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Introduction:	Key	Concepts,	Debates	and
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Agri-Food	Systems
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1
Fraňková, E., Haas, W. and Singh, J.S. 2018.
Introduction. In: Socio-Metabolic Perspectives
on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems Insights
for Science, Policy and Practice. (Eds.)
Fraňková, E., Haas, W. and Singh, J.S., Springer,
Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London,
p. 1-24
Pre-print version excluding fig 1.1
2
Contents
Introduction: Key Concepts, Debates and Approaches in Analysing the Sustainability of AgriFood
Systems ………………………………………………………………………………………..….. 1
Eva Fraňková, Willi Haas and Simron Jit Singh
Part I Key Concepts and Approaches
Methodological Challenges and General Criteria for Assessing and Designing Local
Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: A Socio-Ecological Approach at Landscape Level ............ 27
Enric Tello and Manuel González de Molina
Biophysical Analysis of Agri-Food Systems: Scales, Energy Efficiency, Power and Metabolism
of Society ............................................................................................................................... 69
Tiziano Gomiero
The Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) of Agroecosystems ............................. 103
Joan Marull and Carme Font
Part II Case Studies and Empirical Evidence
Does Your Landscape Mirror What You Eat? A Long-Term Socio-metabolic Analysis of a
Local Food System in Vallès County (Spain, 1860–1956–1999) .......................................... 133
Roc Padró , Inés Marco, Claudio Cattaneo, Jonathan Caravaca and Enric Tello
Sustainability Challenges of Pre-industrial Local Food Systems — Insights from Long-Term
Socio-Ecological Research in Austria .................................................................................. 165
Michael Gizicki-Neundlinger, Simone Gingrich and Dino Güldner
Food, Feed, Fuel, Fibre and Finance: Looking for Sustainability Halfway Between Traditional
Organic and Industrialised Agriculture in the Czech Republic ........................................... 193
Eva Fraňková and Claudio Cattaneo
Leapfrogging Agricultural Development: Cooperative Initiatives Among Cambodian Small
Farmers to Handle Sustainability Constraints ..................................................................... 231
Arnim Scheidel, Bunchhorn Lim, Kimchhin Sok and Piseth Duk
A Socio-metabolic Transition of Diets on a Greek Island: Evidence of “Quiet Sustainability”
............................................................................................................................................. 263
Panos Petridis and Julia Huber
Local, Mixed and Global Organic Tomato Supply Chains: Some Lessons Learned from a
Real-World Case Study ……………..................................................................................... 291
Gonzalo Gamboa, Sara Mingorria, Marina Di Masso and Mario Giampietro
Connecting Local Food and Organic Waste Management Systems: Closing Nutrient Loops
in the City of Madrid ...........…………………………………………………………………….. 319
Marian Simon-Rojo and Barbora Duží
Conclusions: Promises and Challenges for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems ...................... 345
Simron Jit Singh, Willi Haas and Eva Fraňková
Note: Page numbers in table of content presented here are those of the printed book
3
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 1
Introduction: Key Concepts, Debates and Approaches in
the Sustainability of Agri-Food Systems
Eva Fraňková, Willi Haas, Simron Jit Singh
~~~~~~~~~~
Abstract
The Introduction sets the tone for the book by outlining the main concepts,
debates and applications illustrated by the various contributions in this volume.
The theme of Local Food Systems (LFS) is a complex one, and therefore a
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary effort, drawing on a myriad of research
concepts and frameworks. The chapter begins by embedding the food debate
within the broader sustainability discussion. It highlights issues around future
demand and supply scenarios, current production and consumption patterns,
and the challenges of addressing some of these issues in the context of climate
change. The chapter also provides a review of some of the responses so far to
counter the current global agri-food system. Initiatives and concepts such as
local food systems, localisation, food security and sovereignty are discussed,
drawing on examples from both the Global North and South. Since the volume
is about socio-metabolic approaches to agri-food systems, the chapter also
introduces the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of this approach,
and how this relates to political ecology, social conflicts and environmental
justice.
The chapter ends with an introduction to the various contributions in this volume
that discuss the following cross-cutting issues: the necessity to consider local
cases as nested in regional, national and global scales, including the debate on
what might be an optimal scale for food regionalisation or sovereignty; the
agenda of re-localisation and its political and ideological background in relation
to biophysical/socio-metabolic insights with respect to LFS; the inclusion of
trade in the methodological and ideological framework of LFS studies; the multifunctionality
of agriculture and various related metrics of efficiency in agriculture
(including the energy efficiency/EROI variables); the biophysical performance of
other, more sustainability-focused, production regimes; the land-sparing vs.
land-sharing debate in connection to the biodiversity and landscape multifunctionality
of both historical and existing agri-food systems; the role of
livestock in various agri-food systems, and the related issue of meat
4
consumption and dietary transition as part of a broader metabolic transition
happening in many parts of the world; the issue of labour in terms of efficiency,
and also in broader social and economic contexts; the political underpinnings
of peasant livelihoods, existing social conflicts and uneven ecological exchange
related to food; the issue of democratisation of food systems, access to means
of production for fulfilling basic needs, and the agenda of food sovereignty.
The contributors to this volume all ask the following two questions:
• Which local food systems or their particular characteristics can serve as
the best practice examples for maintaining and designing more
sustainable agri-food systems in the future?
• Which scientific and policy relevant insights can the socio-metabolic
approach offer with respect to studying the sustainability of local food
systems?
Key words: Sustainability, Agri-food systems, Local food systems, Localisation,
Social metabolism, MEFA, MuSIASEM, Ecological economics, Political ecology,
Food sovereignty
Index key terms: land sparing, land sharing, multidisciplinarity, inerdisciplinarity,
multi-scale approach, production and consumption pattern, climate change,
food security, Global North, Global South, environmental justice, ecological
distribution conflicts, uneven ecological exchange, local scale, regional scale,
national scale, global scale, globalisation, efficiency, energy efficiency, EROI,
biophysical performance, sustainability indicators, agroecology, organic
farming, livestock, biodiversity, dietary transition, meat consumption, metabolic
transition, peasant livelihood, social conflict, basic needs, democratization of
food system
5
1.1 The Question of the Sustainability of Agri-Food Systems
We all eat.
If we are lucky enough, we eat every day.
Depending on age and gender, our bodies require about 1,700 kilocalories per
day to maintain their basal metabolism, about 2,600 if engaged in sedentary
work at the computer, 3,200 for keeping up with manual factory work, and 3,700
for managing hard physical work like ploughing a field (Shetty 2005).
Worldwide, the average of 2,903 kcal/cap/day was available in 2014 (compared
to 2,196 kcal/cap/day in 1961, FAO 2015:24,48). However, the real calorific
intake of all the 7,511,482,383 human bodies (Worldometers 2017) does differ
a lot among the world regions.1
What´s more, there are growing differences
within nations as well. Whereas, until recently, the most pressing problem
related to food was simply hunger (UN 2015), the more recent term malnutrition
includes undernutrition (stunting and wasting esp. in the case of children), as
well as overweight and obesity that are on the rise worldwide, most rapidly in
Asia. (IFPRI 2016)2
All these various human bodies create a living anthropomass
of about 300 million tons worldwide (Smil 2013:226; Walpole et al. 2012:3),3
and
they all demand their calorific energy to maintain themselves and do their jobs.
Every day.
This simple fact has far reaching consequences for both humans and the natural
environment. Humans as one species out of almost nine billion (Sweetlove
1
On the national level, the highest dietary energy supply in 2014 was statistically in Turkey (the average of
3,715 kcal/cap/day, in comparison to 2,957 kcal/cap/day in 1961), in the US, the calorie supply per capita
was 3,639 kcal/cap/day in 2011 (but only 2,880 kcal/cap/day in 1961). In China the historical shift is much
more striking (above-average 3,156 kcal/cap/day in 2014 in contrast to only 1,439 kcal/cap/day in 1961).
From the other side of the spectrum, the people of the Central African Republic had to survive with only
1,940 kcal/cap/day in 2014, whereas in 1961 they had an average of 2,256 kcal/cap/day available. Data for
2014 from FAO (2015), data for 2011 and 1961 from Food Security Portal (2017); data from 2011 used for
“the present” where the 2014 FAO information was not available.
2
Still, the body mass of an average Asian was 57.7 kg in 2005, in contrast to 80.7 kg of a North American.
(Walpole et al. 2012) These authors estimate that about 15 million tonnes out of the total human biomass
was due to overweight, and another 3.5 million tonnes due to obesity, 34% out of it being based in North
America where 70% of the population is overweight.
3
In terms of Carbon weight, the anthropomass in 2000 accounted for approx. 55 million tons of C, whereas
domesticated animals account for more than double this (120 million tons of C), most of it being cattle (80
Mt of C) (Smil 2013:228).
6
2011)4
currently appropriate about 24% of the potential Net Primary Production
(NPP) of all terrestrial ecosystems (Haberl et al. 2007), and agriculture remains
the most important driver of land use change in this process (Krausmann et al.
2013). During the last century, we have witnessed unprecedented growth in
both global food production and associated environmental, social, and
economic problems connected to the increasingly industrialised, globalised and
commodified food production system (Weis 2010, Gomiero et al. 2011a, Mayer
et al. 2015, Clapp 2017).
Projections for the future foresee a continuation of rising food demand due to
population increase and growing demand for meat which requires
disproportionately more farm land and higher overall crop production (Walpole
et al. 2012, Tilman & Clark 2014). Against this backdrop, some scholars develop
scenarios of a 70% or even 100% crop production increase (FAO 2009, Tilman
et al. 2011); others criticise the very assumptions of these scenarios and ask
whether such a significant growth in food production is at all necessary, and if
so, whether it is possible to achieve that without compromising the regeneration
capacity of the biosphere. Instead, they stress the need to influence dietary
expectations towards less-meaty diets, and to address the still growing
inequality in access to existing food, the alarming amounts of food waste, and
also the broader political agenda of peasants’ livelihoods (Holt-Giménez &
Altieri 2013, Edelman et al. 2014). All, however, emphasise the far-reaching
environmental consequences caused by current dietary patterns and the
dominant agri-food system (Foley et al. 2011, Gomiero et al. 2011b) as highly
disturbing, and call for some radical change towards more sustainable agri-food
systems (for further debate on what sustainability might actually mean for agrifood
systems see Chapter 2 in this volume).
In principle, two distinct strategies on how to achieve sufficient and sustainable
diets have been discussed recently in the literature (Phalan et al. 2011,
Tcharntke et al. 2012). The land sparing strategy is based on increasing
agricultural yields, reducing farmland area and actively restoring natural habitats
on the land spared, thus counteracting the ongoing loss of biodiversity. Some
scholars find that a land-sparing strategy has the technical potential to achieve
significant reductions in net GHG emissions from agriculture and land-use
change, especially when coupled with demand-side strategies to reduce meat
consumption and food waste (Lamb et al. 2016). In contrast, scholars promoting
4
Estimations often go as high as 10 billion species. In any case, these include only eukaryotic organisms
(Sweetlove 2011). The microbial diversity is even bigger by order, Earth is predicted to be home to upward
of 1 trillion microbial species. (Locey and Lennon 2016)
7
land-sharing (Fischer et al. 2008, Perfecto et al. 2008, Gabriel et al. 2009) doubt
that fragmented land plots set aside for nature conservation provide the high
quality habitats required for halting loss of species. They promote extensive land
use that reduces the pressure on species in an agro-ecological matrix at
landscape level (for more on the agro-ecological perspective see Chapter 2, for
further argumentation regarding the land sparing vs. land sharing debate, and
biodiversity on the landscape level, see Chapter 4 in this volume).
Whatever the strategy, it is clear that when considering the sustainability of agrifood
systems, the wider context of food-climate nexus cannot be ignored. Due
to climate change, the global agri-food system is expected to supply ever more
biomass products for a world population growing in numbers and affluence
(Godfray et al., 2010), as well as contributing to climate change mitigation by
providing bioenergy and carbon sequestration (Edenhofer et al., 2014; Lamb et
al., 2016, for more on multifunctionality, and the energy issues in agriculture,
see Chapter 3 in this volume). In the context of climate mitigation, the spatial
scale at which drastic reductions in GHG emissions or even negative emissions
(sequestration) can be achieved are decisive for improving agri-food systems.
All regions can either meet the emission constraint equally, or through
specialisation. For example, certain regions are net-GHG emitters, because, for
instance, they host intensive agriculture and provide biomass to other regions,
which in turn may be net-sinks for carbon if they dedicate their land to forest
regrowth. Biomass trade can balance the GHG emissions of these regions.
Given the fundamentality of the required changes (Steffen et al., 2015), local
“autarky” strategies can play a significant role. At the same time, regional
specialisation is considered a suitable means of increasing land use efficiency
(Kastner et al., 2014). Therefore, the study of agri- food systems should consider
nested design, which embeds the local and regional scale into the national,
regional, and global production-consumption context (see Chapter 5 in this
volume for a good example of this multilevel approach, including the issue of
biomass trade, and Chapter 10 analysing the sustainability implications of
different types of supply chains).
This once again reveals the crucial link between food production and
consumption, and the challenge of the ongoing dietary transition in the Global
South, along with the predominant western diet in the Global North that entails
high levels of meat consumption, far beyond what can be considered as healthy
(McMichael et al. 2007, see chapter 9, on dietary transition on a Greek island,
and the virtues of the Mediterranean diet). A vegetarian diet reduces the
relative risk for type II diabetes by 40%, cancer by 10% and coronary mortality
by 20% compared to the conventional western omnivorous diet. At the same
8
time, the vegetarian diet reduces CO2 emissions by more than two thirds
compared with the conventional diet (Tilman and Clark 2014). Consequently,
changes in diets are one of the crucial components for achieving improved
sustainability (Veeramani 2015).
However, so far it has proven to be quite difficult to intervene in the behaviour
of individuals (Cecchini et al. 2010), partly because of the high level of
disconnection between humans and agri-food systems, both in terms of
production and consumption. Especially in the Western context, consumers are
often dependent on transnational food chains managed by anonymous
individuals and corporations so distant and disconnected from our direct
experience, and often ignorant of the complex processes, from photosynthesis,
through Haber-Bosch synthesis, to soda glutamate production (in the case of
industrially produced and processed food) and to farming itself. While food
consumption is still a very intimate experience of direct contact between the
bodies of animals and plants providing nutrition, and our own bodies that
incorporate the organic matter into their very own structures, food production
is for most intangible and abstract. For most industrialised societies, the focus
is about what we want to buy and eat, but rarely about what we want to grow,
gather or hunt. This does not hold true for about half of the world’s population
(Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011a) that still live off the land, i.e. experience a direct
first-hand contact with food production. This segment of the world’s population
is, however, gradually declining as they join the growing middle class and
associated dietary patterns and consumer behaviour.
At the same time, a growing population from both North and South are
increasingly engaged in influencing the way the current dominant agri-food
system works, reflected in both activist and academic focus on, broadly
speaking, “agri-food alternatives”. Concepts such as alternative food networks,
local food initiatives and local food systems (Renting et al. 2003, Goodman et
al. 2012, Zumkehr and Campbell 2015) have become popular during the last 20
years, encompassing many on the ground initiatives such as community
supported agriculture (CSA), community gardens, urban gardening, food coops
and suchlike. Most of these initiatives are based on the idea that our food
systems should be somewhat more (re-)localised, i.e. more embedded in local
ecosystems and social relations, and shorter in both physical and psychological
distance between producers and consumers.5
Richard Douthwaite, one of the
proponents of food (and also energy and money) localisation, calls for the
5
Sometimes shortening the distance to the extent of becoming prosumers (producers and consumers at
the same time).
9
creation of short circuits, both in terms of resource flows and human interactions
(Douthwaite 1996).
1.2 Local Food Systems, Localisation and Food Sovereignty
In the literature, the term Local Food Systems (LFS) is often used to represent
all alternate food production and distribution models to the dominant
globalised, industrialised and commodified agri-food system trying to create its
more sustainable variants. When defining LFS, physical distance is surely one
key ingredient, but still very much dependent on the cultural and geographical
context.6
LFS are also characterised by “the story behind the food” (Martinez et
al. 2010:4) or the food “provenance” (Thompson et al. 2008), referring to a
combination of cultural, social and environmental attributes, including
commitment to a specific place, to concrete people who produce and consume
the food, nurturing of traditional and/or sustainable practices of production and
processing, knowledge about these processes and the possibility of direct
participation in them (Martinez et al. 2010).
According to proponents of “localisation” (see Fraňková & Johanisová 2012 for
a systemic analysis of the concept, and Chapter 7 in this volume for its
application on a small-scale organic family farm in the Czech Republic), localised
food production is supposed to bring predominantly positive results, combining
social, environmental and economic benefits of lower transport dependence
resulting in less consumption of fossil fuels, lower CO2 emissions, less waste from
packaging, more closed cycles of matter and energy within production systems,
and also stronger local economies showing a higher level of local circulation of
money, lower dependence on foreign investments, and less dependency on,
and more resilience towards, fluctuations of the global economy. Among the
potential drawbacks are the possibility of strong community control by a few,
and limited choice of local and seasonal goods, but they are mostly seen by the
localisation proponents as of lower importance, and as acceptable or – in the
case of direct producer-consumer relations – negotiable (Douthwaite 1996,
Norberg-Hodge et al. 2002, Desai & Riddlestone 2002).
Such an overtly positive framing of LFS has been criticised by scholars as being
too naïve. They argue that the reality of such endeavours, even if positively
motivated, can be and indeed sometimes are, socially exclusive, supplying its
participants more with a good feeling about themselves than with the required
6
Whereas in the USA, a 100 to 400-mile radius might be seen as local, in Europe it is more about 20-100
km (Norberg-Hodge et al. 2002; NEF 2002), and the particular type of goods in question: the supposedly
“local” area differs when it comes to eggs, clothes and refrigerators, see NEF (2010) for rough “local”
distance indications in the European context.
10
amount of food; critics also doubt its overall sustainability impacts and potential
for spreading beyond small niche markets (Hinrichs 2003, Allen 2010, Cadieux
& Slocum 2015). Hence, after the “first generation” of academics
enthusiastically “discovered” the grass-root local food initiatives in the 1990s
and 2000s, the “second” generation are more critical and aware of the
complexity in operationalising these concepts. Their scholarly sophistication is
reflected in new labels such as “social or grass-root innovations” and “scalingup”
of alternatives (Seyfang and Smith 2007, Beckie et al. 2012, Zumkehr &
Campbell 2015).
Beside the food localisation agenda, the related concept of “food sovereignty”,
that has been the subject of intense debate in the fields of political ecology and
agrarian and peasant studies, should also be acknowledged. This stream of
activism and thinking puts a much stronger accent on the political aspects of
LFS, including the question of peasant livelihoods, and shows more sensitivity
to Global North/South relations. At the same time, the strong point in favour of
more localised food systems is also present in the food sovereignty agenda, and
thus it can be interpreted as a fresher incarnation of the ideas previously
formulated within the localisation movement, mainly in the 1990s. Indeed, in
practice many localisation and food sovereignty initiatives overlap and both
movements offer cross-fertilisation (see for example, the declaration of Food
Sovereignty (Nyéléni 2007) and the recent European CSA declaration (Urgenci
2016)). Thus, it can be said that the LFS has recently been enriched and received
impetus by the food sovereignty agenda to include political issues, and to
embody characteristics of a global movement trying to build dialogue between
different regions of the world.
Still, when looking for sustainable alternatives to the dominant agri-food system,
both academics and activists often focus only on Northern initiatives in the sense
of the purposeful, often politically engaged LFS initiatives as described above.
Yet, there are several other modes of sustainable agricultural and land use
practices that have long existed in terms of cultivation management and
production-consumption relationships (Martínez-Torres & Rosset 2014). These
are often overlooked by academics as contributing to sustainability. In the
context of the Global East, Smith and Jehlička (2013) coined the term “quiet
sustainability” for the widespread practices of food self-provisioning and
gardening, a practice spread across all ages, education levels and socioeconomic
statuses, providing food in substantial varieties and amounts (see also
Sovová 2015, Smith et al. 2015; chapters 8 and 9 in this volume provide other
examples of “quiet sustainability”: the case of a rural village in Cambodia, and
the Greek island of Samothraki respectively).
11
Besides such prevailing subsistence gardening practices in many Central and
Eastern European (CEE) countries, half of the world’s population, mainly in the
Global South, still remain involved in subsistence farming (Fischer-Kowalski et
al. 2011a). This segment of the world’s population is often described as
backward, poor and underdeveloped (see Escobar 2014 for a critique of the
very term development), although by their everyday practices fulfilling, albeit
unintentionally, many of the sustainability ideals formulated by the Northern
alternative food initiatives. Efforts are underway to change this framing (see e.g.
Shrivastava and Kothari 2012) and to take these “quiet sustainability” practices
on board, along with the progressive “innovations” discussed in the literature
dominated by western scientists.
Thus, we argue that both the intentional and unintentional initiatives and
practices discussed above, based geographically in the North, East and South,
can be framed within the localisation perspective and may be labelled not only
as Local Food Systems, but at the same time as (re-)Localised Food Systems, i.e.
they do fulfil certain aspects of localisation as defined at the beginning of this
section, including the potentially positive implications for their sustainability.
Indeed, contrary to what some of the critics argue, we believe there are several
environmental, social, economic and political benefits for upscaling (re)localisation
of agri-food systems in comparison to the globalised agri-food
regime (see Chapter 2 for a more detailed elaboration on these reasons).
However, we also believe that the respective level of desired localisation should
be open, case-specific, and thus explicitly questioned, and therefore not a onesize-fits-all
approach. On this, there is a high consensus among virtually all (food)
localisation proponents, even if some are vague on how and to what extent
international trade should be regulated and organised, and what procedures
and principles should be used to decide on this (Fraňková and Johanisová 2012).
The issue of scale of (re-)localisation and trade are raised in some of our case
studies that look at both historical and current practices (see Chapters 5 and 6
for a historical account of the Spanish region of Vallés, and several Austrian
agrarian villages respectively).
This also explains why the term LFS is kept analytically open in this volume. The
contributors do not presuppose any modern or traditional agrarian practices,
nor are the cases conditioned by any political or activist orientation. Further, our
understanding of the “local” in LFS is intended to mean anything lower-thannational,
i.e. on the level of a household, farm, community, village or region.
The focus on local scale is also motivated by our understanding that although
sustainable food production is a global challenge that indeed needs to be
discussed in the global context, it also has an inevitable local dimension. It is at
12
the local level where people live and work, where environmental, economic,
social, cultural and institutional issues are interlocked and experienced (that is,
where the food is produced, processed, transported, traded, and consumed or
wasted).
From the methodological point of view, available LFS studies use predominantly
qualitative research methodologies (Seyfang 2007), discussing the biophysical
impacts of LFS only to a very limited extent (Martinez et al. 2010, Kneafsey et
al. 2013, Matacena 2016). However, well-founded and tested methods to study
the biophysical aspects of agriculture in the fields of social ecology, ecological
economics and industrial ecology do exist. The conceptual and methodological
framework of Social Metabolism (SM) has been applied to study the nexus
between energy, material, land, and time use within agri-food systems for
decades (Giampietro 2003, Gomiero et al. 2006, González de Molina and
Toledo 2014), however, only rarely in the case of LFS.7
1.3 Social Metabolism and Political Ecology
Whether a given local food system is ecologically sustainable or not is a tricky
question. This requires a non-reductionist approach to investigate how social
and natural systems interact and co-evolve over time and different scales. This
interaction entails substantial impacts upon one another, with bidirectional
causality (Haberl et al. 2016). There have been efforts to study the biophysical
relations between society and nature over the last one-and-a-half centuries.
Analogising the metabolism of organisms, Karl Marx first referred to metabolism
when he described work as a process in which people regulate, steer and control
their metabolism with nature through their own action (Marx, 1968 (1867)). A
century later, these considerations were re-introduced from quite another angle
by Ayres and Kneese (1969) that led to what is termed as “industrial
metabolism” (referring to the material and energy throughput of industrial
societies), and later “social metabolism” (to generally refer to the metabolism
of any society at any scale) (for an intellectual history of social metabolism, see
Fischer-Kowalski 1998).
The fundamental premise of “social metabolism”, a term that is now widely
used, is that social systems need to maintain and reproduce their biophysical
7
It is already common to apply the social metabolism approach at national and global scales (Grešlová
Kušková 2013, Erb et al. 2016). Existing local studies either focus on describing the transition from
traditional to industrial agri-food regimes historically (Haberl & Krausmann 2007, Haas & Krausmann 2015),
or focus on contemporary cases in the Global South (Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011a, Scheidel et al 2013,
Ringhofer and Fischer-Kowalski 2016, Birke 2014, Singh et. al. 2001). However, applications of social
metabolism studies at the local level in the Global North are still rather exceptional.
13
stocks (like human and livestock population, and built artefacts) for their survival
and evolution. This requires a continuous flow of energy and materials extracted
from, and eventually released to, the environment (Ayres and Kneese 1969).8
Thus, the metabolism of social systems refers to material, substance and energy
flows related to socio-economic activities. Maintaining the social metabolism
includes the “colonisation of nature” (discussed later in this section), denoted
as purposive intervention into natural systems aimed at improving their utility
for societal purposes (Haberl et al. 2016).
Socio-metabolic studies range from describing the metabolism of national
economies to analysing them across geographical regions over decades or even
centuries (e.g. Krausmann et al. 2009, Schaffartzik et al. 2014). Socio-ecological
transitions, especially from hunter-gatherer to agrarian, to industrial societies,
and to the so-called Anthropocene, provide a specific analytical perspective to
understanding long-term changes in society-nature interactions (FischerKowalski
at al. 2014, Fischer-Kowalski & Haberl 2007). To better understand
these transitions, a series of local studies have been performed (FischerKowalski
et al. 2011a, Birke 2015, Haas & Krausmann 2015).
Within social metabolism studies there are different variants such as substance
flow analysis (SFA),9 physical input-output (PIOT), life-cycle analysis (LCA),
material and energy flow analysis (MEFA), and multi-scale integrated analysis of
societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM). They all share many
similarities but differ due to their special focus. For example, while the MEFA’s
original purpose was to add a biophysical dimension to the usual monetary
description as national accounts, MuSIASEM is more focused on analysing
processes and functions inside a system and at the same time linking this
analysis on different scales in an integrated way (land use, human activity,
energy & material flows, monetary flows) (Gerber and Scheidel forthcoming, see
also chapters 2 and 3 of this volume).
8
Ayres and Kneese (1969, p. 283) claimed that the common failure of (currently mainstream) economics
results from viewing the production and consumption processes in a manner that is somewhat at variance
with the fundamental law of the conservation of mass; similarly, Georgescu-Roegen (1971) argued that
mainstream economic theory and modern economies are at variance with thermodynamics and the law of
conservation of mass. These insights, recognising the biophysical aspects of all socio-economic processes,
established one of the fundamental theoretical underpinnings of the whole field of Ecological Economics
(Røpke 2004).
9
Substance refers to a single type of matter such as a chemical element, e.g. Cadmium (Brunner and
Rechberger, 2004).
14
MEFA indicators provide now highly standardised methodological inventory
that can be derived to discuss a system’s sustainability over time, and to
compare with other cases or other levels of scale (for standardised accounting
guidelines for countries, see Eurostat 2013, and for local systems, see Singh et
al. 2010).10 Over the years, MEFA indicators were further developed to be
practicable, meaningful and sound. One of the classic indicators is the Domestic
Extraction (DE) that accounts for all material appropriated from nature from the
social system’s domestic territory, be it harvested biomass, extracted crude oil,
mined metal ores or minerals. Since livestock, a biophysical stock of society, can
partly feed itself, grazing is considered an extraction as well. In addition to
domestic extraction, a social system also imports materials from other social
systems, while also exporting some. Thus, imports and exports are also basic
indicators. The Direct Material Input (DMI) of a social system is the sum of DE
and Imports. Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) is calculated by
subtracting exports from DMI and reflects the social system’s consumption,
which goes far beyond the apparent consumption of households since it
includes all losses as well as all materials used to extend, maintain and operate
the stocks at the system level. These flows can be disaggregated for a wide
range of material categories such as biomass, fossil fuel carriers, metal ores, and
non-metallic minerals (essentially construction minerals). All flows are reported
in material units (e.g., metric tonnes) in fresh weight or dry matter as well as in
energetic units (e.g., joules, kilowatt-hours) and per unit of time, usually per year
(see Haberl et al. 2004). The resulting energy indicators deviate from standard
technical energy accounting, insofar as the former – besides technical energy –
also includes all the primary energy required for the endosomatic metabolism
of livestock and humans (feed and food).
MuSIASEM studies, on the other hand, have focused on the performance of
societies’ subsectors (Giampietro et al., 2012) and often on particular resources
such as food and agriculture, energy or water (e.g., for agriculture: Ravera et al.
2014; Scheidel et al. 2014; for energy: Ramos-Martín et al. 2007, Giampietro et
al. 2013; for water Madrid-López & Giampietro, 2015). But MuSIASEM is also
concerned with the nexus between these resources (Giampietro et al., 2014).
While MEFA focus on stocks and flows, MuSIASEM look at funds and flows.
These are not just differences in words but in concepts. “Funds” refer to agents
10
For nation states such as Japan, as well as in the European Union (EU) and several other countries,
material flow accounting (MFA) has become a regular part of public statistics (Fischer-Kowalski et al.
2011b). This allows the provision of reliable annual accounts of material use in physical terms and their
comparison across time and with economic accounts.
15
maintained throughout an economic process such as labour, land or
technological capital and “stocks” to human population, livestock and artefacts.
In sum, MEFA is a useful framework for understanding the biophysical dynamics
between stocks and flows in quantities, and helps grasp the figure of a social
system’s metabolism, in terms of the tonnes processed (Fishman et al., 2014;
Matthews et al., 2000). In contrast, the fund-flow approach conceptualises the
functions of a social system’s metabolism. So funds (e.g., labour) require and
produce flows (e.g., food) at a given rate (Gerber and Scheidel forthcoming, see
also chapters 2 and 3 of this volume).
What different approaches to “social metabolism” have in common is that they
encompass biophysical stocks, flows and/or funds and the mechanisms
regulating these flows. Any socio-metabolic analysis starts with the definition of
the social system under consideration, such as a household, a business, a village,
a local food system, a nation state, or the global community. The first step is to
define the social system’s boundary, a prerequisite for studying society-nature
interactions. Delineating this boundary, and deciding which elements are part
of the social system and which belong to the system’s environment, is not simply
an arbitrary construct of the researcher. According to modern systems theory,
a social system constitutes itself through the marking and reproduction of its
boundaries in order to fulfil its functions. Accordingly, the researcher needs to
understand how the social system itself defines its stocks and flows along
ownership boundaries, accepted entitlements, or governance responsibility (see
also Netting 1981, 1993, Singh et al. 2010).
In addition to material and energy flow analysis, land use reflects another form
of society-nature interaction, which is a consequence of the human colonisation
of natural systems. Land use involves the colonisation of ecosystems, organisms
and, increasingly, the genomes of crop plants. The human appropriation of net
primary production (HANPP) is an indicator of the intensity of land use or the
colonisation of ecosystems. HANPP is the quantity of energy appropriated
through human interventions into energy flows in ecosystems, that is, net
primary production (NPP). Net primary production (NPP) is a measure of the
quantity of organic material produced by plants through photosynthesis. NPP is
an important process in ecosystems; it is the source of entire food energy for
humans and all other heterotrophic food webs and provides the basis for the
creation of vegetation cover and soils and their associated carbon stocks. NPP
is one of the most important indicators of ecosystem capacity and forms the
basis for the existence of all biodiversity (Vitousek et al. 1986; Wright 1990). The
difference between the NPP of potential natural vegetation (NPPpot, or NPP of
the ecosystem with no human influence) and vegetation that is pre-dominant
16
due to a certain land use (e.g. for agriculture, buildings, roads) at a particular
point in time (NPPact, or actual NPP) is defined as HANPPluc (HANPP resulting
from land use). Added to this is the harvest of biomass for human use
(HANPPharv, or HANPP through harvest), often the ultimate purpose of land use.
A completely different biophysical indicator, yet a key component of a sociometabolic
analysis, is functional time use (FTU), which views human time as a
key resource of social systems. The total time available to a social system each
day (for example, a village) is the sum of the population multiplied by 24 hours.
This is the maximum time the village has at their disposal per day, also referred
to as the stock of time. With respect to the flows of human time, one fraction of
daily time use is expended on certain metabolic functions (such as sleeping or
eating) necessary for an individual’s basic reproduction, whereas the remainder
is used according to socio-cultural norms, economic necessities or simply
individual preferences. We distinguish between flows serving four functional
subsystems, each of which requires time for reproduction: the person system,
the household system, the economic system and the community system (for a
discussion on methodology, see Singh et al. 2010). Such a systemic analysis
offers a perspective on how much human time is available and what it is used
for on a system level, thereby helping us to understand the specific
opportunities and constraints a society faces in its interaction with the natural
environment. At the same time, because the lifetime/labour time ratio is
calculated for all the age/sex groups in this system, FTU sheds light on the
‘labour burden’ or ‘time poverty’ some of these groups bear with regard to
important aspects of social inequality (Ringhofer and Fischer-Kowalski 2016).
These basic components of the socio-metabolic approach (material and energy
flow analysis, land use analysis, functional time use analysis) not only provide an
important methodological tool, but also generate information that has
significant social and political implications, and thus are not only constituent
parts of Ecological Economics (see footnote 8) but also contribute significantly
to the broad field of Political Ecology. Broadly speaking, political ecology strives
to explain the root causes of social vulnerability by studying ecological
processes as part of the broader political economy. Michael Watts (2000)
defines the role of Political Ecology as being “to understand the complex
relations between nature and society through a careful analysis of what one
might call the forms of access and control over resources and their implications
for environmental health and sustainable livelihoods” (p. 257).
In the context of international trade, the concept of social metabolism and
material flow analysis have been used by a few political ecologists to quantify
“ecological unequal exchange”, that is, the asymmetrical flow of resources from
17
the core (industrialised countries) to the periphery (countries of the Global
South) (see for example, Eisenmenger and Giljum 2007, Singh and Eisenmenger
2011, Schaffartzik et al. 2014, Mayer et al. 2017). Joan Martinez-Alier and
colleagues have made important contributions to show the links between social
metabolism and conflicts. They argue that current patterns of industrial
metabolism draw on huge amounts of resources from all over the world, but the
costs and benefits of extraction, production, consumption and eventual waste
disposal are not equally distributed, often leading to what is termed “ecological
distribution conflicts” (Martinez-Alier 2009, Martinez-Alier et al. 2016).
European funded projects11 have resulted in large collaborative efforts to
underline these connections through a number of publications framed around
environmental justice (Martinez-Alier et al. 2010a, Healy et. al. 2012) and
degrowth (Martinez-Alier et al. 2010b). The themes linking social metabolism,
political ecology, social conflicts and environmental justice are inextricably
woven throughout this book.
The social metabolism approach has thus provided us with valuable insights e.g.
on the biomass metabolism occurring at global, national and local scales. For
much of the 20th
century, biomass dominated total global material extraction for
socio-economic activities, and only in the 1990s was it overtaken by construction
minerals (Krausmann et al. 2009). Between 1950 and 2010, growth in global
biomass extraction was slow, increasing only by a factor of 2.5, unlike other
material categories that grew several-fold in the same period. In an absolute
sense, biomass production increased from 7 Gigatons (Gt) to 19 Gigatons, or
from 2.7 t/cap to 3.1 t/cap, indicating a strong relationship with population
growth (Steinberger et. al. 2010). Much of the growth in biomass production
was in primary food crops that increased by a factor of 4, but the related land
area increased only by a factor of 1.4, indicating a transformation in agriculture
with high levels of inputs of fossil fuels and fertilisers (Mayer et al. 2015).
On the other hand, international trade in biomass increased almost 5-fold in the
same period, from 0.3 Gt to 1.4 Gt. Most of the new land dedicated to crop
production in the mid-1980s was aimed at export. This period corresponds to
what is referred to as the “corporate – or third - food regime” that seeks to
address global food security through international trade, neo-liberal policies
and market instruments. Those with purchasing power could source fresh fruits,
vegetables and animal products from supermarkets (Mayer et. al. 2015). The
changing dietary patterns of a growing middle class (from plant to animal based
11
For example CEECEC (http://www.ceecec.net/), EJOLT (http://www.ejolt.org/), ENV-JUSTICE
(http://www.envjustice.org/), ACKnowl-EJ (http://acknowlej.org/).
18
diets), and growing industrial use of biomass (e.g. biofuels) continues to provide
impetus to its production and trade.
Erb et. al. (2009) examined the increasing spatial disconnect between where
biomass is being consumed and the environmental impacts on where it is being
produced. A closer look at the global biomass metabolism reveals that wealthy
industrialised nations of the Global North supply large parts of the Global South
with cheap staples (namely cereals and pulses) as well as fodder for meat
production, while their imports are comprised mainly of luxury and exotic fruits,
vegetables and animal products (Mayer et al. 2015). The unequal distribution of
costs and benefits of our current global food production and international trade
have provoked resistance movements and related social conflicts worldwide.
These trends not only raise questions around food security (i.e. the amount of
food available to any given society) but also food sovereignty that emphasises
control over food production and access (i.e. who decides to produce what, and
how) both in the Global North and South, giving rise to diverse alternate local
food movements as discussed in this chapter (McMichael 2009).
1.4 The Contributions in this Volume
As the title suggests, this volume is an attempt to critically examine the
sustainability of a wide range of local food initiatives through the lens of social
metabolism. The chapters in this book cover a range of methods related to
social metabolism at different temporal and spatial scales, with a mix of cases
from the Global North, transition economies and Global South. The cases in the
book also capture the various stages of production, distribution, consumption,
and waste related to LFS. As such, two overarching questions drive our enquiry
throughout this book: Which scientific and policy relevant insights can we draw
from our LFS cases that might suggest the best practices for maintaining and
designing more sustainable agri-food systems in the future? What are the
methodological strengths and shortcomings vis-a-vis social metabolism for
studying LFS?
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 outline the methodological complexity in studying agroecological
systems when considering appropriate space and time dimensions.
In chapter 2, Enrico Tello and Manuel Gonzalez de Molina review several
methods for a sustainability assessment of agri-food systems, and offer an agroecological
perspective to account for energy and material flows of farm systems,
linking them to landscape ecology patterns and processes which sustain farmassociated
biodiversity and derived ecosystem services. Tiziano Gomiero, in
chapter 3, explains that food production is both multi-functional (having a dual
19
purpose of maintaining both societal and ecosystem health), as well as multiscale
(connecting soil, farm, landscape, watershed and beyond) that requires
consideration of different criteria at different hierarchical levels. This implies a
significant complexity of sustainability assessment of agri-food systems; within
the chapter, the issue of energy efficiency and energy flow (power) are
discussed particularly extensively, in the broader context of biophysical and
socio-economic analysis, and the different schools of social metabolism that
have already been introduced in this chapter (section 1.3). In the same vein, in
chapter 4, Joan Marull and Carme Font attempt an integrated approach,
combining different spatial scales with long-term socio-metabolic balances and
changes in the ecological functionality of farm systems. The authors propose an
Intermediate Disturbance-Complexity model of agro-ecosystems to assess how
different levels of human appropriation of net primary production affect the
regional functional landscape structure and biodiversity.
Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 discuss cases in different periods of time and emphasise
the social, economic and community aspects of local food systems. Roc Padró
and colleagues (chapter 5) present the case of Vallès County in Spain in three
periods of time (1860, 1956 and 1999) to show the socio-ecological transition
from an organic to an industrial regime. They compare diets and labour
productivity, the role of multi-functionality in agro-ecosystems, the loss of
landscape diversity and species richness through 150 years of agro history. In
chapter 6, Michael Gizicki-Neundlinger, Simone Gingrich, and Dino Güldner
take a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) perspective to focus on
the relationship between soil fertility, food provision and social inequality. Using
several village level cases in 19th
century Austria, the authors highlight a number
of social issues underlying pre-industrial agriculture, and what we might learn
from this with respect to the current debate on the sustainability of LFS. Chapter
7 (Eva Fraňková, Claudio Cattaneo) provides a historical comparison of
traditional and current forms of organic agriculture in the Czech Republic,
focusing mainly on the current case study of an organic family farm to illustrate
the concept of localisation and food sovereignty. Here, the nexus of Food-FeedFuel-Fibre
production is extended to include the aspect of Finance that is too
often neglected in current socio-metabolic studies. In chapter 8, Arnim Scheidel
and colleagues present a case from Kampot (Cambodia) that highlights the
collective efforts of farmers to intensify farming with low labour input,
renewable energy, and buffer food prices and shortages through cooperatives
and a community bank. Kampot is an example of “leapfrogging” to showcase a
model of sustainable livelihoods embedded in local socio-economic dynamics.
20
Chapters 9, 10 and 11 provide other examples and assessments of local
initiatives and efforts with the aim of nurturing and promoting local and
sustainable food systems. Chapter 9 (Panos Petridis and Julia Huber) discusses
the ongoing transition on the small Greek Island of Samothraki, sociometabolically,
from a traditional agrarian lifestyle to a modern industrial society,
and nutritionally, towards a westernisation of diets. While raising concerns about
increasing imports from the mainland, the authors also highlight the significant
role of agricultural self-provisioning and informal food networks, as an example
of “quiet sustainability”. In chapter 10, Gonzalo Gamboa and colleagues
provide a comparative assessment of initiatives related to food supply chains in
Catalonia (Spain). The authors evaluate the performance of three organic
tomato supply chains in the region: the local and global supply chains, and a
mixed supply chain based on a set of multidimensional indicators (based on a
commodity, environment and livelihoods narrative). The authors show that
organic production is not enough to achieve a sustainable food provision
system, and the context and the food supply chain in which organic food is
commercialised also determine the sustainability of organic food production.
Marian Simon-Rojo and Barbora Duží, in chapter 11, present a case of urban
metabolism (Madrid, Spain) where efforts are underway to close the nutrient
loops. The civil society platform Madrid Agroecologico has initiated a bottomup
approach to reintegrate organic waste into the regional alternative food
networks. The project was instrumental in raising awareness on the issue of
waste and its potential re-use as compost to amend local soils.
The concluding chapter summarises both the promising characteristics of the
historical and current local food systems, and the pros and cons of the SM
methodology applied at local level to recognise, preserve and offer more
sustainable pathways (along with necessary policy context) for dealing with the
challenges in the sustainability of agri-food systems.
1.5 Final Remarks
The book is meant as both a scientific and a political project: it’s scientific in
terms of asking critical questions, and discussing the sustainability of local food
systems in the context of the existing body of theoretical and empirical
knowledge with the aim of providing new data and insights into this debate,
including advancement of relevant methodological approaches; it’s political and
value-based in its basic focus on sustainability and local food systems, aiming to
bring these into light as potentially beneficial and important, and thus to break
the (partly performative) dominance of the industrialised agri-food regime as
the only one capable of providing food for the world’s population.
21
Along with Gibson-Graham (2008) we believe that not only activists, but also we
as researchers influence and shape reality by making some things and relations
visible, and by silencing/ignoring others. We should be aware of this and ethics
should inform what we do. According to Gibson-Graham (2008), the dominance
of the current global capitalist system (of food production, too) is partly
performative, i.e. there are other relations and systems of social and economic
organisation than the capitalist, but they are (even by those criticising the
capitalist system) framed as “alternative”, parallel etc. thus actually confirming
the dominant position of capitalism. We as scientists have the power to
influence what is seen as “normal”, and what is seen at all – in this sense, by this
book and the research in it we contribute to making local food systems visible
and important as part of the debate on how to feed the world’s population, and
how to maintain and/or create agro-ecosystems in a more sustainable way.
This book is both academic and activist in nature, thus trying to actively combine
these different domains of activities. We tried to make the process of the
creation of this book convivial and participative – we are all passionate about
our research and the issue this book is about. We see this book as only one part
of the process which has to be continuous and democratic – we offer the results
of the time and effort which we had the chance to devote for research, but we
fully acknowledge that it is only one of many valid ways of creating/gaining
knowledge and we do not position ourselves in the roles of those who know
and tell others what to do. We try to derive conclusions from our research and
experience which can be generalised to some extent (see Chapter 12 for our
main conclusions), but we stress the importance of the particular local context
and conditions, and the importance of participative processes for exploring and
creating more sustainable ways of fulfilling human needs, including the need for
food, feed, fibre and fuel provided by agroecosystems.
Thus, we hope to provide rich food for thought on food, and to contribute to a
vivid – both academic and political – debate (and action!) on this important topic
that affects us all. We would be extremely happy for any feedback, and
meanwhile we hope you will thoroughly enjoy reading this book.
22
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