The Food System and Resilience

For something as critical as food, it is common sense that society should design for resilience. Reliability in food production in the face of change requires a system capable of rapid evolution. Resilience is therefore a core principle of sustainability. Unfortunately, our daily bread relies on a food system that is not resilient. As I have explained before, this state of affairs is an outcome of government policies, financial pressures, cheap fossil fuels, and market forces in play over the past several decades. The result is a food system dominated by relatively few large actors, which creates conditions of rigidity and brittleness.

This post is a brief review of:

* the basic science of resilience,

* how our current food system lacks a resilient structure, and

* an overview of what a more resilient food system would be like

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6140