The contradictions between food poverty affecting a large section of the global population and the everyday wastage of food, particularly in high income countries, have raised significant academic and public attention. All actors in the food chain have a role to play in food waste prevention and reduction, including farmers, food manufacturers and processors, caterers and retailers and ultimately consumers. Food surplus redistribution is considered by many as a partial solution to (...) class='Hi'>food waste reduction and food poverty mitigation, while others criticize charitable initiatives as inadequate responses, that inhibit governments from responsibly protecting the citizens right to food. This paper frames food assistance as “hybrid systems”, situating at the intersection of territorial food, public welfare and third sector voluntary systems. Based on available literature and reflections on previous research examining food banks in Italy, we develop a system dynamics conceptual mapping. The aim is to model a set of relations and dynamic mechanisms associated with variables relevant to food waste generation, food recovery for social purposes and food poverty alleviation. The analysis of feedback interactions highlights the vulnerabilities of food assistance systems that occur when addressing food poverty by reducing food surplus. In summary, as the awareness on food poverty and food surplus arises, incentives to food recovery and redistribution strengthen the role of food assistance actors, increasing their exposure to drivers of change, such as retailers’ standards for food surplus prevention. This paper contributes to the current academic debate on charitable food assistance, with insights for policy makers and other systems’ actors. (shrink)

We offer an overview of both the empirical literature on food waste and philosophical work on the concept of waste. We use this background to argue that an overemphasis on the reduction of individual food waste is misleading at best, and pernicious at worst, in combatting the substantial problems that global food waste creates. Rather, we argue that civic engagement and political activism aimed at institutional reform will be essential in addressing these (...) problems. (shrink)

Food charity in the United States has grown into a critical appendage of agro-food supply chains. In 2016, 4.5 billion pounds of food waste was diverted through a network of 200 regional food banks, a fivefold increase in just 20 years. Recent global trade disruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic have further reinforced this trend. Economic geographers studying charitable food networks argue that its infrastructure and moral substructure serve to revalue food waste (...) and surplus labor in the capitalist food system. The political–legal framework undergirding this revaluation process however is still poorly understood. Drawing on a 6-year institutional ethnography of the food banking economy in West Virginia, this paper takes a supply-side approach to examine the material and moral values driving the expansion of food waste recovery as hunger relief. Empirically, it focuses on the laws, contracts and fiscal incentives regulating charitable food procurement at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Feeding America. The assemblage of government agencies, private businesses and non-profit organizations enrolled into this gift economy at different scales I argue, serves to enclose food waste into a public–private governance structure that regulates food surpluses and ensures these will not disrupt the scarcity logics driving profitability along primary food circuits. (shrink)

The magnitude of the global food waste problem is staggering, yet it receives little mainstream attention. We waste nearly half of all food produced—more than one billion tons annually—yet nearly one billion global citizens are hungry. Our values are out of balance; we need to properly value our food. Urgent change is needed, beginning with heightened awareness and a sense of responsibility to people and planet. Feeding nine billion people by 2050 is a (...) tremendous challenge, but also a tremendous opportunity to develop new levels of innovation and collaboration to eradicate hunger, improve the environment for future generations, and create a more unified, secure world. A new, durable, multifaceted approach to reducing food waste is needed in the form of a global network. This global network should be anchored by a sense of shared responsibility among consumers, businesses, governments, and global institutions to optimize resources in the quest to provide for nine billion people by 2050. (shrink)

A prime example of metaphor use is to denigrate marginalized populations as a means of supporting adverse social policies against group members. This article describes the use of organism, object, natural catastrophe/war and animal metaphors in the immigration restriction debate of the early 1900s. In addition to describing linguistic metaphors that served to dehumanize immigrants or portray them as a threat to social functioning, more global conceptual metaphors will also be discussed.

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and (...) the relationships among food, evolution, and human history. (shrink)

This chapter surveys the most philosophically pressing issues associated with food and climate change. It highlights the main scholarly accomplishments and suggests avenues for further research, drawing from a cross-disciplinary body of literature as well as from recent scholarship in philosophy of food. The discussion follows two intertwined yet distinct directions of investigation: how climate change impacts food; and how the production, distribution, and consumption of food affect climate patterns. More specifically, section “Introduction” offers an introduction (...) to the study of food and climate change in a philosophical perspective; section “Climate Change and the Future of Food: Three Frameworks” showcases three intuitive frameworks that form the backdrops of current discourses about the future of food in light of climate change; section “The Impact of Climate Change on Food: a Philosophical Analysis” discusses the influence of climate change on humans through three case studies: geographical indications, global hunger, and food biodiversity finally, section “The Impact of Food on Climate Change: a Philosophical Analysis” deals with the influence of our practices of food production and consumption on climate change by looking at three case studies: food waste, sustainable diets, and food sovereignty. (shrink)

Waste is a major global environmental issue that assembles socio-cultural and bio-geological processes in complex indeterminate relationships. Drawing on three case studies, this article explores the shifting environmental politics concerned with waste’s material, economic, political, and cultural ‘management’. The Canadian case studies – determining a new waste management technology in a mid-sized city in central Ontario, an open dump in a remote Nunavut community, and an abandoned gold mine in the Northwest Territories – suggest waste (...) occasions particular material and political mobilizations. Landfill leachate, colonialism, disinterested publics, freezing arsenic, global corporate investments, country food, land claims, neoliberal governance, permafrost, ravens, and a host of other socio-material forces both empower and thwart ‘management’ politics. Through these case studies, this article explores Isabelle Stengers’s assertion that participating citizenship is an ‘Empty Great Idea’, and a provocation to consider the contexts in which waste may generate acquiescent or objecting publics. (shrink)

Our case study draws on emerging ideas of degrowth, showing how degrowth values and strategies may emerge where cities rely heavily on global food systems, and contributes to literature on food for degrowth in local contexts. Degrowth rejects the imperative of economic growth as a primary indicator of social wellness. A holistic understanding of wellness prescribes radical societal transformation, downscaling and decreasing consumption, strengthening community relationships and promoting resilience. Building on Bloemmen et al. (2015), we apply a (...) holistic model of degrowth in a small-scale context, embedded within larger capitalist economies, to examine degrowth opportunities and constraints in Edmonton, Canada. Emergent themes in interviews reveal opportunities and challenges for local food for degrowth, by altering local food supplies, reducing food waste and decreasing consumption. We explore the role of social relationships in food justice work, increasing food knowledge, and building capacity for local, sustainable food production. (shrink)

The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science has a long history of delivering conferences addressing topics of interest in the field of science and religion. The following papers from the 2013 summer conference on “The Scientific, Spiritual, and Moral Challenges in Solving the World Food Crisis” are, in keeping with the eclectic nature of these conferences, very different in content and approach. Such differences underline the challenges of synergistically combining scientific and religious insights to increase understanding of (...) global problems and their possible solutions. This in turn reflects deeper questions about the purpose and nature of the science/religion dialogue. These papers suggest various ways in which the two perspectives can be combined in the pursuit of building better understandings of food-related issues, as well as highlighting difficulties and limitations which need to be addressed if the fruits of such dialogue are to make a wider impact. As such they serve as useful pointers for how this type of science/religion interaction might be further developed and deployed. (shrink)

This study focuses on food waste generated by households in four Nordic countries: Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Based on existing literature we present comparable data on amounts and monetary value of food waste; explanations for food waste at household level; a number of public and private initiatives at national levels aiming to reduce food waste; and a discussion of ethical issues related to food waste with a focus on possible (...) contributions from ecocentric ethics. We argue that reduction of food waste at household level, which has an impact on issues such as climate change and unjust distribution of food resources, needs to be based on an appreciative and relational understanding of nature and food and not only on economic and moralizing arguments. This is done by drawing on an ecocentric perspective where food is seen as one of the areas where new narratives need to be developed to establish cultural habits replacing a focus on affluence and individual choice with a focus on participatory embeddedness in a more-than-human lifeworld. (shrink)

California is a landmark setting for studying produce recovery efforts and policy implications because of its global relevance in agricultural production, its complex network of food recovery organizations, and its environmental and public health regulations. Through a series of focus groups with organizations involved in produce recovery (gleaning organizations) and emergency food operations (food banks, food pantries), this study aimed to deepen our understanding of the current produce recovery system and determine the major challenges and (...) opportunities related to the produce recovery system. Operational and systematic barriers to produce recovery were highlighted by both gleaning and emergency food operations. Operational barriers, such as the lack of appropriate infrastructure and limited logistical support were found to be a challenge across groups and were directly tied to inadequate funding for these organizations. Systematic barriers, such as regulations related to food safety or reducing food loss and waste, were also found to impact both gleaning and emergency food organizations, but differences were observed in how each type of regulation impacted each stakeholder group. To support the expansion of food recovery efforts, participants expressed need for better coordination within and across food recovery networks and more positive and transparent engagement from regulators to increase understanding of the specifics of their unique operational constraints. The focus group participants also provided critiques on how emergency food assistance and food recovery are inscribed within the current food system and for longer term goals of reducing food insecurity and food loss and waste a systematic change will be required. (shrink)

By examining corporate social responsibility and power within the context of the food supply chain, this paper illustrates how food retailers claim to address food waste while simultaneously setting standards that result in the large-scale rejection of edible food on cosmetic grounds. Specifically, this paper considers the powerful role of food retailers and how they may be considered to be legitimately engaging in socially responsible behaviors to lower food waste, yet implement practices (...) that ultimately contribute to higher levels of food waste elsewhere in the supply chain. Through interviews with key actors in the Australian fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain, we highlight the existence of a legitimacy gap in corporate social responsibility whereby undesirable behaviors are pushed elsewhere in the supply chain. It is argued that the structural power held by Australia’s retail duopoly means that supermarkets are able to claim virtuous and responsible behaviors, despite counter claims from within the fresh food industry that the food supermarkets’ private quality standards mean that fresh food is wasted. We argue that the supermarkets claim CSR kudos for reducing food waste at the expense of other supply chain actors who bear both the economic cost and the moral burden of waste, and that this is a consequence of supermarkets’ remarkable market power in Australia. (shrink)

The United States wastes approximately 40% of its food supply. This article will examine the implications of this waste for food insecurity and climate change. It will also explore how the law and social entrepreneurship can be used to confront this public health challenge.

Studies of food waste claim that its main causes are technological and logistical deficiencies in the first stages of the agri-food chain. The present article discusses this statement using a specific case as a starting point: the production of fruit in Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). Since the 1980s, fruit production in this region has undergone a process of innovation and development. However, the agents who participate in the sector claim that the wasted volume of edible foodstuffs is greater (...) than in previous times. This article argues that studies of food waste do not consider the power relations existing within the agri-food chain. When these relations are asymmetrical, technological innovation and logistics optimisation do not improve the efficiency of the system; rather, they help the hegemonic players to monopolise the commercial margin and transfer some of their running costs to the weaker agents. The ethnographic data for the study were obtained between 2017 and 2019 using qualitative research techniques. (shrink)

Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and (...) growth-curbing epidemics of infectious disease. Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals. Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism. (shrink)

Food poverty and food waste are two major contemporary food system problems, which have gained prominence amongst both scholars and policy-makers, due to recent economic and environmental concerns. In this context, the culturally dominant perspective portrays charitable food redistribution as a “win–win solution” to confront food poverty and food waste in affluent societies, although this view is contested by many scholars. This paper applies the notions of framings and flat/sharp keyings to unpack (...) the different narratives entailed by public discourses on food waste and food poverty in Italy. The aim is to problematize the representation of the recent anti-waste/pro-donations law as the optimal policy measure to effectively rectify both food poverty and food waste. The paper argues that the widespread public support for the law reflects the interpretation of charitable food redistribution as a consensus frame, standing for the convergence between flat positions and is reinforced by confusion on terms and responsibilities. Indeed, the strength of the law lies in the capacity to reconcile different positions and bring actors together around a short-term objective, whose foundations have deep roots in the common ethics. However, if the debate is to be moved forward, trade-offs between different framings of problems at stake should be explicitly navigated when designing policy instruments. (shrink)

As Brillant-Savarin remarked in 1825 in his classic text Physiologie du Goût, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” Philosophers and political theorists have only recently begun to pay attention to food as a critical domain of human activity and social justice. Too often these discussions treat food as a commodity and eating as a matter of individual choice. Policies that address the global obesity crisis by focusing on individual responsibility and (...) medical interventions ignore the dependency of human agency on a culture of possibilities. -/- The essays collected here address this lack in philosophy and political theory by appreciating food as an origin of human culture and a network of social relations. They show how an approach to the current global obesity epidemic through individual choice deflects the structural change that is necessary to create a culture of healthy eating. Analyzing the contemporary food crises of obesity, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and cultural displacement as global issues of public policy and social justice, these essays display the essential interconnections among issues of social inequity, animal rights, environmental ethics, and cultural identity. They call for new solidarities and new public policies to ensure the sustainable practices necessary to the production and distribution of wholesome and satisfying food. -/- Lévi-Strauss located the origin of ethics in table manners. By learning what and how to eat, humans learned respect for others, for the earth, and for the other forms of life that sustain human existence. Lévi-Strauss fears that in our time this “lesson in humility” coursing throughout the mythologies of “savage peoples” may have been forgotten, so that the world is treated as a thing to be appropriated and the extinction of species and cultures as an inevitable result of the ascendancy of global capital. This volume makes clear the need to change the way we eat, if we are to live on the earth together with what Lévi-Strauss calls “decency and discretion.”. (shrink)

Rising global food prices have driven 44 million additional people into extreme poverty—and malnutrition—in developing countries since June 2010. Partners in Food Solutions , a nonprofit social enterprise affiliated with General Mills, is proposed as the conduit for food industry managers, engineers, and scientists to initially advise small‐ and medium‐sized African mills and food processors—and later other developing countries—on improving supply chain management by addressing manufacturing problems, developing products, improving packaging, extending product shelf, and finding (...) new product markets. In this article, the “creative capitalism” model of sustainability and social and environmental responsibility is applied to the food manufacturing industry's efforts supporting PFS. Furthermore, the evolution of the sustainable business model developed by PFS is thoroughly described, explained, and analyzed as a generic model of social enterprise to be “scaled up” by the global food manufacturing industry. A summary of salient points conclude the article. (shrink)

Food waste comprises a significant portion of the waste stream in industrialized countries, contributing to ecological damages and nutritional losses. Guided by a systems approach, this study quantified food waste in one U.S. County in 1998–1999. Publications and personal interviews were used to quantify waste from food production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Approximately 10,205 tons of food waste was generated annually in this community food system. Of all food (...) class='Hi'>waste, production waste comprised 20%, processing 1%, distribution 19%, and 60% of food waste was generated by consumers. Less than one-third (28%) of total food waste was recovered via composting (25%) and food donations (3%), and over 7,000 tons (72%) were landfilled. More than 8.8 billion kilocalories of food were wasted, enough to feed county residents for 1.5 months. This case study offers an example of procedures to quantify and compare food waste across a whole community food system. (shrink)

This case study takes place in the context of a small urban supermarket chain. It examines the extent to which such firms should work to lower food waste on sustainability and human rights grounds. The scenario examines structural inefficiencies along the supply chain from food production to consumption, asking students to consider what power supermarkets have to correct these inefficiencies, and what ethical responsibility this may create for them to do so. Government regulations written to encourage or (...) require food purveyors to gift their excess supply to the needy are discussed. (shrink)

This paper provides an empirically informed perspective on the notion of responsibility using an ethical framework that has received little attention in the engineering-related literature to date: ethics of care. In this work, we ground conceptual explorations of engineering responsibility in empirical findings from engineering student’s writing on the human health and environmental impacts of “backyard” electronic waste recycling/disposal. Our findings, from a purposefully diverse sample of engineering students in an introductory electrical engineering course, indicate that most of these (...) engineers of tomorrow associated engineers with responsibility for the electronic waste problem in some way. However, a number of responses suggested attempts to deflect responsibility away from engineers towards, for example, the government or the companies for whom engineers work. Still other students associated both engineers and non-engineers with responsibility, demonstrating the distributed/collective nature of responsibility that will be required to achieve a solution to the global problem of excessive e-waste. Building upon one element of a framework for care ethics adopted from the wider literature, these empirical findings are used to facilitate a preliminary, conceptual exploration of care-ethical responsibility within the context of engineering and e-waste recycling/disposal. The objective of this exploration is to provide a first step toward understanding how care-ethical responsibility applies to engineering. We also hope to seed dialogue within the engineering community about its ethical responsibilities on the issue. We conclude the paper with a discussion of its implications for engineering education and engineering ethics that suggests changes for educational policy and the practice of engineering. (shrink)

The emergence of the global administrative sector and its new forms of knowledge production, expert rationality, and standardization, remains an understudied topic in science studies. Using a coproductionist theoretical framework, we argue tha the mutual construction of epistemic and legal authority across international organizations has been critical for constituting and stabilizing a global regime for the regulation of food safety. The authors demonstrate how this process has also given rise to an authoritative framework for risk analysis touted (...) as ‘‘scientifically rigorous’’ but embodying particular value choices regarding health, environment, and the dispensation of regulatory power. Finally, the authors trace how enrollment of the Codex Alimentarius in World Trade Law has heightened institutional dilemmas around legitimacy and credibility in science advice at the global level. Taken together, the case illustrates the importance of attending to the iterative construction of law and science in the constitution of new global administrative regimes. (shrink)

The ongoing conflict between the economic imperative of stimulating consumption as part of the proliferation of neoliberal ideals of consumer supremacy and growing concern to increase environmental protection presents an opportunity to focus on consumption with respect to ethical behavior. Ethical concerns regarding purchasing and consumption behavior are addressed here in relation to the adoption of principles associated with temperance as applied to self-restraint in food purchase and consumption. The paper outlines theological links to the concept of temperance as (...) applied to environmental and health concerns. Employing a virtue ethics perspective, it examines people’s proactive attitudes that value the environment by adopting waste reduction behaviors. Within the context of normative ethics, it is asked: “Is temperance able to fulfill the role of a lever in consumers’ hands and thereby contribute to minimizing negative environmental impacts associated with food waste?” The research bears witness to the role that consumer behavior may play in promotion and application of temperance in daily life. Study results from a survey conducted in Romania extend the scant information on people’s food waste behavior in relation to religion, underscoring the relationship between religion, temperance-oriented behavior and environmental concerns. (shrink)

Stigma is often encountered by recipients who receive food donations from charities, while the consumption of wasted food, also traditionally considered to be a stigmatized practice, has recently become part of a popular food rescue movement that seeks to reduce environmental impacts. These two stigmas—charitable donation and the consumption of waste—are brought together at the Open Table, a community group in Melbourne, Australia, that serves community meals cooked from surplus food. This paper examines how Open (...) Table de-stigmatizes food donations through food waste discourse to enable greater social inclusion. I draw on the experiences of donors, cooks, volunteers and eaters gathered from diverse Open Table sites. Taking a ‘follow-the-thing’ approach, I analyze how food ‘waste’ becomes re-valued by embracing goals of environmental justice enacted through local processes of care and conviviality. Relying on networks of volunteers and not-for-profit agencies, Open Table provides a simple, effective and adaptable model for possible replication for overcoming drawbacks of traditional charity practices. Critically though, as hunger in society continues to grow, this approach is increasingly threatened by the need to ‘single out’ disadvantaged recipients to justify continued supply. This paper contributes to food poverty, waste, and Alternative Food Network literature in two important ways: first, by analyzing the outcomes of community food redistribution approaches with regards to stigma and inclusion; and secondly, by arguing that such holistic approaches need to be acknowledged, valued and supported to shift current discourses and practice. (shrink)

In future decades, food demand for an increased population with elevated standards of living poses a huge challenge, particularly in the sense of the environmental impacts of agricultural systems. We have analyzed agricultural data from the past 50 years, and found that the current agricultural practices will have negative effects on global food production: total agricultural area has decreased since 2000, fertilizer and pesticide consumption increased while their efficiency decreased, and available water sources are already being used (...) for irrigation. Expansion of biofuel production, cultivation limitations of genetically modified organisms, and the trend of increasing living standards will all intensify the risks of a global food crisis in the coming decades. Crop yield and environmental protection will then have to be traded off if there are no feasible solutions at country or regional scales, and it is crucial for agricultural sustainability to increase crop yields and simultaneously decrease environmental impacts of agriculture intensification. (shrink)

This article compares two transnational public–private partnerships against hunger and malnutrition, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the International Alliance Against Hunger with regard to their degree of business involvement and their input and output legimacy. We examine the participation of stakeholders, the accountability and transparency of the decision-making process, and the perceived provision of a public good. We identify a link between business involvement and output legitimacy, and we discuss the implications for public and private food (...) governance. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address (...) this gap by conducting a network analysis to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)

Rice is the most important crop species on earth, providing staple food for 70% of the world's human population. Over the past four decades, successes in classical breeding, fertilization, pest control, irrigation and expansion of arable land have massively increased global rice production, enabling crop scientists and farmers to stave off anticipated famines. If current projections for human population growth are correct, however, present rice yields will be insufficient within a few years. Rice yields will have to increase (...) by an estimated 60% in the next 30 years, or global food security will be in danger. The classical methods of previous green revolutions alone will probably not be able to meet this challenge, without being coupled to recombinant DNA technology. Here, we focus on the promise of these modern technologies in the area of nitrogen acquisition in rice, recognizing that nitrogen deficiency compromises the realization of rice yield potential in the field more than any other single factor. We summarize rice‐specific advances in four key areas of research: (1) nitrogen fixation, (2) primary nitrogen acquisition, (3) manipulations of internal nitrogen metabolism, and (4) interactions between nitrogen and photosynthesis. We develop a model for future plant breeding possibilities, pointing out the importance of coming to terms with the complex interactions among the physiological components under manipulation, in the context of ensuring proper targeting of intellectual and financial resources in this crucial area of research. BioEssays 26:683–692, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Will we, by 2050, be able to feed a rapidly growing population with healthy and sustainably grown food in a world threatened by systemic environmental crises? There are too many uncertainties for us to predict the long-term evolution of the global agri-food system, but we can explore a wide range of futures to inform policymaking and public debate on the future of food. This is typically done by creating scenarios and quantifying them with computer simulation models (...) to get numerical estimates of how different aspects of the global agri-food system might evolve under different hypotheses. Among the many scenarios produced over the last twenty years, one would expect to see the future advocated by the food sovereignty movement, which claims to represent roughly two hundred million self-described “peasants” worldwide. This movement defends a vision of the future based on relocalized, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, self-governed through direct and participatory democratic processes. Yet, food sovereignty is conspicuously absent from quantified scenarios of global food futures. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay identifies seven obstacles that undermine the creation of food sovereignty scenarios by examining two attempts at crafting such scenarios. (shrink)

2021 Catholic Media Association Award first place award in Catholic Social Teaching In The Meal That Reconnects, Dr. Mary McGann, RSCJ, invites readers to a more profound appreciation of the sacredness of eating, the planetary interdependence that food and the sharing of food entails, and the destructiveness of the industrial food system that is supplying food to tables globally. She presents the food crisis as a spiritual crisis—a call to rediscover the theological, ecological, and spiritual (...) significance of eating and to probe its challenge to Christian eucharistic practice. Drawing on the origins of Eucharist in Jesus’s meal fellowship and the worship of early Christians, McGann invites communities to reclaim the foundational meal character of eucharistic celebration while offering pertinent strategies for this renewal. (shrink)

Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signaling transformations in the world's food and fuels systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves prefer transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in (...) industry's extractive transformations of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty—people's right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible. (shrink)

The coming decades will present an immense challenge for the planet: sustainably feeding nearly ten billion people that are expected to be alive by 2050. This is no small task, and one that intersects with climate change, geopolitics, the increased globalization of agricultural markets, and the emergence of new technologies. The world faces a challenge of increased demand, propelled by an expanding world population and a global shift in dietary patterns toward more resource-intensive foods. Moreover, changes in demand occur (...) in the context of declining soil fertility and freshwater availability, agriculture's growing contribution to water pollution and climate change, and the emerging threats to agricultural productivity caused by climate disruption. (shrink)

This paper focuses on examining the dynamic nature of community supported agriculture (CSA) and the real-world experiences which mark its contours, often making it distinct from the early idealized CSA “model.” Specifically, our study examines the narratives of the farmers of Devon Acres CSA over its duration, in tandem with a survey of recent shareholders in order to understand and explain its evolution. The framework we develop here shows that this CSA is largely characterized by instrumental and functional beliefs and (...) practices, with some elements in the collaborative mode. A key contribution of this research is the development of a framework which helps to highlight the relative fluidity and patchwork quality of CSA participant positions over time. At Devon Acres, the real-world factors and issues influencing CSA evolution are seen to be products of both the local and larger contexts, evident in such areas as shifts in farmer learning and adaptation, differences between beliefs and practices in member volunteer efforts, and changes in farm and resource conditions. With respect to CSA more broadly, we argue that the reality of dominant food system context and site-specific influences on CSA development compels us to rework our attachment to early idealized “model” traits. Expansion in CSA numbers, evidence of adaptation and situated learning, and retention of the local and organic as core traits, speak to the pragmatic yet transformative potential of CSA contribution to food system change. (shrink)

This chapter identifies and critically examines a standard form of argument for organic and vegan alternatives to industrial agriculture. This argument faces important objections to its empirical premises, to its presumption that there is a single food system that minimizes harm and is best for the environment, and to the presumption that the ethically best food system for us to promote is the one that would be best in ideal theory or the one that would be best from (...) the perspective of our own society. Instead, determining which food system should be promoted arguably requires a complex global, empirical, and ethical integrated assessment that includes a proper accounting for values of global justice in nonideal theory. This proper accounting arguably recommends sustainable intensification of food systems (as it is called in the food-science literature), which is importantly distinct from contemporary systems as well as from organic, local, and/or vegan-centered alternatives. (shrink)

To increase donations of nutritious food, Ontario introduced a tax credit for farmers who donate agricultural products to food banks in 2013. This research seeks to investigate the role of Ontario’s Food Donation Tax Credit for Farmers in addressing both food loss and waste and food insecurity through a case study of fresh produce rescue in Windsor-Essex, Ontario. This research also documents the challenges associated with rescuing fresh produce from farms, as well as alternatives (...) to donating. Interviews with food banks, producers and key informants revealed that perceptions of the tax credit, and the credit’s ability to address FLW and food insecurity, contrasted greatly with the initial perceptions of the policymakers who created the tax credit. In particular, the legislators did not anticipate the logistical challenges associated with incentivizing this type of donation, nor the limitations of a donation-based intervention to provide food insecure Ontarians with access to fresh, nutritious food. (shrink)