The complexity of food systems: Defining relevant attributes and indicators for the evaluation of food supply chains in Spain

The wide-ranging literature on food systems provides multiple perspectives and world views. Various stakeholders define food and food systems in non-equivalent ways. The perception of the performance of food systems is determined by these specific perspectives, and a wide variety of policies respond...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Gamboa Jiménez, Gonzalo, Kovacic, Zora, Di Masso Tarditti, Marina, Mingorría, Sara, Gomiero, Tiziano, Rivera Ferré, Marta, Giampietro, Mario
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/70720
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10609/70720
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:food systems
food supply chains
narratives
integrated assessment
sistemas alimentarios
cadenas de suministro de alimentos
narrativas
evaluación integrada
sistemes alimentaris
cadenes de subministrament d'aliments
avaluació integrada
Food supply -- Spain
Aliments -- Abastament -- Espanya
Alimentos -- Abastecimiento -- España
Descripción
Sumario:The wide-ranging literature on food systems provides multiple perspectives and world views. Various stakeholders define food and food systems in non-equivalent ways. The perception of the performance of food systems is determined by these specific perspectives, and a wide variety of policies responding to different aims are proposed and implemented accordingly. This paper sets out to demonstrate that the pre-analytical adoption of different narratives about the food system leads to non-equivalent assessments of the performance of food supply chains. In order to do so, we (i) identify a set of relevant narratives on food supply chains in Spanish and Catalan contexts; (ii) identify the pertinent attributes needed to describe and represent food supply chains within the different perspectives or narratives; and (iii) carry out an integrated assessment of three organic tomato supply chains from the different perspectives. In doing so, the paper proposes an analysis of narratives to enable the analyst to characterize the performance of food supply chains from different perspectives and to identify the expected trade-offs of integrated assessment, associating them with the legitimate-but-contrasting views found among the social actors involved.