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Fixing the Business of Food: The Food Industry and the SDG challenge

By Gaelle Espinosa

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN Foundation), in partnership with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the Santa Chiara Lab—University of Siena (SCL), joined forces to help the agro-food sector accelerate progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Angelo Riccaboni from the Santa Chiara Lab and Chair of Prima Foundation explained the report being presented which highlights the need for improved systemic practices in the food industry. The recommendations provided for corporate practices in the food sector go through four overarching topics:

  1. The development of products that contribute to healthy and sustainable dietary patterns;
  2. The identification of sustainable ways to produce food;
  3. Innovation of sustainable global supply chains;
  4. Good corporate citizenship.

The food industry by itself cannot address the challenges alone. Partnerships are needed with governments, academia and consumers. Sustainability reporting mechanisms are too heterogeneous today to make any comparison possible. Companies pick and choose their focus to highlight their strengths, which is why this working group recommends that companies and reporting frameworks align to answer the above 4 overarching dimensions.

“Businesses are co-responsible for the environmental and social aspects of their global supply chain”, even though it is hard to implement in practice - said Guido Barilla, chairman of BCFN during his opening speech. Hence, the food industry must transform in order to reach the SDGs.

Jeffrey Sachs explained the challenge of feeding 7.7 billion people and the shocking epidemic of metabolic diseases and obesity. Legal accountability and traceability of where food comes from is practically non-existent, even though agriculture is the most important driver of anthropogenic change. New metrics and new politics are needed to be far sighted, understand implications, monitor them and change course.

Scarlett Benson of Systemiq presented the latest FOLU (Food and Land Use Coalition) report called “Growing Better: 10 critical transitions for transforming food and land use”. The basic conclusion is that there is no trade-off between social, health and environmental benefits of food and land use. Among the critical transitions, she mentioned nutritious food, nature-based solutions and wider choice, supply and opportunity for all.

Emanuela del Re , Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy, talked about the case of Italy. The country built its reputation with decades of multi-actors and multi-stakeholders’ effort to create a system that puts farmers at the center of the process. These are proud and so it’s a success story that can be an inspiration for many.
Finally, Qu Dongyu, Director General of FAO described food systems and stressed on the importance of the environment, production, supply chain and value chain including culture and nutrition.

The speakers were followed by a discussion panel on how to unlock financing for sustainable agriculture.

Ben Valk from Rabo Partnerships suggested that the public sector act as impact investors in order to unlock much more private financing. He stressed on the importance of not underestimating risks, having a committed executive team and having room to make mistakes.

Charlotte Ersboll from the Global Compact called for health to be a leading indicator and seeing sustainability anchored in every member of senior management teams.

Diane Holdorf of WBCSD reminded everyone that a lot of SMEs don’t have the capacity to do research and innovation. There is tremendous work to be done still.

Gerbrand Haverkamp of WBA urges companies to be more accountable. WBA will publicly rank companies on where they stand on SDGs in the coming year, so that there are incentives for companies to act.

Find the report and video of the launch here: https://www.fixing-food.com/en/

Keynote Speakers

  • Guido Barilla - Barilla Foundation Chairman
  • Jeffrey Sachs – Professor Columbia University
  • Scarlett Benson - FOLU, Systemiq
  • Angelo Riccaboni - University of Siena, Chair of Parma Foundation
  • Emanuela del Re - Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy
  • Qu Dongyu - Director General of FAO


Discussion Panel

  • Ben Valk - Rabo Partnerships
  • Charlotte Ersboll - Global compact
  • Diane Holdorf – World Business Council on Sustainable Development
  • Gerbrand Haverkamp – World Benchmarking Alliance


Moderator
Gerda Verburg – Coordinator Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, UN Assistant Secretary-General

Key outcomes and next steps
We strongly recommend that food industry leaders undertake a series of actions to better align corporate practices in the food sector with the SDGs.

  • Four overarching topics to help SDG alignment of the food sector
    • Products that contribute to healthy and sustainable dietary patterns;
    • Sustainable production practices;
    • Sustainable global supply chains;
    • Good corporate citizenship.
  • Comparable monitoring and reporting standards structured around the four dimensions
  • Better products and more awareness to achieve healthy and sustainable diets

Supply chain traceability and innovation for the circular economy
We aim to make our second-year recommendations available to the public and the industry at the occasion of the UN General Assembly session in 2020.