Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world

Abstract

Sustainable agrifood systems are critical to averting climate-driven social and ecological disasters, overcoming the growth paradigm and redefining the interactions of humanity and nature in the twenty-first century. This Perspective describes an agenda and examples for comprehensive agrifood system redesign according to principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons and care. This redesign should be supported by coordinated education and research efforts that do not simply replicate dominant discourses on food system sustainability but point towards a post-growth world in which agroecological life processes support healthy communities rather than serving as inputs for the relentless pursuit of economic growth.

A Systems Approach to Chemistry Is Required to Achieve Sustainable Transformation of Matter: The Case of Ammonia and Reactive Nitrogen

“…Chemistry and other sciences will have important roles to play, along with economic and political sectors. There will need to be a focus on: Continued global management of Nr emissions in agriculture in the context of a comprehensive approach to sustainable agri-food systems Decoupling NH 3 production from fossil fuels (transition to green production) on a global scale. Carefully evaluating the scaling-up of NH 3 production to meet the demands of emerging markets (energy and refrigeration), aiming to: Avoid large increase in Nr release to the environment, considering that Nr already exceeds the safe planetary boundaries limit. Ameliorate the effect of competition with N-fertilizer market and impact on global food prices and security. …”

“…Continued global management of Nr emissions in agriculture in the context of a comprehensive approach to sustainable agri-food systems …”

“…• Continued global management of Nr emissions in agriculture in the context of a comprehensive approach to sustainable agri-food systems. 94 • Decoupling NH 3 production from fossil fuels (transition to green production) on a global scale. • Carefully evaluating the scaling-up of NH 3 production to meet the demands of emerging markets (energy and refrigeration), aiming to:…”

Planning for sustainable food communities: An optimal spatial allocation study of food hubs considering the 15-min city concept—The case of LebensMittelPunkte in Berlin

“…Although in our case we are still far from achieving food sovereignty, linking urban agroecology to agricultural production would be the first link to re-connect urban and rural contexts through AFNs (López-García and González de Molina, 2020; Tornaghi and Dehaene, 2020). Therefore, the scaling out of the agroecology-based regional FHs to the entire city would foster the articulation of an ALAS, "linking territories and actors within the city-region food system" (López-García and González de Molina, 2020), which has been proposed as a resilient model to overcome the complexity of the system and increasingly achieve sustainable food systems (Vaarst et al, 2018;Quaranta et al, 2019;Bén, 2020;Blay-Palmer et al, 2021) based on the principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons and care (McGreevy et al, 2022).…”

“…However, they are mainly incremental; they focus on reforming specific aspects of the food system, but they do not address the fundamental characteristics of the system (Wezel et al, 2020). In response to this, there is a growing proportion of the scientists, NGOs and citizens proposing the adoption of integrative and more radical approaches to transform the agri-food system as the way to overcome structural causes and impacts of food production and consumption (Carlson and Chappell, 2015;Gliessman, 2016;FAO, 2018;HLPE, 2019;Webb et al, 2020;Argumedo et al, 2021;Calo et al, 2021;Carter et al, 2021;Dengerink et al, 2021;Jonas, 2021;Leeuwis et al, 2021;Ruben et al, 2021;Singh et al, 2021;McGreevy et al, 2022). This has also been mirrored in policies taking new directions, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy of the European Union (European Commission, 2020).…”