This book offers a novel approach to sustainable development through the theory and practice of communication in global food networks, focusing specifically on organic food and fair trade movements. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it brings together the fields of Communication for Development and Social Change, Agri-Food Studies and Economic Geography. This is supported with a participatory method that unveils voices from Indian farming communities, small European businesses and UK-based consumers. The book exemplifies the integral role of communication in sustainable development through direct and mediated communication processes that bring these actors together in the global food market. Such processes include trade relations, self-representation, and information and knowledge exchange through the spaces of the internet. Through these processes the book uncovers the instrumental role of communication in building a more holistic understanding of sustainable development. It also advocates that sustainable solutions require smaller, self-sustained projects and initiatives that pay closer attention to the voices and localized experiences of the people on the ground.

The Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development is a major resource for stakeholders interested in understanding the role of communication in achieving the UN’S Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing together theoretical and applied contributions from scholars in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and North America, the handbook argues that communication is a key factor in achieving the global goals and suggests a review of the SDGs to consider its importance. Reflecting on the impact of COVID-19, it highlights the need for effective communication infrastructure and critically assesses the 2030 agenda and timeline. Including individual SDG and country case studies as well as integrated analysis, the chapters seek to enrich understanding of communication for development and propose crucial policy interventions. It is critical reading for researchers as well as policy makers and NGOs.

An interdisciplinary framework for managing sustainable agrifood supply chains Supply Chain Management for Sustainable Food Networks provides an up-to-date and interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating sustainable supply chains for agri-food products. Focus is given to decision-making procedures and methodologies enabling policy-makers, managers and practitioners to design and manage effectively sustainable agrifood supply chain networks. Authored by high profile researchers with global expertise in designing and operating sustainable supply chains in the agri-food industry, this book: Features the entire hierarchical decision-making process for managing sustainable agrifood supply chains. Covers knowledge-based farming, management of agricultural wastes, sustainability, green supply chain network design, safety, security and traceability, IT in agrifood supply chains, carbon footprint management, quality management, risk management and policy- making. Explores green supply chain management, sustainable knowledge-based farming, corporate social responsibility, environmental management and emerging trends in agri-food retail supply chain operations. Examines sustainable practices that are unique for agriculture as well as practices that already have been implemented in other industrial sectors such as green logistics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Supply Chain Management for Sustainable Food Networks provides a useful resource for researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, regulators and C-level executives that deal with strategic decision-making. Post-graduate students in the field of agriculture sciences, engineering, operations management, logistics and supply chain management will also benefit from this book.

The introduction of Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has traced a path for private and public entities interested in pursuing sustainable development. This handbook identifies the recent challenges in accounting research and the SDGs by exploring the evolutionary pathways and future direction of sustainability reporting. It explores the role of businesses as contributors to Agenda 2030 by assuming a multidisciplinary approach and provides a measure of organisations' contributions to the SDGs through the understanding of business strategies and policies on Agenda 2030 integration. The book represents a substantial and multi-faceted contribution to the debate on SDGs accounting by assembling international scholars and practitioners to effectively explore the practice and theory revolving around the current state of the art and highlight future research pathways. By providing a comprehensive evaluation of accounting for the Sustainable Development Goals, this volume will appeal to a wide variety of readers, from students, scholars, researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in increasing their awareness of Agenda 2030 and offers a significant contribution to the evolution of accounting practices.

As awareness of the commodification of food for profit at the expense of our health and the planet grows, this book foregrounds the communicative dimensions of resistance by food movements. Voice and participation are argued by the author to be the means through which rural and urban communities can, and in many cases do, resist the capture of value by corporate actors and work to democratise their foodscapes. Her critical analysis of meaning-making under neo-liberalism suggests that agroecology, as a socially activating form of agriculture within a food sovereignty framework, provides an example of social learning relevant across rural/urban and North/South divides. Embracing indigenous knowledge, gender equity and postcolonial theory, this approach mobilises growers and eaters to contest the power structures that shape their food environments, and also to focus on social and economic justice within their communities, particularly in the context of climate change. Participatory ecologies that incorporate these forms of social learning encourage the co-creation of inclusive foodscapes and politicise food justice. Such a positive framing of resistance through horizontal pedagogy, participation, communication and social learning processes contrasts with the vertical dissemination structure of the corporatised food regime and takes vital steps towards a more democratic food system. Voice and Participation in Global Food Politics will be of interest to scholars of agri-food, transdisciplinary food studies and political economy of food systems. It will also be of relevance to NGOs and policymakers.

This book offers a fresh set of innovative and creative contributions related to the role of communication in processes of change. Given the current fast pace of social-economic, political and technological change across the globe, and the central role of communication in this, there is a growing need to reconceptualize how we approach communication and change that provides entry points to help us expand and enrich our scholarly and practical work. This collection presents 14 concepts from a multi-disciplinary collection of internationally leading and emerging scholars, from 13 countries on 5 continents. They come together around three meta-topics: citizenship and justice, critiques of development, and renewing thought (from and for the margins). The short chapter format ensures that authors get straight to the nub of their ideas, providing readers — students, scholars and practitioners alike — with accessible, engaging and innovative ways to think critically about communication and social change, in new ways.

Providing the theoretical and conceptual framework for this continually evolving field, Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems, Second Edition explores environmental factors and complexities affecting agricultural crops and animals. Completely revised, updated, and reworked, the second edition contains new data, new readings, new issu

Using sustainable food value chain development (SFVCD) approaches to reduce poverty presents both great opportunities and daunting challenges. SFVCD requires a systems approach to identifying root problems, innovative thinking to find effective solutions and broad-based partnerships to implement programmes that have an impact at scale. In practice, however, a misunderstanding of its fundamental nature can easily result in value-chain projects having limited or non-sustainable impact. Furthermore, development practitioners around the world are learning valuable lessons from both failures and successes, but many of these are not well disseminated. This new set of handbooks aims to address these gaps by providing practical guidance on SFVCD to a target audience of policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners. This first handbook provides a solid conceptual foundation on which to build the subsequent handbooks. It (1) clearly defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain; (2) presents and discusses a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added; (3) presents, discusses and illustrates ten principles that underlie SFVCD; and (4) discusses the potential and limitations of using the value-chain concept in food-systems development. By doing so, the handbook makes a strong case for placing SFVCD at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

In recent years, Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) have been a key issue both in the scientific community and in public debates. This is due to their profound implications for rural development, local sustainability, and bio-economics. This edited collection discusses what the main determinants of the participation of operators – both consumers and producers – in AFNs are, what the conditions for their sustainability are, what their social and environmental effects are, and how they are distributed geographically. Further discussions include the effect of AFNs in structuring the food chain and how AFNs can be successfully scaled up. The authors explicitly take an interdisciplinary approach to analyse AFNs from different perspectives, using as an example the Italian region of Piedmont, a particularly interesting case study due to the diffusion of AFNs in the area, as well as due to the fact that it was in this region that the ‘Slow Food’ movement originated.

This book introduces the human right to adequate food and nutrition as evolving concept and identifies two structural "disconnects" fueling food insecurity for a billion people, and disproportionally affecting women, children, and rural food producers: the separation of women’s rights from their right to adequate food and nutrition, and the fragmented attention to food as commodity and the medicalization of nutritional health. Three conditions arising from these disconnects are discussed: structural violence and discrimination frustrating the realization of women’s human rights, as well as their private and public contributions to food and nutrition security for all; many women’s experience of their and their children’s simultaneously independent and intertwined subjectivities during pregnancy and breastfeeding being poorly understood in human rights law and abused by poorly-regulated food and nutrition industry marketing practices; and the neoliberal economic system’s interference both with the autonomy and self-determination of women and their communities and with the strengthening of sustainable diets based on democratically governed local food systems. The book calls for a social movement-led reconceptualization of the right to adequate food toward incorporating gender, women’s rights, and nutrition, based on the food sovereignty framework.