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Articles

• Food systems at risk
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The way food systems have evolved over past decades means that they now face major risks, which in turn threaten the future of food systems themselves. Food systems have seriously contributed to climate change, environmental destruction, overexploitation of natural resources and pollution of air, water and soils. Despite the global average improvement in calorie production and major development of the food and agricultural product markets, huge inequalities in food access and repartition of the added value have emerged, leading to new serious nutritional and social problems. Based on a review of the most recent scientific knowledge, this report emphasizes Low-Income and Lower Middle-Income countries where the population faces greater challenges than elsewhere. Different threats are adding up and there are few options to adapt or mitigate these combinations of risks. This is a call for all those - businesses, policy makers, consumers, funding agencies - who are engaged in food systems transformations to bear in mind their systemic aspects and their multiple outcomes and risks in order to be able to fashion more sustainable and equitable food systems.

  This report was prepared and coordinated by the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), and is a joint production with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO). The scientific report hereunder takes stock of the current and future risks and challenges as regards to food systems.

• Stratégies pour changer d’échelle. Le guide des entreprises de l’économie sociale et solidaire qui veulent maximiser leur impact social
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  À destination des dirigeant-e-s des structures d’utilité sociale et de leurs équipes, mais aussi des acteurs de l’accompagnement et du financement, cette nouvelle édition enrichie et mise à jour du guide « Stratégies pour changer d’échelle » vise à éclairer la notion de changement d’échelle et à en favoriser une compréhension partagée.

• Ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The relationship between the global food system and the worldwide rapid increase of obesity and related diseases is not yet well understood. A reason is that the full impact of industrialized food processing on dietary patterns, including the environments of eating and drinking, remains overlooked and underestimated. Many forms of food processing are beneficial. But what is identified and defined here as ultra-processing, a type of process that has become increasingly dominant, at first in high-income countries, and now in middle-income countries, creates attractive, hyper-palatable, cheap, ready-to-consume food products that are characteristically energy-dense, fatty, sugary or salty and generally obesogenic. In this study, the scale of change in purchase and sales of ultra-processed products is examined and the context and implications are discussed. Data come from 79 high- and middle-income countries, with special attention to Canada and Brazil. Results show that ultra-processed products dominate the food supplies of high-income countries, and that their consumption is now rapidly increasing in middle-income countries. It is proposed here that the main driving force now shaping the global food system is transnational food manufacturing, retailing and fast food service corporations whose businesses are based on very profitable, heavily promoted ultra-processed products, many in snack form.

• When food systems meet sustainability – Current narratives and implications for actions
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The concept of food system has gained prominence in recent years amongst both scholars and policy-makers. Experts from diverse disciplines and backgrounds have in particular discussed the nature and origin of the “unsustainability” of our modern food systems. These efforts tend, however, to be framed within distinctive disciplinary narratives. In this paper we propose to explore these narratives and to shed light on the explicit -or implicit- epistemological assumptions, mental models, and disciplinary paradigms that underpin those. The analysis indicates that different views and interpretations prevail amongst experts about the nature of the “crisis”, and consequently about the research and priorities needed to “fix” the problem. We then explore how sustainability is included in these different narratives and the link to the question of healthy diets. The analysis reveals that the concept of sustainability, although widely used by all the different communities of practice, remains poorly defined, and applied in different ways and usually based on a relatively narrow interpretation. In so doing we argue that current attempts to equate or subsume healthy diets within sustainability in the context of food system may be misleading and need to be challenged. We stress that trade-offs between different dimensions of food system sustainability are unavoidable and need to be navigated in an explicit manner when developing or implementing sustainable food system initiatives. Building on this overall analysis, a framework structured around several entry points including outcomes, core activities, trade-offs and feedbacks is then proposed, which allows to identify key elements necessary to support the transition toward sustainable food systems.

• Feeding the city : work and food culture of the Mumbai dabbawalas
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Every day in Mumbai 5,000 dabbawalas (literally translated as "those who carry boxes") distribute a staggering 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes to the city’s workers and students. Giving employment and status to thousands of largely illiterate villagers from Mumbai’s hinterland, this co-operative has been in operation since the late nineteenth century. It provides one of the most efficient delivery networks in the world : only one lunch in six million goes astray. Feeding the City is an ethnographic study of the fascinating inner workings of Mumbai’s dabbawalas. Cultural anthropologist Sara Roncaglia explains how they cater to the various dietary requirements of a diverse and increasingly global city, where the preparation and consumption of food is pervaded with religious and cultural significance. Developing the idea of "gastrosemantics" – a language with which to discuss the broader implications of cooking and eating – Roncaglia’s study helps us to rethink our relationship to food at a local and global level.

• Malaysian Food Barometer (MFB) : a study of the impact of compressed modernisation on food habits
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The Malaysian society is undergoing rapid modernisation. The
  emerging middle class in Malaysia is influencing the lifestyles and traditional food habits of the main three ethnics (i.e. Malays, Chinese, and Indians). This article studied the impact of compressed modernisation on food in a multicultural context. The Malaysian Food Barometer (MFB), published in the year 2014, focuses on the socio-cultural determinants of food habits in Malaysia.

• La situation mondiale de l’alimentation et de l’agriculture 2019. Aller plus loin dans la réduction des pertes et gaspillages de denrées alimentaires
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Le présent rapport fournit de nouvelles estimations sur le pourcentage des denrées alimentaires qui sont perdues au niveau mondial, depuis le stade de la production jusqu’à la vente au détail. Il constate par ailleurs une grande hétérogénéité dans les estimations relatives aux pertes alimentaires, souvent pour un même produit ou un même stade de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Le fait de pouvoir déterminer et comprendre clairement les points critiques où se produisent les pertes dans les différentes chaînes d’approvisionnement – là où le potentiel de réduction des pertes alimentaires est élevé – est une condition essentielle si l’on veut prendre des mesures adéquates. Le rapport fournit des principes directeurs susceptibles de guider les interventions de réduction des pertes et gaspillages alimentaires en fonction des résultats escomptés, que ce soit sur le plan de l’efficacité économique, de la sécurité alimentaire, de la nutrition ou de la durabilité environnementale.

• La lutte contre la précarité alimentaire - Evolution du soutien public à une politique sociale, agricole et de santé publique
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Le rapport formule des recommandations permettant de simplifier et de recentrer l’intervention des fonds européens, mais aussi de déployer une politique favorisant l’achat local et les circuits courts. Il préconise, dans le cadre d’un financement globalement préservé, la création d’un Fonds pluriannuel national en complément des fonds européens, suivant trois scénarios gradués.

• Should we go “home” to eat ? : toward a reflexive politics of localism
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  “Coming home to eat” [Nabhan, 2002. Coming Home to Eat : The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Norton, New York] has become a clarion call among alternative food movement activists. Most food activist discourse makes a strong connection between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. Much of the US academic literature on food systems echoes food activist rhetoric about alternative food systems as built on alternative social norms. New ways of thinking, the ethic of care, desire, realization, and vision become the explanatory factors in the creation of alternative food systems. In these norm-based explanations, the “Local” becomes the context in which this type of action works. In the European food system literature about local “value chains” and alternative food networks, localism becomes a way to maintain rural livelihoods. In both the US and European literatures on localism, the global becomes the universal logic of capitalism and the local the point of resistance to this global logic, a place where “embeddedness” can and does happen. Nevertheless, as other literatures outside of food studies show, the local is often a site of inequality and hegemonic domination. However, rather than declaim the “radical particularism” of localism, it is more productive to question an “unreflexive localism” and to forge localist alliances that pay attention to equality and social justice. The paper explores what that kind of localist politics might look like.

• La transition en actions. Des initiatives inspirantes pour une agriculture et une alimentation plus durables
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Ce document sur la Transition en actions présente des initiatives pour inspirer ceux qui souhaitent accélérer la transition sur leurs territoires. Les solutions présentées dans cet ouvrage sont des illustrations concrètes de démarches déjà mises en œuvre en France et en Espagne qui sont soutenus par la Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso.