This page presents a database with key resources in the foresight world that indicate the diversity of themes, timescales, perspectives, and regional cover. This resource database includes large-scale studies, reports, and academic articles.
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Featured Foresight Studies
The featured foresight resources give quick access to a diversity of studies related to food systems. They help to give an overview of the food systems foresight work being undertaken by different organisations. The featured studies will change over time. Being presented here does not imply any indorsement of the study by Foresight4Food or the Foresight4Food community members.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
Abstract
The FABLE Consortium has issued a first report. Over the coming years, members will improve data systems, analytical tools, and analyses of policy options for land-use and food systems. With other parts of the Food and Land-Use Coalition, we work with interested governments to help improve policies and to develop long-term transformation strategies, including low-emission development strategies required under the Paris Agreement. This first report by the FABLE Consortium presents preliminary pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems prepared by 18 country teams from developed and developing countries, including the European Union. The aim of these pathways is to determine and demonstrate the feasibility of making land-use and food systems sustainable in each country to achieve the SDGs and the objectives of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The report represents the first coordinated effort by researchers from most G20 countries and other nations to chart long-term pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems. Our preliminary results show that the objectives can be achieved but will require deep transformations in every country.
In 2021, those working to build food systems that are just, equitable, and operate within planetary boundaries have our work cut out for us. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and rapidly declining soil
fertility are critically damaging the health of people and the planet, dislocating societies, and threatening food systems around the world. Five years into a global commitment to eliminate hunger by 2030, we have lost significant ground. In 2019, an estimated 690 million people were hungry and upwards of 2 billion lacked regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. This was before COVID-19 added approximately 130 million people to the world’s hungry, pushed uncounted millions more to the brink of hunger, and put one third of food and farming livelihoods at risk.
At the same time, the locus of power in food systems and the broader global economy is shifting at dizzying speed. In 2008, the world’s most powerful corporations drilled oil wells and traded stocks. Twelve years later, the world’s five corporate titans all deal in intangible data and have a market valuation that exceeds the GDP of entire continents. The new biodigital giants are now primed for the next step: unleashing big data and digital DNA into the world's pharmacies, food markets, and financial systems. 'Multi-stakeholderism’ is everywhere as corporations – sensing the social and environmental tipping points ahead – seek to draw governments, scientists and a handful of civil society organizations into an artificial new multilateralism.
Against this backdrop, we consider what food systems could look like by 2045 if (agri)business-as-usual is allowed to run its course. We also imagine what could happen if, instead, the initiative is reclaimed by civil society and social movements – from grassroots organizations to international NGOs,
from farmers’ and fishers’ groups, to cooperatives and unions. We consider what this ‘Long Food Movement’ could achieve if it succeeds in thinking decades ahead, collaborating across sectors, scales, and strategic differences, working with governments and pressuring them to act, and transforming financial flows, governance structures, and food systems from the ground up.
Saeed Moghayer, Monika Zurek, Maliha Muzammil, Daniel Mason-D’Croz, John Magrath, Andrzej Tabeau, Joost Mattheus Vervoort, Thom Achterbosch
Abstract
Feeding and nourishing a growing global population in Bangladesh is a major challenge in a changing climate. A multi-level participatory scenario approach with corresponding modeling and decision support tools is developed and applied to support decision-makers in developing scenario-guided enabling policy for food security in the future under climate change. The results presented in this paper show how, under different scenarios, the agri-food system may transform in the next decade as a result of the interaction of intertwined institutional, technological, and market drivers in Bangladesh. For scenario building, the food and agriculture community was brought together with the climate and energy community. We also experimented with different ways to bring voices that are often less included in policymaking, such as poor rural communities and youth. The scenario quantification is performed by MAGNET, a GTAP-based multi-sector and multi-region computable general equilibrium model. The simulation results depict a comprehensive picture of corresponding and varied pressures on agricultural resources and opportunities for economic development and trade in Bangladesh. Finally, we did an ex-ante assessment of the trade-offs and synergies between zero-hunger- and zero-emission-related targets within the Bangladesh Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the developed scenarios.
Construction of plausible scenarios for alternative futures of global food systems requires an understanding of how the past led to the present, and the past's likely relevance to the future. Policy actions affected the past, but are very difficult to foresee. Among those that most shaped global food systems in the last half century are measures that fostered productivity growth, expansion of trade, and the interlinkage of agricultural and environmental policies. Scenarios for global food systems, including those using the quantitative tools of the CGIAR's Global Futures and Strategic Foresight modeling approach, explore alternative assumptions in these three areas, among others. Hindsight can inform foresight by highlighting key elements of the past and forcing transparent examination of whether and how these elements will shape the future.
Scenario planning is increasingly recognized as a useful tool for exploring change in social-ecological systems on decadal to centennial time horizons. In environmental decision making, scenario development tends to include participatory methods for engaging stakeholders and is conducted at multiple scales. This paper presents insights from participatory scenario development in two separate multiscale environmental assessments. We find that, to engage stakeholders at multiple scales, it is important that the issues explored at each scale be relevant and credible to stakeholders at that scale. An important trade-off exists between maintaining relevance to stakeholders at different scales and maintaining consistency across scales to allow for comparison of scenarios. Where downscaling methods are used to ensure consistency, there can be important consequences for (1) the diversity of scenario outcomes, (2) temporal mismatches in the storylines at different scales, and (3) power relationships among stakeholders at different scales. We suggest that development of participatory scenarios at multiple scales has a strong potential to contribute to environmental decision making, but it requires a substantial investment of time and resources to realize its full potential.
Looking across diverse food system futures: Implications for climate change and the environment
2021
Monika Zurek, Aniek Hebinck, Odirilwe Selomane
Abstract
Agriculture and food systems are in urgent need of transformation. Various foresight reports unpack food systems’ challenges and propose diverse pathways of change towards sustainability. We interrogate the framings and proposed pathways of eleven selected reports from a food system perspective, with a focus on environmental and climate change implications. We synthesize key drivers of food systems and their impact on food system outcomes. We distil trends and strategies identified across the reports and their scenarios and discuss the diversity of ‘sustainability pathways’ and ‘solution spaces’. There is general agreement that resource protection and adaptation balanced with significant greenhouse gas emission reductions are vital to food system transformation. There is less consensus on the choice of change options and how to address potential trade-offs. While new technologies or consumption changes are described, more attention needs to be paid to overcoming blind spots like implications for equity or changes in governance mechanisms.
This report aims at inspiring strategic thinking and actions to transform agrifood systems towards a sustainable, resilient and inclusive future, by building on both previous reports in the same series as well as on a comprehensive corporate strategic foresight exercise that also nurtured FAO Strategic Framework 2022–31. It analyses major drivers of agrifood systems and explores how their trends could determine alternative futures of agrifood, socioeconomic and environmental systems. The fundamental message of this report is that it is still possible to push agrifood systems along a pattern of sustainability and resilience, if key “triggers” of transformation are properly activated. However, strategic policy options to activate them will have to “outsmart” vested interests, hidden agendas and conflicting objectives, and trade off short-term unsustainable achievements for longer-term sustainability, resilience and inclusivity.
Agrifood systems are undergoing a transformation with the aim to provide safer, more affordable, and healthier diets for all, produced in a sustainable manner while delivering just and equitable livelihoods: a key to achieving the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, this transformation needs to be executed in the global context of major challenges facing the food and agriculture sectors, with drivers such as climate change, population growth, urbanization, and natural resources depletion compounding these challenges.
Food safety is a keystone to agrifood systems and all food safety actors need to keep pace with the ongoing transformation while preparing to navigate the potential threats, disruptions, and challenges that may arise. Foresight in food safety facilitates the proactive identification of drivers and related trends, both within and outside agrifood systems, that have implications for food safety and therefore also for consumer health, the national economy, and international trade. Early identification and evaluation of drivers and trends promote strategic planning and preparedness to take advantage of emerging opportunities and address challenges in food safety.
In this publication, the FAO Food Safety Foresight programme provides an overview of the major global drivers and trends by describing their implications for food safety in particular and for agrifood systems by extrapolation. The various drivers and trends reported include climate change, changing consumer behaviour and preferences, new food sources and production systems, technological advances, microbiome, circular economy, food fraud, among others.
The intended audience for this publication is broad – from the policymakers, academia, food business operators, private sector, to all of us, the consumers.
Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition
Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition
Abstract
This report includes important recommendations and advice for leaders at the most senior levels in countries and international organisations. It is also of direct relevance to decision makers, professionals, actors in the private sector, experts and researchers with interests in food systems and diets. Many of these individuals will be directly concerned with the production, processing, trade, regulation, supply and safety of food. However, others may work in wider areas of policy and business, for example relating to: public health and well-being, education, economic development and investment, urbanisation, globalisation and demography.
This report and executive summary are necessarily technical due to the nature of the
subject matter. However, they set out the practical steps which are essential for food
systems transformation, and the process of change.
Non-technical summary
The principal policy focus for food has been to increase agricultural productivity and to liberalize markets allowing globalized trade. This focus has led to huge growth in the supply of agricultural produce, more calories becoming available, and price declining. The availability of cheaper calories increasingly underpins diets creating malnourishment through obesity, and global competition incentivizes producers who can produce the most, cheaply, typically with environmental damage. We propose re-focusing, away from yields per unit input, to the food system's overall productivity and efficiency – the number of people that can be fed healthily and sustainably per unit input.
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Technical summary
Since the Second World War, and particularly in recent decades, the over-arching rationale of agricultural and food trade policy has been that by increasing the productivity of agriculture and efficiency of its markets, trade will drive down food prices, drive up choices and food availability: implicitly defining more available and cheaper food as the route to achieving the international public good of global food security. Here we hypothesize that a focus on increasing availability of food, and lowering food prices through focusing on agricultural productivity and trade does reduce prices and increases availability, but also encourages the externalization of costs on health and environment, and instead of providing public goods arguably represents market failure. In other words, a focus on increasing agricultural yields and efficiency decreases the efficiency of the food system through incentivizing externalization of costs. The focus should rather be on the efficiency of the food system to deliver profits, healthy diets and a healthy planet. Reframing the productivity argument towards the efficiency of the food system provides a clear route to reducing market failure, improving public health and sustainability.
B. Vanlauwe, Mariangela Hungría, F. Kanampiu, Ken E. Giller
Abstract
Grain legumes play a key role in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), in relation to food and nutrition security and income generation. Moreover, because of their N2-fixation capacity, such legumes can also have a positive influence on soil fertility. Notwithstanding many decades of research on the agronomy of grain legumes, their N2-fixation capacity, and their contribution to overall system productivity, several issues remain to be resolved to realize fully the benefits of grain legumes. In this paper we highlight major lessons learnt and expose key knowledge gaps in relation to grain legumes and their contributions to farming system productivity. The symbiosis between legumes and rhizobia forms the basis for its benefits and biological N2-fixation (BNF) relies as much on the legume genotype as on the rhizobial strains. As such, breeding grain legumes for BNF deserves considerably more attention. Even promiscuous varieties usually respond to inoculation, and as African soils contain a huge pool of unexploited biodiversity with potential to contribute elite rhizobial strains, strain selection should go hand-in-hand with legume breeding for N2-fixation. Although inoculated strains can outcompete indigenous strains, our understanding of what constitutes a good competitor is rudimentary, as well as which factors affect the persistence of inoculated rhizobia, which in its turn determines whether a farmer needs to re-inoculate each and every season. Although it is commonly assumed that indigenous rhizobia are better adapted to local conditions than elite strains used in inoculants, there is little evidence that this is the case. The problems of delivering inoculants to smallholders through poorly-developed supply chains in Africa necessitates inoculants based on sterile carriers with long shelf life. Other factors critical for a well-functioning symbiosis are also central to the overall productivity of grain legumes. Good agronomic practices, including the use of phosphorus (P)-containing fertilizer, improve legume yields though responses to inputs are usually very variable. In some situations, a considerable proportion of soils show no response of legumes to applied inputs, often referred to as non-responsive soils. Understanding the causes underlying this phenomenon is limited and hinders the uptake of legume agronomy practices. Grain legumes also contribute to the productivity of farming systems, although such effects are commonly greater in rotational than in intercropping systems. While most cropping systems allow for the integration of legumes, intercropped legumes provide only marginal benefits to associated crops. Important rotational benefits have been shown for most grain legumes though those with the highest N accumulation and lowest N harvest index appear to demonstrate higher residual benefits. N balance estimates often results in contradictory observations, mostly caused by the lack of understanding of belowground contributions of legumes to the N balance. Lastly, the ultimate condition for increased uptake of grain legumes by smallholder farmers lies in the understanding of how legume technologies and management practices can be tailored to the enormous diversity of agroecologies, farming systems, and smallholder farms in SSA. In conclusion, while research on grain legumes has revealed a number of important insights that will guide realization of the full potential of such legumes to the sustainable intensification of smallholder farming systems in SSA, many research challenges remain to be addressed to realize the full potential of BNF in these systems.
Caroline K. Bosire, Elizaphan James Oburu Rao, Voster Muchenje, Mark Van Wijk, Joseph O. Ogutu, Mesfin M. Mekonnen, Joseph Onam Auma, Ben Lukuyu, James Hammond
Abstract
Dairy intensification is a widely used means of achieving food security, improving farmer incomes and enhancing overall economic growth. However, intensification is dependent upon the availability and suitability of natural resources to sustain growth in production. Here, land and water footprints of milk production in three contrasting agro-ecological zones ranging from humid to semi-arid across nine counties of Kenya are quantified. Water and land use footprints across three potential intensification pathways are also outlined and evaluated against the baseline scenario, the currently prevailing practices or the S1 Futures scenario, treated as the benchmark. Intensification pathways focusing on improving livestock breeds, feed provisioning and milk output per cow and distinguished by contrasting management practices perform differentially across the three agro-ecological zones. Total water and land footprints increase for all scenarios relative to the baseline scenario. In particular, all the breed improvement scenarios, have much larger total water footprints than the baseline scenario. Improvement in breed to pure bred cattle across all production systems has the largest total water footprint across all the production systems. Across all the scenarios, the largest reduction in water footprint of milk production (75%) occurs with improvement in breed and feeding practices from two scenarios in the lowlands. Milk production by the cross-bred cattle is most efficient in the lowlands system whereas milk production by the pure breed Ayrshire is most land use efficient in the midlands system. Across the three agroecological zones, improving breeds, feed provisioning and milk production per cow may achieve production intensification but concurrently exacerbates resource limitation. Consequently, the heterogeneity inherent in resource availability across dairy production zones should be considered when developing strategies for increasing dairy production.
Carmelia Alae-Carew, Frances A. Bird, Samira Choudhury, Francesca Harris, Lukasz Aleksandrowicz, James Milner, Edward JM. Joy, Sutapa Agrawal, Alan D. Dangour, Rosemary Green
Abstract
Against a backdrop of a rapidly changing food system and a growing population, characterisation of likely future diets in India can help to inform agriculture and health policies. We systematically searched six published literature databases and grey literature repositories up to January 2018 for studies projecting the consumption of foods in India to time points beyond 2018. The 11 identified studies reported on nine foods up to 2050: the available evidence suggests projected increases in per capita consumption of vegetables, fruit and dairy products, and little projected change in cereal (rice and wheat) and pulse consumption. Meat consumption is projected to remain low. Understanding and mitigating the impacts of projected dietary changes in India is important to protect public health and the environment.
Foresight and design are both activities that aim to imagine the future in response to change and uncertainty. Food—a basic human need- has engaged over time in an intrinsic relationship with the design discipline. Design and Food interact at several levels: material (product), immaterial (service) but also prospective (thought). Designers, along with other actors, shape the production, communication, packaging and distribution of food as well as the more ephemeral aspects of food consumption focused on the valorization of people’s senses and experiences. Bearing in mind that each possible design intervention strongly impacts on environmental and social behaviors, the challenge here is to address the challenge of insuring durable innovation within complex social and technological dynamics. Through the lens of an Advanced Design practice, this paper raises the importance of reconsidering the definition of trends in order to build sustainable futures for food and thus for people. Trends are seeds of tomorrow scattered in the overwhelming detail of the present.22Bruland, 2001. Modern societal trends33EU, 2012. are drivers for adequate growth and continuous innovation. With a phenomenological approach this paper wants to show how the attention to trend can change food ways.
The processes underlying environmental, economic, and social unsustainability derive in part from the food system. Building sustainable food systems has become a predominating endeavor aiming to redirect our food systems and policies towards better-adjusted goals and improved societal welfare. Food systems are complex social-ecological systems involving multiple interactions between human and natural components. Policy needs to encourage public perception of humanity and nature as interdependent and interacting. The systemic nature of these interdependencies and interactions calls for systems approaches and integrated assessment tools. Identifying and modeling the intrinsic properties of the food system that will ensure its essential outcomes are maintained or enhanced over time and across generations, will help organizations and governmental institutions to track progress towards sustainability, and set policies that encourage positive transformations. This paper proposes a conceptual model that articulates crucial vulnerability and resilience factors to global environmental and socio-economic changes, postulating specific food and nutrition security issues as priority outcomes of food systems. By acknowledging the systemic nature of sustainability, this approach allows consideration of causal factor dynamics. In a stepwise approach, a logical application is schematized for three Mediterranean countries, namely Spain, France, and Italy.
A growing number of people in high income countries, also from the segments of population once considered secure, seek food assistance. Diverse food aid initiatives and practices are developed by a range of actors to tackle food poverty; alongside traditional difficulties, new challenges emerge from welfare expenditure cuts, the reorganization of EU Funds for the Most Deprived (FEAD) and from the spreading of surplus food recovery practices by private companies. Based on a preliminary analysis on food assistance practices in Tuscany (Italy), it emerged that operators involved in food assistance activities are reflecting upon future developments: how is food assistance re-thinking its role to deal with the challenges posed by the current context of change? This work adopts a participatory scenario approach to examine pathways that can be considered robust under uncertainties in the planning context of food assistance. We combine the strengths of back-casted planning, which develops desirable pathways for the future, and explorative scenarios that describe plausible future contexts. Results comprise the definition of shared priority themes and plans tested across a set of downscaled scenarios. The methodology provides a promising learning tool to engage with stakeholders and foster a creative future oriented thinking approach to food assistance system’s vulnerability and resilience.
A transition towards more sustainable food consumption requires changes in everyday eating patterns, particularly a substitution of animal protein with plant-based protein sources. However, in many European countries plant protein consumption is low compared to meat consumption. The article explores plant protein consumption frequencies, future intentions to increase bean consumption, and the associations of frequent bean eating with socioeconomic factors and bean-related meanings, material issues and competence. A population web-based survey was conducted in 2013 among 15–64-year-old Finns (n=1048). The results showed that beans and soy-based plant proteins were infrequently consumed. A fifth of the respondents intended to increase their bean consumption in the future, intention being the greatest among those who already included beans in their diets. Frequent bean consumption was most likely among persons aged 25–34, living around the capital district, with education higher than comprehensive or vocational school, and who were vegetarian. Perceiving beans as culturally acceptable and good-tasting, and having competence in preparing bean meals were positively associated with the frequent eating of beans. The results suggest that for plant proteins to replace meat, new meanings and competences related to preparing and eating pulse-based dishes are needed. Based on our results, we build alternative future scenarios for plant protein consumption and the related requirements for changes. Several actor groups, such as NGOs, politicians, celebrity chefs and teachers of home economics have a central role in the developments.
Abstract Drawing from previous studies, this review proposes a research agenda in regard to household food waste, a neglected topic within the field of consumer behavior. This phenomenon has remarkable social and environmental relevance when one considers that it occurs at the end of the food chain, and thus, wastage at this stage implies losses of resources required for food production. This study aims to provide a framework and solutions for conducting future research in this area. Academic opportunities identified suggest that further theorizing is needed related to consumer food waste, in addition to studies aimed at testing the impact of communication initiatives on behavioral change and at providing a standardized methodology to measure consumer food waste.
Daniel Mason-D'Croz, Joost Vervoort, Amanda Palazzo, Shahnila Islam, Steven Lord, Ariella Helfgott, Petr Havlík, Rathana Peou, Marieke Sassen, Marieke Veeger, Arnout van Soesbergen, Andrew P. Arnell, Benjamin Stuch, Aslihan Arslan, Leslie Lipper
Abstract
Decision-makers aiming to improve food security, livelihoods and resilience are faced with an uncertain future. To develop robust policies they need tools to explore the potential effects of uncertain climatic, socioeconomic, and environmental changes. Methods have been developed to use scenarios to present alternative futures to inform policy. Nevertheless, many of these can limit the possibility space with which decision-makers engage. This paper will present a participatory scenario process that maintains a large possibility space through the use of multiple factors and factor-states and a multi-model ensemble to create and quantify four regional scenarios for Southeast Asia. To do this we will explain 1) the process of multi-factor, multi-state building was done in a stakeholder workshop in Vietnam, 2) the scenario quantification and model results from GLOBIOM and IMPACT, two economic models, and 3) how the scenarios have already been applied to diverse policy processes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Ulf Gunnar Sonesson, Katarina Lorentzon, Annica Andersson, Ulla-Karin Barr, Jan Bertilsson, Elisabeth Borch, Carl Brunius, Margareta Emanuelsson, Leif Göransson, Stefan Gunnarsson, Lars Hamberg, Anna Hessle, Karl-Ivar Kumm, Åse Lundh, Tim Nielsen, Karin Östergren, Eva Salomon, Erik Sindhöj, Bo Stenberg, Maria Stenberg, Martin Sundberg, Helena Wall
Abstract
To describe a more sustainable food sector, a supply chain approach is needed. Changing a supply chain inevitably means that various attributes of the product and its system will change. This project assumed this challenge and delivered detailed descriptions, life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluations, and consequence assessments of the supply chains of six commodities, i.e., milk, cheese, beef, pork, chicken, and bread, from a Swedish region. This paper presents results for the pork supply chain.
The way we grow and consume food is changing both landscapes and societies globally. The constraints and challenges we face in meeting the anticipated large increase in global food demand out to 2050 are examined to show that while they present significant difficulties on many fronts, we have a large range of choices in the way this food demand might be met. Meeting this future food demand has frequently been articulated as a crisis of supply alone by some dominant institutions and individuals with prior ideological commitments to a particular framing of the food security issue. Our analysis indicates that the crisis can be avoided by the choices we make. The food security debate will be enriched by a rigorous evaluation of all these choices and recognition that the eventual solution will reside in a mixture of these choices. We could shift from our current paradigm of productivity enhancement while reducing environmental impacts, to a paradigm where ecological sustainability constitutes the entry point for all agricultural development. If we embraced this new paradigm, sustainable governance and management of ecosystems, natural resources and earth system processes at large, could provide the framework for practical solutions towards an intensification of agriculture. Such a paradigm shift could reposition world food production from its current role as the world’s single largest driver of global environmental change, to becoming a critical part of a world transition to work within the boundaries of the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the planet’s biophysical processes and functions.
Kyle F. Davis, Jessica A. Gephart, Kyle A. Emery, Allison M. Leach, James N. Galloway, Paolo D’Odorico
Abstract
Meeting the food needs of the growing and increasingly affluent human population with the planet’s limited resources is a major challenge of our time. Seen as the preferred approach to global food security issues, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the enhancement of crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts and preserving the ability of future generations to use the land. It is still unclear to what extent sustainable intensification would allow humanity to meet its demand for food commodities. Here we use the footprints for water, nitrogen, carbon and land to quantitatively evaluate resource demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future agriculture and investigate whether an increase in these environmental burdens of food production can be avoided under a variety of dietary scenarios. We calculate average footprints of the current diet and find that animal products account for 43–87% of an individual’s environmental burden – compared to 18% of caloric intake and 39% of protein intake. Interestingly, we find that projected improvements in production efficiency would be insufficient to meet future food demand without also increasing the total environmental burden of food production. Transitioning to less impactful diets would in many cases allow production efficiency to keep pace with growth in human demand while minimizing the food system’s environmental burden. This study provides a useful approach for evaluating the attainability of sustainable targets and for better integrating food security and environmental impacts.
Roberto Capone, Hamid El Bilali, Philipp Debs, Gianluigi Cardone, Noureddin Driouech
Abstract
Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Food security is built on four pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability. Food and nutrition security embraces meeting energy, protein and nutrient needs for healthy life. Food systems overlap with agricultural systems in the area of food production, but also comprise the diverse set of institutions, technologies and practices that govern the way food is marketed, processed, transported, accessed and consumed. The food system activities are grouped into four categories: producing food, processing and packaging food, distributing and retailing food, and consuming food. The review paper aims at highlighting the connections and linkages between food sustainability and food security. There are very strong linkages between food and nutrition security, responsible environmental stewardship and greater fairness in food management. They intersect in agricultural and food systems at the global, national and local levels. Today, the main concern for the food and agricultural sector is to provide simultaneously enough food, in quantity and quality, to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population and to conserve natural resources for future generations. A sustainable food system supports food security, makes optimal use of natural and human resources, is culturally acceptable and accessible, environmentally sound and economically fair and viable, and provides the consumer with nutritionally adequate, safe, healthy and affordable food for present and future generations. Changes in both food consumption and food production are important to ensure more sustainable food systems and to achieve food and nutrition security in the Mediterranean region. Since diets sustainability is of paramount importance for achieving food and nutrition security, there is an urgent need to design and implement appropriate policies to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the current food consumption patterns.
Sustainable Food Systems for Future Cities: The Potential of Urban Agriculture*
2014
Kubi Ackerman, Patricia Culligan, Richard Plunz, Maria-Paola Sutto, Leigh Whittinghill
Abstract
Populations around the world are growing and becoming predominately urban, fueling the need to re-examine how urban spaces are developed and urban inhabitants are fed. One remedy that is increasingly being considered as a solution to inadequate food access in cities, is urban agriculture. As a practice, urban agriculture is beneficial in both post-industrial and developing cities because it touches on the three pillars of sustainability: economics, society, and the environment. Historically, as well as currently, economic and food security are two of the most common reasons for participation in urban agriculture. Urban agriculture not only provides a source of healthful sustenance that might otherwise be lacking, it can also contribute to a household's income, offset food expenditures, and create jobs. Social facets are another reason for populations to engage in urban agriculture. A garden or rooftop farm is a place where people come together for mutual benefit, often enhancing the common social and cultural identity for city residents. Larger urban farms also participate in community enrichment through job training and other educational programmes, many of which benefit underserved populations. Finally, urban agriculture can play an important role in the environmental sustainability of a city. As a form of green infrastructure, urban farms and community food gardens help reduce urban heat island effects, mitigate urban stormwater impacts and lower the energy embodied in food transportation. This paper will describe a multi-year study undertaken by the Urban Design Laboratory at the Earth Institute to assess the opportunities and challenges associated with the development of urban agriculture in New York City (NYC). The paper will present metrics on potential growing capacity within the City inclusive of both rooftop and land-based options, results from a survey of New York City based urban farmers that gathered information on the challenges and barriers to food production in NYC, with a focus on rooftop farming, and data from an environmental monitoring study on a commercial rooftop farm in Brooklyn. The paper will use the results of the multi-year study to provide insight into the potential role of urban agriculture to creating a more sustainable food system for New York City and cities elsewhere.
Hayo M. G. van der Werf, Tara Garnett, Michael S. Corson, Kiyotada Hayashi, Donald Huisingh, Christel Cederberg
Abstract
This paper introduces the Special Volume (SV) dedicated to the 2012 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Food Conference. During recent years, these conferences have seen a rapid increase in the number of participants, reflecting the development of an interdisciplinary research and development community at the intersection between the agronomic, food/nutrition science and environmental system analysis disciplines. This introductory paper summarises the key issues addressed in the individual papers of this SV, which present a balance between methodological and applied studies. The application of LCA to agro-food systems exemplifies a dynamic and productive interaction between scientific disciplines that previously led separate lives. As a result, LCA in the agro-food sector leads LCA methodological developments on topics such as the attributional versus consequential debate, land use changes, impacts on biodiversity, biotic resource depletion, water use, soil quality, and modelling of direct emissions of crop and animal production systems. Future challenges for the LCA Food research and development domain concern the following issues: functional unit and multi-functionality, emission models, land occupation and transformation, LCA for low-income countries, resilience of agro-food systems and presentation and transparency of results.
Raimund Bleischwitz, Corey M. Johnson, Michael G. Dozler
Abstract
While strategic studies on natural resources usually focus on the criticality of certain single materials, our paper starts from the inter-linkages between and among resources (called “the resource nexus”). It examines the impact any food and water stress may have on extraction activities in fragile states and regions. According to our approach, conflicts are likely to increase and may escalate in a number of countries, many of which are of relevance for the global supply of strategic materials. Future criticality for European and other industries, thus, is more likely to result from particular regions surpassing their adaptive capacities, and not mainly from limited availability or bottlenecks in the supply chain. The paper first develops a heuristic model of drivers for stress in resource-rich regions. Applying this approach, our paper then develops a global three-layered map along the dimensions of (i) future regional food and water stress, (ii) fragility of countries, and (iii) resource-rich countries with relevant reserves of strategic materials. As a result our paper tentatively identifies 15 countries at high risk and some 30 other countries being at relevant risk of causing resource supply disruptions. The conclusions underline the need to analyse those global inter-linkages and institutional mechanisms for strategic futures studies at a regional scale. As this may go beyond the capacities of actors on commodity markets, our paper also draws conclusions towards the establishment of an international data hub on the global resource nexus and for futures research. The paper points to some of the long-term implications of these issues.
The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that notions of progress and ‘science-based’ risk assessment act as ‘anti-political’ strategies to remove consideration of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from the cut and thrust of politics, while the concept of ‘food security’ reconstitutes agricultural biotechnology as a moral imperative. We argue that a debate ostensibly focussed on developing countries in fact largely arises from discordant views about the future of farming and rural areas in the developed countries where these arguments are taking place. These debates are examined through a comparative study of the UK and Australia. Whereas acceptance of GM crops and foods at government and industry level has not led to commercial adoption in the UK due to consumer resistance and the influence of EU regulations, Australian governments at federal and state level have increasingly embraced GM crops, potentially locking Australia into a food and farming trajectory based on agricultural biotechnology.
Colin K. Khoury, Anne D. Bjorkman, Hannes Dempewolf, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Luigi Guarino, Andy Jarvis, Loren H. Rieseberg, Paul C. Struik
Abstract
Significance
This study provides evidence of change in the relative importance of different crop plants in national food supplies worldwide over the past 50 years. Within a global trend of increased overall quantities of food calories, protein, fat, and weight, and increased proportions of those quantities sourcing from energy-dense foods, national food supplies diversified in regard to contributing measured crop commodities. As a consequence, national food supplies globally have become increasingly similar in composition, based upon a suite of truly global crop plants. The growth in reliance worldwide on these crops heightens interdependence among countries in their food supplies, plant genetic resources, and nutritional priorities.
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The narrowing of diversity in crop species contributing to the world’s food supplies has been considered a potential threat to food security. However, changes in this diversity have not been quantified globally. We assess trends over the past 50 y in the richness, abundance, and composition of crop species in national food supplies worldwide. Over this period, national per capita food supplies expanded in total quantities of food calories, protein, fat, and weight, with increased proportions of those quantities sourcing from energy-dense foods. At the same time the number of measured crop commodities contributing to national food supplies increased, the relative contribution of these commodities within these supplies became more even, and the dominance of the most significant commodities decreased. As a consequence, national food supplies worldwide became more similar in composition, correlated particularly with an increased supply of a number of globally important cereal and oil crops, and a decline of other cereal, oil, and starchy root species. The increase in homogeneity worldwide portends the establishment of a global standard food supply, which is relatively species-rich in regard to measured crops at the national level, but species-poor globally. These changes in food supplies heighten interdependence among countries in regard to availability and access to these food sources and the genetic resources supporting their production, and give further urgency to nutrition development priorities aimed at bolstering food security.
Ingrid Öborn, Jan Bengtsson, Fredrik Hedenus, Lotta Rydhmer, Maria Stenström, Katarina Vrede, Charles Westin, Ulf Magnusson
Abstract
To increase the awareness of society to the challenges of global food security, we developed five contrasting global and European scenarios for 2050 and used these to identify important issues for future agricultural research. Using a scenario development method known as morphological analysis, scenarios were constructed that took economic, political, technical, and environmental factors into account. With the scenarios as a starting point future challenges were discussed and research issues and questions were identified in an interactive process with stakeholders and researchers. Based on the outcome of this process, six socioeconomic and biophysical overarching challenges for future agricultural were formulated and related research issues identified. The outcome was compared with research priorities generated in five other research programs. In comparison, our research questions focus more on societal values and the role of consumers in influencing agricultural production, as well as on policy formulation and resolving conflicting goals, areas that are presently under-represented in agricultural research. The partly new and more interdisciplinary research priorities identified in Future Agriculture compared to other programs analyzed are likely a result of the methodological approach used, combining scenarios and interaction between stakeholders and researchers.
The role of the food industry (retailers, manufacturers and food service) in helping consumers eat healthily and sustainably has been receiving considerable attention in recent years. This paper focuses on the challenges facing the food industry and the role of food reformulation in meeting these challenges, through the lens of a public health nutritionist. Attention has been heightened by the Government's Responsibility Deal, launched in early 2011 by the Department of Health (England), by the UK's engagement with the global food security and food supply sustainability agendas and by the Government Office of Science's Foresight report. The Responsibility Deal's food network has to date focused on reduction of trans fatty acids, salt and calories and out-of-home calorie labelling (in food service settings). New pledges are expected soon on increasing fruit and vegetable intakes. Reformulation is a major feature of the Responsibility Deal's approach, and along with other approaches such as portion control, choice editing and information provision, there is potential to increase the breadth of healthier choices available to the public. With the exception of fruit and vegetables, the emphasis has been almost exclusively on aspects of the diet that are in excess for many of the population (e.g. energy and salt). Evidence of low consumption of some key micronutrients by some groups of the population, particularly adolescents and young adults, often alongside excess energy intake compared with expenditure, is all too often overlooked. This paper summarises the progress made to date, the challenges faced and the opportunities that exist, with particular focus on reformulation. One of the biggest challenges is the relatively poor understanding of how to effect positive and long-term dietary behaviour change. The paper concludes that, in isolation, reformulation is unlikely to provide a complete solution to the challenge of improving eating patterns and nutrient provision, although it is a contributor.
This paper provides a critical interpretation of food security politics in the UK. It applies the notion of food security collective action frames to assess how specific action frames are maintained and contested. The interdependency between scale and framing in food security discourse is also scrutinised. It does this through an examination of “official” UK food security approaches and the place of local food systems within these debates. The paper shows how the UK government's approach to food production and food security has been underpinned by the notion of resilience, which it considers is best achieved through sustainable intensification, market liberalisation and risk management, with local food systems largely sidelined within these “official” framings. Nevertheless, collective action frames are socio-political constructs which are open to contestation; they are not static entities and are part of a mobile multi-organizational political field. The notion of incompleteness and fragility is highly pertinent to an examination of debates about the contribution that local food systems can make to food security within the UK, suggesting that the “official” interpretation of food security can be challenged to be more inclusive and to accommodate social justice imperatives. Adopting this more holistic perspective broadens UK definitions of food security beyond the quantity of food available to encompass the needs of communities, households and individuals, offering a more transformative and progressive role for local food systems, notwithstanding the significance of asymmetrical power relations.
The following article discusses how to elicit quantitative stakeholder driven scenarios as an output for use in interdisciplinary policy models using Systems Thinking and Bayesian Belief Network conjointly in a workshop setting. The usefulness of this joint method was tested on a core group of stakeholders that would likely be impacted if offshore aquaculture were to be developed in Santa Barbara, California, namely the commercial fishermen. The workshop elicited several scenarios describing stakeholder perceived notions of how offshore aquaculture could impact their industry. This joint method is a new method of developing future scenarios. These can in turn be used to develop more encompassing and interdisciplinary foresight models, early warning systems, for managers in different management areas. Models can thereby include human perception and comprehensive and quantitative scenarios by delimiting the variable paths toward each stakeholder driven scenario as additional elements in a comprehensive policy foresight recommendation tool.
Food Futures: Co-designing Sustainable Eating Practices for 2050 The unsustainability of food and agriculture has long generated debate, policy initiatives and technological innovation, with proposed solutions predominantly focused on producing more food using fewer resources. Such supply-side actions are important, but creating more sustainable eating practices also requires attention to demand-side dimensions of the food equation. Even given the challenges faced by establishing precise levels of overconsumption (i.e. through levels of obesity) and food loss and wastage, it is clear that a ‘predict and provide’ approach to eating will not address current patterns of unsustainable consumption. This article documents an experiment in practice-oriented participatory backcasting which explores the possibilities of engaging stakeholders and citizens in the design of more sustainable eating practices. This involved a phased process of multi-stakeholder (including citizen-consumer) collaboration to generate alternative scenarios for eating more sustainably and assess their desirability. This was followed by identification of promising practices and, finally, the development of a Transition Framework detailing pathways for more sustainable eating to 2050.The results suggest that mutually supportive technological, organisational and societal innovations are needed, to predict accurately which foods are required globally, prevent overconsumption, food loss and wastage, and ultimately to provide sustainable eating solutions.
Sergio Gomez y Paloma, Pavel Ciaian, Adriana Cristoiu, Frank Sammeth
Abstract
The objective of this paper is (i) to compare and discuss literature related to global and European outlooks in relation to the farming sector and rural areas and (ii) to provide an overview of policy modelling methodologies, especially but not only those used in assessing the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). There is significant variation in terms of both the policies and external drivers that are taken into account in global and European outlooks, driven predominantly by the heterogeneity in focus of studies, the approach applied and/or external pressures. An increasing number of studies take on board the new CAP challenges. However, an area where improvements are needed is in the understanding of the sensitivity of policy effects to assumptions on external drivers. Two key modelling approaches applied for policy impact analysis include structural models and econometric models, with the former dominating the latter mainly due to its better adaptability to the needs of policy makers. However, with the CAP evolving towards ever more complex instruments, the relevance and predictive accuracy of structural models will possibly improve only as long as methodological and data issues are addressed.
Daniele Giovannucci, Sara J. Scherr, Danielle Nierenberg, Charlotte Hebebrand, Julie Shapiro, Jeffrey Milder, Keith Wheeler
Abstract
On our current trajectory, severe disruptions to national and regional food systems are highly likely to happen - the main question is when. This report, commissioned by the UN DESA as a strategic input to SD21 and the Rio discussions, focuses on vital areas and offers a collection of up to date information on the current and likely trends for our global Food and Agriculture systems.
T. Garnett, M. C. Appleby, A. Balmford, I. J. Bateman, T. G. Benton, P. Bloomer, B. Burlingame, M. Dawkins, L. Dolan, D. Fraser, M. Herrero, I. Hoffmann, P. Smith, P. K. Thornton, C. Toulmin, S. J. Vermeulen, H. C. J. Godfray
Abstract
Clearer understanding is needed of the premises underlying SI and how it relates to food-system priorities.
Virginia García-Cañas, Carolina Simó, Miguel Herrero, Elena Ibáñez, Alejandro Cifuentes
Abstract
The state-of-the-art of food analysis at the beginning of the 21st century is presented in this work, together with its major applications, current limitations, and present and foreseen challenges.
Increasingly more studies are raising concerns about the increasing consumption of meat and the increasing amount of crops (cereals and oilseeds in particular) used to feed animals and that could be used to feed people. The evolution of this amount is very sensitive to human diets and to the productivity of feed. This article provides a 2050 foresight on the necessary increase in crop production for food and feed in three contrasting scenarios: diets with no animal products; current diets in each main region of the world; and the average diet of developed countries extended to the whole world. We develop empirical aggregate production models for seven world regions, using 43 years and 150 countries. These models realistically account for the contribution of feed from food plants (i.e. plants that would be edible for humans) and of grassland to animal products. We find that the amount of edible crops necessary to feed livestock in 2050 is between 8% and 117% of today’s need. The latter figure is lower than that in comparable foresight studies because our models take into account empirical features occurring at an aggregate level, such as the increasing share of animal production from regions using less crop product per unit of animal product. In particular, the expected increase in animal production is estimated to occur mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where the amount of feed from food crops required per unit of animal product proves to be lower than that in other areas. This 117% increase indicates that crop production would have to double if the whole world adopted the present diet of developed countries.
The notion of food security has an important history as a key concept for 20th-century policymakers. Two overarching perspectives on food security are identified. One centred on raising production as the core answer to under-consumption and hunger. The other is an emerging perspective, more social and ecological, accepting the need to address a complex array of problems, not just production. The first is primarily agricultural-focused; the latter a food systems approach. From its inception in post-World War 2 international reconstruction, the UN and governments have given tackling hunger a high profile, via a changing package of policy measures. Within a few decades, the production-oriented approach or paradigm was being questioned by the emerging paradigm with its more complex, multi-focused notion of the challenges ahead. When oil and agricultural commodity prices spiked in 2007–8, the complex agenda was marginalised by a renewed international focus on primary production and the needs of low-income countries. Against this background, the paper explores the diversity of perspectives on what is meant by food security, concluding that the core 21st-century task is to create a sustainable food system. This requires a more coherent policy framework than currently exists, a goal thwarted by competing solutions vying for policy attention and policy failure thus far to integrate the complex range of evidence from social as well as environmental and economic sources into an integrated policy response.