Author:

Keywords:

metabolic analysis, apples

Abstract:

The debate on local and global food systems evolved recently in particular to differences in greenhouse gas emissions and energetic efficiencies, with a focus on food miles (Coley et al. 2009). As a result, particularly carbon accounting and energy input-output analysis were applied. However, as explained by Coley et al. (2009), the concept of local food in scientific studies emerged from a broader understanding, that is, that the properties of food are ‘natural’ and that heterogeneity of edaphic conditions give rise to varied natures represented in varied foods, implying the need for food systems grounded in local ecologies and responsive to consumer demands for quality and sustainability. Reducing the debate to only CO2 and energetic efficiencies is therefore too simplistic. Recently, Giampietro et al (2009) have developed the multi scale integrated assessment of societal and environmental metabolism (Musiasem) method based on the fund-flow model of Georgescu Roegen (1971) to study the sustainability of systems at different hierarchical environmental dimension in a consistent way and enables the study of internal and external constraints of the system. Based on this system characterisation, different scenarios can be defined and their feasibility and sustainability can be evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to use the metabolic approach to characterise different food systems and to evaluate different scenarios in order to provide new insights to the debate on the sustainability of local food. As a case study we focus on apple supply systems in Flanders, a region in the north of Belgium.