Resilience and the industrial food system: analyzing the impacts of agricultural industrialization on food system vulnerability

Can Organic Farming Reduce Vulnerabilities and Enhance the Resilience of the European Food System? A Critical Assessment Using System Dynamics Structural Thinking Tools

“…The degradation rate increases with increasing animal production, as animal-based food products are particularly When deciding "how" to produce, no matter whether this concerns crop or animal production (or other uses), to a certain extent labor can be substituted with machinery and external inputs. The feedback mechanism in Figure 3 shows that when fossil fuel and other external inputs are available and inexpensive, there is a strong incentive to invest and use diesel-powered machinery and off-farm sourced inputs instead of labor to increase yields [2,9,10,96,97]. In other words, higher costs of labor increase the attractiveness of investing in and using machinery and external inputs instead.…”

“…The three processes seem to favor each other, so that, for instance, the technical innovations (e.g., promotion of agrochemical use, biotechnology, single crop machinery, etc.) are most (costs) beneficial through scale economies and specialization [5,9,129]. Common feature of all of these processes is that they increase efficiency, but at the same time decrease diversity of different elements in the food system, while diversity is crucial for absorption of shocks and stresses, adaptation, and alternative solutions [5,9,47,155].…”

“…are most (costs) beneficial through scale economies and specialization [5,9,129]. Common feature of all of these processes is that they increase efficiency, but at the same time decrease diversity of different elements in the food system, while diversity is crucial for absorption of shocks and stresses, adaptation, and alternative solutions [5,9,47,155]. Having low diversity in the food system allows disturbances to be augmented in both socio-economic (e.g., food pricing controlled by few) and ecological (e.g., contamination on a single farm can easily effect the entire country) dimensions.…”

“…Assessing it through sustainability lenses, we argue that the capitalized, high external input food system is vulnerable to disturbances that operate beyond the system's own boundaries of ontology (i.e., a set of concepts and their relations that are specified in some way), epistemology, or control, such as unanticipated or non-linear climate variability and feedbacks or unpredicted ecological consequences of continuing use of external inputs. Thus, an alternative approach to food system, which does not trade-off long-term resilience for productivity and stability, is called for [5,[7][8][9]. King [16] lists several potential approaches for a resilient food system, including organic and biodynamic farming, permaculture, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture and community gardens.…”

Overcoming Barriers to Scaling Up Sustainable Alternative Food Systems: A Comparative Case Study of Two Ontario-Based Wholesale Produce Auctions

“…These "alternative" institutions are supposed to be more sustainable in that they should offer environmental and social benefits [4] by better connecting producers with consumers (i.e., "re-socializing") and by bringing production and consumption into the same geographic region (i.e., "re-spatialization"). Ideally, re-socializing and re-spatializing the food system will bring benefits such as improved food quality, the use of more sustainable farming practices, greater resilience and more equitable rural development [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. However, problems persist; while some "alternative" institutional models, such as farmers markets and community supported agriculture schemes, have been studied and evaluated in terms of their potential to create a more sustainable food system, many proposed institutional arrangements have not.…”