Climate Change in the food supply chain – Framing, discourse and governance
Lead Researchers:
Peter H. Feindt and Andrew Flynn
Background
Climate change has emerged as one of the big challenges for societies and economies in the 21st centuries, with concerns about food production looming high in key documents like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Globally, agriculture contributes 13.5% to greenhouse gas emission (IPCC 2007, 36). But the climate change impacts of the food sector can not be equated with those for agricultural production. The latter includes non foods, but the food sector encompasses wholesaling, processing, retailers and upstream activities (fertilizer, machinery, breeding). A swelling stream of studies highlights that once the food system is analysed as a whole, by focussing on consumption, then the food industry emerges as a major contributor to climate change.
Therefore the food sector is both a location of key vulnerabilities (and some considerable medium-term opportunities) and a major source of climate change. The situation appears fuzzy and urgent at the same time. While an understanding of the challenges and causal links is only emerging, the size of the transformations deemed necessary by some is so enormous that they provoke calls for urgent action or denial and defence.
In situations of uncertainty and crisis, the prevailing interpretation of limited evidence determines the course of action (or inaction). Where stakes are high, such interpretations are typically contested. While contestation can remain on a low level of visibility for a while, it can act as a forceful barrier to coordinated action.
This study analyses interpretations of climate change in the food supply chain and their practical and institutional implications. We assume that currently the discourse is entering a new stage in which it will no longer be possible to stay silent on climate change. This is creating a shifting discursive terrain since every actor in every food supply chain will soon have to explain their practices and plans against which they can be held responsible. We therefore presume that the way key actors in the sector frame climate change passes through a formative stage in which contested ideas about responsibilities, opportunities and governance are transformed into competing practices and governance arrangements that will be influential in the long run.
The study looks at the UK food sector in general with a focus on red meat, horticulture (salad vegetables) and cereals (wheat).
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