In the introductory video below you will see a particular local example of a food system, presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. As you watch, look for examples of Human and Natural system components in a local food system particular to the Red River Delta in Vietnam, and the way that the food system has changed over time. Human and Natural system components were introduced in Module 1, and we have been referring to them regularly along the way in the course, as we have considered the natural system elements in agroecosystems and the way these are managed by humans. Now we will begin to take a larger, whole systems view of food systems.

Please watch the below video celebrating world food day 2013, which describes the Vietnamese “Garden, Pond, Livestock Plan” (V.A.C) food system.

Video: World Food Day 2013 (6:52)

The introductory section below is adapted from "Chapter 3: The food system and household food security” at the document website of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

This section attempts to describe the parts of a food system in basic terms, starting from the standpoint of the systems approach. It begins, "the perception underlying the systems approach is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Any situation is viewed in terms of relationships and integration. A food system may thus include all activities related to the production, distribution, and consumption of food that affect human nutrition and health (see Figure 10.1.1, which is reproduced from module 1).

Food production comprises such factors as the use of land for productive purposes (land use), the distribution of land ownership within communities and regions (land tenure), soil management, crop breeding and selection, crop management, livestock breeding and management and harvesting, which have been touched on in previous modules. Food distribution involves a series of post-harvest activities including the processing, transportation, storage, packaging, and marketing of food as well as activities related to household purchasing power, traditions of food use (including child feeding practices), food exchanges and gift-giving and public food distribution. Activities related to food utilization and consumption include those involved in the preparation, processing, and cooking of food at both the home and community levels, as well as household decision-making regarding food, household food distribution practices, cultural and individual food choices, and access to health care, sanitation, and knowledge.

Among the components of the food system, e.g. food processing, communication, and education, there is substantial overlap and interlinkage. For example, household decision-making behavior with regard to food is influenced by nutrition knowledge and by cultural practices with regard to food allocation within the household as well as by purchasing power and market prices."

Figure 10.1.1 Diagram of a food system as a "conveyer belt" of three sequential components delivering Nutrition and Health from Natural Resources and Production Environments. Technical and policy aspects central to food system activities are shown surrounding the three components of production, distribution, and consumption. 

Credit: Steven Vanek, adapted from Combs et al. 1996. Sustainable Food System Approaches to Improving Nutrition and Health.

Food systems are further embedded in environments and societies (thus, both natural and social/political contexts) which differ according to a variety of factors such as agroecology (the composition of the local agroecosystem, see previous modules), climate, social aspects, economics, health, and policy. The model presented in Figure 10.1.1 above is useful in conceptualizing the various activities that determine food security and nutritional well-being and the interactions within the food system."

Two important features that we want to emphasize in the passage above from the FAO are first, the fact that food systems involve processes at multiple scales (e.g. local agroecosystems, government policy at a national scale, international research and technology development), which eventually have many impacts at a household scale, either in the livelihoods of food producers (who gain income from the food system and also consume food); and also for consumers around the world. Second, criteria with which we should evaluate food systems are their ability to deliver nutrition and health outcomes (see e.g. module 3), and also the sustainability of natural resources and environments, which we will consider in module 10.2. We note that these criteria of environmental sustainability and health are at opposite ends of this "conveyer belt" model of food systems, where the food system "conveyer belt" can be said to deliver nutrition and health outcomes by transforming the inputs from natural resources and environments. These health and nutrition outcomes are associated with the concept of food security (sufficient access to appropriate and healthy food) which was introduced in module 3 and will be further explored in module 11. Human health and environmental sustainability correspond roughly to the positive objectives that we conceive of for the human system and natural systems, respectively: health and equitable nutrition (or food security) in the human system, and environmental sustainability of natural systems. A final observation from Fig. 10.1.1 is that food systems are ubiquitous and touch on all aspects of human societies. We are all participants in food systems, either as producers, consumers, in the distribution or in other myriad ways.

Activate Your Learning: Food's Journey in the Food System

Figure 10.1.2. Supermarkets like this one are one of the most commonly accessed nodes for consumers in the modern globalized food system.

Image Credit: Steven Vanek

Food systems comprise the interacting parts of human society and nature that deliver food to households and communities (see the previous page), and can be used to understand food in its relation to the earth system. To better understand food systems, in the exercise below you'll be asked to consider a familiar food of your choice, and the journey this food takes from where it is produced to the meals that we consume every day. Within the food supply chain for this food, you'll be asked to distinguish between social (human system) aspects and environmental (natural system) aspects of that product's food production and supply chain.

Activate Your Learning Activity:

In the blanks below, fill in the blanks regarding the supply chain for food products. You can also download the worksheet for filling in offline, or as part of a classroom activity.  As depicted in Fig. 10.1.3, you’ll need to give the origin, some intermediate destinations, and then the final consumption point for the food product.  Then you should think of some social or human system dimensions of the production, supply chain, or consumption of this product, as well as some ecological or natural system dimensions and fill in the corresponding blanks. Do this first for a product familiar to you, whose supply chain you either know about or can research quickly  (part 1).  Then repeat the activity for a food product in the online introductory video from the first page of this module, about food systems in Vietnam (part 2).  When you are done with each part you can click on the ‘answers’ link in the below each part, and see how your answers match up.

Text description of the Figure 10.1.3 diagram.

The image depicts a simple linear flowchart representing the stages of a supply chain or process. It consists of four rectangular boxes connected by right-facing arrows, indicating a sequential progression. The first box on the left is labeled “Source:” with a blank line underneath for input. The second box is labeled “Intermediate destination 1:” followed by a blank line, and the third box is labeled “Intermediate destination 2:” with another blank line. The final box on the right is labeled “Consumption point:” with a blank line beneath it. The design uses thin blue outlines for the boxes and arrows, set against a white background, giving it a clean and minimalistic appearance. This diagram is intended to illustrate the movement of goods, resources, or information from the original source through intermediate stages to the final point of consumption, allowing customization by filling in specific details for each stage.

Credit:© Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Fill in the blanks below.  If you are doing this online, just note your answers on a piece of paper regarding the food product you have chosen, or download the worksheet. When you are done you can click on the ‘answers’ link below to see some possible examples and see if your answers match up with these answers.

1. Food product: x
2. Food supply Chain:
   1. Source: Where main raw material is produced, fished, hunted: x
   2. Intermediate destination 1: x (e.g processing plant, washing, trucking, warehouse, etc.)
   3. Intermediate destination 2: x (e.g processing plant, washing, trucking, warehouse, etc.)
   4. Intermediate destination 2: x (if needed)
   5. Consumption point: x
3. Up to three social or human system dimensions of this food chain (e.g. policy, economic, or cultural factors associated with the production and consumption of this food, recall the Human System factors in a Coupled Human Natural Framework, module 1.2)
   1. x
   2. x
   3. x
4. Up to three ecological or natural system dimensions of this food chain: (ecological factors would include crop and animal species, agroecosystems, climate, water, and soil influences on food production):
   1. x
   2. x
   3. x

Example answers

(These may be a good deal more complete than your examples but give a sense of the range of possible answers)

Exercise 2:

Recall the video celebrating world food day 2013, World Food Day 2013 Video: the Vietnamese “Garden, Pond, Livestock Plan” (V.A.C) food system". You may want to quickly skim the video again and note the food pathways that foods are following in these systems. Then choose either a product that is consumed within the household that appears in the video or one that is sold outside the household (some products fit into both categories). Fill in the same set of production and transport steps for this product as you did in part 1, as well as some social and ecological aspects.  You can use a piece of scrap paper or the downloaded worksheet.  Note that a product consumed in this farming household may have a very short food supply chain!

Look at the following worksheet and fill in the blanks corresponding to the blanks below. When you are done you can click on the ‘answers’ link to see some possible examples and see if your answers match up with these answers.

1. Food product x
2. Food supply Chain:
   1. Source: Where main raw material is produced, fished, hunted: x
   2. Intermediate destination 1: x (e.g processing plant, washing, trucking, warehouse, etc.)
   3. Intermediate destination 2: x (e.g processing plant, washing, trucking, warehouse, etc.)
   4. Intermediate destination 2: x (if needed)
   5. Consumption point: x
3. Up to three social or human system dimensions of this food chain (e.g. policy, economic, or cultural factors associated with the production and consumption of this food, recall the Human System factors in a Coupled Human Natural Framework, module 1.2)
   1. x
   2. x
   3. x
4. Up to three ecological or natural system dimensions of this food chain: (ecological factors would include crop and animal species, agroecosystems, climate, water, and soil influences on food production):
   1. x
   2. x
   3. x

Example Answers

A good way to understand the complexity of different types of food systems is to look for organizing principles to classify them. In the introductory food supply chain exercise at the beginning of this module, if you chose a product that was produced a long distance from where you consumed it, you are aware that the global food system today handles food at an enormous spatial scale. This example leads to one way to organize our understanding of food systems, which is the hierarchy global, regional, and local scales of food systems (Fig. 10.1.4).

Figure 10.1.4. Spatial scale of organization in food systems

Click for a text description of the spatial scale diagram.

Scale	Examples
Global	Global grain and meat production (commodities), Global fisheries
Regional	Most supermarket and restaurant foods
Local	Farmer's market, local hunting and fishing
Household	Home gardens and subsistence agriculture

Credit: Steven Vanek

Another helpful way to classify food systems is to look for typologies of food systems. Building typologies is a somewhat subjective but often helpful process where we look for groups of systems or components that hang together in order to better understand their function, importance, or other attributes. For the typology of food systems we present here, we are thinking about classifying food systems based on how production occurs and at what scale, which portions of society are involved in production and distribution, and the rationale underlying production, distribution, and consumption. In this course, we use the scheme of three overlapping food systems that exist at global, regional, and local scales shown below in Fig. 10.1.5.

Figure 10.1.5. Typology of Food Systems

Click for a text description of the Food Systems Typology diagram.

Typology of Food Systems into Smallholder, Globalized Corporate, and Alternative types. Two major types at left are the globalized corporate system which is dominant in the industrialized world and in terms of trade of major commodities, and smallholder systems which are in fact extremely important at local and regional levels in the developing world, with more than two billion smallholder farmers globally growing, trading, and selling food in these contexts. The vertical and horizontal axes in the diagram attempt to capture the variation in these systems regarding their integration into global markets and specialized industrial production (vertical axis), and the way in which the systems at right are responses to sustainability challenges of the modern food system (horizontal axis). The alternative types at right, which reflect current trends and movements in the modern food system towards sustainability, are divided into an alternative global or "ecologically modernized" type (see module 2 on the history of food systems) along with a more local or community-based food system type, with both alternative food system types responding to sustainability critiques of the globalized food system in recent history. It is also important to realize that different food systems overlap and are certainly not spatially isolated: for example, smallholders in the developing world simultaneously participate in both smallholder and global ways of producing and consuming food, and urban consumers the world over may simultaneously purchase food from all four systems.

Global Corporate Food System

• High volume, minimized production costs
• Simplified farms that specialize in particular crops
• Global and regional shipping
• Unprocessed and processed foods
• Coordinated through major agribusinesses and food companies
• Goals: markets and return on investment
• Local producers participate via commodity production

Smallholder Food Systems

• Smaller-volume production on many more farms
• Complex, diverse farming systems with e.g. livestock and many crops
• Local/regional shipping and marketing
• Unprocessed foods
• Goals: generating farmer livelihoods and food for direct consumption and local markets
• Mixed production and consumption roles
• Produces a large proportion of food in developing countries

Alternative Food Systems: Globalized and Community-based

• Globalized
  • "Ecological modernization" of globalized food system
  • Global/national trade networks
  • Goals: reform of industrialized farming practices
  • Certification schemes: fair-trade, sustainable forestry, etc
  • Unprocessed and processed foods
  • Mainstreaming of organic products in national/global distribution
• Community-based
  • Emphasis on reintegration of local rural-urban economies
  • Goals: reform of industrialized farming, local economies
  • Local/regional shipping and farmers' markets
  • Mainly unprocessed foods
  • Organic and local criteria/certification

Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer

Consumers worldwide who enter a supermarket are largely interacting with this type of food system. Some local and regional products are provided, but food is largely sourced from major national and global production regions and can be transported long distances (100 to thousands of miles or km) with enormous quantities of food moving through the system as a whole. There is an emphasis on modern production and processing techniques, efficiency, and lowering the immediate costs of production. Also, many of the products moving through this system are thought of as commodities: products that are generic and replaceable regardless of their origin and that carry standard global and national pricing frameworks. Examples would be corn grain for food, different grades of rice, soy and corn oils, supermarket potatoes and tomatoes, and cuts of pork for supermarket consumption.

Figure 10.1.6. Summary of characteristics for the globalized corporate food system, taken from the previous page.

Click for a text description of the globalized corporate food system.

Globalized Corporate Food System

• High volume, minimized production costs
• simplified farms that specialize in particular crops
• global and regional shipping
• unprocessed and processed foods
• coordinated through major agribusiness and food companies
• goals: markets and return on investment
• local producers participate via commodity production

Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer.

Calling this a ‘corporate’ system may obscure the fact that production for this national/global scale system occurs most commonly not on corporate property or company farms, but in family farm enterprises like the thousands of dairy and grain farms that populate many regions of the United States. For example, family farms still constitute about 97% of farms in the United States by number, although the acreage in company-owned farms and the value earned by these company-owned farms is larger than this numerical count suggests (top pie-charts within Figure 10.1.8a below). Also, in some areas of the country, ‘large’ and ‘very large’ family farms have mean farm sizes of many thousands of acres, which contradicts the traditional image of a small family enterprise, and illustrating the pressures for farms to become large in modern industrialized food systems, in order to take advantage of economies of scale in farming (economies of scale refers to the idea that as the size of an enterprise goes up, the efficiency of producing a given item goes up and the cost per item goes down, e.g. baking one tray of muffins every Saturday versus opening a muffin shop making hundreds of muffins every day).

Figure 10.1.7. This landscape in central Europe appears quite traditional but is, in fact, a production zone for commodity crops in the globalized corporate food system

Credit: Steven Vanek

Nevertheless, this portion of the food system is called both ‘global’ and ‘corporate’ because most organizations that coordinate demand and organize processing and distribution of foodstuffs in this layer of the global food system are corporations seeking benefit for their shareholders. In module 3 on nutrition we discussed the way that food has become fiscalized, i.e. it is not only a product working its way through a marketplace to consumers but an active object of investment in the future growth potential of the business of food. These investments are managed through large-scale exchanges like the stock exchange here in the United States. These exchanges allow large swaths of relatively wealthy world citizens (including many in the middle class) to invest in the large-scale production of food and reductions in prices, but can create sustainability issues within the food system because the return on investment rather than food security or environmental sustainability becomes the predominant objective of investors and corporations. Nevertheless, not just corporate entities but also government and civil society (e.g. farmer and community organizations, universities) are also heavily involved in these global systems and can act to reform problems or regulate damaging or unjust practices. They act by way of advocacy and regulation, national/international food policies and support structures such as research on food production and food processing methods.

Within this global system, then, local farmers and fishing communities often act as producers selling into commodity markets, alongside industry-owned farms, feedlots, and other production facilities. In addition to unprocessed food ingredients, the globalized corporate food system has also been largely responsible for the expansion in processed and prepared foods, that seeks to provide convenience for consumers as well as capture the added market value of more prepared foods. Processed foods have been criticized, especially by those advocating community food systems (see description further on), because they displace fresh and whole food components of diets that are important to good nutrition outcomes (see module 3). Processed foods often contain processed industrial ingredients such as corn syrup and processed, low-quality fats along with a lower fiber and vitamin content, which is usually not true of whole unprocessed foods.

Farms and acreage of different crops in United States agriculture:

The pie charts below demonstrate aspects of the description of the globalized food system above. For example, at least in terms of numbers, smaller, family-owned farms with an average size of approximately 240 acres (around 100 hectares with one hectare = 100 x 100 m) dominate the numbers of farms in the United States (Fig. 10.1.8a). Nevertheless, large farms dominate to a greater extent than these smaller farms when considering the total area taken up by farms of different sizes, and a large proportion of income is going to larger operations in a number of classes of farm products (Fig. 10.1.8b). These patterns vary somewhat by what sector of the farming economy is being described, and we include some separate graphs for maize, vegetables, and dairy farms. You will use these graphs in the knowledge check activity below.

Figure 10.1.8a. Charts summarizing USDA Census data from the 2012 agricultural census on numbers, size, and earnings of U.S. farms. It is notable that by numbers of farms, smaller farms dominate, but the total area taken up by larger farms is substantially greater than their small numbers would suggest.

Image credit: Steven Vanek, based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2012 agricultural census

Figure 10.1.8b. Charts summarizing how the total revenue of farm products breaks down among farms of different size classes. Note that when all farm products are included in the estimates of revenue, there is a relatively even division of revenue among the farms of different size classes. However, the much larger numbers of farms in the small size category (88% of all farms, see figure 10.1.8a above) mean that the revenue per farm for these products is likely less. The graphs allow comparison of different products in terms of how different size classes of farms are participating in the markets for different types of products, e.g. "how do mid-size farms compare in the share of total revenue between maize and vegetables?"

Credit: Steven Vanek, based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2012 agricultural census.

Knowledge Check: Food products and farm sizes in U.S. agriculture

Choose the correct answers based on the graphs in Figure 10.1.8 above and then click on the space for the correct answers.

Figure 10.1.9. This patchwork landscape of sloped fields and hedgerows with dozens of family farms in western Kenya is typical of smallholder food systems.

Credit: Steven Vanek

Approximately 500 million smallholder farms with areas less than 2 hectares (5 acres) support the nutrition and livelihood of approximately two billion people in smallholder farms globally (IFAD, 2013). As such smallholders form an important sector of the global food system, producing up to 80% of local and regional food supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa, South/Southeast Asia, and China. You saw an example of a smallholder system in the summative assessment for module 1. Livelihood strategies of households in this system attempt to overcome risk and guarantee subsistence as well as cash income. For this reason, these "semi-subsistence" farming systems are often complex, for example integrating agriculture, livestock, and agroforestry food production with off-farm livelihood activities that overlap with consumption from the globalized food system (previous page). Most food is consumed either on the farm where it is produced or locally and regionally, with transport and distribution handled by relatively short-distance networks.

Figure 10.1.10. Smallholder systems often include livestock for purposes of economic value (meat, wool) and better use of landscapes that are not optimal for cropping, such as this rugged patchwork of rangeland and cropped fields in Bolivia where goats are being grazed.

Credit: Steven Vanek

Figure 10.1.11. Hardy, early yielding crops such as barley, pictured here in the Andes, are a good way for smallholders to produce staple grains in difficult environments. Depending on the elevation of a smallholder community in this Andean context, maize and potatoes round out a full range of options for producing carbohydrate staples in this risky mountain environment.

Credit: Steven Vanek

"Quasi-Parallel" Alternatives to Modern Food Systems

You may recall that the concluding section of module 2 on the history of crop domestication and food systems we presented the recent development of alternatives to the modern globalized food system as "quasi-parallel" new movements as well as food production and distribution strategies intended to address sustainability issues. We use the word "quasi-parallel" because the global and local variants of these responses focus on different strategies and scales within the food system, and target different outcomes, even though both consider themselves to be responding to the sustainability challenges in the modern food system, sometimes using similar practices at the farm scale for managing crops and soils. Also, we acknowledge at the outset that dividing these strictly into two variants may not cover every case. The intention is to give you a sense of the range of alternatives being proposed so that you can potentially look for these types of alternative food systems in your capstone regions and integrate them into proposed sustainability strategies for the future of food in these regions. Also, it is likely that both variants will have advantages and disadvantages that are pointed out and debated by proponents and critics. From this debate we can see that sustainability is a contested concept, depending on the assumptions, goals, and arguments used by different advocates: it does not have a single definition to different camps in the debate over sustainability.

Globalized Alternatives: "Ecological Modernization" as a Reformation of Globalized Food Systems

Globalized variants of alternative food systems seek to correct issues of sustainability from within the framework of global food production and food trade networks. This has been called a case of "ecological modernization" because it seeks to reform certain aspects of globalized corporate food systems (previous pages) such as environmental impact and labor standards, while not altering the main features of the modern global system, for example, large scale of production, long-distance distribution, and leveraging the economic power of global investment to expand production and increase efficiency. Advocates of this approach promote strategies such as the "triple bottom line" for companies, which refers to positive environmental and social benefits from company activities being measures of company success in addition to economic profitability (thus a triple measure mirroring the "three-legged stool" of sustainability, see Module 1 and following pages in this module). Advocates also generally point to the fact that given the globalized corporate food system embodies by far the largest impact on levels of social equality and natural systems currently, reforming its activities and standards for performance is a way to have a tremendous impact on global sustainability. Detractors of "ecological modernization", including advocates of community-based food systems below, complain that these reform efforts leave in place unsustainable features of the system, such as large-scale production that is corrosive to local communities, or marginalization of smallholder farmers within markets or in land distribution in some cases (see the "agriculture of the middle" critique and the concept of a poverty trap in the following pages).

Notwithstanding this debate, it is useful to note some main features and trends in this globalized approach. Like the community-based variant, the globalized variant has prescriptive goals for the food system in response to sustainability problems of the modern food system. It supports substitution of more sustainable methods of food production, such as integrated pest management, organic methods, reduced tillage, and protection of watersheds from pollution with improved farming techniques, some of which have been seen in previous modules. Certification schemes are promoted that hold producers and distribution networks to a higher standard, such as organic certification (which generally must conform to standards in the country where the food product is sold). As another example, fair trade certification seeks to improve the price paid to local producers in source regions, who have generally received very low prices for their products, and thus shares the approach of strengthening local economies with the community-based approaches below, even if it uses global trading networks.

Figure 10.1.12 Characteristics of two types of alternative food systems that are responses to sustainability concerns in food systems. A more global or "ecologically modernized" variant seeks to bring sustainable and fair trade principles into the global food system, while a local and community-based variant seeks to reconnect consumers and communities to food producers at a local scale.

Click for a text description of the Alternative Food Systems diagram.

Alternative Food Systems: globalized and community-based

• Globalized
  • "ecological modernization" of the globalized food system
  • global/national trade networks
  • goals: reform of industrialized farming practices, capturing market niches
  • certification schemes: fair-trade, sustainable forestry, etc.
  • unprocessed and processed foods
  • mainstreaming of organic products in national/global distribution
• Community-based
  • emphasis on reintegration of local rural-urban economies
  • goals: reform of industrialized farming, local market reintegration, market niches, local/regional shipping and farmers' markets
  • mainly unprocessed foods
  • organic and local criteria/certification

Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer.

Community-based Alternatives

Like the globalized variant, community-based alternative food systems define prescriptive goals but oppose many elements of the globalized corporate food system. The community food system primer (Wilkins and Eames-Sheavly 2010, see link below if further interested) states that "a community food system is a food system in which food production, processing, distribution, and consumption are integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular place". Three examples of these prescriptive goals within common components of community food systems are:

1. Organic agriculture as a way to reduce contamination of food with pesticides and improve the ecosystem health of farms
2. Farmers markets and community-supported agriculture schemes that allow consumers to more directly support the activities of farmers
3. An emphasis on supporting the activities of small and medium producers and resisting pressures for production and distribution enterprises to grow larger and larger

Many other examples of community food systems can be found, which also include efforts to link smallholder farmers and their food production systems (see previous page) as producers for burgeoning urban markets in developing countries, thus substituting some of the supply from the globalized corporate food system beyond the food products that are already supplied by smallholders to cities in these countries. The overall volume of food handled by these community-based food systems is generally much smaller than the globalized or smallholder types of food systems. Nevertheless, advocates point out that the potential market of urban consumers in relatively close proximity to small-scale producers around the world is potentially enormous. In fact, channels of alternative food production and distribution (e.g. organic agriculture) are among the fastest growing sectors in volume and economic value on a percentage basis, year after year [USDA-Economic Research Service].

Figure 10.1.13. This small-scale pork and poultry farm, with direct self-service marketing to consumers, is a highly functional part of a community-based alternative food system.

Credit: Karl Zimmerer

Figure 10.1.14. These organic soybeans are being harvested at a relatively large scale (hundreds of hectares in aggregate, within a production region of the Northeastern United States) to manufacture and sell tofu within a regional alternative food system. Soybeans are also a commodity crop largely handled by the globalized food system.

Credit: Steven Vanek

Knowledge Check: Food System Typologies

For each of the following concepts, give which of the three types of food systems it pertains to (global corporate, smallholder, local/alternative).

1. Shareholders invest in food companies
2. Fairtrade organizations link smallholders in Kenya to consumers in the U.K.
3. A dairy farmer sells small lots of milk using weekly deliveries to a mid-size city in New Hampshire.
4. Most supermarket items
5. Very important in densely populated rural areas of the developing world e.g. Ethiopia, Peru.
6. Buying butternut squash at the local farmers market.
7. Large wheat fields near Ciudad Obregón, Mexico for export to processors in Mexico, United States, and Colombia.

Fig 10.1.15. Three-legged Stool of Sustainability

Click for a text description of 3-Legged Stool of Sustainability.

The image illustrates the concept of a Sustainable Food System using a three-legged stool as a metaphor for stability and balance. The seat of the stool is labeled “Sustainable Food System,” supported by three legs representing the essential pillars: environment, community, and economy. Each pillar is associated with key principles. For the environment, the focus is on reducing pollution and waste, using renewable energy, conservation, and restoration. The economy pillar emphasizes employment, profitable enterprises, infrastructure, fair trade, and security. The community and social sustainability pillar highlights good working conditions, health care, education, and fostering community and culture. The design uses green tones to symbolize sustainability and growth, with the text clearly organized around the stool to show how these interconnected elements collectively uphold a resilient food system. If any pillar is weakened or missing, the system becomes unstable, underscoring the importance of integrating environmental, economic, and social considerations for long-term sustainability.

Credit: Steven Vanek, based on multiple sources and common sustainability concepts

 

Challenges to Food Producers: The issue of scale and the “three-legged stool” of sustainability

The previous page on different variants of alternative food systems stressed different ways of analyzing and critiquing the modern global food system based on issues of sustainability. In your capstone projects, you are asked to propose ideas for sustainable food systems in your capstone regions. Therefore, in this page, we repeat from module one the concept of sustainability as a "three-legged stool" combining aspects of environmental, social, and economic sustainability (Fig. 10.1.15, also seen in module 1). We may be most used to thinking about Environmental Sustainability, for example in the need to conserve energy or recycle food containers to reduce pollution and energy generation by fossil fuels, as well as avoiding litter and saving on landfill space. As we presented in module 1, however, sustainability also contains economic or financial aspects devoted to employment, livelihood, and profitability, as well as the concept of social sustainability that embodies goals of social equity and more harmonious societies. Therefore, we are also interested in the nodes of food production such as farms because of the challenges to the economic sustainability of farm (and fishery) enterprises. It is important to think about economic sustainability because of the economic risks that food producers are exposed to. Economic risk is inherent in producing for local, regional and global food systems because producers may not be producing high-value products and must absorb environmental risk, for example from droughts, floods, or pests (see the previous modules, and module 11, next, regarding adaptive capacity). In a drought year, for example, selling vastly reduced yields of soybean or maize crops usually mean an economic loss for a farm because the price of these crops is not very high on the global or local market.

In addition, social sustainability concerns regarding food production are an important part of debates about modern society: for example, smallholder farmers, and laborers on larger farms and within fisheries in the United States and globally, are some of the most economically and politically marginalized populations in the world. Many researchers and advocates point out that food systems cannot be truly sustainable until they embody a more just distribution of resources and power. In this short section, we want to highlight two important concepts that link to these ideas of social sustainability and justice: first, the idea of “poverty traps” within smallholder farming around the world (see Carter and Barrett 2006, reference below), and on the next the threat posed to so-called “agriculture of the middle” in industrialized countries where pressures on producers lead either to a small-scale, niche markets orientation (e.g.. farmers markets) or an inexorable growth toward larger and larger farms that capture economies of scale in agriculture. By introducing these concepts now, you should see both how they fit into the analysis of vulnerability and resilience in the next module. You may be able to incorporate these challenges and potential solutions into your capstone region scenarios.

What is a poverty trap in smallholder agricultural systems?

As you’ve seen in the “pond-garden-livestock” (VAC) system of Vietnam in the video at the beginning of this module, agriculture practiced in smallholder food systems on small plots of land (less than 10 acres or 4 hectares, say) around the world is a hugely important and often quite sustainable enterprise. Smallholder agriculture can embody some of the most efficient use of resources in use today, whether these are traditional methods, well-adapted domesticated plants, new innovations taken up by smallholder families, or labor that is efficiently allocated by a family that is in constant contact with their enterprise and ecosystem. However, a concern about the most impoverished smallholders is that they can fall into what is called a poverty trap, where smallholders produce food from a degraded resource base, either because they have degraded it or because they have been forced to the margins of local society, and many times, both. The diversity of diets can also suffer when the least expensive food sources are local cereal and starch crops or calories coming from the globalized food system. The combination of poverty and degradation of soils and other resources does not permit these farmers sufficient income or well-being to invest in and therefore improve their soils or other aspects of local agroecosystems, and so it is likely that they, and their farm ecosystems, will remain in a low level of productivity and earnings. This is therefore called a poverty trap, and it essentially combines a lack of economic, social, and environmental sustainability for these smallholder households. It has also been linked to the concept of a downward spiral of poverty and soil degradation (Fig. 10.1.16).

Fig 10.1.16 -- Spirals of soil regeneration and improved livelihoods (top) versus poverty and soil degradation (bottom). The reinforcing feedbacks between soil quality and productivity with social and economic marginalization illustrate the connections between social and environmental sustainability.

Credit: Steven Vanek

An example of this poverty trap "downward spiral" is furnished by the dust bowl of the 1930s in the United States, in the case of many families who farmed small plots of land during the depression. The combination of overexploited soils from decades of agricultural expansion after the U.S. civil war, a depressed economy contributing to overall hardship, and a multi-year drought led to a downward spiral in which many poor farmers were finally forced to leave their land and migrate to other areas of the country seeking employment and public assistance. In module 11, we'll examine further how combined human and natural system factors (like poverty and drought, for example) interact to create vulnerability for parts of human society, and ways that human systems have adapted to surviving such shocks and perturbations as drought. We'll include an example of a native American population that was relatively successful in weathering the Dust Bowl and was not subjected to this sort of poverty trap or downward spiral. Also, in the years after the dust bowl, the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was highly active in helping farmers to transition to practices that helped to avoid soil erosion and aid in regeneration of degraded soils (see the additional reading resources below for this history of the Soil Conservation Service).

In current-day contexts where poverty traps represent a risk or chronic problem for small producers, then, both government agencies and development organizations focus on reducing barriers to practicing more sustainable agriculture. Development organizations include those called non-governmental organizations or NGOs, nonprofits, international aid organizations, as well as organizations founded by and managed by farmers themselves. For example, see the blog article below in "additional reading", regarding efforts to promote agroforestry in Haiti, where poverty and land degradation have long been intertwined. These organizations try to reduce barriers to investment in sustainable food production through the promotion of simple, low-cost strategies to conserve soils and raise crop diversity and productivity (see the previous modules for examples) that are within financial reach of smallholder producers. These technology options are optimally combined with credit and direct aid that helps farmers to overcome the resource barriers for investing in the protection of the natural systems that sustain their production. This sort of knowledge and technology, and the ability of farmers to invest in the productivity of their soils are an example of adaptive capacity, a concept that will a major topic of module 11. In addition, government, NGOs, and farmer organizations may also engage in political advocacy that seeks a more just distribution of land, credit, or access to markets that can help producers to avoid or move out of poverty traps.

One of the characteristics of a globalized food system is that a smaller proportion of the population is needed to produce the large amounts of food for the global system. As a result, many analysts have noted shrinkage of the rural population in the rural United States over the last 100 years. Similar out-migrations from rural areas to cities have happened in Europe. Among other factors, this process has been hastened by the use of mechanization for agriculture (tractors, combine harvesters, mechanized crop processing, and transportation; we analyze the environmental impact of this in module 10.2). Mechanization and other factors mean that the cost of producing a bushel of corn, for example, and moving it into the global food system is cheaper when the scale of the farm and transportation infrastructure is larger. This phenomenon is referred to as economies of scale (recall also the example of dramatically scaled-up beef production in Greely, Colorado featured in the video of Module 1.2.) Farm producers in the United States and other industrialized economies thus often face pressures to grow their operations larger so that they can become more profitable, accentuated by competition against larger producers with lower prices, sometimes in other countries with lower labor prices.

These twin trends towards “get big or get out” and “get small for local markets” have left out a huge sector of farms that are mid-sized and that still generate a substantial amount of farm income in the U.S. economy and utilizing the lion’s share of cultivated soils (see figure 10.1.8 with pie-charts of earnings distributions different size farms in the United States). The analysis regarding this “Agriculture of the Middle” (Kirschenmann 2012) points out the threat posed to millions of farming households, most of whom produce for national and global commodity markets (e.g. soybeans, dairy). This analysis also points out that this sector of farms is vital as productive rural citizens that drive social organization, effective policy-making, and community values in most regions of the country. These mid-size farms are often leaders in the adoption of sustainable practices – especially when they are financially successful, illustrating potential linkages between financial and ecological sustainability. In any case, small and medium-sized farms have always played an important role in the maintenance of a rural landscape that most governments and citizens see as valuable. Agricultural landscapes and enterprises often contribute to the tourism value of a particular region, for example, the Pennsylvania Dutch region or wider presence of dairy farms in diverse, forested landscapes of Pennsylvania, or wine-producing regions of California and New York State.

The role of “Agriculture of the Middle” in sustaining rural life according to this analysis is worth protecting, and advocates of this analysis and action to support mid-size farm enterprises point out a few advantages these farms have in interacting with regional farm systems. When effective linkages can be built to regional markets, these farms usually combine production at a medium to large scale (compared to small diversified farms supplying farmers’ markets, say) with a flexible outlook that can allow them to change products and markets quickly, and best adopt sustainable production methods in a way that is visible to consumers and local communities (Kirschenmann 2012). As in the case of poverty traps for small farms discussed above, organizations that promote agriculture of the middle seek to clear barriers to these mid-sized producers. Note also that these “mid-sized” producers are enormous compared to farms in smallholder contexts throughout the developing world, though they are community members in an equivalent way to the role of smallholders in a rural third-world context). Mid-size producers and the food distribution organization that work with them may seek to promote “values-based food supply chains” where not just the commodity value of a food product is taken into account but also the value of a farm that demonstrates environmental sustainability and positive participation in rural communities. For example, many agricultural states now have state-level marketing efforts that promote state and regional agriculture, and these programs increasingly integrate ideas that help to promote mid-sized producers. Farmers, distribution network companies, and food markets have also banded together in different configurations to form networks that seek to support not only food availability for consumers but environmental, social, and economic sustainability along the entire food chain. Some examples of these are the Organic Valley dairy cooperative which now operates across the entire United States, the Red Tomato regional fruit and vegetable marketing effort in New England, U.S.A. (see Fig. 10.1.17 and 10.1.18), or the Country Natural Beef producers in the Northwest United States.

Figure 10.1.17. Photos showing on-farm production, harvest, packing, distribution, and marketing from a "values-based food chain". This example is from Red Tomato, a local/regional network linking farms to consumers in the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the United States.

Credit: Red Tomato Non-Profit and used with permission.

Figure 10.1.18. The Red Tomato Logo used in marketing the produce above.

Credit: Images courtesy of Red Tomato Non-Profit and used with permission.

More Information on Values-Based Food Supply Chains

You can view a PowerPoint slide set introducing nine case studies on values-based food supply chains like the ones described above: Agriculture of the Middle, a research and education effort of the University of Wisconsin.

Integration into the Capstone Project

As you consider the food system of your capstone region, you may want to incorporate references to efforts that support either smallholder farmers in avoiding poverty traps or encourage continued participation of “Agriculture of the Middle” in the regional food system. The formative assessment for this module asks you to address whether you think there are concerns about poverty traps or agriculture of the middle in your capstone region. As you develop your capstone project final scenarios for sustainability, you may want to search on the internet for resources on regional food chains and food systems, as well as local farmers' markets and other initiatives, within your region of interest.

As you saw in the introductory video about a food system in Vietnam, food systems incorporate both natural and human components. In fact, because of the ubiquitous need for food, food systems are among the most important ways that human societies interact with the physical and biological elements and processes on earth's surface. Land used in some way for food production already occupies over two-thirds of the ice-free land surface (Ellis, 2011 or similar on anthromes) and the trend is for this proportion as well as for the intensity (roughly, the production from each unit of land area) to increase. Human fisheries and other forms of food production from oceans (for example, kelp farming) are also tending to exploit wider and wider areas. In addition, as seen in the multiple types of food systems presented above in section II of this unit, the interactions of human societies with earth's ecosystems in food production is not governed by a single human process but depends greatly on human priorities, land management and food production knowledge, rationales and prescriptive goals for food systems, and government policies that regulate and reward food system outcomes. Understanding these societal factors is key to improving the sustainability of food systems in their impact on the earth's ecosystems.

To understand the interaction of human societies with the earth's surface, a common and productive framework is that of coupled natural-human systems [Liu et al., 2007]. These start from a relatively simple diagram (Fig. 8.9), in which a generic human system (e.g. a community within a human society) interacts with a generic natural system (e.g. a farming-dominated landscape within a production region). The framework also recognizes that natural and human systems have many internal interactions and processes such as biogeochemical nutrient cycling (e.g. the nitrogen cycle, see unit N.N in this course) or the policies, corporate actors, and markets determining food supply chains (a human factor).

Fig. 8.9. A generic natural-human system that can be applied to the food system in its interactions with earth system processes

Click for a text description of Natural-Human sytem diagram.

Generic Natural-Human system that can be applied to the food system in its interactions with earth system processes

Arrows labeled human to natural coupling and natural to human coupling form a circle between human system and natural system. Those are defined as follows:

Human system: human system internal interactions

Human to natural coupling: Human system impacts and reorganizes natural system

Natural System: natural system internal interactions

Natural to human coupling: Natural system a)presents food production conditions to the Human System b) responds to human management and other drivers in ways that affect the human system (feedbacks)

Credit: National Science Foundation Coupled Natural Human Systems research grant program

So, for example, in the video that you watched on the food system from the Red River delta in Vietnam, the river delta is the initial, broad natural system context that presents opportunities for farming, livestock production, and aquaculture to farming households and national/local government policies. Human farming/aquaculture knowledge and practices, markets and government policies are part of a human system that impacts and reorganizes the natural system over time into its current state. Over time the natural system internal interactions and processes may also change, for example, increases or decreases in soil fertility, crop pests, or animal diseases. Because of the evolution over time of the system, it is useful to reorganize the coupled natural-human system as evolving over time (Fig. 8.10).

Fig. 8.10. A coupled natural-human food system developing over time. The initial coupling at time 0 is the natural system presenting itself to human society with its properties for potential food production. The Human system "responds" by reorganizing the natural system for food production (time 2), and feedbacks from the natural system ensue, with impacts on the human system. These feedbacks are either intended consequences (e.g food production and income generation) or unintended consequences (e.g. river and estuary pollution, greenhouse gas emissions)

Credit: Karl Zimmerer/Steven Vanek

Overlap and Transition in Food Systems

As a final observation about ourselves as consumers within different food system types, it is important to stress that most consumers and households participate in multiple types of food systems at once. For example, someone in a modern society might consume a breakfast energy bar with globally sourced processed ingredients, along with a fair-trade certified cup of coffee and regionally sourced milk, on the way to picking up sweet corn at a direct-marketing farm stand of a local farmer. In addition, and of special importance for thinking about sustainable scenarios for your capstone project, it is important to find explanations of how transitions occur in food systems from one type of predominant system, to the inclusion of alternatives, or in some cases a wholesale change from one food system type another.

Human-Natural Interactions as Drivers of Food System Variation and Transitions

Recall that in Module two we presented the broad strokes of the history of food systems, from prehistoric times to the modern-day, including the globalized and local-regional variants of alternative food systems that were featured on the previous page of this module. In module two, we presented the idea of drivers and feedbacks that have caused large changes in the environment-food relations over human history (for example, from hunting and gathering to agriculture). In this final page of module 10.1 we want to develop concepts that constitute Coupled Human-Natural Systems explanations or "ways of seeing" that can help to understand two different processes:

1. The way that two different and parallel food systems can exist in the same place, based on divergence from a common origin
2. The transition from one food system type to another, considering the three major types of food systems and the different variants of alternative food systems.

Both of these ways of seeing may be useful in understanding proposals for sustainable food systems, as well as the issues of resilience and vulnerability of food systems presented in the next module.

Regarding process (1) above, The fact that food systems develop over time due to the interactions of human and natural systems means that different food systems can develop in the same natural system environment. For example, the same environment or natural system can support either a smallholder type of food system (small plots, less mechanization, local consumption) or a global corporate food system (larger land sizes, more mechanization and industrially-produced soil inputs, global distribution and consumption). It can also support a mosaic of the two types. This overlay of two types is in fact fairly common: for example, smallholder agriculture on smaller plots for mixed home and regional consumption coexists in Central America with the export agriculture of major food commodities such as bananas or vegetables, and often involves marginalization of smallholders to smaller landholdings in less productive and more difficult to manage soils. This mosaic of food system types is also increasingly true in Southeast Asia as globalized agriculture for cassava and maize production for export to China as well as domestic consumption coexists with more traditional smallholder agriculture as portrayed in the Vietnamese "VAC" system in the introductory video for this module. Figure 10.1.19 shows how two parallel food systems can develop in the same environment according to the Coupled Human-Natural System diagram we have seen at other points in the course. Starting at "time 0" in the middle we can see how an initial food system type might develop via human system management (e.g., the smallholder system in the Central American or Southeast Asian case). At "time 1", meanwhile, differences in the human system (say marginalization of smallholders to certain environments, investment in industrial farming in other environments) have created two divergent food system types. These divergent types then develop on their own through times two and three, and into the future, incorporating interactions between human and natural systems that embody the issues of social, financial, and environmental sustainability. As we can see by the Central American and Southeast Asian examples, this parallel trajectory of two different food system types is highly relevant, since it represents exactly what has happened in developing countries that seek to industrialize their agricultural sectors but retain a large rural population practicing smallholder agriculture, often in more marginal regions with greater heterogeneity of environments (e.g. mountainous areas of Central and South America, mosaics of large export-oriented farms alongside smallholder agriculture in South and Southeast Asia as well as Eastern and Southern Africa)

Fig. 10.1.19. Divergence of the process of coupled human-natural system development to produce two different types of food systems.

Click for a text description of Figure 10.1.9

The image is a conceptual diagram illustrating the divergence of two food systems over time, focusing on the interaction between human systems and natural systems. At the center, the diagram begins with Time 0, labeled “Initial coupling,” where a Human system (in red) and a Natural system (in green) are shown side by side, indicating an initial integrated relationship. From this point, two curved arrows branch out, representing the progression of time and the divergence of these systems.

On the right side, the blue arrow labeled divergence leads to Time 1, where the natural system splits into Natural System 1 and Natural System 2, both in green boxes. This suggests that natural systems evolve differently under separate food systems. On the left side, a black arrow shows the human system evolving into Human System 2 at Time 2, and then continuing toward Time 3, etc., where two boxes appear at the top: one labeled Food system 1, e.g., global corporate and another labeled Food system 2, e.g., smallholder. Each of these boxes contains a stylized representation of human and natural components, but the alignment differs—indicating that the coupling between human and natural systems changes over time and across food systems.

The color scheme uses red for human systems and green for natural systems, with arrows in black and blue to indicate different trajectories. The black arrows primarily represent human system evolution, while the blue arrows represent natural system divergence. The overall layout conveys that initially coupled human and natural systems become increasingly distinct as food systems specialize and scale differently, such as global corporate versus smallholder models.

Credit: Karl Zimmerer, based on the National Science Foundation Coupled Human-Natural Systems program.

Regarding the transition from one food system type to another (process 2 as listed above), the CNHS diagram (figure 10.1.20 below) can help to understand these transitions. As an example, we'll use the transition to alternative food systems from the globalized industrial food system we described in module two and again in this module. In figure 10.1.19, between the "initial coupling" point at center and "Time 1", expansion of a dominant food system begins to create strains on both the natural and the human components of the system. In the case of the globalized industrial food system that emerged in developed countries (sometimes called the global north) after World War II, this system eventually created strains in the natural and human systems and a critique responding to the unintended consequences of the expansion of this industrial and globalized model. You'll recognize these strains and critique as the same issues of sustainability discussed in the previous modules:, "diseases of affluence" from poor nutrition, food insecurity, concerns about water use and the water footprint of food, soil degradation, pest and weed resistance to pesticide and herbicide management, and others. Between Time 1 and Time 2, the human society thus receives signals from the interactions and drivers within the coupled system, and then responds, in the form of a wide range of new policies and "models" of the new system that emerge during Time 3. In some cases, these responses are modest, for example, a new regulation on fertilizer or pesticide application to moderate the unintended negative consequences. In other cases, the responses are more dramatic and become the alternative food system types described in this module, both global and community-based. These different variants of the transition may increasingly create aspects of a "complete" food system, e.g. production, distribution, and consumption pathways in an integrated whole, as compared to their initial state as outliers, regulations, or policy proposals. Through different drivers and feedbacks from the natural and human sub-systems, a transition to new food system types occurs. These new types often coexist with a more dominant food system, which is certainly the case with the coexistence of alternative food systems in the present day with the still-dominant global corporate food system.

Fig. 10.1.20. A model of the way that a crisis in the social and environmental sustainability of a food system can drive a transition to a new type of food system, considered as Coupled Human-Natural Systems (CNHS). See text for more detailed description and example of this process.

Click for a text description of Figure 10.1.10

The image is a conceptual diagram illustrating the transition of food systems over time, focusing on the dynamic interaction between human systems and natural systems. At the center, the diagram begins with “Before Transition – Initial coupling”, where a Human system (in red) and a Natural system (in green) are shown side by side, indicating an integrated starting point. Below this, a note explains that feedback from the coupled Human-Natural system informs food production managers, communities, and societal decision-makers, signaling the need for change toward a new system.

From this initial point, two curved arrows branch outward, representing the progression of time and system evolution. On the right, a blue arrow leads to Time 1, where the diagram shows a combined box labeled Human-Natural, indicating that the natural system is exceeding sustainability limits and human system consequences (such as poor nutrition and inequality) are becoming increasingly apparent. A text box nearby explains that the expansion of the food system model creates strain on natural systems, pollution, and human system consequences.

On the left, a black arrow leads to Time 2, where two separate boxes appear: Human system and Human system (both in red), suggesting diversification or intensification of human-driven changes. A text box lists examples of changes at Time 2, such as:

• Emergence of organic and other sustainable agricultural management.
• New thinking on human nutrition and food policy.
• Mitigation of climate change impacts.

At the top, the diagram shows Time 3, where a box labeled Human-Natural appears again, but with a different alignment, representing the emergence of alternative food system types. The accompanying text explains that these new systems are embodied in alternative production, distribution, and consumption models, and may exist in parallel with pre-transition types.

The color scheme uses red for human systems, green for natural systems, and combined boxes for integrated states. Arrows in black and blue indicate different trajectories and transitions. Overall, the diagram conveys that initial coupling between human and natural systems becomes strained under conventional food system expansion, leading to sustainability challenges and social consequences, which eventually drive the emergence of alternative, more sustainable food systems.

Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer, based on the National Science Foundation Coupled Human-Natural Systems program.