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"This book examines the changing roles and functions of the soybean throughout world history and discusses how this reflects the complex processes of agrofood globalization. The book uses a historical lens to analyse the processes and features that brought us to the current global configuration of soy. From its origins as a peasant food in ancient China, today the protein-rich soybean is by far the most cultivated biotech crop on Earth, used to make a huge variety of food and industrial products, including animal feed, tofu, cooking oil, soy sauce, biodiesel and soap. While there is a burgeoning amount of literature on how the contemporary global soy web affects large tracts of our planet's social and ecological systems, little attention has been given to the questions of how we got here and what alternative roles the soybean has played in the past. This book fills this gap and demonstrates that it is impossible to properly comprehend the contemporary global soybean chain, or the wider agrofood system of which it is a part, without looking at both their long and short historical development. However, a history of the soybean and its changing roles within equally changing agrofood systems is inexorably a history about globalization. Not only does this book map out where soybeans are produced, but also who governs, wields power and accumulates capital in the entire commodity chain from production to consumption, as well as identifying the institutional context the global commodity chain operates within. The book concludes by considering the soybean's future role in a desirable agrofood system which improves human health, culture and livelihoods, and the provision of ecosystem services. This book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in agriculture and food systems, global commodity chains, globalization, environmental history, economic history and social-ecological systems"--

Most people live in cities, but most food system studies and food security issues focus on the rural poor. Urban populations differ from rural populations in their food consumption by being generally wealthier, requiring food trade for their food security, defined as the extent to which people have adequate diets. Cities rarely have the self-provisioning capacity to satisfy their own food supply, understood as the extent to which the food consumed by the city's population is produced from the city's local agro-ecosystems. Almost inevitably, a city's food security is augmented by production from remote landscapes, both internal and external in terms of a state's jurisdiction. We reveal the internal and external food flows necessary for the food security of three wealthy capital cities (Canberra, Australia; Copenhagen, Denmark; Tokyo, Japan). These cities cover two orders of magnitude in population size and three orders of magnitude in population density. From traded volumes of food and their sources into the cities, we calculate the productivity of the city's regional and non-regional ecosystems that provide food for these cities and estimate the overall utilised land area. The three cities exhibit differing degrees of food self-provisioning capacity and exhibit large differences in the areas on which they depend to provide their food. We show that, since 1965, global land area effectively imported to produce food for these cities has increased with their expanding populations, with large reductions in the percentage of demand met by local agro-ecosystems. The physical trading of food commodities embodies ecosystem services, such as water, soil fertility and pollination that are required for land-based food production. This means that the trade in these embodied ecosystem services has become as important for food security as traditional economic mechanisms such as market access and trade. A future policy question, raised by our study, is the degree to which governments will remain committed to open food trade policies in the face of national political unrest caused by food shortages. Our study demonstrates the need to determine the food security and self-provisioning capacity of a wide range of rich and poor cities, taking into account the global location of the ecosystems that are provisioning them.

Most people live in cities, but most food system studies and food security issues focus on the rural poor. Urban populations differ from rural populations in their food consumption by being generally wealthier, requiring food trade for their food security, defined as the extent to which people have adequate diets. Cities rarely have the self-provisioning capacity to satisfy their own food supply, understood as the extent to which the food consumed by the city's population is produced from the city's local agro-ecosystems. Almost inevitably, a city's food security is augmented by production from remote landscapes, both internal and external in terms of a state's jurisdiction. We reveal the internal and external food flows necessary for the food security of three wealthy capital cities (Canberra, Australia; Copenhagen, Denmark; Tokyo, Japan). These cities cover two orders of magnitude in population size and three orders of magnitude in population density. From traded volumes of food and their sources into the cities, we calculate the productivity of the city's regional and non-regional ecosystems that provide food for these cities and estimate the overall utilised land area. The three cities exhibit differing degrees of food self-provisioning capacity and exhibit large differences in the areas on which they depend to provide their food. We show that, since 1965, global land area effectively imported to produce food for these cities has increased with their expanding populations, with large reductions in the percentage of demand met by local agro-ecosystems. The physical trading of food commodities embodies ecosystem services, such as water, soil fertility and pollination that are required for land-based food production. This means that the trade in these embodied ecosystem services has become as important for food security as traditional economic mechanisms such as market access and trade. A future policy question, raised by our study, is the degree to which governments will remain committed to open food trade policies in the face of national political unrest caused by food shortages. Our study demonstrates the need to determine the food security and self-provisioning capacity of a wide range of rich and poor cities, taking into account the global location of the ecosystems that are provisioning them.

Sudden disruptions, or shocks, to food production can adversely impact access to and trade of food commodities. Seafood is the most traded food commodity and is globally important to human nutrition. The seafood production and trade system is exposed to a variety of disruptions including fishery collapses, natural disasters, oil spills, policy changes, and aquaculture disease outbreaks, aquafeed resource access and price spikes. The patterns and trends of these shocks to fisheries and aquaculture are poorly characterized and this limits the ability to generalize or predict responses to political, economic, and environmental changes. We applied a statistical shock detection approach to historic fisheries and aquaculture data to identify shocks over the period 1976–2011. A complementary case study approach was used to identify possible key social and political dynamics related to these shocks. The lack of a trend in the frequency or magnitude of the identified shocks and the range of identified causes suggest shocks are a common feature of these systems which occur due to a variety, and often multiple and simultaneous, causes. Shocks occurred most frequently in the Caribbean and Central America, the Middle East and North Africa, and South America, while the largest magnitude shocks occurred in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Shocks also occurred more frequently in aquaculture systems than in capture systems, particularly in recent years. In response to shocks, countries tend to increase imports and experience decreases in supply. The specific combination of changes in trade and supply are context specific, which is highlighted through four case studies. Historical examples of shocks considered in this study can inform policy for responding to shocks and identify potential risks and opportunities to build resilience in the global food system.

Worldwide, the area planted in genetically modified (GM) crops has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 1996 and 1999, it rose from 1.6 X 106 ha to more than 35 X 106 ha (James 1998, May 1999). This rapid increase has provoked an explosion of concern, particularly in Europe, over the health and environmental impacts of these crops. Despite claims of safety and warnings against popular panic, public concern over GM crops has resulted in changes in their marketing, labeling, planting, and trade. These changes have fueled an increasingly heated debate among environmental advocates, critics of industrial agriculture, seed companies, governments, and scientists. This debate has been characterized by exaggerations of both the safety and danger of GM crops, and by attempts to suppress and avoid public discussion. This paper is the product of a discussion among an international, interdisciplinary group of scientists. Our discussion was based on the Forum articles in this issue of Conservation Ecology. These articles summarize the nature of the debate over biotechnology, describe ways to cope with potential ecological impacts of GM crops, provide insights into the cause and validity of public concern, and make suggestions on where to go from here. Our own dialogue, which was informed by these and other articles, attempts to broaden the debate and develop strategies for coping with and directing the development of biotechnology. As an interdisciplinary group, we do not try to assess the details of particular GM crops, but rather to connect the ecological, economic, and political issues that surround them. As noted by Conway (2000), Pimentel (2000), and others, the balance of evidence suggests that GM organisms have the potential to both degrade and improve the functioning of agroecosystems. Depending on which GM crops are developed and how they are used, GM crops could lead to either increases or decreases in pesticide use, the enhancement or degradation of the ecological services provided by agroecosystems, or the loss or conservation of biodiversity. However, as Conway argues, the current character of GM crop development provides cause for concern.