Quantifying the foodshed: a systematic review of urban food flow and local food self-sufficiency research

Abstract

Cities are net consumers of food from local and global hinterlands. Urban foodshed analysis is a quantitative approach for examining links between urban consumers and rural agricultural production by mapping food flow networks or estimating the potential for local food self-sufficiency (LFS). However, at present, the lack of a coherent methodological framework and research agenda limits the potential to compare different cities and regions as well as to cumulate knowledge. We conduct a review of 42 peer-reviewed publications on foodsheds (identified from a subset of 829 publications) from 1979 to 2019 that quantify LFS, food supply, or food flows on the urban or regional scale. We define and characterize these studies into three main foodshed types: (1) agricultural capacity, which estimate LFS potential or local foodshed size required to meet food demands; (2) food flow, which trace food movements and embodied resources or emissions; and (3) hybrid, which combine both approaches and study dynamics between imports, exports, and LFS. LFS capacity studies are the most common type but the majority of cases we found in the literature were from cities or regions in the Global North with underrepresentation of rapidly urbanizing regions of the Global South. We use a synthetic framework with ten criteria to further classify foodshed studies, which illustrates the challenges of quantitatively comparing results across studies with different methodologies. Core research priorities from our review include the need to explore the interplay between LFS capacity and interregional food trade (both imports and exports) for foodsheds. Hybrid methodologies are particularly relevant to examining such dependency relationships in food systems by incorporating food flows into LFS capacity assessment. Foodshed analysis can inform policy related to multiple components of sustainable food systems, including navigating the social and environmental benefits and tradeoffs of sourcing food locally, regionally, and globally.

The sustainability of “local” food: a review for policy-makers

“…Clearly, local food systems may or may not be more or less food self-sufficient, depending on their production capacity, but in most countries today hardly ever autarkic. The spatial aspect of where food comes from is covered by the concept of foodsheds, which determines “the geographic area from which a population derives its food supply” (Peters et al, 2009 ; Schreiber et al, 2021 ), and which is in general larger than the local area where a population lives. While there is an obvious overlap of the concepts and a certain definitional fuzziness also in the literature, and while we therefore also surveyed literature covering all these concepts, in the following, we try to distinguish between the terms and to use them in accordance with the definitions provided here.…”

Foodshed, Agricultural Diversification and Self-Sufficiency Assessment: Beyond the Isotropic Circle Foodshed—A Case Study from Avignon (France)

“…Specifically, quantitative foodshed approaches can assess the capacity or flows, or both approaches at the same time [28]. In the capacity assessments, to which the majority of the studies belong, the theoretical food land footprint and the potential self-sufficiency are evaluated by considering the population, current dietary patterns, farmland available, land use cover, and regional yields (e.g., the Metropolitan Foodshed and Self-sufficiency Scenario: MFSS [29]).…”

“…The second type of foodshed approaches, the ones assessing the flows [22,23,35], are especially valuable to the study of the distribution networks, as they place consumers and producers. Finally, the hybrid approaches combine the assessments of the capacity and the flows (e.g., [21,36,37]) and, thus, are aimed at comparing the potential food self-sufficiency with the current levels; therefore, they assess the dependencies on foreign food sources, the vulnerabilities of the food system, and the agricultural environmental impacts of the food system's relocalization [28]. The vast majority of the foodshed assessments are developed at a regional level, although some global-scale studies and models have recently appeared (e.g., [38,39]).…”

“…However, so far, the majority of regional foodshed assessments have been developed in an isotropic way, by considering administrative boundaries and biophysical constraints in a second step (notably, for the availability of monitoring data in high-density and identical quality, e.g., population data). Indeed, foodsheds are usually defined by a radius around the city (i.e., centroid), and are therefore represented as circles [28][29][30]38]. Accordingly, the foodshed concept represented by just one circle around the city must be reconsidered in order to consider the landscape heterogeneity, and furthermore, to include societal demands.…”

Spatial distribution and driving factors determining local food and feed self‐sufficiency in the eastern regions of China

“…In contrast, long‐distance domestic transportation can cause a certain loss due to inadequate preservation techniques or other reasons (Sasaki et al, 2021) and can cause adverse environmental effects (Kriewald et al, 2019; Pradhan et al, 2020). For policymaking, analysis of local‐level food self‐sufficiency helps to better understand its dependence on and vulnerability to the food system (Dubbeling et al, 2017) and helps to weigh the benefits and limitations of local versus global food sourcing through comparative studies of agricultural capacity and food flows (Schreiber et al, 2021). To the best of our knowledge, no studies have addressed food self‐sufficiency below the provincial level in China, and few studies have addressed local‐level food self‐sufficiency in other countries (Pradhan et al, 2014).…”