Food System Resilience: Toward a Joint Understanding and Implications for Policy
To support food security and equitable livelihoods in the face of shocks and stressors, policymakers need a common understanding of food systems resilience.
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Building food systems resilience is necessary to withstand shocks and stressors and maintain progress toward desired outcomes: food and nutrition security and equitable livelihoods for all in a healthy ecosystem. The purpose of this paper is to work toward a joint understanding of food systems resilience and its implications for policymaking.
The delivery of desired outcomes depends on the ability of food systems to anticipate, prevent, absorb and adapt to the impacts of shocks and stressors. Food systems resilience issues are far from simple to solve. The complex interdependencies within our food systems involve all aspects of life: natural, political, economic, social and cultural. It is, therefore, key to start from a common understanding between all stakeholders of what food systems resilience entails. From there, the policymakers and the humanitarian community can identify the steps that are needed to reform the governance of food systems to obtain and secure the outcomes that we need as a society.
A Joint Understanding of Food Systems Resilience
A food system includes all processes, actors and activities associated with food production and food utilization, from growing and harvesting to transporting and consuming. A food system also encompasses the wider food environment, from markets and trade to policies and innovation. The main challenge for food systems globally is to increase the supply of safe and healthy food in an inclusive and sustainable way. This is reflected in the desired outcomes of a well-functioning food system, which include:
- The production of sufficient, safe and healthy food for our growing world population.
- The equitable distribution of costs and profits.
- Being adaptable to climate change and using land and natural resources sustainably.
Food systems resilience can be understood as the capacity of food systems to deliver desired outcomes in the face of shocks and stressors. Following the concepts used by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, the authors distinguish five key capacities that together determine the ability of food systems to handle shocks and stressors: anticipation, prevention, absorption, adaptation and transformation:
- Anticipation: Capacity to manage risks and plan strategies to deal with shocks when they occur.
- Prevention: Preventive actions to mitigate the effects of expected shocks or stressors.
- Absorption: The ability to cope immediately with the effects of shocks and stressors.
- Adaptation: The capacity to adapt strategies and actions while maintaining stable functioning of the system.
- Transformation: The capacity to transform the entire system.
The ABDCs of Food System Resilience
To build resilient food systems, the authors identify four key properties:
- Ensuring Agency.
- Creating Buffers.
- Stimulating Creativity.
- Enhancing Diversity throughout the System.
Implementing these properties will enhance the capacity of food systems to anticipate, prevent, absorb and adapt to the impacts of shocks and stressors.