Towards Food Sustainability

At least since Amartya Sen published Poverty and Famines in 1981, we know that food security –viewed globally – is more a question of proper distribution than of a need for ever more productivity. Nevertheless, a “productivist” understanding of food security continues to dominate in science, policy, and practice – gaining steam in the aftermath the 2008 food price crisis – even though more than enough calories for every person on earth are already being produced.

In order to better understand and address the “wicked problems” of hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity, this project takes a food system approach in its analysis of actors, activities, and results of food system activities. In case studies in Kenya and Bolivia, we examine different food value chains (e.g. agro-industrial and agroecological, from production to consumption), the livelihoods of those who depend on them, and the consequences of various food-system related activities.

Going beyond "producing enough"

Instead of applying a narrow food security concept, we have adopted an understanding of food sustainability that includes realization of the right to food, environmental sustainability, reduction of poverty and inequality, and resilience of food systems going beyond just producing enough. In a transdisciplinary process, the project seeks to develop a tool to assess the sustainability of food systems – a tool that can also be used by non-scientists who are interested in identifying ways to make food systems more sustainable.

                                                    Concept of food sustainability

Case studies

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Switzerland, Kenya, and Bolivia has begun researching various aspects of different food systems in Kenya and Bolivia. Our case studies focus on agro-industrial food systems as well as local, indigenous, and alternative food systems. Five postdoctoral researchers, nine doctoral candidates, and 21 master’s candidates are involved in corresponding “Work Packages” (WPs). WP1 examines the policy context and the right to food from a legal perspective. WP2 looks at institutions and actors from an anthropological perspective. WP3 analyses value chains, livelihoods, and food security. WP4 assesses the environmental sustainability of food systems as well as their social-ecological resilience.

Indicators of food sustainability

Together with our partners and interested organizations in Kenya and Bolivia, we defined indicators for use in assessing each of the five pillars of food sustainability. To assess the environmental performance of food systems, for example, we defined agrobiodiversity and landscape patchiness and connectivity as important indicators, in addition to resource use intensity, generation and handling of waste, emission of greenhouse gases, and more. In a workshop to define ways of assessing the right to food, we identified indicators that describe equality, non-discrimination, and empowerment of vulnerable groups, for example the proportion of land titles held by women, or levels of public investment in agro-pastoral activities.

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