Speaker
Description
Introduction: The development of a country or region requires equilibrium among various factors like food security, population growth, gross national income, biodiversity conservation. Such factors are crucial for planning and policy-making as they are interconnected with the broader framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a developmental objective, food self-sufficiency responds to the need for increased autonomy and control of own food supply as well as protection against international markets' fluctuations. The country or region food self-sufficiency (FSS) refers to its ability to produce enough food to meet its local population demand. In the literature, FSS is debated: arguments in support of the achievement of FSS are based on decreasing dependency on global markets and on the need of increasing food availability and accessibility for local population (i.e., two main components of food security). On the other hand, critics are based on the costs associated with pursuing FSS objective and highlight the trade-offs involved, particularly when political considerations overshadow economic and environmental factors in food policy decisions (Clapp, 2017).
Objective: The relevant question is therefore: Could FSS be achieved at the expense of other SDGs? The objective of our study was to explore the state-of-the-art for the assessment of both positive and negative interactions between the FSS objective and other factors. Specifically, we investigated the different types of interactions between FSS objective and other factors (economic, social, environmental or agronomic) at regional and national scale, along with the main methods implemented to explore such interactions.
Method: We adhered to “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA); a standardized protocol for systematic review and meta-data analysis (Page et al., 2021). In our initial literature scoping, we identified 1243 documents through our initial search in web databases (i.e., Scopus and Web-of-Science). We established exclusive criteria at each step of the protocol for the selection of publications. Final 174 selected articles were further reviewed by reading the full paper to extract relevant information and dataset. These documents were scientific papers in English addressing with any method the interaction between FSS and other factors. We extracted the following elements from the studies reviewed: a) Spatiotemporal context: the country or region unique circumstances (e.g., the country or region investigated, food self-sufficiency level, policies orientation, resources availability), and the global- or local-crisis interaction with FSS objective (e.g., financial crisis, health crisis, wars); b) Feed or food item or group for which FSS is addressed, (e.g., cereal, soybeans, multi-item); c) FSS indicators; d) Considered factors in interaction with FSS (e.g., water-land-energy resources, GDP, urbanization); e) Factors’ indicators; f) Type of interaction between FSS and factors (positive, negative, or neutral); g) Methodologies and trade-off analysis (e.g., data analysis, scenario analysis, optimization).
Findings: Results showed that: i) The main targets of the studies examined regarding FSS objective focus on the staple food provision, e.g., cereals, animal products, roots and tubers. ii) The assessment of a region or country's FSS status is based on the equilibrium between two pivotal factors: consumption and production. Consumption is mainly influenced by population density and growth, as well as the population dietary patterns. Meanwhile, production is intricately linked to factors such as resource availability, land allocation policies, and decisions regarding crop selection and competition. iii) The trade-offs associated to achieving FSS objectives are evident: first, in the potential losses of economic profit or efficiency (e.g., lower GDP, economic growth, farmers income, job opportunities); second, in the natural resource degradation (e.g., decreases in arable land area, soil loss and degradation, groundwater and fresh water degradation); and finally, in increased environmental negative impacts (e.g., carbon emissions and pollution, increases in temperature, high recurrence of drought or floods events). The major positive interactions mainly regard agricultural management. These include crop management practices, resource requirement, agricultural inputs, and level of technology, all that when considering closing yield gaps through agriculture intensification, or increasing food production based on arable land expansion. These positive interactions can be further strengthened in order to improve environmental aspects by implementing adapted agricultural management practices and climate change mitigation strategies, all while maintaining a sustainable resources management. Furthermore, trade-offs and synergies with FSS could be context-dependent. For example, fresh-water and arable-land factors are vital for food production and FSS, however, under crop intensification that might occur in some contexts, an overexploitation with no-consideration of resources use-efficiency disrupts system balance, especially for non- or slow-renewable resources like soil and groundwater. iv) We identified three main methodological approaches for interactions analysis: empirical analysis of FSS status, as an analysis of observed/historical data, at the region or country level based on an examination of food production and consumption levels (i.e., FSS-components); dynamic modelling used for scenario analysis relating FSS to the variation of one or multiple factors ; multi-objective optimization using mathematical programming models or algorithms to compute optimal solutions or trade-off mitigation strategies.
Conclusion: The positive interplay between FSS and agronomic factors open windows on the importance of supporting the agricultural sector. This entails a targeted effort towards improving crop production efficiency in countries or regions with food insecurity. However, in specific context, FSS can be achieved in different ways (e.g., through different agronomic scenarios like sustainable intensification or agroecology) each one leading to different trade-offs and synergies. Under trade-offs associated to the achievement of FSS, the multi-objective optimization helps to identify optimal compromise between the conflicting objective and factors. That is to say, the identification of a balanced solution that, over-proportionally, improves economic efficiency and reduces environmental impacts in comparison to stabilize or a small decrease in FSS, which represent an optimum and sustainable levels of FSS objective. Overall, mitigating trade-offs and fostering synergies among FSS interactions with other factors, can enhance policy-makers' capacity to make scientific decisions for food security, and to embrace potential strategies aimed supporting, at once, environmental, economic, social and resource-based benefits and sustainability at a region or national level.
Keywords: food self-sufficiency; factors; interaction; trade-off analysis; food security.
