From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

principles” do not “include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather thanintroducing external inputs”. Agroecology does not advocate organic or low-inputagriculture. It is a board concept, providing a framework for investigating the ways of linkinga range of inputs (germplasm, nutrients, pesticides, water, energy) with the goods andservices we seek from agricultural systems in the context of the natural resource base.Both the production ecology and agroecology approaches have been further developed toconsider factors operating at higher spatial levels, i.e. farm, landscape and even region.Examples include integrated approaches for agro-ecological zonation and regional yieldforecasting (Bouman et al., 1996); scenario studies for exploring the effect of environmentalor socioeconomic changes on agriculture such as the ‘Grounds for Choices’ study(Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1992; Rabbinge and Van Latesteijn,1992); for ex-ante evaluation of public policies for sustainable agriculture at landscape level(Parra-López et al., 2009); and for exploring multi-scale trade-offs between natureconservation, agricultural profits and landscape quality (Groot et al., 2007). Interactions withlivestock (i.e. the whole farming system) are also critically important in many parts of theworld, and particularly in helping farmers cope with uncertainty regarding future threats andpotentials (Darnhofer et al., 2010). The boundary between the two approaches are in effectbecoming less distinct as researchers move towards addressing problems at regional to globallevels, integrating other environmental objectives in addition to food production.While the production ecology and agroecology concepts have therefore moved well beyondfood production at local level towards food availability at higher levels neither, however,addresses the broader issues underpinning food security. For instance, affordability, foodallocation and cultural norms, food preferences and the social and cultural functions of food,and food safety, all need to be factored in. This needs additional analyses of the consequencesof human activities as a chain of effects through the ecosystem and human social system.This is the realm of human ecology, encompassing elements of sociology concerned with thespacing and interdependence of people and institutions (Marten, 2001). As with bothproduction ecology and agroecology, the study of human ecology is composed of conceptsfrom ecology including interconnectivity, community behaviour, and spatial organisation.‘Interaction’ is a fundamental concept of human ecology and is a function of scale, diversityand complexity. Together with political economy and entitlement relations, human ecologyhas been seen for some time as a causal structure of food system vulnerability, and hencefood insecurity (Bohle et al., 1994). Concepts from human ecology are very relevant for foodsystems analyses given the importance of the linkages between the wide range of actorsinvolved and the outcomes of their varied activities.‘Food system ecology’ based on integrating conceptsFood security planning can be enhanced by integrating concepts from production ecology,agroecology and human ecology with concepts of food systems and scales.Understanding the interactions between the many activities and associated stakeholder115