Systems thinking: an approach for understanding ‘eco-agri-food systems’ (original) (raw)
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Chapter 3 provides an overview of the diversity of agriculture and food systems, each with different contributions to global food security, impacts on the natural resource base and ways of working through food system supply chains. We describe “eco-agri-food systems” and further identify their many manifestations through a review of typologies. We identify challenges ahead with existing systems due to prevailing economic and political pressures resulting in patterns of invisible flows and impacts across global food systems. We describe pathways to ensure sustainability by securing the benefits from working with, rather than against, natural systems and ecosystem processes and the challenges for farmers, communities and societies to reorient food value chains and build resilience in eco-agri-food systems.
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Societal actors across scales and geographies increasingly demand visual applications of systems thinking – the process of understanding and changing the reality of a system by considering its whole set of interdependencies – to address complex problems affecting food and agriculture. Yet, despite the wide offer of systems mapping tools, there is still little guidance for managers, policy-makers, civil society and changemakers in food and agriculture on how to choose, combine and use these tools on the basis of a sufficiently deep understanding of socio-ecological systems. Unfortunately, actors seeking to address complex problems with inadequate understandings of systems often have limited influence on the socio-ecological systems they inhabit, and sometimes even generate unintended negative consequences. Hence, we first review, discuss and exemplify seven key features of systems that should be – but rarely have been – incorporated in strategic decisions in the agri-food sector: int...
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Food and agriculture systems (FAS) sustainability is multi-dimensional with the potential for huge impacts on spatial and temporal factors of urban and rural communities. One of the reasons for assessing the sustainability of FAS is to understand the conditions of and policy planning needs for the food system as a way to enhance both economic and social growth, while minimizing negative environmental impacts. To this end, assessments of FAS sustainability aim to measure the status of environmental, economic and social conditions using an interdisciplinary approach. This complex process necessitates a proper assessment of the diverse conditions under which AFS operates. Many attempts have been made to assess the sustainability of AFS. To some extent all of these attempts are questionable as they fail to consider two key facts supporting the SD concept; namely, the interaction between sustainability dimensions; and the temporal inter-relationships between different life cycle phases. ...
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In 2018, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) published a report entitled “Measuring what matters in agriculture and food systems”1 that developed a comprehensive framework for analysing food systems. The report references the value of the contribution of the natural resource base to agricultural production, the positive or negative impacts of production on nature, its interaction with society, and its impact on human health. In doing so this report provides an overview of the true cost of food.