Dietary shifts are an important lever for addressing the hidden costs of agrifood systems transformation and steering people towards healthier and more sustainable futures. When consumers buy healthier products or goods produced in a more sustainable and socially responsible way, they signal their priorities to food supply chain actors. With enough momentum, agrifood businesses will respond to the best of their ability, by changing their practices to meet consumer needs.
Nonetheless, such dietary shifts are not happening fast enough. Many consumers face economic constraints on their ability to change the make-up of their food basket. Others prefer the status quo of their food consumption patterns or opt to change only a portion of their diets and purchases. Consequently, while there has been a proliferation of food supply chain actors undertaking sustainability and social goals – for example, through environmental, social and governance claims and reporting – the landscape is uneven, leaving consumers to grapple with conflicting and confusing information about their product choices.
Bringing about such dietary shifts to drive agrifood systems transformation, therefore, requires a mix of levers. The combination of several levers allows not only to increase their positive effects, but also to balance their advantages and disadvantages, boosting public support for the intervention.145 Levers can use economic influences, such as taxes, subsidies and social safety nets; others aim to affect behavioural change by increasing food literacy and raising awareness about the multidimensional impacts of available food choices. Moreover, restrictions on marketing, especially of unhealthy foods to children, are important. Consumer organizations and associations play an important role in ensuring consumer rights and education. Institutions can also play a critical role by facilitating a unique food environment, such as schools that provide meals and involve children in hands-on and skills-building activities to do with food, while also channelling their purchases to the broader benefit of society. True cost accounting assessments are a powerful tool to help analyse trade-offs and synergies to design effective interventions.
Recalling that every agrifood systems actor – from farmers, agribusiness workers and owners to retailers, financiers and politicians – is also a food consumer, consumers create a hugely influential constituent group with the potential to redirect their power in favour of agrifood systems transformation. Policy interventions to intensify efforts to harness this power need to take a systems approach and combine various levers for greatest effect, while ensuring the right to food.
