SDGs Knowledge Hub

Sustainable Food Systems and the SDGs

Food Secure Canada and partners, 2021-2024

What is the SDG Knowledge Hub?

From 2021 – 2024, with the support of the federal government, Food Secure Canada worked on a collective process to identify, analyse and document food systems approaches and innovations towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

As part of this process, we launched this web-based knowledge hub that includes project news, outputs, and our engagement with SDGs. Click here to learn more about What are the SDGs?

Food Secure Canada’s engagement with the SDGs

Food Secure Canada (FSC) co-ordinated three years of work about how food systems pathways can help to meet multiple SDGs, with an emphasis on integrating civil society and Indigenous knowledge. We collected and proposed approaches towards meeting the SDGs through three priority areas for food systems change in Canada. Read about the three action areas here:

1. Equitable access to healthy, sustainable food – led by Food Secure Canada
2. Healthy school food – led by the Coalition for Healthy School Food
3. Indigenous food sovereignty – led by Plenty Canada.

We also undertook cross-cutting initiatives throughout the project, with highlights including:

• Policy Backgrounders for local communities organising “Eat Think Vote” events for parliamentary candidates from all parties at the 2021 federal election, including an introduction to food systems and the SDGs;
• Civil society Town Halls (2023, 2021), convened to inform the renewal of the Food Policy for Canada, and to influence the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC) and its Working Groups, in alignment with meeting SDG targets;; 
• Contributing to Canada’s National Pathways document for the UN Food Systems Summit; and
• Joining Canada’s delegation to the United Nations High Level Political Forum in New York as the Voluntary National Review was presented in 2023.

Thanks to this work, FSC has highly-relevant, embedded organisational knowledge and experience of the SDGs, and a network of active partners nationally, regionally, and thematically across different dimensions of the food system and the food movement. FSC warmly thanks all its partners, especially Indigenous leaders and others most impacted by injustices in the food system, for being on this learning and unlearning journey together.