## 6 Strategies & Policies towards a Sustainable Food System & Responsibilities  
From a systems perspective and as outlined in the previous sections, food security is not an independent, self-contained affair [28; 81; 82]. For example, it is compounded by the planet's increasing water and land scarcity, soil, land and biodiversity degradation and climate change leading to more frequent and severe weather events and their impact on agriculture. Any effort to strive towards a sustainable and resilient food system has to go beyond merely boosting production in order to meet the crop yield targets for an expected world population of around 10 billion people in 2050. Rather, under the umbrella of economic, social and ecological sustainability and with respect to innovative and systemic interventions to be developed, one has further to differentiate between various economic, financial, sociocultural, political, legal, institutional, technological, infrastructural/built environmental and ecological subdimensions including their interplay as part of a multi-layered societal innovation system [83]. Various potential strategic options might be outlined when aiming at food security and health as the two core dimensions of a sustainable food system:  
1. measures for an increase in food production, either by boosting crop yields of today's agricultural land by more sophisticated seeds (e.g., hybrid seeds), improved fertilization (and application of 4 Rs [84]) and irrigation systems (e.g., the use of cheaper drip-irrigation systems for smallholder farmers [56]), in general, efficiency improvements along the entire foods values chain including better logistics and storage systems (to avoid food losses during production, storage and transport; for example, vertical farming), and/or, by clearing further land for agriculture under the consideration of the land resource-food price nexus [29] or, more generally, by adopting new land-use scenarios under consideration of given path dependencies; all of which geared towards closing yield gaps (the difference between observed versus regional attainable yield) through nutrient and water management;
2. food losses and waste prevention, alternative uses and recycling;
3. avoidance of food overconsumption and changed quality related consumption patterns, including increases in organic food production;
4. hybrid solutions of (1), (2), and/or (3) (as core element of comprehensive system interventions);
5. the development of health programs, which build on joint (pro)active and passive health-related nutrition initiatives and a higher awareness regarding own food consumption patterns as well as their consequences including behavioural change (nudging); and
6. the establishment of food and health policies including taxation and appropriate educational measures, which build on the increased responsibility of all members of society. Such strategies will also depend on _technological and social innovations_ at various levels of society (including stakeholder-driven innovations), awareness building among and educational measures to increase the competences of, various stakeholders of society in order to deal with vulnerabilities within the food system and to strive for resilience and sustainable development, as well as for more systemic policies, which integrate strategies related to overweight (and obesity) as well as those related to undernourishment and cost reduction as potentially helpful promoters within a sustainable food system. Consequently, not only the'real' effects of innovation (at various levels of the food system) are relevant but also, from an ex-ante perspective, the _mental process of simulation of innovation_ within food systems is crucial in understanding the potential sustainable transition path, which may ultimately lead to a resilient food system [85]. The provision of agricultural technologies for the poor tends to be considered a \"support service\" by rich countries for the poor.