Food chains

The research on diversity in food supply chains is coordinated by the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University. This work package aims at:

• mapping the current biological diversity of food products across three different food provisioning systems in five European Countries.
• understanding how and for what purpose diversity is conceived and valued within different food provisioning systems and to explore the interconnections between diversity, sustainability and resilience.
• understanding the drivers and barriers to achieving the supply of more diverse products across different food provisioning systems
• understand the influence that consumers/citizens are able to exert in different provisioning systems.

We examine the drivers and barriers to increasing agrobiodiversity within different food supply chains in the UK, Norway, Germany, Poland and Italy. The WP adopts a systems-based approach to explore the interconnections between consumers, producers, distributors and other key food chain actors within three different food provisioning systems: (1) food products supplied predominantly via the supermarket sector; (2) Short food supply chains with less than two intermediaries between producer and consumer; (3) catering (including mainstream and more sustainability-focused operators).