Beoordeling van de mondiale en lokale voedselketen: een multidimensionale, op prestaties gebaseerde aanpak.

General objective of the project is to integrate advancement in scientific knowledge about the impact of food chains with application of knowledge to practice to increase food chains sustainability through public policies and private strategies. This general objective will be pursued through the following specific objectives:

• To develop and validate a ‘performance criteria matrix’ for assessment and comparison of food chains operating at a range of geographical scales through analysis of how food chain impacts are communicated in different spheres of society.
• To build a database of quantifiable indicators of impact and a set of 20 case studies aimed at understanding how impacts are generated within specific food chains.
• To advance knowledge on methodological problems and trade-offs arising when measuring and comparing the impact of food chains within and between sectors.
• To assess how performance is perceived by stakeholders in different national contexts through participatory assessment and multicriteria analysis of the different typologies of food chains.
• To assess the actual and potential role of public and private policies addressing food chains and to turn assessment into policy recommendations.
• To build a network that turns the advancement of scientific knowledge into decision making tools for domestic and public consumers, producers, citizens, scientists, policy makers, civil society organizations.

The project will be developed around the following assumptions:

• Costs and benefits analysis needs methodological update: for this reason the broader concept of performance is used
• The performance of food chains has multiple dimensions (economic, social, environmental, health, ethical)
• To turn knowledge into practice a demand-driven approach is necessary, focusing on how food choice affects the five dimensions of impact

The complexity of impacts of food chains requires plurality of methods and transdisciplinarity