Contents
Introduction
The 2024 EAT-Lancet Commission warns that global food systems drive 30% of greenhouse emissions and breach five planetary boundaries, making “justice in food systems” central to ensuring sustainability, equity, and nutrition security.
Justice in Food Systems: Meaning and Dimensions
- The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems (2024) defines justice in food systems as ensuring that production, distribution, and consumption of food are environmentally sustainable, nutritionally adequate, economically fair, and socially inclusive.
- Justice implies:
- Healthy diets for all (nutritional justice)
- Fair prices and affordability (economic justice)
- Sustainable agriculture that protects ecosystems (environmental justice)
- Dignity and rights for farmers, workers, and consumers (social justice)
- Currently, global food systems violate these principles.
Why Justice is Necessary: The Current Food System Crisis
- Environmental Unsustainability: Food systems contribute 30% of global GHG emissions (FAO, 2023). Agriculture breaches five of six planetary boundaries — climate, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles (EAT-Lancet, 2024). Animal-based foods dominate emissions, while cereal monocropping drives excessive groundwater extraction and nutrient imbalance. Example: Global agriculture produces twice the safe nitrogen surplus, contaminating soil and water.
- Nutritional Inequality and Diet-Related Diseases: WHO reports 2.3 billion adults overweight or obese, while 735 million people face hunger. India faces a triple burden: undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, rising obesity. NFHS-5 (2019-21): 35% children stunted and 57% women anaemic. This reflects dietary injustice, where calorific sufficiency hides nutritional deficiency.
- Affordability and price shocks: The Commission notes that shifting to fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts—essential for healthy diets—may increase consumer costs, especially in import-dependent regions. RBI (2024) shows that vegetable inflation disproportionately affects poor households.
- Social and Structural Injustice: Market concentration gives large corporations power over seeds, inputs, and pricing. Small farmers lack bargaining power and remain indebted. In India, 86% of farmers are small/marginal (Agriculture Census, 2015–16), yet they bear the highest climate risk. Hence, justice demands:
- fair prices
- worker protections
- consumer participation in regulation
Pathways Toward Just and Sustainable Diets
| Dimension | Required Actions |
| Environmental justice | Crop diversification, regulation of nitrogen/phosphorus fertilizers, water-efficient agriculture (e.g., millets). |
| Economic justice | Fiscal incentives to lower prices of healthy foods; rationalising subsidies that promote water-intensive crops. |
| Nutritional justice | Public procurement of diverse foods for ICDS and Mid-Day Meals, replacing cereal-heavy diets. |
| Social justice | Empowering farmer cooperatives; ensuring fair wages in food processing and cold chain infrastructure. |
India’s 2023 International Year of Millets, PM-POSHAN’s inclusion of millets, and FAO-backed climate-resilient agriculture are aligned interventions.
Why Global Transition to Healthy, Affordable Diets Is Urgent
- Reduces non-communicable diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases).
- Cuts agricultural emissions and restores planetary boundaries.
- Enhances food sovereignty and resilience against global shocks (climate events, pandemics, wars).
- A sustainable diet is not just environmental necessity, but a moral imperative.
Conclusion
Eating is a political act. Justice in food systems demands equitable access, sustainable production, and dignified livelihoods—ensuring health for people and the planet together.
