Review of Sustainable food systems: building a new paradigm

Abstract

Of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals agreed in September 2015, four were concerned with the importance of dealing with global food insecurity, climate change, good health, and women’s empowerment. Although these four priorities have been given their own sets of goals and targets, there are cross-cutting sustainability processes and issues that link them. One sustainability domain that encapsulated all these issues is food systems. Food systems is broadly defined as the full suite of activities ranging from production, processing, and distribution to consumption of food, including the feedbacks that operate between these activities and influence their behavior (Ericksen, 2008; Ingram et al., 2010). Food-systems thinking is becoming a core way of understanding the problem of global food insecurity and environmental change (Ericksen, 2008; Ingram, 2011; Ingram et al., 2010; iPES Food, 2015). (First paragraph of review).