Achieving food security through food system resilience

Food provision systems (FPS) have a need for better conceptual and applied tools to evaluate the extent to which they can be made robust and provide a more stable foundation for attaining and maintaining food security in the long-term. The first of three purposes of the thesis is to conceptually design and appraise a more robust FPS resilience framework that integrates the dynamics between ecological, social and economic wealth, connectivity and diversity, and the four basic food security pillars. Based on this framework, the second purpose of this thesis uses Belize as a case study to appraise current food security levels and apply the framework at two distinct scales. The appraisal found Belizean FPS to be highly susceptible to natural hazards, unstable macro-economic conditions, eroding trade preferential treatment, as well as household financial difficulties. In addition, although average national food availability in Belize is above acceptable minimum dietary intake standards, over half the population are indigent or remain vulnerable to food insecurity in several areas. By assessing two major FPS in Belize, findings illustrate (1) how historical patterns and repeated acute and chronic changes have resulted in high proportions of vulnerable and indigent levels in smaller, asset poor, inadequately connected FPS; (2) how FPS have resulted in adaptive cycle pathological traps; and (3) how Panarchy explains why lower-level FPS participants are food insecure, their FPS vulnerable, and their higher-level FPS counterparts rigidly trapped. In fact, this field study effectively demonstrated how the latter constrains the shape of smaller FPS, a large reason why they currently remain vulnerable and indigent. With these FPS complex vulnerabilities in mind, the third purpose of the thesis is to examine the extent to which Belize's National Food and Nutrition Security Policy can further support a stable foundation for long-term food security through enhancing FPS resilience and social cohesion. For a more FPS resilience-sensitive food policy to be effective, this thesis reveals how to integrate resilience dimensions in food security policies. Overall, the resilience framework allows for a richer description of food security, replacing conventional methods addressing food security status and outcomes, with food security dynamics.