Resilience in a concentrated and consolidated food system

Power, Food and Agriculture: Implications for Farmers, Consumers and Communities

“…Nature is dynamic however, and weeds and pests have rapidly evolved resistance to widely used chemicals. (King 2008), has increased vulnerability for many farmers and communities and reduced the range of options for adaptation from field to plate (Hendrickson 2015). With its lengthening supply chain, the industrialization and concentration of the agrifood system results in a lack of tight ecological and social feedback loops, compromising adaptive responses that promote resilience (Lamine 2015).…”

“…Concentration in both seed and livestock genetics raises a number of important issues alongside the fact that farmers must now use more capital to access genetics while also having fewer choices about what kinds of seeds or breeds to use. Genetic concentration is a growing concern, especially in terms of disappearing livestock breeds (FAO 2015), which means animals may be more susceptible to evolving pathogens (Howard 2016a) or could also be less resilient in the face of climate change (Hendrickson 2015). While improved genetics in seeds and breeds certainly increased agricultural productivity (yield), about half the gains made in the 20 th century owes to inorganic fertilizers, particularly for critical crop nutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K), also commonly referred to as potash (Aziz et al 2015).…”

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

“…Both of the latter reinforcing feedback loops are examples of unintended processes that increasingly lock food producers into dependence on external inputs, the companies that provide them, the financial resources needed to purchase them and the capitalist relationships within food production that frame their decisions [5,139]. The use of external inputs considerably changes food producing practices as well as agroecosystems in which they are applied.…”

“…Accordingly, as the system specializes, the diversity of organizational forms as well as of crops and animals decreases in the food system. Technical innovations (e.g., application of more and more specific fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides and genetic advances) to a great extent are in hands of few multinational corporations [5]. This narrows down sources of technical innovations as well as the choices available for food producers.…”

“…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].…”