Preface

Food and nutrition security are prerequisites to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty eradication (SDG 1), hunger eradication (SDG 2), good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), reduced inequalities (SDG 10), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), and responsible consumption and production (SDG 12). However, meeting these ambitious goals within the next 10 years, given the current global scenario, will be challenging. On one hand, the exponential growth of the world's population, which is anticipated to reach about 10 billion in 2050, mainly living in cities and under diet transition, will necessarily result in a significant increase in food demand. On the other hand, climate change projections such as an increase in temperature and greenhouse gases, erratic rainfall patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events, accompanied by the reduction of arable land by as much as 50% in 2050, impose major food production challenges. In addition, the world is also facing unprecedented health, social, political, and economic impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerability of local food systems, especially in the global South through food supply disruption and contraction. Additionally, the armed conflict in Ukraine and the economic sanctions on Russia will likely change the arrangements of global trade of major staple agricultural commodities and the energy markets, directly or indirectly impacting food availability, food supply, and food prices and therefore challenging food security in the most vulnerable settings. Thus, accelerating the development and implementation of a nutrition-sensitive agricultural research and development agenda is now more relevant than ever to transform current food systems to ensure healthy and inclusive diets that are environmentally sustainable and affordable on the global scale. This book presents a set of chapters that discuss some of the major challenges and achievements for food systems resilience. It is divided into two sections, the first of which is devoted to key issues of global interest (Chapters 1–4) and the second of which includes case studies (Chapters 5–10).

#### **Section Overview**

Section 1 focuses on the transformation of food systems towards resilience. The first two chapters employ a global context approach to address the key factors undermining food systems' resilience and sustainability. Chapter 1 (by B. de Steenhuijsen Piters et al.) unpacks the intertwined connections between food system resilience, food policies, and global food markets. The authors argue that because of shocks (e.g., COVID-19) and crises in global food systems (e.g., the global food price crisis of 2008) it has become difficult to achieve food and nutrition security for all. The chapter concludes that to achieve national food systems goals, policymakers and key stakeholders must have a common understanding of what food system resilience entails, to allow transformation actions that anticipate, prevent, absorb, and adapt to the impacts of shocks and stressors.

Chapter 2 (by J. O. Godwin Elechi) focuses on global food system transformation for resilience. The author argues that the current global food systems are unsustainable because, on one hand, more than 800 million people globally are chronically

undernourished, while on the other hand, food systems are releasing a third of all greenhouse gases and are responsible for 80% of biodiversity loss. Therefore, scaling up existing food systems cannot be the way forward in order to achieve SDG 2 on ending hunger by the year 2030. The chapter also highlights that the challenge is to renovate, to find sustainable ways of producing more local food, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where many countries rely on food items sourced from distant producers. Therefore, the transformation of global food systems, including the entire operational environment (cropping, harvesting, post-harvesting, and distribution) and consumption, is essential to make the entire system more efficient and more environmentally friendly. For that, government policy intervention along with the behavioral change from producers, consumers, and food distributors will be required.

Chapter 3 (by D. S. Shumba) addresses the importance of Weather Index Insurance (WII) to manage food production uncertainties, using the dataset of pilot projects that have been launched across SSA since the early 2000s. This chapter explores the gap between the assertion that WII is a promising risk transfer mechanism for smallholder farmers in SSA and the realization that, even where microfinance is made available, subscription rates among smallholder farmers rarely rise.

Chapter 4 (by D. Mogopodi et al.) discusses a global food safety concern that is related to the presence of mycotoxin contaminants in everyday food, recognizing that mycotoxins pose a threat to human health and food security, which is frequently neglected in SSA food systems. The authors discuss mycotoxin's impact on food availability and public health and provide analytical and preventive strategies that aim to increase the quality of products while avoiding food wastage.

Section 2 presents six case studies that address different topics and geographies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Chapters 5 (by T. Zerbian et al.) and 6 (by K. Chareonwongsak) discuss the food insecurity shocks and stressors imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic at a community level (Preston community, NW England, UK) and at a country level (Thailand), highlighting the importance of self-sustained communities to mitigate food insecurity crises in both settings. Chapter 5 builds on the new challenges for food production, distribution, and consumption posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the exacerbating effects on the existing socioeconomic inequalities that hinder access to food. The chapter focuses on the dynamic interactions of local food initiatives and derives its findings from a social network analysis (SNA) conducted during the summer of 2020. The authors pinpoint that pre-existing social conditions, such as a previously organized local food network in partnership with local authorities, have enabled some communities to self-organize and respond favorably to the COVID-19 crisis and discuss the role of current models of emergency food provisioning, advocating stronger collaborative bonds within already organized networks. Chapter 6 provides an analysis of the status of food insecurity and food system resilience during the COVID-19 crisis in Thailand. It proposes the adoption of a "Food Self-Sustained Community" (FSSC) model that addresses food security at the community level. It also shows how, through pre-emptive planning, a community can switch local food production seamlessly to a self-sufficient and resilient model that prepares it for future crises, so that the community can produce enough food for all members without relying on outside sources.

Chapter 7 (by A. A. Debessa et al.) discusses the nexus between coping strategies and resilience to recurrent food insecurity shocks in the community of Boricha,

Sidana National Regional State, Ethiopia. The authors address the coping strategies employed by households when exposed to food insecurity shocks and highlights that households use various consumption-based coping strategies that range from compromising the quality of food to food rationing. Repeatedly occurring food shortage has also forced some households to employ resilience erosive coping mechanisms such as selling reproductive assets. Such coping strategies limit the capacity of households to cope with future food insecurity-related shocks. Coordinating crisis management based on humanitarian intervention with households' livelihood assets protection and resilience strengthening is the major policy objective of this study.

Chapter 8 (by R. S. Gomes and E. Stedefeldt) focuses on food safety as an intrinsic component of food security and a shaper of food systems. It discusses the "commercial restaurant" system and the "kitchen worker" subsystem from the perspective of building resilience in food safety. It discusses that relationship maps built for the system and subsystem guide the presentation and discussion of structural, organizational, social, and symbolic aspects and elements. Examples include risk perception of foodborne diseases, cognitive illusions, sociological aspects, the social dimension of taste, humanization, and working conditions and precariousness of work in kitchens. The chapter concludes by providing some recommendations for promoting food safety resilience in commercial restaurants.

Chapter 9 (by F. Teixeira) discusses the environmental pressures that the Montado/ Dehesa systems are experiencing, leading to an impoverishment of the floristic composition of the understorey. The chapter examines the potential for using legume–rhizobia symbiosis to increase biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and avenues for research. It also discusses the co-colonization of the roots of legumes with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and the effects on P and Mn uptake. The chapter highlights a better understanding of the relationships between soil pH, organic matter content (SOM), microbial community, soil P content, and the plant strategies to mobilize it, as well as plant effects on the soil solution concentrations of Mn, as important for the management of these systems. The increase of BNF in these systems, through the breeding of tolerant cultivars to acidic soils and a stepwise legumes enrichment, alongside soil fertility management, may contribute to increasing biomass production and SOM content.

The final chapter (by S. Sood et al.) addresses the importance of effective and efficient systems for the early diagnosis of biotic stress in crops through deep learning models, using wheat-rust pathogenic interaction as a model. Rusts are plant diseases caused by obligate fungi parasites. They are usually host-specific and cause greater losses of yields in crops, trees, and ornamental plants. Wheat is a staple food crop bearing losses specifically due to three species of rust fungi namely leaf rust (Puccinia triticina), stem rust (Puccinia graminis), and yellow rust (Puccinia striiformis). About 100% yield loss has been reported by the stem and yellow rust, while a 50% yield loss has been reported by leaf rust. Under this scenario, the need for an effective and efficient system that allows the identification and classification of these diseases at early stages was recognized. The chapter reports the results from the use of a deep learning-based convolutional neural network (i.e., VGG16) transfer learning model for wheat disease classification on the CGIAR image dataset. The deep learning models produced the best results by tuning the various hyper-parameters such as batch size, number of epochs, and learning rate.

Collectively, the book addresses some major challenges of food systems associated with a diversity of agricultural contexts and priorities, disclosing distinct but complementary entry points to advance resilience. Within this context, the transformation of the current food systems towards sustainability and resilience should include smart and innovative approaches across all components of the food system – from supply chains to consumer behavior and diets – that ensure both the production of nutritious foods at affordable costs and the reduction of food wastage and the valorization of sub-products. Understanding the complexity of food systems and shaping actions and policies to their different categories that range from "rural and traditional" to "industrialized and consolidated" is mandatory to identify priority areas of intervention. Only with resilient and sustainable food systems, contextualized according to geographic and socioeconomic realities, and adjusted to 21st-century societal expectations, the world would be able to meet the SDG targets. Actions targeting different drivers that govern food systems are mandatory to this endeavor. And time is of the essence.

The editorial team acknowledges all chapter contributors. Acknowledgments are also due to the School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon – Forest Research Center (UIDB/00239/2020) and Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food Research Centre (UIDB/04129/2020), Department of Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism, University of the Western Cape, and Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering, Eduardo Mondlane University.

#### **Ana I. Ribeiro-Barros**

Forest Research Center, School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

#### **Daniel S. Tevera**

Department of Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism, University of the Western Cape, Western Cape, South Africa

**Lucas D. Tivana**

Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique

**Luís F. Goulao** Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture, School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal Section 1
