Food System Resilience: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges

Zurek, Monika and Ingram, John and Bellamy, Angelina Sanderson and Goold, Conor and Lyon, Christopher and Alexander, Peter and Barnes, Andrew and Bebber, Daniel P. and Breeze, Tom D. and Bruce, Ann and Collins, Lisa M. and Davies, Jessica and Doherty, Bob and Ensor, Jonathan and Franco, Sofia C. and Gatto, Andrea and Hess, Tim and Lamprinopoulou, Chrysa and Liu, Lingxuan and Merkle, Magnus and Norton, Lisa and Oliver, Tom and Ollerton, Jeff and Potts, Simon and Reed, Mark S. and Sutcliffe, Chloe and Withers, Paul J.A. (2022) Food System Resilience: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 47 (1). ISSN 1543-5938

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Abstract

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better positioned to address challenges of the future. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.