Issues in Global Food Politics and Options for Sustainable Food Consumption

2021 ◽

pp. 1036-1061

Author(s):

Henry E. Alapiki ◽

Luke A. Amadi

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Food Consumption ◽

Low Income ◽

Food System ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

World Systems Theory ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Sustainability Challenges ◽

Global Food

In recent decades, we have seen the rise of the sustainable food consumption field and its push for disciplinary space in development studies. This chapter turns to the original impetus of sustainable food consumption and the question of how neoliberal order can be reconciled with the need to save the ecology. Beyond the fundamental objectives, there is a need to assess the links between the global food system, as influenced by neoliberal order, and the signs that it leads to adversity for low-income countries. A review of relevant literature in the sustainable consumption field is explored using content analysis to examine links between neoliberal food consumption dynamics, the logic of global food politics, and the emerging terminological shifts from food consumption to food system. The world systems theory and the Marxian political ecology framework are used to show that sustainability is notable for emphasizing resource efficiency and equitability, which can be useful when sustainability challenges are matched with ecological policies. This chapter makes some policy recommendations.

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Sustainable Food Consumption in the Neoliberal Order

Food Systems Sustainability and Environmental Policies in Modern Economies - Advances in Environmental Engineering and Green Technologies ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-3631-4.ch005 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 90-123 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Henry E. Alapiki ◽

Luke A. Amadi

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Food Consumption ◽

Low Income ◽

Food System ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

World Systems Theory ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Sustainability Challenges ◽

Global Food

In recent decades, we have seen the rise of the sustainable food consumption field and its push for disciplinary space in development studies. This chapter turns to the original impetus of sustainable food consumption and the question of how neoliberal order can be reconciled with the need to save the ecology. Beyond the fundamental objectives, there is a need to assess the links between the global food system, as influenced by neoliberal order, and the signs that it leads to adversity for low-income countries. A review of relevant literature in the sustainable consumption field is explored using content analysis to examine links between neoliberal food consumption dynamics, the logic of global food politics, and the emerging terminological shifts from food consumption to food system. The world systems theory and the Marxian political ecology framework are used to show that sustainability is notable for emphasizing resource efficiency and equitability, which can be useful when sustainability challenges are matched with ecological policies. This chapter makes some policy recommendations.

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The Impact of Resource and Nutritional Resilience on the Global Food Supply System

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12020751 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 751 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Wayne Martindale ◽

Mark Swainson ◽

Sonal Choudhary

Keyword(s):

Supply Chains ◽

Food Supply ◽

Food System ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Food Supply Chains ◽

Critical Control Points ◽

Development Goals ◽

The Impact ◽

Global Food ◽

Global Food Supply

Pressure points in global food supply where resilience in supply chains can be limited or controlled are the equivalent of Critical Control Points in food safety systems. The approach of using critical control in supply chains can provide insights for nutritional improvement, sustainable food trade and food waste reduction. The pressure points determine the provision of a secure and sustainable food system where the outcomes of reducing their criticality are identified in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and other international programmes. These seek to reduce climate change impact and improve public health provision. While policy makers are rightly focussed on these targets, the data analysis methods required to rank and associate resource flow pressure points with commercial food supply chains and nutritional goals remain untested. Here, we show how methodologies can identify where opportunities to tackle future criticality exist, and where they are currently being overlooked for food categories that have the greatest consumer and dietary protein demand. The analysis provides insights that identify where latent restrictions in resilience can occur, so that the future risk of food insecurity is reduced.

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Hunger and Obesity as Symptoms of Non-Sustainable Food Systems and Malnutrition

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app9061062 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (6) ◽

pp. 1062 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Gerald Steiner ◽

Bernhard Geissler ◽

Eva Schernhammer

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Calorie Intake ◽

Sustainable Food Systems ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Great Opportunity ◽

Global Food System ◽

Global Food ◽

Innovation Policies

Among the great challenges the world faces are how to ensure food security for its growing population—projected to rise to around 10 billion by 2050—so it can meet their nutritional needs for a healthy life. Current regulations and literature on food security mainly focus on food quantity (i.e., portion sizes), daily calorie intake and methods for increasing food production and too little on food and diet quality and the holistic effects of (mal)nutrition. From a systems perspective, in order to promote innovation policies for more sustainable food systems, food security cannot be viewed independently; rather, it is characterized by the interplay of an extensive network of economic, environmental and social dimensions that should all be taken into account in a comprehensive resilient and sustainable global food system. Here, we highlight one aspect of this vast network that we consider a particular challenge—yet also a great opportunity—for innovative policies geared toward more sustainable food systems: the interplay of hunger and obesity, including resulting policy strategies beyond potential efficiency improvements in farming practices. Future studies need to emphasize the importance of an in-depth understanding of the interdependencies within the global food system and its interrelatedness with societal and natural systems as part of coupled human-environment systems and in the face of continuing population growth and food demand globally. Recommended strategies for achieving sustainable food security systems include innovative educational approaches and stakeholder-driven innovation policies based on mutual learning processes between society, science, industry and policymakers, as well as fostering increased responsibility of all members of society along the agriculture and food value chain.

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A global food systems framework for pandemic prevention, response, and recovery

Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development ◽

10.5304/jafscd.2021.102.015 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Anastasia Lambrou ◽

Isha Berry ◽

Amelie Hecht ◽

Alain Labrique

Keyword(s):

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Recovery Phase ◽

Surveillance Systems ◽

Emerging Infections ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Dynamic Relationship ◽

Response And Recovery ◽

Global Food

COVID-19 has highlighted the dynamic relationship between pandemic threats and global food systems. Despite important connections, research and policy-making on food systems and pandemics largely operate in silos. We propose a framework that integrates food systems and pandemic planning and response, exploring the role of the food system in shaping pandemics and, consequently, the role of pandemics in disrupting a now global food system. This framework highlights important connections between food production, distribution, and consumption at each stage of the pandemic cycle: prevention, response, and recovery. We use recent experiences with COVID-19 to illustrate vulnerabilities in systems interaction during the prevention and response phases. Over the long term, in the recovery phase, food systems must transform, adopting an enhanced level of functioning to improve resilience. To reduce population health risks and promote sustainable food systems, we call for implementation of surveillance systems for both emerging infections and food systems functioning in order to strengthen global food supply chains, create stakeholder resource coordination mechanisms, and address underlying socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Multidisciplinary global actors should draw on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the inevitable next one.

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Use of Mechanistic Nutrition Models to Identify Sustainable Food Animal Production

Annual Review of Animal Biosciences ◽

10.1146/annurev-animal-021419-083913 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 355-376

Author(s):

Mark D. Hanigan ◽

Veridiana L. Daley

Keyword(s):

Food Production ◽

Food System ◽

Growth Curves ◽

Animal Production ◽

Mechanistic Models ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Nutrient Excretion ◽

Food Animal ◽

Global Food ◽

Insight Into

To feed people in the coming decades, an increase in sustainable animal food production is required. The efficiency of the global food production system is dependent on the knowledge and improvement of its submodels, such as food animal production. Scientists use statistical models to interpret their data, but models are also used to understand systems and to integrate their components. However, empirical models cannot explain systems. Mechanistic models yield insight into the mechanism and provide guidance regarding the exploration of the system. This review offers an overview of models, from simple empirical to more mechanistic models. We demonstrate their applications to amino acid transport, mass balance, whole-tissue metabolism, digestion and absorption, growth curves, lactation, and nutrient excretion. These mechanistic models need to be integrated into a full model using big data from sensors, which represents a new challenge. Soon, training in quantitative and computer science skills will be required to develop, test, and maintain advanced food system models.

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Redressing the Corporate Cultivation of Consumption: Releasing the Weapons of the Structurally Weak

International Journal of Health Policy and Management ◽

10.34172/ijhpm.2020.205 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sharon Friel

Keyword(s):

Food Systems ◽

Food System ◽

Biodiversity Loss ◽

Shared Vision ◽

Coalition Building ◽

Environmental Harm ◽

Issue Framing ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Global Food System ◽

Global Food

Corporate control of the global food system has resulted in greater global availability of highly processed, packaged and very palatable unhealthy food and beverages. Environmental harm, including climate change and biodiversity loss, occurs along the supply chains associated with trans-national corporations’ (TNCs’) practices and products. In essence, the corporatization of the global food system has created the conditions that cultivate excess consumption, manufacture disease epidemics and harm the environment. TNCs have used their structural power – their positions in material structures and organizational networks – to establish rules, processes and norms that reinforce and extend the paradigm of the neoliberal corporate food system. As a result, policy and regulatory environments, and societal norms are favourable to TNC’s interests, to the detriment of nutrition, health and environmental outcomes. There is hope, however. Power, of which there is many forms, is held not just by the TNCs but by all actors concerned about and connected to the food system. This paper aims to understand these power dynamics, and identify how structurally weak, public-interest actors can release their agency and work to achieve positive structural change. Such an analysis will help understand how the status quo can be disrupted and healthy and sustainable food systems created. The paper draws from the health governance and social movement literature, examining the Doha Declaration on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and Public Health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and the Divestment movement. These cases demonstrate the many ‘weapons of the weak’ that can, against all odds recalibrate structural inequities. There is no one approach to transforming the corporate food system to become a healthy and sustainable food system. It involves coalition building; articulation of an ambitious shared vision; strategic use of multi-level institutional processes; social mobilization among like-minded and unusual bedfellows, and organized campaigns; political and policy entrepreneurs, and compelling issue framing.

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Criteria for assessing food consumption patterns in the brics countries in accordance with sustainable development goals

BIO Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/bioconf/20224204005 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

pp. 04005

Author(s):

Anna Diachkova ◽

Sergey Tikhonov ◽

Olga Tomyuk ◽

Natalya Tikhonova

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Food Consumption ◽

Sustainable Development Goals ◽

Food System ◽

Sustainable Food ◽

Brics Countries ◽

Food Pattern ◽

Harmful Emissions ◽

Development Goals ◽

Processed Products

Achieving quality nutrition, food security, ending hunger, combating climate change and other challenges facing the world. These problems can be solved by building a sustainable food pattern. The aim of the article was to assess food patterns in accordance with sustainable development goals (2,3,12): the level of energy consumption and the structure of consumption (WHO recommendations gap), sustainable pattern gap, the share of imported food, the amount of harmful emissions. From the results obtained, the BRICS countries have not yet reached the goals of sustainability in the food system and require measures to change the food pattern: development of local farming, reducing the consumption of ultra-processed products, increasing organic products, reducing poverty and unemployment in the country, reducing the consumption of products that polluted the environment, reducing food waste and losses, buying rational quantities of products for eliminated the risk of product spoilage. These changes will help move towards sustainable food consumption.

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

Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l alimentation ◽

10.15353/cfs-rcea.v6i1.269 ◽

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.

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