Achieving food security through food system resilience

Jean-Charles Le Vallée

Food provision systems (FPS) have a need for better conceptual and applied tools to evaluate the extent to which they can be made robust and provide a more stable foundation for attaining and maintaining food security in the long-term. The first of three purposes of the thesis is to conceptually design and appraise a more robust FPS resilience framework that integrates the dynamics between ecological, social and economic wealth, connectivity and diversity, and the four basic food security pillars. Based on this framework, the second purpose of this thesis uses Belize as a case study to appraise current food security levels and apply the framework at two distinct scales. The appraisal found Belizean FPS to be highly susceptible to natural hazards, unstable macro-economic conditions, eroding trade preferential treatment, as well as household financial difficulties. In addition, although...