The need for a more sustainable food system

Current food systems face numerous challenges that threaten their ability to provide healthy and nutritious food to the world's growing population. Climate change, pollution, land degradation, natural resource depletion, economic turmoil and social crises challenge the ability of food systems to address food insecurity, malnutrition and hunger while providing quality food. Pressing questions such as how to overcome the negative impacts of food production and supply on the natural environment, how to reduce food waste, how to improve food safety, how to ensure that all consumers have access to healthy food, and how to ensure the resilience of food systems are waiting to be answered. 

Food systems are complex configurations involving heterogeneous actors directly (e.g. farmers, processors, wholesalers, transporters, retailers, people working in the hotel, restaurant and café/catering industries, consumers) or indirectly (developers of agricultural and food processing technologies, researchers in relevant fields of study, farm advisors, food activists) involved in the production, manufacture and supply of food. Achieving a shift towards a more environmentally friendly, economically viable and socially just food system requires the coordinated efforts of all these actors. In this sense, the competencies of the actors are critical assets that enable the transition to new, more sustainable food systems.    

The journey from understanding sustainability to acting sustainably 

Ideally, the development of sustainability-related competence should lead to transformative change, moving a person from understanding the meaning of sustainability to valuing its importance, cultivating sustainability empathy, and finally taking action to achieve sustainability goals. The continuum from awareness to action is briefly outlined below.   

Understanding sustainability

The first step in developing sustainability-related competence is to develop an awareness of sustainability, to acknowledge its complexity, to recognise and think systematically about its dimensions and interrelationships, and to be aware of how individual practices affect the environmental, social and economic sustainability of food systems.

Valuing sustainability

After understanding what sustainability is and how (uns)sustainable actions define the sustainability performance of the food system, the process of value reorientation of adult learners begins. By bringing together one's beliefs and feelings about what is worth pursuing in life, values arouse people and drive them to achieve certain (value-congruent) goals (Schwartz, 2012). A person's value system determines the appropriateness, suitability, worthiness, or legitimacy of a behaviour or practice.

Values can be case-specific, such as believing it is good to buy food from small farms to support their social sustainability without changing other consumption habits. They can also be universal, serving as reference standards and internal guidelines used in different aspects of everyday life. This form of values has a more general form and transforms the value system into a compass that guides behaviour. A consumer who supports the importance of buying organic products, a farmer who values choosing agricultural practices that take into account their impact on the sustainability of the natural environment, or a chef who sees the merit in using locally produced ingredients to prepare meals may be guided by the same set of pro-sustainability values. 

Developing empathy

Values operate by (re)shaping cognitive schemas and emotions. The cognitive strand of values refers to the ability to understand the meaning of a behaviour. The emotional component, however, is what generates empathetic responses. Put simply, when people order sustainability values as important and central to their identity, they develop empathetic mindsets that focus on caring about and wanting to help achieve sustainability-related goals. Empathetic people are willing to go the extra mile by adopting pro-sustainable behaviours that help build a better future for the environment and their communities.

Acting sustainably

Knowledge, values and their affective (empathic) responses facilitate the adoption of practices that enhance the sustainability of food systems and the abandonment of behaviours that have negative impacts. Acting can take different forms depending on one's position within a food system. For example, reducing the use of fertilisers at the farm level, using environmentally friendly packaging materials in the food industry and avoiding food waste at the consumer level are different responsible practices that support the sustainability of food systems.

Designing adult learning programmes to promote the sustainable transformation of food systems: Three key steps

Step No. 1: Embracing food systems’ complexity

Acknowledging the complicated nature of food systems and the conceptual complexity of sustainability is a good starting point for designers of adult learning programmes. Relevant programmes should be able to expose learners to the wickedness of food system sustainability and the many different - and often conflicting - ways of approaching it. Offering ready-made solutions is not the answer. A functional learning programme should be designed to provide cues and stimulate the systemic and critical thinking of adult learners. 

Step No. 2: Looking beyond knowledge

Knowledge development in learning programmes is both an end and an intermediate stage in the process of transformation of adult learners. Transformation is about re-identifying frames of reference, changing habits of mind, and changing points of view (Mezirow, 1997). Through knowledge, learners critically reflect on their value systems and establish new value priorities. In this context, the link between knowledge and value reform is essential. To make such a link, spaces for reflection and opportunities to negotiate personal beliefs and values are necessary. 

Step No. 3: Going participatory

A key question is: can all adult education programmes lead to the negotiation and reorientation of value systems? Despite the good intentions of their designers, traditional programmes that emphasise the linear transfer of knowledge from teacher to learner cannot fully achieve such a purpose, as they face challenges in addressing wicked problems related to sustainability. Today, there are some great examples of projects that promote collaborative knowledge co-creation and value creation through hands-on experimentation in multi-actor environments such as social labs, living labs or challenge labs. The common feature of these approaches is the exchange of knowledge and values between heterogeneous actors such as adult education providers and industry, universities, societal actors, governmental and EU-level organisations and citizens.

References

Charatsari, C., Fragkoulis, I., Anagnou, E., & Lioutas, E. D. (2022). Can adult education boost sustainability transitions? Some evidence from farmers and teachers. Sustainability, 14, 9859. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169859
Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 74, 5-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.7401
Schwartz, S. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. 2, 11. https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116.

About Chrysanthi Charatsari

Chrysanthi holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Education and Extension from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has completed four post-doctoral fellowships in Agricultural extension, Rural sociology and Adult education. She participates as scientific director or research associate in many projects funded by the European Union and/or national funds. Among other research activities, she has developed an adapted version of Farmer Field Schools for Greek farmers. Today she is a visiting lecturer at the Hellenic Open University and a post-doctoral researcher at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited books and proceedings of international and national conferences. Her research interests include agricultural extension/education, agricultural innovation, digitalisation, sustainability transitions and innovative learning techniques.

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