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Governance of food systems across scales in times of social-ecological change: a review of indicators

Food Security volume 10, pages 287–310 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Governance of food systems is a poorly understood determinant of food security. Much scholarship on food systems governance is non-empirical, while existing empirical research is often case study-based and theoretically and methodologically incommensurable. This complicates aggregation of evidence and generalization. This paper presents a review of literature to identify a core set of methodological indicators to study food systems governance in future research. Indicators were identified from literature gathered through a structured consultation and sampling from recent systematic reviews and were classified according to governance levels and the food system activity domain they investigate. We found a concentration of indicators in food production at local to national levels and with less literature investigating how food governance affects food distribution and consumption. Many indicators of institutional structure were found, while indicators capturing social agency and indicators of cross-scale dynamics were moderately represented but critical perspectives on governance were lacking. These gaps present an opportunity for future empirical research to investigate more comprehensively the diverse components of food systems and how governance arrangements at different scales affect them.

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Notes

  1. This 15 member panel included 10 of the authors of this paper, plus five additional experts.

  2. This team includes four authors of this paper, plus three research assistants.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the CGIAR Fund Council, Australia (ACIAR), Irish Aid, European Union, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, UK, USAID and Thailand for funding to the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The research for this article was funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), under the Priorities and Policies for CSA Flagship. This article builds upon an earlier version which appeared as a CCAFS Working Paper, number 167. This work was also supported by the US National Science Foundation (grant numbers BCS-1534544, SES-1360421, and SES-1360463) and some authors benefitted from support from the R4D project “Food Sustainability” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 400540-152033). We would like to thank Katrien Termeer for helpful insights throughout the project. Thanks are also extended to all those who helped by suggesting literature during consultation, all authors who responded to requests during the review and to Patricia Lezotte of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University for invaluable assistance during drafting. We acknowledge the services of the Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg for providing access to materials reviewed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Consultant Researcher, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

    Aogán Delaney

  2. Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Tom Evans, Jordan Blekking & Tyler Schlachter

  3. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    John McGreevy & Donald R. Nelson

  4. Helsinki University Centre for Environment, HENVI, Helsinki, Finland

    Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki

  5. Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia

    Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki

  6. Research Methodology Chair Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Peter A. Tamás

  7. International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya

    Todd A. Crane

  8. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Hallie Eakin

  9. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, Nairobi, Kenya

    Wiebke Förch

  10. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK

    Lindsey Jones

  11. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Christoph Oberlack & Stephan Rist

  12. Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Christoph Oberlack & Stephan Rist

  13. Département de science politique, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Mark Purdon

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aogán Delaney.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. We disclose above the sources of funding that made this research possible.

Appendix: List of records included in full review

Appendix: List of records included in full review

Table 6 List of records included in full review
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Delaney, A., Evans, T., McGreevy, J. et al. Governance of food systems across scales in times of social-ecological change: a review of indicators. Food Sec. 10, 287–310 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-018-0770-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-018-0770-y

Keywords

  • Food systems
  • Governance
  • Food security
  • Research methods
  • Evidence synthesis
  • Socio-ecological change

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