Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor.

Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives.

Towards food systems transformation-five paradigm shifts for healthy, inclusive and sustainable food systems.

Food systems must serve different societal, public health and individual nutrition, and environmental objectives and therefore face numerous challenges. Considering the integrated performances of food systems, this paper highlights five fundamental paradigm shifts that are required to overcome trade-offs and build synergies between health and nutrition, inclusive livelihoods, environmental sustainability and food system resilience. We focus on the challenges to raise policy ambitions, to harmonize production and consumption goals, to improve connectivity between them, to strengthen food system performance and to anchor the governance of food systems in inclusive policies and participatory institutions.

Financing adaptation for resilient livelihoods under food system transformation: the role of Multilateral Development Banks.

Climate change is imposing a transformative process on agricultural and food systems, threatening the livelihoods of people dependent upon them which includes a large share of the world's poor people. Transformative adaptation that addresses the risks and vulnerabilities to livelihoods that climate change imposes is essential for effective and inclusive transformation of food systems. Financing that is adequate, accessible and appropriate is essential to realizing these objectives.

Shedding light on the evidence blind spots confounding the multiple objectives of SDG 2.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 consists of five targets ranging from the eradication of hunger and malnutrition to doubling productivity of small-scale farmers and ensuring sustainable and resilient food production systems. Trade-offs and synergies arise between strategies to achieve any one of these targets, which complicates the use of evidence to guide policies and investments since most analyses focus solely on one objective. This gives rise to 'blind spots' in the evidence base, where acting to achieve one objective can have strong impacts on achieving others, hampering attempts to establish a systematic approach to attaining the multiple objectives of SDG 2.