Suchergebnisse

The Swiss Food Net was created on March 12, 1999. This national network, to serve the Swiss food industry, unites all institutions of higher education of the food and nutrition sector as well as the main national institutions active in fundamental and applied research. It also incorporates production and processing industry, national scientific communities as well as three federal offices directly concerned with the food sector.

Aim: In 2012 Switzerland will reimburse hospital costs through the diagnosis related group system (DRG), a system known for many years all around the world. This is a fundamental change as up to 2011 hospitals were paid for their cost, whatever they priced (Fetter, 1991; Teisberg, 2008). One of the aims of the Swiss government is to handle the on-going raise of health care cost and hospitals have to budget with the prospective reimbursement schema. Therefore hospitals need to analyse their processes in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Intention of our research was to detect how this change influences hospitals meal provisions for patients, in order to identify possible efficiency potential. Methods: Literature review and qualitative interviews Findings: Today's spending for acute hospitals is about CHF 17bn (BfS, 2011). 65% of that sum is consumed by hospitals core activities, medicine and care. And 35%, or CHF 6bn, by their supporting services, which are provided under the roof of facilities management (Lennerts & Abel, 2006). Clear is that in Switzerland patient meal provision is one of the most costly support services due to the high costs of labour, material and patient expectations. The SwissDRG introduction involves two major changes directly affecting this process: - Expected decrease in the inpatients average length of stay, i.e.: Switzerland 2010: 7.5 days, Sweden 2010: 4.5 days (OECD, 2011) - Chance in space utilisation: Up to 2011 space was defined by the user's needs, under SwissDRG the available resources define space allocation as construction has to be fully financed by the prospective payments. Swiss hospitals offer their patients a broad range of different diet meals. Their number varies between 30 and 85 and the definition of diet is diversely outlined by the hospitals as there are no defined standards. With a share between 20-60% of the total food production, administered diets generate a lot of the production cost and need production space. Production cost of the dietary food lies about 23-29% above the cost for normal meals (Biotti & Hofer, 2008). Conclusion: The findings lead to the conclusion that efficiency potential lies in the reduction of costly diets as their use is questioned due to inpatients decreasing average length of stay. Standards need to be defined. The new freed space of hospital kitchens could be used for more profitable activities.

Increase of magnitude and frequency of climate-related disturbances challenges the Swiss food system. Disturbances such as hot and dry summers in 2003, 2015 and 2018 and extended periods of cold weather in 2013 and 2017 affected Swiss agricultural production. While the regulation of food imports allows ensuring food security for Swiss residents, economic effects of climatic disturbances on the activities of actors operating within the system (e.g. agro-input suppliers, farmers, processors) remains a challenge. On the other hand, the Swiss food system is heavily reliant on state support for its functioning. The reduction of state support, which is a current global trend, would represent a significant shock for the Swiss actors. Hence, this dissertation explored the ability of the Swiss food system to function despite (a) the increasing climatic disturbances and (b) removal of border protection (free trade) with the European Union. To represent the Swiss food system, we chose four value chains: milk, beef, wheat and potato. Resilience of these value chains is essential for the Swiss food system, as they are the base for the traditional Swiss diet and account for 41% of the total agricultural value of the country. The thesis relies on a combination of quantitative surveys among producers, processors and consumers; and a transdisciplinary research approach based on engagement with stakeholders. Paper 1 addresses resilience of four value chains to the effects of potentially introducing a free trade with the EU based on stakeholder surveys and workshops. The results suggest that the Swiss value chains do not possess resilience capacity to secure the current level of self-sufficiency by withstanding the effects of the free trade scenario. Furthermore, we identified that the studied value chains have limited adaptive capacity due to the side-effects (e.g. a strategy of one actor negatively affects other actors) and limitations (e.g. insufficient consumer loyalty) of strategies aimed at coping with the effects of free trade. Also, the results suggest that an increase of specific resilience to the effects of free trade has a potential to decrease overall resilience of the value chains. Paper 2 presents measures to increase resilience of the value chains to drought identified at stakeholder workshops. The measures are mostly focused on the production activity and are aimed to avoid production disruptions and mitigate economic losses among farmers. While some of these measures (e.g. irrigation, drought-resistance varieties, off-farm income) can be implemented by farmers themselves, other measures (e.g. compensating prices, adjustment of quality requirements) require interventions from stakeholders including post-production actors (processors, retailers) as well as consumers. However, our results indicate that such implementation is hampered by conflicting interests, disproportional exposure of actors to climate disturbances and the lack of motivation by the actors to act beyond securing their own operational needs. Paper 3 summarizes results of consumer surveys and stakeholder workshops in order to investigate whether consumers could contribute to the resilience of the food value chains in case of an extreme weather disturbance. The results of the consumer surveys suggest that Swiss consumers favor the idea to pay more for food if farmers are affected. On the other hand, practitioners expressed several concerns regarding feasibility and implementation of consumer support in practice. The results of the studies on both scenarios, drought and free trade, suggest that an increase of resilience in one activity can have negative implications on other activities. Hence, we conclude that resilience assessment and enhancement should be based on systemic approaches that allow capturing broader effects of resilience than those of just individual actors. Furthermore, the results suggest that resilience of the value chains is subject to conflicting interests of value chains' actors. This emphasizes the need for further research on motivations for actors to accommodate strategies that enhance resilience of their value chains along with the strategies that increase their individual resilience.

Legislative reforms in the food stamp and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs in the 1990s, together with a booming economy and the Earned Income Tax Credit, led to dramatic increases in employment among single mothers and smaller increases among other low-income families. The deterioration of the economy after 2000, however, has raised again the question of the adequacy of the safety net for nonworking families. This study will examine the extent of support from government programs, especially food stamps, among nonworking families, but with a focus on a program that has not received much research attention: the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program. ; Joint Center for Poverty Research, Food Assistance Research Small Grants Program ; Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources

In 2008, when food prices rose precipitously to record highs, international attention and local policy in many countries focused on safety nets as part of the response. Now that food prices are high again, the issue of appropriate responses is again on the policy agenda. This note sets out a framework for making quick, qualitative assessments of how well countries' safety nets prepare them for a rapid policy response to rising food prices should the situation warrant. The framework is applied using data from spring 2011, presenting a snap?shot analysis of what is a dynamically changing situation. Based on this data safety net readiness is assessed in 13 vulnerable countries based on the following criteria: the presence of safety net programs, program coverage, administrative capacity, and to a lesser degree, targeting effectiveness. It is argued that these criteria will remain the same throughout time, even if the sample countries affected will be expected to vary. Based on this analysis the note highlights that though a number of countries are more prepared than they were in 2008, there is still a significant medium term agenda on safety net preparedness in the face of crisis. In this context, strategic lessons from the 2008 food crisis response are presented to better understand the response options and challenges facing governments and policy makers. The note concludes by calling for continued investment and scale up of safety nets to mitigate poverty impacts and help prevent long term setbacks in nutrition and poverty.