David Dumaresq

Local food: understanding consumer motivations in innovative retail formats

Purpose – This paper sets out to profile the activities and consumers of a unique and successful local food retail outlet in the UK that is based on weekly community markets.Design/methodology/approach – The seminal literature on local food in the UK is reviewed prior to providing a case study on a local food outlet, the True Food Co‐op. This is followed by the results from a detailed survey of its customers.Findings – The increase in availability of and interest in local food over the last decade has been matched by new research findings. Although there is a consensus on the reasons why people buy local food, there are significant gaps in other areas of ones understanding, such as the lack of a clear definition of what local food is. This is frustrating further developments in the sector.Research limitations/implications – Business development strategies that rely on niche markets, such as local food, in fast‐moving consumer goods categories are enjoying rapid growth. However, there are many difficultie...

The Mekong River: trading off hydropower, fish, and food

Hydropower dam construction is currently focused in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to increase electricity supplies, yet the negative environmental and social impacts are extensive. The planned development of 88 hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin by 2030 is used to explore how to quantify the energy versus food supply trade-offs. We estimate the land and water resources needed to replace the protein and lysine from the lost wild fish supply in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Using FAO data, we (1) examine the supply of protein and also lysine, as an example of an essential micronutrients, (2) consider three options for managing loss of wild fish supplies, namely replace with livestock, other fish or crops, and (3) quantify the land use change required in the crop and livestock replacement scenarios. We provide a new index for assessing lysine in food and find that replacing lysine from wild fish requires considerable reallocation of land or of fish exports. The options for replacing protein and lysine through domestic production involve significant resource trade-offs and have social impacts. This method of quantifying the links between hydropower (energy) and food policies at regional and other scales can be used to better inform decisions on sustainable developments across sectors.

Impacts of rice intensification on rural households in the Mekong Delta: emerging relationships between agricultural production, wild food supply and food consumption

Rice intensification programs target poverty reduction and improved food availability in Asia. Vietnam adopted a rice intensification policy aimed at a rice surplus for export by the 1990s. The intensification policy replaced an annual wet season crop with two to three High Yielding Variety (HYV) rice crops a year. These multiple annual crops required changes in hydraulic systems in areas such as the Mekong Delta (MD) with the introduction of low and high dikes for wet season flood control and dry season irrigation. This study examines the impacts of rice intensification and hydraulic changes in the MD between the 1990s and 2000s on rural household food sources, both wild and cultivated. Across study sites representing three flood management regimes, 165 households were sampled for data on household demographics, the collection and consumption of fish, other aquatic animals, wild and cultivated vegetables and fruit, and other food sources. The results indicate that rice intensification programs and dike construction have significantly increased rice production. However, farm household catch, collection and consumption of wild foods has decreased. Household use of wild fish, other aquatic animals, and wild vegetables was reduced significantly over the period. Significant wet and dry season variation in food availability emerged. Poor households experienced most loss. Overall household food security was affected. This study suggests that rice intensification policies aimed at global food security need to balance wider population access to a food staple with the need for rice farming communities to maintain access to high quality wild foods obtained from the fields and waterways of rice farming landscapes.