Through the Food Systems Resilience project, we conduct policy research to strengthen food systems against climate change and other hazards.
With climate-related shocks and stressors adding to existing hazards facing food systems, this is a critical time to examine food system vulnerabilities and work to ameliorate them. Food Systems Resilience: Concepts & Policy Approaches presents advocates and policymakers with a suite of policy tools for strengthening food system resilience.
The project grew out of a desire to understand whether specific types of policies can promote food systems resilience. Authors Assistant Professor Emily Spiegel and student Jenileigh Harris developed an overview of the current scholarship on resilience, especially as it applies to food systems, as a means to predict, assess, and improve how those systems cope with disruption. They created the Food Systems Resilience Policy Chart to illustrate the conceptual mechanisms by which different types of policies contribute to resilience. Finally, the authors applied the chart to a case study of Puerto Rican policies and proposals.
The report aims to help advocates and policymakers to develop and adopt policies that foster resilience within their own food systems, or to complement efforts they are already undertaking.
This project is funded by the National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.