Sustainable Food System Assessment

This book provides practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, highlighting conceptual and methodological convergence.

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence.

Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives.

The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs.

Autorentext

Alison Blay-Palmer is Director, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Damien Conaré is Secrétaire general of the Chaire Unesco Alimentations du monde, Montpellier SupAgro, France

Ken Meter is President of the Crossroads Resource Center, USA

Amanda Di Battista is a Project Coordinator at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, Canada

Carla Johnston is a PhD candidate, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Canada

Klappentext

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs.

Inhalt

1. Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from global practice Part I Conceptual Foundations 2. An Emerging User-led Participatory Methodology: Mapping Impact Pathways of Urban Food System Sustainability Innovations 3. Taking care of the land: an interdisciplinary approach to community-based food systems assessment in Kakisa, Northwest Territories, Canada 4. Assessing Food Systems as Complex Adaptive Systems: Conceptual Views and US Applications Part II Operationalizing Sustainable Food System Assessment 5. Data gaps and the politics of data: Generating appropriate data for food system assessment in Cape Town, South Africa 6. Action research as a tool to measure progress in sustainable food cities: enacting reflexive governance principles to develop indicators 7. Building consensus on sustainable food system assessment: applying a Delphi survey Part III Impacts and outcomes of sustainable food system assessment 8. Building the foundation to grow food policy: the development of a toolkit to measure advocacy capacity 9. Tools for Food System Change: City Region Food System Assessment, Planning and Policy 10. Assessing responsible food consumption in three Ecuadorian city regions 11. Integrating Upstream Determinants and Downstream Food Metrics 12. The View from Here: A Critical Consideration of Sustainable Food System Assessments