It is now one week on from the Stockholm Food Forum, and I find that I am still at an early stage in fully processing many critical takeaways from the sessions, the new EAT-Lancet Commission report, and my engagement with so many mission-aligned food system leaders while there.

It was indeed a privilege to be a part of the process, from initial work in the Communities for Action dialogue (Chefs, Restaurants and Foodservice) to the Communities for Action session at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and finally to the two days of sessions at the Food Forum. 

Many excellent summaries have been written by participants in recent days which reinforce numerous shared learnings regarding the healthy people/healthy planet balance as well as the key message of the event:  the need for urgent global collaborative actions to drive the transformation to healthy, sustainable, and just food systems.

From the start, the Forum included a theme of key words which were interwoven throughout the sessions, including Engage, Act, Transform, Justice, Collaboration, Possibility, and Urgency.

To these, I will add three that stood out to me:  Inspiration, Humanity, and Leadership.

There were countless moments of inspiration throughout the week, including the Forum’s opening message (Get Ready For Change), Shakuntala Thilsted’s call out that we all have a responsibility to be part of the solution, the many excellent Stories of Progress, and several key points from Johan Rockstrom, who reminded us that 1) all 9 planetary boundaries have now been quantified, and that 5 of the nine boundaries that have been crossed are attributed to the food system, and 2) the new report reconfirms the Planetary Health Diet, which he called “a gift to humanity.” 

Second, humanity.  I love the fact that the new report is grounded in justice, including the right to food, the right to a healthy environment, and the right to decent work – as it must – for no one can be excluded from the goal of providing sufficient, affordable healthy food within planetary boundaries.  Transforming the food system requires properly valuing food and properly valuing all people.

Third, leadership.  As the new report notes, “Healthy diets are not only a fundamental right, but a shared responsibility.”  Further, “major efforts are needed to manage an increasingly urgent food systems transformation that secures human and planetary health” and the urgency needed is “undeniable.”  

As noted often at the Forum, everyone has a role to play in driving food system change.  The scale of the work is enormous, and the need for urgency is extreme.

Thus, building on the many action calls and inspirational moments from the event, let’s work to hasten the transformation in all of our circles, and let’s especially raise our expectations of business leaders and policymakers.  The financial, environmental, and moral cases for accelerating actions to achieve a sustainable and equitable food system are clear, yet progress is too often restrained by entrenched operating paradigms which perpetuate actions that are antithetical to a sustainable food system. 

This is the time for organizational leaders to act responsibly by putting food security, climate, and biodiversity at the heart of strategy, setting bold goals in multiple areas to reduce externalities (ex. food waste), reporting transparently on progress, and amplifying impact by pushing such behavior through supply chains. 

As consumers, we should expect such responsible behavior from organizations, and reward business leaders that display it and policymakers that support it. 

Last, the report’s finding that achieving healthy diets for all within planetary boundaries is biophysically possible is another “gift” to humanity.  Let’s not waste it.  As Line Gordon noted, let’s intensify our work to build coalitions of action to overcome barriers to the needed transformation.