Although global in scope, the SDGs require concerted efforts at the national and regional level, and, consequently, each nation needs to build concrete food policy pathways and implement measures customized to its local conditions 3.Ī logical first step in building national transformative pathways is to select appropriate indicators that can evaluate and track the progress toward the sustainability of its diets and food systems. Most of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are linked with global food systems performance 2. Going forward, global food systems need to ensure improved economic security of actors involved and combat existing malnutrition/obesity-related health problems, while keeping the environmental impacts low enough so as not to transgress the planetary boundaries of biophysical processes and further destabilize Earth systems 1. They also represent an important part of national gross domestic product (GDP), although the share of income generated from agriculture production, food processing, sales, and distribution varies across different countries. Food systems are by far the biggest employer in the world, particularly in economically poor countries. Meeting the increasing demand for nutritious food in the face of growing world population, consumption levels, dietary shifts, and the consequent environmental degradation constitute a major challenge for humanity in this century. Our nation-specific quantitative results can help policy-makers to set improvement targets on specific areas and adopt new practices, while keeping track of the other aspects of sustainability. Transitioning from animal foods toward plant-based foods would improve indicator scores for most countries. High-income nations score well on most indicators, but poorly on environmental, food waste, and health-sensitive nutrient-intake indicators. The results show that different countries have widely varying patterns of performance with unique priorities for improvement. Here we present a first global-scale analysis quantifying the status of national food system performance of 156 countries, employing 25 sustainability indicators across 7 domains as follows: nutrition, environment, food affordability and availability, sociocultural well-being, resilience, food safety, and waste. The wide scope of the SDGs call for holistic approaches that integrate previously “siloed” food sustainability assessments. Food systems are at the heart of at least 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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