Health & Resilience

Food systems affect human health through a variety of pathways. Unhealthy diets are the most obvious link, while food insecurity leads to debilitating health impacts. Environmental contamination from agriculture also has huge human health implications, including pollution of drinking water with nitrates and endocrine disrupting chemicals, nitrogen-based air pollution, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Meanwhile, farmers, farm-workers, and food-workers face a range of severe occupational health risks. The COVID-19 crisis has further highlighted the role of industrial agriculture in disease spillover, as well as underlining the need to build food systems that are resilient to the disease and climate crises of the future.

Publications

All publications

September 2020 | Agroecology

Health & Resilience

| West Africa

The Added Value(s) of Agroecology: Unlocking the potential for transition in West Africa

West Africa has all the ingredients to become the epicenter of the global agroecology movement, and one of the frontrunners in transition to sustainable and equitable food systems. Through a three-year participatory research process, IPES-Food identified eight key obstacles to agroecology in West Africa, but also four leverage points where sustained action could accelerate the agroecological transition in the region.

Read the Full Report ( EN | FR )
Read the Executive Summary ( EN | FR )

April 2020 | Agroecology

Health & Resilience

Agribusiness

Global Governance

COVID-19 and the Crisis in Food Systems

What are the impacts of COVID-19 on food systems? Why are we in the midst of this perfect storm? What can be done immediately to avert more damage to society and the economy? And what are the structural changes we now need to protect people and planet?

Read the Special Report ( EN | FR | ES )

October 2017 | Health & Resilience

Unravelling the Food–Health Nexus: Addressing practices, political economy, and power relations to build healthier food systems

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the many interconnected ways in which food systems affect human health, why these negative impacts are systematically reproduced, and why certain problems are not politically prioritized.

Read the full report ( EN | FR | ES )
Read the executive summary ( EN | FR | ES )

January 2018

Industry-sponsored science is clouding the picture of how food systems impact health

In January 2018, IPES-Food contributed to the special edition magazine of the Food Ethics Council. The chapter considers how the current structuring, framing, and financing of scientific research bears on our understanding of the health risks generated by food and farming systems.

Read the chapter (EN)

January 2018

Advancing equity, equality and non-discrimination in food systems: Pathways to reform

UNSCN News 43

In a chapter for UNSCN News entitled "Framing the nutrition problem: The political-economic obstacles to healthier diets", IPES-Food Panel Member Cecilia Rocha examines issues holding back our understanding of health impacts and our ability to address them.

Read the chapter (EN)