scholarly journals Measuring Progress in Sustainable Food Cities: An Indicators Toolbox for Action

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Moragues-Faus ◽  
Alizée Marceau
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Despite the growth of urban food policies across the globe, a key challenge remains around measuring the impact of these initiatives in building more sustainable and just cities. The literature identifies as the main barriers to progress food system assessments the lack of clear definitions of sustainability, insufficient data, the low applicability of global conceptualisations to local conditions and vice versa and low levels of actor involvement. We aim to address these gaps by co-developing a sustainability assessment framework to evaluate food systems performance in UK cities. The framework emerging from this collaborative process overcomes key limitations of previous exercises by providing a place-based and participative definition of sustainability aligned with global conceptualisations, building on the experiences and needs of a wide range of practitioners and taking a holistic but non-prescriptive approach to understanding food system outcomes. However, its application to the city of Cardiff reveals new challenges, mostly regarding the need to incorporate underrepresented stakeholders as well as account for multiscalar food system interdependencies and their positive but also negative impacts. Results show the need to embed critical perspectives in sustainable food assessments that actively expand their transformative capacity by developing further inclusive, participatory, place-based and whole-systems approaches.

scholarly journals Eating identity: challenging narratives of Canadianness through culinary identity building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Ramtahal
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Canadian Identity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Land Mass ◽  
Social Contributions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Eating Identity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

This MRP will examine how food can be used as a tool for challenging traditional nation stories and growing notions of what it means to be Canadian. There is an opportunity to write and shape a Canadian narrative that is inclusive of its evolving demography while simultaneously reconciling its violent history by developing a Canadian culinary identity. Food is political, social and cultural. Food can bring people together and can provide a platform to have compelling discussions about what it means to be Canadian; who is included in the definition of Canadian; and, how we can develop a sense of Canadianness that speaks to an evolving population. Historically and at present, Canada’s story has often excluded or minimized the cultural, political and social contributions of Indigenous peoples and racialized immigrants. There remains a prevailing sense of Canadian identity being tethered to whiteness despite over a century of global immigration. However, the very idea of what defines Canadianness is relatively tenuous one. There are few traits, markers, or qualities that are seen as characteristically Canadian. This is even more true for Canada’s culinary identity. What exactly is Canadian food? Canada, as a nation, is a relatively new country without a clear culinary identity. Further, Canada is an expansive land mass covering different time zones, geographic regions, and climates. To further complicate matters, it is place for people from all over the world to immigrate. Nowhere is the impact of immigration and the diversity of people more evident than in Toronto. How the city has changed demographically is reflected in the diversification of it’s culinary landscape. The wide range of available foods reveals and affirms how the appetites and desires of those that live here have also changed. International foods, restaurants and markets are not only ubiquitous, but a defining characteristic of the city. Where, what and how people eat can provide insight into how historical systems of inequality and colonial narratives persist. Growing and developing Canadian culinary identity is a way of challenging the idea of whiteness as a prerequisite for being Canadian. It is a potential way to acknowledge and include immigrant contributions. Food is wrapped up in politics of inequality and injustice, just as much as it is in pleasure and desire. Mapping how food is used as a tool that furthers colonization and racist dogma is key for shifting food to a tool for education and understanding. Food has the power to open up conversation and reshape understandings of Canadian identity through developing and defining a distinct Canadian culinary position. If an understanding about Canadian culinary identity is inclusive of its complex and divergent cultural and political history, then perhaps there is an opportunity to rethink Canadian identity as a whole. The goal of this MRP is to establish that food can be used as an ideological intervention that examines, challenges and reimagines Canadian identity.

scholarly journals Agricultural cooperatives remaining competitive in a globalised food system: At what cost to members, the cooperative movement and food sustainability?

Organization ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Ajates
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Cooperatives ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Cooperative Movement ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Local Embeddedness ◽  
Farming Policy ◽  
European Farming ◽  
The Impact

There are more than 40,000 agricultural cooperatives in Europe with 9 million farmer members and over 600,000 workers. Due to the democratic nature of the cooperative form, it is assumed agricultural cooperatives empower their members and allow small farmers to have a stronger voice in the supply chain. However, much of the academic literature on agricultural cooperatives focuses on the economic analysis of their performance, while hardly any research has been done on analysing the impact that policy, long supply chains and the internationalisation of the food system have on members and labour dimensions. This article contributes to covering this gap by analysing how agricultural cooperatives are being shaped and misshaped by European farming policy and the architecture of global food systems. Following Schneiberg’s thesis on social movements being a condition for processes of diffusion and mutualism, this article reflects on critical issues in organisational studies related to agricultural cooperatives, the cooperative movement and sustainable food systems. Case studies from Spain and United Kingdom are used to illustrate the Northern and Southern European perspective. The concept of deviant mainstreaming is applied to discuss how agricultural cooperatives are being co-opted and losing their transformative potential as a result of pressures to remain competitive, with effects on members, social justice and the environment. The findings suggest policy changes at the European level, and the increasing internationalisation of the food system is fuelling the amalgamation of agricultural cooperatives, which is threatening their local embeddedness and creating organisational tensions between the local, co-operative space and the global, capitalist space.

scholarly journals Eating identity: challenging narratives of Canadianness through culinary identity building

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Ramtahal
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Canadian Identity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Land Mass ◽  
Social Contributions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Eating Identity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

This MRP will examine how food can be used as a tool for challenging traditional nation stories and growing notions of what it means to be Canadian. There is an opportunity to write and shape a Canadian narrative that is inclusive of its evolving demography while simultaneously reconciling its violent history by developing a Canadian culinary identity. Food is political, social and cultural. Food can bring people together and can provide a platform to have compelling discussions about what it means to be Canadian; who is included in the definition of Canadian; and, how we can develop a sense of Canadianness that speaks to an evolving population. Historically and at present, Canada’s story has often excluded or minimized the cultural, political and social contributions of Indigenous peoples and racialized immigrants. There remains a prevailing sense of Canadian identity being tethered to whiteness despite over a century of global immigration. However, the very idea of what defines Canadianness is relatively tenuous one. There are few traits, markers, or qualities that are seen as characteristically Canadian. This is even more true for Canada’s culinary identity. What exactly is Canadian food? Canada, as a nation, is a relatively new country without a clear culinary identity. Further, Canada is an expansive land mass covering different time zones, geographic regions, and climates. To further complicate matters, it is place for people from all over the world to immigrate. Nowhere is the impact of immigration and the diversity of people more evident than in Toronto. How the city has changed demographically is reflected in the diversification of it’s culinary landscape. The wide range of available foods reveals and affirms how the appetites and desires of those that live here have also changed. International foods, restaurants and markets are not only ubiquitous, but a defining characteristic of the city. Where, what and how people eat can provide insight into how historical systems of inequality and colonial narratives persist. Growing and developing Canadian culinary identity is a way of challenging the idea of whiteness as a prerequisite for being Canadian. It is a potential way to acknowledge and include immigrant contributions. Food is wrapped up in politics of inequality and injustice, just as much as it is in pleasure and desire. Mapping how food is used as a tool that furthers colonization and racist dogma is key for shifting food to a tool for education and understanding. Food has the power to open up conversation and reshape understandings of Canadian identity through developing and defining a distinct Canadian culinary position. If an understanding about Canadian culinary identity is inclusive of its complex and divergent cultural and political history, then perhaps there is an opportunity to rethink Canadian identity as a whole. The goal of this MRP is to establish that food can be used as an ideological intervention that examines, challenges and reimagines Canadian identity.

scholarly journals Towards Territorially Embedded, Equitable and Resilient Food Systems? Insights from Grassroots Responses to COVID-19 in Italy and the City Region of Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2425
Author(s):  
Simona Zollet ◽  
Luca Colombo ◽  
Paola De De Meo ◽  
Davide Marino ◽  
Steven R. McGreevy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
City Region ◽  
The Face ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The City

The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have further exposed and exacerbated the structural weaknesses and inequalities embedded in the global industrial agri-food system. While the mainstream narrative continues to emphasise the importance of ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of global supply chains to counter COVID-related disruptions, the pandemic has also highlighted the resilience of small-scale, sustainable family farming and of spatially and socially embedded food systems. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three surveys, this study examines organic and agroecological farmers’ responses to the first COVID-related lockdown (March–May 2020) in Italy, as well as the responses of grassroots alternative food networks (AFN) in the city region of Rome. The results show how local grassroots action played a significant role in ensuring food access, provisioning, and distribution, often in the face of delayed or insufficient action of mainstream food system actors and institutions. These grassroots responses identify opportunities and barriers for agri-food system transformation away from neoliberal, market-based interventions and towards policies that support food sovereignty and democracy in the context of localised, agroecology-based and more resilient agri-food systems.

scholarly journals Impacts of Reducing UK Beef Consumption Using a Revised Sustainable Diets Framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chalmers ◽  
Stetkiewicz ◽  
Sudhakar ◽  
Osei-Kwasi ◽  
Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Sustainable Food Systems ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Nutrient Adequacy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Impact

The impact of beef consumption on sustainability is a complex and evolving area, as sustainability covers many areas from human nutrient adequacy to ecosystem stability. Three sustainability assessment frameworks have been created to help policy makers unpack the complexities of sustainable food systems and healthy sustainable dietary change. However, none of these frameworks have yet to be applied to a case study or individual policy issue. This paper uses a hybrid version of the sustainability assessment frameworks to investigate the impact of reducing beef consumption (with a concurrent increase in consumption of plant-based foods, with a focus on legumes) on sustainability at a UK level. The aim of this paper is to understand the applicability of these overarching frameworks at the scale of an individual policy. Such an assessment is important, as this application of previously high-level frameworks to individual policies makes it possible to summarise, at a glance, the various co-benefits and trade-offs associated with a given policy, which may be of particular value in terms of stakeholder decision-making. We find that many of the proposed metrics found within the sustainability assessment frameworks are difficult to implement at an individual issue level; however, overall they show that a reduction in beef consumption and an increase in consumption of general plant-based foods, with a focus around legumes production, would be expected to be strongly beneficial in five of the eight overarching measures which were assessed.

Disruptive innovation and operationalization in local and sustainable food systems: Examining the University of Toronto-Local Food Plus partnership

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-139
Author(s):  
Lori Stahlbrand
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Food System ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
The University

This paper traces the partnership between the University of Toronto and the non-profit Local Food Plus (LFP) to bring local sustainable food to its St. George campus. At its launch, the partnership represented the largest purchase of local sustainable food at a Canadian university, as well as LFP’s first foray into supporting institutional procurement of local sustainable food. LFP was founded in 2005 with a vision to foster sustainable local food economies. To this end, LFP developed a certification system and a marketing program that matched certified farmers and processors to buyers. LFP emphasized large-scale purchases by public institutions. Using information from in-depth semi-structured key informant interviews, this paper argues that the LFP project was a disruptive innovation that posed a challenge to many dimensions of the established food system. The LFP case study reveals structural obstacles to operationalizing a local and sustainable food system. These include a lack of mid-sized infrastructure serving local farmers, the domination of a rebate system of purchasing controlled by an oligopolistic foodservice sector, and embedded government support of export agriculture. This case study is an example of praxis, as the author was the founder of LFP, as well as an academic researcher and analyst.

The Role of Research and Innovation in the Transformation of Agri-Food Systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-63
Author(s):  
Mariana Sandu ◽  
Stefan Mantea
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Determinant Factor ◽  
Rapid Transformation

Abstract Agri-food systems include branching ramifications, which connect in the upstream the input suppliers with farmers, and downstream farmers, processors, retailers and consumers. In the last decades, at the level of the regions, food systems have undergone rapid transformation as a result of technological progress. The paper analyzes the changes made to the structure, behavior and performance of the agri-food system and the impact on farmers and consumers. Also, the role of agricultural research as a determinant factor of transformation of agri-food system is analyzed. The research objective is to develop technologies that cover the entire food chain (from farm to fork) and meet the specific requirements of consumers (from fork to farm) through scientific solutions in line with the principles of sustainable agriculture and ensuring the safety and food safety of the population.

Sustainable Food Logistics Systems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaohui Wu ◽  
Madeleine Elinor Pullman
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Cold Chain ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Food Supply Chain ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Chain Management

Food supply chain management is becoming a critical management and public policy agenda. Climate change, growing demand, and shifting patterns of food production, delivery, and consumption have elicited a series of new challenges, such as food security, safety, and system resiliency. This chapter first introduces the typical players in a food supply chain and examines the global food system characterized by consolidation and industrialization. It then discusses some critical topics of the sustainable food supply chain that aim to address these challenges. These topics include traceability, transparency, certification and standards, and alternatives to industrialized food systems, including cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, and roles of small and medium-sized growers in regenerative agriculture. The chapter ends with a discussion of several important emerging logistics management topics, including last-mile delivery, new technology, and cold chain management.

scholarly journals Changes in Consumers’ Food Practices during the COVID-19 Lockdown, Implications for Diet Quality and the Food System: A Cross-Continental Comparison

Nutrients ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Blain Murphy ◽  
Tony Benson ◽  
Amanda McCloat ◽  
Elaine Mooney ◽  
Chris Elliott ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Diet Quality ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Food System ◽  
Vegetable Intake ◽  
Saturated Fat ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
The Impact

COVID-19 has led to dramatic societal changes. Differing movement restrictions across countries have affected changes in consumers’ food practices, with a potentially detrimental impact on their health and food systems. To investigate this, this research explored changes in consumers’ food practices during the initial COVID-19 phase and assessed the impact of location on these changes. A sample of 2360 adults from three continents (Island of Ireland (IOI), Great Britain (GB), United States (USA), and New Zealand (NZ)) were recruited for a cross-sectional online survey (May–June 2020). Participants completed questions in relation to their cooking and food practices, diet quality, and COVID-19 food-related practices. Significant changes in consumers’ food practices during the pandemic were seen within and between regions, with fewer cooking practices changes found in the USA. Food practices, which may put added pressure on the food system, such as bulk buying, were seen across all regions. To prevent this, organisational food practices, including planning ahead, should be emphasized. Additionally, while positive cooking-related practices and increases in fruit and vegetable intake were found, an increase in saturated fat intake was also seen. With the additional pressure on individuals’ physical and mental health, the essentiality of maintaining a balanced diet should be promoted.

scholarly journals Proposal of a Bioregional Strategic Framework for a Sustainable Food System in Sicily

Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1546
Author(s):  
Paolo Guarnaccia ◽  
Silvia Zingale ◽  
Alessandro Scuderi ◽  
Ezio Gori ◽  
Vincenzo Santiglia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Scenario Planning ◽  
Economic Indicators ◽  
Developmental Approach ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Strategic Framework ◽  
Sustainable Food System

The alignment of food systems with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is generally envisaged to make a positive impact on sustainability. This paper outlines some critical environmental and socio-economic indicators for Sicily in order to compare and explore the outcomes of two juxtaposing key drivers in a scenario planning exercise, where the extremities are Industrial versus Regenerative Agriculture/Agroecology and a Proactive versus Reactive government response. The most rational and less risky scenario becomes the most sensible sustainable development option, around which a 2030 vision is projected for a bioregional sustainable food system for Sicily, which is aligned with the SDGs and related policies. To accomplish the 2030 vision, a holistic education-led developmental approach is outlined with a supporting bioregional strategic framework, whose key milestone deliverables are projected through a backcasting process. This paper therefore highlights the importance of consistency and alignment of a development vision with its strategic framework and ensuing implementation, failing which, the holistic bioregional approach is compromised by activities that are shown to negatively impact environmental and socio-economic indicators. For this reason, all public and private sector development plans and associated resources ought to be aligned with a bioregional strategic plan for a sustainable food system for Sicily.

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