scholarly journals Food system resilience assessment : A practical approach to capture how specific system dynamics shape food and nutrition outcomes in protracted crises

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charleen Malkowsky ◽  
◽  
Gerrit-Jan van Uffelen
Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Simona Tarra ◽  
Giampiero Mazzocchi ◽  
Davide Marino

The restriction measures linked to the COVID-19 shock suddenly highlighted the vulnerability of most socioeconomic systems, including the food sector. In a context in which the limitation to the movement of people and goods has put the longer and more structured supply chains in serious difficulty, many experiences and initiatives have emerged as viable alternatives. The aim of the research was to understand if and how the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPG) of Rome have contributed to the resilience of the food system of the metropolitan city during the lockdown. The research was based on the results of a questionnaire administered to the SPGs of Rome during the first period of the pandemic (April–July 2020), enriched by some in-depth interviews carried out by the authors. What emerged was that, despite the limited extent in terms of products conveyed within the whole food system, the SPGs represented an important food supply channel during the lockdown period, for two main reasons: a greater flexibility and agility in moving and in handling goods and the possibility of remunerating local farms, contributing to the resilience of the local agri-food fabric. The analysis of the results confirms the strong vitality of such Food Movements in Rome and, at the same time, allows for the identification of a series of interventions that the institutions could adopt to favor the spread of a food environment more compatible with more sustainable and fairer forms of food production and distribution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 277 ◽  
pp. 124040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Amiri ◽  
Yahia Zare Mehrjerdi ◽  
Ammar Jalalimanesh ◽  
Ahmad Sadegheih

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Zurek ◽  
Aniek Hebinck ◽  
Adrian Leip ◽  
Joost Vervoort ◽  
Marijke Kuiper ◽  
...  

Steering the EU food system towards a sustainability transformation requires a vast and actionable knowledge base available to a range of public and private actors. Few have captured this complexity by assessing food systems from a multi-dimensional and multi-level perspective, which would include (1) nutrition and diet, environmental and economic outcomes together with social equity dimensions and (2) system interactions across country, EU and global scales. This paper addresses this gap in food systems research and science communication by providing an integrated analytical approach and new ways to communicate this complexity outside science. Based on a transdisciplinary science approach with continuous stakeholder input, the EU Horizon2020 project ‘Metrics, Models and Foresight for European SUStainable Food And Nutrition Security’ (SUSFANS) developed a five-step process: Creating a participatory space; designing a conceptual framework of the EU food system; developing food system performance metrics; designing a modelling toolbox and developing a visualization tool. The Sustainable Food and Nutrition-Visualizer, designed to communicate complex policy change-impacts and trade-off questions, enables an informed debate about trade-offs associated with options for change among food system actors as well as in the policy making arena. The discussion highlights points for further research related to indicator development, reach of assessment models, participatory processes and obstacles in science communication.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Sampedro ◽  
Francesco Pizzitutti ◽  
Diego Quiroga ◽  
Stephen J. Walsh ◽  
Carlos F. Mena

AbstractLike many other oceanic islands around the globe, environmental conditions, social circumstances and forces of globalization combine to challenge the sustainability of the Galapagos Archipelago of Ecuador. This paper describes a food-supply system in Galapagos that is mainly controlled by population growth, weak local agriculture, imports from mainland Ecuador and the influence of a growing tourism industry. We use system dynamics (SD) as a modeling technique in this paper to identify the main driving forces operating on the Galapagos food system to create a series of future scenarios and to examine the subsequent implications across the supply system structures. We model the supply side of the food system using secondary data collected from governmental and non-governmental sources. We find that the consumption profile of the local inhabitants of the Galapagos is on average higher than consumption in the Ecuadorian mainland. This fact, plus rapid growth of the local population fueled by the tourism industry, has created a decrease in per capita local food production and an increase on food import dependence that now, challenges the sustainability of the archipelago. Imports are the largest source of food in the archipelago. Approximately 75% of the agricultural food supply was transported from the mainland in 2017. Our model projects that this fraction will increase to 95% by 2037 with no changes in food policy. Moreover, any plan to increase tourism arrivals must be accompanied by a plan to address the subsistence needs of the new population that the tourism industry attracts. Policies to promote local agricultural growth should be central to the development strategy implemented in the Galapagos.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. e64101421596
Author(s):  
Beatriz Gouveia Moura ◽  
Jamille Caroso de Andrade ◽  
Adriana Correia dos Santos ◽  
Rodrigo do Nascimento Lopes ◽  
Maria Emília Lisboa Pacheco ◽  
...  

Discussions on the health consequences of the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are wide-ranging, but little has been addressed under systemic aspects, human rights, sovereignty and food and nutrition security, and socio-environmental sustainability. For this reason, the aim of this article was to analyze the systemic implications of children's access to UPFs. Secondary data from a cross-sectional survey conducted with pre-school students of two private schools in a capital city in the Northeastern region of Brazil were analyzed through the analysis of lunch boxes for three consecutive days. The most frequent UPFs had information about the manufacturing location, ingredients, and brand collected from their labels and subsequently studied. We noticed that most of the products were manufactured in other states, being transported for long distances, had little ingredient diversity, and belonged to sub-brands that conglomerate into “big players”. In this sense, we conclude that children are having their right to food violated and that access to UPFs by this public supports a hegemonic and unsustainable food system from a socio-environmental point of view that contributes to food and nutrition insecurity.


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