Global and local perspectives on food security and food systems

Resilience as a concept has been known for more than a hundred years in many scientific fields, but its application to food systems is relatively recent. This is hardly surprising, as resilience is difficult to define in food systems. This, in turn, is due to the complexity of these systems. Bart de Steenhuijsen Piters has designed a framework to make it easier to define and, more importantly, support such resilience. In doing so, the framework focuses on four elements.

In short, the framework suggests:

1. Ensuring the Agency and the means and capacities of populations to mitigate risks and respond to shocks,
2. creating Buffers and resources that can be relied on in the event of shocks and stressors,
3. boosting Connectivity between market actors and segments, and
4. increasing diversity from production to consumption and across spatial scales. The Food system’s resilience can increase if the people, communities and institutions master these four capacities.