Colliding paradigms and trade-offs: Agri-food systems and value chain interventions

Urban food systems: Factors associated with food insecurity in the urban settings evidence from Dessie and Combolcha cities, north-central Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, food security and vulnerability assessments have traditionally focused on rural areas. Recently, the issue of urban food security has been attracting attention in global policy debates. However, limited studies are found in the study areas that link food insecurity with major food market chains in the urban food system settings. This study is therefore, aimed at measuring the status of food insecurity in the urban food systems. A mixed study design has been used with randomly selected 506 resident households in Dessie and Combolcha cities, of north-central Ethiopia. We used a pre-tested, semi-structured survey questionnaire to collect quantitative data. The qualitative data has been collected with key informant interview, and focus group discussion among food system actors and facilitators in the selected commodities. We applied Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) to measure the food security status and narration and summarization techniques to analyze the qualitative data. The study confirmed that 33.1% of the respondents were food insecure. Moreover, nine and six individuals per 100 people were forced to 'sleep hungry' and 'not eat in the whole day and night' respectively. Households' food insecurity was significantly associated with the gender of the household head, participation in casual labor, and living house ownership. The degree of food insecurity was deemed to be higher due to weak food system governance, an inconsistent food supply chain, and socio-economic and gender inequalities. However, both formal and informal food systems have their own unique qualities and maximum food security benefit can be achieved if they are well integrated. This implies food security intervention in urban areas needs to refocus their strategies towards systematic and integrated approaches that can promote social security programs like: urban housing, job security, urban agriculture and inclusive food safety net programs. Moreover, multidimensional studies are still important to obtain a wider picture of sustainable urban food security in urban areas and to better integrate the formal and informal food systems.

Simple solutions for complex problems? What is missing in agriculture for nutrition interventions

Within the nutritionism paradigm, in this article we critically review the marketization and medicalization logics which aim to address the pressing issue of malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries. Drawing from political economy and food system transformation discourses, we are using the popular intervention types of nutrition-sensitive value chains (marketization logic) and biofortification exemplified through orange-fleshed sweet potato (medicalization logic) to assess their outcomes and underlying logics. We demonstrate that there is insufficient evidence of the positive impact of these interventions on nutritional outcomes, and that their underlying theories of change and impact logics do not deal with the inherent complexity of nutritional challenges. We show that nutrition-sensitive value chain approaches are unable to leverage or enhance the functioning of value chains to improve nutritional outcomes, especially in light of the disproportionate power of some food companies. We further demonstrate that orange-fleshed sweet potato interventions and biofortification more broadly adopt a narrow approach to malnutrition, disregarding the interactions between food components and broader value chain and food system dynamics. We argue that both intervention types focus solely on increasing the intake of specific nutrients without incorporating their embeddedness in the wider food systems and the relevant political-economic and social relations that influence the production and consumption of food. We conclude that the systemic nature of malnutrition requires to be understood and addressed as part of the food system transformation challenge in order to move towards solving it. To do so, new evaluation frameworks along with new approaches to solutions are necessary that support multiple and diverse development pathways, which are able to acknowledge the social, political-economic, and environmental factors and drivers of malnutrition and poverty.

Balancing national economic policy outcomes for sustainable development

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at jointly improving economic, social, and environmental outcomes for human prosperity and planetary health. However, designing national economic policies that support advancement across multiple Sustainable Development Goals is hindered by the complexities of multi-sector economies and often conflicting policies. To address this, we introduce a national-scale design framework that can enable policymakers to sift through complex, non-linear, multi-sector policy spaces to identify efficient policy portfolios that balance economic, social, and environmental goals. The framework combines economy-wide sustainability simulation and artificial intelligence-driven multiobjective, multi-SDG policy search and machine learning. The framework can support multi-sector, multi-actor policy deliberation to screen efficient policy portfolios. We demonstrate the utility of the framework for a case study of Egypt by identifying policy portfolios that achieve efficient mixes of poverty and inequality reduction, economic growth, and climate change mitigation. The results show that integrated policy strategies can help achieve sustainable development while balancing adverse economic, social, and political impacts of reforms.

Selecting economic policies to achieve sustainable development is challenging due to the many sectors involved and the trade-offs implied. Artificial intelligence combined with economy-wide computer simulations can help.

Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor

Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives. We build on these critiques of emerging food system transformation approaches in our review of four recent and influential publications from the EAT-Lancet Commission, the IPCC, the World Resources Institute and the Food and Land Use Coalition. We argue that a major problem is the lack of explicit inclusion of the livelihoods of poor rural people in their modeling approaches and insufficient measures to ensure that the nature and scale of the envisioned changes will improve these livelihoods. Unless livelihoods and socioeconomic inclusion more broadly are brought to the center of such approaches, we very much risk transforming food systems to reach environmental and nutritional objectives on the backs of the rural poor.

Vegetables for Healthy Diets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of the Food Systems Literature

Background:

Vegetables are an essential element in healthy diets, but intakes are low around the world and there is a lack of systematic knowledge on how to improve diets through food system approaches.

Methods:

This scoping review assessed how studies of food systems for healthy diets have addressed the role of vegetables in low- and middle-income countries. We apply the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews to narratively map the literature to an accepted food systems framework and identify research gaps.

Results:

We found 1383 relevant articles, with increasing numbers over 20 years. Only 6% of articles looked at low-income countries, and 93% looked at single-country contexts. Over half of articles assessed vegetables as a food group, without looking at diversity within the food group. 15% looked at traditional vegetables. Issues of physical access to food were among the least studied food system topics in our review (7% of articles). Only 15% of articles used a comprehensive food system lens across multiple dimensions. There is also a research gap on the impacts of different policy and practice interventions (13% of articles) to enable greater vegetable consumption.

Conclusions:

Food system studies necessarily drew on multiple disciplines, methods and metrics to describe, analyze, and diagnose parts of the system. More work is needed across disciplines, across contexts, and across the food system, including understanding interventions and trade-offs, and impacts and change for diets particularly of marginalized population groups. Filling these gaps in knowledge is necessary in order to work toward healthy vegetable-rich diets for everyone everywhere.

Measures to Increase Local Food Supply in the Context of European Framework Scenarios for the Agri-Food Sector

The issue of local food supply has attracted considerable political and public attention, due to the changing preferences of consumers, who have more awareness about ecological sustainability, in particular, but also due to recent developments concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to identify measures facilitating local food value chains, which are resilient to different nationwide and global future developments, the aim of our analysis was to set the identified measures derived from the local roadmap of the city of Graz in the context of European scenarios for the agri-food sector in 2035. The results show that certain measures are applicable under all of the described scenarios, such as the food policy council, whereas some measures—for example, open food labs—are less suitable or need to be adjusted to fit the purpose within changing framework conditions. Setting specific measures for a city region in the broader context of European agri-food scenarios provides a systemic perspective, thus making the multiple links and influences more visible.

Agri‐food sector and entrepreneurship during the COVID‐19 crisis: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The related literature highlighted the impact of COVID‐19 on agri‐food entrepreneurship, the government measures and support on agri‐food entrepreneurship, and the shift of agri‐food entrepreneurship towards digitization, innovative ideas, and new market solutions. Agri‐food entrepreneurship faces numerous challenges, but at the same time, the crisis can generate opportunities. The studies made so far indicate that COVID‐19 can cause transformational changes to agri‐food entrepreneurship, although further research is needed to clarify open issues.