Child-centered food systems: reorienting food systems towards healthy diets for children

Current food systems are failing to guide children towards healthy diets. This paper presents a tool to identify the actions needed to reorient food systems to become more child-centred from a nutrition perspective. To connect the dots between children's lives, their food environments and food supply systems, the tool takes a child-centred, food systems approach. Comprising six methodological steps, the tool starts by measuring and understanding children's realities and then working back up into the system to identify how food environments and supply systems could make relevant foods more or less available, affordable, appealing and aspirational in the contexts of children's lives. The paper spells out the mix of methods needed to make this assessment, gives examples of the data and studies already available and type of insights they provide, and discusses the methodological challenges and gaps. It presents a worked example that shows how following these steps in sequence enables the identification of a package of actions that can act coherently to reorient food systems in the way most likely to have impact on child malnutrition

A Review of Global Progress toward the Millennium Development Goal 1 Hunger Target

Background. The hunger component of the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) aims to reduce the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half between 1990 and 2015. In low- and middle-income countries, progress has been mixed, with approximately 925 million people hungry and 125 million and 195 million children underweight and stunted, respectively

Exploring the 'city-bush divide': what do urban people really think of farmers and rural land management?

Many developed economies have highly urbanised populations. As environmental concern in the general population has increased, farmers have found themselves at the centre of competing demands in relation to the resources and land they manage or own. Australian farmers are concerned that urban people are unsympathetic and see them as ‘environmental vandals’. These perceived negative views of farmers are part of a wider division variously described as an ‘urban - rural’ or ‘city - bush’ divide. However, there is no empirical evidence to support, or define the nature of a divide, if it does exist in relation to urban people’s views of farmers’ environmental performance. This study found little evidence of a city - bush divide in relation to urban views of farmers and rural land management. Although diverse views are held of farmers and rural land management, there is a reasonable level of trust in, and empathy with, farmers. Nevertheless, rural land management is of high concern for urban people and they consider the environment to be in poor condition. We identified five groups of people, with only one group that could be considered sceptical of farmers’ land management performance. The results highlight the difficulties in developing appropriate rural land management policies that balance legitimate societal concerns for environmental condition and public versus private benefits and costs, while not adversely affecting the many farmers whom the majority of urban people feel act responsibly. The data suggest uncertainty in the urban community as to whether government is effectively achieving this balance

Combating Global Antibiotic Resistance: Emerging One Health Concerns in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries

International audienceAntibiotic misuse in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance that can disseminate globally. Strategies specific to LMICs that seek to reduce antibiotic misuse by humans, but simultaneously improve antibiotic access, have been proposed. However, most approaches to date have not considered the growing impact of animal and environmental reservoirs of antibiotic resistance, which threaten to exacerbate the antibiotic resistance crisis in LMICs. In particular, current strategies do not prioritize the impacts of increased antibiotic use for terrestrial food-animal and aquaculture production, inadequate food safety, and widespread environmental pollution. Here, we propose new approaches that address emerging, One Health challenges

Defining spaces of resilience within the neoliberal paradigm: could French land use classifications guide support for risk management within an Australian regional context?

An effective response to future risk within socioecosystems will require the retention of local diversity, not just in more vulnerable communities on the margins but also in regions vital to industrialised countries. A case study is presented that examines agroecosystem vulnerability to climate change within an Australian multifunctional rural landscape adjacent to the city of Adelaide. The dominant neoliberal governance approach is struggling to account for the levels of risk apparent in the region, even though there is considerable evidence that changes in policy and practice are required. Land use planning mechanisms can explicitly and implicitly support adaptation to risk within vital agroecosystems by defining spaces of complexity and experimentation. A review of French land use policy suggests that appropriate classifications can facilitate support for local diversity and broaden the capacity of farming systems to adapt to risk. Such classifications of spaces valuable for socio-ecological resilience and innovation could become vital tools to integrate into neoliberal governance systems to support anticipatory adaptation to future socio-ecological risk.Douglas K. Bardsley and Pierre Pec