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.

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?

This project creates stronger ties between actors in the food system through targeted stakeholder interventions with producers, retailers and consumers. A novel and innovative approach to these interventions is the inclusion of integrated and co-designed IT applications to aid in communication between stakeholders. The IT applications will include backend models that quantify a region's optimal environmentally-sustainable production capacity based on a healthy diet. In addition, social network metrics will be calculated from the online social interactions of stakeholders and fed into the backend models. The frontend will be designed to maximise the communication of these outputs to stakeholders in an easy-to-comprehend way.

While innovative IT approaches seek to enhance the connectivity of actors in the regional food system, household interviews, photo elicitation and audio food diaries will collect information for analysing the impact of greater connectivity on household food culture (considered as household food purchasing, preparation and consumption) and whether these mechanisms can drive healthier and more sustainable food consumption. Triangulation of data sources will enable cross-referencing of results from analyses, facilitating a deeper understanding of how improved connectivity of actors influences household food culture.

The proposed research aims to improve the resilience of the UK food sector, by reconnecting producers and consumers, thereby cultivating healthier diets and environmentally sustainable production systems. Therefore, this research aims to positively impact all of UK society. In the short-term, our research will benefit consumers and producers who participate in workshops and social network activities. Specifically, the research will impact: how producers relate with their customers and ultimately choose which crops to grow and livestock to rear; consumers and their understanding of, and participation in, the processes of sustainable agriculture; relationships between food intake, nutrition and health; UK and devolved government agricultural policy; the way we approach research on producer-relationships in the UK food system; and local and regional economies. In the long run, research activities and outputs will impact the ways in which different actors in the food system interact, thereby laying the foundations for the creation of strong social bonds between producers and producers; producers and consumers; and consumers and consumers.

The models identifying the capacity of different regions to produce healthy and sustainable food will be transferable to other areas of the UK and potentially internationally. Producers engaging with project researchers will benefit from the insights developed through household interviews with CSA customers. The interview tool is designed to both address our research questions, and meet producers' need to understand their impact on household food culture, so that they can provide an improved service for their CSA members / consumers. This may impact how they communicate and the type of information they share with consumers, with positive outcomes for customer satisfaction and stronger connections between consumers and producers.

The importance of social capital between producers is understood to be critical in the development of sustainable food systems, especially in the absence of strong economic incentives. Producers often receive information on farming inputs directly from other producers; this creates a network that producers rely upon for sourcing information on what crops to grow and which inputs to use. Food consumption is also highly influenced by social capital. Food is an important part of cultural identity and social wellbeing. The research team will develop innovative IT tools to help facilitate communication and relationships between producers and potential consumers of their food. A particularly impactful component of this project - and one that sets it apart from others - is the ability of the developed approaches to be replicated and scaled up to influence millions of people living in the UK.

Interactive visual tools will be developed to enable consumers and producers to interface with the agricultural models. The tools will help consumers and producers to negotiate a sustainable and healthy regional food system based on desirable production and consumption practices. The research team will also produce socio-digital tools for meaningfully connecting producers, retailers and consumers in a regionally-based food system. The tools will help actors in the regional food system to realise the desirable food system attributes identified by research participants. The tools, used in combination with outcomes from social network analysis, could potentially be widely dispersed through social networks. While the proposed research activities will deliver a prototype, these tools can serve as a first step to transforming regional food systems towards more sustainable production and healthier consumption.

Research outputs will form an evidence-base that can be adopted or adapted for local and regional authorities of each case study region. Research briefs in language appropriate for layperson will maximise project impact on local and regional place-based policy.