The future of food: let's fight together

From oranges grown in North Africa, to lemons grown in Spain, to salmon caught in the wilds of the Atlantic, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting the ingredients that end up on our plates, whether we live in Paris, New York, Tokyo or Auckland.?

Yet as concerns about the environment and sustainability grow, discussions about how - and where - we grow our food are becoming more numerous, and urgent. A few weeks ago, the English government, through its report The National Food Strategy, shook up the debate and opinion once again.?

This wide-ranging report focused on the changes needed, in England and around the world. The conclusions are sobering, but above all, action-oriented.?

According to the study, commissioned by restaurant legend Henry Dimbleby, founder of the Substainable Restaurant Association - whose aim is to accelerate change towards an environmentally friendly food sector - the food we eat and the way we produce it "is causing terrible damage to our planet and our health". "The global food system is primarily responsible for biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic wildlife," the study said. It was also, according to Henry Dimbleby's report "the second largest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry." The toll is stark, and calls for action, for change, for an upheaval in the way we eat, live, function. Once again, man is at a turning point in his history. We must not make a mistake, because our world depends on it.?

Some players in the global industry, however, continue to hold a rudimentary and archaic discourse, like the CEO of Cargill, who after vaguely evoking the idea of favoring local crops concludes during an interview with Time Magazine: "one of the best ways to ensure that the 9 billion people in the world have access to food is to make sure that it can be transported from the place where it is best produced to the place where it is most needed." - the transport, the routing, the geographical transfer of raw materials produced by man, thus remain the vision of the food world, in a moment when the great specialists of the question recommend to break with this globalized vision, to produce exclusively locally. But to do this, we must change the way we consume, buy and eat. And to change is to choose, and therefore to give up. And man does not like to give up.?

As I said earlier, the establishment of a sustainable food sector is one of the most important and complex challenges facing human beings today. Food production must be at the forefront of this struggle. To meet this challenge, farmers and producers must be committed to finding new methods of food production, and consumers must choose the most sustainable alternative in their daily lives. Innovation has driven human action since the beginning of time, it is the only value that must once again serve our cause. We must all work together to revolutionize production and consumption. Our eating habits will change, our consumption will decrease and production will change, both in terms of the basic components and the way they emerge.

In this new world, we will have to favor environmentally friendly agriculture, companies that want to provide local food, and individuals and groups that try to upset the established order. But let's make no mistake: many will want to fight, to defend their own interests, their own production, and we can't really blame them: this upheaval will put economies, sectors and families in front of an abyss. We will have to find help, reconversion, solidarity and create equality wherever the risk of inequality emerges. It is a war, a war that we have no choice but to wage, but which will require difficult choices, terrible sacrifices, and a strong will, which man knows how to find in these crucial moments. It will be an immense struggle, but perhaps the most important in contemporary human history.?

Let's fight this battle together.