The State of Food and Agriculture 2023

Revealing the True Cost of Food To Transform Agrifood Systems

There are two sides to the story of agrifood systems. Both are true.

The first is that agrifood systems generate considerable benefits to society, not least because they produce the food that nourishes us. Agrifood systems are also the world’s biggest employer, providing jobs and livelihoods to over a billion people.¹ Many farmers are also environmental stewards, supplying environmental services to society. Through sustainable practices, such as agroforestry, agrifood systems also generate public benefits, including biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and sequestration, and watershed regulation. As such, the value to society of agrifood systems is likely well beyond what is measured in gross domestic product (GDP). The other side is that, due to market, policy and institutional failures, agrifood systems are fragile and unsustainable, contributing to climate change and natural resource degradation while failing to provide healthy diets to all. With our existence relying on just one planet and fragile agrifood systems, we need to tread carefully.

Agrifood systems have been evolving since the beginning of agriculture, thousands of years ago. Thanks to technological change and innovation in the last 70 years, agricultural productivity has increased tremendously. Meanwhile, food trading has grown enormously, especially in the last three decades. These factors have helped feed a population that has tripled and become more urbanized. Consequently, the share of the population employed in agriculture has declined, while jobs have been created in upstream and downstream value chains and other sectors.