Why are sustainable food systems central to climate resilience and inclusive growth in emerging markets?

A sustainable food system is central to delivering food security, nutrition, climate resilience, and rural livelihoods. This holds true particularly in emerging markets across Africa, Asia, and Latin America where the impacts of climate change are already undermining agricultural productivity and food security. Climate hazards such as droughts, heatwaves, floods, and changing precipitation patterns are reducing crop yields and increasing volatility in food production. For example, climate change has already reduced yields of staple crops in many regions, and in the absence of ambitious climate action, global agricultural yields could decline by up to 30% by 2050 due to climate impacts alone.

Asia and Africa dominate global agrifood employment, with  830 million and 300 million people respectively. China and India alone account for nearly 60% of Asia’s total, and together these two continents represent 88% of the world’s agrifood workforce. Smallholder farms, which make up about 80% of all farms in low- and lower-middle-income countries, are particularly vulnerable, as they are concentrated in emerging markets such as East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. These systems are also under growing stress from land degradation and biodiversity loss, compounding climate risks. For example, extreme climate conditions have been linked to declines in staple crop yields in about 76%  of cases studied in Africa. Around 757 million people faced hunger in 2023, nearly 152 million more than in 2019. The urgency of addressing these intersecting challenges is reflected in global commitments such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger), yet progress is moving in the opposite direction. Transforming food systems is therefore not only a development priority but also a cornerstone of climate adaptation, resilience-building, and inclusive growth in emerging economies.