The inter-connected challenges for food security from a food regimes perspective: Energy, climate and malconsumption

Recent experience of food price volatility in global markets encourages closer examination of the dynamics underlying the global food system and reveals a range of contingent factors. Meanwhile a common thread of many recent expert reports has emphasised the need to intensify agricultural production to double food output by 2050. Drawing upon a food regimes approach, the paper argues that the global food system is vulnerable to three inter-connected challenges that make a largely productivist strategy inappropriate. Analysis suggests that there is a strong likelihood of rising energy costs given the anticipated decline in conventional oil supplies which will have repercussions for land-use and food security. Climate change scenarios anticipate rates of warming and drying in large areas of the tropics that will also have huge implications for food security in those areas. Yet the mode of operation of the global food system is to deliver poor quality nutrition with significant dietary health consequences, a phenomenon labelled malconsumption. The paper argues that these issues are closely inter-related and until we address the fact that the global food system remains dominated by powerful economic interests, an effective solution will remain elusive

The transition movement and food sovereignty: from local resilience to global engagement in food system transformation

The emergence of grassroots social movements variously preoccupied with a range of external threats, such as diminishing supplies of fossil energy or climate change, has led to increased interest in the production of local food. Drawing upon the notion of cognitive praxis, this article utilises transition as a trajectory guided by an overarching cosmology that brings together a broad social movement seeking a more resilient future. This ‘grand narrative’ is reinforced by ‘transition movement intellectuals’ who serve to shape an agenda of local preparedness in the face of uncertainty, rather than structural analysis of the global system. In this context, growing and producing food offers important multi-functional synergies by reconnecting people to place and its ecological endowments and serves to provide a vital element in civic mobilisation. Yet, local food could also become a means to build international solidarity in defence of food sovereignty and establish a global coalition opposed to the corporate agri-food agenda of biotechnologies, land grabbing and nutritional impoverishment

Re-imagining the Irish foodscape

Limited attention has been paid by geographers to the Irish food system beyond the farm gate. Yet the last two decades have witnessed a substantial transformation in the provision of food and in patterns of consumption. This extended introduction to a set of four themed papers considers the role played by corporate retailing in refashioning the urban foodscape and in restructuring agri-food supply chains. The article aims to highlight the significant disconnection that exists between the realms of production and consumption, and outlines the potential of alternative visions and practices that offer a way of reconnecting them. Finally, the article will introduce the four papers which provide an illustration of the range and depth of analysis that geographers can bring to the study of the Irish food system

Food security, food sovereignty and the special rapporteur: Shaping food policy discourse through realising the right to food

Over the past 6 years, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, has vigorously defended the case for small-scale and sustainable farming and has helped to establish the political legitimacy of food sovereignty in high-level expert fora. This commentary offers brief reflections on De Schutter’s contribution focusing on the welcome shift of emphasis from food to nutritional security as well as his strong support for agroecology. It argues that he has offered a powerful and coherent alternative to the prevailing paradigm of productivism that has helped reshape food policy discourse

Reduction of trapped ion anomalous heating by in situ surface plasma cleaning

Anomalous motional heating is a major obstacle to scalable quantum information processing with trapped ions. While the source of this heating is not yet understood, several previous studies suggest that surface contaminants may be largely responsible. We demonstrate an improvement by a factor of four in the room-temperature heating rate of a niobium surface electrode trap by in situ plasma cleaning of the trap surface. This surface treatment was performed with a simple homebuilt coil assembly and commercially-available matching network and is considerably gentler than other treatments, such as ion milling or laser cleaning, that have previously been shown to improve ion heating rates. We do not see an improvement in the heating rate when the trap is operated at cryogenic temperatures, pointing to a role of thermally-activated surface contaminants in motional heating whose activity may freeze out at low temperatures.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Petty producers, potatoes and land: a case study of agrarian change in the Cochabamba Serranla, Bolivia

The thesis comprises a study of agrarian change in one highland, ex-hacienda locality in the Cochabamba region of Bolivia and documents a process of agricultural intensification and crop specialisation amongst small producers. The thesis demonstrates that. Since the Agrarian Reform, a process of commoditization has transformed the locality, leading to its incorporation into the regional economy as a major producer of potatoes. It examines the role played by a dynamic sector of truck operators and commercial intermediaries in stimulating this process. The thesis reconstructs the emergence of the hacienda, and the forms of production which co-existed on the estate. It documents the implementation of the Agrarian Reform and the distribution of land titles to ex-labour-rent tenants which consolidated the pattern of usufruct holdings and consequently formalised inequality between households. The contemporary situation is characterised by an intensive farming system which places considerable demands upon local environmental resources. The thesis conducts a detailed analysis of the existing pattern of land ownership, labour relationships and the distribution of other productive resources, to demonstrate that access to the means of production, control over the production process and disposal of the fruits of labour are highly uneven between households. However, inequality in the control over agricultural operations, besides the movement of labour from poor to rich households, do not by themselves provide sufficient evidence of differentiation between units. The thesis examines other dimensions which play a vital role in determining the social and economic trajectory of households. These include the role played by non-agricultural economic activities and the organisational structure of households. The thesis demonstrates the value of moving beyond the boundaries that conventionally define the analysis of household production, in order to examine dynamics within the domestic unit. Case studies are used to illustrate this approach