Hello and thank you for stopping by GregPostdocs!
While this week is still fresh in my mind, I just wanted to write up some reflections from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s ‘Nutritious Food Systems’ convening, which was held in London from Monday to Wednesday this week (27th-29th March).
This week felt significant for various reasons – not least because it was my (and I’m sure many people’s) first in-person conference for three years! With more than 150 attendees from over 25 countries, the convening featured some 70 different BMGF-funded projects, ranging from hugely impactful initiatives such as Prof. William Master’s ‘Food Prices for Nutrition’ and Prof. Christine Blake’s ‘Drivers of Food Choice’ programmes, to relatively nascent projects like Dr. Saweda Liverpool-Tassie’s ‘Research supporting African MSMEs to provide safe and nutritious food’ (RSM2SNF) and our very own ‘Indian Food Systems for Improved Nutrition’ (INFUSION).
There were also various projects present which seemed to be pushing the boundaries of what might have been possible with technology even three to five years ago, including the VISIDA project led by Dr. Megan Rollo, which is developing an automatic image recognition system to estimate dietary intakes from photos of food plates!
As I was preparing to leave India a few weeks ago, I was asked by the organisers if I would like to participate in the opening panel/roundtable of the convening, alongside a star-studded line-up of Prof. Patson Nalivata (Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources), Prof. Suneetha Kadiyala (LSHTM), Dr. Oliver Cumming (LSHTM) and Dr. Marie Ruel (IFPRI). Our task was essentially to ‘take stock of the evidence’ of food systems policies and programmes that have had positive impacts upon diets and nutrition, particularly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, before considering where further innovation is needed to accelerate progress (e.g., towards a world free of hunger and malnutrition).
I received the invitation on a Friday afternoon in Hyderabad, and I think it took me until midway through the following week to respond as I weighed-up whether the organisers really did mean me! I confirmed after a little encouragement from friends and family, and to my surprise, I didn’t really feel nervous until I woke up at around 4am on the morning of the panel and struggled to remember anything from my notes. Once actually on the panel, I just thought to myself “let’s just go for it”, and the 45 minutes hurtled past (it is amazing how time seems to compress during presentations/these sorts of events). It was also super reassuring to know that the likes of Suneetha and Marie were sat on the same stage – just in case my mind went blank!
Just briefly, I focused my comments on two main areas. First, I tried to emphasise the need to view almost everything we do through a climate-sensitive lens (preaching to the choir, perhaps); be it a value chains analysis, the design of a complex agri-nutrition intervention, or the modelling of future food system scenarios. “Stationarity is dead”, and it is virtually certain that the climatic and environmental conditions that our food systems operate in today will not look the same in ten years, let alone in half a century’s time. Investing in and scaling-up low (if not zero!) carbon solutions, such as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s Pusa Farm SunFridge cold storage, holds significant potential to cut food loss both at the farmgate and market level, whilst dampening the contribution of food systems to our global climate crisis.
Second, I tried to unpack various paradoxes which make researching and understanding food markets incredibly complex (although it may also be my lack of economics training!). We know from World Bank data that over 80% of food consumed in low- and middle-income countries is sourced from markets (as opposed to say, own production), yet governments often rely on the private sector to develop food markets (of course, often reflecting budgetary constraints). We know that geographical remoteness from markets can be problematic for both producers and consumers of nutrient-dense foods (e.g., the economic and opportunity costs of access), yet integration into formal supply chains can be associated with significant entry barriers and the need to maintain unobtainable standards for many smallholders. Lastly, we know that investment in technology can lead to much needed food systems innovation, but as exemplified by, say, the huge investments in potato cold storage in Bihar over the last 15 years, particular investments risk potential lock-ins and traps at times when flexibility and diversification are also important.
In reality, the space for nutritious, sustainable and equitable food systems most likely sits somewhere between these various extremes, although the exact configuration still remains largely elusive to researchers and policymakers alike!
Conscious of the length of this post, I’ll quickly wrap up with some more highlights from the week. Given their influence on both our public health and our politics at various scales, Dr. Purnima Menon (IFPRI) spoke powerfully of the need to tackle the ‘Big Food’ industry head-on, especially when it comes to their aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods and beverages. Prof. Ashwini Chhatre (ISB) critiqued the view that food systems should always be resilient – citing how gender and caste-based inequalities have remained resilient for centuries. Lastly, there was also a broad commitment to engage policymakers early and repeatedly, making sure there is a space at the table to receive their inputs, respond to data needs, and establish a line of communication for co-learning and dissemination.
Anyway, I will sign-off here and just finish by saying it was awesome to be back in-person amongst friends (old and new!) and colleagues in such a setting for the first time in forever. I’ll keep an eye out for any material coming from the convening and be sure to retweet it.
If you have read until here, thank you for sticking with it! Until next time, G.
GregPostdocs 