What would the world be if there were no hunger? It’s a question that the late ecologist Donella Meadows would ask her students at Dartmouth College back in the 1970s. She set out to create a global movement. The result—an approach known as systems thinking—is now seen as essential in meeting big global challenges.
Systems thinking is crucial to achieving targets such as zero hunger and better nutrition because it requires considering the way in which food is produced, processed, delivered and consumed, and looking at how those things relate with human health, the environment, economics and society. According to systems thinking, changing the food system—or any other network—requires three things to happen. First, researchers need to identify all the players in that system; second, they must work out how they relate to each other; and third, they need to understand and quantify the impact of those relationships on each other and on those outside the system.
Take nutrition for example. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization tracked 150 biochemicals in food and various databases, which revealed the relationships between calories, sugar, fat, vitamins and the occurrence of common diseases. But using machine learning and artificial intelligence, network scientists propose that human diets consist of at least 26,000 biochemicals and that the vast majority are not known. This shows that we have some way to travel before achieving the first objective of systems thinking—which, in this example, is to identify more constituent parts of the nutrition system.
A systems approach to creating change is also built on the assumption that everyone in the system has equal power and status. But the food system is not an equal one. There have been calls for a World Food and Nutrition Organization, so that legally binding policies can be applied to all its members. Another way to address power imbalances is for more universities to do what Meadows did and teach students how to think using a systems approach.
A team of researchers has done just that, through the Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning program. Students from disciplines including agriculture, ecology and economics learn together by drawing on their collective expertise in tackling real-world problems, such as how to reduce food waste. Since its launch in 2015, the program has trained more than 1,500 students from 45 university departments.
More researchers, policymakers and representatives from the food industry must learn to look beyond their direct lines of responsibility and embrace a systems approach, as the editors of Nature Food advocate in their launch editorial. Meadows knew that visions alone don’t produce results, but concluded that “we’ll never produce results that we can’t envision”.
【小题1】The passage is mainly about ________.| A．how to conduct research efficiently | B．how to build a world food organization |
| C．an approach to solving real-world problem | D．an approach to applying scientific findings |
| A．artificial intelligence is more useful than traditional methods |
| B．achieving systems thinking requires identifying more components |
| C．we are unable to gain thorough understanding of our nutritious system |
| D．some biochemicals are related with the occurrence of common diseases |
| A．It is the only way of solving imbalance in our food system. |
| B．It aims to urge the governments to carry out its food policies. |
| C．It seeks to solve theoretical issues about food and nutrition |
| D．It has cultivated many interdisciplinary talents since its launch. |
| A．Results can’t be produced. | B．Vision brings about change. |
| C．Action matters more than saying. | D．Systems thinking is too difficult to realize. |
