Making Better Policies for Food Systems
Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains. This report focuses on three questions. What has been the performance of food systems to date, and what role did policies play? How can policy makers design coherent policies across the triple challenge? And how can policy makers deal with frictions related to facts, interests, and values, which often complicate the task of achieving better policies? Better policies will require breaking down silos between agriculture, health, and environmental policies, and overcoming knowledge gaps, resistance from interest groups, and differing values. Robust, inclusive, evidence-based processes are thus essential to making better policies for food systems.
The contribution of the ruminant livestock sector to the triple challenge
Ruminant livestock is an important source of protein and livelihoods, but is a significant contributor to environmental problems, including climate change. This chapter reviews its contribution to the triple challenge and illustrates how governments in Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand (countries with important ruminant livestock sectors) are navigating trade-offs and incorporate facts, interest and values in their policy process. Scientific facts, including from independent advisory groups, play an important role but are not always widely accepted by the public or stakeholders. Through consultation with stakeholders, policy makers hear from groups with different interests, including those with livelihoods at stake. Values play a role as well, including farmers’ sense of belonging to a rural community, the importance of reducing climate change emissions in all sectors, as well as animal welfare, preserving landscapes, and the ethics of eating meat. Policy developments have also been influenced by court challenges and innovative mechanisms such as deliberative processes.