How food systems change (or not): governance implications for system transformation processes (original) (raw)
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Food systems everywhere: Improving relevance in practice
Global Food Security
Food systems approaches are increasingly used to better understand transitions in diets, sustainable resource use and social inclusion. Moreover, food systems frameworks are also widely used in many recent policy and foresight studies. We assess 32 highly-cited international studies, identifying and comparing differences in the frameworks used for food systems analysis, and discrepancies in the procedures to identify strategies for and performances of food system transformation. We show that the relevance of existing food systems analysis for identifying critical trade-offs and understanding relevant policies and practices for achieving synergies remains limited. While many studies are largely descriptive, some offer more practical insights into and evidence of entry points for food system transformation as well as opportunities for improving multiple food system outcomes (i.e. nutrition and health, environmental sustainability and resilience, social inclusion). We distinguish four different pathways for food system transformation and outline their analytical underpinnings, their views on multi-stakeholder governance, and how they deal with critical trade-offs between multiple food system objectives. We conclude that food systems approaches must be useful to decision makers and performance can only be improved if decision makers have a better understanding of these underlying interactions and dynamics of food systems change.
Sustainably achieving the goal of global food security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The current food system is failing to meet the needs of people, and at the same time, is having far-reaching impacts on the environment and undermining human well-being in other important ways. It is increasingly apparent that a deep transformation in the way we produce and consume food is needed in order to ensure a more just and sustainable future. This paper uses the concept of regime shifts to understand key drivers and innovations underlying past disruptions in the food system and to explore how they may help us think about desirable future changes and how we might leverage them. We combine two perspectives on regime shifts-one derived from natural sciences and the other from social sciences-to propose an interpretation of food regimes that draws on innovation theory. We use this conceptualization to discuss three examples of innovations that we argue helped enable critical regime shifts in the global food system in the past: the Haber-Bosch process of nitrogen fixation, the rise of the supermarket, and the call for more transparency in the food system to reconnect consumers with their food. This paper concludes with an exploration of why this combination of conceptual understandings is important across the Global North/ Global South divide, and proposes a new sustainability regime where transformative change is spearheaded by a variety of social-ecological innovations.
What is a food system? Exploring enactments of the food system multiple
Agriculture and Human Values
Recent years have seen widespread calls to transform food systems to address complex demands such as feeding a growing global population while reducing environmental impacts. But what is a food system and how can we most effectively work to change it? “Food System” can be found describing more limited dietary regimens as well as sector-specific supply chains going back to the 1930s, but its use to describe very large, dynamic, coupled socio-ecological systems gained traction in academic and civil society publications in the 1990s and this use of the term has increased dramatically in recent years. When the influential food system actors from non-governmental organizations, foundations, consultancies, and the UN that this research focuses on talk about food systems, they seem to be talking about the same thing. Yet the interpretive flexibility of the concept obfuscates that people may have very different framings that may be deeply incompatible. Drawing from interviews, participant o...
1 Organizing for Food Systems Change
2016
Pre-print version of chapter in forthcoming edited book. Preliminary citation information: Anderson, C.R., Silivay. J. and K. Lobe. (2017). Organizing for Food Sovereignty: The Opportunities and Contradictions of Institutionalization and Formalization. In Anderson, C.R. Buchanan, C., Chang, M., Sanchez, J., and T. Wakeford (eds). Action Research for Food Systems Transformation. Reclaiming Citizenship and Diversity Series. Coventry: Coventry University.
Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation
Environmental Science and Policy, 2024
Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation towards a more just and sustainable food system. Scholars argue that food policy integrationpolicies that unite numerous foodrelated actionsis required to overcome dominant siloed and fragmented approaches and to tackle environmental and economic crises. However, what is being integrated and how such integrations contribute to food system transformation remain unexplored. This paper aims to disentangle frames and approaches to food policy integration through a critical analysis of literature on integrated policies and food system transformation. Complemented by a systematic literature review for "food system" and "polic* integrat*", overlapping approaches and gaps between these literatures are revealed over the last twenty years. We use the prisms of processes ("how" food policy integration is being practiced), placement ("where" crossovers between sectors in governance institutions and where synergies between objectives can be created) and things ("what" specific aspects of the food system and related sectors exist within integrated policies and leverage points to trigger transformative dynamics) to explore how policy integration and food system transformation intersect within current debates. Our findings reveal cross-cutting themes and distinct theoretical frameworks but also identify substantial gaps, where frames of food policy integration often remain within their disciplinary silos, are ambiguous or ill-defined. We conclude that to achieve policy integration as a tool for food system transformation, a new research and policy agenda is needed that builds on diverse knowledges, critical policy approaches and the integration of food with other sectors.
Transforming Food Systems: The Potential of Engaged Political Economy
IDS Bulletin, 2019
A food systems approach is critical to understanding and facilitating food system transformation, yet gaps in analysis are impeding changes towards greater equity, sustainability, and emancipation. Gaps include analyses of interdependencies among food system activities, of narrative politics, and of the behaviour of food system components using dynamic methodologies. Other problems include inappropriate boundaries to the system, insufficient learning across scales, lack of integration of social and ecological drivers and trends, and inadequate attention to the intersectional impacts of marginalisation. Both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work is necessary to overcome these problems, and, fundamentally, to understand power in food systems. Transdisciplinarity allows an engaged political economy in which social actors, including those who have not benefited from adequate food, livelihoods, and other services that food systems provide, are involved along with academics in co-creating the knowledge necessary for transformation. This engagement requires humility and respect, especially by academics, and explicit power-sharing.
Democratic directionality for transformative food systems research
Nature Food
Effective interfaces of knowledge and policy are critical for food system transformation. Here, an expert group assembled to explore research needs towards a safe and just food system put forward principles to guide relations between society, science, knowledge, policy and politics.
The Challenge of Food Systems Research: What Difference Does It Make?
Sustainability, 2018
Recent discussions on the results of food security programs devote key attention to complex interactions between policy interventions and business innovation for improving nutrition outcomes. This shift from linear approaches of food and nutrition security towards a more interlinked and nested analysis of food systems dynamics has profound implications for the design and organization of research and innovation processes. In this article we outline our experience with interdisciplinary and interactive processes of food systems analysis at different scale levels, paying systematic attention to three critical system interfaces: intersections with other systems, interactions within the food system, and incentives for food system innovations (the so-called: 3I approach). We discuss the importance of these interfaces for leveraging food system adaptation and managing food system transformation. We also provide illustrative examples of the relevance of food systems analysis for the identif...
National processes shaping food systems transformations
2021
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