Sustainable Food Chains
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2013) | Viewed by 108996
Special Issue Editor
2. Foodscapes Research Group, Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam School of Arts, Waterlooplein 213, 1011 PG Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Interests: rural development; agri-food studies; alternative food networks; urban food provisioning; food planning; city-region food systems; foodscape studies and design; urban-rural linkages
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Our current food system is facing major sustainability challenges. About 65% of the daily water consumption is used for the production and processing of food. The Western style diet requires between 7 and 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy, when looking at energy use in the entire food chain. Both water and fossil fuel are likely to become scarce, in particular in light of the expected growth of the world population from the current 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Furthermore, the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has contributed to environmental pollution and degradation. The focus on high yielding plant varieties and animal breeds has caused massive genetic erosion, due to the disappearance of many diverse populations of crops and animals maintained by farmers and adapted to local circumstances. In addition, large areas of rainforest, and concomitantly flora and fauna species, are disappearing as more land is needed for the production of animal feed and biofuels. Finally our food system is characterized by diet-related ill-health: over 1 billion people are overweight and many suffer from obesity-related diseases while also more than 1 billion people suffer from malnutrition and hunger. Lack of resources, environmental degradation and diet-related ill-health are just a few of the problems inherent to our food system. Other issues of concern are for instance food waste, climate change, soil degradation, competition over land use and large social inequalities in access to food.
Taking into account the challenge of feeding 2 billion more people by 2050, the current system of food provisioning seems to be heading for a catastrophe. This may indeed be true if we stick to business as usual or keep focussing on single challenges, as solutions for one problem may well lead to a worsening of other issues. Hence, the aforementioned challenges cannot be addressed as single issues, but need to be dealt with as an interrelated and mutually reinforcing set of challenges. Despite the gloomy picture, there is also reason to be hopeful: across the globe there are many examples emerging (initiated by farmers, consumers, retailers, food industries and/or NGOs) that (attempt to) address (several of) the aforementioned challenges.
This special issue would like to explore those solutions for more sustainable food supply chains and welcomes conceptual and theoretical contributions as well as original research papers on the subject. We are especially interested in papers of an integrative nature, exploring and examining the interrelated ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainable food provisioning. Finally this special issue seeks a balanced contribution of papers from the global North and South.
Prof. Dr. Han Wiskerke
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- environmental sustainability
- economic sustainability
- socio-cultural sustainability
- food chain
- agriculture
- food consumption
- resource use efficiency
- world population growth
- diet
- global food chains
- local food networks
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