Part 1 of the Symposium on American Food Resilience (13 articles) has now been published in the September issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (http://link.springer.com/journal/13412/5/3/page/1#page-1). Part 2 (14 articles) will be in the December issue.
The entire collection is exciting in the diversity of its coverage, as experts on various aspects of the food system draw upon their disparate perspectives to throw light on a single high-stakes theme – the security of our food supply. A major goal of the Symposium is to frame this theme in a way that points to what scientists, teachers, and other professionals can do through research, education, community action, or other means to make the food system more resilient.
- Below, you can see a brief explanation of the Symposium and a list of article titles. A complete list of abstracts is attached to this message.
- The introductory article for the Symposium provides a detailed explanation of what it’s all about. You can free-download the introductory article from http://gerrymarten.com/publicatons/pdfs/GM_food-resilience-introduction-Marten-Atalan-Helicke.pdf.
- A simple and inexpensive way to access and download all the articles is through membership in the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (http://aess.info). Membership can be obtained at http://aess.info/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=939971&module_id=106623.
Description of the Symposium on American Food Resilience
The resilience of our food system is declining as global demand for food approaches limits for sustainable production. Difficult-to-predict disturbances such as severe influenza pandemic or large-scale crop failure could disrupt food production or distribution severely enough to set in motion a breakdown of food supply. The risk of serious shortfalls, whether on a local scale or larger scale, shorter period or longer period, is of genuine concern. Cities are particularly vulnerable. Decline in food storage throughout the system has eroded the capacity to buffer perturbations.
It’s difficult to get a clear grip on this topic because the food system is so complex, and failure could take forms never seen before. It’s easy for wishful thinking to prevail, but the stakes are high. The Symposium on American Food Resilience addresses the following questions:
- What are the main lines of vulnerability in the food system?
- What are leverage points for reducing the risks and improving the capacity to cope with breakdowns?
- What is already being done by government, civil society, and the private sector to reduce the risks?
- What can scientists, teachers, and other professionals do through research, education, community action, or other means to make the food system more resilient?
The following are titles of the articles in the Symposium on American Food Resilience (Part 1 and Part 2):
- Introduction to the Symposium on American Food Resilience DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0310-4
- A System Dynamics Approach for Examining Mechanisms and Pathways of Food Supply Vulnerability DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0289-x
- How Resilient Is the United States Food System to Pandemics? DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0275-3
- The Vulnerability of the U.S. Food System to Climate Change DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0290-4
- The 2014 Drought and Water Management Policy Impacts on California’s Central Valley Food Production DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0283-3
- Connecting Resilience, Food Security and Climate Change: Lessons from Flooding in Queensland, Australia DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0278-0
- “Plant a Victory Garden: Our Food is Fighting:” Lessons of Food Resilience from World War DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0293-1
- From Chernobyl to Fukushima: Risks for Food Security Policies after Nuclear Disasters DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0284-2
- Resilience in a Concentrated and Consolidated Food System DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0292-2
- Civil Society, Corporate Power, and Food Security: Counter-Revolutionary Efforts that Limit Social Change DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0294-0
- Creating a More Resilient Food System: A Critical Evaluation of Food Storage as a Way of Maintaining Stability in Light of Climate Change and Economic Shocks DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0276-2
- Resilience and the Industrial Food System: Analyzing the Impacts of Agricultural Industrialization on Food System Vulnerability DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0277-1
- Adapting a Social-Ecological Resilience Framework for Food Systems DOI: 10.1007/s13412-015-0280-6
- The Role of Knowledge in Building Food Security Resilience across Food System Domains
- Modelling Food System Resilience: A Scenario-Based Modelling Approach to Explore Future Shocks and Adaptations in the Australian Food System
- Metropolitan Food Webs: A Resilient Solution to the Climate Change Challenge?
- From Industrial Production to Biosensitivity: The Need for a Food System Paradigm Shift
- Agroecosystem Health, Agroecosystem Resilience, and Food Security
- Can Urban Agriculture Usefully Improve Food Resilience? Insights from a Linear Programming Approach
- Seed Exchange Networks and Food System Resilience in the United States
- Does the Global Food System Have an Achilles’ Heel? How Regional Food Systems May Support Resilience in Regional Disasters
- Toward Resilient Food Systems through Increased Agricultural Diversity and Local Sourcing
- Regionalism: A New England Recipe for a Resilient Food System
- PromotingResilience in a Regional Seafood System: New England and the Fish Locally Collaborative
- The Power of Story for Adaptive Response: Marshaling Individual and Collective Initiative to Create More Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems
- The Local Food Movement, Public-Private Partnerships, and Food System Resiliency
- Conclusions from the Symposium on American Food Resilience