Our obsession with creating cheaper fast food that is high in sugar, salt and carbohydrates has led to a situation where much of the food we consume is unhealthy and contributes to diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

All food production systems are also deeply entwined with other systems, such as energy, water, land use and soil fertility, all of which are overexploited and are susceptible to the effects of climate change. In addition, we are plagued with food waste.

Collectively, this has created a major health, hunger and environmental crisis that calls for a complete reset in the food systems on our continent and worldwide in order to start producing and marketing healthy, sustainable, affordable food.

Resetting an entire system requires dramatic changes in mindset, policy, systems and finance, and we are duty-bound to achieve this. That is why it is a major transdisciplinary research focus at the University of Pretoria (UP). The findings of this research are documented in an annual report that the University recently submitted to the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) Hub for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger by 2030. (The full wording for SDG 2 reads as: “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”).

UP is the host for the UNAI Hub for SDG 2. It also hosts the Africa Research Universities Alliance Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems, and the South African Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Food Security.

The triple food system challenge we face as a country and continent is described as follows:

• Ensuring that the growing global population has access to enough good-quality food; 
• providing livelihoods for the millions of people working in agriculture and food supply chains; and
• making sure that all this is done sustainably.

Fortunately, we are seeing greater willingness for public-private dialogue and action around this triple challenge. This requires proactively promoting and supporting the production and consumption of foods that benefit our health, while not overexploiting our ecosystems.

In a paper titled The true cost and true price of food – commissioned by the Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit, of which I was one of several co-authors – we explained that the lack of inclusion of externalities (hidden costs) in the cost of food has led to sustainable and healthy food often being less affordable to consumers and less profitable for businesses than unsustainable and unhealthy food.

Externalities include air, water and soil pollution, carbon emissions, land use, overuse of renewable resources, soil depletion, water use, and the depletion of ecosystem services and biodiversity. The evidence we presented points to the urgent need for a system reset to account for the hidden costs in food systems, and calls for bold action to redefine food prices and put in place incentives for producing and consuming healthier and more sustainable diets.

The first step to correct for hidden costs is to redefine the value of food through True Cost Accounting in order to address externalities and reveal the costs of damage to the environment and human health. This is currently not factored into crucial economic indicators for policymakers.

Governments need to adopt pragmatic, true pricing policies with mandatory transparency of externalities of food products, as well as formal incentives through taxes and subsidies to encourage businesses to produce healthier, more sustainable food and for consumers to purchase it. Various initiatives should also be implemented to recognise and support farmers, including smallholders and food processors, as important environment and food security stewards.

Some examples of potential policies that create sustainable food production incentives include financing subsidies for healthy and sustainable food through a carbon tax on carbon emissions by businesses; prioritising foods with low external costs; and integrating true pricing in risk and capital regulation by central banks.

As part of the action, we also need to create incentives for women farmers. Women throughout Africa are the anchor of our food and feeding systems, yet they are not reaping anything like the profitability and productivity of their male counterparts. Key constraints are land ownership, access to finance, and training for leadership roles. The Corteva Women Agripreneur Programme at UP’s Gordon Institute of Business Science is addressing this through an intervention that develops the entrepreneurial, leadership and business skills of women farmers.

To understand the many aspects that affect African food systems, UP is co-hosting a research project aimed at identifying solutions to achieve SDG 2. The project, called the Food Systems Research Network for Africa programme, is funded by the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund in collaboration with the University of Leeds in the UK, and the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Research and Policy Analysis Network. It includes 20 early-career researchers from six African countries and their mentors.

Overall, a profound change in our food and agriculture systems is needed if we are to nourish the people of our continent and the more than 690 million people worldwide who are hungry today, with numbers growing daily due to the Ukrainian crisis that is threatening the global food supply.

Hunger is one of the key wicked challenges we face in the world today, and it doesn’t need to be this way. Sustainable food production is a moral and environmental imperative that UP embraces.