Food loss and waste are associated with an unnecessary consumption of natural resources and avoidable greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations have thus set the reduction of food loss and waste ...on the political agenda by means of the Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3. The German Federal Government committed itself to this goal by implementing the National Strategy for Food Waste Reduction in 2019. However, this policy approach relies heavily on voluntary action by involved actors and neglects the possible role of power imbalances along the food supply chain. While current research on food loss and waste in industrialised countries predominantly focuses on the consumer level, this study puts emphasis on the under-researched early stages of the food supply chain from the field to retailers’ warehouses. Based on 22 expert interviews with producers, producer organisations and retailers, this article identifies major inter-stage drivers of food loss in the supply chains for fresh fruit and vegetables in Germany. Its main novelty is to demonstrate how market power imbalances and risk shifting between powerful and subordinate actors can reinforce the tendency of food loss on the part of producers further up the supply chain. Results indicate that prevalent institutional settings, such as contractual terms and conditions, trading practices, ordering processes, product specifications, and communication privilege retailers and encourage food loss. The mechanisms in which these imbalances manifest, go beyond the European Commission’s current legislation on Unfair Trading Practices. This study suggests a research agenda that might help to formulate adjusted policy instruments for re-structuring the German fruit and vegetable markets so that less food is wasted.
In 2022, engineers at Rice University revealed a new procedure to reanimate the corpse of a spider. Hailed as a biotechnological achievement, the experimental procedures designed to convert death ...into useful, productive labor portend a deepening of necrocapitalism and the violence of science. In this commentary, we call attention to three overlapping dimensions epitomized by scientifically reanimated spiders: (a) the fetishization of violence, (b) the subsumption of life and death to circuits of capital, and (c) the contradictions inherent in necrocapitalism. We view the necrobotic spider as an omen, one that calls us to refigure our understanding of violence in a post-humanist and post-anthropocentric way.
Circular economies are an important pillar of sustainable production and consumption. This particularly applies to the agri-food industry, which is characterised by large amounts of organic waste and ...by-product streams posing a serious challenge for many food producers. Therefore, respective firms increasingly adopt circular economy business models (CEBMs) to manage these resource flows effectively. However, there is only little knowledge on the functioning of CEBMs in bio-based industries, especially from a socio-economic perspective. We address this gap by exploring enablers and motivations behind such business models as well as the institutional contexts they are embedded in. In methodological terms, we adopt a case study approach using the example of potato production in Lower Saxony (northwest Germany). The core of the paper is a qualitative in-depth analysis of four potato processors, adopting varying business models to valorise their by-product streams (e.g. peels, scraps, pulp) either ‘in-house’ or in partnerships with external partners. The findings show that the implementation of CEBMs results from a complex interplay of internal and external enablers, with economic considerations as the main impetus for the management of biological reverse cycles. Thereby, we found a shifting economic logic in the assessment of potato by-products from disposable waste to valuable resources for other sectors (e.g. livestock farming, bioenergy, biofuels). While being encouraged by targeted policies, the companies studied feel increasingly affected by emerging sustainability discourses, prompting them to (re)design and (re)frame their CEBMs in view of environmental and societal issues.
Public catering has become increasingly important in recent years. With increasing annual customers, the sector’s impact on the environment is also growing continuously. At the same time, public ...catering offers a lever to promote sustainable nutrition that has rarely been used so far. Small changes in kitchen practices and food offers can thus be multiplied into a significant positive impact on environmental challenges, such as climate change or loss of biodiversity due to the large number of servings. In contrast to private households, management decisions in public catering can influence the food-related environmental impact of thousands of customers. This article deals with the nationwide level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use in the German public catering segment “business” and its saving potentials by different scenarios of unsupported and supported recipe revision. In this paper, we define "unsupported" as the intuitive optimization of recipes by employees of public catering businesses. In contrast, “supported” approaches had to meet specific target goals, for example of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung; engl. German Nutrition Society or the sustainable level. Specifically, we will test how (A) an unsupported recipe revision, (B) a recipe revision based on dietary recommendations and (C) a recipe revision using scientific guidance affect the environmental impact of a dish. As a methodological framework, an online survey of public catering companies was conducted as well as a scenario analysis at menu level and at nationwide level. The results are based on empirical data on the one hand, and on extrapolations on the other. The results show that the nationwide implementation of recipe revision according to scientific guidance—such as concrete target goals for the GHG emissions per serving—can save up to 44% of resource use in the German business catering sector (which corresponds to 3.4 million tons of resources per year) and as much as 40% of GHG emissions (0.6 million tons GHG emissions per year). Even in the scenario of unsupported recipe revision, GHG and resource savings of up to 20% can be realized. The results show that public catering can reduce its material and carbon footprint by 20% overnight. Moreover, the findings show indications for the sustainable transformation of public catering. Nevertheless, it must be noted that these are some first steps of the transformation, which will require further changes with even greater impacts and political activities.
The multi-level perspective has been criticized for being functionalistic and paying little attention to actor-based perspectives. Nevertheless, for the identification and assessment of potential ...change agents in a sustainability transition, a clear conceptual and methodological approach is necessary. This paper, thus, develops a multi-dimensional typology of niche, regime, and hybrid actors, which is conceptually grounded in transition studies and empirically illustrated by a cluster analysis based on a survey of pig and poultry farmers in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Animal husbandry is chosen as a case study because a significant share of the environmental impact within the agri-food system is attributed to this sector and there is evidence for resistance to change by mainstream actors. Conceptually, the paper provides a framework of constitutive elements for different kinds of actors and contributes to an extension of the niche–regime dichotomy by adding the group of hybrid actors. The empirical results show that cluster analysis is a suitable approach to identify conceptually meaningful differences among interviewed farmers. Among pig and poultry farmers, the regime actors are by far the largest group. The smaller group of hybrid actors, however, has large potential to act as boundary spanners. A particularly interesting finding is that several larger farms are among the group of niche actors which hints at the possibility that larger farms are not necessarily resistant to change.
The significance of educational research is today predicated on its ability to engage with the ecological, economic, and political challenges of the anthropocene, for where we might take seriously ...education's commitment to the future necessitates a sustained encounter with the implications and questions raised in the wake of 'our' mutated planetary ecology. To repeat in the image of those educational practices, models and patterns of thinking that have contributed to the contemporary ecological crisis of the planet falls gravely short of apprehending what it might entail to live (and die) in the contemporary moment. Yet further, where education is intimate to teleology, it is today clear that the image of the future posited educationally has fallen out of synch with the 'outside thought' of ecocatastrophe, or rather, our being 'thought' from the inhuman perspective of a planet destined to go on without us. Educationally, this threat poses a quite remarkable opportunity, for where human thought might be doomed to extinction, the question of how and where we might think assumes urgency. In this vein, this essay explores the wisdom that 'we' are and will be thought from perspectives alien to human desire becomes a catalyst for how educational research might be rethought otherwise in a more-than-human world.
Much sustainable development in agri-food systems is predicated upon increasing the production of agricultural commodities amid changing climates, political organization, and markets. While this ...growth in exports is critical for the expansion of alternative production supply chains like certified organic commodities markets, the long-term success of alternative agriculture development programs in helping farmers achieve a range of rural aspirations depends not on sociotechnical fixes for specific ecological problems, but on the creative and performative reorganizations of labor and value in farm spaces. Degrowth, a political-economic theory of reorganizing production to achieve socio-ecological sustainability over the long term, provides a framework to evaluate the lasting impact of alternative agricultural development or persistent smallholder farming beyond the production or sale of agricultural commodities. This paper draws on research with organic cotton and coffee farmers in India, as well as a brief case study with small-scale heritage farmers in Bosnia, to argue that sustainability, broadly conceived, must account for factors beyond resource-efficiency or yields. Small-scale organic farming in India and household allotments in Bosnia will never outperform agri-food commodities producers with respect to profits, yields, or sustained growth. However, a degrowth perspective suggests that these are the wrong metrics for sustainability. Efforts that keep farmers in place and with local autonomy are best positioned to ensure that small-scale farmers can continue to manage agricultural landscapes over the long term.
A Place for Everything Young, Liam
Architectural design,
01/2019, Letnik:
89, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Amazon's warehouse shelves look chaotic – far from the orderliness of a traditional store or library. So how are our online orders fulfilled at such speed? Guest‐Editor Liam Young reports on ...Madrid‐based British photographer
Ben Roberts
's exploration of this environment governed by computer algorithms.
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