A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6 The U.S. Food and Agriculture System as a Complex Adaptive System
6 The U.S. Food and Agriculture System as a Complex Adaptive System
Pages 233-242
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 233... ...
The chapter then reviews the implications of these properties for the development of a sufficiently rich and comprehensive framework, including consideration of how specific factors shape the complex dynamics of the food system with regard to health, environmental, social, and economic outcomes. COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS A CAS is a system composed of many heterogeneous pieces whose interactions drive system behavior in ways that cannot easily be understood from considering the components separately.
|
From page 234... ...
In modern industrialized societies, a vast array of human actors and aggregate institutional actors play important roles in shaping the structure and dynamics of the food system. Individual decisions that shape food system outcomes are made daily by farmers, crop field workers, bankers, crop consultants, grain elevator operators, meat packers, corporate product developers, advertisers, grocery store managers, truck drivers, chefs, waiters, home food gatekeepers, nutritionists, garbage collectors, antihunger and environmental activists, state and federal legislators, government employees, researchers, and physicians (to name a few)
|
From page 235... ...
Market research guides advertising to influence consumer choices in ways that benefit the marketers. Politicians and public agency leaders develop tax, regulatory, trade, and research policies to respond to shifts in societal values and political power, which in turn constrain the behaviors of economic firms and individual actors.
|
From page 236... ...
These costs reflect the prevalence of inadequate and ineffective strategies for limiting the strength of the selection pressures for resistance created by chemical controls that initially are efficacious. Given the limited availability of new chemistries for controlling pests and pathogens and the ability of resistant organisms to move and transmit genetic material, this form of feedback and interdependence may greatly affect future management options in food, agriculture, and health systems.
|
From page 237... ...
Markets also create repercussions for the availability of goods and services that lack clear property rights. Climate stability, a global ecosystem service, is a clear example where a lack of property rights makes markets fail to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (like those from indirect land use)
|
From page 238... ...
Within the food and agriculture system, elements of spatial organization include supply chains, market segmentation, the patchwork of geographically specific regulations across states and counties, international borders, and ecosystems and food webs. Spatial structure can matter by directly shaping the local context experienced by actors, but it also can shape impacts at a distance, govern changes in environment over time (e.g., spatial displacement as in environmental effects like pollution; see Chapter 4)
|
From page 239... ...
Examples in the food system include the relationship between arable cropland conversion to conservation buffer strips composed of reconstructed prairie and the consequent reduction in the export of soil sediments from watersheds (see Chapter 4) , or the metabolic changes that result from weight gain and loss (see Chapter 3)
|
From page 240... ...
Similarly, rapid increases in input costs, sharp declines in market values of crops and livestock, and regulations form part of the matrix of socioeconomic stress factors acting on agricultural systems. Often, farmers can take actions that minimize risks and susceptibilities to stress factors (e.g., adding irrigation systems to make up for precipitation deficits, purchasing crop insurance to cover lost revenue)
|
From page 241... ...
Chapter 7 also discusses specific methods that are well suited to capturing key aspects of complex dynamics, recognizing, however, that not all analyses can (or should) address all of the elements of the complex food system.
|
From page 242... ...
American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35(2 Suppl)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.