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A system dynamics approach for examining mechanisms and pathways of food supply vulnerability
Abstract
Understanding vulnerabilities in complex and interdependent modern food systems requires a whole-system perspective. This paper demonstrates how one systems approach, system dynamics, can help conceptualize the mechanisms and pathways by which food systems can be affected by disturbances. We describe the process of creating stock-and-flow maps and causal loop diagrams from the graphical representation of a problem and illustrate their use for making links and feedback among the human health, food, and environmental health sectors visible. These mapping tools help structure thinking about where and how particular systems might be affected by different disturbances and how flows of material and information transmit the effects of disturbances throughout the system. The visual representations as well as the process of creating them can serve different purposes for different stakeholders: developing research questions, identifying policy leverage points, or building collaboration among people in different parts of the system. They can serve as a transition between mental models and formal simulation models, but they also stand on their own to support diagrammatic reasoning: clarifying assumptions, structuring a problem space, or identifying unexpected implications of an unplanned disturbance or an intentional policy intervention. The diagrams included here show that vulnerability of a national food system does not only or automatically result from exogenous shocks that might affect a country. Rather, vulnerability can be either intensified or reduced by the interaction of feedback loops in the food system, and buffered or amplified by the structure of stocks and flows.
... The identified problems were rarely presented as behaviour over time graphs to indicate the behaviour of problems. In only fifteen studies problems were presented in the form of behaviour over time graphs, e.g. in Stave and Kopainsky (2015); Lie and Rich (2016); and Faeid et al. (2018). These reference modes of behaviour are critical in the development of a system dynamics model because the aim of the modelling process is to develop a model that can replicate the problem behaviours. ...
... Besides economic performance, a few selected documents (15 studies), e.g. Stave and Kopainsky (2015), also evaluated social impacts (e.g. improved skills or knowledge or social capital and improved investment in labour, and effect of products on human health). ...
... The recommended interventions to the limits to growth and tragedy of the commons archetypes were to help value chain actors remove or minimising constraints through the adoption of technologies and improved decision support systems . A successful to the successful archetype was identified in ; and Stave and Kopainsky (2015) where the success of a group of value chain actors who implemented improved agricultural practices (caused by a reinforcing loop that improved their success), reduced the success of another group of value chain actors who stayed with conventional agricultural practices (caused by a reinforcing loop that reduced their success). The recommended solution to the successful to the successful archetype was to balance the success of all actors in the value chain through improved decision support systems. ...
Value chain analysis has been widely used as a diagnostic approach to identify and address complex issues across value chains in an agricultural development context. While comprehensive, the method is primarily qualitative and static in nature, it has limited capability in capturing the dynamic interactions between components from production to consumption and their linkages within a complex system. The application of system dynamics in value chain analysis has the potential to address the limitations. We conducted a systematic literature review to synthesise the underlying reasons behind the application of system dynamics in value chain analysis and understand how it has been operationalised. Results show that the primary reasons why system dynamics is used in value chain analysis were improved ability in capturing the feedbacks, dynamic behaviours and time delays, modelling the dynamics of governance and roles of support systems over time, incorporating multiple causal factors, and measuring performance and policy interventions over time. This can be broadly attributed to the need to improve the analytical rigour of value chain analysis. The applications of system dynamics in value chain analysis varied according to the agricultural commodities analysed, the modelling process followed, dynamic complexity modelled, and the scope of the value chain components analysed. We discuss the contributions, limitations, and opportunities for future improvements. A preliminary framework is proposed to improve the application of system dynamics in value chain analysis.
... Stakeholder interactions: The stakeholder interactions section maps required stakeholders that enable food security such as formal and informal local and national leaders (e.g., government, influencers of change) [82] [46]; the workforce which plays critical roles in the food value chain (agriculturists, food processors and distributors) as well as those that support activities that enhance food security (technology providers, healthcare workers, researchers, NGOs and other partners); drivers of food demand (i.e., consumers); stabilizers or stakeholders who are experts at managing variability in the system (climate predictors, economy assessment agents, emergency response personnel) [83] . Beyond this, interactions between these multi-tiered entities have also been outlined in terms of positive and negative interactions, wherein positive interactions (such as cooperation, partnerships and healthy market competition) are encouraged in the food system and measures to mitigate negative interactions (such as conflicts or disputes) are framed to bring out the best outcome in connection with achieving food security in the nation [84,85] . ...
... The workforce needs to be aware of best practices, guidelines for food quality standards, and requirements charted for the regions and scales at which they operate [81,99]. These elements have been described in this section along with those factors, such as appropriate communication channels and content for specific audiences, that can enable generation of awareness among them [83,100,101]. ...
... We broadly searched the literature on the topic of "national food security" and discovered studies that covered a single or a few parts of the CSFA ontology. For instance, the bulk of the focus in the literature was laid on system level elements -Policy [83,115,117,118], Security [72,119], Sustainability [119,120], Resilience [73,115,118,120], and Leadership [118,119,121,122]. Furthermore, another strong focus was on operational elements -Resources [93,98,118], Economics [72,119], and Supply-chain and distribution [93,115,122,123]. ...
Complex socio-technical challenges, often referred to as grand challenges or wicked problems, lack a robust method for their holistic framing. Current approaches to framing fall into two primary categories. On one hand, models grounded in reductionist perspectives tend to oversimplify the problems and thus fall short of capturing the true complexity that must be understood to make tangible progress. On the other, notable attempts to achieve holism are more effective at incorporating contextual nuance, but still lack systematicity to identify and drive effective inclusion of critical issues, and also tend to suffer from the inherent bias of select expert input. In this article, we report on an extension of holistic problem framing techniques called comprehensive success factor analysis (CSFA) that makes-sense of web-mined information reflective of both expert and general population perspectives as well as pattern-informed ontological knowledge organization structure, to yield ‘richer pictures’ of grand challenges. This method has been developed and refined over a seven-year period by application to a variety of distinct socio-technical challenges, and emphasizes that framing complex problems requires one to embrace multiple levels of abstraction, a plurality of perspectives, careful contextualization, and an overarching system view. The CSFA method results in ‘success factor trees’ that are more comprehensive than seen otherwise and present a holistic view of the essential factors that need to be considered when engaging in large scale socio-technical problems. The success factor trees provide common grounds for meaningful collaboration and discourse on grand challenges, facilitate more informed resource allocation decisions, and provide guidance for designing solutions through careful consideration of system factors that are not always apparent. The paper illustrates CSFA applied to the challenge of ‘food security for a nation in a low- to middle-income country context’ to ascertain the value of the approach and finds that it results in a robust view of the challenge that greatly exceeds perspectives arrived at in the literature using current framing methods, on dimensions of scope, levels of abstraction, plurality, and context detail.
... Recognizing that effective action on a complex problem requires the perspectives, consensus, and coordination of multiple stakeholders, SD has evolved a rich framework to involve stakeholders in the model building process to foster collaboration and learning [52]. The reliance on visual tools allow insights and causal theories to be shared and understood with diverse stakeholder groups, enabling a history of participatory approaches [4,71,99,107]. Community based system dynamics (CBSD) [46] is a particular SD practice approach that engages stakeholders who are embedded in the system of interest to conceptualize the problem, identify the related issues and prioritize interventions based on model supported insights. ...
... These activities can be adapted for diverse contexts and support the development of capabilities for collaborative causal theory formation (CCTF). Overall, CBSD has been shown to be useful in a broad range of problem domains such as maternal and child health [71], identifying food system vulnerabilities [99], mental health interventions [107] and alcohol abuse [4], to name a few. ...
... Another advantage of our SD-based approach is that it draws heavily on the visual diagramming conventions which emphasize transparency and facilitate the engagement of diverse stakeholders to add, revise and critique causal theories [46,56]. A long lineage of participatory approaches within SD including CBSD and group model building provide evidence of success in developing and using system dynamics models in diverse contexts serve as resources for groups interested in developing SD capabilities in their communities/contexts [4,71,99,107]. Moreover, a strength SD shares with other causal modeling approaches, including Bayesian networks [75,76], is the correspondence between its visualizations and their underlying mathematical representations, which allows stakeholders to do more than visualize, but continue to develop deep insights about important data to collect, consider, and evaluate impact of products and decisions through simulation as well [56,101]. ...
Machine learning (ML) fairness research tends to focus primarily on mathematically-based interventions on often opaque algorithms or models and/or their immediate inputs and outputs. Such oversimplified mathematical models abstract away the underlying societal context where ML models are conceived, developed, and ultimately deployed. As fairness itself is a socially constructed concept that originates from that societal context along with the model inputs and the models themselves, a lack of an in-depth understanding of societal context can easily undermine the pursuit of ML fairness. In this paper, we outline three new tools to improve the comprehension, identification and representation of societal context. First, we propose a complex adaptive systems (CAS) based model and definition of societal context that will help researchers and product developers to expand the abstraction boundary of ML fairness work to include societal context. Second, we introduce collaborative causal theory formation (CCTF) as a key capability for establishing a sociotechnical frame that incorporates diverse mental models and associated causal theories in modeling the problem and solution space for ML-based products. Finally, we identify community based system dynamics (CBSD) as a powerful, transparent and rigorous approach for practicing CCTF during all phases of the ML product development process. We conclude with a discussion of how these systems theoretic approaches to understand the societal context within which sociotechnical systems are embedded can improve the development of fair and inclusive ML-based products.
... A general five-step process is employed in implementing the SD modelling process. Problem Definition (defining boundaries, Variables, Time Frame, and Data Sources), Development of a dynamic hypothesis based on influential variables (initial explanation of the inherent dynamics of the problem), formulating a simulation model (moving from a qualitative understanding of the problem towards a quantitative understanding), Testing the simulation model (building confidence in the quantitative model) and designing, experimenting, and analyzing policies or strategies (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015). ...
... According to Nguyen et al. (2017), an SD method produces results that have a high degree of confidence since it takes into account not just the variables that affect research resilience but also the interactions between each of these variables. Complex situations can be better understood with the use of SD (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015;Zomorodian et al., 2018). Furthermore, it highlights the system's overall behavior and how that behavior will impact the system's future evolution, which makes decision-making easier (Kotir et al., 2016;Morecroft, 2010). ...
Omnichannel Retailing (OCR) places a strong emphasis on how different channels work together to offer seamless purchasing experiences for customers. Nevertheless, retailers will incur significant costs in implementing it. This study investigates the variables influencing OCR by examining the executive perspectives required by retailers to realize, expand, and improve OCR. To achieve this, system dynamics is employed, and a model is created to determine the factors influencing three stock variables-profitability, delivery time, and customer satisfaction-as well as the degree to which these effects are present and the connections among them. Before designing the model, the influential variables were extracted from the literature by considering the ex-perts' opinions. Then, the optimal values of the variables were evaluated by creating two different scenarios and three policies. The findings showed that utilizing OCR contributes to both the highest possible profit and level of customer satisfaction. Moreover, to achieve the lowest level of delivery time, we proposed three policies: 1) the creation of a distribution center, 2) inventory management and safety stock, and 3) demand management. The results of the implementation of these policies are given at the end of the article.
... Articles identified relationship factors that influence implementation by applying systems science methods. Acknowledged factors included: contextual and organizational structures, and intervention and individual behavioral characteristics that impact nutrition D&I goals, plans, and sustainability (59,83,87,92,(94)(95)(96)(97). 5. Innovation and education defines systems science approaches to support and encourage the development of strategies to address complex nutrition behaviors and outcomes in D&I research. Articles identified that situating education and innovations within systems-oriented frameworks or theories assists stakeholders with design, evaluation, and self-efficacy in nutrition D&I research (59,83,96). ...
... Many key challenges included capacity and resources for complex interventions (57,82,93), especially in rural contexts (100), and lack of training in systems science and nutrition D&I research (88)(89)(90)93). Articles concluded that future research needs to focus predominantly on educating nutrition researchers and practitioners through trainings and curriculums to enhance systems science in nutrition D&I research (57,89,93,95,98). ...
Use of systems science can improve the dissemination and implementation (D&I) process. However, little is known about use of systems science in nutrition D&I research. The purpose of this article is to synthesize the ways in which systems science methodology is applied in nutrition D&I research. Scoping review methodology involved searching 6 academic databases for full-text, peer-reviewed, English articles published between 1970 and 2020 that employed systems science within nutrition D&I research. Data extraction included intervention type, population, study aim, methods, theoretical approach, outcomes, and results. Descriptive statistics and qualitative thematic analysis followed. Thirty-four retained articles qualitatively identified benefits (successful planning and organization of complex interventions) and challenges (limited resources, trainings, and lack of knowledge) to utilizing systems science in nutrition D&I research. Future research should work toward building knowledge capacity among nutrition practitioners by increasing available trainings and resources to enhance the utilization of systems science in nutrition D&I research.
... Agriculture and food supply chain resilience and vulnerability have been investigated with several SD modeling studies. These studies covered supply chain resilience assessment (Spiegler et al.,2012) and understanding food system vulnerability with conceptual models (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015). Recently Armendariz et al. (2016) focused on a systemic understanding of sustainability a nd resilience of food systems at the urban and regional level. ...
... Since our objective was to understand the effects of COVID -19 on smallholder food systems from a global perspective, the analysis relied on a diverse set of resources instead of focusing on specific cases of selected stakeholders. The stock-and-flow model was mainly constructed and validated via relevant references such as reports published by reputable international organizations (e.g., FAO, United Nations; IPES), and publications that are relevant to the relationships between the pandemic and food systems (e.g., Garnett, Doherty, and Heron, 2020;Hobbs, 2020;Petetin, 2020;Stephens et al., 2020), SD modeling (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015;Huff et al., 2015), community health during a pandemic (Demirag, 2020;Blecker et al., 2020), supply chain management (Gray, 2020;Mussell et al., 2020), and AF resource management (Burger, Warner, and Derix, 2010;Bruno et al., 2020;Galanakis, 2020;Torero, 2020). Throughout the tests, we inquired about the endogeneity and exogeneity of each variable, the consistency of the model relationships with the available knowledge about the effects of the pandemic, the level of aggregation of variables, and the decision rules along the supply chain. ...
COVID-19 has caused severe agriculture and food supply chain disruptions, significantly affecting smallholder farmers who supply most of the world's food, specifically their changes in vulnerability, resilience, and food loss and waste. Therefore, the objective of this study was to understand the complex causal and feedback relationships for this system by developing a dynamic hypothesis and causal loop diagrams utilizing the System Dynamics methodology. Results provide a roadmap for dialogue and a framework for case-specific model development and help to guide policy decisions for smallholder farmers' survival during health crises.
... CBSD's explicit goal to build capacity among stakeholders to derive deeper system insights together through their participation sets it apart from other approaches where stakeholders are viewed as informants. It has been used to engage and center the perspectives of marginalized and vulnerable communities in the development of more effective interventions in ecology, public health, and social work (Stave & Kopainsky, 2015;Trani et al., 2016;Escobedo et al., 2019). ...
... These activities can be adapted for diverse contexts and support the development of capabilities for collaborative causal inference development. Overall, CBSD has been shown to be useful in a broad range of problem domains such as maternal and child health (Munar et al., 2015), identifying food system vulnerabilities (Stave & Kopainsky, 2015), mental health interventions (Trani et al., 2016) and alcohol abuse (Apostolopoulos et al., 2018), to name a few. In the domain of ML (un)fairness, the use of CBSD can help center the voices and lived experiences of those marginalized communities that are potentially impacted by ML-based products. ...
Recent research on algorithmic fairness has highlighted that the problem formulation phase of ML system development can be a key source of bias that has significant downstream impacts on ML system fairness outcomes. However, very little attention has been paid to methods for improving the fairness efficacy of this critical phase of ML system development. Current practice neither accounts for the dynamic complexity of high-stakes domains nor incorporates the perspectives of vulnerable stakeholders. In this paper we introduce community based system dynamics (CBSD) as an approach to enable the participation of typically excluded stakeholders in the problem formulation phase of the ML system development process and facilitate the deep problem understanding required to mitigate bias during this crucial stage.
... While building food systems' resilience remains challenging, many participatory methods have been developed and tested which can be used to build resilience both in social-ecological systems, and specifically food systems (Fazey et al., 2007;Ravera et al., 2011;Reed et al., 2010;Rodela, 2011). One feature of participatory methods is that they enable a genuine system perspective, which, as various scholars have argued, is necessary for improving food system resilience and reducing its vulnerability (e.g., Ericksen, 2008;Stave & Kopainsky, 2015; also see Bala et al., 2017). ...
... Stave (2010) argued that PSM is one of a suite of system dynamics modeling approaches used to engage stakeholders in problem analysis. PSM has been often used as a transition between the creation of mental models and formal simulation models, but it also stands alone to inform diagrammatic reasoning, including clarifying assumptions, structuring a problem space, or identifying unexpected implications of unplanned disturbances or policy interventions (Henly-Shepard et al., 2015;Mendoza & Prabhu, 2006;Rzzzibeiro & Zwirner, 2010;Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). PSM has been previously used worldwide, and in West Africa. ...
Participatory methods can be used to build food system resilience. However, it is widely acknowledged that these methods are usually highly time and resource consuming, which reduces their applicability. This study developed a novel rapid participatory system mapping method to elicit system conceptualizations from distinct value chain actors. This study also tested the method in a case study of rice value chains in Benue State, Nigeria. Participant evaluations of the rapid participatory system mapping method provide evidence of this method’s potential to contribute to resilience building by facilitating social learning, informing better decision making, and promoting community problem solving. These contributions especially strengthen the two resilience factors of social self-organization and reflective and shared learning. This novel rapid participatory system mapping method can be used in the future as a self-standing research approach, or to complement other participatory methods of food system resilience building.
... У новій, синергетичній науковій парадигмі (stepin, 2003), яка в західній науковій школі отримала назву пост-нормальної науки (post-normal science), механіцизм поступається процесуальності та гетерогенності, а редукціонізм -холізму. Неодмінним атрибутом постановки і вирішення проблем є плюралізм вартостей (цінностей), а звідси -суб'єктивність оцінок і суджень, на яких базується прийняття рішень, контекстуалізм рішень, релевантність неакадемічних знань і затребуваність деліберативних методів прийняття рішень (söderbaum, 2000;. ...
... Ці діаграми використовують як замінники диференціальних рівнянь, а також як засоби візуалізації елементів системи та їхніх взаємозв'язків. Причинно-наслідкові діаграми використовують для якісного аналізу процесів і систем, візуалізації досліджуваної проблеми, а також для того, щоб ідентифікувати проблемні місця, сформулювати теми для подальшого дослідження, виявити сфери ризику та невизначеності (stave & Kopainsky, 2015). Потокові діаграми використовують для кількісного аналізу. ...
Проаналізовано методологічні обмеження мейнстриму економічної теорії ХХ ст. у сфері дослідження еколого-економічних систем (ЕЕС) у соціо-екологічному контексті антропоцену. ЕЕС розглянуто на засадах постнекласичної наукової парадигми як органічну і динамічну єдність екологічної та економічної систем, пов’язаних обміном речовини, енергії та інформації, для яких характерна сильна нелінійна взаємодія структурних елементів і колективна (виникаюча, емерджентна) поведінка. Особливу увагу зосереджено на таких особливостях досліджуваних систем, як нелінійність, стохастичність і генераційність, а також на таких особливостях прийняття рішень стосовно управління цими системами, як плюралізм вартостей (цінностей), суб’єктивність оцінок і суджень, контекстуалізм рішень, релевантність неакадемічних знань і партисипативність самого процесу прийняття рішень.
Обґрунтовано напрями трансформування теоретико-методичних підходів до дослідження ЕЕС у межах постнекласичної наукової парадигми для усунення методологічних некоректностей сучасної економічної науки шляхом теоретизування на засадах екологічної економіки і теорії економічної складності, обмеженої раціональності і теорії економічного оцінювання. Аргументовано застосування нових інструментів дослідження еколого-економічних систем, а саме: нексусний підхід, деліберативні методи, імітаційне моделювання (агентне і системно-динамічне), методи оцінювання економічної вартості та ін.
... Kopainsky et al. (2018) lists different contributions that system dynamics modelling makes to the development of theories of change for sustainability transitions in food systems: calibration of simulation models to location specific food systems and identification of leverage points, identification of structure and building blocks for specific applications and guidelines for involving stakeholders in the modelling process, anchoring simulation models in ongoing community development. Relevant to the latter aims, structural thinking tools such as system diagrams can be used for qualitative conceptualization of theories of change (Brzezina et al. 2016;Stave and Kopainsky 2015). ...
... Feedback loops can be "balancing" (B) when they counter-act the initial force, having a stabilizing effect (e.g. the higher the supply, the lower the price and in turn the lower the supply). Feedbacks involve nonlinearities, time delays and accumulations, that complicate information and material flows, create instability and may lead to counterintuitive system behavior (Stave and Kopainsky 2015). ...
The contradictions between food poverty affecting a large section of the global population and the everyday wastage of food, particularly in high income countries, have raised significant academic and public attention. All actors in the food chain have a role to play in food waste prevention and reduction, including farmers, food manufacturers and processors, caterers and retailers and ultimately consumers. Food surplus redistribution is considered by many as a partial solution to food waste reduction and food poverty mitigation, while others criticize charitable initiatives as inadequate responses, that inhibit governments from responsibly protecting the citizens right to food. This paper frames food assistance as “hybrid systems”, situating at the intersection of territorial food, public welfare and third sector voluntary systems. Based on available literature and reflections on previous research examining food banks in Italy, we develop a system dynamics conceptual mapping. The aim is to model a set of relations and dynamic mechanisms associated with variables relevant to food waste generation, food recovery for social purposes and food poverty alleviation. The analysis of feedback interactions highlights the (actual and potential) vulnerabilities of food assistance systems that occur when addressing food poverty by reducing food surplus. In summary, as the awareness on food poverty and food surplus arises, incentives to food recovery and redistribution strengthen the role of (voluntary) food assistance actors, increasing their exposure to drivers of change, such as retailers’ standards for food surplus prevention. This paper contributes to the current academic debate on charitable food assistance, with insights for policy makers and other systems’ actors.
... These qualitative diagrams can also be used to develop quantitative simulation models to evaluate how the system may respond to "what if?" scenarios related to specific policy levers [22]. CBSD and other group model building approaches have been previously applied to similar issues like diet [23], public health issues in Latin America [24][25][26], and food systems [27][28][29][30][31]. ...
Background
Peru is facing a double burden of malnutrition (DBM), characterized by the co-existence of undernutrition and overnutrition. Double-duty actions that concurrently target common drivers of undernutrition and overnutrition, while ensuring no unintended side effects, are recommended to effectively address the DBM. To understand these complex common mechanisms and design context-specific double-duty actions, there is a need for participatory systems approaches. This paper provides a case study of applying a community-based system dynamics approach to capture stakeholder perspectives of food system drivers of the DBM in two regions in Peru.
Methods
We implemented a multi-stage community-based system dynamics approach, which included processes for research capacity building for systems approaches, and the designing, piloting, and implementation of stakeholder workshops. A total of 36 stakeholders, representing diverse perspectives, participated in five group model building workshops. Stakeholder views are presented in a causal loop diagram that showcases the feedback mechanisms between key food system drivers of overweight and stunting in Peru.
Results
The causal loop diagram highlights that prioritization of undernutrition over overnutrition in the policymaking process, due to Peru’s historically high levels of undernutrition, may undermine action against the DBM. It also describes potential mechanisms of unintended impacts of undernutrition policies on the DBM in Peru, including impacts related to within-family distribution and quality of food provided through food assistance programs, and unintended impacts due to regional dynamics.
Conclusions
This paper highlights the importance of a participatory approach to understand local needs and priorities when recommending double-duty actions in Peru and shares practical methodological guidance on applying participatory systems approaches in public health.
... • There are no backorders for food manufacturers (the primary and secondary processors). In the FSC, unavailable food products often result in lost sales due to consumers easily finding and buying substitutes, thus SD modelling works for the food system typically does not include the backorder variable (For example see Kumar and Nigmatullin (2011) and Stave and Kopainsky (2015)). • Orders are shipped immediately when products are available in stock. ...
The food supply chain (FSC) constantly needs to address persistent challenges such as information asymmetry, low transparency, food quality and authenticity, and unnecessary waste. Blockchain is perceived as a promising solution to overcome these FSC challenges. Existing literature captures a conceptual understanding of various aspects of Blockchain for FSC, such as how the technology can enhance transparency, efficiency, and food authenticity. However, a quantitative assessment of the overall impact of Blockchain adoption on the FSC operational performance is still missing. This study combines empirical and analytical approaches to investigate the evident research gap. Under the lens of systems thinking and System Dynamics (SD) modelling perspective, the study collected questionnaire and interview data to develop different FSC models for evaluating the impact of Blockchain on key operational performance metrics. The findings indicated that Blockchain positively affects inventory level and lead time in the immediate term, and cost in the long term. The results also warn that forgoing inventory buffers can come with the cost-of-service level. This study provides quantitative evidence of the positive influence of Blockchain on the FSC. This research contributes by extending the understanding of Blockchain's implications on broader supply chain performance from a systems perspective.
... Spatial and temporal modeling methods may be among the precise instruments for elements of the organizational and social domains where LRFSs occur. Precursor graphical representation simulations of food production can reveal significant features of the system's structure and linkages [91]. Success and failure variables can be identified by parameterizing models using financial, production, ecological, and societal data and simulating LRFSs. ...
... Stocks in various forms contribute as a buffer against failure, redundancy, and diversity and avoid that the loss of critical system components triggers dramatic changes in the system dynamics (Altieri et al., 2015;Hodbod and Eakin, 2015). Fraser et al. (2015) and Stave and Kopainsky (2015) relate the importance of stocks to food security. Autonomy or self-organization in biological, social, and ecological systems should avoid top-down suppression and reliance and supports the self-organizing properties of diverse entities at local scales (Berkes, 2007;Hoy, 2015). ...
Farmers around the world are increasingly vulnerable: climate variability is identified as the primary stressor, but unfavorable biophysical circumstances and disturbances in the socioeconomic domain (labor dynamics and price volatility) also affect farm management and production. To deal with these disturbances, adaptations are recognized as essential. Antifragility acknowledges that adaptations and volatility are inherent characteristics of complex systems and abandons the idea of returning to the pre-disturbance system state. Instead, antifragility recognizes that disturbances can trigger reorganization, enabling selection and removal of weaker system features and allowing the system to evolve toward a better state. In this study, we assessed the vulnerability of different types of smallholder farms in Bihar, India, and explored the scope for more antifragile farming systems that can ‘bounce back better’ after disturbances. Accumulation of stocks, creation of optionality (i.e., having multiple options for innovation) and strengthening of farmer autonomy were identified as criteria for antifragility. We had focus group discussions with in total 92 farmers and found that most expressed themselves to be vulnerable: they experienced challenges but had limited adaptive capacity to change their situation. They mostly made short-term decisions to cope with or mitigate urgent challenges but did not engage in strategic planning driven by longer-term objectives. Instead, they waited for governmental support to improve their livelihoods. Despite being confronted with similar challenges, four positive deviant farmers showed to be more antifragile: their diverse farming systems were abundant in stocks and optionality, and the farmers were distinguished in terms of their autonomy, competence, and connectedness to peers, the community, and markets. To support antifragility among regular farmers, adaptations at policy level may be required, for example, by shifting from a top-down toward a bottom-up adaptation and innovation regime where initiative and cooperation are encouraged. With a more autonomous orientation, farmers’ intrinsic motivation is expected to increase, enabling transitions at the farm level. In this way, connected systems can be developed which are socioeconomically and biophysically adaptive. When practices, knowledge, and skills are continuously developed, an antifragile system with ample stocks and optionality may evolve over time.
... Furthermore, Kumar, and Nigmatullin [40], use system dynamics to examine the supply chain performance of non-perishable food items. Tedeschi et al. [41] have also utilized the system dynamics approach as a management tool to develop a model for animal (such as goat and sheep) production. Teimoury et al. [42] have studied the supply chain of perishable fruits and vegetables to identify the best import quota policy. ...
Farm to fork strategy, advocated by the European Commission, aims for a ‘fair, healthy, and environmentally healthy food system. It requires a renewed mindset and an in-depth analysis of the intricate agricultural-based value- chain that forms the food system. Indigenous chicken micro-farming, the focus of this study, for example, is a highly potential candidate for the Farm to Fork strategy but requires a deep analysis of its disintegrated value chain to achieve the strategy. Indigenous chicken farming provides opportunities for the poor and marginal people for a steady income while at the same time being more environmentally friendly and a source of healthy food. These have motivated this study to analyse the indigenous chicken micro-farming value chain in Malaysia, with the objectives to evaluate the present status of the indigenous chicken farm value chain and develop an initial integrated model for indigenous chicken farms. This study uses qualitative system dynamics in data collection and analysis and model development to achieve the objectives. The proposed model is simulated to understand the dynamics of interaction and behaviour among the sub-systems. The findings lead to two outcomes of the study- the first is the dynamics model of the typical indigenous chicken value chain, and the second is the potential integrated value chain model for indigenous chicken farming. These findings are imperative for future research to enhance further the integrated model to be able to realise the farm-to-fork strategy and to contribute to the sustainable development goals.
... A field that has been very active in sustainability modelling is that of systems thinking. Systems thinking incorporates multiple views on epistemology, from quantitative modelling of what are assumed to be simplified but rather realistic representations of core parts of a system (e.g., [64,65]), to the use of models with great awareness of their constructed nature, when used to reduce conflict and generate consensus [66]. Systems thinking seeks to "replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, longterm, dynamic view, reinventing our policies and institutions accordingly" ([67] pp. ...
Scientific modelling is a prime means to generate understanding and provide much-needed information to support public decision-making in the fluid area of sustainability. A growing, diverse sustainability modelling literature, however, does not readily lend itself to standard validation procedures, which are typically rooted in the positivist principles of empirical verification and predictive success. Yet, to be useful to decision-makers, models, including their outputs and the processes through which they are established must be, and must be seen to be “valid.” This study explores what model validity means in a problem space with increasingly interlinked and fast-moving challenges. We examine validation perspectives through ontological, epistemic, and methodological lenses, for a range of modelling approaches that can be considered as “complexity-compatible.” The worldview taken in complexity-compatible modelling departs from the more standard modelling assumptions of complete objectivity and full predictability. Drawing on different insights from complexity science, systems thinking, economics, and mathematics, we suggest a ten-dimensional framework for progressing on model validity when investigating sustainability concerns. As such, we develop a widened view of the meaning of model validity for sustainability. It includes (i) acknowledging that several facets of validation are critical for the successful modelling of the sustainability of complex systems; (ii) tackling the thorny issues of uncertainty, subjectivity, and unpredictability; (iii) exploring the realism of model assumptions and mechanisms; (iv) embracing the role of stakeholder engagement and scrutiny throughout the modelling process; and (v) considering model purpose when assessing model validity. We wish to widen the debate on the meaning of model validity in a constructive way. We conclude that consideration of all these elements is necessary to enable sustainability models to support, more effectively, decision-making for complex interdependent systems.
... Systemic approaches such as System Dynamics Modelling tools have gradually become popular for studying urban systems due to their capacity to combine soft and hard methodologies for data collection and analysis (Richardson 2013;Adamides et al. 2017;Eker et al. 2018). Such tools have also been used to study food systems, including among others to (a) identify mechanisms associated with food supply vulnerability and resilience (Stave and Kopainsky 2015), (b) understand the interactions between food supply and distribution (Vanessa et al. 2015), and (c) identify the opportunities of organic farming in reducing food systems' vulnerability (Brzezina et al. 2016). Studies employing system dynamics tools in the broad interface of urbanisation and food systems have focused on specific health impacts such as child obesity (Nelson et al. 2015), metabolic risk factors (Sharma et al. 2017), inequities in healthy eating (Friel et al. 2017), and non-communicable diseases in general (Waqa et al. 2017). ...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is urbanising rapidly. One of the most visible outcomes of this urbanisation process is the change in the diets of urban residents. However, diet change in the context of rapid urbanisation is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that encompasses multiple intersecting historical, environmental, socioeconomic, and political aspects. This study aims to unravel and systematise the characteristics, drivers and impacts of diet changes in Accra, through the interviews of multiple stakeholders and Causal Loop Diagrams. Diet change is characterised by the increased consumption of certain foodstuff such as rice, chicken, fish, vegetable oil, sugar, and ultra-processed food (UPF), and the decreased consumption of traditional foodstuff such as roots, tubers, and some cereals such as millet. These changes are driven by multiple factors, including among others, changes in income, sociocultural practices, energy access, and policy and trade regimes, as well as the proliferation of supermarkets and food vendors. Collectively, these diet changes have a series of environmental, socioeconomic, and health/nutrition-related impacts. Our results highlight the need to understand in a comprehensive manner the complex processes shaping diet change in the context of urbanisation, as a means of identifying effective interventions to promote healthy and sustainable urban diets in SSA. The development of such intervention should embrace a multi-stakeholder perspective, considering that the relevant urban actors have radically different perspectives and interests at this interface of urbanisation and diet change.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01195-y.
... Recent studies suggest that SDM can be useful to quantify a system's response to disturbances and use causal analysis to identify ways to influence this response (Herrera, 2017a;Herrera and Kopainsky, 2020;Stave and Kopainsky, 2015). SDM draws upon both qualitative (e.g., survey and interview methods) and quantitative techniques (e.g., model simulations) and provides a valuable framework for investigating complex agricultural and natural resource management issues (Turner et al., 2016). ...
In Morocco, droughts are an increasing threat affecting water availability, agricultural production and producers' livelihoods. Moreover, water demand for irrigation has led to overexploitation of the groundwater table causing significant natural resource management challenges. The combination of groundwater changes and increasing drought risk raises concerns about the ability of agricultural producers to be resilient against drought. In this study, we describe the interactions of environmental and socioeconomic processes which influence farmers' livelihoods involved in tomato production in Morocco. Building on system dynamics modelling tools, we aim to improve the understanding of the long-term dynamic behavior of water management and to explore plausible policy scenarios necessary for sustainable and resilient water resource management and agricultural development. Our results show that tomato production is not yet severely impacted by droughts. However, droughts are accelerating the process of groundwater depletion, impacting farmers' livelihoods, by decreasing crop productivity and reducing farmer's revenue over a longer time period, especially since tomatoes are a high-value crop. Therefore, integrated and effective policies are presented as a set of measures for a systemic enhancement of resilience. We conclude that a more radical approach toward water resource conservation and upholding the most vulnerable producers has to be adopted in order to enhance a sustainable and inclusive resilience of the tomato production in Morocco.
... Since farming systems are nested, multilevel systems that combine multiple actors interacting among each other and with the environment through complex networks of feedback loop relationships (C.S. Holling, 2001;Folke, 2006;Holling & Gunderson, 2002), it is almost impossible to grasp systems behaviour using intuition alone (Gain et al., 2020;Liu et al., 2015). As an alternative, simulation models are often used by policy-makers to explore the performance of farming systems under different conditions (Anderson, 2021;Marandure et al.,2020;Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). Known by many names (e.g., microworlds, synthetic task environments, high fidelity simulations, interactive learning environments), interactive simulation models are used to help decision-makers navigate this complexity and to identify policy leverage, unintended consequences and emerging behaviours (Gonzalez et al., 2005). ...
Resilience management of farming systems requires building an understanding of the underlying drivers of the adaptive capacity of the system. In this paper, we use the concept of resilience as a framework to understand how bovine livestock farming systems may adjust to challenging environmental, social, and political conditions. Using an interactive simulation model (microworld), we explored potential developments for livestock farmers in Bourbonnais, France, to the effect of simultaneous changes in the socioeconomic landscape and unpredictable weather conditions resulting from climate change. The results offer insights into the potential trade-offs between systems scale and long-term sustainability by suggesting that sacrificing socioeconomic performance in the short and medium term may increase long-term sustainability and resilience. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Qualitative models can be used as a standalone tool for policy guidance in systems that have broad boundaries and involve multiple stakeholders, and where quantification is difficult, hampered by uncertainty, or restrained by time and financial resources [57,58]. Several examples of these models relate to food systems, agriculture, and food security [59][60][61][62]. ...
Global broiler production and consumption levels continue to rise. South Africa’s broiler system is dominated by commercial production and formal retail trade, with competition from cheap imports. Local broiler policies have narrow, production-driven, short-term aims for industry growth and national food security. However, these have unintended consequences that undermine the system’s future sustainability. Using a food systems approach, this study developed a qualitative system dynamics model of the South African commercial broiler system and used it to engage stakeholders in policy discussions within the boundaries of health, nutrition, and environmental sustainability. A problem statement and key system elements were drawn from a previously published qualitative study and were validated by 15 stakeholders via an online questionnaire. From this, a seed model was developed, expanded into a larger model, and shared in a modular format with stakeholders in virtual meetings, on an individual or institutional basis, for feedback and validation, and for discussion of areas for policy consideration. Refinements were incorporated into the modules, policy considerations were summarised, and crosscutting issues were identified. The model demonstrated the system’s complexity, interlinkages, feedbacks, reinforcing and balancing loops, and behaviour archetypes. The modular presentation format created a suitable platform for stakeholder engagement. Current policies focus on local commercial production, formal markets, and affordability without cognisance of the broader system represented by the model. Inequality pervades throughout the system. Commercial producers, linked to large supermarkets and fast-food chains, dominate the system, presenting barriers to entry. Affordability is unintentionally traded off against non-communicable disease risks through brining of most frozen products, and ultra-processing of fast-food items. Foodborne disease control is critical, given the proportion of vulnerable individuals, and greater coherence of food safety policy is urgently needed. The environmental footprint of broilers, whilst less than that of ruminants, deserves closer scrutiny based on its dependence on intensive cereal production for feed. This study’s food systems approach provides a system-wide perspective and a foundation for policymakers to develop more integrated and transformative policies.
... Furthermore, the dynamical system approach considers factors affecting a system and also considering their interrelations, thus providing wellvalidated results (Hendalianpour, 2017;Nguyen et al., 2017). SD can also help to understand complex environments (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015;Zomorodian et al., 2018). It emphasizes system-wide behavior and its possible effects on system evolution in the future, thereby facilitating decision-making (Kotir et al., 2016). ...
Purpose
By designing a system dynamics model in the form of a multimodal transportation system, this study for the first time seeks to reduce costs and time, and increase customer satisfaction by considering uncertainties in the intra city transit system, especially demand uncertainty and provide a prototype system to prove the capability of the dynamical system.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper tried to model the factors affecting the intra city multimodal transportation system by defining different scenarios in the cause-and-effect model. The maps and results developed according to system dynamics modeling principles are discussed.
Findings
Four scenarios were considered given the factors affecting the urban transportation system to implement the transportation information system for reducing the material and non-material costs of wrong planning of the intra city transit system. After implementing the scenarios, scenario two was selected under the following conditions: advertising for cultural development, support of authorities by efforts such as street widening to reduce traffic, optimize infrastructure, increase and optimize public transport and etc.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is considering uncertainty in traffic optimization; taking into account behavioral and demand indicators such as cultural promotion, official support, early childhood learning, traffic hours and the impact of traveler social status; investigating the factors affecting the system under investigation and the reciprocal effects of these factors and real-world simulation by considering the factors and effects between them.
... Its basis is the recognition that the structure of a system-the many circular, interacting, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components-can be just as important in determining its behaviour as the individual components themselves. There have been some applications in agriculture, e.g., [40] and food supply chains using system dynamics [41][42][43][44]. However, earlier studies rarely included the flow of money through the system; and, even when included its impact on decision making and the dynamics of the system were usually neglected. ...
System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato.
... [21] established a multi-layered model to determine the potential impact of biodiesel technological and supply chain development on sustainability, while [22] combined key sectors of the biofuels industry, including each value chain stage (biomass production, conversion, transport and end use distribution) to study biomass-to-energy technology and cost pathways. Ref. [23] analysed policy mechanisms supporting the market roll-out of biofuels in the transport sector, ref. [10] mapped stockand-flow relationships among health, food security and environment sectors, and both [24] and [25] incorporated country-scale market, sustainability and demographic factors for supply chains using agricultural or forestry residues to generate electricity. Lastly, Ref. [26] modelled the impacts of government intervention, biodiesel-diesel ratio, production capacity, oil palm cultivation, population displacement, poverty and pollutant emissions on biodiesel production and [27] assessed the potential of biofuel commercialisation through both market and value chain factors. ...
The greatest challenge in accelerating the realisation of a sustainable and competitive bioeconomy is to demonstrate that enshrining sustainability principles at the very heart of a production line can generate value and improve its overall system. Strategies for reducing emissions, pollutants, indirect land use change or soil depreciation are all perceived as costs or necessary inconveniences to comply with stringent, climate change-focused policy frameworks. System dynamics modelling and competitive priorities are tools that can accurately and intelligently expand on the cross-value chain approach, which integrates both technical and environmental performances, to address the issue of harmonising sustainability and technical operations as one overall dimension of performance. A stock-and-flow model is developed to map a full biofuel value chain and quantitatively and coherently integrate factors of emissions, carbon, land, production, and technology. As such, environmental and operational impacts of innovative practices are measured, and subsequently linked to a qualitative framework of competitive priorities, as defined by transparency, quality, innovation and flexibility. Sustainability and productivity functions are found to reinforce each other when all competitive priorities are optimised. Equally, the framework provides a clear understanding of trade-offs engendered by value chain interventions. Advantages and limitations in the accessibility, scope and transferability of the multi-pronged analytical approach are discussed.
... The closest example is Wesseling and Van der Vooren (2017), who developed a system dynamics diagram by connecting interviews with a qualitative modelling, and identified causal relationships between seven technological innovation system functions (Hekkert et al., 2007) to identify systemic problems. Qualitative participatory system dynamics modelling has been used in other sustainability studies, for instance, in sustainable urban planning research (Eker et al., 2018;Pineo et al., 2019), electricity production (de Gooyert et al., 2016 and sustainable farming and food security (Lane et al., 2012;Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). The contribution of qualitative participatory system dynamics modelling includes its ability to structure the systems' complexities and long-run, non-linear effects of the decisions, in combination with viewpoints from practitioners (de Gooyert et al., 2017). ...
Industrial clusters are considered more resource- and greenhouse gas-efficient than stand-alone industrial plants, but clustering may also act as a barrier to radical changes required for deep greenhouse gas emission reductions. Here we explore how clustering in an energy-intensive chemical industry cluster may influence attainability of the deep emission reduction targets. Chemelot, located in the southeast of the Netherlands, was willing to collaborate and we adopt a qualitative system dynamics approach based on expert interviews and group model building sessions. We found that clustering may hinder reaching deep emission reductions by three reinforcing feedback mechanisms, or ‘traps’, related to: incremental changes; short-term focus; and companies acting alone. The system dynamics analysis also identified potential mechanisms to escape from these traps, notably: (1) increasing cluster autonomy; (2) activating public support; (3) promoting changes in the supply chain; and (4) attracting long-term investors. The findings can inform policymakers on how to steer industrial clusters towards deep emission reductions, and support industrial cluster decision-makers on both internal and external strategies.
Key policy insights
• Industrial clustering may offer opportunities to accelerate deep greenhouse gas emission reductions, but it could also cause carbon lock-in because of increased physical and organizational interdependency, which favours incremental changes, short-term focus, and solitary actions rather than collective actions, at the cost of deep greenhouse gas emission reductions.
• To fully exploit the potential benefits of industrial clustering for greenhouse gas emission reductions, policies need to take into account the causal relations that operate in a self-reinforcing way to lock the cluster into high greenhouse gas emissions, and that can help escape them.
• A coordinating authority operating across the cluster is necessary to ensure effective collaboration within a chemical cluster so as to escape carbon lock-in.
• Policies addressing emissions along the full value chain (i.e. to include scope 3) might be mutually beneficial with the circularity and low-emission ambitions of the chemical industry.
... Precision tools accounting for variables of the social and organizational realms in which LRFSs exist may include spatial and temporal system models. Precursor diagrammatic models of food systems can identify important aspects of structure and relationships throughout the system [106]. Parameterizing models with economic, production, environmental, and social data, and simulating LRFSs, can lead to identifying the variables that influence successes and failures. ...
In response to global calls for sustainable food production, we identify two diverging paradigms to address the future of agriculture. We explore the possibility of uniting these two seemingly diverging paradigms of production-oriented and ecologically oriented agriculture in the form of precision agroecology. Merging precision agriculture technology and agroecological principles offers a unique array of solutions driven by data collection, experimentation, and decision support tools. We show how the synthesis of precision technology and agroecological principles results in a new agriculture that can be transformative by (1) reducing inputs with optimized prescriptions, (2) substituting sustainable inputs by using site-specific variable rate technology, (3) incorporating beneficial biodiversity into agroecosystems with precision conservation technology, (4) reconnecting producers and consumers through value-based food chains, and (5) building a just and equitable global food system informed by data-driven food policy. As a result, precision agroecology provides a unique opportunity to synthesize traditional knowledge and novel technology to transform food systems. In doing so, precision agroecology can offer solutions to agriculture’s biggest challenges in achieving sustainability in a major state of global change.
... In addition, the perishability and short shelf life of agriculture products create uncertainty for the buyer with respect to product quality, safety, and supply reliability, which leads to vulnerability in coordination among stakeholders in the brand value chain. Traditional methodologies cannot solve these problems, so we employ the system dynamics (SD) methodology, well known and proven in strategic decision-making, as the major modeling and analysis tool in this research [27][28][29][30]. ...
This paper develops a system dynamics framework for the closed-loop agri-food brand supply chain (AFBSC) with multiple small farmer suppliers and one core brand manufacturer, and investigates the influences of various factors including brand effort, quality elasticity, price elasticity, revenue sharing, and the number of suppliers on the system behavior. The results show: (i) food quality is determined by all farmer suppliers, who might choose hitchhiking with the prisoner’s dilemma game in a decentralized decision-making mode; (ii) brand effort to improve brand value for food quality is mainly made by the core brand manufacturer, who presents a goal-seeking system dynamics (SD) manner with oscillation behavior around the expected quality of consumers; (iii) whether farmer suppliers or brand manufacturers, the centralized decision-making mode is more useful for them to increase revenue than the decentralized one; furthermore, the shared centralized decision-making mode is most useful for them to obtain more revenue, and the brand manufacturer is still the biggest beneficiary.
... Stocks in various forms contribute as buffer against failure: redundancy and diversity avoid that loss of critical system components trigger dramatic changes in the system-dynamics (Altieri et al., 2015;. Fraser et al. (2015) and Stave and Kopainsky (2015) relate the importance of stocks to food security. Autonomy or self-organization in biological, social and ecological systems should avoid top-down suppression and reliance, and supports the self-organizing properties of diverse entities at local scales (Berkes, 2007;Hoy, 2015). ...
... System dynamics models represent systems as structures of stocks, flows, and feedbacks (Sterman, 2000), with links between model variables expressed as ordinary differential equations. Given their ability to explicitly capture feedback loops, delays and nonlinearities (Turner, Menendez, Gates, Tedeschi, & Atzori, 2016), systems models are increasingly being utilised in the investigation of complex food system challenges, including the design of inclusive value chain interventions (Lie, Rich, van der Hoek, & Dizyee, 2018;Queenan et al., 2020), disease outbreak management (Galarneau, Singer, & Wills, 2020;Mumba, Skjerve, Rich, Rich, & Zia, 2017), and the links between agricultural resilience and food security (Herrera de Leon & Kopainsky, 2019;Nicholson et al., 2020;Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). Here, our quantitative systems model was informed by five datasets (Table 1); the extent to which these datasets provide reliable and representative information is evaluated in Appendix A. ...
The need for food systems to generate sustainable and equitable benefits for all is a global imperative. However, whilst ample evidence exists linking smallholder farmer coordination and aggregation (i.e. the collective transport and marketing of produce on behalf of multiple farmers) to improved market participation and farmer incomes, the extent to which interventions that aim to improve farmer market engagement may co-develop equitable consumer benefits remains uncertain. This challenge is pertinent to the horticultural systems of South Asia, where the increasing purchasing power of urban consumers, lengthening urban catchments, underdeveloped rural infrastructures and inadequate local demands combine to undermine the delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables to smaller, often rural or semi-rural markets serving nutritionally insecure populations. To this end, we investigate the potential for aggregation to be developed to increase fruit and vegetable delivery to these neglected smaller markets, whilst simultaneously improving farmer returns. Using an innovative system dynamics modelling approach based on an aggregation scheme in Bihar, India, we identify potential trade-offs between outcomes relating to farmers and consumers in smaller local markets. We find that changes to aggregation alone (i.e. scaling-up participation; subsidising small market transportation; mandating quotas for smaller markets) are unable to achieve significant improvements in smaller market delivery without risking reduced farmer participation in aggregation. Contrastingly, combining aggregation with the introduction of market-based cold storage and measures that boost demand improves fruit and vegetable availability significantly in smaller markets, whilst avoiding farmer-facing trade-offs. Critically, our study emphasises the benefits that may be attained from combining multiple nutrition-sensitive market interventions, and stresses the need for policies that narrow the fruit and vegetable cold storage deficits that exist away from more lucrative markets in developing countries. The future pathways and policy options discovered work towards making win–win futures for farmers and disadvantaged consumers a reality.
... A myriad of reasons supports paying increasing attention to achieving sustainability, such as the occurrence of declining resources (Daily and Ehrlich, 1992;Davis, 1990;Purvis et al., 2020;Wakeford, 2012), overpopulation (Daily and Ehrlich, 1992;Davis, 1990;Sharma et al., 2020), extensive poverty, messy industrialization (Shamsuddoha, 2015a), deteriorating living standards (Singh and Trivedi, 2016), contaminated natural resources (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015), worldwide climate change (Sampedro et al., 2020), rise of non-renewable resources (Jokar and Mokhtar, 2018) and ecosystems and biodiversity disturbances (Tenza et al., 2017). These problems impede the growth and profitability of the concerned firms. ...
Purpose
Poultry production supply chains produce substantial wastes that are transformable into favorable environmental outcomes and profitable products. While overwhelming evidence supports this conclusion, scant literature is available on how such transformations are doable. Using systems dynamics, this study addresses this research gap in a national (Bangladesh) context. This study aims to contribute an integrated model for poultry supply chains that incorporate reverse flows of wastes using system dynamics (SD) engineering with empirical simulations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applies SD and simulations of alternative supply chains with versus without reverse loops that transform wastes into viable products in poultry production and downstream marketing operations. This research reports on an in-depth case study of systems thinking and use of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology systems dynamics software. Data for the study are longitudinal and come from written operation records and extensive, repeated, one-on-one Interview from a large poultry plant operation in Bangladesh.
Findings
This study finds that several current poultry waste production problems are solvable through an integrated approach that generates viable new marketable products with substantial profitable opportunities that also contributes to reductions in industrial pollution. This study confirms that forward, backward and reverse supply chains need to be under one umbrella system to achieve economic, social and environmental benefits.
Research limitations/implications
This study’s SD model and outputs need additional applications in poultry supply chains in multiple countries. Applying the firm-level model that this study provides is a necessary but insufficient step toward empirical confirmation through replicating.
... Finally, we analyze the outcome of the model and identify the implications of the agricultural irrigation and production strategies with a special focus on the outcomes for agricultural production, producer's economic welfare and water resources. We chose SDM as a coherent and relevant approach for analyzing complex SES behavior (Balali et al., 2015;Stave and Kopainsky, 2015). ...
Agricultural-food production systems are facing the challenging task to provide food and socio-economic welfare while preserving natural resources in the long-term. In Morocco, the Green Moroccan Plan steered the promotion of groundwater-based drip irrigation. Over the last decade, the Plan encouraged producers to shift to cash crop production. This is how tomato became a main agri-food export commodity mostly produced in greenhouses in the Souss-Massa region and produced intensively in open-fields for local demand in the Northern part of the country. However, water resources are expected to become particularly scarce over the next decades, increasing the vulnerabilities of tomato farmers in face of unforeseen changes and shocks. The main purpose of this study is to show a) how global and local tomato value chains respond to irrigation schemes and b) what the environmental consequences are. By means of a system dynamics model, and a survey conducted among a sample of 244 producers, we describe and outline the major interactions between agricultural, ecological and socio-economic dimensions of the tomato production systems. The results of the model simulations highlight how overexploitation of groundwater tables negatively affects crop production and farmers’ welfare. The model shows that in the near future, water scarcity will have long-lasting consequences on the producers, such as reduced productivity and losses in cash flow. Our model results highlight that measures need to be taken in the coming years in order to prevent the predicted irremediable water shortage in 2030. We conclude that the current groundwater management will, in the long-term, lead to irreversible groundwater depletion which will enhance already existing inequalities between the two types of producers. Urgent actions have to be taken in order to sustainably manage water while supporting farmers in the long-term.
... Within the context of food systems, various studies have used causal loops to derive managerial and policy implications aiming to improve sustainability. Stave and Kopainsky (2015), for instance, focus on disturbances in national food systems by identifying relevant relationships and potential vulnerabilities. The authors show that food systems are not only at risk from external disturbances but are further challenged due to the internal structure of modern food systems. ...
Sustainability transitions of food systems are at the core of several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In many regions, grassroots initiatives (i.e., community-led bottom-up initiatives) have emerged to experiment with alternative food networks and change the dominant food regimes. While grassroots initiatives can play a crucial role in sustainability transitions, it is known that actors usually face challenges related to (1) building and maintaining an initiative, and (2) diffusing it to the mainstream. However, the systemic mechanisms underlying these two types of challenges in food systems are still underspecified. Building on previous empirical research, the paper uses systems thinking (qualitative causal loop diagrams) to detail (1) the systemic mechanisms underlying the emergence and maintenance of an alternative food network; and (2) the feedback loops related to organizational and logistics issues that pose limits to scaling. It explains the paradox of diffusion in alternative food networks and concludes that diffusion of alternative food networks to mainstream may be achieved through replication and translation strategies, rather than scaling-up.
... Second, this paper furthers efforts to capture explicit food system trade-offs using system dynamics modelling. Built from structures of stocks, flows and feedbacks, system dynamics models (SDM) are suited to exploring the accumulations and movements of goods, finance, and information (Nicholson et al., 2020;Stave and Kopainsky, 2015;Sterman, 2000). Various studies have developed qualitative tools linking production and food security (Langellier et al., 2019;Rammelt and Leung, 2017;Walters et al., 2016), but stop short of quantitative analysis. ...
Context
There is growing recognition that food systems must adapt to become more sustainable and equitable. Consequently, in developing country contexts, there is increasing momentum away from traditional producer-facing value chain upgrades towards efforts to increase both the availability and affordability of nutritious foods at the consumer level. However, such goals must navigate the inherent complexities of agricultural value chains, which involve multiple interactions, feedbacks and unintended consequences, including important but often surprising trade-offs between producers and consumers.
Objective and methods
Based around the 'Loop' horticultural aggregation scheme of Digital Green in Bihar, India, we develop a system dynamics modelling framework to survey the value chain trade-offs emerging from upgrades that aim to improve the availability of fruits and vegetables in small retail-oriented markets. We model the processes of horticultural production, aggregation, marketing, and retailing – searching for futures that are ‘win-win-win’ for: (i) the availability of fruits and vegetables in small retail markets, (ii) the profits of farmers participating in aggregation, and (iii) the sustainability of the initial scheme for Digital Green as an organisation. We simulate two internal upgrades to aggregation and two upgrades to the wider enabling environment through a series of 5000 Monte Carlo trajectories – designed to explore the plausible future dynamics of the three outcome dimensions relative to the baseline.
Results
We find that ‘win-win-win’ futures cannot be achieved by internal changes to the aggregation scheme alone, emerging under a narrow range of scenarios that boost supplies to the small retail market whilst simultaneously supporting the financial takeaways of farmers. In contrast, undesirable producer versus consumer trade-offs emerge as unintended consequences of scaling-up aggregation and the introduction of market-based cold storage.
Significance
This approach furthers ongoing efforts to capture complex value chain processes, outcomes and upgrades within system dynamics modelling frameworks, before scanning the horizon of plausible external scenarios, internal dynamics and unintended trade-offs to identify ‘win-win-win’ futures for all.
... There are challenges in making agriculture and food systems resilient enough to continue functioning during a pandemic due to its severe and adverse effects (Kumar & Chandra, 2010;Osterholm, 2005). This study showed how the SD approach can help portray the relevant processes of agriculture and food systems in a way that demonstrates the likely effects of a pandemic (Huff et al., 2015) and identifies potential actions to promote resilience (Stave & Kopainsky, 2015) in the short-term and medium-term. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe disruptions in the supply and demand channels of agriculture and food chains. As a fundamental approach to addressing complex social, managerial, economic, or ecological problems, system dynamics models have been used to provide a shared understanding of agriculture and food systems resilience and to enhance decision-making for policy actions. To begin to address challenges arising from this pandemic, eight system dynamics researchers from different countries participated
(virtually) in a group model building study. The project, “Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Resilience in the Face of a Health Crisis”, emerged as an initiative of the Agriculture Food Special Interest Group of the System Dynamics Society. As a result of the project, a stock-flow diagram with nine modules (Food Supply Chain, Food Market, Farm Finance, Agricultural Inputs, Labor, Shelf Life, Cooperation, Information, and Community Health) was built to understand the effects of the pandemic from the viewpoint of small-scale farmer communities. This preprint has been prepared and distributed to facilitate dialogue and to generate feedback from researchers interested in providing modeling solutions to mitigate the effects of these disruptions and enhancing agriculture and food supply chain resilience.
... However, the specifi cities of the innovative development of some sectors of food industry in conditions of globalization require new complex studies [14]. We have used the concept of the dynamic system with formulated problems of the sensitivity of industrial food systems and presented defi nition of their resistance as a capability of counteracting the failures, which may cause disruptions in food supply [15][16][17]. ...
Aim. One of the important problems in the development of the food industry in Ukraine is the infl uence of globalization processes, accompanied by cyclical development of the economy. The cycles are manifested in periodic ups and downs of the business climate, taking into account the infl uence of various factors (climate change, risks in agricultural production, legislative changes, etc.), i.e. when the economy seeks to fi nd equilibrium. Therefore, the identifi cation of fl uctuations in economic activity and, accordingly, changes in market conditions that arise as a reaction to the action of well-defi ned, predictable factors of the market environment are relevant and necessary. The purpose of the article is to reveal the infl uence of globalization processes and economic cyclicality on the innovative development of the food industry in Ukraine, to identify the phases of business cycles, to determine the criteria for the effective functioning of individual food industry sectors during periods of crisis and depression in order to develop effective tools for leveling and smoothing their consequences at different levels of management. Methods. Based on the application of classical and modern methods for assessing economic cycles, we developed a methodological approach to justifying the phases of the business cycle and identifying the development specifi cities of individual sectors of the food industry of Ukraine (meat processing, milk processing, baking, sugar production) in these phases. In the authors’ algorithm, at the appropriate stages of the study, the following methods were applied: factor analysis to calculate the indicator of the business climate; smoothing time series to identify individual phases of the business cycle; average values of growth rates to summarize the characteristics of the phases of the business cycle and identify the characteristics of the development of food industry sectors of Ukraine in these phases. The primary data for the calculations were the data of global and national statistics. Results. It has been established that the consequences of the impact of globalization on the development of the food industry of Ukraine since the beginning of the new millennium are: changes in the industrial structure; its formation under the infl uence of an external market, where raw materials and primary processing products are most in demand; accelerated growth in consumer prices for food products, which does not correlate with real incomes of the population; expanding the monopolization of food markets; the imbalance of supply and demand, which leads to differences in the development of economic phenomena, in particular in the innovative development of the food industry, etc. The study showed that the development of individual sectors of the food industry is affected by the cyclical development of the national economy. The periods of the business cycle phases for the Ukrainian economy (from 2002 to mid-2019) and their impact on the activity of the food industry are determined. It was established that during this period the Ukrainian economy went through 4 business cycles with fi ve major downturns and peaks in economic activity. It was revealed that a sign of its development is the presence of separate business cycles in which there is no depression phase. Conclusions. The assessment of the intensity of the development of the food industry sectors during the phases of business cycles gives grounds for the justifi cation of their slower innovative development. The main reasons for this phenomenon in the food industry are as follows: imbalance in supply and demand for goods; low purchasing power of the population; investing signifi cant amounts of fi nances in increasing production volumes, and not in innovative development, ineffi cient pricing policy. The methodological approach proposed in the article, based on the identifi ed signs of the phases of the business cycle, makes it possible to justify the problem periods of the food industry in the short term, as current problems signifi cantly affect the implementation of long-term plans. This confi rms the feasibility of applying the proposed methodological approach in further research.
... Для дослідження та моделювання процесу енергетичного переходу ми використали причиннонаслідкову та потокову діаграми. Причиннонаслідкові діаграми -головний інструмент системної динаміки -використовують для якісного аналізу процесів і систем, насамперед -для візуалізації проблеми, пошуку й апробації можливих рішень, залучення стейкхолдерів до деліберативного прийняття рішень (Rauschmayer & Wittmer, 2006, Stave & Kopainsky, 2015, Fedoruk & Zahvoyska, 2018. Потокові діаграми використовують для кількісного аналізу. ...
Dominant energy generation paradigm is highly centralized, carbon intensive, and enable energy poverty. Global climate change imperative prioritizes energy transition to ensure effectiveness, inclusiveness and environmental safety of energy generation processes. One of the pillars of the process is a transition to sustainable use of wood biomass in the residential sector using energy cooperatives as a mean for the transition process facilitation. This transition process deals with a nexus of changes induced in different realms like social, ecological, economic, technological, educational etc. Counterintuitive dynamics of the processes can create synergies or trade-offs.
To embrace a complexity of the process we proposed and applied system dynamics models. Causal loop diagram of the transition process was used to understand the scope. The model consists from two blocks: conceptual, which describes the general logic of the climate change mitigation, and operational one, which represents development of energy cooperatives (balancing and reinforcing loops correspondently).
Stock-flow diagram was proposed for quantitative analysis of the energy cooperatives development process. The model is based on the Bass model of innovation diffusion (1980) and Sterman model of its system dynamics (2000). The stock-flow diagram was parameterized according to realities of Boryslav city. Features of Ukrainian institutional landscape were examined using regression analysis of 11 indicators, aggregated in Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 (WEF, 2018) to reflect complexity of competitiveness. According to results of regression analysis, we complemented the stock-flow diagram with another parameter – Institutions – which describes dependence of individuals’ economic activity on institutions’ performance. Simulation run for 8-year period using the parameterized stock-flow model demonstrated quite weak transition toward energy cooperatives – only 8.9% of homeowners – that can be explained by a poor performance of institutions in Ukraine.
However, according to a survey we conducted in Boryslav, 18.1% of the respondents are familiar with the concept of energy cooperatives, of which one in five was ready to invest in the cooperative development; about half of the respondents likely to change the heating systems in their homes, which is easier to manage through renewable energy cooperatives.
To get insight of wood biomass usage for Boryslav we run SWOT analysis and proposed four SWOTstrategies for the process facilitation. These recommendations were tested against ‘what-if’ questions using the proposed causal loop diagram of the transition process to reveal potential unintended consequences, additional interventions and uncertainties resulted from the process complexity. These findings facilitate understanding and deliberative governance of the process.
... Vulnerabilities can be anticipated by examining the supply chain design, structure, and connectivity (Blackhurst et al. 2018). As a latent behaviour, vulnerability emerges from a system's structure (Wagner and Neshat 2010), which arises from feedback and the interactions of agents (Stave and Kopainsky 2015). Hence, studies that adopt network analysis for vulnerability assessment have suggested network structure-related indicators. ...
Conventional approaches for assessing supply chain vulnerability do not capture endogenous disruptions emanating from chain actors’ decisions that might increase value chain vulnerability. These approaches adopt a reactive analytical explanation of vulnerability, rather than one that considers issues of feedback effects. To address this issue, this paper adopts a system dynamics modelling approach to identify the precursors of vulnerabilities in Ghana’s cocoa value chain. The paper assesses the vulnerability levels of the cocoa value chain by adjusting the baseline values of several key parameters that can be influenced by chain actors. Results of the sensitivity analyses indicate that the precursors of vulnerability situated upstream of the cocoa value chain have varying impacts on chain vulnerability, but the same magnitude of effect on the vulnerability levels of chain actors. However, precursors of vulnerability that are situated midstream of the cocoa value chain have an unequal magnitude of effect on the vulnerability levels of chain actors. Results suggest that policies governing cocoa trading can become countervailing factors that obstruct the government’s call for upgrading along the cocoa value chain. The system dynamics model presented here enables a proactive assessment of vulnerability which can facilitate collaborative planning among stakeholders in the value chain.
... However, CLD can also be used as an independent analytical tool. In addition to visualizing the structure of the system on the basis of hypotheses, the approach allows to outline problem areas, formulate topics for further research, identify areas of risk and uncertainty (Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). Flow Diagrams are used to perform quantitative analysis of complex systems (Bennich et al., 2018). ...
Using the method of system dynamics, hypotheses about functioning of the mechanism of energy saving stimulation in buildings and its ecologization tools have been proposed and tested. The results of the survey conducted by domestic and foreign experts were used as the main empirical data for analysis and modeling. The constructed simulation models have allowed to prove the advisability of using multicriteria assessment of energy saving measures effectiveness, as well as to test the recommendations we propose concerning ecologiza- tion of the energy saving process by integrating environmental and social assessments into the rules for making investment decisions. Methods of system dynamics revealed undesirable consequences and points of resistance, which can cause the failure of the proposed intervention.
... Although it is not within the scope of this paper, this concept map could be the basis for further and more sophisticated analytical developments, like Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (Kok, 2009) or System Dynamics (Stave and Kopainsky, 2015). ...
... Soil fertility and soil organic matter (SOM) play a central role in this context as they affect agricultural productivity in general and resource efficiency in particular (Kumwenda, Waddington, Snapp, Jones, & Blackie, 1997). Soils rich in SOM also have the potential to buffer external shocks such as droughts or unavailability of synthetic fertilizer (Stave & Kopainsky, 2015). Currently, however, SOM levels are low in SSA, and replenishing SOM levels is a long-term process that conflicts with farmers' short survival-oriented time horizons (Donovan & Casey, 1998). ...
Smallholder farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa recurrently face situations of complex and dynamic decision trade‐offs. Short‐term‐oriented activities such as fertilizer application help to cover immediate food needs but compromise on future food production. Long‐term‐oriented production activities such as building up soil fertility are important systemic leverage points; however, they compromise on today's harvests. This article uses a semicomputerized observational experiment in Zambia to investigate farm management decision making with conflicting production objectives in a dynamic context. The results reveal that, overall, Zambian smallholder farmers have a strong and significant preference for short‐term‐oriented production activities, which leads to a suboptimal performance in production in the long term. A mind shift towards more long‐term‐oriented production activities is required to sustainably increase food production. Our findings point at two things in this regard: First, we identify decision rules that successful performers have applied and that should be the basis for capacity building strategies. Second, we indicate that our approach itself contributed to recognition of the importance of a longer term perspective.
... The iterative steps of the SD method can be described as "problem articulation, formulation of a dynamic hypothesis, formulation of the simulation model, testing, and policy design and evaluation" [Morecroft, (2015), p.106;Sterman, (2000), pp.86-87]. As a dynamic hypothesis, a CLD provides provisional explanation of the feedback structure (Morecroft, 2015;Stave and Kopainsky, 2015;Sterman, 2000) of the complex eGW maintenance process, and suggests an endogenous elucidation of how individual and organisational effort, competence and collaboration and the eGW maintenance relate to each other, to influence dynamic level of eGWSA over time. The CLD will also be used to provide direction and guidance for data collection (Coyle, 2000) and simulation model construction (Morecroft, 2015) in the later phase of this research. ...
E-government websites have become the main gateways for accessing government services. To be constantly or highly available, these websites require ongoing quality maintenance. E-government websites are complex; its maintenance necessitates a complex undertaking. Further understanding about e-government website maintenance remains necessary, especially relating to the required effort and competence of government staff and organisations, as well as collaboration. This research aims to propose a qualitative system dynamics model which conceptualises the feedback relationships of website maintenance, staff and organisational effort as well as competence, and the collaborative factors in influencing e-government website availability. As part of the broader context of system dynamics study, the conceptual model needs to be validated with actual data and will be used as a basis for developing a system dynamic simulation model.
... Minegishi and Thiel (2000) used system dynamics modeling and simulation to improve the knowledge of the complex logistic behavior of an integrated food industry. Stave and Kopainsky (2015) used system dynamics to frame questions about food system vulnerability in industrialized food systems and defined food system resilience as the ability of the food system to withstand disturbances that could lead to disruption of the food supply. Furthermore, a systemic analysis of food supply and distribution systems in the context of city-region systems provided insights to policy interventions to motivate transition to resilient agri-food systems (Armendariz, Armenia and Atzoru, 2016). ...
VALUMICS is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission (2017-2021). The project structure is highly integrated and transdisciplinary, building on the expertise of over 30 specialists in various fields of research including knowledge integration through systems analysis and system dynamics modelling, food science, supply chain management, life cycle assessment, logistics, economics and social science. The aim of the project is to analyze the dynamics of food supply- and value chain systems using a structural analysis including system analysis and perform system simulations using system dynamics. The VALUMICS research approach and the project design are explained and it is justified why system analysis is needed to obtain an understanding of the complex connections and interactions of the distinct parts of food systems. Patterns will be recognized and thus causes and effects of complex relations within the selected food supply system and networks will be identified. This understanding of the functioning of the system can in turn be used to identify policy interventions.
Responding to growing calls for system dynamics (SD) research to engage with structural racism, this article examines the barriers that Black farmers in New York State face and explores values‐based public institutional food procurement (VBFP) as one possible solution for overcoming these barriers. Combining a qualitative data analysis with causal loop diagrams, this analysis reveals that ongoing structural racism generates (1) structural disconnects between Black farmers' and public institutions' supply chains that inhibit their integration; and (2) procurement policies that create new, rather than addressing existing, barriers for Black farmers. VBFP initiatives' potential to support Black farmers is thus dependent upon dismantling structural racism. In addition, this article advances SD supply chain research by examining one effort to align supply chains with social and environmental values and demonstrates how causal loop diagrams, with their emphasis on system structure, reveal why values‐based supply chain efforts in general often struggle. © 2024 System Dynamics Society.
Cities have advanced in terms of economic and social status over the last five decades, improving the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people. However, population growth and urban expansion have put pressure on social and environmental conditions. This study examines the relationship between urban development and societal well-being over time. We analyze 500 pages from published urban plans of Greater Sydney between 1968 and 2018 and code the text into causal maps. The findings show that policymakers adopted a dominant urban development strategy over the last fifty years to pursue economic and public infrastructure growth. This growth strategy resulted in unintended, negative consequences for social and environmental dimensions of societal well-being. Although policymakers eventually recognized the seriousness of these social and environmental consequences, they never attempted to fundamentally change the dominant growth strategy. Instead, policymakers sought to address the consequences (i.e., symptoms) by responding to each issue piecemeal.
Careful and focused decision-making in the food sector reduces the challenges threatening food systems' stability. Besides, it can optimally control any changes that result in food shortages. The present study aimed to identify identifiable factors' effects on food insecurity using a dynamic system with an emphasis on consumption behaviors. A dynamic model was developed to understand the long-term interaction between individual characteristics, average cost, average income, and hygiene status, and a dynamic model was then validated and operationalized among 1,000 Alborz Province's households randomly using a questionnaire. The base scenario for predicting food insecurity changes revealed that food insecurity had increased over ten years, resulting in changes in social and economic status and vulnerability of urban society. Four additional scenarios indicated that the average cost and income could directly affect the food insecurity status in Iran by indirectly influencing policies to increase food security, health, and hygiene. Individual characteristics and food security also influence food insecurity and reinforce the relationship between these variables. The study revealed that dynamic systems modeling could be a valuable tool for assessing food insecurity policies and their factors in developing countries.
The government “enterprise” consists of a complex set of organizations with a multitude of goals and values, serving an equally diverse group of constituents. Because of this complexity, governing technology and data to support Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability has proven to be a difficult task that –according to experts– requires a systems perspective in its design and implementation. In this paper, we take a conceptual approach to respond to this call from experts by providing working definitions of both enterprise data governance and a systems approach to management. Using these working definitions and data from municipal governments in Mexico we develop a system dynamics model to explore some potential trade-offs in the process of developing an enterprise view of information systems and data to create capability to develop AI applications in government. Simulation experiments suggest that an emphasis on governance of IT may create a strong foundation for the development of AI capability.
Given the growing importance of system dynamics (SD) in solving increasingly complex and dynamic problems in any country, we believe SD education will become an imperative leverage point in helping us deal with our uncertain future. This study tries to understand the causal relationships in proliferating SD education by a system dynamics group modelling approach in China. Based on a questionnaire survey and a group model building (GMB) workshop, we aim to explore the interactions of feedback loops in the constructed causal loop diagram (CLD). This uncovers insights into what constitutes the growth of SD education in China and helps to guide the design and implementation of policies to achieve this growth. We conclude that it is important and relevant to find ways to improve, including the construction of an SD teaching platform to integrate normative resources, providing opportunities for teacher training, enhancing the availability and accessibility of SD education, and building networks with international partners. The results of our study may set the foundation for further research to extend the generalizability of our insights and methodological approaches to other countries.
The transition from a linear bio-based economy to a sustainable circular bioeconomy depends not only on the skills that the different actors of the innovation system can find, develop, and exploit internally, but also on the efficiency with which they can access external sources of knowledge and skills related to technologies and markets. In this scenario, understanding the dynamics of learning and knowledge accumulation acquires greater importance due to the bioeconomy’s position at the confluence of several technological areas. Therefore, for this study, we apply qualitative system dynamics modelling methods to the analysis of Andalusia’s circular bioeconomy, obtaining important insights into its complexity due to the existence of non-linear processes, multiple feedback loops, and time delays. The models thus generated led to the identification of 20 key interventions points where targeted actions by governments and other actors could help overcome the pervasiveness of information asymmetry in the sector.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe disruptions in the supply and demand channels of agriculture and food chains. To begin to address challenges arising from this pandemic, the “Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Resilience in the Face of a Health Crisis” project emerged as an initiative of the Agriculture Food Special Interest Group of the System Dynamics Society, and was conducted as a (virtual) group model building study with eight system dynamics researchers, practitioners, and students from six different countries. As a result of the project, a stock-flow diagram with nine modules (Food Supply Chain, Food Market, Farm Finance, Agricultural Inputs, Labor, Shelf Life, Cooperation, Information, and Community Health) was built to discuss the effects of the pandemic from the viewpoint of smallholder farmer communities. We depicted the causal relationships and feedback loops related to food supply chain resilience, mainly focusing on the barriers in input access and market access. This study has been prepared to facilitate dialogue among related stakeholders and provide critical causal loops for researchers and practitioners interested in providing formal simulation modeling solutions to mitigate the effects of these disruptions and enhancing agriculture and food supply chain resilience.
The sustainability and resilience of EU farming systems are threatened. According to stakeholders in selected EU farming systems, many of these systems are close to critical thresholds regarding the challenges they face (e.g., droughts, price declines), functions they deliver (e.g., economic viability, biodiversity and habitat) and attributes required for resilience (e.g., social self‐organization). Strategies are required that increase the sustainability and resilience of EU farming systems, and insight is needed into the effects of such strategies.
In this study, we used insights from a participatory assessment (FoPIA‐SURE‐Farm 1 and 2) executed in in 11 EU farming systems to identify strategies that enhance sustainability and resilience of these farming systems. This participatory assessment was complemented by an expert assessment and system dynamics (SD) modelling, to improve understanding of dynamic processes influencing sustainability and resilience of farming systems, and the conditions that enable such processes. The main aim was to identify past and optional future strategies in farming systems across the EU, to assess how these contribute to the delivery of private and public goods and resilience‐enhancing attributes, and to identify additional interventions needed by farming system actors and the enabling environment.
Food insecurity represents a growing problem in the United States, with levels of household insecurity hovering around 12.5% of national population. Policy leaders and advocates have long struggled to define adequate solutions, mired in concerns about food access and affordability, as well as overlays of equity and social justice, in part because of the numerous many ways we have measured the problem and defined and evaluated solutions. Most food security programs are designed as temporary assistance and few policy leaders or advocates are well‐placed to address leverage points for durable policy change, both because they are focused on short term solutions and because they are unable to collaborate to identify leverage points within the food policy system that would enable long term solutions. This paper offers a systems thinking assessment of a recent food policy symposium, illuminating the problem and causes as perceived by those practitioners involved in addressing household food insecurity, highlighting the lack of coherence among current stakeholders and an inability to collaboratively address the problem of food insecurity. It concludes with suggestions for future research.
Contemporary food production and consumption cannot be regarded as sustainable and raises problems with its wide scope involving diverse actors. Moreover, in the face of demographic change and a growing global population, sus-tainability problems arising from food systems will likely become more serious in the future. For example, agricultural production must deal with the impacts of climate change, increasingly challenging land-use conflicts, and rising health and social costs on both individual and societal levels. The unsustainability of current arrangements arises from the industrialization and globalization of agriculture and food processing, the shift of consumption patterns toward more dietary animal protein, the emergence of modern food styles that entail heavily processed products, the growing gap on a global scale between rich and poor, and the paradoxical lack of food security amid an abundance of food. These factors are attributable to national and international policies and regulations, as well as to prevalent business prac-tices and, in particular, consumers' values and habits. The most effective ways for affluent societies to reduce the environmental impact of their diets are to reduce consumption of meat and dairy products (especially beef), to favor organic fruits and vegetables, and to avoid goods that have been transported by air on both individual and institutional levels (e.g., public procurement, public catering). In examining the unsustainability of the current food system this article reviews the pertinent literature to derive a working definition of sustainable food consumption, outlines the major issues and impacts of current food-consumption practices, and discusses various policy interventions, including information-based instruments, market-based initiatives, direct regulations, and "nudges." It concludes with a call for integrative, cross-sectoral, and population-wide policies that address the full range of drivers of unsustainable food production and consumption.
In this article, we use data on meat consumption, per capita income, and other socioeconomic variables for 150 countries to determine whether data support the hypothesis that per capita meat consumption follows a Kuznets-style inverted U-curve. In other words, as nations increase their real per capita incomes, while individuals at first consume more meat, ultimately, over time and with increased income, do they moderate their consumption? Our results signal that although there is evidence of a Kuznets relationship, the income at which our data suggests a deceleration of meat is large enough that for many countries this deceleration will not be reached in the foreseeable future. In a cross-section sample of low-income countries, we find no evidence of a Kuznets relationship. In a cross-section sample of high-income countries, we do find a potential Kuznets relationship and a deceleration of meat consumption at a per capita income of US36,375, still quite high for any realistic impact. Thus, our results highlight that effectively decelerating the global demand for meat may require aggressive and potentially controversial policy interventions, which, while leaving individuals with less choice, would address the otherwise devastating environmental impacts of increasing meat consumption .
Regional agricultural development projects based on water resource development have many potential impacts on social and natural environments. In this research, potential long-term environmental problems of the Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) related to water resources, land use, land degradation, agricultural pollution and demography are analyzed from a systems perspective. The analysis focuses on the totality of environmental, social and economic issues. For this purpose, a systemic dynamic simulation model (GAPSIM) is developed as an experimental platform for policy analysis. GAPSIM is validated, first "structurally", using the tests suggested by the literature and then the model "behavior" is tested and calibrated with respect to available data. The reference behavior of GAPSIM reveals that, as the irrigated lands are developed, GAP faces significant water scarcity because of the increased intensity of cotton planting, the most water-demanding crop. Simulation results also indicate that two key environmental factors, pesticide and fertilizer consumption, reach undesirable levels. Alternative irrigation water release strategies, development rates of irrigated fields and farm rotation practices appear as important policy
Background
Few studies have focused on the relationship between the retail food environment and household food supplies. This study examines spatial access to retail food stores, food shopping habits, and nutrients available in household food supplies among 50 Mexican-origin families residing in Texas border colonias.
Methods
The design was cross-sectional; data were collected in the home March to June 2010 by promotora-researchers. Ground-truthed methods enumerated traditional (supercenters, supermarkets, grocery stores), convenience (convenience stores and food marts), and non-traditional (dollar stores, discount stores) retail food stores. Spatial access was computed using the network distance from each participant’s residence to each food store. Data included survey data and two household food inventories (HFI) of the presence and amount of food items in the home. The Spanish language interviewer-administered survey included demographics, transportation access, food purchasing, food and nutrition assistance program participation, and the 18-item Core Food Security Module. Nutrition Data Systems for Research (NDS-R) was used to calculate HFI nutrients. Adult equivalent adjustment constants (AE), based on age and gender calorie needs, were calculated based on the age- and gender composition of each household and used to adjust HFI nutrients for household composition. Data were analyzed using bivariate analysis and linear regression models to determine the association of independent variables with the availability of each AE-adjusted nutrient.
Results
Regression models showed that households in which the child independently purchased food from a convenience store at least once a week had foods and beverages with increased amounts of total energy, total fat, and saturated fat. A greater distance to the nearest convenience store was associated with reduced amounts of total energy, vitamin D, total sugar, added sugar, total fat, and saturated fat. Participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was associated with lower household levels of total energy, calcium, vitamin C, sodium, vitamin D, and saturated fat. Spatial access and utilization of supermarkets and dollar stores were not associated with nutrient availability.
Conclusions
Although household members frequently purchased food items from supermarkets or dollar stores, it was spatial access to and frequent utilization of convenience food stores that influenced the amount of nutrients present in Texas border colonia households. These findings also suggest that households which participate in NSLP have reduced AE-adjusted nutrients available in the home. The next step will target changes within convenience stores to improve in-store marketing of foods and beverages to children and adults.
A doubling in global food demand projected for the next 50 years poses huge challenges for the sustainability both of food production and of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the services they provide to society. Agriculturalists are the principal managers of global useable lands and will shape, perhaps irreversibly, the surface of the Earth in the coming decades. New incentives and policies for ensuring the sustainability of agriculture and ecosystem services will be crucial if we are to meet the demands of improving yields without compromising environmental integrity or public health.
An agricultural commodity production cycle model consisting of corn, beef, and dairy sectors was constructed for the purpose of exploring the propagating effects of large-scale disruptive events. In an initial proof-of-concept exercise, we considered an agricultural disruption scenario in which foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is introduced into the U.S., causing a large-scale outbreak of the disease in both beef and dairy cattle. The magnitude of disruption to the beef and dairy sectors are presented under the existing FMD response policy and then improvements under two alternative policies are shown.
Sustainable consumption is gaining in currency as a new environmental policy objective. This paper presents new research findings from a mixed-method empirical study of a local organic food network to interrogate the theories of both sustainable consumption and ecological citizenship. It describes a mainstream policy model of sustainable consumption, and contrasts this with an alternative model derived from green or ‘new economics’ theories. Then the role of localised, organic food networks is discussed to locate them within the alternative model. It then tests the hypothesis that ecological citizenship is a driving force for ‘alternative’ sustainable consumption, via expression through consumer behaviour such as purchasing local organic food. The empirical study found that both the organisation and their consumers were expressing ecological citizenship values in their activities in a number of clearly identifiable ways, and that the initiative was actively promoting the growth of ecological citizenship, as well as providing a meaningful social context for its expression. Furthermore, the initiative was able to overcome the structural limitations of mainstream sustainable consumption practices. Thus, the initiative was found to be a valuable tool for practising alternative sustainable consumption. The paper concludes with a discussion of how ecological citizenship may be a powerful motivating force for sustainable consumption behaviour, and the policy and research implications of this.
Vast amounts of land are required for the production of food, but the area suitable for growing crops is limited. In this paper, attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements. Land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages, varying from subsistence to affluent, leading to information on land requirements for food. Large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements, while food consumption, expenditure, and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time. A difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing European food patterns, while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat. It is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food. Trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land. Lifestyle changes, changes in consumer behavior on a household level, can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land.
This paper focuses on a search for concrete policy measures to facilitate the overall sustainability of ecological agricultural development at a county level. For this purpose, a system dynamics model (AISEEM) has been developed to explore the potential long-term ecological, economic, institutional and social interactions of ecological agricultural development through a case study of Jinshan County in China. The model provides an experimental platform for the simulation and analysis of alternative policy scenarios. The results indicate that the diversification of land-use patterns, government low interest loans and government support for training are important policy measures for promoting the sustainable development of ecological agriculture, at least in the case study context. In addition, the study reveals that environmentally sound technology (e.g., biogas project) alone cannot sufficiently induce farmers to adopt ecological agricultural practices. Limited availability of information, risk aversion and high transaction costs are major barriers to the adoption of alternative agricultural practices. In this regard, the importance of capacity building and institutional arrangements are emphasised through the development of an improved policy-making process on agricultural sustainability. This case study highlights the importance of combining the ecological economics analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach as a feasible integrated tool to provide insight into the policy analysis of ecological agriculture, and thus set a solid basis for effective policy making to facilitate its sustainable development on a regional scale.
Advocates of ‘local food’ claim it serves to reduce food miles and greenhouse gas emissions, improve food safety and quality, strengthen local economies and enhance social capital. We critically review the philosophical and scientific rationale for this assertion, and consider whether conventional scientific approaches can help resolve the debate. We conclude that food miles are a poor indicator of the environmental and ethical impacts of food production. Only through combining spatially explicit life cycle assessment with analysis of social issues can the benefits of local food be assessed. This type of analysis is currently lacking for nearly all food chains.
This paper reviews research traditions of vulnerability to environmental change and the challenges for present vulnerability research in integrating with the domains of resilience and adaptation. Vulnerability is the state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the absence of capacity to adapt. Antecedent traditions include theories of vulnerability as entitlement failure and theories of hazard. Each of these areas has contributed to present formulations of vulnerability to environmental change as a characteristic of social-ecological systems linked to resilience. Research on vulnerability to the impacts of climate change spans all the antecedent and successor traditions. The challenges for vulnerability research are to develop robust and credible measures, to incorporate diverse methods that include perceptions of risk and vulnerability, and to incorporate governance research on the mechanisms that mediate vulnerability and promote adaptive action and resilience. These challenges are common to the domains of vulnerability, adaptation and resilience and form common ground for consilience and integration.
http://www.gecafs.org/publications/Publications/Food_Security_and_Global_Environmental_Change.pdf
GECAFS (Global Environmental Change and Food Systems - www.gecafs.org) is a Joint Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). It is a new, international research programme involving a wide range of social, physical and biological scientists, investigating the vulnerability of human food systems to, and interactions with, global environmental change. The project has been developed to address the growing need for integrated analyses of (i) vulnerability and impacts of GEC on food systems; (ii) adaptation options; and (iii) consequences of possible adaptation strategies on both socioeconomic and environmental conditions. The paper considers some of the background issues and describes the three GECAFS Science Themes. An example of GECAFS research in the Indo-Gangetic Plain is described.
Community Based System Dynamics introduces researchers and practitioners to the design and application of participatory systems modeling with diverse communities. The book bridges community- based participatory research methods and rigorous computational modeling approaches to understanding communities as complex systems. It emphasizes the importance of community involvement both to understand the underlying system and to aid in implementation. Comprehensive in its scope, the volume includes topics that span the entire process of participatory systems modeling, from the initial engagement and conceptualization of community issues to model building, analysis, and project evaluation. Community Based System Dynamics is a highly valuable resource for anyone interested in helping to advance social justice using system dynamics, community involvement, and group model building, and helping to make communities a better place. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York. All rights reserved.
The resilience of the American food supply—the ability of the food system to withstand shocks or stresses that could lead to disruption or collapse—is a matter of genuine concern. While all seems well with supermarkets stocked to the brim, changes in the food system and our environment during recent decades have created risks that are no longer hypothetical possibilities. They are with us now. The 27 articles in the Symposium on American Food Resilience explore the vulnerability and resilience of food production and distribution from a diversity of perspectives. Four central questions provide a framework for the exploration:
An important challenge for the Swiss agri‐food system is how to align food provision with environmental goals in the context of increasingly complex conditions. This paper describes a system dynamics model that analyses the trade‐offs and synergies between these goals arising from different fields of action. The model is grounded in the social‐ecological systems framework and was developed in a participatory process with stakeholders across the Swiss agri‐food system. Model analysis indicates that yield improvements and the implementation of more sustainable production systems have important leverage for increasing food provision and simultaneously improving environmental performance. However, these fields of action need to be complemented by fields of action outside agriculture such as reductions in food waste and losses or changes in consumption patterns. Model analysis also shows that the feedback perspective, inherent to the system dynamics methodology, promises to yield valuable synergies with the social‐ecological systems approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This book explores the connections between two of the most transformative processes of the 21st century, namely global environmental change and globalization. It presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the interactions between these two processes, and illustrates, through case studies, how these interactions create situations of "double exposure." Drawing upon case studies largely related to climate change, the book shows how prominent recent and current environmental events - recurring droughts in India, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the melting of the Arctic ice sheet - demonstrate different pathways of interaction between globalization and global environmental change. Each of these pathways shows how broader human security concerns, including increasing inequality, growing vulnerability, and unsustainable rates of development, are integrally connected to both processes of global change. The double exposure framework not only sheds light on the dangers associated with these two global processes, but also reveals possibilities for using the interactions to generate opportunities for positive action. The book ultimately challenges the ways that global environmental change and globalization are viewed and addressed. By drawing attention to double exposure, the book shows how integrated responses to global environmental change and globalization can create new types of synergies that promote sustainability and enhance human security.
Introduction to the US Food System: Public Health, Environment, and Equity is a comprehensive and engaging textbook that offers students an overview of today's US food system, with particular focus on the food system's interrelationships with public health, the environment, equity, and society. Using a classroom-friendly approach, the text covers the core content of the food system and provides evidence-based perspectives reflecting the tremendous breadth of issues and ideas important to understanding today's US food system. The book is rich with illustrative examples, case studies, activities, and discussion questions.
The textbook is a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), and builds upon the Center's educational mission to examine the complex interrelationships between diet, food production, environment, and human health to advance an ecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of the public, and to promote policies that protect health, the global environment, and the ability to sustain life for future generations.
Issues covered in Introduction to the US Food System include food insecurity, social justice, community and worker health concerns, food marketing, nutrition, resource depletion, and ecological degradation.
Presents concepts on the foundations of the US food system, crop production, food system economics, processing and packaging, consumption and overconsumption, and the environmental impacts of food
Examines the political factors that influence food and how it is produced
Ideal for students and professionals in many fields, including public health, nutritional science, nursing, medicine, environment, policy, business, and social science, among others
Introduction to the US Food System presents a broad view of today's US food system in all its complexity and provides opportunities for students to examine the food system's stickiest problems and think critically about solutions.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118063384.html
Research findings have suggested a vital need to understand the food environment: the pervasiveness of unhealthy food exacerbates social inequalities; malnutrition contributes to obesity, heart disease, and diabetes; and planners and policy makers have historically been absent from the food system. Little research has shown how food system actors vary in their individual understandings of these and other general truths. The lack of understanding or misunderstanding of key issues can lead to ineffective policy formulation or efforts toward solving the wrong problem.To determine opinions on food system issues and to uncover dissonance between research and practice, a survey was administered to stakeholders from various sectors of the food system across North America. Significant differences existed regarding problems and solutions, suggesting challenges for food system actors. These varying opinions illustrate the need to conduct and disseminate empirical research on the food system to encourage evidence-based decision making.
In this article I present and discuss some criteria to provide a diagrammatic classification. Such a classification is of use for exploring in detail the domain of diagrammatic reasoning. Diagrams can be classified in terms of the use we make of them—static or dynamic—and of the correspondence between their space and the space of the data they are intended to represent. The investigation is not guided by the opposition visual vs. non-visual, but by the idea that there is a continuous interaction between diagrams and language. Diagrammatic reasoning is characterized by a duality, since it refers both to an object, the diagram, having its spatial characteristics, and to a subject, the user, who interprets them. A particular place in the classification is occupied by constructional diagrams, which exhibit for the user instructions for the application of some procedures.
Using modeling representations as boundary objects provides an important aid to collective meaning‐making. By understanding the construct of boundary objects, which arises from sociological studies of cross‐boundary work, we can increase our effectiveness in using visual representations to facilitate shared understanding for joint action. This paper draws on theories of social construction, distributed cognition, and boundary objects to build the argument that visual representations provide the crucial pivot between the system dynamics modeling method and socially constructing shared meaning. I highlight the role of visuals particularly in the context of group model building because it provides an explicit occasion devoted to shared meaning‐making through facilitated execution of the system dynamics method. Many system dynamicists use the model‐building process and simulation analyses to socially construct shared understanding among people with differing domain expertise, and the theoretical principles and practical guidelines described here can usefully inform efforts beyond participatory modeling workshops. Copyright © 2013 System Dynamics Society
This paper outlines a framework for studying the multiple interactions of broadly defined food systems with global environmental change and evaluating the major societal outcomes affected by these interactions: food security, ecosystem services and social welfare. In building the framework the paper explores and synthesizes disparate literature on food systems food security and global environmental change, bridging social science and natural science perspectives. This collected evidence justifies a representation of food systems, which can be used to identify key processes and determinants of food security in a given place or time, particularly the impacts of environmental change. It also enables analysis of the feedbacks from food system outcomes to drivers of environmental and social change, as well as tradeoffs among the food system outcomes themselves. In food systems these tradeoffs are often between different scales or levels of decision-making or management, so solutions to manage them must be context-specific. With sufficient empirical evidence, the framework could be used to build a database of typologies of food system interactions useful for different management or analytical purposes.
Individual and Organizational Problem Construction. System Dynamics: Problem Identification and System Conceptualization. System Dynamics: Model Formulation and Analysis. Designing Group Model-Building Projects. Facilitating Group Model-Building Sessions. Group Model-Building in Action: Qualitative System Dynamics. Group Model-Building in Action: Quantitative System Dynamics. Analysis of the Housing Association Model. Summary and Reflections. Appendices. References. Index.