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Module 10: Food Systems 

Module 10: Food Systems

Overview

Understanding Coupling in Natural and Human Systems

Module 10 continues the theme of human-environment interactions seen at smaller scales in agroecosystems in module 8 and elaborates on the coupled human-natural systems (CHNS) concept introduced in Module 1. As learners, in Module 10.1 you will explore different scales and types of food systems, learn about barriers food producers face within food systems, and look in detail at how the framework of CHNS allows us to see divergences of food system into different types, and transitions from one type to another. In Module 10.2 you’ll learn about the impacts of food systems on natural systems, and practice a method called Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) which is used to measure the impact of Human Food System components on the environment. LCAs can be applied to measure the impacts of both particular products as well as complex human systems on the environment. The food systems typology, the CHNS framework, and the broad ideas behind LCAs in measuring impacts across a system are tools that you can use to develop your ideas for the capstone project and other learning efforts beyond this course.

As you apply the CHNS framework and the LCA method, you'll be using a geoscience habit of mind introduced in module 1, that of systems thinking. Systems-oriented frameworks and methods are ways of interpreting and measuring complex systems in a way that incorporates the scale of an entire system as well as linkages among many interacting parts. As designers of this course, we believe that these frameworks and skills will be useful to you whether or not you go in some area of geosciences since systems thinking is a needed skill in today's complex world.

Goals and Learning Objectives

Goals and Learning Objectives

Goals

  • Describe ways that food systems impact the earth system.
  • Explain the characteristics and scale of the three major food systems coexisting in the world today and their overlap.
  • Demonstrate the complexity and interconnectedness of food system types that connecting society to the environment in different ways within a globalized world.
  • Construct an assessment that measures the impacts of food systems on the earth system and local environments.

Learning Objectives

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Define food systems and name the component systems, the roles played by each, and the three dominant and overlapping types of food systems in the world today.
  • Name different types of impacts of the food system on earth’s natural systems.
  • Define the basic elements of a coupled human-natural system.
  • Describe a life cycle assessment (LCA) and state what it is used for.
  • Explain examples of food systems to illustrate and compare their combined social and environmental inputs and impacts.
  • Apply the concept of natural human systems to food systems and distinguish different ways that food systems develop and change because of human and natural factors.
  • Apply a coupled natural system framework to describe how human systems affect earth’s natural systems within food systems.
  • Construct life-cycle assessments using data on food production activities that compare the impacts of different types of food systems on the earth systems.
  • Synthesize outputs of LCAs you have constructed to compare impacts of different food production systems.

Assignments

Module 10 Roadmap

Detailed instructions for completing the Summative Assessment will be provided in each module.

Action Assignment Location
Module 10 Roadmap
To Read
  1. Materials on the course website.
  2. Watch the video on introduction to food systems, 2013 World Food Day, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
  3. NCAT/ATTRA: Life Cycle Assessment of Agricultural Systems, pp. 1-3 and figure 3 within the reading, which refers to the life-cycle analysis comparing light bulbs, on page 9.
  1. You are on the course website now.
  2. Online: 2013 World Food Day [1]
  3. Online: Life Cycle Assessment of Agricultural Systems [2]
To Do
  1. Summative Assessment: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of potato production in smallholder Andean and globalized North American Systems
  2. Participate in Module 10 Discussion
  3. Take Module Quiz
  1. In course content: Summative Assessment [3]; then take quiz in Canvas
  2. In Canvas
  3. In Canvas

Questions?

If you prefer to use email:

If you have any questions, please send them through Canvas e-mail. We will check daily to respond. If your question is one that is relevant to the entire class, we may respond to the entire class rather than individually.

If you prefer to use the discussion forums:

If you have any questions, please post them to the discussion forum in Canvas. We will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.

Module 10.1: Food Systems

Module 10.1: Food Systems

What are food systems and what do they do?

This module builds on the introductory material in modules one and two defining food systems as coupled human-natural systems: human society interacting with the natural earth system. It marks the transition in the course to focusing on human food systems and land use and their impacts on the environment and earth systems.

Introductory Video on Food Systems

Introductory Video on Food Systems

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

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

Video: World Food Day 2013 [4] (6:52)

Click for a transcript of the World Food Day 2013 video.
Narrator: In the Red River Delta area around Hanoi, peasant farmers have worked the rice fields for thousands of years. Zune started farming at 18, when he returned to his village after years of war. Zune: From 1975 to 1984 there was real hunger. At that time, we had cooperative markets and we suffered from hunger. We always had to borrow for our meals. Our life was so hard. Narrator: Now, after decades of economic reform, farmers can lease land from the government, decide what to raise, and sell what their farms produce at market. Combined with wide scale support for agriculture, what emerged was a sustainable food system that works, now known as VAC farming. Nguyen Ngoc Triu, Pesident, VACVINA: VAC in Vietnamese is vuon, ao, chuong, which means garden, pond, livestock pen. Vietnamese families, especially in the Delta areas, that normally have a pond in front or in the back of their house. They also have gardens and pig pens. This is an integrated system. Narrator: Waste products from one part of the system are recycled and used by other parts of the system. Even the nutrient-rich silt from the bottom of the pond is recycled to fertilize the garden and create new land for fruit and vegetables. Fish this year are the main business of Zune’s farm. Zune: In the pond I have pike, carp, bighead carp and mudcarp. As an example, normally we can have productivity of two and half tons of fish. After expenses of about 700 US dollars, my net income is 1700 US dollars per year. Narrator: The pigs provide income, but they play yet another role in this complete system that links fish farming, gardening, and livestock. Biogas from the pigs powers the gas cooker in the family's kitchen. Zune: For example, with the pig pen we don't have to buy gas for cooking. The manure is used for fish production. The biogas system helps protect the environment. We also use manure for the garden. The wastewater of biogas is very good for irrigating crops. This type of irrigation water is better than nitrate. Narrator: Zune and his family make anywhere from five to seven thousand a year from all the activities on the farm. All the food they eat is produced here. With the farms profits, Zune’s children have attended school and university and Zune is constantly reinvesting and expanding the farm. Good nutrition is another benefit of VAC. The system is widely credited with increasing people's consumption of fish and animal proteins, and fruit and vegetables, grown according to the seasons, but all year round. Huong Nguyen Thi, National Programme Officer FAO Viet Nam: The VAC system has been there like for 30 or 35 years. It plays quite important role in providing nutritional intake for a small household level, especially in the area where land is very limited. So they can create a nutritional intake for their own family, and at the same time they can have some kind of surplus from agriculture production, and they can sell at the market or share with other surrounding family in the community. Narrator: Today, Vietnam is the world's number two rice exporter. But the Vietnamese have much more than just rice. Sound policy making and investment and nutrition education, for women especially, have brought about a whole of society response that's created just one type of sustainable food system. What can we learn from it? First, all of us need to understand that food comes to us through food systems. They can be local, global, or a bit of both. Next we need to recognize that we ourselves are part of our food systems. Only then can we begin to play a positive role by learning about nutrition, teaching our children, making good choices as consumers, and wasting less food. A food system, after all, is people and what they do, from farm to fork, to feed the body and the mind. As they say, you are what you eat.

Food Systems: Environments, Production, Distribution, and Household Utilization of Food

Food Systems: Environments, Production, Distribution, and Household Utilization of Food

The introductory section below is adapted from "Chapter 3: The food system and household food security” at the document website of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [5] (FAO).

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

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

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

Food System Diagram, see image caption
Figure 10.1.1 Diagram of a food system as a "conveyer belt" of three sequential components delivering Nutrition and Health from Natural Resources and Production Environments. Technical and policy aspects central to food system activities are shown surrounding the three components of production, distribution, and consumption. 
Credit: Steven Vanek, adapted from Combs et al. 1996. Sustainable Food System Approaches to Improving Nutrition and Health [6].

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

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

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

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

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

Activate Your Learning Activity:

In the blanks below, fill in the blanks regarding the supply chain for food products. You can also download the worksheet [7] for filling in offline, or as part of a classroom activity.  As depicted in Fig. 10.1.3, you’ll need to give the origin, some intermediate destinations, and then the final consumption point for the food product.  Then you should think of some social or human system dimensions of the production, supply chain, or consumption of this product, as well as some ecological or natural system dimensions and fill in the corresponding blanks. Do this first for a product familiar to you, whose supply chain you either know about or can research quickly  (part 1).  Then repeat the activity for a food product in the online introductory video from the first page of this module, about food systems in Vietnam (part 2).  When you are done with each part you can click on the ‘answers’ link in the below each part, and see how your answers match up.

worksheet: Four boxes with blanks and with arrows point from one to the next in this order: Source, Intermediate destination 1, Intermediate destination 2, and Consumption point
Figure 10.1.3. Illustration of source/production areas, intermediate destinations, and consumption points for typical food products from the activity below.

Fill in the blanks below.  If you are doing this online, just note your answers on a piece of paper regarding the food product you have chosen, or download the worksheet [7]. When you are done you can click on the ‘answers’ link below to see some possible examples and see if your answers match up with these answers.

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

Example answers

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

Example Answer 1 - frozen, breaded fish filet from a local supermarket:


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
  1. Frozen, breaded fish filet (i.e., the fish part)
  2. Food supply chain:
    1. Fishing boat in Atlantic, Chinese, or Alaskan Fishery, e.g., including flash-freezing.
    2. Preparation facility in Canada or U.S.
    3. Cold chain shipping / Supermarket
    4. Kitchen oven and dining table for food preparation and consumption.
      See some fascinating details about the production process, in How It's Made [8].
  3. Social dimensions:
    1. Financing, organization, and contracts for a fishing fleet and processing
    2. Government and fishing communities’ agreements on fisheries regulation to avoid overfishing.
    3. Supermarket companies
  4. Ecological dimensions:
    1. The wild fish species itself
    2. Food sources for the fish (algae, other fish)
    3. Changing ocean temperatures and conditions with climate change

Example Answer 2 - Bagel or bread from a local bake or coffee shop:


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
  1. Baked good (i.e., flour it is made from)
  2. Food supply chain:
    1. Farm in Midwest or Western U.S.
    2. Grain elevator purchasing and storing grain
    3. Flour production facility
    4. Café or restaurant kitchen (may be a large centralized kitchen for a chain restaurant) and coffee shop table for consumption.
  3. Social dimensions: (could include any of these)
    1. Farm enterprise belonging to a farm family or company – organization of production labor and agroecosystem management.
    2. Supply chains and companies for fertilizers, seed, and other agricultural inputs
    3. Government policies regulating subsidies to farmers, tax on diesel fuel, pollution regulations etc.
    4. Grain commodity markets and corporations
  4. Ecological dimensions:
    1. Domesticated wheat species (Triticum aestivum)
    2. Prairie soils (Mollisols) with inherent good qualities and climate for wheat growing
    3. Soil bacteria breaking down organic matter, releasing nutrients, accessing fertilizer N and releasing nitrous oxide.
    4. Bread yeast and/or sourdough bacteria used in bread making.

Exercise 2:

Recall the video celebrating world food day 2013, World Food Day 2013 Video: the Vietnamese “Garden, Pond, Livestock Plan” (V.A.C) food system" [4]. You may want to quickly skim the video again and note the food pathways that foods are following in these systems. Then choose either a product that is consumed within the household that appears in the video or one that is sold outside the household (some products fit into both categories). Fill in the same set of production and transport steps for this product as you did in part 1, as well as some social and ecological aspects.  You can use a piece of scrap paper or the downloaded worksheet.  Note that a product consumed in this farming household may have a very short food supply chain!

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

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

Example Answers

Example for the Vietnam VAC food system example:


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
  1. Food Product: Fish from the fish pond in the video
  2. Food supply chain (if sold):
    1. Brought from pond
    2. Transported by cart or truck to city
    3. Sold in market
    4. Prepared at home
    Food Supply chain (if consumed at home):
    1. Brought from pond
    2. Prepared and eaten.
  3. Social dimensions: (could include any of these)
    1. Farm enterprise belonging to a farm family – production roles of family members
    2. Government policies promoting choice by farmers of what to grow and the ability to market it (note as a communist government there was a time when this was not allowed)
    3. Government and community efforts to promote and adapt the V.A.C. food production methods.
    4. The organization of local markets and food sellers that allows farmers to sell products.
  4. Ecological dimensions:
    1. Fish species e.g. carp
    2. Pond / Garden agroecosystem
    3. Recycling of organic wastes from fish production into soils
    4. Rainy climate/river delta geography and abundant water for fish and crop production.

Spatial Scale and Typologies of Food Systems

Spatial Scale and Typologies of Food Systems

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

Spacial scale of organization in food systems. See link in caption for text description
Figure 10.1.4. Spatial scale of organization in food systems
Click for a text description of the spatial scale diagram.
Scale Examples
Global Global grain and meat production (commodities), Global fisheries
Regional Most supermarket and restaurant foods
Local Farmer's market, local hunting and fishing
Household Home gardens and subsistence agriculture
Credit: Steven Vanek

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

Diagram of Food Systems Tyopology. See link in caption for text description
Figure 10.1.5. Typology of Food Systems
Click for a text description of the Food Systems Typology diagram.
Typology of Food Systems into Smallholder, Globalized Corporate, and Alternative types. Two major types at left are the globalized corporate system which is dominant in the industrialized world and in terms of trade of major commodities, and smallholder systems which are in fact extremely important at local and regional levels in the developing world, with more than two billion smallholder farmers globally growing, trading, and selling food in these contexts. The vertical and horizontal axes in the diagram attempt to capture the variation in these systems regarding their integration into global markets and specialized industrial production (vertical axis), and the way in which the systems at right are responses to sustainability challenges of the modern food system (horizontal axis). The alternative types at right, which reflect current trends and movements in the modern food system towards sustainability, are divided into an alternative global or "ecologically modernized" type (see module 2 on the history of food systems) along with a more local or community-based food system type, with both alternative food system types responding to sustainability critiques of the globalized food system in recent history. It is also important to realize that different food systems overlap and are certainly not spatially isolated: for example, smallholders in the developing world simultaneously participate in both smallholder and global ways of producing and consuming food, and urban consumers the world over may simultaneously purchase food from all four systems.

Global Corporate Food System

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

Smallholder Food Systems

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

Alternative Food Systems: Globalized and Community-based

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

The Globalized Corporate Food System

The Globalized Corporate Food System

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

Globalized Corporate Food System. See link in caption for text description
Figure 10.1.6. Summary of characteristics for the globalized corporate food system, taken from the previous page.
Click for a text description of the globalized corporate food system.

Globalized Corporate Food System

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

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

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

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

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

Farms and acreage of different crops in United States agriculture:

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

pie charts summarizing 2012 agricultural census, see caption
Figure 10.1.8a. Charts summarizing USDA Census data from the 2012 agricultural census on numbers, size, and earnings of U.S. farms. It is notable that by numbers of farms, smaller farms dominate, but the total area taken up by larger farms is substantially greater than their small numbers would suggest.
Image credit: Steven Vanek, based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2012 agricultural census
Pie charts summarizing break down of revenue of farm products, see caption
Figure 10.1.8b. Charts summarizing how the total revenue of farm products breaks down among farms of different size classes. Note that when all farm products are included in the estimates of revenue, there is a relatively even division of revenue among the farms of different size classes. However, the much larger numbers of farms in the small size category (88% of all farms, see figure 10.1.8a above) mean that the revenue per farm for these products is likely less. The graphs allow comparison of different products in terms of how different size classes of farms are participating in the markets for different types of products, e.g. "how do mid-size farms compare in the share of total revenue between maize and vegetables?"
Credit: Steven Vanek, based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2012 agricultural census.

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

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

Question 1 - Short Answer

Which food product type (maize, vegetables, dairy) above had the largest participation of non-family owned farms, in terms of revenue from sales of that food product type?


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
Vegetables. This means that in Maize and Dairy production, family-owned farms are more important in terms of total earnings.

Question 2 - Short Answer

Which crop type above has the largest participation of family-owned farms in the SMALL category, in terms of value sold?


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
Maize

Question 3 - Short Answer

These charts don’t show the large variation that exists in the distribution of farm sizes around the country, which you will want to incorporate into your capstone project for your capstone region. If you have looked up this information for your capstone, does your capstone region have a smaller or larger average (or median) farm size?


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
Here are some answers for different regions of the country that should help you to estimate how farm size varies: California – in line or larger than these figures; Colorado: in line with these figures on farm size; Pennsylvania: smaller. In particular, the Pennsylvania dairy sector is much less dominated by very large and corporate farm holdings. This is information you will be able to find in the USDA Census county-level reports, which give a breakdown on farmland areas for each county in the United States.

Question 4 - Short Answer

How do you think the “small” category of U.S. farms in land area (236 acres or just under 100 hectares) compares to the average landholdings of the “small” category for countries like Peru, Kenya, or India where smallholders (farmers on relatively small land areas) are a large part of the population?


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
The median small farm size of smallholder farmers in these countries is much smaller, often 10 acres (3-4 hectares) or less, which is less than a tenth of the "small" family farm in the united states.

Smallholder Farmer Food Systems

Smallholder Farmer Food Systems

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

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

Man in the mountains with goats
Figure 10.1.10. Smallholder systems often include livestock for purposes of economic value (meat, wool) and better use of landscapes that are not optimal for cropping, such as this rugged patchwork of rangeland and cropped fields in Bolivia where goats are being grazed.
Credit: Steven Vanek
Man with crops in the Andes
Figure 10.1.11. Hardy, early yielding crops such as barley, pictured here in the Andes, are a good way for smallholders to produce staple grains in difficult environments. Depending on the elevation of a smallholder community in this Andean context, maize and potatoes round out a full range of options for producing carbohydrate staples in this risky mountain environment.
Credit: Steven Vanek

Alternative Food Systems: Global and Local Variants

Alternative Food Systems: Global and Local Variants

"Quasi-Parallel" Alternatives to Modern Food Systems

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

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

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

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

Alternative Food Systems: globalized and community based. See link in caption for text description
Figure 10.1.12 Characteristics of two types of alternative food systems that are responses to sustainability concerns in food systems. A more global or "ecologically modernized" variant seeks to bring sustainable and fair trade principles into the global food system, while a local and community-based variant seeks to reconnect consumers and communities to food producers at a local scale.
Click for a text description of the Alternative Food Systems diagram.

Alternative Food Systems: globalized and community-based

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

Community-based Alternatives

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

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

Many other examples of community food systems can be found, which also include efforts to link smallholder farmers and their food production systems (see previous page) as producers for burgeoning urban markets in developing countries, thus substituting some of the supply from the globalized corporate food system beyond the food products that are already supplied by smallholders to cities in these countries. The overall volume of food handled by these community-based food systems is generally much smaller than the globalized or smallholder types of food systems. Nevertheless, advocates point out that the potential market of urban consumers in relatively close proximity to small-scale producers around the world is potentially enormous. In fact, channels of alternative food production and distribution (e.g. organic agriculture) are among the fastest growing sectors in volume and economic value on a percentage basis, year after year [USDA-Economic Research Service, 2014 [9]].

Community food systemCommunity Food System2
Figure 10.1.13. This small-scale pork and poultry farm, with direct self-service marketing to consumers, is a highly functional part of a community-based alternative food system.
Credit: Karl Zimmerer
large scale soybean harvest
Figure 10.1.14. These organic soybeans are being harvested at a relatively large scale (hundreds of hectares in aggregate, within a production region of the Northeastern United States) to manufacture and sell tofu within a regional alternative food system. Soybeans are also a commodity crop largely handled by the globalized food system.
Credit: Steven Vanek

Additional Reading:

  • "A Primer on Community Food Systems” [10]: Read the Introduction, Community Food Systems, and Goals of Community Food Systems.

Knowledge Check: Food System Typologies

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

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

Scoring your answers to the knowledge check:


Click for the answer.

ANSWER:
  1. global corporate
  2. global alternative
  3. local community-based, alternative
  4. global corporate
  5. smallholder
  6. alternative community based
  7. global corporate

Challenges to Producers: Sustainability and "Poverty Traps"

Challenges to Producers: Sustainability and "Poverty Traps"

Three-legged stool. See link in caption for text description
Fig 10.1.15. Three-legged Stool of Sustainability
Click for a text description of 3 Legged Stool of Sustainability.
Sustainable Food System
  • Environment
    • reduce pollution and waste
    • use renewable energy
    • conservation
    • restoration
  • Community (and social sustainability)
    • good working conditions
    • health care
    • education
    • community and culture
  • Economy
    • employment
    • profitable enterprises
    • infrastructure
    • fair trade
    • security
Credit: Steven Vanek, based on multiple sources and common sustainability concepts

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

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

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

What is a poverty trap in smallholder agricultural systems?

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

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

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

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

Additional Reading:

  • Carter, Michael R., and Christopher B. Barrett. "The economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: An asset-based approach." The Journal of Development Studies 42.2 (2006): 178-199.
  • Jacquet, Bruno: blog article, Agroforestry & Sustainable Land Management in Haiti [11], documenting efforts to promote agroforestry in Haiti with smallholder farmers.
  • Natural Resource Conservation Service (USDA): web page giving a brief history of the dust bowl and the soil conservation service, which became the Natural Resource Conservation Service [12].

Challenges to Producers: Sustainability and "Agriculture of the Middle" in Globalized Food Systems

Challenges to Producers: Sustainability and "Agriculture of the Middle" in Globalized Food Systems

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

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

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

Red Tomato Promo
Figure 10.1.17. Photos showing on-farm production, harvest, packing, distribution, and marketing from a "values-based food chain". This example is from Red Tomato, a local/regional network linking farms to consumers in the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the United States.
Credit: Red Tomato Non-Profit and used with permission.
Red Tomato Promo
Figure 10.1.18. The Red Tomato Logo used in marketing the produce above.
Credit: Images courtesy of Red Tomato Non-Profit and used with permission.

More Information on Values-Based Food Supply Chains

You can view a PowerPoint slide set introducing nine case studies on values-based food supply chains like the ones described above: "Agriculture of the Middle" [13], a research and education effort of the University of Wisconsin.

Integration into the Capstone Project

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

Food Systems as Coupled Natural-Human Systems

Food Systems as Coupled Natural-Human Systems  

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

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

A generic natural-human system that can be applied to the food system in its interactions with earth system processes. See link in caption for text description
Fig. 8.9. A generic natural-human system that can be applied to the food system in its interactions with earth system processes
Click for a text description of Natural-Human sytem diagram.

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

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

Human system: human system internal interactions

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

Natural System: natural system internal interactions

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

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

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

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

Divergence and Transition of Food Systems: Human-Natural Interactions

Divergence and Transition of Food Systems: Human-Natural Interactions

Overlap and Transition in Food Systems

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

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

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

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

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

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

Divergence of the process of coupled natural system development. More info in text above and text description.
Fig. 10.1.19. Divergence of the process of coupled human-natural system development to produce two different types of food systems.
Click for a text description of Figure 10.1.9
Add text description here
Credit: Karl Zimmerer, based on the National Science Foundation Coupled Human-Natural Systems program.

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

Feedback of the coupled human-natural system to food production managers, community and societal decision makers
Fig. 10.1.20. A model of the way that a crisis in the social and environmental sustainability of a food system can drive a transition to a new type of food system, considered as Coupled Human-Natural Systems (CNHS). See text for more detailed description and example of this process.
Click for a text description of Figure 10.1.10
Add text description here
Credit: Steven Vanek and Karl Zimmerer, based on the National Science Foundation Coupled Human-Natural Systems program.

Module 10.2: Assessing Food System Impacts on Natural Systems and Sustainability

Module 10.2: Assessing Food System Impacts on Natural Systems and Sustainability

Introduction

What are the impacts of Food Systems on the Natural Systems that support our food production? You will learn about system-level impacts and impact assessment in module 10.2. You have already considered many of these impacts on the environment in earlier modules, for example, plant domestication, nutrient cycling, water use, and water pollution. You will learn about assessing impacts that emerge from the behavior of a whole food system, and practice life cycle assessment (LCA), one method used for assessing whole-system impacts.

Earth System Impacts and Energy Use by the Food System

Earth System Impacts and Energy Use by the Food System

Human System Impacts on the Environment Within Food Systems

The collection, transport, and application to soil of plant nutrients using animal manure (left), and the destructive effects of erosion from tillage on sloped land (right) are two human system impacts on the earth system.  Emissions resulting from fossil fuels and effects on biodiversity from seed systems and habitat impacts are other examples
Figure 10.2.1. The collection, transport, and application to the soil of plant nutrients using animal manure (left), and the destructive effects of erosion from tillage on sloped land (right) are two human system impacts on the earth system.
Credit: Steven Vanek
fertilizer production factory in Philadelphia
Figure 10.2.2. Fertilizer production, like in this old print of a factory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a large new plant in India, represents a substantial contribution to the energy expenditure and greenhouse gas footprint of food production via modern agroecosystems.
Credits: top, Boston Public Library, used with permission via a creative commons license; bottom: used by permission through the Wikimedia Commons.

In modules one and two of this course, and most recently in this module, we represent food systems as coupled human-natural systems. Throughout the course, we have tried to emphasize the dramatic impacts that human food production has had and continues to have on earth's natural systems. Here are some examples from previous modules:

  • Changing river basins to create irrigation systems
  • Exposing soils to greater rates of erosion, and stabilizing some soils against erosion
  • Domestication and development of new crop types, including transgenic engineering of new crop traits in the recent past
  • Contributions of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions that are warming planet earth and leading to climate change

Different types of food systems – global, smallholder, and alternative, as we summarized in module 10.1 -- may all impact the earth's natural systems in a different way and to different degrees. You may recognize on the short list of examples above that the impacts from these changes and the creation of agroecosystems by humans may have both positive and negative aspects. For example, irrigation and crop breeding both have as objectives increasing the productive potential of crops. They may carry other unforeseen consequences, such as depletion and collapse of water resources, changes in the dietary quality of food with domestication and breeding, and greater use of herbicides in the case of Roundup-ready crops. These human system actions within the food system improve production can be seen as the initial driving arrow as part of a human-natural system coupling (Fig. 10.2.3) and generally involve management, reorganization of the ecosystem, and energy and nutrient inputs (e.g. the use of fossil fuels to create fertilizers). The natural system then responds with positive and negative impacts on productivity and other natural system processes, which can include positive and negative consequences. These consequences eventually determine the level of sustainability of the food system. The massive extent of food systems and food production globally, within different types of food systems, translates into a large effect, or leverage, on the sustainability of human societies. To promote the sustainability of food systems, we must understand how food systems as a whole affect measures of sustainability. In this unit, we will first refer to the different human system impacts on natural systems, and then allow you to practice life-cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the energy use of two food production systems in the Andes and North America.

Human system impacts of food production activities. The human system reorganizes and provides energy and nutrient inputs to the natural system (1), which induces changes in natural system processes such as nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and agrobiodiversity (2a).  The changes in the natural system allows the human system to produce food but may also alter ecosystem services in harmful or unintended ways (2b: e.g. water pollution, global warming, and biodiversity changes in land and ocean systems)
Figure 10.2.3. Human system impacts of food production activities. The human system reorganizes and provides energy and nutrient inputs to the natural system (1), which induces changes in natural system processes such as nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and agrobiodiversity (2a). The changes in the natural system allow the human system to produce food but may also alter ecosystem services in harmful or unintended ways (2b: e.g. water pollution, global warming, and biodiversity changes in land and ocean systems).
Credit: Karl Zimmerer / Steven Vanek

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Measuring the Impacts of Systems in Multi-part Processes

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Measuring the Impacts of Systems in Multi-part Processes

Life Cycle Assessments

Life cycle assessments or life cycle analyses (LCAs) are defined as “a tool to analyze the potential environmental impacts of products at all stages in their life cycle” (International Standards Organization). Analogous to the food supply chain activity you completed in module 10.1, LCAs follow products (foods and otherwise) from production, through transport and assembly steps, to the consumption or operation of the product, and in some cases even its disposal. In contrast to the supply chain descriptions in module 10.1, at each of these stages of production, transport, consumption, and disposal, LCAs keep a running total of environmental costs or impacts of the product. Common impacts that are tracked by LCAs across product life cycles are greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution impacts, and energy use. As such LCAs are a key tool in analyzing the impacts of human on natural earth surface systems within the coupled natural-human food system (Fig. 10.2.3). LCAs require some careful thinking about where to draw the boundaries of the system for considering the life cycle of a product. For example, an LCA devoted to carrots would probably include the energy required to operate the refrigerated truck used to transport the carrots but not the energy needed to make the truck. Also, many LCAs are “cradle to grave” and include both impacts of all raw materials used in production as well as disposal impacts for the product, but some do not focus on the entire life cycle and assess other segments of the lifecycle such as “cradle to farm-gate” or “cradle to plate” in the case of food products.

Life cycle analyses are an excellent way of putting into practice a geosciences "habit of mind" of using systems thinking. Because food systems are complex, we think about a way to measure its performance and then explore all the linkages in the system within that single metric or measurement parameter (see module 1.2 for a discussion of complex systems behavior). That is, we don't content ourselves with just thinking about a crop plant in a field, the entire farm field, or the highway where foods are transported; we go several levels up to measure impacts along the entire pathway or web of interacting system parts. Along the way, it is likely that we will start to think in new ways about the linkages between parts of the system, about the most important contributions to impact, or about previously hidden factors or unexpected outcomes that explain the performance of the system.

Required Reading

National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT): Life Cycle Assessment of Agricultural Systems [14], pp. 1-3 and figure 3 for light bulb LCA on page 9.

You'll notice that the presentation of compact fluorescent light bulbs is somewhat dated since there has now been a big move to LED light bulbs that are further reducing energy usage for lighting. We continue to feature this presentation of LCA from the NCAT because it is one of the better non-technical introductions to the subject and also relates LCA concepts to agriculture. See the resources below if you want to read more about LCAs, including a detailed PowerPoint comparing different types of light bulbs.

Additional Reading on LCAs (optional)

  1. Colin Sage's book, Environment, and Food, pp. 167-172, Chapter 5, Final foods and their consequences. You may remember that the first few pages of this book were assigned as a reading in module 1.1. This document may be available through your E-Reserve System.
  2. A PowerPoint comparison of light bulbs to complement the reading from NCAT above, H. Dillon and C. Ross: "Updating the LED Life-Cycle Assessment [15]".
  3. A video of a "six-minute crash course, LCA 6 minute crash course Life cycle thinking and sustainability in design [16], by Leyla Acarogluintroducing.

Using LCAs, Part One: Comparing Costs and Impacts

Using LCAs, Part One: Comparing Costs and Impacts

Life cycle assessments are often used in two important ways. The first is to compare the costs or impacts of different products or production systems in a rigorous way, seen in Fig. 10.2.4 which compares the phosphorus water pollution resulting from three ways of producing pork meat in France (Basset-Mens and Van Der Werf, 2005). This “cradle to farm-gate” pork LCA includes the cropping used to produced pig feed as well as the animal raising methods at pig farms that use three different standard methods. In this example, two different ways of expressing LCA results show how different messages can emerge depending on how results are presented. The graph at left shows the impacts at a per-area of land used basis (per hectare), while the graph at right expresses the impact as a per-kg of food produced, which means that if a production method yields more on a per-area basis, its impact can be reduced compared to one with less productivity per hectare. Organic and red-label humane methods with straw-bedded barns pollute less on a per-hectare basis, but the organic methods are not less polluting than the conventional treatments on a per-kg of pig basis because more area is needed to both raise the pigs and grow the crops for feed in the organic system. Therefore if demand (in kg pork) remains the same for pigs while consumers switch from conventional to organic pork, total water pollution from phosphorus in pig production is unlikely to decline, at least according to this study. Rather, the red-label option seems to be able to shrink pollution per kg of pork consumed in the food system. Meanwhile, if you limited your viewpoint to a single watershed with a delimited area, you would say that both the red-label and organic methods reduce pollution. Despite some of the benefits of organic management generally, in reducing toxins in the environment and building soil quality (for example), this study can give us some pause in thinking about the particular system we are talking about (e.g. organic hog production versus organic apple production, for example) and the need to respect specific case analyses and the measures used in LCA analysis. When we talk about a whole food system, it may be best to employ a per-kg of food produced approach.

Results of a life cycle assessment for water pollution impacts of pork production under different standard methods in France: EU standard best conventional methods using confinement; a red label producers standard using more humane methods and conventional cropping, and organic standard methods including humane treatment and organically produced cropsResults of a life cycle assessment for water pollution impacts of pork production under different standard methods in France: EU standard best conventional methods using confinement; a red label producers standard using more humane methods and conventional cropping, and organic standard methods including humane treatment and organically produced crops
Figure 10.2.4. Results of a life cycle assessment for eutrophication impacts (water pollution, see modules 3 and 4; in this case, via phosphorus or P runoff into surface waterways of pork production under different standard methods in France: European Union (EU) standard best conventional methods using confinement of hogs; a "red label" which denotes a defined-origin producers' standard using more humane methods and sustainable but non-organic crop practices, and organic standard methods including more humane treatment and organically produced crops. (data adapted from Basset-Mens and Van Der Werf, 2005).
Credit: Steven Vanek

Using LCAs, Part Two: Assessing Hot Spots

Using LCAs, Part Two: Assessing Hot Spots

The second main way of using LCA is to assess which steps or process inputs in the production, consumption, and disposal of a product are most responsible for human negative impacts of practices. These “hot spots” in the analysis can then be the focus for better measurement to confirm the findings of the LCA and/or innovations in practices that eliminate these practices or limit their impact. One type of LCA uses the common measure of external energy inputs for food production (i.e., those not related to solar energy that is used by plants "for free") to analyze one aspect of the sustainability of food production. These energy inputs are visualized in Figure 10.2.5.

Principal flows of human-managed energy inputs involved in food production based on the resources of soil, seed, water, and solar energy. These are the flows that can be accounted for using an LCA approach
Figure 10.2.5. Principal human-managed energy inputs involved in food production, in addition to resources of soil and water as well as the solar energy captured by plants. Energy expended in irrigating crops, and in the growing of seed, would be additional flows that might be especially important in other systems. These energy flows are summed up using an LCA approach, noting which ones account for most of the impact, creating "hot spots" that should be researched further and targeted to increase efficiency and reduce the impacts of food production.
Credit: Steven Vanek

Dissecting an LCA

An LCA for energy use is illustrated below in Fig. 10.2.6 which shows the comparison of total energy used in different crop production practices in a long-term trial of farming practices in Switzerland. This graph shows the energy used in food production in two formats: stacked colored bars as kilowatt-hours (kWh) energy equivalent per land area under production (i.e. per Ha or 100 x 100 m area) of food production, and also as a total watt-hours (Wh) per kg of food produced (dark green lines and points above the stacked bars).

It's worth considering these results and the units used in more detail. First, for comparison, a typical U.S. home uses about 72 kWh per day for heating, cooling, and electricity, if we boil all these energy uses down to one energy equivalent* (calculations based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2009 data [17]). Some further "ballpark" or rough calculations allow us to see that the fertilizer-based system (bar at right) uses a total of about 100 days of mean household energy**to produce food on one hectare in a year (per year), while the organic system (bar at left) uses a little over half this amount of energy. Meanwhile, if we express this daily household energy use as the energy used for food per kg of food, the 72 kWh become 94 kg of food in the fertilizer-based case at right, and 144 kg of food in the organic management case at left ***. Expressing LCA results as energy per land area and energy per kg food produced are common approaches, analogous to the pollution impact analysis on the previous page. In the summative assessment on the next page, you will use an LCA to calculate energy inputs per kg of potato production in two systems.

* That is the amount of heat and light given off by 30 100-watt light bulbs burning for 24 hours.

** That is, about 7200 kWh (height of rightmost split bar on the left axis showing energy use per hectare), divided by about 72 kWh household use per day, which is equal to 100 days.

*** Dividing 72 kWh by the energy amounts per kg from the green point+line data above the stacked bars, e.g. 72 kWh / 0.77 kWh per kg or 93 kg food for the fertilizer based-case, and 72 kWh / 0.50 kWh per kg, or 144 kg of food, for the organic case.

Life Cycle Analysis results, see image caption
Figure 10.2.6. Results from a life-cycle analysis on energy use equivalents to compare three farming methods growing a variety of food crops in a long-term research trial (DOK Trial, Therwil, Switzerland). The left Y-axis and stacked colored bars give the energy use per land area (i.e. per Ha or 100 x 100 m land area) and might be helpful to know if we have the total production land area of a farm or region. Meanwhile, the plotted points above each stack and right y-axis give the energy use per kg of dry matter of crops produced, which may be a more useful measure for a food system where we want to adjust for the productivity of different food systems. It is notable that the largest differences between the three systems derive from in the energy used to manufacture chemical fertilizer (yellow bars). Figure adapted from data cited in Nemecek, T. 2005. Life Cycle Assessment of Agricultural Systems: Introduction [18].
Credit: Adapted from data in the study cited in caption (Steven Vanek)

Fertilizer Use as a "Hot Spot" in the Analysis

Two additional observations: first, in this LCA there emerged large differences in energy use that have to do almost completely with the energy used to produce chemical fertilizer, especially of nitrogen fertilizers like those produced in the large fertilizer plant in India shown in Fig. 10.2.2. Energy inputs to fertilizer production are especially high for nitrogen fertilizer because it takes a great deal of energy to fix inert nitrogen in the atmosphere (N2) into reactive forms like ammonium and nitrate that can be easily taken up by crops (see module 5 and other previous modules). Fertilizer use emerges as a "hot spot" in this analysis and might prompt managers or policymakers to work towards reducing fertilizer use by incorporating aspects of the organic and manure-based system into the more conventional, fertilizer-based system. Many energy inputs in agriculture, such as these fertilizer inputs or tractor fuel that are tallied in the LCA above, are important to consider because they represent non-renewable fossil fuel energy sources that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic climate change through the release of carbon dioxide. The LCA thus helps to measure natural system impacts and sustainability of food systems. Second, this LCA used energy as a yardstick to measure the impact of food production. As we will note for your summative assessment, such an LCA using energy inputs is only ONE measure of sustainability, and may not capture other measures of sustainability, like forest clearing needed to establish agroecosystems, runoff of nutrients that contribute to dead zones, pesticide effects on beneficial insects like pollinators, or whether farming practices provide sustained income and other livelihoods to farmers. As an example of using a different yardstick for LCAs, consider the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by different pork production systems on the previous page, in which the organic management system, in fact, had higher potential to pollute waterways with phosphorus runoff per kg of pork produced, than either conventional or "best practices" red label standard in the European Union. This result contrasts with the favorable result shown on this page for organic management when energy inputs were used as a yardstick.

Knowledge Check: Earth System Impacts and Life Cycle Analysis

Question 1 - Short Answer on types of impacts from food system activities

One of the skills involved in building life-cycle analyses is the ability to conceptualize all the different impacts on natural systems related to the different functions of production, transport, and consumption of a product. The activities give below in each question form a part of the functioning of food systems. Identify an impact or impacts on the natural system (e.g. soil erosion, air pollution, water pollution) that would most likely result from these activities, based on the material in this module and previous modules. Then check your answers by clicking on "click for answer" as a review.

Transporting food by ship and truck:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
greenhouse gas emissions from burning fuel, other air pollution from burning fuel

Applying manure to soils:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
water pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus drainage and runoff if over-applied, and no measures in place to retain nutrients in soils (cover crops, riparian barriers that keep nutrients out of waterways). Greenhouse gases, especially N2O, will be emitted if manures are applied on waterlogged soils, and methane as a greenhouse gas is associated with the animal production (especially cows) used to produce the manure.

Applying fertilizer to soils:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
greenhouse gases because of fertilizer manufacturing, greenhouse gas due to denitrification and N20 emission, water pollution if over-applied as in the case of manure above.

Tillage of soils:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
if practiced irresponsibly, soil erosion; siltation of waterways; greenhouse gas emission from mechanized tillage with tractors; emission of carbon as carbon dioxide that was once part of organic matter in soils.

Pesticide and herbicide application:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
toxicity to organisms in the environment, e.g. honey bees, other beneficial insects and water pollution; evolving resistance of pests and weeds, greenhouse gas emissions from manufacture, transport to farms, and application with tractors

Question 2 - Short Answer

As preparation for doing your own life-cycle analysis, make a list of all of the energy needs you can think of that go into both manufacturing and operating a car. You may want to also refer to the NCAT/ATTRA required reading to review an example life cycle analysis:


Click for answer.

ANSWER:
mining and refining metal ore to make steel, refining oil and synthetic production of plastics and paint, energy for water supply to all manner of production processes, burning gasoline or diesel in the engine for running the car, etc.

Summative Assessment: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Energy Use in Potato Production in Smallholder Andean and North American Production Systems

Summative Assessment: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Energy Use in Potato Production in Smallholder Andean and North American Production Systems

Instructions

This assignment has been broken down into three steps. First, you need to understand the LCA Spreadsheet, next you will need to complete the spreadsheet and finally you will complete the Summative Assessment Worksheet using the results of the completed spreadsheet. Please read all of the instructions very carefully. They are presented in the next three pages.

Files to Download

Energy Input LCA Activity Spreadsheet [19]
Summative Assessment Worksheet [20]

Submitting Your Assignment

Please complete the Module 10 Summative Assessment in Canvas.

Step 1: Description of the LCA Exercise

Step 1: Description of the LCA Exercise

Instructions for Filling in the LCA Spreadsheet

  1. If you haven't already done so, download the Energy Input LCA Activity Spreadsheet [21], which includes an excel spreadsheet with embedded calculations that will carry out some of the calculations in the LCA, and also a copy of the data table below.
  2. In a step-by-step fashion, the spreadsheet asks you to use data given in tables on the next page to calculate the total energy needed to produce and ship potatoes in two contrasting food system types: a smallholder agricultural system in Peru and an industrialized system like those in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Colorado, USA. See Fig. 10.2.5 (previous pages) for a simple view of the flows that will be accounted for in the LCA.
  3. To translate the energy usage into an understandable form, the energy results from the LCA are given in gallons of gasoline-equivalent, which is a “yardstick” of energy usage (for learners outside the United States, multiply by 3.8 for liters of gasoline). This is similar to the use of kilowatt-hours of electricity (kWh) as an energy yardstick for the LCA on production practices in Europe, two pages ago.
  4. The results we will calculate will be in gallons of gasoline equivalent per land area (per hectare or Ha, equal to a 100 by 100-meter area), and also per 1000 kg (metric ton) of potatoes (a metric ton is slightly more than a standard U.S. ton or 2000 lbs.)
  5. Detailed instructions for filling in the excel table appear on the following page. You will first fill in the excel table in the cells labeled as 1.1, 1.2, etc. for the smallholder system in the Andean region of South America, where yields are generally lower and satisfy the needs of households and local markets (a smallholder food system).
  6. You will then continue filling in the energy inputs for the United States-based industrial system for the excel cells labeled 2.1 through 2.17
  7. Note that to make the exercise easier, a few values in the excel sheet have been filled in for you. Also, greyed-in cells in the excel table will fill automatically by summing the blank cells once these have been filled in.
  8. After filling in both sides of the excel table carefully and checking, you will answer questions regarding the LCA on the page for step three, to complete the summative assessment.

Now, move to the next online page to start filling in the spreadsheet to complete this activity.

Step 2: Complete the Excel Spreadsheet

Step 2: Complete the Excel Spreadsheet

Instructions

Read the table below very carefully and follow the instructions to complete the spreadsheet (see the previous page for spreadsheet download) using the Gallon Gasoline Equivalents per Hectare given in table 10.2.1 below.

Instructions for lines 1.1 to 1.15 of Excel table. This is for potatoes produced in the Andean smallholder agriculture system.

The table below provides instructions for filling in the data needed for the LCA of energy use by Andean smallholder agriculture based on the agricultural practices in these systems. You will need the table of values for the two different systems (see table 10.2.1 below, see link below to download or use the online version)

Line Number in Excel Table What to enter into the spreadsheet -- you are entering 'Gallon Gasoline Equivalents' of energy
A.1 Look up the smallholder tillage energy value (LEFT side of table 10.2.1 below) in the table and enter it.
A.2 Look up the smallholder hand labor energy value on the LEFT side of table 10.2.1 below and enter it -- it is considerable because many operations like weeding and hilling up potatoes to make them yield better are done by hand.
A.3 Manure energy is not counted as it is a by-product of other animal uses on the farm such as meat, wool, and traction uses, so enter zero.
A.4 Irrigation - as explained on the right side of table 2, this does not use energy even when it is used, because it is usually gravity-fed.
A.5 & A.6 This value has been entered to simplify the exercise, but please read this explanation: small amounts of fertilizers are used by smallholders, so use a value of 10 kg per Ha of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in fertilizers. The values in the table happen to be given just "per 10 kg of nutrient", so we have multiplied the figure in the table (4.9 gallons gasoline per 10 kg N) by 10 kg, which gives 4.9 gallons gasoline and 1.0 gallons of gasoline for N and P respectively. These are already filled in.
A.7 Potassium fertilizer is not used, so enter zero.
A.8 Energy is required to produce seed, in essence, the energy value from this LCA for the preceding crop multiplied by the seeding rate of potatoes. Enter this value into the excel table.
A.9 Fungicide might be one chemical input that would be used in the Andes by smallholders to combat late blight and other common potato diseases, so we include it here. Enter the value shown in the table into your LCA excel table.
A.10 This cell is summed automatically. You do not need to enter anything, but you should note it for comparison and checking with other findings of the LCA. The energy inputs for all production activities are summed automatically by the spreadsheet, in gallons gasoline equivalent per Ha. At right it is also given per 1000 kg of potatoes produced, assuming a yield of 10,000 kg/ha fresh weight of potatoes which is a medium to good yield for smallholders in the Andes.
A.11 This cell is summed automatically and you do not need to fill in. Here the energy inputs are summed as in A10 but representing ONLY those energy sources that represent fossil fuel inputs (e.g. fertilizer, fungicide)
A.12 Transport distance. For smallholder systems in the Andes, about half the crop might be transported about 100 km as an average. Half the crop being sold is already factored into the calculations for energy used (A13).
A.13 This cell is calculated automatically. The transport energy required to transport half the crop to market is calculated by the spreadsheet. The other half is assumed to stay on the farm for home consumption.
A.14 This represents a total of energy inputs for production plus transport to market per land area (Ha); at right on line 13, it is given per kg of potato produced.
A.15 This represents only the fossil fuel energy required for production plus transport

When you have entered all the values for the smallholder system, you will see the LCA results for production only, and production plus transport summarized at right in column E of the Excel spreadsheet.

Instructions for lines 2.1 to 2.17 of the excel table, LCA for industrial agriculture:

Use the instructions below to fill in the second LCA for industrial agriculture:

Line Number in Excel Table What to enter into the Excel Table -- you are entering 'Gallon Gasoline Equivalents' of energy
B.1 look up the industrial agriculture value for tillage energy value (RIGHT side of table 10.2.1 below) in the table and enter it.
B.2 look up the industrial agriculture hand labor energy value in table 10.2.1, RIGHT side, and enter it (hand labor energy is very small because most operations have been mechanized)
B.3 We assume manure is not used on these potato farms. They tend to be large farms and not necessarily close to sources of manure, so we have already entered zero here.
B.4 Irrigation: Enter the value on the right side of the table if you wish to model the case of Colorado or other regions where potatoes are grown in dry climates. Otherwise, you should enter zero because we assume that potatoes use only rainfall, and energy is not required to irrigate them.
B.5 Nitrogen fertilizer: 180 kg/ha of nitrogen is applied to potatoes. The value in the table below gives an energy value in gallons of gasoline per 10 kg of N, so you should calculate 180/10= 18 and multiply it by the value in the table, equal to 18 x 4.9 or 88.2 gallons gasoline. This value has been entered in the excel table, and you will use the phosphorus and potassium fertilizer energy equivalents to enter them.
B.6 Repeat the process above for N fertilizer, but using the P fertilizer value from the table and 120 kg of P/Ha as the application rate of phosphorus to potatoes (remember to divide this P rate by 10)
B.7
Repeat the process above for N fertilizer, but using the K fertilizer value from the table and 200 kg of P/Ha as the application rate of phosphorus to potatoes (remember to divide this P rate by 10)
B.8 Energy is required to produce seed, in essence, the energy value from this LCA for the preceding crop multiplied by the seeding rate of potatoes. This value is 35.4 and has been entered into the excel table.
B.9 Fungicide is applied to combat fungal diseases that are common in potato-growing regions, and ensure high yields that justify the relative expensiveness of growing in this intensively managed crop.
B.10 Insecticide is used to manage insect pests of the crops. These have an energy cost of manufacture, transport, and driving through the field on a tractor to apply them. Enter the value from the right side of the table
B.11 Herbicide is used to control weeds in the potato crop. These have an energy cost of manufacture, transport, and driving through the field to apply them. Enter the value from the right side of the table.
B.12 This cell is summed automatically. You do not need to enter anything, but you should note it for comparison and checking with other findings of the LCA. The energy inputs for all production activities are summed automatically by the spreadsheet, in gallons gasoline equivalent per Ha. At right it is also given per 1000 kg of potatoes produced, assuming a yield of 10,000 kg/ha fresh weight of potatoes which is a medium to good yield for smallholders in the Andes.
B.13 This cell is summed automatically and you do not need to fill in. Here the energy inputs are summed as in A10 but representing ONLY those energy sources that represent fossil fuel inputs (e.g. fertilizer, fungicide)
B.14 Transport distance: For potatoes in New York or Michigan (examples of eastern states in the U.S.) choose 200 km. For potatoes in more remote Colorado, the mean transport distance is approximately 700 km (on average), so enter this in the excel table. The energy for transport is calculated automatically in the next cell below.
B.15 This cell is calculated automatically as the energy needed to transport the entire crop to ma et, since this is exclusively a cash crop by contrast to the smallholder system.
B.16 This represents a total of energy inputs for production plus transport to market per land area (Ha). To the right on row 33, it is given per kg of potato produced.
B.17 This represents only the fossil fuel energy required for production plus transport

Also, in the case of the industrial system, the yield that is present in the excel table is a good deal higher than that shown for the Andean system, at 35,000 kg potatoes per Ha. This can be traced to a number of factors: less limiting fertility provided by higher nutrient inputs, different varieties specialized for high yields as well as different globalized market characteristics in North America, reduced pest and weed pressure, and better overall quality of soil resources where potatoes are grown, which may include flatter, deeper, and better-drained soils.

Table 10.2.1. Data table of energy equivalent values, drawn from Pimentel and Pimentel, 1995. Food, Energy, and Society. Note: if it easier to display the table in a separate window or print it out you can download the table [22]. Some updates have been made to the information to reflect more recent practices and fertilizer application rates. Industrial potato figures are based on the New York Potato production, while developing country figures are based on figures for similar ox-drawn tillage systems in highland Mexico and authors’ estimates of transport distances in the Andes and differences in embodied energy for seed production. Note that fertilizer energy amounts are given per 10 kg of fertilizer.
LCA Category Smallholder agriculture system description Energy input for smallholder agriculture, in Gallon Gasoline Per Hectare equivalents Industrial agriculture description Energy input for industrial agriculture, in Gallon Gasoline Per Hectare equivalents
1.Tillage and field operations Energy input of oxen for plowing 16.1 Tractor fuel use and other machinery energy use on-farm 146
2. Hand labor Driving traction animals and several hand operations (hilling, weeding, harvesting) 6.4 Human operation of machinery and occasional direct field operations 0.05
3. Irrigation Irrigation is usually gravity-based if used at all. none Choose this value ONLY if you decide to do an LCA for Colorado potato production - all other areas use zero irrigation. 137
4. Nitrogen (N) fertilizer Manufacture of N fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 4.9 Manufacture of N fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 4.9
5. Phosphorus (P) fertilizer Manufacture of P fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 1.0 Manufacture of P fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 1.0
6. Potassium (K) fertilizer Manufacture of P fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 0.5 Manufacture of P fertilizer per 10 kg fertilizer 0.5
7. Seed Energy embodied in seed production 2.3 Energy embodied in seed production (in an industrial system) 35.4
8. Insecticide none -- Energy embodied in insecticide production and application 87.6
9. Herbicide none -- Energy embodied in herbicide production and application 58.5
10. Fungicide Energy embodied in fungicide production 12.7 Energy embodied in fungicide production and application 12.7
11. Electricity none -- Electrical equipment and lighting for processing potatoes 4.4
12. Transport
Energy to transport half of one-hectare yield to wholesale market or processor (for e.g. 100 km distance) - this will be calculated by the spreadsheet.
7.8

Energy to transport the whole yield of industrially produced potatoes to market.

72.2

Step 3: Discussion and Analysis

Step 3: Discussion and Analysis

Conclusions: Discussion and Completing the Summative Assessment Worksheet

If you have finished both LCA sections, congratulations! You have just learned the basics of a common analysis tool for complex systems such as coupled natural-human food systems.

Taking stock: For discussion: here are some items you may want to discuss in your groups and with the class.

  1. Module 10.2 has been devoted to summarizing natural systems impacts of the food system. In this LCA, why did we focus on energy use and fossil fuel energy use in particular? What specific impact on natural systems, does fossil fuel use create that evokes sustainability concerns?
  2. Within the particular measurement parameter or metric from question one, which system created less impact on the earth system per unit of food produced (note that there might be other ways to measure the systems with other conclusions, see question 4)?
  3. Which system yielded more potatoes per area? Does this make a difference to the conclusions regarding energy use and its contribution to sustainability? (think about in which units we expressed the results of the analysis)
  4. What are other measures of sustainability that could be applied to the two systems? Think about the other natural systems components presented in sections II and III of the course and in modules 10.1 and 10.2 (water, soil, etc.), or the concepts of social and economic/financial sustainability.
  5. What lessons from the smallholder system, could be applied to the industrial system, and vice-versa?

You will now complete an assignment based on the LCAs you have just conducted, to submit as the second part of your summative assessment, using a worksheet you will download below.

Files to Download

Summative Assessment Worksheet [20]

Submitting your Answers

Complete the Summative Assessment Worksheet short answer and paragraph responses, based on modules 10.1 and 10.2 and your responses on the Excel LCA Spreadsheet you just completed. Then complete the Module 10 Summative Assessment in Canvas.

Summary and Final Tasks

Summary

In the first part of Module 10, you learned about some of the formal concepts around food systems seen either as food production, transport, and consumption chains, and as types of coupled natural-human systems, and explored these concepts using real examples: food products as windows into production and transport chains, and food system examples from around the United States and the world. In the second part, module 10.2, you learned about and practiced a skill for measuring impacts of food production activities and other human processes on the environment: Life cycle analysis. These are vital tools that you can use to understand human-environmental linkages that pertain to food, one of the main goals of section III of this course.

Reminder - Complete all of the Module 10 tasks!

You have reached the end of Module 10! Double-check the to-do list on the Module 10 Roadmap [23] to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Module 11.

References and Further Reading

Altieri, M. A., Funes-Monzote, F. R., & Petersen, P. (2012). Agroecologically efficient agricultural systems for smallholder farmers: contributions to food sovereignty. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 32(1), 1-13.

Cooper, J. M., Butler, G., & Leifert, C. (2011). Life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from organic and conventional food production systems, with and without bio-energy options. Njas-Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 58(3), 185-192.

Ericksen, P. J. (2008). Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research. Global Environmental Change, 18(1), 234-245

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 1997. "Chapter 3: The food system and household food security” in Agriculture food and nutrition for Africa - A resource book for teachers of agriculture. Available at the document website of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [5] (http://www.fao.org/docrep/w0078e/w0078e04.htm [24]).

Hinrichs, C. C. (2003). The practice and politics of food system localization.Journal of rural studies, 19(1), 33-45.

IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development): Investing in smallholder family agriculture for global food security and nutrition. IFAD -2015 Policy Brief 3, 2013.

Liu, J., Dietz, T., Carpenter, S. R., Folke, C., Alberti, M., Redman, C. L.,& Provencher, W. (2007). Coupled human and natural systems. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 36(8), 639-649.

NCAT/ATTRA: Life Cycle Assessment of Agricultural Systems. Available at: https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=457 [25]

Netting, R. M. (1993). Smallholders, householders: farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford University Press.

P. Pinstrup Andersen and D. D. Watson. 2011. Toward a dynamic global food system”. In: Food Policy for Developing Countries: The Role of Government in Global, National and Local Food Systems, 1-25

Sage, Colin. 2011. “Final foods and their consequences” Ch. 5 in Environment & Food. Routledge, 2011.


Source URL: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/694

Links
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkLpUwmYCIQ
[2] http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=457
[3] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/982
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkLpUwmYCIQ&feature=youtu.be
[5] http://www.fao.org/home/en/
[6] http://www.css.cornell.edu/FoodSystems/Tuftspap.html
[7] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod10/Module%2010.1%2C%20Introductory%20Activity%20_102019.docx
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdgBjpON5QU
[9] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture/organic-market-overview.aspx
[10] https://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/files/integrate/teaching_materials/food_supply/student_materials/ldquoa_primer_community_food.pdf
[11] https://blogs.iadb.org/sostenibilidad/en/agroforestry-sustainable-land-management-in-haiti/
[12] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/about/history/?cid=nrcs143_021392
[13] http://www.agofthemiddle.org/pubs/UWVValueChains.ppt
[14] https://attra.ncat.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/life_cycle_assessment.pdf?
[15] https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/11/f27/dillon_lifecycle_portland2015.pdf
[16] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D55PVhdMA8o
[17] http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/
[18] https://db.ecoinvent.org/reports/15_Agriculture.pdf
[19] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod8/WorksheetLCA_final_May2017_Blank.xlsx
[20] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod10/Module10SummativeWorksheet.docx
[21] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod8/WorksheetLCA_final_May2017_Blank_Edits_August2017.xlsx
[22] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog3/files/Mod8/Pimentel1995_TableValues_.xlsx
[23] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog3/node/699
[24] http://www.fao.org/docrep/w0078e/w0078e04.htm
[25] https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/summary.php?pub=457