News Overview

BY KIBROM A. ABAY, MULUBRHAN AMARE, LUCA TIBERTI,KWAW S. ANDAM AND MICHAEL WANG COVID-19 has disrupted programs that assist vulnerable populations worldwide. In addition to education, schools provide daily meals and other services that many families depend on; when schools closed during the pandemic, those services ceased. Kibrom Abay and colleagues explore the food security consequences of school closures in

BY DANIELLE RESNICK On July 28, local governments were given center stage at the United Nations Food Systems Pre-Summit dialogues to discuss how to tackle food insecurity and nutrition. This reflects the growing prominence of local governments in civic life around the world—the outcome of processes of decentralization unfolding globally since the early 1990s. Decentralization involves the transfer of certain administrative functions,

BY JULIE KURTZ AND DREW SAMPLE Our food system has a plastic problem. Macro- and micro-plastic pollution is contaminating aquatic and agricultural ecosystems—threatening food security. Plastics are entering food chains, threatening both animal and human health. Meanwhile, as diets increasingly include more packaged ultra-processed and fast foods, the food system itself is generating more and more plastic pollution. Takeout food and beverage

BY JEMIMAH NJUKI Somewhere in rural South Asia, a very enterprising woman toils for about 18 hours a day to feed and care for her family. However, despite working to the point of endangering her own health, she only gets a fraction of her labor. The bulk of her returns go to the landowner. I met Kapilaben during the South Asia

BY SWATI MALHOTRA On top of climate-driven shocks, conflicts, and economic stresses, the COVID-19 pandemic undermined the livelihoods of billions around the world in 2020. Food insecurity grew: 155 million people suffered acute hunger and 34 million people were on the brink of famine in 20 countries, according to the 2021 Global Report on Food Crises. The May 10 T20 Forum

BY ELS LECOUTERE,MARRIT VAN DEN BERG AND ALAN DE BRAUW Effective food systems innovations—defined as policies, technologies, and/or institutional innovations that trigger changes in food systems dynamics and outcomes—can help produce healthier, more sustainable outcomes, and are essential to confront our current global challenges, which are formidable. Food insecurity persists around the world, along with high rates of micronutrient malnutrition and

BY EMILY BROAD LEIB AND DOUG O’BRIEN As much as one third of all food produced is lost or wasted. Rather than reaching the estimated 820 million people who face hunger around the world, that food is thrown away and decomposes, contributing 8%-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Loss and waste occur across food supply chains: On farms, because of surplus or imperfect products, and downstream

BY CLAUDIA RINGLER Accelerating the development of sustainable groundwater use in Africa could be pivotal in the transformation of the continent’s food security and prosperity. This was the key message of a July 6 UN Food Systems Summit Science Days side event organized by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), along with IFPRI, the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and