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Resilience and the industrial food system: analyzing the impacts of agricultural industrialization on food system vulnerability

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how socioeconomic and technological shifts in Canadian and American food production, processing, and distribution have impacted resilience in the food system. First, we use the social ecological systems literature to define food system resilience as a function of that system’s ability to absorb external shocks while maintaining core functions, such as food production and distribution. We then use the literature to argue that we can infer food system resilience by exploring three key dimensions: (1) the diversity of the food system’s components, (2) the degree to which the components are connected, and (3) the degree of decision-making autonomy within the food system. Next, we discuss the impacts of industrialization on these three factors within Canada and the USA. Specifically, we show how processes of corporate concentration, farm-scale intensification, mechanization, and the “cost-price squeeze” have led to a decrease in ecological and economic diversity, a high degree of spatial and organizational connectivity, and a diminished decision-making capacity for individual farmers. While this analysis is qualitative and heuristic, the evidence reviewed here leads us to postulate that our food system is becoming less resilient to external shocks such as climate change. We conclude by discussing four possible strategies to restore resilience and suggest a more transformational shift in food system politics and practice. Specifically, we argue that publicly led multifunctional policies may support more diversified production while programs to promote food system localization can increase farmer autonomy. However, these shifts will not be possible without social-structural corrections of current power imbalances in the food system. This policy discussion reinforces the value of the social ecological framework and, specifically, its capacity to produce an analysis that interweaves ecology, economy, and power.

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Notes

  1. Occurred between 1845 and 1850 and was caused by a potato blight that triggered a famine which killed or displaced 25 % of the Irish population (Fraser 2003).

  2. Measured by the mean change in similarity between each country and the global standard composition.

  3. Although many scholars argue that concentration in the food system occurred long before the 1950s, a number of concurrent shifts caused concentration in the post-war era of food production to be both more comprehensive and more structurally transformative (Winson 1993).

  4. Replicating the functions of natural systems in their applicable ecological context: i.e., establishing “species and mixtures of species appropriate to specific environments” (Jackson 2002). Jackson highlights the “perennial polyculture” as a functionally effective form of “natural systems agriculture” in prairie ecosystems (Jackson 2002).

  5. Especially through non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups, and neighborhood initiatives.

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Acknowledgments

The support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Vanier Scholarship program are gratefully acknowledged. This paper benefits greatly from the review process, and so, we acknowledge the blind peer reviewers who provided insights and input to an earlier draft.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Sarah Rotz & Evan D. G. Fraser

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Rotz, S., Fraser, E.D.G. Resilience and the industrial food system: analyzing the impacts of agricultural industrialization on food system vulnerability. J Environ Stud Sci 5, 459–473 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0277-1

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