Overcoming undesirable resilience in the global food system

Oliver, Tom H.; Boyd, Emily; Balcombe, Kelvin; Benton, Tim G.; Bullock, James M.; Donovan, Deanna; Feola, Giuseppe; Heard, Matthew S.; Mace, Georgina M.; Mortimer, Simon R.; Nunes, Richard; Pywell, R. F.; Zaum, Dominik

doi:10.1017/sus.2018.9

Cited by 90 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…SESs can be in resilient states whereby unfavorable conditions are maintained via 'lock-ins' or strong 'basins of attraction' [39,40] as well as exhibiting contextual vulnerability to intermittent climate shocks [5]. Both of these are mediated through social and biotic factors that require interdisciplinary research to understand their underlying mechanisms [40].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

Morel

Hirons

Demissie

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Smallholder farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture are particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events and, therefore, it is necessary to identify adaptive measures that would increase farmer resilience to these shocks. The management options in a low-input system, like forest coffee (Coffea arabica), are limited and there are several factors out of farmers' control driving their vulnerability to changing climatic conditions. These can relate to social structures and landscape factors, which can interact to reduce farmers' adaptive capacity, creating a state of contextual vulnerability. We explored the potential synergies of this interaction across elevation, patch area and shade management gradients for smallholder coffee farms around the UNESCO Yayu Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve in Ethiopia before, during and immediately following the 2015/16 El Niño. We documented a dramatic collapse in coffee yields across all farms, resulting in coffee incomes 29.5%±18.0% and 19.5%±10.0% of 2014 incomes in 2015 and 2016, respectively. We identified farms at elevations between 1500 and 1600 m with canopy openness between 40% and 45% as being consistently low yielding over our study period. We found these farmers had the highest rates of income diversification and, therefore, were already exhibiting adaptive capacity. Farmers with the largest income losses were spatially concentrated between 1600 and 1700 m, located in larger patch areas with lower canopy openness. Farmers at this elevation have access to poor infrastructure, restrictions on shade management and reported higher dependence on income from coffee, indicating an interaction of biotic and social factors exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, due to a nationally declared state of emergency, we were unable to survey farmers on the adaptive measures they undertook; therefore, we are limited in assessing their resilience. However, we do show the importance of considering both biotically and socially-mediated influences for assessing smallholder vulnerability, particularly barriers to diversifying incomes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

Morel

Hirons

Demissie

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

Self Cite

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“…Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) often includes Gordon et al's (2017) sustainable practice principles and could act as living laboratories for a wider transformation that sustains global food security (Hebinck and Page, 2017;Oliver et al 2018;Shepon et al 2018). Can UPA also play a part in navigating the competition for land between food production and urbanization?…”

Section: Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture (Upa) As Leverage Placesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global urbanization and food production in direct competition for land: Leverage places to mitigate impacts on SDG2 and on the Earth System

Barthel

Isendahl

Vis

et al. 2019

The Anthropocene Review

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Global urbanization and food production are in direct competition for land. This paper carries out a critical review of how displacing crop production from urban and peri-urban land to other areas – because of issues related to soil quality – will demand a substantially larger proportion of the Earth’s terrestrial land surface than the surface area lost to urban encroachment. Such relationships may trigger further distancing effects and unfair social-ecological teleconnections. It risks also setting in motion amplifying effects within the Earth System. In combination, such multiple stressors set the scene for food riots in cities of the Global South. Our review identifies viable leverage points on which to act in order to navigate urban expansion away from fertile croplands. We first elaborate on the political complexities in declaring urban and peri-urban lands with fertile soils as one global commons. We find that the combination of an advisory global policy aligned with regional policies enabling robust common properties rights for bottom-up actors and movements in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as multi-level leverage places to intervene. To substantiate the ability of aligning global advisory policy with regional planning, we review both past and contemporary examples where empowering local social-ecological UPA practices and circular economies have had a stimulating effect on urban resilience and helped preserve, restore, and maintain urban lands with healthy soils.

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“…In recent years, it has been recognized that food systems can best be understood as complex systems [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], pointing to the need to understand the dynamics of systems as a whole, rather than focusing only on their constitutive parts. Holistic conceptualizations of food systems therefore aim to move beyond traditional divisions between production-oriented and consumption-oriented approaches by emphasizing the need to include all relevant processes (e.g., food production, distribution, consumption), actors (e.g., farmers, researchers, consumers), policy sectors (e.g., health, agriculture, environment), governance levels (e.g., local, national, global), and functionalities (e.g., healthy diets, access to food, employment, fostering commensality, and cultural identity) in research and policy efforts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such conceptualizations point to the need to move beyond linear models (such as value or supply chains) and circular food system models (such as food cycles) since they do not adequately capture the complex structural and dynamic properties of food systems [16,20]. The many interacting elements of complex (food) systems give rise to properties such as resilient or locked-in system states, adaptivity, emergent behavior, self-organization, and non-linear dynamics, such as systemic feedback loops, synergies, and trade-offs [16][17][18][19]. Such holistic food systems approaches are increasingly gaining ground in policy environments globally (see e.g., [21][22][23][24]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming Research and Innovation for Sustainable Food Systems—A Coupled-Systems Perspective

Kok¹,

Boer²,

Cesuroğlu³

et al. 2019

Sustainability

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Current research and innovation (R&I) systems are not equipped to fully serve as catalysts for the urgently needed transformation of food systems. Though research on food systems transformation (first order: ‘what?’) and transformative research (second order: ‘how to’) are rapidly gaining traction in academic and policy environments, current efforts fail to explicitly recognize the systemic nature of the challenges associated with performing transformative second-order research. To recognize these manifold and interlinked challenges embedded in R&I systems, there is a need for a coupled-systems perspective. Transformations are needed in food systems as well as R&I systems (‘how to do the “how to”’). We set out to conceptualize an approach that aims to trigger double transformations by nurturing innovations at the boundaries of R&I systems and food systems that act upon systemic leverage points, so that their multisystem interactions can better support food system transformations. We exemplify this coupled-systems approach by introducing the FIT4FOOD2030 project with its 25 living labs as a promising multilevel boundary innovation at the cross-section of R&I and food systems. We illustrate how this approach paves the way for double systems transformations, and therefore for an R&I system that is fit for future-proofing food systems.

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Overcoming undesirable resilience in the global food system

Cited by 90 publications

References 60 publications

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system

Global urbanization and food production in direct competition for land: Leverage places to mitigate impacts on SDG2 and on the Earth System

Transforming Research and Innovation for Sustainable Food Systems—A Coupled-Systems Perspective

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