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Abstract
The Swiss food system faces complex economic, social, and environmental challenges concurrent with a consensus among citizens, scientists, and institutions advocating for a transition toward sustainable food production. We argue that resilient and sustainable Regional Food Systems have a spillover effect on global food system sustainability and resilience. This study focuses on the regional level, assessing the resilience and sustainability of Valposchiavo's food system, an innovative Swiss alpine valley, utilizing a novel assessment framework developed through an extensive literature review and the integration of some of the numerous existing assessment tools. Semi-structured interviews with 51 stakeholders representative of the Regional Food System reveal that Valposchiavo has a resilient and sustainable food system. The agricultural sector’s resilience and sustainability outperform the ones of the processing, retail, and restaurant sectors. Valley institutions show commitment to sustainable development but perform poorly in stakeholder support and organizational structure. Our holistic approach, encompassing resilience and sustainability for the regional food system as a whole, provides context-specific recommendations and is replicable in other regions.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X52H53
Subjects
Food Science
Keywords
regional food system, resilience, sustainabilty, policy, assessment tool, switzerland
Dates
Published: 2024-02-12 22:28
Last Updated: 2024-02-13 06:28
License
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Data Availability (Reason not available):
All non confidential data are available in the supplementary materials.
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.