Abstract
The international collaboration network Food Systems Innovation to Nurture Equity and Resilience Globally (Food SINERGY) unites food system experts concerned with the confluence of environmental, geopolitical, economic, and public health stressors that weaken food systems and increase inequalities. In March 2023, Food SINERGY participants from universities, research institutes, food policy advocacy groups, Indigenous networks, farmers’ associations, consumer organizations, social enterprises, and non-governmental organizations from around the world met in Mont Orford, Québec, for a forum to revisit food system structures across local-to-global scales and to identify key junctures for transformation. This article summarizes the network's discussions in the context of the existing literature. Key knowledge contributions include the importance of diversification throughout the food system for cultivating resilience; the value of food sovereignty in promoting equity across scales; the reconciliation between food sovereignty and equitable trade; the need for consonance between policy environments at different scales to enable positive societal actions; the pioneering role of food system innovations that challenge conventional political and economic structures, with emphasis on agroecology; and the need for critical self-reflection around knowledge production and knowledge use to better serve equitable food systems. These discussion outcomes provide insights for actors seeking to transform food systems in support of equity and resilience.
Graphical Abstract
Introduction
The global Covid-19 pandemic, armed conflict, political disruptions, and numerous climate change-driven phenomena have, unfortunately, given us multiple opportunities to test the resilience of the global food system in recent years (FAO et al. 2022; United Nations Environment Programme 2022). We have seen both stronger points and points of collapse. For example, even when pandemic restrictions upended market chains, farmers with highly biodiverse production in Colombia, Nepal, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala demonstrated their resilience by consuming their own foods as well as sharing them with others in their communities and networks (Gómez Serna and Bernal Rivas 2020; Adhikari et al. 2021; Lyall et al. 2021; Little and Sylvester 2022; Rice et al. 2023). In some locations where unprecedented heavy rains coincided with pandemic disruptions, biodiverse production also buttressed farmers against the effects of crop losses and impassable roads (Túquerrez 2022). Such stories of resilience stand in stark contrast to situations elsewhere. Perhaps nowhere has the interaction of globalized environmental, economic, geopolitical and public health disruptions been as evident as in Somalia. Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant that Somalia lost 90% of its wheat supply just as the country grappled with its worst drought in decades, ongoing armed conflict, remaining fallout from the pandemic, and rising global food prices. The confluence of these factors sent Somalia into a famine that saw an estimated 43 000 people die in 2022 alone, half of them children (Wise 2022; WHO and UNICEF 2023). While Somalia's circumstances are exceptional, they may be a harbinger of what is to come, particularly in a scenario where resources are increasingly depleted, nutrition and health disparities are broadening, and climate change brings new curveballs that affect the food system (Shukla et al. 2019; Willett et al. 2019).
Just as the disruptions of recent years have thrust the consequences of inequitable, fragile food systems into the global spotlight, they also present an opportunity to critically revisit and transform the structure of food systems. This interest propelled the development of the international collaboration network Food Systems Innovation to Nurture Equity and Resilience Globally (Food SINERGY). The network was formally launched in March 2023 with a 3-day forum in Mont Orford, Québec, two pre-forum online workshops, and multiple small-group meetings. These inaugural activities united food system experts from 13 universities and research institutes as well as from 21 food policy advocacy groups, Indigenous networks, farmers’ associations, consumer organizations, social enterprises, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Participating individuals were located in 14 countries (Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, India, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and the United States), and the geographical scope of their collective expertise extended to many more locations. Box 1 provides further information on Food SINERGY and the activity-based discussion methods used for generating knowledge outputs.
Box 1: About the Food SINERGY network and its methods for producing knowledge
The Food SINERGY network is led by the Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Health Inequalities (CIENS). Individuals were invited to join Food SINERGY according to a snow-ball approach, wherein individuals were selected for their expertise in a diversity of food system-related subjects as well as their representation of diverse sectors and geographical regions.
The Food SINERGY in-person forum and preceding online workshops utilized activity-based, participatory facilitation methods to support productive discourse. Activities were designed with the help of a communication facilitation expert and included, among others, an open-response survey for pre-identification of key subjects; a mapping exercise of food system subjects and key actors; paired walking discussions; “1-2-4-all” group discussions; “open-space” group discussions; “soft-shoe-shuffle”; and moderated plenary discussions. Spanish language translation was provided to promote inclusivity. Forum activities and discussions were documented by a visual artist and a team of seven notetakers. All forum participants consented to have their contributions documented. Notes were then organized and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis (Hsieh and Shannon 2005).
Analyses produced the subjects and ideas that are presented in this article as the outputs of Food SINERGY's discussions. These ideas emerged out of the participants’ professional trajectories, including their extensive engagement with scholarly literature from across multiple disciplines. Therefore, in this article, the Food SINERGY discussion outputs are scaffolded by literature representing some of the most prominent scholarly sources that have informed the network's perspectives. All authors are founding Food SINERGY members.
This article summarizes the knowledge generated by Food SINERGY discussions to date, with a focus on critical junctures for advancing equitable, resilient food systems. We situate the discussion points in the existing literature to reflect that the Food SINERGY network's expertise emerges from, and is embedded in, an extensive and evolving body of knowledge.
We begin by contextualizing the need for transforming food systems, then we move into a discussion on what constitutes food system resilience and how a food sovereignty focus can better support equity. Next, we present three avenues that Food SINERGY identified as key to creating equitable, resilient food systems. The first of these avenues, transformation across scales, discusses how resilience can be built across the local-to-global spectrum by simultaneously supporting food sovereignty and equitable international trade, as well as through seeking consonance across scales. The second, learning from stories of resilience, discusses how a diversity of innovations are challenging the conventional political and economic discourse around food systems, and highlights agroecology as a promising integrated innovation. The third, knowledge for transformation, presents the need for critical thinking around how we produce, mobilize, and ultimately use knowledge in order for it to better serve equitable, resilient food systems. We conclude by summarizing key learnings.
