Transforming Food System Relationships

In this project, we will investigate the role that regional food systems could play in promoting healthier and more sustainable production and consumption practices, and how we can use IT to catalyse relationships between consumers and producers to achieve this. In doing so, we seek to increase the proportion of a healthy diet comprised of food produced regionally.

We will address two overarching questions: 1. How can regional UK landscapes deliver healthy food sustainably? and 2. Can new and equitable relationships between food chain actors drive more sustainable production and consumption practices?

We will focus on two diverse case study regions, East Anglia (dominated by arable and horticulture) and South Wales (dominated by livestock systems). Within these case study areas there are various levels of connectivity between producers and consumers, ranging from systems where consumers communicate directly with producers, exemplified by Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups, to those where supply chains are long and consumers are disconnected from the source of their food and the environmental consequences of its production.

To investigate the first question, we will develop a model to quantify the impact of crop and livestock systems in each case study region in terms of (i) production, (ii) farm profitability, (iii) environmental impact (greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient and pesticide leaching, soil health) and (iv) associated dietary balance. We will use this model to quantify a 'business as usual state' and to explore the impact of scenarios where the configurations of crops and livestock in the region align more closely with recommendations for a healthy balanced diet.

These scenarios will account for environmental, processing, and seasonality constraints. Data from existing national surveys and data collected during the project on farm practice and farmer networks will be used in the models.

The second overarching question will be addressed through farmer and consumer interviews, photo elicitation, audio food diaries, network surveys, and a series of workshops where food system stakeholders (consumers, retailers and producers) will use digital tools to facilitate co-creation of scenarios for an improved regional food system. CSAs provide a model system where consumers directly engage with producers.

We will target new CSA customers, and through a series of interviews across the lifetime of the project assess to what extent these positive associations between farmers and consumers influence food choices over time. As a transformative project, we will address how to strengthen the relationship between consumers and producers (either direct or through retailers), and the implications of food choice on health and the environment.

We maintain that mechanisms based on IT have an essential role to play here in transitioning to "business unusual", both in terms of building social capital and communicating the impact of choices to stakeholders in the food system. We will explore the current and future role that social media (for example Twitter) plays in building and strengthening producer-producer and producer-consumer relationships and how this could be exploited further.

Within each set of workshops, we will use digital tools based on the models described above to co-create scenarios for a regional based food system. These tools will enable stakeholders to negotiate future scenarios for regional food systems by assisting them to visualise trade-offs and synergies between production, farm profitability, environmental impact and delivery of healthy balanced diets.

The findings from these workshops, the network analysis and interviews will form a basis for the design of digital prototypes for connecting food system stakeholders which will be deployed and evaluated. Through these innovative interdisciplinary methods, the research team seeks novel approaches to address UK food security needs.