Global Food Production and Consumption Systems Before and After the Pandemic

• Amelie Bernzen – University of Vechta
• Christine Bonnin – University College Dublin – christine.bonnin@ucd.ie
• Bill Pritchard – University of Sydney

The present structuring of contemporary global food production and consumption systems remains inconsistent with the promotion of healthy and sustainable diets and the Sustainable Development Goals. Food production and consumption has major impacts on local and global environments, contributing approximately 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet for all this damaging environmental effect, more than 800 million people remain undernourished and the world suffers from a double burden of malnutrition with rapidly rising rates of overweight and obesity. Crises attached to climate and pandemic emergencies have had major disruptive effects on a global food system increasingly dependent on a network of interconnections across space, exposing its vulnerability and inherent lack of resilience. Large food processing and retail companies exercise considerable lead firm powers in the governance of value chains, structured within a complex array of national, supranational and international health, trade and agricultural policy settings. This session brings together geographers interested in the makings and consequences of contemporary global food systems.

Topics for potential consideration include (but are not limited to):

• How are the food systems organised spatially? How are sites of production, provisioning and consumption connected, and by whom?
• How are food systems scaled, and what are their environmental, social, cultural and economic consequences? Localism has been highlighted as a scalar response to contradictions in food systems, but how is this enacted, by whom and with what impacts?
• How is farming being reorganised and reinserted within global food systems?
• What does the future hold for global food systems given current and future climate trajectories?
• How has Covid-19 affected food and nutrition security at different geographical scales?