Scholarlink

<p>The global food system faces intersecting challenges that have prompted calls for transformation. Central to this transformation is the management of trade-offs when balancing competing goals such as health, environmental sustainability, and equity. This qualitative study explores how food system actors navigate these trade-offs while working to shift local food systems in a positive direction. From January to April 2024, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 food system actors in U.S. and Canadian cities who had knowledge of food system transitions. Interviews were transcribed, iteratively coded, and thematically analyzed. While participants reported alignment between the various goals of food system transformation, conflicts frequently emerged. In cases where these conflicts could not be resolved, participants had to engage in trade-offs. Cost, acceptability, and food security emerged as dominant considerations in trade-offs, often constraining efforts to promote a more healthful, environmentally sustainable, and equitable food system. While grappling with these trade-offs, participants remained optimistic that food system reform was possible, suggesting that transformations are mostly hindered by narrowly framed objectives and structural features of the food system that make it difficult to enact or maintain transformative policies that challenge the status quo. We propose that transformation in the food system can be more readily achieved by reframing ineliminable trade-offs as an opportunity to balance the objectives of transformations more meaningfully.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

“The win-win is we need to talk about it”: how U.S. and Canadian food system actors navigate trade-offs in food system transformation

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月4日

查看全文
  • Jessica Barth,
  • Safura Abdool Karim,
  • Anne Barnhill,
  • Katelyn Esmonde

摘要

The global food system faces intersecting challenges that have prompted calls for transformation. Central to this transformation is the management of trade-offs when balancing competing goals such as health, environmental sustainability, and equity. This qualitative study explores how food system actors navigate these trade-offs while working to shift local food systems in a positive direction. From January to April 2024, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 food system actors in U.S. and Canadian cities who had knowledge of food system transitions. Interviews were transcribed, iteratively coded, and thematically analyzed. While participants reported alignment between the various goals of food system transformation, conflicts frequently emerged. In cases where these conflicts could not be resolved, participants had to engage in trade-offs. Cost, acceptability, and food security emerged as dominant considerations in trade-offs, often constraining efforts to promote a more healthful, environmentally sustainable, and equitable food system. While grappling with these trade-offs, participants remained optimistic that food system reform was possible, suggesting that transformations are mostly hindered by narrowly framed objectives and structural features of the food system that make it difficult to enact or maintain transformative policies that challenge the status quo. We propose that transformation in the food system can be more readily achieved by reframing ineliminable trade-offs as an opportunity to balance the objectives of transformations more meaningfully.