Resilience of food

systems

Helen Ross

Professor, Rural Development

School of Agriculture and Food

Sciences

Food Systems Workshop Wednesday 6th April 2016

Outline

Why does resilience matter

Ways of considering resilience

Some angles on food systems and resilience

research

Why does resilience matter?

• ???

• Our world – and particularly complex systems –

does not behave in predictable linear ways

• It is not enough to have a good working system,

it must be able to withstand shocks and

surprises

• A system that has had successive shocks loses

resilience, and can lose its functions over time

(disturbed by smaller shocks)

Sustainability and resilience

• Resilience thinking enhances (does not replace) sustainability

• Sustainability is about staying within the limits of the earth’s resources, using them in a way that leaves sufficient for future generations, and distributes them fairly (around the world, rich and poor) in a current generation.

• Resilience translates sustainability for a complex and uncertain world – complexity theory (see Levin 1998, Norberg & Cumming 2008)

- the world does not change according to linear trends, but according to far more complex patterns (with ‘tipping points’).

- the idea of ‘complex adaptive systems’

Many bodies of resilience theory

Social-ecological systems

(complex and adaptive,

multi-level)

Psychology-mental health

(strengths-based,

individuals, now

communities)

Disaster--management(engineering resilience +

household roles + responsibility

sharing)

Image: http://sportsnutritioninsider.insidefitnessmag.com/5050/an-ode-to-nutrient-timing

Engineering

resilience

Business

resilience

Some key points

• Relates to ability to withstand, cope with (even grow

through) disturbances

• Complex adaptive systems thinking

• Coupling of social and ecological

• Multi-level systems – interacting levels

• Generalised and specified resilience (of something, to something)

• Focus on strengths

• Resilience as a process

• Resilience is not converse of vulnerability

• Adaptive cycles theory

• Control is not possible, agency and adaptation is

e.g. Community resilience model(Berkes and Ross, Society and Natural Resources, 2013)

Berkes and Ross (2013), building on Ross et al. (2010) and Buikstra et al. (2010)

Think of the strengths as being adaptive capacities.

At community level, agency and self-organising convert the capacities into a resilience process

Research options (general)Ross & Berkes, Society and Natural Resources (2014)

• Understand resilience processes (in a

context)

• Understand and build (e.g. participatory

planning, action research, community

development)

• Monitoring and indicators

Management options

For managers:

1. Know (acknowledge) resilience

– Pursue existing mandates in consciousness of social-ecological characteristics, without

trying to intervene

2. Use it

– Take advantage of resilience characteristics in management strategies

3. Grow it

– Pursue organisational mandates in a new way that enhances resilience

For communities:Community development (capacity building) approaches

build the strengths

support for self-organising

Community-based planning

local knowledge and ownership towards relevant plans

Toolkit approach

Resilience and food systems (1)

Ideas:Food security as a resilience issue, better ways of organising

supply and shocks (e.g. disaster interruptions)

role of nutrition in individual and community resilience

Resilience in food-energy-water nexus complex systems (Zimmerman et al. 2016)

Multi-level organising in food systems (local to global)

Food as a vector in One Health (local - global)

SE Asia circular economy project – more plastics than fish in the ocean

Food growing/production systems for resilient ecosystems and society;

climate resilience for food systems

Resilience and farming systems (especially for poor/vulnerable)

Not just about resilience of the food system.

Think about resilience where food interacts in wider systems e.g. population

growth-food-biodiversity

Methods

• Systems thinking, analysis

• Mixed methods

• Case studies

– Including economic analyses

• Participatory methods (e.g. Part action

research)

• Multi-party collaborative, with partners,

communities

Funders

• Governments, e.g. for disaster area,

biosecurity

• ACIAR?

• World bank e.g. circular economy project

Some titles in literature

• Future water availability for global food production: the potential of green water

for increasing resilience to global change

• Effects of nutrient recycling and food-chain length on resilience

• Land use alters the resistance and resilience of soil food webs to drought

• … crop-drought vulnerability: an empirical analysis of the socio-economic

factors that influence the sensitivity and resilience to drought of three major

food crops in China …

• Community resilience and contemporary agri‐ecological systems: reconnecting

people and food, and people with people

• Urban gardens, agriculture, and water management: sources of resilience for

long-term food security in cities

• Food security in complex emergencies: enhancing food system resilience

• Resilience of soil biota in various food webs to freezing perturbations

• Travelling in antique lands: using past famines to develop an

adaptability/resilience framework to identify food systems vulnerable to climate

change

Thinking about food systems

• What are the challenges and opportunities

of this kind of research?

• What methodologies are available?

• Who are potential partners for this kind of

research?

References

• Berkes F and Ross H 2013, Community resilience: Toward an integrated approach, Society and Natural Resources, 26:1, 5-20

• Ross H and Berkes F 2014, online first, Research approaches for understanding, enhancing and monitoring community resilience, Society and Natural Resources, 27: 8, 787-804.

• Zimmerman R, Zhu Quanyan and Dimitri C 2016, Journal of Environmental Studies and Science, 6: 50-61.