Local food systems: Reviewing two decades of research

Abstract

Food systems worldwide are under enormous pressure. Over the past decades, local food systems have been promoted by governments and civil society organisations as a lever for change towards more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems based on the belief of their many purported benefits. The goal of this article is to test eight common beliefs on local food systems – from a consumer, farmer, community and environmental perspective – against scientific evidence, with a focus on North America and Europe. We conduct a systematic multi-disciplinary literature review and identify 123 peer-reviewed studies on local food systems. We find that the impact of local food systems on different social, economic and environmental factors highly depends on the type of supply chain under assessment, with important differences across product types and countries. Hence, our review refutes the idea that local food is inherently good. In addition, we highlight the confusion surrounding the definition of a local food scale and point out a critical lack of cross-country comparable data hindering the possibility of drawing generalisable conclusions on the benefits and drawbacks of local food systems. A comprehensive review of multi-disciplinary scientific evidence confirming (or refuting) claims on local food systems was missing, leading to possible counter-productive policies. Based on our findings, we suggest that policy-makers should invest in cross-country comparable data collection on local food systems (especially in Europe), which would allow the scientific community to perform robust causal analyses on their impacts on society.