title: Systems approaches in food policy and research: learning from the Scottish context
Creators: name: Périer, Claire
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Food policy
subject: Scotland
subject: Food systems
subject: Systems Thinking
subject: Food studies

description: A growing body of evidence situates food at the nexus of many significant societal challenges, from rising economic inequalities and diet-related ill health, to the impact of climate change and unrelenting extractivism on our planet’s natural resources (UNEP, 2016; Rockström et al., 2020; WWF, 2020; FAO et al., 2021). The entrenched and global nature of these issues demonstrates the extent with which they are embedded in a complex web of actors, laws, policies, practices, and cultures, and cross multiple dimensions and scales (Swinburn et al., 2019; Willett et al., 2019). In this context, and with increasingly globalised food production and consumption, systems approaches have gained popularity in food studies (van Berkum, Dengerink and Ruben, 2018; Dekeyser et al., 2020).The value of adopting a systems lens lies in its ability to not only describe the drivers, stakeholders, and power relationships influencing food activities, but also in how it helps to identify trade-offs, synergies and new ways to transform what and how we grow, process, distribute, sell, and eat. More recently, there have been calls from academia, policymaking circles, and civil society to extend systems approaches to food governance, accompanied by appeals towards more coherent and integrated food policy (Webb et al., 2020; Dimbleby, 2021a; Montenegro de Wit et al., 2021; IPES-Food, 2023; etc.). However, movement towards delivering more sustainable, resilient, fair, and healthy food provision across the globe has been slow (Béné, 2022; Scottish Food Coalition, 2022). Some attribute this lack of progress to the inherent complexity of food systems, but in this work, I argue that the transformative potential of systems approaches has yet to be reached due to their incomplete implementation within food studies and policy. I posit that Systems Thinking needs to be embedded in the way both research and interventions are designed, conducted, and assessed. In addition to using the language of trade-offs, feedback loops, and/or unintended consequences to describe food systems, Systems Thinking demands deep interrogation and challenging of existing siloes and linear and normative modes of knowledge, calling instead for the exploration of connections and relationships, for actively seeking what pieces may be missing, and asking different questions as to how food systems can be re-structured and re-imagined. Using the case of Scotland, a country where food plays an essential role in the economy, and at the same time also underpins significant ill-health and social inequalities, I demonstrate how an analysis grounded in Systems Thinking can be operationalised to identify the deep-rooted barriers to structural changes, as well as drawing attention to factors which may enable food transformation. Throughout the thesis, I deploy an innovative suite of analytical and methodological tools, which bring both primary and secondary data sources (policy documents, a range of official statistics from different government departments, and my personal experiences of the policy process) into conversation in order to explore the evolution of Scottish food governance across geographical scales, time, administrative levels, priority areas, and outcomes (economy, health, social justice, environment). Modern Scotland provides a compelling context for such a study, as the Scottish Parliament introduced a new systems-oriented framework legislation, the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022, designed to foster greater national and local food policy coherence, deliver stronger interventions planning and implementation, and support the government’s ambition to become a Good Food Nation. I construct an analytical narrative that establishes how historical events, evolving political, social, and economic circumstances, and the dominance of Western-centric and neo-liberal models have framed how private and public actors in Scotland viewed, engaged with, and invested in food governance nationally and locally since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Recent changes in the devolved government structure, and its relationship with British and European authorities, are also shown to have played a significant role in influencing the type of interventions currently prioritised. My findings reveal how established governance and policy paradigms, institutional structures, and working siloes have stubbornly prevailed despite an apparent desire to transform food policymaking post devolution, which suggests these issues are in fact contributing to the very challenges food policy seeks to address. Crucially, I also demonstrate how the delicate balance between national objectives and local implementation has attracted little attention, even though Local Authorities play a substantial role in delivering food-related interventions and public services. A detailed examination of local government’s role in, and engagement with, food policy exposes how significant variations in operational context, but also a model of administration focused on performance, have contributed to this disconnect between global outcomes and localised impact. At the same time, using four Local Authorities as case studies, I illustrate how innovative initiatives that disrupt the status-quo have emerged in response to recent pressures, including diminishing public service funding, and recent crises including Brexit and the Covid pandemic. This thesis contributes to and advances the growing body of literature on systems approaches by proposing an innovative methodological framework for food policy analysis. It addresses head-on the inherent complexity of the food system through an approach that supports both broad and in-depth knowledge of food policy. Furthermore, it demonstrates how embedding Systems Thinking challenges the disciplinary siloes and paradigms that continue to influence research and policymaking both practically and conceptually. As the first in-depth exploration of Scottish food policy governance, my thesis provides a strong evidence base for policymakers and activists involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions directly connected to food. The analytical framework also has the potential to be applied in other policy fields like health, environment, or economic development. Two key outputs in particular – a policy tracker and a database of food-related metrics at the local authority level - are poised to support the development of national and local food plans, which have been introduced by the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022, and will also inform future research into how policy and governance processes may be leveraged towards global efforts towards food systems transformation.