Food market systems are increasingly influenced by multiple global trends, including: population growth, urbanization, ecological uncertainty, technology change, and shifts in dietary preferences. These emerging trends are dramatically affecting both supply and demand for food, and changing how smallholder farmers can be integrated into local and global value chains.

The common goal of improved food and nutrition security in rural and urban settings needs new thinking from policy makers, development agencies, private sector agribusinesses, and implementing partners. To advance this shared objective, SEEP embraces the importance of strengthening food market system competitiveness, inclusiveness, resilience and nutrition sensitivity. 

This track explored practical examples of solutions and challenges related to transforming food market systems along these critical thematic areas. We focused on collaborative approaches that are reshaping rules and incentives, shifting behaviors, and promoting shared standards and principles across market and food systems. 

A resilience approach supports people, businesses, communities and systems to plan and prepare for risks, cope with disruptions, and adapt to changing contexts. Resilience thinking is becoming increasingly important as humanitarian crises stretch out over time, lasting an average of 7 years. This means that the lines between disaster response and economic recovery are more frequently blurred, as more humanitarian actors are operating in ongoing crisis contexts. Economic well-being and inclusive market development play an important role in resilience programming, underpinning capacities and contributing to overall household resilience.

This track explored the multiple approaches that organizations are using to address resilience issues in communities. We learnt from successful and experimental approaches to shelter programming, youth resilience, market systems, and institutional learning that can support more resilient livelihoods and markets.

Supporting the ability of women and girls to succeed and advance economically leads to healthy and productive households, growing businesses and the well-being of communities and nations. However, despite progress in promoting increased investments in gender equality, women and girls still face significant barriers to achieving their full potential. Disadvantages in political, social and economic relationships perpetuate inequalities. In fragile and emergency contexts, women and girls face even higher risks. Women's economic empowerment refers to a process by which women expand their ability to succeed and advance economically, and where they have the power to make and act on strategic life decisions in a context where this power was previously denied.

This track explored collaborative change processes that address systemic barriers affecting large numbers of women and girls in key economic areas, while tapping into new opportunities. We specifically emphasized themes that cut across enterprise growth/job creation, agriculture development, and inclusive finance. Cross cutting themes include: technology and innovation, private sector partnerships, women's access and agency, empowerment for girls, legal and regulatory barriers, addressing sex-based harassment and preventing and mitigating risk of gender-based violence and other unintended consequences that might occur as women and girls become more economically empowered.

There are three main challenges with regards to evidence: How do we generate evidence that is relevant to multiple audiences (donors, private sector, government)? How can a program get the right kind of internal data to iteratively improve their programs? And how can we most effectively use data?

Continued learning and experimentation is essential for developing insights. It allows us to improve how we collect and analyze new sources of data (quantitative and qualitative) and how we use time-tested research and M&E capabilities. Improving these processes is even more critical in multi-stakeholder collaborations, where the interpretation and use of evidence can influence strategies and the way we assess change, behaviors and relationships in market systems.

This track explored effective methods for collecting both "new" and "traditional" data and then transforming it into useful evidence to understand real-time needs, improve decision-making at multiple levels, promote learning, influence policy, and increase overall development impact.