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Articles

• Transforming food systems with agroecology
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Agroecology is a way of redesigning food systems, from the farm to the table, with a goal of achieving ecological, economic, and social sustainability. Through transdisciplinary, participatory, and change-oriented research and action, agroecology links together science, practice, and movements focused on social change. But what are the steps that must be taken to transform food systems toward the ultimate goal of sustainability, and away from the mounting evidence of the negative impacts on the environment and society caused by modern industrial agriculture ?

• Corporate concentration and technological change in the global seed industry
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and to investigate the potential impact on the agri-food chain of the trend toward increased corporate concentration. The first part of this paper presents the main characteristics of the global seed sector, its stakeholders, and its size in the agri-food chain. Next, the corporate consolidation trends of the seed industry over the past two years are examined. The technological evolution of the seed sector is also briefly presented. In the last part of this paper, the fallout of recent mergers and acquisitions in the seed industry are analyzed. Opposing views are expressed on the impact of these mergers and acquisitions in the agri-food chain : while certain stakeholders worry about the risk of food power by the biggest companies, some others expect useful innovations.

• When food systems meet sustainability – Current narratives and implications for actions
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The concept of food system has gained prominence in recent years amongst both scholars and policy-makers. Experts from diverse disciplines and backgrounds have in particular discussed the nature and origin of the “unsustainability” of our modern food systems. These efforts tend, however, to be framed within distinctive disciplinary narratives. In this paper we propose to explore these narratives and to shed light on the explicit -or implicit- epistemological assumptions, mental models, and disciplinary paradigms that underpin those. The analysis indicates that different views and interpretations prevail amongst experts about the nature of the “crisis”, and consequently about the research and priorities needed to “fix” the problem. We then explore how sustainability is included in these different narratives and the link to the question of healthy diets. The analysis reveals that the concept of sustainability, although widely used by all the different communities of practice, remains poorly defined, and applied in different ways and usually based on a relatively narrow interpretation. In so doing we argue that current attempts to equate or subsume healthy diets within sustainability in the context of food system may be misleading and need to be challenged. We stress that trade-offs between different dimensions of food system sustainability are unavoidable and need to be navigated in an explicit manner when developing or implementing sustainable food system initiatives. Building on this overall analysis, a framework structured around several entry points including outcomes, core activities, trade-offs and feedbacks is then proposed, which allows to identify key elements necessary to support the transition toward sustainable food systems.

• Peruvian cuisine’s slippery road to UNESCO (Raul Matta)
  24 mai 2017, par Clarisse

  An increasing number of strategies of cultural preservation acknowledge local particularities by including them in political and economic programmes. Recent research has demonstrated how governmental and private institutions work to stabilise, promote and manage the particularities of ’national’ foods and cuisines and the image of the countries themselves (Caldwell 2002 ; Karaosmanoglu 2007 ; Hiroko 2008 ; DeSoucey 2010). Food heritage emerges in this context...

• Toward a new philosophy of preventive nutrition : from a reductionist to a holistic paradigm to improve nutritional recommendations
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The reductionist approach has been predominant to date in human nutrition research and has unraveled some of the fundamental mechanisms at the basis of food nutrients (e.g., those that involve deficiency diseases). In Western countries, along with progress in medicine and pharmacology, the reductionist approach helped to increase life expectancy. However, despite 40 y of research in nutrition, epidemics of obesity and diabetes are growing each year worldwide, both in developed and developing countries, leading to a decrease in healthy life years. Yet, interactions between nutrition-health relations cannot be modeled on the basis of a linear cause-effect relation between 1 food compound and 1 physiologic effect but rather from multicausal nonlinear relations. In other words, explaining the whole from the specific by a bottom-up reductionist approach has its limits. A top-down approach becomes necessary to investigate complex issues through a holistic view before addressing any specific question to explain the whole. However, it appears that both approaches are necessary and mutually reinforcing. In this review, Eastern and Western research perspectives are first presented, laying out bases for what could be the consequences of applying a reductionist versus holistic approach to research in nutrition vis-à-vis public health, environmental sustainability, breeding, biodiversity, food science and processing, and physiology for improving nutritional recommendations. Therefore, research that replaces reductionism with a more holistic approach will reveal global and efficient solutions to the problems encountered from the field to the plate. Preventive human nutrition can no longer be considered as “pharmacology” or foods as “drugs.”

• Beacons of hope : accelerating transformations to sustainable food systems
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This report examines 21 initiatives that are working to achieve sustainable, equitable, and secure food systems.

• Resource over-exploitation and running out
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Food systems around the world are highly dependent on both renewable and nonrenewable resources. Drivers such as population growth, urbanisation and climate change put a lot of pressure on resources that have become core issues for the future of food systems. Cropland availability is limited in most parts of the world, adding pressure for cropping intensification. Fossil energy and phosphorus shortages are expected to occur within a few decades, with particular impact in Low-Income (LI) countries where farmers are more vulnerable to volatile prices. The availability of very unevenly distributed freshwater resources shows a similar picture, with an increasing number of regions reaching alarming levels of water scarcity. Some world fish stocks have been overexploited and are now depleted. But the situation is not without hope. While we need to intensify food systems to meet the challenge of a growing population, new ways to produce with less impact on the environment and more resilience to climate change need to be widely adopted.

• Power at the table : food fights and happy meals
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  In family meals the normative and the performative are very far apart—though everyone likes to think of the family table as a place of harmony and solidarity, it is often the scene for the exercise of power and authority, a place where conflict prevails. My interest in this topic was sparked by research on middle-class parents’ struggles with their “picky eater” children. Besides narrating the way the dinner table became battleground with their own children, many parents also recalled their own childhood family meals as painful and difficult. From this very narrow focus on family struggles, I expand the discussion to the larger question of why this topic is relatively ignored in social science, and I question the sources of the normative power of the family “happy meal.” The ideological emphasis on family dinners has displaced social responsibility from public institutions to private lives, and the construction of normative family performances is part of a process that constructs different family types as deviant and delinquent.

• What’s on the menu ? A global assessment of MUFPP signatory cities’ food strategies. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Increased recognition of the persistent and interconnected nature of food system challenges resulted in the creation of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) in 2015. MUFPP signatory cities commit themselves to contribute to a better functioning food system by adopting integrated approaches. This study assesses the number of MUFPP cities that have developed food strategies and the choices local policymakers make in the design of these strategies. The results show surprising similarities between cities across regions in terms of goals and instruments. At the same time, local governments clearly put different emphases and seem to vary in policy styles.

• Food aid after fifty years : recasting its role
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This book analyzes the impact food aid programmes have had over the past fifty years, assessing the current situation as well as future prospects. Issues such as political expediency, the impact of international trade and exchange rates are put under the microscope to provide the reader with a greater understanding of this important subject matter. This book will prove vital to students of development economics and development studies and those working in the field.