Transforming agrifood systems: the importance of governance

Global hunger cannot be eliminated without an effective, timely, and coordinated transformation of agrifood systems. A transformation that is becoming increasingly urgent. Achieving the SDGs related to hunger involves navigating complex technical and policy challenges, made even more daunting by multidimensional crises: feeding a growing population, securing livelihoods for billions, strengthening resilience to increasing climate shocks, and reducing agriculture’s own impact on environmental degradation. Proven strategies, innovation, and technological advancements are certainly a cause for optimism. But even the best investments, data, and breakthroughs will fall short unless we secure a fundamental catalyst for lasting change: strong, effective governance.

Good governance is the foundation that holds together all potential for transformation in the agrifood sector, ensuring that progress is not just a collection of isolated efforts but a cohesive and sustainable shift. It requires decision-making that maximizes synergies, minimizes trade-offs, and balances short-term needs with long-term sustainability. Without strong governance, technical innovations and policy reforms often fail to deliver real impact. Climate-smart agriculture, digital supply chains, and food safety regulations require coordination to be effective. Governance connects ministries, agencies, businesses, farmers, and consumers, ensuring policies translate into action. It directs investments toward sustainability, resolves conflicts, and supports evidence-based decisions, making agrifood systems more resilient, inclusive, and effective.

 Effective governance is built on participatory and inclusive processes. It is not just about making decisions but also about how those decisions are reached and implemented. In agrifood systems, this includes numerous public and private actors, and a complex combination of formal and informal rules and procedures governing these systems, from production to consumption, from food security to nutrition, and all along the value chain.

Multiple actors with varied interests and power can either block or accelerate progress in the agrifood systems transformation agenda. Understanding the governance and political economy landscape together with good data and sound evidence is, therefore, critical in developing politically feasible policy options and investment opportunities.

The role of governance as an accelerator across FAO programmes

Governance is central to all FAO action. FAO facilitates governance platforms and processes at all levels on issues that are crucial for agrifood systems. At the country level, FAO supports member countries in developing and implementing policies and investments that are aligned with national priorities and circumstances and consider local contexts, capabilities and resources.

We support our Member States in mainstreaming the vision for better production, better environment, better nutrition and better life that underpins their efforts towards agrifood systems transformation, through participatory and inclusive processes. 

• In Indonesia, for instance, we work with the Government to help rethink their national strategic planning on agrifood systems development using evidence obtained from innovative modelling and analytical methods, maintaining continuous consultations with key actors, and mapping potential synergies and trade-offs across policies and interventions in the agrifood sector. Through this initiative, a common understanding among actors was advanced about the challenges and opportunities to achieve commonly agreed-upon goals and the transformations that they require. The Government holds the ownership of the process and is now incorporating the methods developed with FAO into their programmatic work, replicating them across provinces and other subnational divisions (watch and read about it).
• In Morocco, over the last 10 years, FAO has supported the government in facilitating a successful governance process between local authorities and farmers in the Berrechid plain to regulate the use of local groundwater, which is being rapidly depleted because of excessive and unregulated irrigation. Among other efforts, FAO contributed to facilitating the dialogue between local government authorities and water users, collecting and disseminating data on water use, and engaging and sensitizing farmers on the importance of measuring the water they use. While farmers used to be unreceptive to negotiate or enforce any regulation, today they are the ones who promote better water use and monitoring as a way of preserving such a precious resource, as they are direct witnesses and beneficiaries of this new approach (watch this video in French). 

Embracing diverse voices and negotiation

Successful policies demand awareness of differences and the ability to negotiate among diverse communities and actors. They also require acknowledging the inevitability of winners and losers in policy choices. Moving away from a business-as-usual approach, we must engage in serious reflection on our role in supporting Members' efforts and strive to minimize negative impacts while maximizing benefits.

Governance plays a pivotal role in the transformation of agrifood systems. It provides the framework to make informed decisions, coordinate efforts across sectors and actors, and build capacities for transformative change. As we work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, we must deal with governance to ensure that our efforts are both effective and sustainable. By doing so, we can create agrifood systems that are capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

About the author:

Máximo Torero is the Chief Economist at FAO. Throughout his career at multilateral organizations and global research institutions, he has provided intellectual and strategic leadership to translate research into policy, fighting poverty and hunger.

 
The views and opinions expressed in this piece are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of FAO. FAO does not accept responsibility for, or endorse the views of the author(s). 

Learn more:

• Framework paper: Focus on governance for more effective policy and technical support
• Brochure: Focus on governance for more effective policy and technical support
• E-learning: Focus on governance for more effective policy and technical support
• Methodological framework: Water auditing/water governance analysis – Governance and policy support
• Policy brief: Improving water governance in Lebanon’s Kalb River Basin - Governance and policy support
• Story: Water sharing: From underground to common ground
• Video: Presentation of the LVM case by Abdelhamid Mnajja, Tunisia's Director-General a.i. for Rural Engineering and Water Development (in French)
• Case study: Analyse de la gouvernance de l’eau dans la basse vallée de la Medjerda - Tunisie (in French)