CSIRO is urging a new approach to managing and reporting on our food system, following the national science agency completing the country’s first national stocktake of its structure and workings. The system must be understood as providing equitable access to safe, nutritious and healthy food, produced sustainably, not simply producing and exporting commodities, it says.
Dr Michael Robertson (Source: CSIRO)
CSIRO Agriculture and Food director, Dr Michael Robertson, said knowing and understanding the state of our food system through regular reporting is the critical first step in dealing with the complex challenges and opportunities facing Australia’s food system.
“Our food system is more than just producing and exporting commodities – it’s also about providing equitable access to safe, nutritious and healthy food, produced sustainably for all Australians.
“We have an intergenerational responsibility to pursue these goals vigorously,” Dr Robertson said.
Australia’s food system incorporates production to distribution, consumption of food and food ingredients, nutrition and health, as well as the natural and social systems that support it.
“This national stocktake provides an evidence base to guide our actions as social, cultural, environmental, and economic priorities shift,” he said.
The report said, “A critical step towards recognising and coordinating the food system is being able to monitor and report on it. This report provides a first step towards reporting on the interactions across Australia’s food system that pose the greatest challenges and create the greatest opportunities.”
Successful, but fragmented
The report highlighted that food policy in Australia is fragmented across portfolios as diverse as agriculture, environment, industry, social services, health, transport and urban planning.
CSIRO Sustainability Research director, Larelle McMillan, said a reporting system would offer valuable insights into where the food system is falling short – for example, almost a third of Australian households experience moderate or severe food insecurity each year – and where it’s failing to meet the needs of all Australians.
“We need to move from analysing specific parts of the food system, to establishing coordinated reporting for important food system attributes and interactions, thus enabling connected up action for a national food system that serves all,” McMillan said.
Other sectors can do it
CSIRO makes the point that other systems – of equal complexity – are routinely overseen in other parts of our society and economy. The agricultural sector is highly optimised and able to support a more integrated food system into the future, the report authors said.
“The food system needs to be managed through interventions that improve its performance and future trajectories of development and that better reporting has a key role to play.
“This type of system management is best implemented in a distributed way through inclusive deliberation and genuine partnership between government, industry and community,” it said, providing examples of agencies doing so: emergency management, air traffic control, maritime safety, the road transport system, the pharmaceutical system, the Australian Defence Force, multiple state and Commonwealth police forces and criminal justice systems, the social welfare system and the health system.
“We also know how to balance sectoral interests with wider societal interests when managing systems similar to the food system.
“Central agencies such as Treasury, Finance, Defence and Departments of Prime Minister/Premier and Cabinet have evolved as mechanisms for elevating important societal goals above conflicting sectoral interests.
“Other nations, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, already have food portfolios for managing food system interactions,” the report said.
The report has identified three key steps to guide a systems-based approach for transformation:
- Recognising the food system as an integrated whole, moving beyond a fragmented, sector-based view;
- navigating responsibility across government, industry, and communities to ensure shared accountability for sustainability, nutrition, and equity goals; and
- enabling interactions across disconnected parts of the system, from farming and nutrition to policy and innovation.
The report then presents expert insights from across the food system in 11 Insights organised into three parts:
- Insights 1 to 5 present the food system’s diverse goals in nutrition and health, food retail, food safety, Indigenous food systems, and food policy;
- Insights 6 to 8 present food system sustainability, life cycle assessment, and a circular economy; and
- Insights 9 to 11 present food production and its unintended environmental and health impacts.
Australian food system facts
The food system adds more than $200 billion to Australia’s economy and employs 3.5 million people
Almost one-third of Australian households experience moderate or severe food insecurity each year.
Around two-thirds of Australian adults and almost one-third of children and adolescents are overweight.
85 per cent of Australian groceries are purchased from major supermarket chains.
Public health costs associated with foodborne illness in Australia approach $3 billion annually.
Within the Australian Government, responsibility for food policy has become dispersed among 11 different portfolios.
Australia generates 33 million tonnes of organic waste each year, much of which is not repurposed and ends up in landfill.
Australia’s food system has the highest per capita hidden environmental and health costs in the world, with estimates ranging from $98 billion to $274 billion in net present value terms.
Just under 90 per cent of food manufacturing businesses are small-to-medium enterprises with less than 20 employees, and reporting on factors for their success is underdeveloped.
But the report emphasises: "We tend to latch onto high profile statistics, and they can distract us from understanding the food system interactions that cause them. We naturally tend to manage the things we can measure at the risk of ignoring parts of the food system we can’t see.
"This report highlights that reporting is highly underdeveloped for some critical components of the food system – especially environmental sustainability and Indigenous food systems – and misleading for other components. It suggest ways of balancing food system reporting to meet a more balanced set of economic, sustainability, equity and health goals."
