Rethinking food systems: Urgent call for sustainable practices amid climate change crisis

Daily Maverick

24-04-2025

South Africa's food systems account for 15 to 20% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions — less than the global average, but still a sizeable chunk – and it begs the question: What is the world — and South Africa — doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by improving aspects of the food system that contribute so much to its overall emissions footprint? (Spoiler alert: not nearly enough.)
There is no sidestepping the chilling fact that the global food system is responsible for 31% of all greenhouse gases that result from human activity, and — oddly, you might say — the world is not doing much to change that.
In 2021, the United Nations' secretary-general reminded the world at the UN Food Systems Summit of this stark truth, along with food systems' responsibility for up to 80% of biodiversity loss, and for the use of 70% of the earth's fresh water. The impact of how we grow food and what we eat is massive — yet still attracts little attention, or financing, in the global battle against climate change.
'Food system' is the umbrella term for everything it takes to grow, harvest, produce, package, distribute and sell any food that ultimately arrives on your plate (or in your hand). Most of South Africa's greenhouse gas emissions from the food system come from agriculture, energy consumption (refrigeration, processing, and transporting the food to market), and food waste.
The two biggest culprits by far are cattle farming and food waste.
Methane emissions from livestock's enteric fermentation (in their digestive tract), pasture and manure management contributes 68% of the agricultural sector's total emissions, said AgriSA's Janse Rabie in November 2024.
Direct emissions from cattle were a source of 6.7% of South Africa's overall emissions in 2020, according to the Institute for Economic Justice in a 2024 policy brief. Methane burped by cattle traps up to 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, making it much more lethal for the environment, in the short-term, than the much-maligned CO₂. (Methane emissions, 11% of overall emissions in total, also come from fossil fuel production and use.)
About one-third of food produced in South Africa goes to waste. That means more than 10 million tons — and half of these losses occur during handling and storage of crops after harvest, and during production. Later in the supply chain, further losses occur during processing, packaging and distribution. Only about 5% of total food loss and waste happens at the consumer stage (for example, households discarding fresh foods that have spoiled).
Overview report on 14 countries
A report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, titled 'Untapped opportunities for climate action', assessed in 2022 the extent to which 14 countries had included food systems in their plans to reduce the country's overall greenhouse gases emissions. The assessments are a way of demonstrating how policy makers can apply the toolkit that the report offers, to support their countries' integration of food systems in their 'nationally determined contribution' (NDC).
The term 'NDC' comes from the United Nations' framework that guides countries to take action to reduce their national emissions in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement (among UN member states) to limit global heating to 1.5°C by 2050. The Paris Agreement 'requests each country to outline and communicate their post-2020 climate actions', and to submit, every five years, an updated NDC, specifying the greenhouse gas emission and climate adaptation efforts the country sets itself .
South Africa's 'nationally determined contribution'
The Global Alliance on the Future of Food's 'overview report' summarises its findings from the NDCs of 14 countries, including South Africa. The other countries or territories are Bangladesh, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, the European Union (focusing on the climate policies of France, Germany and Spain), Kenya, Senegal, the UK, the US, and Vanuatu. (The country choices were based on a combination of their potential to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change, as well as the geographical and socioeconomic balance across the countries.)
None of the countries assessed 'holistically address food systems emissions', the overview report states — a strong, and shocking, indictment, given the huge proportion of greenhouse gas emissions for which food systems are responsible. (Food systems' one-third of total emissions, 31%, means they account for 15 times the greenhouse gases compared with aviation, which is responsible for 2.5%.)
Overall, the report says, to the extent the 14 countries have included food systems in their NDCs at all, they focused mainly on food production aspects, but were 'frequently overlooking other areas and components of food systems'. On the positive side, the report says, most of the assessed countries promoted overall regenerative approaches to farming, and 'nature-positive solutions'.
However, what the report calls 'demand-side measures' — measures to promote changes in diet and also address the massive problem of food waste (post-harvest is when most of it happens), as well as ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food processing, storage and transportation — were 'rarely included'.
Not a single country had included in their NDC any measures to reduce the consumption of meat or dairy — despite the enormous, known contribution by cattle farming to emissions — nor to try to shift their populations' diets from processed to more whole foods, and toward more plant-based proteins (such as beans, lentils and protein-rich grains — whole plant-based foods, not highly processed 'fake' meats and dairy).
The Global Alliance for the Future of Food report/toolkit is designed to help the people who craft each country's NDC to identify emission-reduction opportunities and entry points for food systems — in the development process (i.e. who is included), in the content (i.e. what are the right targets and measures) and in the implementation of the NDC in-country (i.e. how the policy gets translated into action).
South Africa's Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which leads our climate-change efforts, missed the 10 February deadline to submit South Africa's updated NDC (NDC 3.0) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. (South Africa's NDC 2.0 was also late, released in February 2022 instead of 2021.)
Daily Maverick has asked the department when it plans to submit South Africa's NDC 3.0, and to what extent food systems are represented in it, but had not had any response two weeks after that request.
Global Alliance for the Future of Food's report on South Africa
The Food Justice team reviewed the Global Alliance for the Future of Food's country-specific reports assessing the 2021 NDCs, to try to understand how and where South Africa's food systems are accounted for in the country's approach to mitigating climate change. (South Africa's NDC for 2021-2025, as for most countries, specifies a range: From 398 to 510 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂), and for 2026 to 2030, this drops to 350 to 420 million tons.) Right now, South Africa accounts for 1.07% of all global greenhouse gases, according to the United Nations.
The alliance's report, under the heading 'NDC development process', said that South Africa had coordination mechanisms set up within the government to develop the NDC, and that the process was 'participatory and involved an extensive process of consultation' — but also mentioned that some interviewees cited a 'lack of active consultation with food sector stakeholders' and criticised the NDC for not fully considering 'key food systems elements such as food waste and sustainable and healthy diets' in the NDC's climate mitigation or adaptation measures.
The report said South Africa needed to 'increase effective and sufficient participatory approaches to consult all relevant food systems stakeholders, including health and nutrition experts, academia, women, local communities, smallholder farmers, and other traditionally marginalised groups, including indigenous peoples', as well as to 'conduct a holistic food systems assessment to inform the development of the NDC, highlighting the climate mitigation and adaptation potential of food systems transformation as well as other co-benefits and possible trade-offs'.
Discussing the NDC's content, the report said South Africa's 'areas for improvement' were to 'include evidence-based measures to transition to sustainable food systems while considering the environmental, social, and health impacts of such a transition, as well as to include targets and measures 'to accelerate the transition toward healthier and more sustainable diets'.
In addition, South Africa needed to 'consider the environmental, social, and health impacts of transitioning to sustainable food systems'. The report emphasised that large-scale food processors 'should be more stringently regulated and discouraged from producing ultra-processed foods that contribute to the noncommunicable diseases epidemic'. The report went on to explain that these globally influential processing industries 'also create a market for bulk food commodities derived from monocultural production systems that are known to be ecologically destructive' (for example, clearing rainforest to grow single crops such as soy or maize, core ingredients of ultra-processed foods) 'so discouraging production, sale and consumption of ultra-processed foods could have important upstream impacts' in reducing the viability of 'extensive monocultural cropping systems', it said.
Further, South Africa's NDC does not mention any targets or measures to drive the transition to sustainable and healthy diets – an astonishing omission, given South Africa's triple burden of malnutrition, with noncommunicable diseases accounting for more than half of all deaths in the country, and overall emissions reduction potential heavily dependent on diet shifts, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food says. (The report states that there is 75% greenhouse gas emissions' reduction potential for a sustainable diet scenario, and 40% for a business-as-usual diet scenario).
What's next?
All countries, including South Africa, had a deadline to submit their updated NDCs to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by 10 February 2025, for the 2025 to 2030 period. Although the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment published its draft sectoral emissions targets for a 2-month public comment period on 26 April 2024, South Africa has not yet submitted its NDC 3.0 to the UN framework. DM