Abstract
Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favourable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions. Instead, they should be embedded as part of systemic changes that facilitate the implementation of the SDGs. Emerging trade-offs need to be intentionally addressed to achieve true sustainability, particularly those involving social aspects like inequality in its many forms, social justice, and strong institutions, which remain challenging. Trade-offs with undesirable consequences are manageable through the development of well planned transition pathways, careful monitoring of key indicators, and through the implementation of transparent science targets at the local level.
Generated Summary
This Personal View article, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, examines the potential effects of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study employs a qualitative approach, using case studies to illustrate the complex impact pathways of technological advancements in the food system. It identifies the potential consequences and interactions between food system innovations and the SDGs, offering insights for guiding investments and policy formulation. The research emphasizes the need for a systemic approach, considering the interconnectedness of the SDGs and the trade-offs inherent in food systems sustainability. The study also stresses the importance of responsible scaling principles and the need for addressing unintended consequences and social aspects like inequality. The methodology involves identifying potential consequences, interactions between food system innovations and the SDGs, and the need for responsible scaling and mitigating unintended consequences, particularly those involving social aspects. Four case studies are used to demonstrate the complex impact pathways of various platform technologies.
Key Findings & Statistics
- The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2019 estimated that 8 million deaths were attributable to dietary risk factors.
- The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN member states in 2015, is built around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Case study 1: production of microbial protein from organic waste streams (circular feed)
- Demand for animal-source foods is projected to rise rapidly in coming decades.
- Microbial protein production is not yet economically competitive as a replacement for the conventional soybean.
- Circular feed technology could substantially affect several SDGs, both positively and negatively.
- For example, microbial protein could reduce the demand for soybean meal that is currently mainly used for animal feed
- Case study 2: personalised nutrition
- Personalised nutrition encompasses several individual technologies that can be combined or used in isolation to apply detailed and multidimensional metabolic data and health data to better understand human metabolic responses to diet.
- If personalised nutrition could improve diet, then it could substantially reduce NCDs, increase life expectancy (SDG 3), and generate health-care cost savings.
- Case study 3: automation and robotics in agriculture
- Automation could have important benefits to human safety by reducing exposure to harmful agrochemicals and dangerous equipment, reducing human injuries (SDG 3, 8).
- Automation would substantially increase the amount of capital in agriculture, resulting in potential increases in economic and social inequality (SDG 10) as available jobs and income opportunities in commercial agriculture substantially decrease (SDG 8).
- Case study 4: nitrogen fixation in cereals
- The large expansion of cereal production over the past century is partly attributable to the sharp expansion in the availability of, and reduction in the cost of, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.
Other Important Findings
- Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions and should be embedded as part of systemic changes.
- Emerging trade-offs need to be intentionally addressed to achieve true sustainability, particularly those involving social aspects like inequality, social justice, and strong institutions.
- Impact pathways vary across technologies, SDGs, and distinct food system types.
- Innovation for system transformation involves disruption, including the intentional and unintentional creation of winners and losers.
- The study makes five key points:
- Even the most attractive technologies face long, complex pathways to affect the SDGs.
- Complex impact pathways and the closely coupled nature of food systems mean that unforeseen outcomes abound (environmental externalities or distributional effects).
- Impact pathways vary across technologies, SDGs, and distinct food system types.
- The development community has traditionally focused on silver bullet solutions that often solve one problem and create others.
- The disruptive effects of innovation often prompt vigorous political efforts to try to block or delay the deployment of a particular technological breakthrough.
- Circular feed could reduce the demand for soybean meal.
- Automation and robotics could improve resource-use efficiency by decreasing harmful agrochemical input use and their ecological footprint.
- Technologies related to inputs and waste reduction, in particular, might have had antagonistic effects on equity considerations.
- The socioeconomic factors that mediate the effects of novel technologies involve a cascade of responses across multiple parts of the food system.
- Eight essential sociocultural, behavioural, economic, and political factors affect whether technologies emerge, are able to be scaled, and drive the effect that they were originally intended to have on society, the environment, and thus the SDGs.
Limitations Noted in the Document
- The study recognizes that stand-alone technical solutions are unlikely to result in exclusively positive effects.
- The impacts of technologies are presented as potential effects rather than a comprehensive analysis.
- The examples are built in workshops between the authors, intended to show possible effects, rather than a comprehensive analysis of these technologies in a dynamic market setting.
- The study acknowledges that the extent to which individual differences in responses to diets are a major driver of the global burden of diet-related disease is unclear.
- Personalized diets also raise a raft of ethical questions with potentially perverse effects.
- There were varied effects on SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities).
Conclusion
The study emphasizes that food system innovations are instrumental in achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but major innovation breakthroughs can lead to profound and disruptive changes. The research stresses that stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions and the importance of a systemic approach to address trade-offs and unintended consequences. The study provides a framework for assessing the potential effects of various technologies and highlights the need for responsible scaling principles and the incorporation of social justice. The analysis also calls for a clear examination of the complex pathways from technology development to its deployment and consequences, and the need to ensure that unintended consequences do not create unacceptable damage or conflict with approaches to ensure social justice. The complexity of impact pathways inevitably influences the trade-offs or synergies across different SDGs. Managing those accelerators thoughtfully will require dialogue and cooperation from a wide range of public, private, and civil society sector actors. The authors stress that food transformations are often erroneously solely attributed to the emblematic technology and that crucial enabling social and political conditions get overlooked. They conclude by emphasizing the need to put our arsenal of sociotechnical innovation and immense human ingenuity to use to secure the future of our planet and the next generations.