ABSTRACT

The chapter describes how the book adds to the literature and provides evidence and examples about how sustainable food systems can provide conceptual and operational foundations as well as goals and outcomes that support change. The processes and tools described in the book and the questions they raise can help address our most pressing issues including climate change, migration, and growing inequality. To do this, we need assessment processes and tools that reflect the realities of those most disadvantaged in households, communities, regions, and countries. By providing relevant assessment support, we can make decisions based on evidence that raises the voices of the people who need to be heard the most. At its best, a sustainable food system assessment process, as demonstrated by all the chapters in this volume, offers the potential to build capacity and bring transparency and clarity, in turn enabling a better use of resources and learning over time and across scales. They can also provide the basis for seeing how participation may need to change, measure change over time, enable strategy development, knowledge transfer, and inform transformative, coherent policy.