Advances in Food Security and Sustainability, Volume Four, takes a scientific look at the challenges, constraints and solutions necessary to maintain a healthy and accessible food supply in different communities. This ongoing series addresses a wide range of issues on food sustainability and security, with this release focusing on The Evolution of Food Security Policy in Lao PDR: Continuity and Change in the Era of the Sustainable Development Goals, Food System Resilience and Diversity, A Pliable Pillar: How the Social Dimension of Sustainability Has Been Framed in UK Public Food Policy, and much more.

Advances in Food Security and Sustainability, Volume Three, takes a scientific look at the challenges, constraints and solutions necessary to maintain a healthy and accessible food supply in different communities. This ongoing series addresses a wide range of issues on food sustainability and security, exploring challenges related to protecting environmental resources while also meeting human nutritional requirements. Chapters included in this release include "A Food Systems perspective on food and nutrition security in Australia," "The potential, and limits, of agricultural intensification to improve the welfare of rural households in semi-arid areas," "Food supply chain fraud: the economic, environmental and social consequences" and much more.

Advances in Food Security and Sustainability takes a scientific look at the challenges, constraints, and solutions necessary to maintain a healthy and accessible food supply in different communities around the world. The series addresses a wide range of issues related to the principles and practices of food sustainability and security, exploring challenges related to protecting environmental resources while meeting human nutritional requirements.

Advances in Food Security and Sustainability, Volume Two takes a scientific look at the challenges, constraints and solutions necessary to maintain a healthy and accessible food supply in different communities around the world. Topics covered in this new volume include the Management of major fungal diseases for sustainable oilseed rape crop production in the UK, Public Policy and the Construction of New Markets to Family Farms: Analyzing the Case of School Meals in Sao Paulo, Brazil, The environmental, social and market sustainability of sugar, and Sustainability performance of food chains: linking biodiversity and nutritional value in the Italian wheat to bread chain. This ongoing series addresses a wide range of issues on the principles and practices of food sustainability and security, exploring challenges related to protecting environmental resources while also meeting human nutritional requirements.

The theme of this book evolved from the idea of linking three concepts around food: traceability, ethics and informed choice. We believe that the current devel- ment and implementation of traceability in the agri-food sector offers an interesting way not only of handling food safety but also of addressing and communicating ethical issues arising from current food production practices. Practices in the agri-food sector worry food consumers (as we all are, since we need to eat and drink to stay alive). But how can consumers act upon their concerns? Paradoxically, although consumers are bombarded with information on food - from the media, the food industry, food authorities, NGOs and interest groups - details about how foods are actually produced is often hard to find. Much of the infor- tion available is superficial, conflicting or partial, and it is hard for consumers seeking to mak e informed food choices to know which information to trust. The consumers we interviewed for this project felt that information about food products was withheld and manipulated. Traceability, which provides a record of the history and journey of a given food, and which is increasingly used in the food sector for legal and commercial reasons, has the potential to communicate a more authentic picture of how food is produced.

The theme of this book evolved from the idea of linking three concepts around food: traceability, ethics and informed choice. We believe that the current devel- ment and implementation of traceability in the agri-food sector offers an interesting way not only of handling food safety but also of addressing and communicating ethical issues arising from current food production practices. Practices in the agri-food sector worry food consumers (as we all are, since we need to eat and drink to stay alive). But how can consumers act upon their concerns? Paradoxically, although consumers are bombarded with information on food - from the media, the food industry, food authorities, NGOs and interest groups - details about how foods are actually produced is often hard to find. Much of the infor- tion available is superficial, conflicting or partial, and it is hard for consumers seeking to mak e informed food choices to know which information to trust. The consumers we interviewed for this project felt that information about food products was withheld and manipulated. Traceability, which provides a record of the history and journey of a given food, and which is increasingly used in the food sector for legal and commercial reasons, has the potential to communicate a more authentic picture of how food is produced.

For over half a century, food policy has mapped a path for progress based upon a belief that the right mix of investment, scientific input, and human skills could unleash a surge in productive capacity which would resolve humanity's food-related health and welfare problems. It assumed that more food would yield greater health and happiness by driving down prices, increasing availability, and feeding more mouths. In the 21st century, this policy mix is quietly becoming unstuck. In a world marred by obesity alongside malnutrition, climate change alongside fuel and energy crises, water stress alongside more mouths to feed, and social inequalities alongside unprecedented accumulation of wealth, the old rubric of food policy needs re-evaluation. This book explores the enormity of what the new policy mix must address, taking the approach that food policy must be inextricably linked with public with public health, environmental damage, and social inequalities to be effective.
Written by three authors with differing backgrounds, one in political science, another in environmental health and health promotion, and the third in social psychology, this book reflects the myriad of perspectives essential to a comprehensive view of modern food policy. It attempts to make sense of what is meant by food policy; explores whether the term has any currency in current policy discourse, assesses whether current policies help or hinder what happens; judges whether consensus can triumph in the face of competing bids for understanding; looks at all levels of governance, across the range of actors in the food system, from companies and the state to civil society and science; considers what direction food policies are taking, not jsut in the UK, but internationally; assesse who (and what) gains or loses in the making of these food policies; and identifies a modern framework for judging how good or limited processes of policy making are.
This book provides a major comprehensive review of current and past food policy, thinking and proposing the need for what the authors call an ecological public health approach to food policy. Nothing less will be fit for the 21st century.