scholarly journals Agroecological Approach to Farming for Sustainable Development: The Indian Scenario

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ishwari Singh Bisht ◽  
Jai Chand Rana ◽  
Sarah Jones ◽  
Natalia Estrada-Carmona ◽  
Rashmi Yadav
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Food System ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Ecological Principles ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
System Sustainability

Agroecology is the application of ecological principles to agricultural systems and practices and the application of social justice principles to whole food systems. Agroecological farming, an unfamiliar concept to those who treat agriculture and ecology as separate subjects, refers to farming for producing food, employment and economic benefits in addition to cultural, social and environmental services and benefits. Additionally, agroecology empowers farming communities, as the key agents of change, and addresses the root cause of problems of unsustainable agricultural systems in an integrated way and provides holistic and long-term solutions to transform the food and agricultural systems. As agroecology is at the forefront of transforming farming and food system sustainability, the present chapter specifically explores the state of Indian traditional farming agroecosystems, evidence collected under the ongoing Indian UNEP-GEF project “Mainstreaming agricultural biodiversity conservation and utilization in agricultural sector to ensure ecosystem services and reduce vulnerability”. We discuss traditional Indian farming in view of FAO’s 10 principles of Agroecology which is key to help policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders, in planning, managing and evaluating agroecological transitions.

scholarly journals Food System Sustainability Metrics: Policies, Quantification, and the Role of Complexity Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12408
Author(s):  
José V. Matos ◽  
Rui J. Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Sustainability Metrics ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Complexity Sciences ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Confidence Levels ◽  
System Sustainability ◽  
And Control

The rise of global attention toward sustainability and sustainable development (SD) has provided increased incentives for research development and investment in these areas. Food systems are at the center of human needs and global population growth sustainability concerns. These drives and the need to provide quantified support for related investment projects led to the proliferation of sustainability metrics and frameworks. While questions about sustainability definition and measurement still abound, SD policy design and control increasingly need adequate quantified support instruments. This paper aims to address this need, contributing to a more consistent and integrated application of food system sustainability metrics and quantified management of the implemented solutions. After presenting the relationships between sustainability, resilience, and robustness and summarizing food system sustainability quantification developments so far, we expose complexity sciences’ potential contributions toward SD quantified evaluation, addressing prediction, intangibles, and uncertainty issues. Finding a paramount need to make sense and bring existing sustainability metrics in context for operational use, we conclude that the articulated application of multiple and independent modeling approaches at the micro, meso, and macro levels can better help the development of food SD policies and implemented solution quantified management, with due regard to confidence levels of the results obtained.

Agricultural and Food Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Abiodun Elijah Obayelu ◽  
Simeon Olusola Ayansina
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Sustainable Food Systems ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Adequate Food ◽  
System Sustainability ◽  
Sustainable Food System

Policy plays significant role in defining the food system of any country, and a sustainable food system is necessary for food security. This chapter maps out the causal interactions between food systems, food security and policy, and the challenges in transition to a sustainable food system while respecting the rights of all people to have access to adequate food in Nigeria. Explicit, rigorous, and transparent literature search was undertaken and many articles were assessed and reviewed. Although the results established a mutual relationship between food system and food security, existing literature have widely failed to take interactions between food systems, food security and policy into account. While food production is used as an entry point to improving food system sustainability, the quest for food security are undermining transition towards sustainable food systems. It was found that without right policies in place, it may be difficult to have food systems that are sustainable and ensure food security. This chapter provides a useful contribution to policy, and research on transitions towards sustainable food system. Any policy intervention to address one part of the food systems will impact on other parts and will determine whether a country is food secure or not. Enabling policy environment is therefore essential in ensuring a sustainable food system and for the attainment of food security.

scholarly journals The case for a Canadian national school food program

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley Hernandez ◽  
Rachel Engler-Stringer ◽  
Sara Kirk ◽  
Hannah Wittman ◽  
Sasha McNicholl
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Dietary Behaviour ◽  
School Food ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Food Literacy ◽  
National School ◽  
Good Nutrition ◽  
System Sustainability

Canada is one of the only member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) without a national school food program. Good nutrition impacts children’s health, wellbeing, and learning; and school food environments offer an important setting to promote health and other food system sustainability behaviours that can last a lifetime. We present an overview of national and international evidence, with a focus on promising practices that support the establishment of a national school food program in Canada. School food programs have been shown to benefit health and dietary behaviour and critical food literacy skills (learning, culture, and social norms) that support local agriculture and promote sustainable food systems. Finally, we make recommendations for key elements that should be included in a national school food program for Canada.

scholarly journals Climate change mitigation beyond agriculture: a review of food system opportunities and implications

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith T. Niles ◽  
Richie Ahuja ◽  
Todd Barker ◽  
Jimena Esquivel ◽  
Sophie Gutterman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Systems Research

AbstractA large body of research has explored opportunities to mitigate climate change in agricultural systems; however, less research has explored opportunities across the food system. Here we expand the existing research with a review of potential mitigation opportunities across the entire food system, including in pre-production, production, processing, transport, consumption and loss and waste. We detail and synthesize recent research on the topic, and explore the applicability of different climate mitigation strategies in varying country contexts with different economic and agricultural systems. Further, we highlight some potential adaptation co-benefits of food system mitigation strategies and explore the potential implications of such strategies on food systems as a whole. We suggest that a food systems research approach is greatly needed to capture such potential synergies, and highlight key areas of additional research including a greater focus on low- and middle-income countries in particular. We conclude by discussing the policy and finance opportunities needed to advance mitigation strategies in food systems.

scholarly journals Global map and indicators of food system sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Béné ◽  
Steven D. Prager ◽  
Harold A. E. Achicanoy ◽  
Patricia Alvarez Toro ◽  
Lea Lamotte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Entire Range ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Data Space ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Metric Dimensions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
System Sustainability

AbstractThis paper presents the first global map of food systems sustainability based on a rigorous protocol. The choice of the metric dimensions, as well as the individual indicators included in the metric, were initially identified from a thorough review of the existing literature. A rigorous inclusion/exclusion protocol was then used to refine the list and shorten it to a sub-set of 27 indicators. An aggregate sustainability score was then computed based on those 27 indicators organized into four dimensions: environment, social, food security & nutrition and economic. The paper shows how the availability of data (or lack therefore) results in an unavoidable trade-off between number of indicators and number of countries, and highlights how optimization can be used to present the most robust metric possible given the existence of this trade-offs in the data space. The process results in the computation of a global sustainability map covering 97 countries and 20 indicators. The sustainability scores obtained for each country are made available over the entire range of indicators.

scholarly journals Conflicts over GMOs and their Contribution to Food Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 165-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beate Friedrich ◽  
Sarah Hackfort ◽  
Miriam Boyer ◽  
Daniela Gottschlich
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Agricultural Futures ◽  
New Breeding Techniques ◽  
Breeding Techniques ◽  
Food Democracy

The use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) embodies a specific vision of agricultural systems that is highly controversial. The article focuses on how conflicts over GMOs contribute towards food democracy. Food democracy is defined as the possibility for all social groups to participate in, negotiate and struggle over how societies organize agricultural production, thereby ensuring that food systems fulfil the needs of people and sustain (re)productive nature into the future. EU agricultural policy envisages the coexistence of agricultural and food systems with and without GMOs. This policy, which on the surface appears to be a means of avoiding conflict, has in fact exacerbated conflict, while creating obstacles to the development of food democracy. By contrast, empirical analysis of movements against GMOs in Germany and Poland shows how they create pathways towards participation in the food system and the creation of alternative agricultural futures, thereby contributing to a democratization of food systems and thus of society–nature relations. Today, as products of new breeding techniques such as genome editing are being released, these movements are gaining new relevance.

scholarly journals Ecologically Intermediate and Economically Final: The Role of the Ecosystem Services Framework in Measuring Sustainability in Agri-Food Systems

Land ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Alessandra La Notte
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Food System ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Economic Perspective ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Accounting Approaches

Ecosystem services can be defined as the ecosystem’s contribution to human activities. According to recent assessments, the agricultural sector is one of the most important economic users of ecosystem services in Europe. To assess, value, and account for ecosystem services related to the agri-food system offers the possibility to measure and investigate how agricultural management practices together with changing environmental conditions can affect ecological resilience. However, the accounting of ecosystem services’ flows needs to be carefully addressed, because the overlapping of services and benefits and the overlapping of what are considered intermediate and final services could create dangerous misunderstandings about the role and importance of ecosystem services in agriculture. This paper reports on the possible accounting approaches that can be used to assess crop provision, as well as their meanings and implications from an ecological to an economic perspective. The results demonstrate that an economic accounting-based assessment of ecosystem services needs to move from an ecological holistic view to a one-by-one disaggregation of ecosystem services in order to avoid underestimates that would ultimately affect the policy perception of the role of ecosystems with respect to the agri-food systems’ resilience.

scholarly journals Data Integration for Diet Sustainability Analyses

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 8082
Author(s):  
Zach Conrad ◽  
Alexandra Stern ◽  
David C. Love ◽  
Meredith Salesses ◽  
Ashley Cyril ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Integration ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Public Data ◽  
System Sustainability

Diet sustainability analyses are stronger when they incorporate multiple food systems domains, disciplines, scales, and time/space dimensions into a common modeling framework. Few analyses do this well: there are large gaps in food systems data in many regions, accessing private and some public data can be difficult, and there are analytical challenges, such as creating linkages across datasets and using complex analytical methods. This article summarizes key data sources across multiple domains of food system sustainability (nutrition, economic, environment) and describes methods and tools for integrating them into a common analytic framework. Our focus is the United States because of the large number of publicly available and highly disaggregated datasets. Thematically, we focus on linkages that exist between environmental and economic datasets to nutrition, which can be used to estimate the cost and agricultural resource use of food waste, interrelationships between healthy eating and climate impacts, diets optimized for cost, nutrition, and environmental impacts, and others. The limitations of these approaches and data sources are described next. By enhancing data integration across these fields, researchers can be better equipped to promote policy for sustainable diets.

scholarly journals Assessment of the Condition and Instruments of the Food Security Regulation of Countries Taking into Account the Inequality of Their Economic Development and Instability of the World Trade in the Conditions of a Pandemic

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
Elena Gushchina ◽  
Darja Babkina
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Food System ◽  
Optimal Level ◽  
The State ◽  
The World ◽  
Food Security Indicators ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Security Indicators

The differentiation by the level and quality of life, the inequality of income distribution in the worlds regions, as well as occurring global problems reveal the need to assess the degree of stability of state food security systems and search for adequate methods for its regulation at the interstate level. The paper studies the indicators that are used to determine the level of food security of countries in general and the stability of development of their agricultural sector, in particular. Studying the dynamics of food security indicators makes it possible to identify a number of factors that impede the achievement of an optimal level of stability of food systems in different regions of the world and to reveal the dependence of the state of food security on countries economy and social development. The ways of improving the system of ensuring food security of countries are proposed, and threats and prospects for the development of the world and domestic food markets in changing geopolitical circumstances are assessed. Modern methodological approaches to assessing food security and methods for its regulation, as well as the state of affairs in ensuring the stability of the development of the food system in Russia in the conditions of a pandemic, are considered.

Local or global: A biophysical analysis of a regional food system

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 523-533
Author(s):  
Meidad Kissinger ◽  
Cornelia Sussmann ◽  
Caitlin Dorward ◽  
Kent Mullinix
Keyword(s):  
Food Supply ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Environmentally Sustainable ◽  
Regional Food ◽  
Family Approach ◽  
Regional Food System ◽  
System Sustainability

AbstractGrowing concern regarding environmental, social, economic and food quality outcomes of the modern global industrial food system as well as the implications of climate change on food security and food system sustainability have fomented interest in, and action to advance localized food systems. Environmental stewardship is an oft-touted benefit of food system localization. However, few studies have comparatively examined actual environmental benefits of local versus global supply systems and most focus on only one aspect (e.g., GHG emissions). The study reported here comparatively analyzes land, water, carbon and ecological footprints of a localized food supply and contemporary global food supply for the South-West British Columbia (Canada), bioregion (SWBC). The footprint family approach utilized allows measuring overall biophysical loads for the studied region. We quantified regional rates of reliance on imported biophysical services; measured the performances of specific food products grown locally in comparison with their imported counterparts; and identified those commodities that have better and worse local biophysical performances. For the SWBC bioregion, only 35% of the food consumed in the region is locally produced. Supplying the region's food demands requires 2 million hectares of land and 3 billion m3 of water, generating approximately 2.8 million tons of CO2e, with an eco-footprint of 2.5 million gha. Examining a large number of commodities grown and consumed in the bioregion revealed that only some commodities grown locally have absolute or significant biophysical advantages, while the rest have very little to no local advantage. Our analysis challenges the notion that local food systems are necessarily more environmentally sustainable from a biophysical resource use perspective and therefore may not represent the most compelling argument(s) for food system localization. We call for better and more comprehensive comparative analysis of existing and desired food systems as a mean to advance sustainability.

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