Introduction to the Symposium on American Food Resilience

Abstract

The resilience of the American food supply-the ability of the food system to withstand shocks or stresses that could lead to disruption or collapse-is a matter of genuine concern. While all seems well with supermarkets stocked to the brim, changes in the food system and our environment during recent decades have created risks that are no longer hypothetical possibilities. They are with us now. The 27 articles in the Symposium on American Food Resilience explore the vulnerability and resilience of food production and distribution from a diversity of perspectives. Four central questions provide a framework for the exploration:• What are the main lines of vulnerability?• What are leverage points for reducing the risks and improving the capacity to deal with breakdowns if they occur?• What is already being done by government, civil society, and the private sector to reduce the risks?• What can scientists, teachers, and other environmental and food system professionals do through research, education, community action, or other means to make the food system and food supply more resilient? Some of the articles use case studies that highlight various kinds of disturbances: influenza pandemic, war, nuclearreactor catastrophe, natural disasters (e.g., floods and earthquakes), and crop failure due to drought or other climatic perturbations. Lessons for improving resilience are drawn from the experiences. Other articles examine the significance of globalization, food system consolidation, diversity, and food storage; the interplay of efficiency, adaptive capacity, sustainability, and resilience; the potential and limitations of local or regional food systems to compensate for shortcomings in the mainstream food system; organizational learning and networking, integrating local food systems with the mainstream, channeling promising innovations into the mainstream; and success stories and the lessons they offer. The articles afford a wealth of material that can be mined by researchers, teachers, practitioners, and policy makers for application to their own circumstances.

A system dynamics approach for examining mechanisms and pathways of food supply vulnerability

“…Based on Marten's (2015, this issue) definition of vulnerability above, we frame the problem of food supply vulnerability as the concern that the food system might be subjected to shocks or stressors that would cause a normally stable food supply to catastrophically or permanently decrease from its normal or desired level. In this section we start by representing Marten's vulnerability definition graphically, then work outward from the problem definition to build the structure likely to be generating the problematic trends.…”

“…In this paper, we use system dynamics concepts and diagramming tools to address Marten's (2015, this issue:PAGE) framing questions about food system vulnerability in the kinds of modern industrialized food systems found in high income countries such as the U.S. Defining food system resilience as the ability of the food system to withstand disturbances that could lead to disruption of the food supply, he asked: What are the main lines of vulnerability in the food system?…”

Resiliencia, infancia y nutrición: propuesta de indicadores para medición en niños y adolescentes

“…La resiliencia alimentaria ha sido estudiada en varios países, a partir de situaciones como las emergencias alimentarias, los huracanes, las pandemias de salud o las crisis económicas o políticas, que ocasionan caídas en la importación, la producción o el abastecimiento alimentario (14). Es así como surge el término de resiliencia alimentaria en el contexto de los países y comunidades.…”

Can Organic Farming Reduce Vulnerabilities and Enhance the Resilience of the European Food System? A Critical Assessment Using System Dynamics Structural Thinking Tools

“…Europeans take their food and nutrition security (FNS) for granted and rely on a food system in which most of the food is produced by conventional farmers subsidized from the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) [1]. Over the last decades this system, hugely depending on public support, has achieved tremendous improvements in productivity [2].…”

“…As a result, nowadays more food is supplied than demanded at historically low prices. This allows European consumers to spend only a small percentage of their household disposable income on food [1,3].…”