The Past and the Present of Food Sustainability and Resilience of Local Food Production: 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue contributes to the topic/debate surrounding the interlinkages between past and present food production systems, with a special focus on how this impacts food sustainability and the resilience of local food production. It is of interest to see how current food production systems are related to pre-colonial ones, what the factors of reduction or increase in food diversity and sustainability are, and what the impacts of these changes on wellbeing and health, as well as economic and social relations such as labor and gender, are. Thus, contributions from different disciplines such as social anthropology, public health, and epidemiology are welcome. We are interested in seeing how local ecological knowledge of food production systems in contemporary situations can still be enhanced and how different local actors engage in such situations.

We argue that while in the beginning of colonialization, new foods increased diversity, this changes with urban and market-oriented agro-industrial food production, which lowers diversity. Furthermore, these changes in dietary pattern are reflected in nutritional outcomes and are paralleled by major changes in health status that can be both positive and negative. Strategies to upkeep diversity and lower vulnerability have been created through institutional transformations from common property to private and state property, as well as through the open access of natural resources. This undermines the seasonal and cyclical production and accessibility of food in rural areas and might also negatively affect the resilience and sustainability of local food production, especially under situations of local political, economic, and climate crises.

In this second volume, we focus more on social–anthropological, new institutionalist, political ecology, and food systems theory perspectives, which focus on regulatory aspects, relative prices, and power relations, as well as discourse, narratives, and ideologies. We call for contributions analyzing changes in institutions for natural resources (such as agricultural land, water, wildlife, fish, plants, non-timber forest and veldt products, etc.) that provide the basis of local food production systems and that explore their impact on food sustainability. We also welcome contributions that look at local perceptions and local traditional ecological knowledge, as well as at changes in food security policies and their impacts on local food sustainability. This relates to contributions that show how agro-industrial transformation and agricultural investments (privatization) change local food production systems and food practices and preferences, as well as other local dynamics such as power relations (gender, inter-ethnic relations, etc.).

Furthermore, we look for contributions on food insecurity, shifts in food availability, and access that are linked to different food systems and how local people use/activate/revitalize local traditional knowledge on foods/food production variation/conservation/storage (hunger foods, etc.) or invent/introduce new practices to cope with this situation and upkeep resilience and fight malnutrition.

Over the past two decades, the pace of dietary change appears to have accelerated in different regions of the world, such as a shift in the consumption of basic staples toward more diversified diets. Today, a marked worldwide shift from traditional food regimes to a diet that is high in fat, sugar, processed foods, and low in fiber, with corresponding increases in degenerative diseases, is evident. From an epidemiological perspective, diet and nutritional status have undergone shifts in the broad patterns of food use, which has resulted in changes in stature, body composition, and patterns of disease. Thus, we welcome contributions on how changes in food consumption pattern and preferences have contributed to health status, as food insecurity is associated with poorer health profiles, including overweight and obesity, which are increasingly recognized as forms of malnutrition.

Dr. Désirée Gmür
Prof. Dr. Tobias Haller
Guest Editors

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• food sustainability
• food resilience
• food systems
• food security
• food consumption
• food security state policies
• global dynamics of food production
• malnutrition
• natural resource management systems and food security
• institutional changes and food sustainability
• landscape evolution
• agro-industrial transformations
• sustainable diets
• local foods
• archaeology of food archaeobotany

• The Past and the Present of Food Sustainability and Resilience of Local Food Production in Land (6 articles)