Analysis of the evolution of agri-food systems in Western Europe (1986-2020): ISSSA, a synthetic indicator of sovereignty and sustainability.

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, agri-food systems have experienced a set of transformations that are not only relevant in themselves, but also highlight new challenges, new debates, new research approaches and, therefore, new methodologies that allow us to approach the old and new realities. In order to analyze these transformations from new perspectives, in previous works an alternative system of evaluation of the changes experienced by agri-food systems was developed based on the identification of the evaluable principles that define the concept of food sovereignty. This article takes another step in this direction. For the synthetic presentation of the proposed multifactorial analysis, the ISSSA has been constructed: Index of Sustainability and Sovereignty of Agri-food Systems. This indicator is calculated for 7 countries representative of three large geographical areas that would make up Western Europe, with Spain and Italy for Mediterranean Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom, for Central-Atlantic Europe, with France between these first two regions, and Denmark and Sweden for Scandinavia, with the aim of analyzing the transformations experienced by their agri-food systems between 1986 and 2020. The analytical exercise carried out allows us to confirm that there has been a progressive loss of sovereignty and sustainability in all the regions analyzed.