Resilience and Food Security in a Food Systems Context

This open access book compiles a series of chapters written by internationally recognized experts known for their in-depth but critical views on questions of resilience and food security. The book assesses rigorously and critically the contribution of the concept of resilience in advancing our understanding and ability to design and implement development interventions in relation to food security and humanitarian crises. For this, the book departs from the narrow beaten tracks of agriculture and trade, which have influenced the mainstream debate on food security for nearly 60 years, and adopts instead a wider, more holistic perspective, framed around food systems. The foundation for this new approach is the recognition that in the current post-globalization era, the food and nutritional security of the world’s population no longer depends just on the performance of agriculture and policies on trade, but rather on the capacity of the entire (food) system to produce, process, transport and distribute safe, affordable and nutritious food for all, in ways that remain environmentally sustainable. In that context, adopting a food system perspective provides a more appropriate frame as it incites to broaden the conventional thinking and to acknowledge the systemic nature of the different processes and actors involved. This book is written for a large audience, from academics to policymakers, students to practitioners.

This is an open access book.

​Christophe Béné is Senior Researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)--a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He has 20+ years of experience conducting interdisciplinary research and advisory work in different parts of the world (Africa, Asia, Pacific), focusing on poverty alleviation, food security, and more generally low income countries’ economic development. In his career, he worked on a wide range of topics, including natural resource management, analysis of policy and science-policy interface, resilience (measurement), and more recently food system.
Stephen Devereux is a development economist who works on famine, food security and social protection, with a focus on Africa. His work experience includes three years heading a Rural Research Programme at the University of Namibia and one year researching household drought responses in rural Ghana. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex since 1996, where he co-founded the Centre for Social Protection in 2005. In 2016 he was awarded a South Africa-UK Bilateral Research Chair in Social Protection for Food Security by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Newton Fund, affiliated to the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.