Food systems provide important benefits to the global population, not only providing food but also supporting livelihoods for more than one billion people around the globe. However, food systems also encompass hidden environmental, health, and social costs, estimated to be at least $10 trillion per year, as mapped out in two separate seminal reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC).

Please join us for a discussion on these hidden costs of food systems and the remedies to reduce this economic burden, while moving toward more sustainable, health-promoting, and socially inclusive food systems.

Speakers include experts involved in FAO’s report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2023, and FSEC’s Global Policy Report, The Economics of the Food System Transformation. Additional food system experts will delineate the hidden costs of food systems and examine transformative approaches for reducing them.

Open and Welcome Remarks | Setting the Scene

• Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI and Managing Director, Systems Transformation Science Group, CGIAR
• Maximo Torero, Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

FAO SOFA report

• Andrea Cattaneo, Senior Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 

FSEC Global Policy Report Findings

• Caterina Ruggeri Laderchi, Director, Food System Economics Commission (FSEC)

The Role of Diets in Reducing Food System’s Hidden Costs

• Jessica Fanzo, Professor of Climate and Food at Columbia University

Addressing Obstacles to Food Systems Transformation

• Danielle Resnick, Senior Research Fellow, Development Strategies and Governance Unit (DSG), IFPRI

Q&A

Moderator

• Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI