Systemic Inequality, Sustainability and COVID-19 provides an opportunity to engage in a critical dialog on the consequences and interactions of COVID-19 with social inequalities and environment management.

Food is fundamental to health and social participation, yet food poverty has increased in the global North. Adopting a realist ontology and taking a comparative case approach, Families and Food in Hard Times addresses the global problem of economic retrenchment and how those most affected are those with the least resources. Based on research carried out with low-income families with children aged 11-15, this timely book examines food poverty in the UK, Portugal and Norway in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. It examines the resources to which families have access in relation to public policies, local institutions and kinship and friendship networks, and how they intersect. Through ‘thick description’ of families’ everyday lives, it explores the ways in which low income impacts upon practices of household food provisioning, the types of formal and informal support on which families draw to get by, the provision and role of school meals in children’s lives, and the constraints upon families’ social participation involving food. Providing extensive and intensive knowledge concerning the conditions and experiences of low-income parents as they endeavour to feed their families, as well as children’s perspectives of food and eating in the context of low income, the book also draws on the European social science literature on food and families to shed light on the causes and consequences of food poverty in austerity Europe.

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.

Tania Lewis offers the first critical account of the impact of digital information, media, and communication technologies on the topic of food. Lewis critically analyzes how our relationship to food consumption, production, and politics is being re-mediated through digitally connected electronic devices, practices and content. By drawing together the world of food and the digital, the book speaks to a number of pressing contemporary themes including the tensions around digital engagement in increasingly commercialized spaces; the changing nature of politics in a social media context; the growing naturalization of digital devices and related practices of data monitoring; and the role and impact of digitization on social relations. At the forefront of critical new research, and written with a student readership in mind, this text is essential for scholars interested in media studies, cultural studies, food studies, and cultural geography.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on the study of different cities in the Global South, this book explores how the intensive use of data changes politics, power relations, and everyday life in contemporary cities. Across the volume, expert contributors show how urban actors, from the state to activists, are increasingly using data as a resource to empower their actions and support their claims, while also demonstrating how times of crisis are moments when the power of data is made visible. Focusing on the different dimensions of data power and politics in the urban realm, this is an important contribution to our understanding of how datafication transforms the places in which we live and how we experience them.

This book explores the links between food and democracy. It addresses how democratic principles can be used to shape our food system and takes a practical ‘how-to’ approach to using democratic processes to regain control of the food we eat. It also highlights what food democracy looks like on the ground and how individuals, communities and societies can be empowered to access, cook and eat healthy food in ways that are sustainable. Food democracy, as a concept, is a social movement based on the idea that people can and should be able to actively participate in shaping the food system rather than being passive spectators. The book is useful for university and advanced TAFE courses that cover topics examining food in health sciences, social sciences and other areas of study. It is also relevant to health practitioners, nutritionists, food advocates, policy makers and others with a keen interest in exploring an alternative to the industrial food system known as “Big Food.”

This Working Paper takes comprehensive stock of the impacts of the first two waves of COVID-19 (in Q2 and Q4 2020) on the microfinance sector in Myanmar. We discuss potential impact pathways, review policy responses to the crisis, and present new quantitative analysis based on a set of surveys with respondents throughout the agricultural value chain. Additionally, we briefly review impacts since the military takeover on February 1, 2021. Overall, various disruptions to the microfinance sector, particularly during peak periods of COVID-19, significantly reduced overall lending from April 2020, onward. These disruptions, along with disruptions to external financing, led to greater informal borrowing, likely greater indebtedness, and lower food security. However, policy responses and financing accommodations to microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Q2 and Q3 2020 cushioned the sector against widespread insolvency. The events since the military takeover are creating new challenges, exacerbating the aforementioned impacts, and raising new risks of MFI insolvency and broader crises around food security, indebtedness, and poverty. Considering these findings, stakeholder recommendations underscore the importance of easing the movement of international and domestic goods. Efforts should be focused on meeting the MFIs’ need for loanable funds through mechanisms such as exchange rate hedging, credit guarantees, and loan enhancement, while continuing to encourage flexibility around existing financing. When the time comes for a full recovery, there should be a focus on facilitating additional financial injections so that MFIs can more effectively restart lending operations.

This document analyzes the state of world food. The three first chapters explain the world food crisis, demand, need and supply. The two following chapters highlight the impacts of environmental degradation on yield and the impacts of expansion of food production on biodiversity and ecosystems. The solutions are explained in two chapters with detailed description of the seven sustainable options for increasing food security.

Today there are over a billion hungry people on the planet, more than ever before in history. While the global food crisis dropped out of the news in 2008, it returned in 2011 (and is threatening us again in 2012) and remains a painful reality for the world's poor and underserved. Why, in a time of record harvests, are a record number of people going hungry? And why are a handful of corporations making record profits? In Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, authors Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck offer us the real story behind the global food crisis and document the growing trend of grassroots solutions to hunger spreading around the world. Food Rebellions! contains up to date information about the current political and economic realities of our food systems. Anchored in political economy and an historical perspective, it is a valuable academic resource for understanding the root causes of hunger, growing inequality, the industrial agri-foods complex, and political unrest. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Holt-Giménez and Patel give a detailed historical analysis of the events that led to the global food crisis and document the grassroots initiatives of social movements working to forge food sovereignty around the world. These social movements and this inspiring book compel readers to confront the crucial question: Who is hungry, why, and what can we do about it?