Patrick Okori, Executive Secretary of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building In Agriculture (RUFORUM) with a doctoral degree from SLU, share his thoughts about sustainable food systems.
1. How does your ideal sustainable food system look like in the context of your country/region of expertise?
2. Can you share with us your experience of supporting changes/ transitions towards sustainable food systems in a country/region?
Globalization is never good when it comes to food. Emphasis should be laid on food sovereignty. We need to try to become independent of other countries. This became particularly evident after the impact of the Ukraine war.
Stemming from the Food Systems summit of 2021, the emphasis has been placed on how we produce and consume food. As an example, we can look at milk vs rice farming based on the recent Ugandan budget wherein an average milk farmer makes twice as much money as the rice farmer but tends to sell milk at a much lower price as compared with rice which has a very high demand.
It is also important to rethink how food systems works. Some negatives are that rapid globalization does not favor traditional food systems, and the current food systems does not have an updated system for traditional foods.
Traditional food systems have not been designed for sustainability at scale.
3. In your view, what are the key triggers and success factors for change to happen?
It is to recognize urbanization of Africa, abandoning traditional food systems and embracing the globalized food systems. In additon, creating an enabling policy environment and promoting R&D in food science and technology.
This interview was made by Sheikh Jenneh, ICRA Sierra Leone, at the Science Policy Lab in Malmö on June 18-19, 2024.
Dr. Patrick Okori is Executive Secretary of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building In Agriculture (RUFORUM). He is an Ugandan national and received his doctoral degree from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala in 2004.