This study addressed the question of future food challenges and how these may play out. Part of the analysis focused on the question as to how we may enhance our understanding of the effects of climate change, increased population growth and rising incomes worldwide on future food systems. The worldwide food system is vulnerable to many influences. The approach used in this study focused on the most significant possible influencers of drivers, or the elements having the most effect on how drivers will develop. This approach was employed due to our understanding that the system’s complexity cannot be reduced to the drivers alone. The applied research method however allows us to look at the different aspects while recognizing their interlinkages.

Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains.

Despite food-related policies, the global food system struggles with ecological sustainability, public health and robustness. The situation is no different in the Netherlands which, though it can be considered a food nation because of its large agro-food sector, has serious issues with diet-related ill-health such as obesities, cardio-vascular diseases, and diabetes. Governments are seriously concerned with these issues, because diet-related ill-health results in high social costs. Food and nutrition are however complex issues that cut across many different policy domains. At the same time, the food-related policies are developed at different governance levels. This thesis analyses how the integration between the different food-related policy domains can be enhanced to establish a sustainable and health-inducing food system. The research question is: to what extent does the Netherlands have an integrated food policy and which factors could enhance this integration? This research is executed by means of a literature review, policy analysis, and semi-structured interviews with relevant actors in the food policy domain. In addition to reflecting on theories of cross-domain and cross-level interactions, boundaries, boundary work, and relationships in public administration, this research investigates the different food-related policies in force in the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands has a monocentric organized governance system with ministerial responsibility and hierarchic and stovepiped structured Ministeries, it increasingly has to deal with multidisciplinary policy issues like food and nutrition which demands interaction and cooperation between the involved actors. This thesis juxtaposes the monocentric approach to an interactive approach. The interactive approach is characterized by cross-domain and cross-level interactions, boundary work and relationships. Physical, social and mental boundary spanning can result in knowledge integration among the involved actors of the food system. The integration of knowledge could strengthen the separate food-related policies and prohibit contradictions, resulting in a more integrated food policy. To achieve integration of knowledge and policies, it is necessary to construct physical boundary objects that can build social connections. These social connection can enact strategies to enhance flows of information. Therein it is important to create co-authority and feelings of joined responsibility in order to develop a joined strategy and an integrated food policy that establishes a sustainable and health-inducing food system.

In 2007/8 world food prices spiked and global economic crisis set in, leaving hundreds of millions of people unable to access adequate food. The international reaction was swift. In a bid for leadership, the 123 member countries of the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security (CFS) adopted a series of reforms with the aim of becoming the foremost international, inclusive and intergovernmental platform for food security. Central to the reform was the inclusion of participants (including civil society and the private sector) across all activities of the Committee. Drawing on data collected from policy documents, interviews and participant observation, this book examines the re-organization and functioning of a UN Committee that is coming to be known as a best practice in global governance. Framed by key challenges that plague global governance, the impact and implication of increased civil society engagement are examined by tracing policy negotiations within the CFS, in particular, policy roundtables on smallholder sensitive investment and food price volatility and negotiations on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, and the Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition. The author shows that through their participation in the Committee, civil society actors are influencing policy outcomes. Yet analysis also reveals that the CFS is being undermined by other actors seeking to gain and maintain influence at the global level. By way of this analysis, this book provides empirically-informed insights into increased participation in global governance processes.

Ethical sourcing, both through fair trade and ethical trade, is increasingly entering the mainstream of food retailing. Large supermarkets have come under pressure to improve the returns to small producers and conditions of employment within their supply chains. But how effective is ethical sourcing? Can it genuinely address the problems facing workers and producers in the global food system? Is it a new form of northern protectionism or can southern initiatives be developed to create a more sustainable approach to ethical sourcing? How can the rights and participation of workers and small producers be enhanced, given the power and dominance of large supermarkets within the global food chain? What role can civil society and multistakeholder initiatives play in ensuring the effectiveness of ethical sourcing? This book brings together a range of academics and practitioners working on issues of ethical sourcing in the global food system. It critically explores the opportunities and challenges in the ethical sourcing of food by combining analysis and case studies that examine a range of approaches. It explores whether ethical sourcing is a cosmetic northern initiative, or can genuinely help to improve the conditions of small producers and workers in the current global food system.

One of the major knowledge challenges in the domain of Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems refers to the integration of perspectives on consumption, patterns that support public health, inclusive value chains, and environmentally sustainable food production. While there is a long record of the analysis of separate interventions, this special issue generates integrated insights, provides cross-cutting perspectives, and outlines practical and policy solutions that address these global challenges.The collection of papers promotes the view that sustainable food systems require thorough insights into the structure and dynamics of agri-food production systems, the drivers for integrating food value chains and markets, and key incentives for supporting healthier consumer choices. On the production side, potential linkages between agricultural commercialization and intensification and their effects for food security and nutritional outcomes are analyzed. Value Chains are assessed for their contribution to improving exchange networks and markets for food products that simultaneously support efficiency, circularity, and responsiveness. Individual motives and market structures for food consumption need to be understood in order to be able to outline suitable incentives to enhance healthy dietary choice.The contributed papers focus on interfaces between food system activities and processes of adaptive change that are critical for overcoming key constraints and trade-offs between sustainable food and healthy diets.