In continuation to the presentations from the FEAST Policy Chat Webinar, this blog features insights from Anant Jani, who provided a deep dive into the pressing challenges faced by the current global food system.

A major theme in the webinar was the high external costs of our current food systems.

• Non-communicable diseases (NCDs): Conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure are largely preventable, yet they account for a staggering €700 billion in healthcare costs across Europe each year. Poor diets are a leading cause of these conditions.
• Economic inequality: While millions struggle to afford healthy meals, the food industry continues to generate enormous profits.  During the cost of living crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic, 62 new billionaires emerged from the food sector, while 100 million Europeans remain at risk of poverty with many not being able to afford healthier and more sustainable food.
• Environmental degradation: Industrial agriculture is a major contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, water use, pollution, and climate change. Yet, government subsidies and lobbying efforts continue to prioritise unsustainable practices over regenerative alternatives.

Rethinking competitiveness in the food industry

The traditional view of competitiveness

The World Economic Forum defines competitiveness as “the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country”.¹ This framework prioritises economic growth, assuming that higher productivity leads to greater income and, consequently, better well-being.
However, this narrow focus on economic output ignores the negative externalities of food systems that negatively impact the health of people and the planet. The Draghi Report (2024)  frames European competitiveness as lagging behind the US and China, advocating for increased investment in technology and industry. However, it largely fails to adequately prioritise well-being, health outcomes, and environmental sustainability in its assessment of competitiveness.

For example, one of the most striking issues raised in the webinar was the narrow definition of food security in policy discussions. In the Draghi Report, food security is equated solely with fertilizer and pesticide availability, ignoring broader concerns like food affordability, access, and quality.
True food security should be about ensuring that everyone has access to sufficient, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, not just ensuring that industrial farms can maintain high yields.

A new goal for competitive food systems: Regeneration

The FEAST project proposes an alternative perspective to the business-as-usual scenario: regenerative competitiveness. In this model, economic growth is not an end in itself but a means to achieving One Health—a balance between human, environmental, and economic well-being. Regenerative competitiveness in a food system should:

• Prioritize regenerative productivity, producing food in a way that restores ecological balance and improves human health.
• Foster inclusive economic growth, ensuring that wealth is distributed fairly across farmers, workers, and consumers.
• Measure success not just by GDP growth but by public health indicators, environmental restoration, and food security.

With regeneration as the goal, food production doesn’t just sustain the status quo but actively restores ecological integrity, social justice, and public health. It adheres to core principles such as:

• Food as a public good: access to healthy, sustainable food should be a right, not a privilege.
• Resilient local economies: decentralized food networks reduce vulnerability and improve food sovereignty.
• Diverse and inclusive policies: food security policies must consider diverse communities, including non-citizens and marginalized groups.
• Economic fairness: farmers, workers, and consumers should all benefit equitably from the food economy.
• Ecological stewardship: agriculture should enhance, not deplete, biodiversity, soil health, and climate resilience.

Creating regenerative food systems

To transition from the current model to a regenerative one, governments, businesses, and citizens must work together to:

• Reframe policy priorities: stop measuring competitiveness solely in economic terms, and incorporate health and environmental sustainability into national food strategies.
• Increase public participation: engage citizens, farmers, and food workers in shaping food policy.
• Hold corporations accountable: implement regulations that prevent exploitative practices and ensure fair wages across the food supply chain.

From a policy perspective, there are two broad shifts that can catalyse the shift to regenerative food systems:

Redirecting public funds and policies
Currently, food policy is skewed in favor of large agribusinesses rather than small-scale farmers and sustainable producers. The EU allocates 1,200 times more public funding to animal-source food production compared to plant-based alternatives. This imbalance contradicts health and environmental goals.
To fix this, we need a realignment of public investment, ensuring that food policies support:

• Local and regional food networks to reduce dependency on centralized supply chains.
• Easy access for all people to delicious, healthier, and more sustainable food.
• Agroecological practices that restore soil health and reduce carbon emissions.

Fair distribution of wealth, ensuring that profits don’t just concentrate among a handful of corporations.

Shifting the focus from behavior to environment

One of the biggest misconceptions in food policy is that individual behavior is the main problem. Many policymakers argue that people need to make better choices, eat less processed food, buy organic, and support sustainable brands.
But as the webinar highlighted, people can only make healthy choices if those choices are actually available and affordable. For instance, in Tower Hamlets, London, there are 42 fried chicken shops for every secondary school². Expecting children in such areas to eat healthily without changing their food environment is unrealistic.
Thus, instead of just changing consumer behavior, policies should focus on reshaping food environments by:

• Regulating junk food advertising and access in low-income areas.
• Subsidizing fresh produce and whole foods instead of processed foods.
• Creating food policies that make nutritious meals the default, not the expensive exception.

We need win-win-win-win solutions

The FEAST Policy Chat webinar shed light on the urgent need for a paradigm shift in food policy. Instead of prioritizing corporate competitiveness, we must focus on holistic well-being, ensuring that food systems are regenerative and improve health, equity, and sustainability.
We are at a turning point. If we continue business as usual, health inequalities, climate crises, and economic disparities will only deepen. But if we embrace regenerative food systems, we have the chance to create a future where food systems serve the needs of people and the planet – now and in the future.
It’s time to rethink what makes a food system competitive – regeneration, not just delivering more power and wealth to those who are already powerful and wealthy, almost always at the expense of the planet and the majority of the world’s people. 
The answer isn’t just economic growth, it’s a system that ensures win-win-win-win solutions for all: people, the planet, the public sector, and the private sector.

The recordings and presentation slides from our second Policy Chat webinar can be found here:

Presentations: FEAST Policy Chat Webinar 02 
Recordings: FEAST Policy Chat Webinar 02 - Part 2