Food control or food democracy? Re-engaging nutrition with society and the environment

The concept of food democracy has been developed to articulate norms and ideals of democracy as a counterpressure to ‘food control’ from concentrated and transnational corporate power in the agri-food system. Yet to date, a comprehensive overview is missing to identify the various elements and dimensions of food democracy conceptualizations and to reflect on what exactly is democratic about food democracy. To address this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to assess consensus, common and outlying dimensions of food democracy conceptualizations and the epistemological synergies and struggles around different understandings of democracy in the research field. Analysis uncovers more than 20 different food democracy dimensions, the most common of which (deliberation, knowledge democracy, food choice, civic co-planning, rights protection) diverge along two predominant schools of thought, epistemological positions and strategies for change: first, food democracy as a process of open and inclusive public deliberation in participatory settings; second, food democracy as the protection of individual rights, liberties and private (consumer) freedom. Through the lens of varied democracy perspectives, we discuss implications for further development of food democracy in research, policy and agri-food systems interventions.

The article discusses the role that short supply chains (SSCs) and local food systems (LFS) play in the implementation of food sovereignty and food democracy. The question asked is whether it is justified to seek alternatives to global and industrial food systems, bearing in mind, on the one hand, their negative effects and, on the other hand, food challenges as well as the objectives and assumptions of the EU policy expressed in the “Farm to Fork” strategy. The conducted analysis has shown that SSCs and LFS play a key role in food sovereignty and food democracy, as they contribute to building sustainable and equitable food systems that provide nations with control over the way they produce, and control of the food self-sufficiency and sovereignty over food supply, social bonds, choice of alternatives to industrial products, as well as information on food and its origin.

Aquaculture sustainability: Global challenges need local actions

Food control in Zimbabwe: A situational analysis

Food security in a just energy transition is a growing debate about designing sustainable food secure networks worldwide. Energy transition, land-use change, and food security are crucial factors for food security and provision. The increased demand for food products and customer preferences regarding food safety provide various issues for the current agriculture food supply chain (AFSC). Along with rising sustainability concerns, strict government regulation, food security, and traceability concerns compel managers, business houses, and practitioners working in AFSC to adopt new tools, techniques, and methodologies to model current food supply chain problems. Thus, in turn, design the food logistics network for food security. Hence, this study investigates the core determinants of food security and supply in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Lebanon over the period of 2010–2019. In order to estimate the objectives of the study, we employ the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares estimators (DOLS) to draw the study findings. However, the estimated results show a negative association of land use with food security and supply. Likewise, energy transition, gross domestic product, and agricultural value added (AVA) contribute to the food security supply. In contrast, urbanization's negative but insignificant contribution to the food supply in selected economies exists. Besides, another core objective of the study is to investigate the moderate role of the energy transition on the gross domestic product, agriculture sector, and land use and find the significant contribution to the food supply. However, the current study also tries forecasting for the next 10 years and employs the impulse response function (IRF) and variance decomposition analysis (VDA). Congruently, this study uses the pairwise panel causality test and finds exciting outcomes. The COVID-19 crisis has posed challenges such as energy consumption and food security issues. On behalf of the results, the current study proposes imperative policies to investigate the desired level of food supply. The findings provide valuable insights for experts, policymakers, and officials to take practical measures for energy use and food security challenges.

Reviewed by: Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding Thomas Kühne Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding. By Alon Confino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 180. Paper $24.99. ISBN 978-0736329. “The accumulation of facts in massive studies is accompanied by diminishing interpretative returns.” Based on this verdict on Holocaust history and the “sense of déjà [End Page 435] vu” that “many contributions” to the field evoke (41), Alon Confino urges historians to invest more time and energy in reflecting on the ways they do history, i.e., on the conceptual categories they use, consciously or unconsciously, while writing history. In a field that is indeed inclined to exhaust itself by lapsing into documentary narratives or into recycling the same old models of explanation, this request is reasonable—although Confino is not the first to think about the historiography rather than just the history of the Holocaust. A number of leading scholars, such as Ian Kershaw, Yehuda Bauer, Michael Marrus, and Omer Bartov have, of course, already done so. More recently, other scholars, including Dan Stone, Tom Lawson, and Peter Hayes and John Roth, as well as Paul Bartrop and Steven Leonard Jacobs, have produced comprehensive surveys and biographical compendiums on Holocaust historiography. Confino’s work is not just another survey of the research, however. He is interested in the metahistory of the Holocaust. According to him, much of the extant Holocaust historiography is still burdened by the idea that the Holocaust was a unique event that cannot be represented, described, or explained in the same way as other historical events. Confino’s book takes aim at exactly this kind of mystification of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was surely an extreme event, he says, but one that reveals the opportunities and restrictions of historical interpretation precisely because of its extreme nature. Foundational Pasts demonstrates how Holocaust historiography navigates through conceptual, categorical, and interpretive problems that shape, and have shaped, other historiographies as well. The comparative paradigm is the French Revolution. Both the French Revolution and the Holocaust have served as “foundational pasts,” as events that have been considered as ruptures—not only of political regimes, societies, or economic orders, but also of all other dimensions of human life, experience, and morality. Since the 1960s or 1970s, the Holocaust has replaced the French Revolution as the one foundational past of the West, as well as other parts of the world. Foundational Pasts is divided into two sections. The first, “Thinking the Holocaust,” outlines some general thoughts on Holocaust historiography and the 1789–1933 comparison, which leads into an in-depth analysis and favorable critique of the role the voices of victims’ diaries play in Saul Friedlaender’s preeminent Holocaust narrative, Years of Extermination (New York, 2007). In his second section, “Thresholds and Limits of History,” Confino examines how four principle issues of historical writing have shaped, advanced, or obstructed explanations offered by Holocaust scholars. These include issues of periodization, as well as definitions of the Holocaust’s beginnings, ruptures, and endings. Confino also examines historians’ dedication to contexts, which he says has made historians overestimate the military confrontation of World War II as a reason for the Holocaust. Another conceptual problem that Confino addresses is the popularity of the category “contingency,” and, related to this, the search for agency and the choices of historical actors. He rightly [End Page 436] warns against confusing different degrees of contingency in different historical situations. The fourth conceptual problem of Holocaust historiography that he addresses results from its fixation on antisemitism as an ideology. Confino suggests using the tools of cultural history instead, in order to explore more complex belief systems (including religion), emotions, obsessions, and social practices as conditions that allowed for the perpetration of the Holocaust. Not all of Confino’s observations may sound new to historians familiar with the field, but it is nevertheless an inspiring and well written book; any advanced class on Holocaust historiography will profit from it. Of course, this book cannot cover all the issues of Holocaust historiography. One of these is the deep entanglement of Holocaust research, and thus historiography, in memory and identity politics (Jewish, non-Jewish, American, German, Polish...

Working on Wicked Problems in Food Systems

Tourism communities such as Monteverde, Costa Rica, the site of this study, have been profoundly impacted by the loss of tourism revenue during COVID-19. Faced with intensified food insecurity caused by the cascading impacts of this pandemic, the community has organized initiatives to stimu­late local, sustainable food production to increase food security during the COVID-19 economic recovery. This paper adopts a food democracy framework to analyze restaurants’ regional food purchases, barriers to local purchasing, and tour­ists’ interest in and ability to identify local food products. Our findings show that nearly all restaurant owners identified benefits of purchasing regional food but reported multiple barriers to buying locally. Tourists reported high interest in eating locally produced food but do not have enough information to identify farm-to-fork options. Local food initiative stakeholder inter­views show that emergent strategies demonstrate a move toward food democracy actions by promot­ing communication and co-learning between res­taurants, food producers, and tourists to rein­force principles of food democracy. Based on our find­ings, we recommend (a) strengthening producer-to-restaurant networks, (b) enhancing communication of local food production benefits and responsi­bilities to restaurants, and (c) promot­ing the locally made certification for restaurants to strengthen localized food networks and direct tourists to transformative food strategies underway in Monteverde.

As we have discussed in the previous chapter, the premise of food democracy is that it aims to reorient control of the food system from industrialised multinational giants back into the hands of ordinary people. In this way, individuals are transformed from passive consumers to active and empowered food citizens.KeywordsFood SystemUrban AgricultureCooking SkillRainforest AllianceVoluntary SimplicityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Global research trends in food safety in agriculture and industry from 1991 to 2018: A data-driven analysis

Food wedges: Framing the global food demand and supply challenge towards 2050

An accurate assessment of food security and its challenges is essential for formulating effective measures and promoting sustainable socioeconomic development. This study develops an evaluation system for China's food security, focusing on four dimensions: food supply, food access, food production stability, and food continuity. The entropy weight extended matter element model is used for quantitative processing, which ensures that the integrity of the information can be guaranteed to a greater extent while reducing the influence of subjective factors, and then, the study evaluates the food security of different functional areas in China, and finally, it diagnoses the main obstacles to food security by using the obstacle degree model. (1) From 2000 to 2020, China's food security level fluctuated, initially declining, and then increasing. The food security level in major production and marketing areas is generally higher, while the primary marketing areas exhibit the lowest security levels. (2) The level of grain yields and the total power of machinery per unit area are the key factors affecting food security; the impact of inputs of agricultural materials (fertilizers and pesticides) on food security has decreased and is constantly stabilizing. In the main marketing area, the per capita food share is significantly lower than in the other functional areas, which has the greatest impact on food security. (3) Analysis of the obstacle factors reveals that the food supply and access security subsystems are crucial for ensuring national, production, and marketing security. From 2000 to 2020, the average obstacle degrees of food supply and food access security at the national level were 46.56% and 21.17%, respectively; for the production and marketing areas, they were 58.47% and 21.45%; and for primary marketing areas, they were 37.69% and 26.59%. In major grain-producing areas, the main obstacles lay within the food supply security and food production stability subsystems, with average obstacle degrees of 53.77% and 15.67%, respectively, from 2000 to 2020. The above results provide a scientific basis for comprehensively improving the level of food security in China, optimizing the structure of food production in each functional area, and formulating regionalized policies for stabilizing and maintaining food production and supply.

Effective food control ensures supplies of safe and wholesome food and promotes international trade, human welfare and comfort. Unfortunately most developing countries do not have an effective food control system due to problems which include insufficient trained personnel, absence of basic infrastructure, inadequate food laws and regulations in association with socio‐cultural determinants. This paper examines the future of food control in developing countries and possible strategies that can be adopted. Such strategies include training of personnel, provision of basic infrastructure and encouraging a wider participation of the public in making food laws and regulations within the countries socio‐cultural context. This will depend on identifying the problems hindering functional food control and installing appropriate strategies for the achievement of the objectives.

The article studies the peculiarities of formation and implementation of the state agrarian policy in modern Ukraine. The essence and concept of the state agrarian policy as a strategic course of state regulation of the agro-industrial complex are analyzed. The principles, directions and tools for implementing such a policy are considered. Particular attention is paid to the historical stages of development of agricultural policy in Ukraine - from the Soviet period to the present. The author analyzes the impact of market transformations and European integration processes on the evolution of state agricultural policy. The peculiarities of the formation of the modern model of state agricultural policy under the influence of global and national challenges - climate change, technological and social challenges, economic and geopolitical instability, Russian aggression against Ukraine - are investigated. The author formulates priority areas for improving state support for the agrarian sector of the economy under martial law, such as food security, infrastructure reconstruction, compensation for losses of producers, etc. The article also emphasizes that agrarian policy is an important type of state policy, as it concerns the strategic sector of the country's economy - the agro-industrial complex. The level of food security of the state directly depends on the efficiency of the formation and implementation of the state agricultural policy. The author emphasizes that the peculiarities of the formation and implementation of the State agricultural policy are influenced by both internal factors (historical context, sectoral specifics) and global challenges (climate change, technological development, international competition). This requires a comprehensive approach and consideration of national interests. The author analyzes the priority directions and instruments for the formation and implementation of the State agricultural policy in the context of modern challenges, in particular, Russian military aggression. It is emphasized that under such conditions the State agricultural policy should be flexible and adaptive, capable of rapid transformation, taking into account the needs of the industry. Thus, the article comprehensively analyzes the relationship between current global and national challenges and the specifics of the formation of the State agricultural policy, and identifies the priority areas for improving its strategies and instruments in the context of crises and conflicts.

The Earth is facing several environmental challenges on a global scale, often called “Grand Challenges” (https://www.wcrp-climate.org/grand-challenges/). The growing population (https://pdp.unfpa.org) needs fresh air, fresh water, food and energy, while at the same time climate is changing, many cities have challenges with air quality, biodiversity is decreasing and supplies of fresh water, food and energy are diminishing. Since these Grand Challenges are highly connected and interlinked, not only with each other but also with e.g. pandemics, they cannot be solved separately since potential solutions are tightly coupled with each other. However, the solutions may also include unexpected trade-offs. Therefore, integrated, comprehensive, big open data are required, together with a research and innovation framework in which a multidisciplinary research with critical mass of scientists utilising proper resources is connected to fast-tracked policy making and wide stakeholder community. This allows aiming for practical solutions based on deep scientific understanding. The global challenges are intimately linked to interactions and feedbacks between the different compartments of the planet Earth at different spatial and temporal scales. Fundamentally, the atmosphere is closely interconnected with various other parts of the Earth, including biosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and lithosphere as well as urban surfaces over a range of time and spatial scales varying from seconds to millennia. The sources, sinks and atmospheric concentrations of reactive trace gases, greenhouse gases and aerosol particles depend strongly on each other via physical, chemical and biological processes. Furthermore, both human actions and natural feedback mechanisms between the biosphere and atmosphere have substantial impacts on interactions between these atmospheric constituents and their influences on air quality and climate. To be able to meet global grand challenges we need comprehensive open data with proper metadata, along with open science. The large data sets from ground-base in situ observations, ground and satellite remote sensing and multiscale modelling need to be utilized seamlessly. Here we demonstrate the power of the SMEAR (Station for Measuring Earth surface – Atmosphere Relations) concept via several examples, such as detection of new particle formation and their subsequent growth, quantifying atmosphere-ecosystem feedback loops, combining comprehensive observations with emergency science and services, as well as studying the effect of COVID restrictions on different air quality and climate variables. Furthermore we show how from feedback loop analyses we develop CarbonSink+ concept. The future needs and the potential of comprehensive observations of the environment are also summarized.