Food systems as the foundation of autonomy

Food underpins how economies function and how autonomy is shaped in a volatile world.

Over recent months, we have explored how food systems are being reshaped by a convergence of forces: climate extremes, geopolitical tensions, shifting trade dynamics, and structural fragilities in global value chains. These are not isolated disruptions. They are structural and expose how interconnected global food systems have become.

This page brings together those perspectives, showing why food systems should be understood as critical infrastructure, and why resilience and autonomy depend on strengthening the full system: from natural resources and production, to livelihoods, markets, and trade.

At its core, this is about how economies function under stress and what it takes to keep food flowing, incomes viable, and value chains stable in a more volatile world.

Food systems under pressure

The strain on food systems is already visible in day-to-day reality. In Ethiopia, during the current planting season, rising energy and fertiliser costs are disrupting agricultural systems at multiple points. The country’s heavy reliance on imported oil and fertiliser has left it exposed to global price spikes, with fertiliser costs rising sharply. At the same time, fuel shortages are disrupting transport and logistics, leaving produce stranded in warehouses and increasing post-harvest losses, which have risen significantly.

This illustrates a wider pattern: shocks in energy and inputs are quickly transmitted into food production, with direct consequences for farmer incomes and national food availability.

Food systems are inherently interconnected. Around one-third of global food production is traded internationally, while production depends on globally linked inputs. As a result, disruptions in one part of the system can quickly transmit across production, trade, and markets.

Livelihood security

These disruptions are not only immediate. They accumulate into longer-term livelihood insecurity.

In the short term, farmers face rising input costs, climate shocks and ongoing global cost-of-living challenges.

More than 2.5 billion people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. For many of these households, repeated shocks erode the ability to invest, recover, and remain economically viable.

Across regions, this is increasingly evident in the widening gap between what it costs to produce food and what farmers can earn from it. For many smallholder households, viability is being stretched not by a single shock, but by the accumulation of pressures.

Autonomy

This is where food systems connect directly to the question of autonomy.

Strategic autonomy is often discussed in terms of energy, defence, or technology. But food is equally foundational. Without stable food systems, economic participation and long-term investment are constrained.

However, autonomy in food systems does not mean self-sufficiency. It means resilience: the ability of interconnected systems to withstand disruption while maintaining function across production, trade, and consumption.

In practice

These dynamics are already visible in how food systems function across regions. They emerge through work across agricultural value chains in different regions, where climate risks and market structures interact directly with the livelihoods of farmers and workers.

This proximity to how food systems function in practice makes one thing clear: resilience is determined in the everyday conditions that shape whether people can continue to produce, earn, and invest in the next season.

It is in this space between global systems and local realities that practical solutions need to take shape.

Strengthening food systems is therefore not only about securing supply. It is about reinforcing the conditions that allow production to continue, incomes to become viable, and systems to absorb disruption without breaking down.

This is what food system autonomy looks like in practice.

Blog

Food systems as the foundation of autonomy

Food systems under pressure

Livelihood security

Autonomy

In practice

The ripple effects of the war in the Gulf region on global food systems

Climate extremes are reshaping food systems

Price of stability: Strengthening every layer of food security

Path to security & stability

Stability starts with food