Toward a Sustainable Food System PDF Download

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309148960
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

Author: Ruerd Ruben
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038978140
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
One of the major knowledge challenges in the domain of Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems refers to the integration of perspectives on consumption, patterns that support public health, inclusive value chains, and environmentally sustainable food production. While there is a long record of the analysis of separate interventions, this special issue generates integrated insights, provides cross-cutting perspectives, and outlines practical and policy solutions that address these global challenges.The collection of papers promotes the view that sustainable food systems require thorough insights into the structure and dynamics of agri-food production systems, the drivers for integrating food value chains and markets, and key incentives for supporting healthier consumer choices. On the production side, potential linkages between agricultural commercialization and intensification and their effects for food security and nutritional outcomes are analyzed. Value Chains are assessed for their contribution to improving exchange networks and markets for food products that simultaneously support efficiency, circularity, and responsiveness. Individual motives and market structures for food consumption need to be understood in order to be able to outline suitable incentives to enhance healthy dietary choice.The contributed papers focus on interfaces between food system activities and processes of adaptive change that are critical for overcoming key constraints and trade-offs between sustainable food and healthy diets.

Author: Riccardo Accorsi
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128134127
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Sustainable Food Supply Chains: Planning, Design, and Control through Interdisciplinary Methodologies provides integrated and practicable solutions that aid planners and entrepreneurs in the design and optimization of food production-distribution systems and operations and drives change toward sustainable food ecosystems. With synthesized coverage of the academic literature, this book integrates the quantitative models and tools that address each step of food supply chain operations to provide readers with easy access to support-decision quantitative and practicable methods. Broken into three parts, the book begins with an introduction and problem statement. The second part presents quantitative models and tools as an integrated framework for the food supply chain system and operations design. The book concludes with the presentation of case studies and applications focused on specific food chains. Sustainable Food Supply Chains: Planning, Design, and Control through Interdisciplinary Methodologies will be an indispensable resource for food scientists, practitioners and graduate students studying food systems and other related disciplines. - Contains quantitative models and tools that address the interconnected areas of the food supply chain - Synthesizes academic literature related to sustainable food supply chains - Deals with interdisciplinary fields of research (Industrial Systems Engineering, Food Science, Packaging Science, Decision Science, Logistics and Facility Management, Supply Chain Management, Agriculture and Land-use Planning) that dominate food supply chain systems and operations - Includes case studies and applications

Author: Robert Biel
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 191130707X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis. By contributing more to feeding themselves, cities can allow breathing space for the rural sector to convert to more organic sustainable approaches. Biel’s approach connects with current debates about agroecology and food sovereignty, asks key questions, and proposes lines of future research. He suggests that today’s food insecurity – manifested in a regime of wildly fluctuating prices – reflects not just temporary stresses in the existing mode of production, but more profoundly the troubled process of generating a new one. He argues that the solution cannot be implemented at a merely technical or political level: the force of change can only be driven by the kind of social movements which are now daring to challenge the existing unsustainable order.Drawing on both his academic research and teaching, and 15 years’ experience as a practicing urban farmer, Biel brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to this key global issue, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences

Author: Colin Ray Anderson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030613151
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This open access book develops a framework for advancing agroecology transformations focusing on power, politics and governance. It explores the potential of agroecology as a sustainable and socially just alternative to today’s dominant food regime. Agroecology is an ecological approach to farming that addresses climate change and biodiversity loss while contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. Agroecology transformations represent a challenge to the power of corporations in controlling food system and a rejection of the industrial food systems that are at the root of many social and ecological ills. In this book the authors analyse the conditions that enable and disable agroecology’s potential and present six ‘domains of transformation’ where it comes into conflict with the dominant food system. They argue that food sovereignty, community-self organization and a shift to bottom-up governance are critical for the transformation to a socially just and ecologically viable food system. This book will be a valuable resource to researchers, students, policy makers and professionals across multidisciplinary areas including in the fields of food politics, international development, sustainability and resilience.

Author: Nicoletta Batini
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831611
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The Economics of Sustainable Food details the true cost of food for people and the planet. It illustrates how to transform our broken system, alleviating its severe financial and human burden. The key is smart macroeconomic policy that moves us toward methods that protect the environment like regenerative land and sea farming, low-impact urban farming, and alternative protein farming, and toward healthy diets. The book's multidisciplinary team of authors lay out detailed fiscal and trade policies, as well as structural reforms, to achieve those goals. Chapters discuss strategies to make food production sustainable, nutritious, and fair, ranging from taxes and spending to education, labor market, health care, and pension reforms, alongside regulation in cases where market incentives are unlikely to work or to work fast enough. The authors carefully consider the different needs of more and less advanced economies, balancing economic development and sustainability goals. Case studies showcase successful strategies from around the world, such as taxing foods with a high carbon footprint, financing ecosystems mapping and conservation to meet scientific targets for healthy biomes permanency, subsidizing sustainable land and sea farming, reforming health systems to move away from sick care to preventive, nutrition-based care, and providing schools with matching funds to purchase local organic produce.--Amazon.

Author: Gary Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Food supply
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description

Author: Brouwer, H., Guijt, J., Kelly, S., Garcia-Campos, P.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251347840
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
The intention of this case study is to learn from the institutional and programmatic processes that have sustained the transformation of Ireland’s food system so that other countries might be inspired by ideas and practices that could be potentially adapted to their own journey towards a sustainable food system. The country’s trajectory from small-scale farming focused on commodity exports with little value addition, to gradual integration into high-value international supply chains, alongside its current ambition to contribute to solving world hunger, reflect the profound shifts that have taken place within and around the boundaries of Ireland’s food system. Ireland’s transformation demonstrates the complexity of multiple drivers (policies, investments, market trends and disruptions) simultaneously at play as food systems evolve. At present, the top challenges in agri-food concern the environment, human health and nutrition.

Author: Wigboldus, S., Guijt, J., Garcia-Campos, P.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251347905
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description
Governments and other food system actors from the private sector, civil society, research and education institutions are being called upon to work together to enhance the sustainability, resilience and inclusiveness of food systems. This appraisal presents key lessons from food, agriculture and environment-related institutional mechanisms, programmes and policies in Rwanda, considered against the backdrop of the country’s agroecological conditions and relevant social, economic and political history. It also provides insights into trade-offs and tensions which involve a balancing act between strong leadership and meaningful participation, securing local food sovereignty and outward connectivity, intensifying and diversifying the (agricultural) economy, creating room for private sector entrepreneurship and providing central coordination – as well as a mindset focused on what is needed and possible.

Author: Roosendaal, L., Brouwer, H., Garcia-Campos, P., Prado-Rivera, F.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251347859
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
Governments and other food system actors from the private sector, civil society, research and education institutions are being called upon to work together to enhance the sustainability, resilience and inclusiveness of food systems. The analysis presented in this case study provides an insight into the process and direction of food system transformation, and the key capabilities required. It portrays the interplay of different internal and external dynamics combined with the capacity of food system actors to connect, forge alliances and commit to specific actions that has enabled Costa Rica to move towards a more sustainable food system. As a result, the sustainability debate has increasingly opened up, moving from a focus on environmental sustainability in food production towards a broader discussion encompassing nutrition and health.