Food Security and the Fractured Consensus on Food Resilience: An Analysis of Development Agency Narratives

Abstract

The published narratives on food resilience of 16 development agencies are analysed. Using a rapid appraisal method, their positions and conception of resilience as a factor in food security are scrutinised. The study provides a snapshot of thought in 2020 and 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss and a policy focus on food systems have made resilience prominent in food policy. Firstly, concerns are raised that resilience may follow food security in its plasticity, blunting its critical edge. Secondly, the methods are explained. Thirdly, the findings are presented and organised by agency type. Fourthly, the findings are discussed. A fractured consensus around food resilience is noted. Despite broad agreement that resilience is a useful dimension for food security, there is no mutually agreed systematic conceptualisation or framework. Agencies use different definitions, approaches and measurements in their discourse, with varying levels of complexity. Some agencies adopt resilience as a buzzword, while others make it central to their institutional approach. The chapter concludes that, although resilience is emerging as core concept, its value would be strengthened with interdisciplinary attention paid to how food resilience is measured; unless this occurs, the risk is that resilience will be diluted as it becomes ubiquitous.