Challenges for food system adaptation today and tomorrow

Fresco, L.O.

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2008.11.001

Cited by 127 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Alternative ways of production and consumption are necessary to develop a more resilient and sustainable food system [15]. Asustainablefood system is described by Fresco (2009) [16] as being resource and energy efficient, productive, reducing vulnerability, responsive to changes, and limited in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Almås et al (2012) [12] state that a resilient food system can be understood as a socio-ecological-political system that possesses a given adaptive capacity to alleviate perturbations.…”

Section: Starting Pointsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confusion and Misunderstanding—Interpretations and Definitions of Local Food

et al. 2017

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Developing a more resilient food system based on sustainable food production and consumption is of major concern in creating food security. One issue in this complex field concerns the scale of the food system. Trends and tendencies show that the interest for local food has increased the last decade in Sweden, as well as in other parts of the world. Although the concept "local food" is commonly used, research shows that there is no single definition of it, instead definitions and meanings vary widely. This has led to a need by consumers of clearer information when buying "local food". Several main actors in the Swedish food sector have joined forces to meet this issue. This paper contributes to knowledge on definitions, interpretations, and practice on local food by presenting views and opinions among different actors in the food chain in a Swedish context, but also in the light of an international pilot study. Main findings concern how the meaning of "local food" related to production, processing, raw material, and distance differs among stakeholders in the food chain. A majority stated that the basic meaning of "local food" concerns both the production and consumption within a certain geographical area.

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Section: Starting Pointsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confusion and Misunderstanding—Interpretations and Definitions of Local Food

et al. 2017

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“…However, there are a few notable pieces of empirical research. A survey of more than 3000 households in two slums in Nairobi, Kenya-a part of the wider Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System, which involved 70,000 individuals within nearly 30,000 households-found that 85% of households were food insecure and 50% were severely food insecure [11]. Additional research from South Africa has found that 80% of poor urban dwellers in Cape Town can be classified as moderately or severely food insecure [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Governance and Market Heterogeneity: An Institutional Analysis of an Urban Food System in Sub-Saharan Africa

Blekking

Tuholske

2017

Sustainability

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African cities face immense challenges over the coming decades. As countries urbanize, African cities must maintain service provision for rapidly increasing populations, yet with limited resources. In particular, urban food systems must be able to cope with regional food shortages and catalyze (or at least enable) the distribution of food from diverse sources in order to ensure that the cost of food remains affordable for all of the segments of a city's population. Food systems in most African cities are composed of wholesale sellers, formal markets, street vendors, shops, and increasingly large-scale international stores, creating an evolving landscape of food sources. At the same time, urban population growth can result in rapid changes in urban structure with new peri-urban development and transitions in socioeconomic status within existing areas. Governance plays an important role in the creation and coordination of formal and informal actors across different types of food providers. At the municipal level, new markets must be approved to keep pace with urban expansion. Within residential areas, market management committees must work to maintain traditional markets in the context of increasing competition from large-scale grocers and small-scale street vendors. We use household and market-level data that was collected in Lusaka, Zambia, to conduct an institutional analysis of residential areas to examine the interplay between households, public markets, and street vendors. Analysis of the city's food system identifies a complex network of relationships featuring formal and informal governance arrangements, which may affect food system functionality.

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“…Fresco shares this view: "Even if a decreasing number of people acknowledge it today, the application of agricultural and food system science has been one of the great success stories of mankind, and it has been such a success story because of the collective capacity of humankind to adjust to the lessons learnt [5]". In all, since the 1960s, world population has doubled while the available calories per head increased by 25% [5,6]. The challenge, however, is to double food production in the decades to come, an increasing part of which for over 3 billion people already living in metropolitan areas.…”

Section: The Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From his perspective, a sustainable agriculture will only be possible with industry producing machines, fertilizers and pesticides [2,4]. Fresco shares this view: "Even if a decreasing number of people acknowledge it today, the application of agricultural and food system science has been one of the great success stories of mankind, and it has been such a success story because of the collective capacity of humankind to adjust to the lessons learnt [5]". In all, since the 1960s, world population has doubled while the available calories per head increased by 25% [5,6].…”

Section: The Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivating the Glocal Garden

Hisschemöller

2016

CIS

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This paper addresses the question under which conditions small-scale urban agriculture (UA) initiatives can accelerate a sustainability transition of the global food system. It develops the notion of a glocal garden, a large number of likeminded local initiatives with a global impact and forms of worldwide collaboration. Taking a transition perspective, the glocal garden, producing vegetables and fruits, is a niche that has to overcome barriers to compete with the dominant food regime. Since a sustainability transition restructures (policy) sectors, institutional domains including knowledge systems, the paper explores which innovations are needed for the glocal garden to succeed. It discusses the glocal garden as an environmental, a social, an economic and a global project. As an environmental project, the glocal garden will link sustainable production of food with renewable energy production. As a social project, it will be organized into a consumers' cooperative. As an economic project, it will strive for profit, increasing the yield in a sustainable manner. As a global project, it will enhance collaboration between local cooperatives in the North and the South, as well as with rural agriculture. Under these conditions, the glocal garden can develop into a power, able to resist a possible future food regime that splits societies, in terms of quality standards and food products, into haves and have-nots.

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Challenges for food system adaptation today and tomorrow

Cited by 127 publications

References 4 publications

Confusion and Misunderstanding—Interpretations and Definitions of Local Food

Confusion and Misunderstanding—Interpretations and Definitions of Local Food

Adaptive Governance and Market Heterogeneity: An Institutional Analysis of an Urban Food System in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cultivating the Glocal Garden

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