A comparative national-level analysis of government food system resilience activities across four developed countries at varying stages of planning

We selected the countries to include in this comparative analysis in two steps. Firstly, because to date there is no central repository for government food system resilience plans, we completed internet searches for national-level food system resilience plans using the following search terms in different variations: (food OR food system) (supply chain OR food supply chain) AND (food system resilience OR climate resilience OR resilience) AND (government OR national) AND (plan OR planning) AND (policy OR policies) AND (strategy OR strategies). The search produced 36 results. Secondly, we reviewed each search result, as we required the documentation to be available in English, published by a national government department, be written within the last 10 years, and greater than two pages in length. From the limited country documentation available we then sought to identify similar or “peer” nations for comparison based on the following criteria: (a) they have established primary sectors (agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture); (b) they are categorized by the World Bank as “high-income economies”; (c) they have documented vulnerabilities to shocks and stressors; and (d) they have food insecurity [23]. We also wanted countries that represented different regions of the world and were geographically dispersed (North America, Europe, and Oceania) and not contiguous countries. We selected four nations to be included in the analysis: Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, and the United States. Australia, Sweden, and the United States have published national-level food system resilience documents (reviews, policies, or strategies) in the last ten years and have taken different approaches to food system resilience. We also included Aotearoa New Zealand even though its approach to food system resilience was different: rather than having one national document, it has integrated food system resilience into other documents. Aotearoa New Zealand was of particular interest to the members of the research team, due to its geophysical, economic, and social vulnerabilities: it is an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean and is on a collusion zone (fault line) between the Pacific and Australia tectonic plates; it is economically and trade dependent on its primary sector and is being impacted by extreme weather events, and; relative to the other countries, it has a high incidence of food insecurity, especially among its indigenous Māori and Pasifika populations. The inclusion of Aotearoa New Zealand allowed us to explore whether a dispersed (food system resilience was addressed across many documents) approach functioned as well as a centralized document approach to understand if the methodology would be generalizable across varied peer nation documentation, prior to introducing countries with greater differences.

For each of the four selected countries we then reviewed their government websites and grey literature for additional documents that had a focus on food system resilience and whose title included: food, food supply chain, food system resilience, resilience, adaption, sustainable, sustainability, climate change, vulnerability, critical, primary industry or sector, government agency, national, or country. The goal was not to collect all documents but key food system resilience documents from each country. This search produced thirteen documents (see Table 1). A member of the research team then coded these documents. As Aotearoa New Zealand did not have a national food system resilience plan, we compiled a list of related plans for climate change and resilience across civil defense, health, primary industries, and indigenous peoples. While the documents used for Aotearoa New Zealand were different, our approach to identifying, coding, and analyzing them was the same.

For documents wholly pertaining to food system resilience [16, 24, 35], we did not use search terms within the documents themselves, as all the contents of these documents pertained to food system resilience. For the Australian document indirectly pertaining to food system resilience [25] we used the following search terms: (food OR foods) AND (food system OR food systems) AND (food company OR food companies) AND (agriculture) AND (horticulture) AND (farmers OR producers) AND (primary sector OR primary industries) AND (food supply chain OR supply chain) AND (food processors OR processor) AND (consumer goods manufacturers OR CGM) AND (food retailers OR retailers OR supermarket OR supermarkets) AND (food service OR restaurant OR cafeteria) AND (food procurement OR procurement) AND (food loss OR food waste). For all the Aotearoa New Zealand documents [26‐34] we used the previous search terms, as well as the following additional terms: “kai” (Māori for food).

Figure 1 outlines the conceptual framework we used to develop the analysis. It follows the sequence of events of government planning: a country’s food system resilience is reviewed using a retrospective and/or a prospective review of shocks and stressors; these previous or expected disruptions inform a country’s food system resilience issues and subsequent actions. Food system resilience documents are then developed that outline actions to be taken in response to the issues. The actions represent food system resilience attributes, a particular part or parts of the food supply chain and are expected to be implemented at different levels in society within a designated timeframe. The expected result or outcome of the action on food security is then determined.

Currently, there are only a few analysis frameworks for policymakers to assess food system resilience. To assess the countries’ national-level food system resilience activity, we adapted the Harris et al. [10] framework as it made the link between food system resilience policy attributes and the intended effect on food security.

We adapted the framework in several ways, based on updates in the literature [8, 36, 37] and deductive review of the data. We expanded the framework to include additional food system resilience attributes (adaption, awareness, capital reserves, connectivity, diversity, equity, redundancy, and preparedness) based on work done by members of the research team, and that are established in the literature [8], removed self-regulation (due to the inability to determine food system self-regulation from national-level documents), and extended the definition of food security to include sustainability and agency, to align with the Committee on World Food Security High Level Panel of Experts [36]. We also added the following categories that were originally noted by Harris et al. [10], but not used in their analysis: part of the food supply chain (producer, processor, distributor, input services, and support services) [37] where the action is being targeted; the shock or stressor related to the issue or action being addressed; the implementation level to which actions were directed – national, regional, local/state, community or household; and temporal focus, including an assessment of when actions are required in response to the effects of shocks and stressors—in the short, medium, or long term. We also added a component indicating whether the actions were taken to a shock or stressor from a prospective or retrospective perspective.

For each national document included in the study, we reviewed the content and classified it into food system resilience “issues” and “actions.” Issues are specific concerns raised by or commissioned by the government that highlight where the country has determined that it was not or is not sufficiently prepared or equipped to maintain its food system. Actions are government-determined activities either undertaken or required to be undertaken in the future to address the issues raised to increase food system resilience. For example: the US document highlighted the issue of concentration and consolidation in agri-food production, manufacturing, and distribution, which they propose to address with the action of investing $4 billion in building regional and local facilities [16]. We coded the issue as related to concentration and consolidation in the food supply chain and the action as investing in local and regional alternative infrastructure.

We coded each issue or action by the seven categories and thirty-eight sub-categories outlined in our conceptual framework (Fig. 1) and Table 2. We provide a full description of the categories and sub-categories and the source in supplementary information file 1 but, in brief: (1) Food system resilience attributes (adaption, awareness, capital reserves, connectivity, diversity, equity, redundancy, preparedness) are the characteristics that have been identified to enhance resilience in the food system by absorbing and/or mitigating the effects of disruptions [8]; (2) Part of the food supply chain or the main constituent components that enable the flow of food from production to consumption; (3) Anticipated stressors and shocks that can cause disruption to the food system; (4) Level of society at which the government actions will be implemented; (5) Expected impact of the food system resilience actions on food security; (6) Designated timeline for an issue or action to take place; and (7) Perspective from which the issue or action is derived—retrospectively when a disruptive event or events have already occurred, or prospectively when a disruptive event is predicted to occur.

The initial coding was done by a member of the research team (JL). A random check for coding accuracy was done by another member of the research team (EM). Additionally, where coding decisions were ambiguous, JL and EM discussed and reached consensus on the decision. For each action, at least one sub-category needed to be selected per category. Coding was done as 1 or 0, with 1 indicating the that the document referenced the subcategory and 0 indicating no reference. Three exceptions to that approach were: when no timeline was stipulated that category was left blank; when a specific subcategory of shock or stressor was not stipulated, all subcategories were coded with a 1; and in category 1 capital reserves and other were both coded with a 1 when “funding” needs were outlined, as funding does not fit neatly into the definition of capital reserves. A data validity test was run for missing data (LD), which was then corrected (JL) prior to the analysis being re-run (LD).

To assess the breadth of actions highlighted in each country’s documents, we calculated frequencies of actions by category and sub-category. We then calculated the percentage that each sub-category comprised of a country’s total actions within that resilience category (Table 2 and supplementary information file 2 and 3). We also assessed the extent to which multiple documents within a country repeated the same combinations across categories versus distinctive combinations. We did this by distilling the combination frequencies of all policy actions, removing timeframe and perspective, and then rank ordering the countries by the number of combinations (Table 3 and supplementary information file 2). We note that these frequency-based measures provide one lens into national priorities, however, they may not assess the extent of emphasis a country may place on a particular action.

Figure 2a compares the number and percentage of actions targeting each food system resilience attribute across countries. For Australia, the largest number of actions (58%) focused on preparedness. Sweden’s actions, by contrast, focused on increasing diversity (42%) and redundancy (32%) of the food supply to build resilience through increased production to manage its shortfalls between production and consumption. The United States had policy actions across all of the studied attributes, with the largest number in capital reserves (34%) and “other” (26%), showing the importance the United States is placing on funding to support existing and new resilience programs. Aotearoa New Zealand also outlined funding shortfalls in its need for infrastructure climate adaptation. The United States placed emphasis on awareness (30%) through expanding research and monitoring of food systems, in particular biosecurity due to climate change. Aotearoa New Zealand also placed an emphasis on developing awareness (30%) through monitoring the changes resulting from climate change that could impact agribusinesses. It also emphasized the use of equity (24%) by including the indigenous Māori worldview of climate change adaption, including specific references to the effects of climate change on Māori, their cultural and food gathering sites, and their wellbeing.

Figure 2b compares the number and percentage of actions targeting each part of the food supply chain across countries. The comparison shows that all countries have strategies focused at the producer part of the supply chain. Documents from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States also emphasized support services. Within support services (64%), Australia noted the need for increased warehouse capacity and transportation coordination regionally in a disaster. It also focused actions on distributors (58%), such as food service and retail stores that are critical in providing food for disrupted communities during natural disasters. Aotearoa New Zealand also emphasized support services (32%), due to the vulnerability of roads, rail, ports, and airports to climate change and natural hazards. The United States also gave emphasis to support services (41%), inclusive of all forms of food transportation across the United States. Sweden chose to focus more heavily on food distribution (37%) to consumers but by providing strategic guidance on the alignment of producers and processors to providing the sustainably produced, organic, and healthy foods that are being demanded by consumers, including tourists to Sweden.

Figure 2c shows a comparison of the shocks and stressors targeted by countries’ actions. When addressing food system vulnerabilities to different shocks and stressors, most countries addressed the stressor of climate change, except for Australia, which focused on natural shocks (100%), floods and bush (forest) fires. Given the timing of its plan’s development, the US also placed greater emphasis on addressing biosecurity hazards (40%) and pandemic vulnerabilities (33%) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Aotearoa New Zealand’s primary focus was on climate change resilience (91%), since the documentation analyzed was climate related. The other category (26%) was infrastructure, which was outlined by the US in terms of failing infrastructure that requires maintenance or updating as it is outdated.

Figure 2d provides a comparison of the implementation level of actions for the four countries in this study. All included countries centered most of their actions at the national level. This would be expected since we reviewed national plans. Australia did, however, emphasize coordination between national (65%) and local levels (61%). It is notable that Aotearoa New Zealand also included a local (33%) and community (32%) emphasis, due to climate adaption planning requiring coordination between national and local government authorities, as well as a focus on climate risk prone communities (such as Māori and rural communities). Sweden’s notably few actions outside of the national level was due to the objective of setting strategic direction at the national level.

Figure 2e shows the intended effect on food security of the food system resilience actions. We found that, amongst all countries, increasing food availability and food sustainability was the most expected and targeted outcome of the actions. Australia (87%), Sweden (68%) and the United States (45%) placed more emphasis on availability. Sustainability was addressed by the United States (51%) and Aotearoa New Zealand (57%) as they sought actions to increase resilience in the face of climate change. Access was addressed to a lesser extent by Aotearoa New Zealand (17%) and Sweden (11%), although still more than the other countries, due to their documents’ focus on aligning producers and processors with their consumers’ needs. Agency was also addressed by Aotearoa New Zealand (17%) as it sought some actions to address inequities that they acknowledged in the face of climate change.

In the next section, we explore the focal policy areas where countries concentrate on the same combination of categories in their policy actions. Table 3 lists the repetitions of category combinations in a country’s resilience policy actions. In these instances, we found more than one action targeting the same combination of resilience attributes, parts of the supply chain, shocks and stressors, implementation level, and intended effect of food security. We found that governments’ policy actions did repeat across some combinations of categories, however not significantly.

In Table 3 we outline all the repeated combinations that are rank ordered by country based on the number of combinations. We found that, of the 167 possible policy combinations, in only 12 cases did the same combination occur 2 or more times. The United States had 67 unique combinations and only 8 repeating combinations. The United States had the top number of combinations (row 1): three national climate change policy actions directed at adaptability of input services that addressed the ecological and climate risks to crops from drought and irrigation water scarcity. They included actions: for a focus on resource management on public forest and rangelands to enhance water retention/storage and basin water yield; to expand availability of effective treatment methods for irrigation water for food crops, and; directing USDA and the EPA to identify opportunities to mitigate the impact of water scarcity and drought to farmers, such as Water Reuse Programs. Aotearoa New Zealand had 52 unique combinations with only 2 repetitions. Aotearoa New Zealand’s top combinations, in rows 2 and 3 (Table 3), show that, at a national level, there is a focus on developing support services for biosecurity to maintain the food system in the future and to establish equity for Māori producers who are projected to suffer disproportionate disruption in their indigenous food system as a result of climate change. Australia had 31 unique combinations and no repetitions. Sweden had 17 unique combinations with only 2 repetitions. This indicates that governments are using a variety of actions to address food system resilience issues within their countries.

We also analyzed the temporal or time bound aspects of the countries’ actions and found that they were primarily focused on short- (up to 2030) and medium-term (2030 to 2050) actions. There were 84 short-term and 57 medium-term actions, and only 7 slated for the longer term (2050 to 2100). Governments looked to the past and future to inform actions, with 137 actions being based on retrospective reviews and 134 taking a prospective viewpoint, while 39 considered both prospective and retrospective viewpoints.