Resource
This storytelling series features six case studies of fisher communities organizing for justice and food sovereignty across land and water. These stories surface strategies of resistance, resilience, and survival in the face of systemic injustice and extractive economies. We begin with two stories from Uganda and South Africa.
This publication outlines seven guiding principles for transforming food systems, providing a framework for action to guide decision-making in food systems transformation.
Farmers harvest Yuca plant. Photo credit: Murray Cooper
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food highlights the urgent need for food systems transformation to address challenges like food insecurity, climate change, and health crises. Incremental changes are insufficient; systemic transformation is needed to tackle these interconnected issues. This Framework for Action provides seven guiding principles to help inform and guide decisions in creating sustainable, resilient, healthy, and equitable food systems.
This Framework acts as a practical toolkit for organizations, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in food systems transformation. It offers clear criteria and standards to assess, learn from, and act on various activities, encouraging a holistic, systems-oriented approach. The toolkit helps users apply the seven principles in diverse contexts, ensuring alignment with values like sustainability, equity, and resilience. It supports transparency, collaboration, and adaptation, driving meaningful and measurable change.
Both the Framework and Discussion Guide are intended to evolve over time, integrating new insights and experiences from ongoing food system innovations.
Download the Toolkit to start exploring pathways for food system transformation.
Address the integrity of natural and social resources that are the foundation of a healthy planet and future generations in the face of changing global and local demands.
Our food systems must be renewable so that the natural and social systems that we rely on and that have regenerated over millennia continue to do so. This means that food is produced, processed, and consumed in adequate quality and quantity while protecting both food cultures, traditions, and practices, as well as protecting the intrinsic value and integrity of natural resources including land, soils, water, seas, biodiversity and seeds, livestock, pollinators, and other natural resources through preservation, conservation, restoration, regulation, and responsible management and use.
Address the integrity of natural and social resources that are the foundation of a healthy planet and future generations in the face of changing global and local demands.
Our food systems must be renewable so that the natural and social systems that we rely on and that have regenerated over millennia continue to do so. This means that food is produced, processed, and consumed in adequate quality and quantity while protecting both food cultures, traditions, and practices, as well as protecting the intrinsic value and integrity of natural resources including land, soils, water, seas, biodiversity and seeds, livestock, pollinators, and other natural resources through preservation, conservation, restoration, regulation, and responsible management and use.
Promote sustainable livelihoods and access to nutritious and just food systems for all.
Our food systems must be equitable so that no one is left behind and so that those upon whom our food systems depend—especially Indigenous people, women, and smallholder farmers and fishers—have the ability to achieve a decent livelihood and food security. This means that we must work to: eliminate poverty; ensure our food systems continue to provide for the over 3 billion smallholder farmers and fishers in need of fair employment; and ensure local communities’ control over the means of production, such as access to land and water rights, production subsidies, capital, and control over their own spiritual and material relationships to their waters, lands, and nature.
Value our rich and diverse agricultural, ecological, and cultural heritage.
Our food systems must be diverse so that we protect and conserve the rich agricultural biodiversity of fishing grounds, forests, water bodies, pastoral lands, migratory routes, and plant and animal genetic resources and medicines, including aquatic organisms, crops, seeds, livestock breeds, and their wild relatives. As well, it means not just protecting and conserving agricultural biodiversity but also upholding diversity in healthy diets, markets, technology, and local knowledge processes, traditions, and cultural heritage – all as pathways conducive to resilience and better farmer and fisher livelihoods, consumer well-being and health, and environmental protection.
Advance the health and well-being of people, animals, the environment, and the societies that depend on all three.
Our food systems must deliver health for all–human health, animal health, environmental health, and community health. This means that all forms of malnutrition are eliminated through access to safe, nutritious, diverse, and affordable food now and for future generations. It means ensuring that every actor in the food system—from production to processing to consumption—is protected from food production-related occupational hazards and environmental contamination, such as air and water pollution, and toxic pesticides. As well, it means nurturing food’s role in providing social, familial, and cultural meaning.
Ensure meaningful and authentic engagement of diverse people and organizations in transparent deliberations, shared power, democratic decisions, and collective actions affecting food systems for the public good.
Our food systems must be inclusive of all those who produce, process, and consume food in rural and urban areas, in poor and wealthy countries. This means that global governance is built on democratic principles, shared power, and inclusive participation, that decision-making is democratic, including the participation of food producers and constituencies most affected by hunger and malnutrition, and that in deliberations concerning the future of food, diverse people and organizations are engaged in transparent and authentic ways.
Understand the implications of the interdependence of food, people, and the planet in a transition to more sustainable food systems.
Our food systems must be interconnected. We must understand the interdependencies within the system, recognizing the complex web of dynamics and interactions between parts of the system. It means watching for, making sense of, and interpreting the implications of things that are interconnected in the global system. We must think beyond nation-states, sector siloes, and narrowly identified issues and see the interconnections between the global and local, the macro and the micro, and the relationships between worldwide patterns and area-specific challenges.
Address the integrity of natural and social resources that are the foundation of a healthy planet and future generations in the face of changing global and local demands.
Our food systems must be renewable so that the natural and social systems that we rely on and that have regenerated over millennia continue to do so. This means that food is produced, processed, and consumed in adequate quality and quantity while protecting both food cultures, traditions, and practices, as well as protecting the intrinsic value and integrity of natural resources including land, soils, water, seas, biodiversity and seeds, livestock, pollinators, and other natural resources through preservation, conservation, restoration, regulation, and responsible management and use.
Address the integrity of natural and social resources that are the foundation of a healthy planet and future generations in the face of changing global and local demands.
Our food systems must be renewable so that the natural and social systems that we rely on and that have regenerated over millennia continue to do so. This means that food is produced, processed, and consumed in adequate quality and quantity while protecting both food cultures, traditions, and practices, as well as protecting the intrinsic value and integrity of natural resources including land, soils, water, seas, biodiversity and seeds, livestock, pollinators, and other natural resources through preservation, conservation, restoration, regulation, and responsible management and use.
Promote sustainable livelihoods and access to nutritious and just food systems for all.
Our food systems must be equitable so that no one is left behind and so that those upon whom our food systems depend—especially Indigenous people, women, and smallholder farmers and fishers—have the ability to achieve a decent livelihood and food security. This means that we must work to: eliminate poverty; ensure our food systems continue to provide for the over 3 billion smallholder farmers and fishers in need of fair employment; and ensure local communities’ control over the means of production, such as access to land and water rights, production subsidies, capital, and control over their own spiritual and material relationships to their waters, lands, and nature.
Value our rich and diverse agricultural, ecological, and cultural heritage.
Our food systems must be diverse so that we protect and conserve the rich agricultural biodiversity of fishing grounds, forests, water bodies, pastoral lands, migratory routes, and plant and animal genetic resources and medicines, including aquatic organisms, crops, seeds, livestock breeds, and their wild relatives. As well, it means not just protecting and conserving agricultural biodiversity but also upholding diversity in healthy diets, markets, technology, and local knowledge processes, traditions, and cultural heritage – all as pathways conducive to resilience and better farmer and fisher livelihoods, consumer well-being and health, and environmental protection.
Advance the health and well-being of people, animals, the environment, and the societies that depend on all three.
Our food systems must deliver health for all–human health, animal health, environmental health, and community health. This means that all forms of malnutrition are eliminated through access to safe, nutritious, diverse, and affordable food now and for future generations. It means ensuring that every actor in the food system—from production to processing to consumption—is protected from food production-related occupational hazards and environmental contamination, such as air and water pollution, and toxic pesticides. As well, it means nurturing food’s role in providing social, familial, and cultural meaning.
Ensure meaningful and authentic engagement of diverse people and organizations in transparent deliberations, shared power, democratic decisions, and collective actions affecting food systems for the public good.
Our food systems must be inclusive of all those who produce, process, and consume food in rural and urban areas, in poor and wealthy countries. This means that global governance is built on democratic principles, shared power, and inclusive participation, that decision-making is democratic, including the participation of food producers and constituencies most affected by hunger and malnutrition, and that in deliberations concerning the future of food, diverse people and organizations are engaged in transparent and authentic ways.
Understand the implications of the interdependence of food, people, and the planet in a transition to more sustainable food systems.
Our food systems must be interconnected. We must understand the interdependencies within the system, recognizing the complex web of dynamics and interactions between parts of the system. It means watching for, making sense of, and interpreting the implications of things that are interconnected in the global system. We must think beyond nation-states, sector siloes, and narrowly identified issues and see the interconnections between the global and local, the macro and the micro, and the relationships between worldwide patterns and area-specific challenges.
Photo credit: SELCO Foundation & IKEA Foundation (Global Alliance Member)