Food security exists when “all people, at all times, have economic, physical, and social access to adequate safe, nutritious foods that meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. This definition was proclaimed during the World Food Summit in 1996 (with social access added in 2001), yet nearly 30 years later there are still hundreds of millions of people who remain food insecure, cannot afford a healthy diet, or face other barriers to accessing and choosing healthy foods. This body of work focuses on understanding the constraints to accessing and choosing safe, nourishing, and satisfying foods that promote health and support all aspects of well-being.

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Food systems are complex systems that involve all aspects of producing, processing, transporting, distributing, and consuming food. They deliver nourishment, jobs, community, culture, and pleasure. But at the same time, current food systems do not equitably provide access to sufficient nutritious and safe food for all people, are responsible for a large share of environmental degradation despite depending on natural resources for food production and are rife with unfair labor practices and violations of human rights. Transforming food systems – meaning reshaping all the infrastructure, technology, interactions, and actors within them – to become healthy, sustainable, equitable, resilience, and just is a necessary part of addressing the numerous problems facing today’s world from human suffering to planetary crisis.

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Agrifood systems are essential to every economy on earth and employ more than a billion people, with billions more who depend on at least one member of their household’s food system work for their livelihood. Yet statistics on the number of food system workers, the economic value af agrifood systems, and evidence on job quality, labor and human rights, workers’ welfare outcomes, labor productivity, and livelihood pathways out of poverty through and beyond agrifood systems remain very limited outside of the agricultural sector. Ample evidence demonstrates a high degree of exploitation in agri-food systems, including human trafficking, dangerous and harmful conditions, precarious job security, low wages, disproportionate burdens on women, and other exploitation including coercive use of child labor. At the same time, food systems and their transformation promise to create economic grooth and jobs and have the potential to improve livelihoods and job quality. Better understanding of the economics of agrifood systems, especially beyond primary production, can reveal entry points for programs and policies to support food systems transformation, improve livelihoods, and promote new pathways to sustainable, resilient agrifood systems and transitions out of poverty.

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