Transformations in food consumption and production systems

The sustainability of global food consumption and production systems (FCPSs) over the next 25 years depends on changing economic developments, changing household consumption patterns and new technological developments, as well as on the environmental context of agriculture. This paper explores the interaction of these dynamics by examining the claims for sustainability of supposedly competing 'strategies' for the transformations of FCPSs. An FCPS includes not just agricultural production but also processing, retailing, eating and waste disposal phases. The four strategies are characterized as 'industrialized', 'traditional sustainable', 'organic' and 'new industrialized'. The paper argues that each strategy works in a variety of politico-economic structures and that focusing only on food crop production (such as in agriculture) ignores major environmental problems that are due to other phases of a food's lifecycle.