Skip To Content

Sustainable Agrifood Systems – Meeting China’s Food and Climate Security Goals

The agri-food systems feature predominantly in China’s 2021 – 2025 five-year plan, National Determined Contributions (NDC), 2060 climate goals, and other policies as a contributor to national priorities such as food security, climate neutrality, common prosperity, and public health. However, increasingly, the trade of food staples is becoming more vulnerable to shifts in geopolitics; food supply will be even more vulnerable to changes in climate and environmental degradation; rural populations have been marginalized as secondary and tertiary activities are the main sources of family income; and malnutrition and other food-related health issues are already epidemic as many in China adopt western food habits. To achieve national strategic goals and address these challenges, China must transform its agrifood system.

To advance the evaluation of actionable options for this transformation, this SPS includes a review of food production technology, on-farm practice, and public policy solutions, some tested and some in development. Such solutions fall into four categories: producing more (and more nutritious) food, protecting nature, reducing agrifood system inefficiencies and pollution, and restoring degraded lands. While individual solutions by themselves may produce some positive outcomes and be implemented intra-sectorally, the interdependencies and sheer scale of the task call for a multi-sectoral concerted effort supported by the relevant institutions through arrangements and processes that rely more on systems thinking than on narrow sectoral mandates. Six policy, governance and institutional innovations are recommended to facilitate such concerted effort:

  1. Develop a National Agrifood System Transformation Strategy
  2. Repurpose Agricultural Fiscal Incentives and Finance
  3. Promote Healthy Diets and Consumption
  4. Accelerate the Agrifood Systems Transformation through Private Sector Leadership
  5. Incentivize Alternative Sources of Protein and Food Technology
  6. Green International Food Value Chains

 

 

Task Force: Sustainable Production and Consumption Topic: Sustainable Production and Consumption Year: 2022 Phase: Phase VI (2017-2022) Concluded

Sustainable Agrifood Systems – Meeting China’s Food and Climate Security Goals

VIEW IN English

Sustainable Agrifood Systems – Meeting China’s Food and Climate Security Goals

VIEW IN Chinese