A delicious transformation

Food production is not just taking a heavy toll on land, soils and biodiversity. While many have gained from modern food production and agriculture now produces more than enough calories to meet basic dietary needs, the benefits are skewed. One out of eight people still do not have access to sufficient food.

Solutions for how the food system can become sustainable have so far focused mainly on altering agriculture through intensification and different farming practices, or encouraging less meat-intensive diets. Awareness and knowledge might be increasing, but is it enough to spur the change needed?

In a study published in Global Sustainability, centre researchers Laura Pereira and Albert Norström with colleagues argue that traditional, local food knowledge might be the unexpected ingredient that can transform the food system to become more sustainable, equitable and just. It is time to include the anthropological aspects of food and eating, and to shift from a focus on quantity to a focus on quality.

All eyes on the kitchen (and the chef)

In light of this the authors propose that chefs and cooks can become key changemakers, leveraging knowledge about local species to create dishes that are both nutritious and delicious.

“By focusing attention on the kitchen as a site of innovation and on the landscape as gastronomic, the importance of the quantitative starts to give way to the qualitative, and a more nuanced concept of scaling impact starts to emerge,” explains Albert Norström.

Impacts from such a shift can spread across ecosystems, knowledge and nutrition. Increasing the use of neglected species contributes to biodiversity in the agricultural landscape and promotes and preserves traditional knowledge, and traditional local food is an important means for improving health, especially in poor contexts.

Food from somewhere

Although modernized agriculture and global trade has introduced people to new flavours, dishes and eating habits, choice has in fact led to a narrowing of food production and consumption. What starts as “food from everywhere” has become “food from nowhere”, and many people seem to have lost their connection to what food is, the researchers warn.

Bringing back local food and produce, “food from somewhere”, can help harness synergies between health, sustainability and great taste. Studies from Mexico and South Africa illustrate how chefs can drive innovation in local food, strengthening traditional ecological knowledge and allying with local producers to promote trust and connectedness.

Local chefs promoting local foods from local producers can also allow for shorter and more ethical supply chains: “For a smallholder farmer it is more profitable to sell their products to a local chef concerned about quality than to a regional intermediary who focuses more on quantity,” Pereira explains.

Trust and connectedness key values

However care must be taken also in the scaling of local foods. As products and ingredients become sought after the risk is that production starts happening at the cost of other types of ecosystems, or that prices soar making the products unavailable to the majority of people.

This would ultimately counteract the goal of making the food system more sustainable, while at the same time ensuring that good, healthy, culturally acceptable food is accessible to all.

Pereira concludes, “We propose an alternative model of global food system transformation that does not emphasize scaling up, but rather recognizes that trust and connectedness are the key values that need to be scaled through a focus on diversity.”