Project Description

Resilient food systems have become a central topic in the international debate on climate change adaptation and territorial development, given the meaningful shortcomings of modern, globalised food supply chains. Considering the complexity of securing food’s sustainability and resilience, the scientific literature supports adopting the food system approach, which provides a holistic, multilevel and cross-scale perspective to policies and initiatives. Moreover, researchers have re-embedded the territorial dimension of food as a lever for allowing resilient food system planning that accounts for urban and rural integration. However, in most contexts, food planning occurs under a limited sectoral scope, neither fully integrating with spatial planning nor interconnecting the food system’s participants. In this sense, the territorial food system approach requires new food governance that connects food and spatial planning systems, further promoting territorial and policy integration. Given those circumstances, this research will investigate the contributions of combining food and spatial planning for promoting resilient food systems. By studying one of the Portuguese urban regions, the research will characterise and analyse the present state of the local and national food policy framework and governance. More specifically, the research will entail (1) the development of a conceptual framework behind the territorial food system approach; (2) the analysis of European territorial food policies and how they integrate with spatial planning; (3) the assessment of a local-regional food system; and (4) the recommendations for the current and future food policy framework and governance backed by the theoretical and empirical findings.

Research Team

• Daniel Maia
• Sara Cruz (supervisor)

Financial Support

• FCT - UI/BD/151234/2021 

Stage of Progress

• Started in 2021