Examining food systems: a research framework at a national level.

Abstract

There is wide consensus on the urgency to transform current food systems to be more sustainable and fairer. The aim of this article is to advance understandings of the functioning of national food systems and identify levers of change that could enable such transformation. Departing from food regimes—which address global food relations throughout the contemporary history of capitalism—and combining it with the approaches of social metabolism and surplus/reproduction, we propose a research framework to study food systems at the national scale, and in particular their role in the reproduction processes of the capitalist system. We use a national scale as unit of analysis because of the relevant roles the state holds on food systems. The resulting research framework consist of six dimensions, which encompass thirty elements in total, linked through six key cross-cutting connections. By doing so, we contribute to expand on food regime by overcoming some of its main limitations: remaining at the world scale and its level of abstraction. In addition, we expand the political economy of food systems and link it to political ecology.