scholarly journals Subversive Future Seeks Like-Minded Model: On the Mismatch between Visions of Food Sovereignty Futures and Quantified Scenarios of Global Food Futures

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Yashar Saghai
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Computer Simulation Models ◽  
Global Food

AbstractWill we, by 2050, be able to feed a rapidly growing population with healthy and sustainably grown food in a world threatened by systemic environmental crises? There are too many uncertainties for us to predict the long-term evolution of the global agri-food system, but we can explore a wide range of futures to inform policymaking and public debate on the future of food. This is typically done by creating scenarios (story lines that vividly describe what different futures could look like) and quantifying them with computer simulation models to get numerical estimates of how different aspects of the global agri-food system might evolve under different hypotheses. Among the many scenarios produced over the last twenty years, one would expect to see the future advocated by the food sovereignty movement, which claims to represent roughly two hundred million self-described “peasants” (small farmers) worldwide. This movement defends a vision of the future based on relocalized, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, self-governed through direct and participatory democratic processes. Yet, food sovereignty is conspicuously absent from quantified scenarios of global food futures. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay identifies seven obstacles that undermine the creation of food sovereignty scenarios by examining two attempts at crafting such scenarios.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world food system

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
N. Shurakova
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
World Food ◽  
Global Food Security ◽  
Food Supply Chains ◽  
The World ◽  
Agricultural Imports ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Global Food

The article examines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the world food system (WFS) through the prism of economic and social aspects. It is revealed that the paralysis of world trade caused by the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating effect on the WFS and threatens global food security. It is proved that in order to prevent a food crisis in the foreseeable future, it is necessary to restructure food systems at the national and global levels, ensure their stability and continuity of operation. Some measures are proposed to prevent trade barriers, protect food supply chains and expand access to food. It is concluded that there is a need to expand domestic «food sovereignty», especially in countries that depend on agricultural imports and are involved in the global food trade system.

scholarly journals Overcoming undesirable resilience in the global food system

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom H. Oliver ◽  
Emily Boyd ◽  
Kelvin Balcombe ◽  
Tim G. Benton ◽  
James M. Bullock ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Global Food

Non-technical summaryOur current global food system – from food production to consumption, including manufacture, packaging, transport, retail and associated businesses – is responsible for extensive negative social and environmental impacts which threaten the long-term well-being of society. This has led to increasing calls from science–policy organizations for major reform and transformation of the global food system. However, our knowledge regarding food system transformations is fragmented and this is hindering the development of co-ordinated solutions. Here, we collate recent research across several academic disciplines and sectors in order to better understand the mechanisms that ‘lock-in’ food systems in unsustainable states.

Decolonizing Food Systems: Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Revitalization, and Agroecology as Counter-Hegemonic Movements

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 173-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Figueroa-Helland ◽  
Cassidy Thomas ◽  
Abigail Pérez Aguilera
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
World System ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Global Food

Abstract We employ an intersection of critical approaches to examine the global food system crisis and its alternatives. We examine counterhegemonic movements and organizations advancing programs of constructive resistance and decolonization based on food sovereignty, indigenous revitalization and agroecology. Food system alternatives rooted in intersectional critiques of the world-system open spaces for materially-grounded, commons-based socioecological relations that make just, sustainable, and equitable worlds possible beyond a civilization in crisis.

Fulfilling the Right to Food for South Africa: Justice, Security, Sovereignty and the Politics of Malnutrition

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-152
Author(s):  
Busiso Helard Moyo ◽  
Anne Marie Thompson Thow
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Right To Food ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

Despite South Africa’s celebrated constitutional commitments that have expanded and deepened South Africa’s commitment to realise socio-economic rights, limited progress in implementing right to food policies stands to compromise the country’s developmental path. If not a deliberate policy choice, the persistence of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms is a deep policy failure.  Food system transformation in South Africa requires addressing wider issues of who controls the food supply, thus influencing the food chain and the food choices of the individual and communities. This paper examines three global rights-based paradigms – ‘food justice’, ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ – that inform activism on the right to food globally and their relevance to food system change in South Africa; for both fulfilling the right to food and addressing all forms of malnutrition. We conclude that the emerging concept of food sovereignty has important yet largely unexplored possibilities for democratically managing food systems for better health outcomes.

Pathways to a sustainable, inclusive and healthy food system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Gaupp
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Food System ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Climate Extreme ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Global Food System ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Global Food

<p>Currently, the global food system is the single largest threat to people and planet. Food is the leading cause behind transgressing five of the nine planetary boundaries. It is a major source of carbon emissions, as well as the single largest contributor to global deforestation, overuse of fresh water and eutrophication of our aquatic ecosystems. And while agriculture has been a major engine of poverty reduction, agricultural activities are unable to deliver a decent livelihood for an estimated 80 percent of those living in extreme poverty. The projected increase in frequency and severity of climate extreme events is posing additional threats to the global food system.</p><p>A transformation towards a more inclusive, sustainable and health-promoting food system is urgently needed. This presentation will introduce the newly established Food Systems Economics Commission (FSEC) that provides detailed and robust evidence assessing the implications of the policy and investment decisions needed to foster a food system transformation. It integrates global modelling tools such as integrated assessment modelling and innovative applications of agent-based modelling with political economy considerations.  It investigates the hidden costs of our current food system, explores transitions pathways towards a new food and land use economy and suggests key policy instruments to foster the transformation towards a sustainable, inclusive, healthy and resilient food system.</p>

Development and Use of Bounding Functions in a Forest Growth Model

1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-27
Author(s):  
K. Leroy Dolph ◽  
Gary E. Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Height Growth ◽  
Forest Growth ◽  
Growth And Yield ◽  
Forest Growth Model ◽  
Individual Trees ◽  
Computer Simulation Models ◽  
Forest Growth And Yield

Abstract Erroneous predictions of forest growth and yield may result when computer simulation models use extrapolated data in repeated or long-term projections or if the models are used outside the range of data on which they were built. Bounding functions that limit the predicted diameter and height growth of individual trees to maximum observed values were developed to constrain these erroneous predictions in a forest growth and yield simulator. Similar techniques could be useful for dealing with extrapolated data in other types of simulation models. West. J. Appl. For. 8(1):24-27.

Knowledge, meaning, and the world's great challenges

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Future Generations ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
Value Ethics ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Questioning

The future of Cambridge University is discussed in the context of the current British and global situation of universities, the main focus being on what the core concerns of a major university should be at this time. After raising issues related to core intellectual values (truth-seeking, rationality in argument, balanced judgement, integrity, linguistic precision and critical questioning) and the sustaining of a long-term social and intellectual ecology, four main challenges are identified: uniting teaching and research fruitfully; interrelating fields of knowledge appropriately across a wide range of disciplines; contributing to society in ways that are responsible towards the long-term flourishing of our world; and sustaining and reinventing collegiality so that the university can be a place where intensive, disciplined conversations within and across generations can flourish. The latter leads into questions of polity, governance and management. Finally, the inseparability of teaching, research and knowledge from questions of meaning, value, ethics, collegiality and transgenerational responsibility leads to proposing ‘wisdom’ as an integrating concept. The relevant sources of wisdom available are both religious and secular, and in a world that is complexly both religious and secular we need universities that can be places where both are done justice. Given the seriousness and long-term nature of the conflicts associated with religious and secular forces in our world, it is especially desirable that universities in their education of future generations contribute to the healing of such divisions.

scholarly journals Systems of Food and Systems of Violence: An Intervention for the Special Issue on “Community Self Organisation, Sustainability and Resilience in Food Systems”

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 7092
Author(s):  
Mama D. Ujuaje ◽  
Marina Chang
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Present System ◽  
Farm Production ◽  
Agricultural Produce ◽  
Field Practice ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
Embodied Practice

This intervention critiques the rationale which underpins the authority of the food system as a context for sustainability, resilience and self-organisation. We apply learning from embodied practice, in particular The Food Journey©, to demonstrate the existence of harm and trauma arising from the overrepresentation of the liberal model of Man as constituting the only reality of humanity. This model has, in reality been a colonial, capitalising force of violent dispossession. It is this context that has produced global circulations of agricultural produce, systematised by a colonialism which violates the integrity of all that it encounters as different. Colonialities of being, power and knowledge extract and exploit globally both people and places as legacies of colonialism and perpetuate an abyssal divide between worlds. We unsettle and reconfigure both geopolitical contemporary and historic accounts of food-related narratives. We do this to help reveal how the ‘food system’ is actually a mainly Euro-American-centred narrative of dispossession, presented as universal. We propose the use of decolonial tools that are pluriversal, ecological and embodied as a means of interrogating the present system design, including its academic and field practice. The embrace of decolonial tools have the potential to take us beyond mere emancipation, cutting through old definitions and understandings of how food sovereignty, farm production, land justice and food itself are understood and applied as concepts. The outcome—as a continuous process of engagement, learning and redefinition—can then lead us towards a relational pluriverse as an expression of freedom and full nourishment for all humans and for the Earth, which is, in itself, a necessary healing.

scholarly journals Product Qualification as a Means of Identifying Sustainability Pathways for Place-Based Agri-Food Systems: The Case of the GI Corsican Grapefruit (France)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 7148
Author(s):  
Morgane Millet ◽  
Valerie Keast ◽  
Stefano Gonano ◽  
François Casabianca
Keyword(s):  
Food Waste ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Quality Criteria ◽  
Visual Quality ◽  
Marketing Channels ◽  
Export Markets ◽  
Short Run

Existing frameworks offer a holistic way to evaluate a food system based on sustainability indicators but can fall short of offering clear direction. To analyze the sustainability of a geographical indication (GI) system, we adopt a product-centered approach that begins with understanding the product qualification along the value-chain. We use the case of the GI Corsican grapefruit focusing on understanding the quality criteria priorities from the orchard to the store. Our results show that certain compromises written into the Code of Practices threaten the system’s sustainability. Today the GI allows the fruit to be harvested before achieving peak maturity and expectations on visual quality lead to high levels of food waste. Its primary function is to help penetrate mainstream export markets and to optimize labor and infrastructure. Analyzing the stakeholders’ choices of qualification brings to light potential seeds for change in the short run such as later springtime harvests, diversification of the marketing channels, and more leniency on the fruit’s aesthetics. These solutions lead us to reflect on long-term pathways to sustainable development such as reinforcing the fruit’s typicality, reducing food waste, reorganizing human resources, and embedding the fruit into its territory and the local culture.

Geography of Food

Geography ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Passidomo ◽  
Jeffrey Miller
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rural Sociology ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Many ◽  
Agricultural Geography

The geography of food is an emergent and growing subfield within human geography. Often distinguished from older literature in agricultural geography, writings in the geography of food tend to be critical (and in some cases, radical) in their political framing, focusing on the many ways in which food systems are connected to, and potentially disruptive of, entrenched systems of oppression and social and economic inequality. In part, this critical framing arose in response to a lack of critical food systems engagement in other disciplines, and to agricultural geography’s focus on spaces of production; geography’s persistent interest in spatial relationships and systems of power that cross spaces and scales made the discipline well-suited to critical interrogation of food and agricultural systems. Geographers who study and write about food demonstrate interest in scales ranging from the body to the global economy, and indeed the ways in which global processes become inscribed on and metabolized by individual bodies in disparate spaces. Literature in this subdiscipline is often theoretically robust, drawing on complex biopolitical formulations, state theory, and multi-scalar analyses of political economic change to link global processes with local places, and to situate alternative food systems within a dominant industrial agro-food system. The geography of food shares many theoretical and empirical interests with other food studies subdisciplines, including rural sociology and the anthropology of food. This article primarily features contributions by geographers, or by scholars who make use of geographic concepts (often emphasizing scale or place in their analysis). There is also a robust literature in agricultural geography (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Agricultural Geography”); this article aims to focus instead on geographies of food “beyond the farm gate.” As such, the article is organized by sections according to scale (global/national/urban/rural/home and body), and then focuses on a variety of food movements and responses to corporate/industrial global food systems.

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