The Food Systems Approach: Sustainable Solutions for a Sufficient Supply of Healthy Food

The food systems approach highlights the complexity of the food system and how different subsystems interact with one another. It also reveals the non-linear nature of many cause-effect pathways. This means that once a tipping point is reached, an increase in one variable can sometimes lead to a disproportionately large increase in another. An example of this is climate change, whereby anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions can bring about irreversible changes in our climate system. Because the food systems approach looks in detail at interactions between different systems, it is essential that it be used to study this kind of tipping point, which occurs outside the food system but which will have a direct impact on food system outcomes. However, the balance within the food system can also be disrupted by internal processes such as specialization and monoculture, with their attendant risks of animal and plant diseases. The food system is highly vulnerable as a result of a one-sided emphasis on expanding food production, without taking sufficient account of changes in the natural, technical and social systems surrounding it. Thus much of the recent literature about the relationship between food security and food systems emphasizes the need for the food system to be not only sustainable but also resilient enough to cope with threats and uncertainties (often in relation to climate change): concepts like 'adaptability' and 'transformability' play a key role in enhancing the resilience of the food system. 

Resilience thinking is a form of systems thinking that embraces the need to change in order to survive. Sustainable solutions for a sufficient supply of healthy food requires changes in the food system, such as more efficient use of natural resources and less waste. Adaptations that enhance the system's resilience to external shocks (see also Section 2.1) may be of a technical, organizational, political policy, or socio-economic nature. Weighing up options for solutions to make the food system more resilient to disruptions calls for intensive collaboration between a range of research disciplines, policymakers, and other stakeholders.