Conceptualizing and Creating Sustainable Food Systems: How Interdisciplinarity can Help

The concept of sustainability has been one of the key alternative food discourses challenging the limitations of the current practices in the agri-food system. Talking about sustainability of the modern food system that has systematically encouraged destruction of rural livelihoods while turning millions of people into urban consumers suffering from either malnutrition, eating disorders, or obesity should be a seen as an alarming tendency rather than a societal objective. In its liberal version, the sustainability discourse identifies structural problems of the market economy as market failures that need to be remedied with proper policy initiatives. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit (WFS) Plan of Action were reading sustainability manifestos identifying sustainable food security for all, sustainable progress in poverty eradication, sustainable agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development, and sustainable management of natural resources as prime objectives.