Search results for "Food system"

Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Structure, Boundaries, and Dynamics

2019

Recognizing the broader dimensions of entrepreneurial and innovation activities, holistic and inclusive networked approaches pave the way to co-creation activities that are essential for achieving sustainability in food systems. Recent studies have started to deepen what are the critical enablers for creating thriving entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems. Networks that include firms, institutions, and several other relevant stakeholders in knowledge spillovers enable to produce more social and economic value through co-creation processes. However, due to the unique complexity within ecosystems, there is no standardized framework or strategy to develop entrepreneurial or innovation ecos…

Towards more sustainable food systems. Addressing food waste at school canteens

2018

Food Waste is a global significant issue for ethical, environmental and economic reasons, while its management is difficult due to its frequent low visibility. Individual choices and preferences are closely related to the generation of food waste although likely to be modified through education and awareness campaigns. In particular, school canteens are big generators of food waste and, at the same time, provide a great opportunity to improve habits regarding nutrition and education on sustainability, thus impacting the future of the food system. The end purpose of this research is identifying the causes of food waste and unveiling best practices towards its reduction. To achieve this goal,…

Agroecology and Strategies for Climate Change

2012

 ; Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and biodiversity depletion.Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms of processes that occur fro…

Transfer of Water and Volatiles at Interfaces: Application to Complex Food Systems

2013

International audience; During processing, storage and consumption, mass transfer of various small molecules (water, gases, flavour compounds or other solutes) occurs between the different phases in complex food products, or between complex food and its surroundings. These mass transfers can lead to physical or chemical changes and thus induce food quality modifications.The objective of this paper is to better understand the behaviour of small molecules at the interfaces, especially in model heterogeneous food systems. Different techniques have been designed to characterize mass transfers of these small molecules and their effects on food properties. In particular, techniques such as rotati…

Developing a matrix framework for protein transition towards more sustainable diets

2021

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose a matrix framework to understand the interdependencies of domains and scales of protein transition towards diets based on plants and alternative sources of proteins.Design/methodology/approachThe abductive research approach is used in building the framework, and the proposed framework is illustrated using the regional food system in Central Finland as an example. Focus groups and interviews were used to collect qualitative data from 28 respondents.FindingsThis study provides a framework for protein transition, with five domains and five scale levels. Interactions between public and private governance activities at different scales, domains and …

What is (not) the point of just transition in food systems?

2022

Food systems are confronted with a low-carbon transition challenge. The need for significant emission reductions in industrial food systems implies significant systemic transformations in food production, processing, and consumption. The wide-reaching impacts of such transformations have evoked public discussion and academic research on just transition in food systems. The undisputable legitimacy of the idea of just transition makes it an attractive concept for all food system actors who might be affected by low-carbon transition policies in direct and indirect ways. Some of the claims that are being made are warranted claims for justice, some merely defend the achieved privileges and benef…

Justice in transitions: Widening considerations of justice in dietary transition

2021

Just transition is gaining increasing attention. The need to consider social justice in sustainability transitions is finally being acknowledged. Research on this issue has, to date, mainly concentrated on energy systems. In this paper, we examine how the elaboration of dietary transition widens the spectrum of justice questions in sustainability transitions research. We explicate the arising normative questions along the dimensions of distributive, procedural and recognitive justice; widening the considerations further to restorative and cosmopolitan justice. Dietary transition widens the justice considerations to basic needs, food security and nutrition. By doing so, it evokes socio-cultu…

PUBLIC POLICY PLANNING TO ENHANCE THE RESILIENCE OF SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS TO CLIMATE CHANGE: OPERATIONALIZING RESILIENCE CONCEPTS FROM A DYNAMIC P…

This study outlines a system dynamic based approach to the planning for resilience in food systems to climate change. The processes described and the insights gained are novel in the literature since they focus on describing operational aspects of resilience that can be generalized to multiple contexts and problems. On the one hand, the process described offers an aid for researchers and practitioners operationalizing resilience in public sector settings. Simultaneously, the insights gained from multiple stakeholder discussions and modelling work open new questions regarding the general mechanisms driving resilience in food systems. Climate change is threatening the extent to which social, …

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

2019

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions…

Justice in Finnish Food Policies

2023

Abstract The need to create more sustainable food systems calls for careful attention to justice in making the transition. However, to achieve a just transition and create policies to support the goal of developing sustainable food systems, we need more knowledge of the ways current policies tackle justice. This knowledge can reveal blind spots and development needs and increase the transparency of potentially conflicting goals, which is essential for designing just transition policies. From the normative perspective of food justice, a food system should produce three principal outcomes: food security and nutrition, livelihoods and fair income, and environmental sustainability. In this arti…