Food 21: A research program looking for measures and tools to increase food chain sustainability

Abstract

Food 21, an interdisciplinary research program encompassing the whole agro-food chain, was conducted in Sweden during 1997-2004. The challenges undertaken were to come up with environmental tools and solutions to existing nonsustainable practices along the entire food chain. This required close collaboration between the scientists and the food chain stakeholders. A set of goals characterizing sustainable food production is presented in this paper. Synthesis and systems analysis were the main tools used to analyze the sustainability of proposed changes. In this introduction we give an overview of the Food 21 concept and highlight some results. For example, we found that organic farming and organic products were not in general superior to conventional products and practices with respect to environmental impact and product quality. We also summarize the management experiences in this article, since we consider them to be rather unique and since they contributed to the overall success of the program

Published in

AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
2005, volume: 34, number: 4-5, pages: 275-282
Publisher: ROYAL SWEDISH ACAD SCIENCES

SLU Authors

• Andersson, Rune

  • Department of Molecular Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Algers, Bo

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Bergström, Lars

  • Department of Soil Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Lundström, Kerstin

  • Department of Molecular Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Nybrant, Thomas Gunnar

  • Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science
Veterinary Science
Agricultural Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1639/0044-7447(2005)034[0275:FARPFM]2.0.CO;2

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/5946