Roberta Sonnino

• Professor at University of Surrey

Current food transition studies predominantly examine the role of food actors in challenging dominant food regimes. However, there is a notable gap in understanding changes within the spaces where individuals interact with the food system-the food environment. In this paper, we seek to support the development of a new research agenda that engages a...

Under the banner of "the right to the city," scholars and activists reclaim the rights of urban dwellers to access, use and shape their urban space. However, few studies have examined how this right to the city is interpreted, negotiated and exercised in practice. To address this gap, we explore democratisation processes that aim to increase popula...

Since 2020, the progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2– Zero Hunger has faced a sudden stall due to an ongoing “polycrisis”. While some countries are on track, a great effort is still globally necessary to achieve the SDG2 targets. Here we provide a brief background about SDG2, including its synergies and trade-off...

Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation towards a more just and sustainable food system. Scholars argue that food policy integration-policies that unite numerous food-related actions-is required to overcome dominant siloed and fragmented approaches and to tackle environmental and economic cri...

Recent years have seen the emergence of novel collaborations between key food system actors, many of whom seek to change policy towards food system transformation. These networks of food system stakeholders – referred to as Food Policy Networks (FPNs) in this report – exist in diverse compositions around the world. For example, in North America, Fo...

The European Union (EU) plans to decarbonize the region by 2050. As highlighted by the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy, food systems are essential for this transition. Here we investigate the resource dependence and carbon emissions of the EU-27’s food systems from 2004 to 2014 via an ecological footprint (EF)-extended multi-regional input–out...

Deliverable 2.1 of the European funded project FoodCLIC

Recent years have witnessed an intensification of scientific debates on food system transformation, which, however, continue to unfold mostly at the macro-level, with little empirical backing. To begin to fill the gap between theory and practice surrounding food system transformation, this paper focuses on the governance scale that has been more ac...

In the context of food transition studies scant attention has been given to the role of state authorities (be they local or national) in destabilizing the dominant food regime. Specifically, little is known about how state-based regime actors use the power at their disposal to bring about change “from within”. Using a political economy approach and...

The European Commission (EC) established a High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) to assess the needs and options for strengthening the science-policy interface (SPI) for improved food systems governance. The HLEG concludes that food system transformation must be better supported through more ambitious interlinked science-policy-society interfaces and reco...

Responding to growing calls for research that engages with the complexity of food system transformation, in this paper we focus on place as an “active meso-level mediator” between the multiple tensions and contestations that surround processes of change. Drawing on Massey’s notion of a “progressive sense of place”, we identify, through a critical r...

Calls for food system transformation to strengthen synergies between socioeconomic and environmental goals have been growing in recent years. As yet, however, insights from theoretical debates have not been tested against the actions and perceptions of food system actors. To add empirical weight to this debate, we focus on a region in the north of...

The anticipated failure of many countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 necessitates the assessment of science–policy engagement mechanisms for food systems transformation. We explore options for enhancing existing partnerships, mandates and resources — or reimagining a new mission — for science–policy interfaces.

Independent Expert Report: The urgency of food systems transformation is widely agreed. The UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), in September 2021, presents the opportunity to develop political momentum behind food system transformation at national and international levels. Given the scale and ambition of this vision, and that many countries are at...

Urbanization processes have been accompanied by a shift towards diets that have placed increased pressures on the environment and human health. City governments are increasingly striving to address these challenges through a policy focus on “sustainable diets”. Using the example of the city of Vienna (Austria), this paper adopts an innovative multi...

This final policy brief of the European Union (EU) Think Tank – part of the FIT4FOOD2030 Coordination and Support Action (CSA) of the FOOD 2030 initiative – aims to highlight key principles for commissioning impactful, inter- and transdisciplinary Research and Innovation (R&I) in support of the FOOD 2030 agenda.

Background Food systems are associated with severe and persistent problems worldwide. Governance approaches aiming to foster sustainable transformation of food systems face several challenges due to the complex nature of food systems. Scope and approach In this commentary we argue that addressing these governance challenges requires the developmen...

Moving beyond the methodological ‘cityism’ of urban food scholarship, in this paper we focus on the ways in which the ‘urban’ is conceptualised, utilised and implicated in post-Quito development discourse. The analysis of international policy documents and data collected through interviews with stakeholders from prominent global organisations highl...

The EU Think Tank (as part of the FIT4FOOD2030 Coordination and Support Action) strongly supports the development of the Farm to Fork Strategy as a key component of the European Green Deal, recognising the need to transform the food system as a whole. This policy brief calls for innovative approaches to the Farm to Fork Strategy to provide practica...

In this paper we examine the dynamic nature of local food governance by considering the potential for (and barriers to) developing a more robust approach that can enhance the socio-ecological resilience of the food system. Fusing insights from Eliasian sociology with the literature on local food governance, we focus on a region of northern England...

Com base em apelos generalizados por políticas e estratégias de desenvolvimento que alinhem objetivos humanos e ecológicos, um número crescente de estudiosos e profissionais está recorrendo ao conceito de “dieta sustentável” como um princípio orientador para abordar as implicações multidimensionais da produção de alimentos na sociedade, no meio amb...

Drawing upon Urban Political Ecology and recent developments around place-based approaches to food security, this article examines how various urban food coalitions in the United Kingdom (UK) are acting to influence their local food environment and forge more sustainable socio-ecological relations within a highly unequal, contested and multi-scalar...

An emerging literature recognizes cities as the optimal scale for food policy innovation, pointing to their pervasive emphasis on the adoption of a systemic approach to address the complex socio-ecological issues that have disrupted the internal metabolism of the food system. To date, however, no empirical effort has been made to identify the meani...

Interconnected sets of vulnerabilities have emerged in the European food system since 2007–2008, raising concerns about food security in a region with arguably some of the most advanced and prosperous economies and environmental governance frameworks. Historically, this is suggesting the current “double jeopardy” problem in food system vulnerabilit...

Cities have begun to develop a more ‘place-based approach’ to food policy that emphasises translocal alliances. To understand how such alliances develop distinct capacities to act, in this paper we integrate key theoretical contributions from governance networks, social movements and translocal assemblages. Our analysis focuses on the activities an...

In the context of an ongoing crisis of the global food system, research has recently emphasized the transformative potential of emerging urban food policies, particularly in relation to new strategies and mechanisms utilized at the implementation stage. This paper aims to expand this debate through a focus on the cultural dimension of urban food go...

Studies on vulnerabilities and drivers of change in the food system have largely failed to address holistic but also the competing interpretations of “food security”. In general, they tend to focus on specific sectors and dimensions of the food system as well as on outcomes, rather than unpacking root causes of vulnerability. To contribute to overc...

This paper addresses emerging calls for an enhanced relationality and convergence across different food security discourses. Based on a critical analysis of different narratives and concepts that have, over time, been deployed to address the food security problem, this paper asks: How, and to what extent, can the different narratives on food securi...

http://sustainablefoodcities.org/getstarted/developingindicators

There is increased recognition of a common suite of global challenges that hamper food system sustainability at the community scale. Food price volatility, shortages of basic commodities, increased global rates of obesity and non-communicable food-related diseases, and land grabbing are among the impediments to socially just, economically robust, e...

Food insecurity is increasingly ‘bimodal’, encompassing issues of quantity and quality, under- and overconsumption, in developed and developing countries alike. At a time when most of the world's population lives in cities, food security has also assumed a strong urban dimension, raising new issues of physical and financial access to food. Finally,...

In the last decade, the unfolding of a “new food equation” has raised the need to address food security more structurally and systemically. This paper aims to progress this debate through a focus on Brazil, where food security policies are embedded into a “reflexive governance” framework that facilitates learning, adaptation and collaboration betwe...

'The School Food Revolution is an important book that deserves success.' Journal of Organic Systems 'A great new book that describes how 'the humble school meal' can be considered as 'a litmus test of… government's political commitment to sustainable development.' Peter Riggs, Director, Forum on Democracy & Trade 'The School Food Revolution should...

This article summarizes a decade of research engagement with local food systems, highlighting some key changes in the scholarly perception of their nature and potential. Based on a synthesis of case studies from different countries, the article identifies three key stages that have shaped the research agenda on food re-localizations: (1) an early e...

In the context of a global food system that has given rise to widespread concerns for food security and sustainability, reformative efforts have emerged, expanded and multiplied worldwide. To enhance understanding of the multi-faceted nature of this food movement and its scope for convergence and consolidation, in this article we propose frame alig...

Public health nutrition sits at the nexus of a global crisis in food, environmental and health systems that has generated - along with numerous other problems - an urgent and changing problem of food insecurity. The 'new' food insecurity, however, is different from the old: it is bimodal, encompassing issues of both under- and over-consumption, hun...

Highlights ► Food systems under capitalist development have always had to confront the twin problems of food security and long-term sustainability. ► This resulted in a series of ‘spatial fixes’ which are now currently being progressively dismantled as the current food crisis deepens. ► The current crisis provides an opportunity to re-integrate hum...

Although agro‐food researchers have been calling for studies that uncover the tensions inherent in the process of construction of alternative food networks, the literature has mostly focused on individual initiatives, which make it difficult to address the implications of these processes in the wider territorial context where they operate. To overc...

At a time of global economic and environmental crisis, academic and policy debates are re-emphasizing the potential of the social economy in providing an alternative development model that reconnects communities with their resource-base and enhances their ‘resilience’. The goal of this paper is to explore this potential through a focus on the pract...

This article aims to address the need for more comprehensive studies on sustainable food systems through a case study of hospital food waste in Wales, UK. Based on a mixed-method research approach that focused on the links between hospital food waste, catering practices and public procurement strategies, the article shows that the hospital meal sys...

A new food equation is taking shape in response to burgeoning prices for basic foodstuffs and growing concerns about the security and sustainability of the agri-food system. Far from being confined to the countries of the global south, food security is now a major issue for the global north, where cities are most exposed to the new pressures on acc...

Building on the stimulating critique of normative views of scale provided by the literature on the ‘local trap’, some agri-food researchers have recently argued that local food initiatives (including, for example, American Farm-to-School programs) reproduce neo-liberal values and forms of governance. By focusing on school food reform in two devolve...

In an era when, for the first time in history, more than half of the human population is urbanized, cities in both developed and developing countries are facing enormous challenges in terms of food security. In this context, municipal governments in New York, Rome, Belo Horizonte, Toronto, London, Amsterdam and Dar es Salaam are devising integrated...

In the last decade the concept of quality has been widely used to describe the dynamics that have been shaping the agrifood system. Despite differences in research focus and approach, scholars agree that quality is the outcome of a contingent and so far underresearched process of negotiation that entails and determines relations of power in the foo...

Under the emerging rural development paradigm, we argue that to be multifunctional an activity must add income to agriculture, it must contribute to the construction of a new agricultural sector that corresponds to the needs of the wider society and it must reconfigure rural resources in ways that lead to wider rural development benefits. By evalua...

This article explores the meanings and implications of the notion of embeddedness through a focus on two emerging local food systems: saffron in Tuscany and Steve Turton meats in the South West of England. Based on the analysis of documentary material and of the narratives of key actors operating within two different food cultures, the article show...

Despite the widespread use of the concept of embeddedness in the literature on agri-food networks, not much has been written on the process through which a food economy becomes embedded. To explore this dynamic and contribute to a more critical perspective on the meanings and implications of embeddedness in the context of food, this paper analyzes...

Reflecting on recent questions concerning the meaning and implications of food “re-localization”, in this chapter we utilize the concept of “embeddedness” as an analytical tool to deepen and broaden the investigation of the relationships between food and territory. After pointing to some limitations inherent in the conventional use of the concept o...

In this paper, we develop the burgeoning research agenda on alternative food networks in Europe. Through the concept of 'embeddedness', we argue for a much more nuanced and complex understanding of the relationships between conventional and alternative food chains--and, by extension, of their implications for rural development. Rather than viewing...

Under global conditions that threaten the viability of rural economies and the farm sector, Italian legislation supports both through agritourism, a form of rural tourism conceived to diversify and complement the economic activities of individual farms. In theory, agritourism is a sustainable strategy: in its stated objectives, it promotes the cons...

The term 'sustainable development' has largely been promulgated by the industrialized nations in the context of global environmental processes and concerns, and it has catalyzed attention on the relationship between economic growth and the natural resource base on which this depends (Redclift 1987). Although the term has been used in a variety of w...