États-Unis d’Amérique - Étape 1
Discussion topic outcome
Participants identified environmental degradation and climate change as overarching challenges to agricultural production and resilience across the food system.Some participants emphasized that variability in growing conditions due to climate change poses challenges for agricultural productivity. Some participants also mentioned lack of harmonized rules, regulatory and trade burdens, and differing uses and approaches to technology as additional challenges for global market competition and resilience. Some participants discussed how racial inequality is exacerbated by divergent exposure to
... Lire la suitepesticides, water quality, and other environmental conditions.Some participants hypothesized that a driver of environmental degradation is lack of access to infrastructure to bring diverse crops to market such as diverse marketing and processing outlets. Without diverse outlets, farmers may not be able to diversify production or redirect product to higher-valued market options.
Some participants were concerned about who bears the costs and who should bear the costs of implementing environmentally sustainable and climate adaptation and mitigation practices at scale, and the tradeoffs with food system livelihoods and food affordability. Some participants asked “Is “tradeoffs” always the right lens? Are there opportunities for economic and sustainability wins or synergies?” and noted that we should aim for solutions where foods are both nutritious and sustainably produced. Some participants highlighted that meeting the needs of producers and consumers is a tradeoff, with increased sustainability sometimes meaning higher prices for producers and consumers. Some participants emphasized that when food insecurity is an issue, sustainability it not a high priority. In addition, some participants noted that imports of less expensive products from countries with less stringent environmental production protections may result in a more affordable, but less sustainable food supply.Evidence gaps identified by some participants included the environmental and carbon footprints of food and the scientific links between environmentally sustainable practices and productivity yields. Some participants discussed the need for research about productivity and sustainability to investigate the assumption that producing food sustainably inherently reduces yield. Some participants noted a lack of sophisticated modeling of the impacts of dietary shifts considering international trade and shifting demand elsewhere in the world. Some participants expressed the need for articulation of multi-stakeholder agreement around desired, quantifiable outcomes for a sustainable food system and for environmental costs to be included in agricultural production. Some participants noted the issue of evidence gaps to accelerate the rate of adoption and the diversity of applying conservation agriculture practices, as well as data to assess downstream effects of increased production and processing costs. Lire moins
Piste(s) d'Action: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Mots-clés : Data & Evidence, Environment and Climate, Finance, Innovation, Policy, Trade-offs