The food systems approach: sustainable solutions for a sufficient supply of healthy food

By S. Berkum, J. Dengerink, Ruerd Ruben. 2018

171 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A food systems approach (FSA) is a useful interdisciplinary conceptual framework for research and policy aimed at sustainable solutions for the sufficient supply of healthy food. An FSA analyses the relationships between the different parts of the food system and the outcomes of activities within the system in socio-economic and environmental/climate terms. Feedback loops are a distinguishing factor in systems thinking: they occur between parts of the food chain (production, processing, distribution and consumption) and from the socio-economic and environmental outcomes of food production and consumption (such as food security and soil depletion) back to that production and consumption. The FSA sheds light on non-linear processes in the food system, and on possible trade-offs between policy objectives. Systems thinking also broadens the perspective when seeking solutions for the root causes of problems such as poverty, malnutrition and climate change. The framework offers at least three benefits. First, it provides a checklist of topics that should at the very least be addressed when it comes to improving food security, certainly in relation to other policy objectives. Second, FSA helps to map the impact of environmental and climate changes on food security by pointing to the various vulnerabilities of the food system. In that sense the approach can contribute to the search for possibilities for strengthening the system’s resilience to climate changes. Third, it helps to determine the most limiting factors for achieving food security, and hence identify effective interventions aimed at improving food security

Subfields: General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cff389133a7f730b369bba44e2064c49dead2f0d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

1. I. Brouwer
2. J. McDermott
3. Ruerd Ruben
4. Brian Chiputwa
5. M. Qaim

Citations in the corpus

• Food systems everywhere: Improving relevance in practice (2020, background): “Other frameworks take a more circular view and consider agro-ecology principles for closing water and nutrient cycles, as well as loss reduction and waste recycling as major objectives (De Boer and Van Ittersum, 2018; Jurgilevich et al., 2016), addressing as their key concern ‘‘how do we reduce nega”