Where does your food come from? The answer is more fragile than you may think. Many people might say the grocery store, knowing their foods’ origin only as the shelves it was grabbed from. Yet to reach those shelves, or even a local market, most food travels an extensive journey from the growth of basic ingredients to ultimate consumption.

As the world faces growing uncertainty in the face of climate change, few sectors are more deeply affected than food production. Degraded lands, shifting climate zones, and depleted soils carry dire consequences for our ability to meet food demands globally. The urgency of protecting this most basic need has made food systems a central topic of conversion in international environmental contexts, and COP17 will be no different.

As the next UNCCD Conference of the Parties approaches in August, the UNCCD has launched a series of webinars highlighting the key topics to be discussed. On May 19, 2026, the webinar focused on the future of food systems, with two guest speakers addressing land degradation, soil health, food security, and how we can transform the way we produce and consume food while moving towards a more sustainable future.

The scale of the problem is staggering.

The webinar host opened with striking statistics: one-fourth of all degraded land is abandoned farmland, and up to 40% of the world’s land is degraded. Affecting more than 3 billion people, this degradation has enormous consequences for climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Approximately one billion people under the age of 25 live in regions directly dependent on land and natural resources for their jobs, meaning an entire generation of young people will have their livelihoods threatened as land degradation accelerates. 

Guest speakers Gabriel Lambert and Maarten Klop dove into the challenges and consequences of the way we produce food today and what this means for the already declining health of our land and soil. Industrial farming was immediately named as a system that works against nature rather than with it, one requiring enormous inputs of energy, pesticides, and fertilizers just to keep nature’s natural processes at bay. The widespread practice of monocultures compounds the damage, depleting earth systems and creating cascading impacts on both environmental and human health.

As Klop pointed out, global food demand is expected to increase by 50% by 2050. How do we meet this demand sustainably when our land is being degraded faster than ever? And quantity alone isn’t the issue, as quality, variety, and access to healthy foods matter just as much for genuine food security. Land health also underpins production of fibers like cotton and linen, critical materials for our clothing. Without transformation in farming systems, the situation will only worsen.

There is reason for hope.

Lambert highlighted the vital role of smallholder farmers as stewards of land, and the equally critical role that healthy soil plays in food production. While global food systems are currently vulnerable, with fertilizers in shortage and food prices rising, that vulnerability also opens a door. It creates an opportunity for the regionalization of food systems, combining ecological restoration and regenerative agriculture with economic growth and incentives for people to work with the land.

Moving towards solutions, the speakers outlined practical steps for meeting increased demand while reducing waste. The core insight: the world can feed itself through localized production by implementing regenerative practices with lower inputs and costs that support the natural functions of soil biology. This requires letting go of current distribution infrastructure and redesigning around local demand, mapping what communities need, connecting those who eat with those who produce, and only supplementing externally when gaps genuinely exist.

A solutions-based approach also means embracing diverse agricultural methods, including agroforestry, agroecology, crop diversification with locally grown varieties, that provide the nutrients and dietary foundations populations actually need. One of the main barriers? Political and institutional spheres rarely communicate effectively or share frameworks, creating gaps in understanding. Yet locally, simple and effective solutions often already exist. Lambert noted that the farmers he’s worked with are deeply pragmatic and want simple and logical answers to the problems they face. Real transformation requires political processes to better understand and engage with farmers at the community level.

Scaling that works.

For change that reaches beyond local initiatives, the speakers emphasized co-creating across regions so that what works somewhere can be scaled and replicated. Each community should be seen as a living laboratory, developing solutions for water, energy, food, and more. We each move at different speeds and hold different pieces of the puzzle, but coming together to share findings and merge capacities can fill in gaps and benefit everyone.

Meeting people where they are is equally important. Some are motivated by economics; others by the environment they’ll pass on to their children; others by the drive to transform political systems and laws. Sparking a global movement from these diverse motivations means making things actionable and engaging first. Education from a young age is essential, planting seeds about localized food production early on so that future generations grow up connected to the systems behind what they eat.

Only when people become truly aware of those systems can we live sustainably with our land: meeting human needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The inclusion of food systems and soil health as a Thematic Day of COP17 is an encouraging sign. Smallholder farmers are planned to be central voices in the conversation, a meaningful recognition of their importance on the global stage. The path forward is complex, but the direction is becoming clearer.