Abstract:
A Food System comprises a complex set of activities, interactions and actors
along the food value chain involving production, aggregation, processing,
distribution, consumption and disposal of food products. These food products
could originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader
economic, societal and natural environments in which they are embedded.
Sustainability of a food system is focused on simultaneously generating
positive values along the three dimensions, namely, economic, social and
environmental. The challenges are multiple and multi-faceted, especially for
countries like Sri Lanka, to make the food system more climate resilient, more
productive and to make it more inclusive of poor and marginalized populations
than the current scenario. The food systems link the cities with rural areas
within a country, and operate in a complex operational setting with many
actors, under many scenarios such as COVID-19 pandemic, variable and
changing climate, man-made food crisis due to imposition of irrational policy
decisions (e.g. the policy decision taken to ban the importation of synthetic
fertilizer and pesticides), etc. Therefore, the vulnerabilities, weaknesses and
strengths of food systems operating within geographic regions of Sri Lanka is
a need by tracing food flows to help strengthening local food systems by
eliminating inefficiencies in different operational nodes. Tracing the flows and
sources of food (food flow analysis) is an important way of identifying food
system activities taking place within city region boundaries and obtaining a
sense of food system vulnerabilities, weaknesses and strengths. The path that
food flows from production to consumption, and waste disposal, is
important to determine where the potentially significant inefficiencies would
occur. At each operational step in the flow, active management of food
preparation and processes is an essential part of business operations that will
strengthen the rural-urban connectivity in terms of food production, value
addition, and food supply. Sri Lanka needs results of such scientific efforts to
provide unique insights into the debates surrounding the sustainability of
production and consumption at multiple scales.