Applying Transdisciplinary Models to Food and Nutrition Security: A Systems Science Perspective

The global food system has been associated with the epidemic of obesity now seen in developed (and developing) countries (Swinburn et al., 2011). At the same time, in less developed parts of the world, many continue to suffer from under-nutrition and food insecurity. Both over-nutrition and under-nutrition have an impact on individuals and, the health care system at large, leading to higher health care costs and the declining health those suffering from poor nutritional status (Finkelstein, Ruhm & Kosa, 2005; FAO.ORG, n.d.).
Hammond & Dube (2012) contend that components of the global food system, including the agricultural practices employed by it, the environmental impacts it exerts and, the aforementioned challenges to human health resulting from it provide an opportunity for the use of a “systems approach” to aid policymakers in attenuating these negative outcomes. The authors argue that multi-disciplinary, collaborative efforts, and the use of tools like agent-based modeling or systems dynamics (tools already used to generate epidemiological, economic and environmental models), can provide valuable information to help scientists and policymakers better understand the processes responsible for the simultaneous epidemics of obesity and under- nutrition. While they concede that interdisciplinary research presents challenges, the authors contend that solving food and nutritional insecurity “is likely to require the interdisciplinary collaboration of many actors across society, including health professionals, agriculturalists, food industrials, policy-makers, and scientists, and the use of unconventional approaches and tools” (Hammond & Dube, 2012). Hammond and Dube (2012) conclude that, despite the obstacles to applying multi-disciplinary, systems-based approaches to the global food system, “recent recognition of these challenges” and of the necessity for “more interdisciplinary insights” has begun to steer research and shift policy to better enable these obstacles to be surmounted.
Systems based approaches endeavor to elucidate the ways in which different components of a complex system (i.e. inputs/outputs, the behavior of sub-systems nested within it) connect to one another, with the ultimate aim of gaining a more thorough understanding of the system, as a whole. The application of interdisciplinary problem solving “involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to redefine problems outside of normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations” with an approach “guided by holism rather than reductionism” (Atlas.eu, n.d.). The global food system is “a classic example of a complex adaptive system (CAS)—a system composed of many different actors at many different levels of scale, interacting with each other in subtle and nonlinear ways that strongly influence the behavior of the system” (Neff, 2014). I agree with the assessment of Hammond & Dube (2012), the global food system lends itself to being examined through the more holistic, multi-disciplinary, systems-based approaches they suggest.
Using such approaches to overcome food system mediated challenges like obesity and under-nutrition, environmental degradation and food insecurity, would enable us to move away from the status quo “sectoral approach” to agricultural production, nutrition, food security and human health (Combs, Welch, & Duxbury, n.d.). Sectoral approaches “ tend to address problems with relatively narrow focus and to define objectives in limited ways," indeed, these approaches “have limited abilities to deal with truly complex issues” like those presented by the global food system (Combs, et al., n.d.). Additionally, the use of complex systems computational modeling techniques could allow for the exploration of “key processes and outcomes of the analysed systems for food and nutrition security, delivering innovative and deeper insights at the environmental level” (Peters, 2014).
Industrialized agricultural systems have traditionally measured success solely in terms of output (food production). Using this performance metric, one could argue that the global food system is an overwhelming success as, in the U.S. alone, the food system accounts for more than 13% of the nation’s gross domestic product (Neff, 2014). However, this figure fails to account for the many externalized costs associated with the food system including degradation of the environment, food insecurity or, various diet-related human health problems. Applying a systems-based approach to the global food system might expand this definition of success of a food system to include its impact on the environment and human health (Story, Hamm & Wallinga, 2009). The more holistic nature of systems-based approaches confers to them an ability to "encompass all relevant factors in their analyses” (Combs, et al., 2014).
Considering that systems based approaches and computational modeling have been used for some time by various other disciplines, I find it striking that they have not yet already been widely applied to the multitude of problems associated with the global food system. Having used systems-based approaches in designing “permaculture” systems has often resulted in my finding creative solutions to constraints and challenges that, more than likely, would have otherwise been elusive. In fact, the discipline of permaculture itself “is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking” (Holmgren, n.d.). According to Meadows & Wright (2008), there exist “places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.” Through observing both negative and positive feedback loops in complex and dynamic systems, we can use systems approaches to help guide responses and, course correct, as needed. The insights that systems-based approaches can provide, through their facilitation of creative, novel solutions to problems associated with complex dynamic systems renders them quite well suited to the ‘wicked’ problems that stem from the global food system.

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