The key to building healthier, more resilient food systems

Global food systems are under increasing pressure to deliver more than enough food—they must also provide affordable nutrition, support resilient livelihoods, and promote environmental sustainability. Three recent Perspective Papers examine this challenge from different angles while pointing to a common conclusion: integrated investment and decision-making are essential to building healthier, more resilient food systems.

The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2026 report underscores the urgency. Although global hunger is declining, nearly one in three people still cannot afford a healthy diet. Progress is uneven, with women, young children and rural communities still disproportionately affected. Produced by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, the report calls for coordinated action to reduce costs, strengthen food systems and make nutritious food accessible to all. The Perspective Paper, Healthy Diets Require Integrated Investment in Affordable Nutrition, highlights how strengthening dairy value chains can help address this challenge by making nutrient-rich foods more affordable while supporting rural livelihoods, resilience, and economic development.

Making informed decisions about food systems also requires looking beyond individual measures of success. The Perspective Paper, Beyond Individual Metrics: Integrated Evidence for Food System Optimization, argues that evaluating foods through a single lens—whether environmental impact, cost, or another metric—fails to capture their full value. Instead, integrated frameworks that consider nutrition, affordability, sustainability, consumer acceptability, and resilience together can better guide policy and investment decisions.

A practical example of this integrated approach is found in school meal programs. Governments have increased investment in these programs by 20 percent between 2020 and 2024, with approximately 466 million children now receiving school meals each day through an estimated USD 84 billion in annual investment. The Perspective Paper, Feeding Futures: The Business Case for Dairy’s Role in School Meals, explains how dairy can help maximize the nutritional impact of these programs while supporting local farmers, strengthening rural economies, and leveraging supply chains that serve both smallholder and commercial producers.

Together, these papers demonstrate that creating resilient food systems requires policies and investments that recognize the interconnected roles of nutrition, affordability, sustainability, and economic opportunity. Dairy has an important role to play in delivering solutions that benefit people, communities, and the planet.