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

While the flow of the argument about how GEC will affect food security via impacts on cropgrowth is thus relatively easy to define, the flow back to how this will affect regionalproduction, thence availability, and thence provision is far from simple. This is because manyother factors emerge which govern these parameters. For instance, even the extrapolation ofpoint results to estimate regional production is not straightforward due to a range ofgenotypes and management practises employed and landscape heterogeneity (Ingram et al.,2008: Paper 2). Significant advances are however now being made in modelling regionalproduction (e.g. Challinor et al., 2007; Thornton et al., 2011). Even if changes in regionalproduction are established, assessing how this will affect food security within the region andbeyond is highly complex due to wide range of socioeconomic factors such as demography,wealth, prices, customs and intra- and inter-regional trade arrangements that all affect accessto food.The Global Environmental Change and Food Systems Project (GECAFS)The interdisciplinary notion of food security was further developed within an internationallyagreedresearch project (Global Environmental Change and Food Systems, GECAFS, 2001-2011) under the auspices of the international GEC research community (Gregory et al.,1992). The goal of GECAFS was “to determine strategies to cope with the impacts of globalenvironmental change on food systems and to assess the environmental and socioeconomicconsequences of adaptive responses aimed at improving food security” (Ingram et al., 2005).GECAFS planning identified four issues of particular interest because they would set thecontext for many researchable questions (Ingram et al., 2005). First was the need to betterunderstand what constitutes vulnerability to GEC in relation to food security. This would bekey to helping to determine where, when and which sections of society are most at risk, andwas especially necessary given problems of predicting global food production (Döös, 2002).Second was the need to construct scenarios of future conditions that encapsulate thesocioeconomic and biogeophysical factors that determine food security. Third was the needto assess options for reducing the vulnerability of food systems to GEC. Fourth was the needto understand how best to report and communicate research results and so help deviseimproved policies to adapt food systems to GEC.Developing ‘food systems’ researchAkin to the need for adopting the broader concept of food security (rather than just foodproduction), it was also recognised that research planning and policy formulation to addressthis challenging goal needed to be set within the context of food systems, rather than justfood supply. The term “food systems” was chosen for the GECAFS focus (and hence is usedin the project title) rather than “food security” as it was recognised that it is food systems thatunderpin food security and that defining the system clearly would provide a structured,analytical lens to research the highly complex food security agenda.6