Posted on September, 12 2024

Place-based solutions are key to transforming food systems - the complex network of activities that involves the production, processing, transportation, and consumption of food -  and unlocking their global potential to restore biodiversity, limit climate change and provide everyone with enough healthy and nutritious food.

Because countries have unique food cultures and physical environments, there isn’t one thing that everyone should do.

But there are groups of countries that can apply similar solutions to deliver the biggest impact in the shortest time. 

The Great Food Puzzle identifies these groups and the highest-potential solutions in each.

This new tool can help people learn from and replicate the success of others who operate in similar contexts - ultimately aiding the design and implementation of more impactful solutions. 

See also:
The Great Food Puzzle tool
Solving the Great Food Puzzle: Applying the right solutions in the right places

There are lots of examples of how some of the highest-potential solutions are already being implemented.

Scaling those in the appropriate places can lead to a rapid transformation of global food systems.

Nature-based supply chains

For instance, countries including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia (Type 1) can replicate the successful development of a nature-positive supply chain for cocoa in Ecuador.

WWF has worked Indigenous Amazonian communities to strengthen traditional cocoa production practices, implementing a deforestation-free traceability system, and establishing a long term supply chain with a German company, ensuring the farmers get a fair price for the cocoa beans and products.

Supply chain infrastructure

Countries including Guatemala, Madagascar, Thailand and Viet Nam (Type 2), can take inspiration from how supply chain infrastructure has been developed in the Philippines.

WWF partnered with local tech companies to create SoilMate, an innovative mobile application that makes composting of food waste easier, faster and safer for businesses and residents in Manila, to keep food waste out of landfill and provide organic fertilizers to local farmers.

Smallholder support

Supporting smallholders is important in Kenya and other countries, like Pakistan, India and Paraguay (Type 3), can learn from the work done in the Lake Naivasha Basin.

An alternative market, owned and run by local farmers, was set up to break reliance on brokers, minimize food losses suffered while food was transported to cities, and increase the availability of healthy and sustainable food available to rural communities.

High-tech methods

There is high potential to adopt high-tech methods in countries including China, Mexico, Spain and Turkey (Type 4).

They can learn from the South African example of integrating Artificial Intelligence.

Aquaculture farms near the West Coast National Park have implemented an Artificial Intelligence-powered early warning system to prevent whales becoming entangled in ropes used to grow mussels.

Improving public awareness

Many countries with heavily industrialized food production, strong environmental protection and high levels of food security, like the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan (Type 5) could accelerate transformation by improving public awareness and driving individual behaviour change.

They could replicate the Food Waste Warriors programme in the US that established an education programme that turns cafeterias into classrooms, empowering them to measure and reduce food waste and even introduce state legislation that increases funding for food waste reduction systems in schools.