Small Farming and the Food System

Abstract

This chapter provides a first systemic analysis of the environment in which small farms operate, hinging on the concept of ‘food system’. Food systems are not detached from the territory: an effective conceptualization must take into account the geographical dimension in which actors operate, originating material and immaterial flows. Thus food systems can be represented according to their functional elements, but also conceptualized and represented in their spatial dimension. This chapter provides a conceptualization of territorialized food systems, seen as a set of relations between actors located in a regional geographic space and coordinated by territorial governance (Rastoin, 2015). In the analysis of a food system in the context of a specific territory, geographical elements like distances, spatial distribution and physical and administrative borders become key factors that influence the systems’ capability to provide sustainable food and nutrition security and to achieve the other socially expected outcomes. Having explored the conceptualization of food systems as systems of actors ad flows in a given space, the chapter ends with a representation of small farms' interaction with the system (taken from a report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security – HLPE), where the specific types of flows they activate are highlighted (HLPE, 2013).

Citation

Grando, S., Brunori, G., Pinto-Correia, T. and Sutherland, L.-A. (2020), "Small Farming and the Food System", Brunori, G. and Grando, S. (Ed.) Innovation for Sustainability (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 25), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 9-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-192220200000025003