This family has haunted me since I took their photo years ago in West Africa where I was working for an international organization.  The two boys in front almost certainly have a malnutrition disease such as kwashiorkor, often characterized by a bloated stomach. They’re among the approximately one billion people in the world today whose diets give them inadequate calories or nutrients.

The image illustrates the first of what I call Five Key Challenges for Food Systems – to feed people.  Feeding people sounds simple, but as world citizens we’re not achieving it.  Despite the fact that there is plenty of sustenance in the world, and sufficient calories being produced to satisfy all 7 billion people on the planet, we’re nevertheless not feeding people enough or well enough.  That’s also true in our own backyards.  Here on the west coast of Canada, the Greater Vancouver Food Bank serves more than a million meals a year, which indicates how many of our neighbours are unable to meet their most basic of needs.

Here’s my list of Five Key Challenges for Food Systems:

• To feed a large and growing world population
• To produce food ecologically
• To consume food for human health
• To act compassionately toward all living beings
• To support community well-being.

I’ll expand on these in future posts.  Meanwhile, there are steps we can all take to help.   These include eating lower on the food chain to use fewer planetary resources and stop supporting high-tech, export-oriented, industrial food systems.  We can also urge governments to support small-scale, ecological agriculture at home and overseas, to allow more people to feed themselves.   I’d love to hear from you on this or related issues.