Assessing Sustainable Food and Nutrition Security of the EU Food System—An Integrated Approach

Abstract

Steering the EU food system towards a sustainability transformation requires a vast and actionable knowledge base available to a range of public and private actors. Few have captured this complexity by assessing food systems from a multi-dimensional and multi-level perspective, which would include (1) nutrition and diet, environmental and economic outcomes together with social equity dimensions and (2) system interactions across country, EU and global scales. This paper addresses this gap in food systems research and science communication by providing an integrated analytical approach and new ways to communicate this complexity outside science. Based on a transdisciplinary science approach with continuous stakeholder input, the EU Horizon2020 project 'Metrics, Models and Foresight for European SUStainable Food And Nutrition Security' (SUSFANS) developed a five-step process: Creating a participatory space; designing a conceptual framework of the EU food system; developing food system performance metrics; designing a modelling toolbox and developing a visualization tool. The Sustainable Food and Nutrition-Visualizer, designed to communicate complex policy change-impacts and trade-off questions, enables an informed debate about trade-offs associated with options for change among food system actors as well as in the policy making arena. The discussion highlights points for further research related to indicator development, reach of assessment models, participatory processes and obstacles in science communication.

Supporting food systems transformation: The what, why, who, where and how of mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems

“…MAIS analysts, drawing on generic innovation system theories, can utilize some of the existing innovation system analysis frameworks such as functional-structural analysis, innovation policy mix analysis, or social network analysis to analyse MAIS ( Hermans et al, 2019 ; Lamprinopoulou et al, 2014 ; Spielman et al, 2011 ; Wieczorek and Hekkert, 2012 ; Schut et al, 2015 ). This can be combined with agricultural and food systems assessment and modelling approaches focusing for example on resilience ( Meuwissen et al, 2019 ; Tittonell, 2020 ), and drawing on recent frameworks to analyse different aspects of food systems transformation ( Gaitán-Cremaschi et al, 2019 ; Hebinck et al, 2018 ; Kanter et al, 2015 ; Termeer et al, 2018 ; Zurek et al, 2018 ). Such analysis may make use of data science or citizen science driven approaches bringing together large datasets of biophysical and socioeconomic data to track mission evolution ( Beza et al, 2017 ; Fielke et al, 2020 ; Guo et al, 2020 ; Klerkx et al, 2019 ; Sauermann et al, 2020 ).…”

Food System Outcomes: An Overview and the Contribution to Food Systems Transformation

“…Another strand of literature offers concrete metrics for assessing the FSs sustainability performance. For instance, metrics for assessing sustainable FNS are proposed, with the holistic character of the offered approach qualifying it for assessments of the entire FS (Gustafson et al, 2016;Zurek et al, 2018). While the proposed assessment metrics from Gustafson et al (2016) seem to build upon social, ecological and food security dimensions, the integrated approach offered by Zurek et al (2018) adds the economic pillar.…”

“…The latter assessment approach proposes a sustainable FNS visualizer. The tool is based on people, planet and profit approach incorporating equitable conditions, balanced and sufficient diets, reduced environmental impacts and competitiveness of the agri-food business (Zurek et al, 2018). Both assessment approaches explicitly incorporate social well-being and equity as part of the assessment and have the potential of revealing synergies and trade-offs among potential interventions.…”

Demand-Side Food Policies for Public and Planetary Health

“…Addressing GHGE and not addressing health-related indicators may lead to a narrow conceptualization of sustainable diets. Besides nutrition/health and environmental (climate, pollution, biodiversity, and scarce resources), economic, ethical, and equity aspects also need to be looked at to comprehensively assess sustainability [112,113]. Multiple indicators and diverse sets of methodologies to assess sustainability might help to address the inherent complexity of sustainability and may help guide policy-making [102,113].…”