A social–ecological analysis of the global agrifood system

Abstract

Eradicating world hunger—the aim of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2)—requires a social–ecological approach to agrifood systems. However, previous work has mostly focused on one or the other. Here, we apply such a holistic approach to depicting the global food panorama through a quantitative multivariate assessment of 43 indicators of food sovereignty and 28 indicators of sociodemographics, social being, and environmental sustainability in 150 countries. The results identify 5 world regions and indicate the existence of an agrifood debt (i.e., disequilibria between regions in the natural resources consumed, the environmental impacts produced, and the social wellbeing attained by populations that play different roles within the globalized agrifood system). Three spotlights underpin this debt: 1) a severe contrast in diets and food security between regions, 2) a concern about the role that international agrifood trade is playing in regional food security, and 3) a mismatch between regional biocapacity and food security. Our results contribute to broadening the debate beyond food security from a social–ecological perspective, incorporating environmental and social dimensions.