Towards local food systems: what do we know concerning facilitators & obstacles?
Editorial
Global population growth, increasing urbanization and climate change are placing enormous pressure on food systems worldwide (Nyström et al., 2019). As set by the Sustainable Development Goals, the equation we need to solve is ensuring consumer access to safe, nutritious food, improving the remuneration of farmers and food chain players, while preserving natural resources and mitigating climate change (UN General Assembly, 2015). To face this challenge, the need to transition towards more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems is clear.
To this end, many stakeholders see the reterritorialization of food systems as one of the solutions to launch (Altieri and Nicholls, 2020). The role that local food systems may play in this transition is increasingly drawing the attention of the general public, policy-makers and researchers, especially in high-income countries (De Schutter, 2017). Two recent crises – the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine – have indeed disrupted supply chains and highlighted the need for governments to consider their food sovereignty and take action to guarantee it.
Synthesizing 3 recent publications, the September issue of Equation Nutrition sheds light on the obstacles and levers to the reterritorialisation of food systems and the opportunities it presents.
The first article (Enthoven and Van den Broeck, 2021) reviewed two decades of research on local food systems to determine if the benefits associated to focal food systems are scientifically supported or not. This work concludes that the local food systems are not inherently positive and that their impact highly depends on the type of supply chain under assessment, with important differences across product types and countries. The authors also point out the need for further research on this subject.
The second article (Mundler & Boulianne 2022) examined the challenges and obstacles to the reterritorialisation of food production in the region of Quebec (Canada). This work shows that the local of food production in Quebec comes up against a number of organisational, socio-technical, cultural and cognitive obstacles, which leave little room for territorial planning and limit local products to remaining niche products.
The third article (Sanz Sanz, 2022) examined how the city of Avignon (France) took a step toward transition to local fresh food procurement for public schools. It describes the transformation of associated practices, focusing on the motivations of municipal staff. Alongside the role of public bodies and the importance of co-construction with local stakeholders, this work highlights the role of individuals in the success of public policies targeting sustainable food systems.
Esther SANZ SANZ is a food geographer. Her research mainly focuses on the spatial dimension of the territorialisation of food systems, with a particular emphasis on characterising the form and location of agriculture that can make a sustainable contribution to local supply, analysing the spatial structure of local supply chains for school catering and characterising the spatial organisation of physical food environments conducive to healthy and sustainable eating.