Global Food Security-Agriculture Policy Economics and Environment最新文献

It is widely accepted that current food systems are not on a trajectory for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by the end of the decade. Technological innovation will have a considerable role to play in different parts of the food system; many promising options exist or are in the pipeline, some of which may be highly disruptive to existing value chains. Scaling up the innovations required, at the same time as protecting those who may lose out in the short term, will require a strong enabling environment. Here we apply an existing framework of eight change accelerators to six case studies of historical agricultural innovation. We estimated the degree to which each accelerator had been addressed at some stage in the innovation process, as a measure of the gap between what was needed and what was achieved. For the innovations that are being taken to scale and widely utilized, these accelerator gaps are small. Uptake of other innovations is stalled, and for these we found large gaps for one or more of the eight accelerators. Impactful innovation processes address all eight change accelerators at some point, with different phasing of the accelerators depending on the nature of the technology and on the impact pathway being pursued. This simple framework, when used in combination with narratives of uptake based on theories of change and impact pathways, may provide an effective means of screening future innovation processes to help prioritize and guide investment that can lead to more resilient, sustainable and equitable food systems.

Estimates of food-insecure populations are biased upwards, lacking adjustment for global increases in sedentary behavior in recent decades. We construct a household model to account for sedentary choices during leisure and work time decisions. The model rationalizes increasing sedentary behavior from the household by accounting for increasing returns to cognitive human capital vs physical capital, alongside increased productivity of more sedentary activities both at work and at home. The household model informs an empirical model applied to our unique international pseudo-panel data on sitting time, proxy-ing for sedentarism. We econometrically estimate a transfer function linking sedentarism to widely available covariates and make out-of-sample predictions. It is applicable to most countries. The estimated sedentary time can be used to adjust the physical activity level reflected in the minimum dietary energy requirement used to determine a cutoff for food insecurity.

Iron (Fe) is an essential micronutrient for human nutrition and health, but its deficiency is prevalent worldwide. Wheat biofortification offers a potential strategy to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in humans. However, the effects of Fe fertilization on grain Fe concentration and yield of wheat remain inconsistent. A global meta-analysis of 107 publications including 171 records of grain Fe concentration and 378 records of yield was conducted to quantify the contribution of Fe fertilization to wheat biofortification. Overall, compared with no Fe addition, Fe application significantly increased grain Fe concentration by 20.5% and yield by 12.4%. Foliar and soil application of Fe fertilizer increased grain Fe concentration by 18.2% and 26.7%, and grain yield by 15.1% and 9.5%, respectively. Results showed that higher foliar Fe fertilizer rate (>0.1%) and multiple applications before the flowering stage had a stronger effect on grain Fe concentration than lower Fe fertilizer rate (<0.1%) and only one application after flowering stage. Under severe soil Fe deficiency conditions (DTPA-Fe < 6 mg kg⁻¹), the foliar application increased yield by 13.9%, more than the yield increase (4.0%) when soil DTPA-Fe was greater than 6 mg kg⁻¹. Soil application of Fe was more effective to improve yield and grain Fe of wheat grown on high pH soil with lower available Fe. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between the increase in the wheat grain yield and the increase in grain Fe concentration. In summary, our findings indicate that Fe fertilization can be managed in ways that simultaneously enhance grain nutritional quality and achieve high wheat yields.

The consumption of unhealthy and environmentally unsustainable diets is a major societal challenge because of its impacts on human health and the environment. The adoption of micronutrient-rich diets with relatively low pressure on natural resources is an important development target at the intersection between sustainability and public health goals. Pulses are known for being rich in proteins and micronutrients, while having several environmental benefits. It is still unclear to what extent improving the nutritional content of diets by boosting pulse consumption can address health concerns associated with micronutrient deficiency without exacerbating environmental impacts. Here we evaluate to what extent environmentally sustainable, healthy diets can be achieved by increasing pulse production, while reducing the areas cultivated with cereals. To that end, taking as case studies two low/middle income countries (i.e., Pakistan and Nigeria) with high prevalence of nutritional diseases among children and women, we study different crop replacement scenarios that can boost pulse supply and comply with the micronutrient requirements suggested by the EAT-Lancet Commission. We find that in Nigeria the recommended pulse intake requirement can be met by increasing the domestic production of pulses, while saving 27% of water consumption. Conversely, in Pakistan the recommended levels of pulse intake are barely met because of the limited area suitable for pulse production. Overall, the current low yields of pulses and the limited availability of land suitable for pulse production are the main constraints to their supply in these two countries.

Inequalities by gender and intersecting sources of social differentiation in access to resources, exercise of agency, and desirable outcomes persist in agri-food systems in low- and middle income countries. Despite decades of development and theoretical assessment efforts calling for multiscale approaches to addressing inequalities in agri-food systems, common approaches remain specific to a scale rather than holistic.

In this paper, we make the case that achieving lasting equality and empowerment in agri-food systems requires transformative change. This depends on fostering an enabling environment by relaxing ‘deeper’ – often interrelated – institutionalized constraints to equality and empowerment across multiple nested scales of the state, markets, communities, household and individuals.

Based on a review of recent literature focused on agri-food systems in low- and middle income countries, we present newly emerging thinking and a status update of key structural constraints to equality at different scales – rooted in policy and discriminatory, formal and informal, social and economic institutions, including norms. We give examples that show how structural constraints to equality at different nested scales are interdependent and mutually reinforcing; demonstrating the need for holistic approaches tackling constraints at multiple scales to foster transformative change in agri-food systems. We recommend designing holistic policy and development programs that combine strategies for relaxing constraints to equality and empowerment at multiple scales using inclusive processes of tailoring and prioritizing. To inform the design of such programs, we present recent evidence of effective or promising strategies for addressing structural constraints to equality that relate to policy, market systems, collectives and norms.

This study aimed to evaluate the alignment of the Canadian food supply to the recommended daily food intake. The annual supply data of 92 foods per Canadian resident from 1961 to 2019 was collected and evaluated. The adherence of the average total food supply (kg/capita/day) for the 58 years to the Canada Food Guide and the EAT-Lancet reference diet was assessed. A trend analysis of the food supply over the 58 years was also conducted. The environmental impact of the average food supply (kg/capita/year) was also estimated employing publicly available global averages of impact values for food crops. The predominant result was an insufficient daily per capita supply of nuts (−86 %), legumes (−71 %), vegetables (−5 %), and added oils (−12 %), yet an excessive supply of red meat (+1187 %), added sugar (+255%), dairy (+138%), roots and tubers (+342%), eggs (+164) %) and chicken (+162), as revealed in comparison to the EAT-Lancet reference diet. Compared to the Canada Food Guide, the supply of red and processed meat (among foods to decrease) was higher than nuts and legumes (suggested alternative protein sources) by 457%. Also, the per capita daily food supply yielded 34 kgCO₂ eq greenhouse gas emissions, 65. m² land use, 270 gPO4eq eutrophication potential, 99,601 L water scarcity, and 2517 L water withdrawals. Considering the obtained results, low consumption adherence could be associated with the non-alignment of the food supply to these guidelines. Conformity to the recommended dietary patterns is necessary and can potentially reduce the current environmental impacts by more than 50%. Therefore, implementing steps to ensure an alignment of the food supply to the dietary recommendations is worth pursuing in national efforts toward a sustainable food system.

AgriFoodTech start-ups are coming to be seen as relevant players in the debate around and reality of the transformation of food systems, especially in view of emerging or already-established novel technologies (such as Artifical Intelligence, Sensors, Precision Fermentation, Robotics, Nanotechnologies, Genomics) that constitute Agriculture 4.0 and Food 4.0. However, so far, there have only been limited studies of this phenomena, which are scattered across disciplines, with no comprehensive overview of the state of the art and outlook for future research. In this paper, we argue that AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems should receive more attention by researchers and policy makers as a relatively new, and potentially transformative, component of agrifood innovation systems, which adopt a narrative of offering a solution to the global challenges of sustainability and food security. To this end we review the extant literature and provide a brief overview of this emerging field of study, in which we sketch what constitutes an AgriFoodTech start-up, the start-up ecosystems from which they often emerge and show the potentials and pitfalls of the contribution of AgriFoodTech start-ups to food security and food systems transformation. In order to spur further research in this area, we outline four main lines for a research agenda: 1) the global geography of AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems; 2) the role of AgriFoodTech start-ups in different food system transformation pathways and resolving food security challenges; 3) the effect of AgriFoodTech start-ups on agrifood innovation, and; 4) the influence of public policies on AgriFoodTech start-up ecosystems.

Rural households in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico experienced a series of shocks beginning in 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, loss of income, an abrupt increase in food prices, hurricanes, a public safety crisis and political instability. Through household surveys in 10 territories in those countries, along with interviews and focus groups, we studied the association between the context created by those shocks, food security and households' coping strategies. The main finding is that the relative level of wealth, measured by households’ asset endowment, is the factor that most influences both food insecurity and the strategies households choose for coping with shocks.

Climate change affects every aspect of the food system, including all nodes along agri-food value chains from production to consumption, the food environments in which people live, and outcomes, such as diets and livelihoods. Men and women often have specific roles and responsibilities within food systems, yet structural inequalities (formal and informal) limit women's access to resources, services, and agency. These inequalities affect the ways in which men and women experience and are affected by climate change. In addition to gender, other social factors are at play, such as age, education, marital status, and health and economic conditions. To date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions do not adequately integrate gender. If climate-smart and climate-resilient interventions do not adequately take gender differences into account, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women's labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power. At the same time, women's contributions are critical to make food systems more resilient to the negative impacts of climate change, given their specialized knowledge, skills and roles in agri-food systems, within the household, at work and in their communities. Increasing the resilience of food systems requires going beyond addressing gendered vulnerabilities to climate change to create an enabling environment that supports gender equality and women's empowerment, by removing structural barriers and rigid gender norms, and building equal power dynamics, as part of a process of gender transformative change. For this to happen, more research is needed to prioritize structural barriers that need to be removed and to identify effective gender transformative approaches.

Agricultural Research Organisations (AROs) are being urgently called to provide solutions for agri-food system transformation. However, contrasting visions of how transformation should be achieved create difficult choices for AROs. This paper reviews existing transformation narratives to build four scenarios of future AROs: 1. Industry transition-oriented; 2. Technology mission-oriented; 3. The Community innovation-oriented; and 4. Facilitating transformative innovation-oriented. Their analysis uncovers possible risks and trade-offs, and suggests the need for new hybrid organisational forms that incorporate elements from across the scenarios. Besides, the paper highlights that given the broad industry, policy, and societal interests of AROs, decisions about transformation pathways cannot be made unilaterally and without broader discussion around the future shape and aims of innovation systems in which these organisations are embedded.