Global Goals & Sustainable Food Systems

Ending hunger. Protecting the climate. Conserving biodiversity. Lifting rural communities out of poverty. The world has set itself ambitious shared targets, and agriculture sits at the crossroads of nearly all of them — both as part of the problem and as an indispensable part of the solution. No sector touches as many global goals at once, which means how we farm will help decide whether those commitments are met or missed. Global Goals & Sustainable Food Systems is the session that views agriculture through this wide-angle lens.

The difficulty is that these goals can pull in different directions. Producing more food can strain water and biodiversity; protecting ecosystems can constrain output; climate action and food security must somehow advance together. Navigating sustainable agriculture and global development goals means confronting these tensions honestly and finding the synergies — practices and systems that deliver across multiple objectives at once rather than trading one against another. It is a question of integration: aligning what happens on farms with commitments made on the world stage.

This session draws together sustainability scientists, development specialists, and food-systems strategists to connect field practice with global ambition. The programme covers agriculture's role in the Sustainable Development Goals, climate and biodiversity commitments, the transformation of food systems toward sustainability, managing trade-offs and synergies, and measuring progress against global targets. Participants at this Agriculture Conference will explore how local action aggregates into global impact, how competing goals can be reconciled, and how food systems can be steered to nourish people, sustain the planet, and support prosperity — the threefold promise at the heart of every sustainability agenda.