Agroecologically-conducive policies A review of recent advances and remaining challenges

Even before the current global COVID-19 health crisis — whose potential long-term impacts on food systems are still unclear (Béné et al. 2020; Knill and Steinebach 2022) — experts from several areas have pointed to a ‘global syndemic’ characterized by the confluence of environmental degradation, climate change and the triple burden of malnutrition (Swinburn et al. 2019; Willet et al. 2019). According to numerous studies, the behaviour of some private sector actors and the eating habits of a significant part of the world’s population, combined with insufficient government action, is leading to significant loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function (Wagner et al. 2021; Rampino and Shen 2019). Hence, there are increasing demands for concerted actions or initiatives that will simultaneously tackle the many dimensions of this complex problem. The argument is that solutions focused on single issues will be insufficient and may even worsen other aspects of the global syndemic. Historically, single-issue agricultural policies that favoured industrial approaches, while contributing to reducing hunger, also generated externalities that contributed to environmental degradation, climate change (IPCC 2019) and — when associated with the concentration of a few commodities and ultra-processed food consumption — negative impacts on public health (Monteiro et al. 2019; Vandevijvere et al. 2019). These facts have generated a vigorous discourse among governments and other stakeholders on how innovative farming practices and the development of food value chains could promote healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems (HLPE 2020; FAO et al. 2020; IFOAM-Organics International 2017; Blay-Palmer et al. 2019; Lamine et al. 2019)