Using panel data to estimate the effect of rainfall shocks on smallholders food security and vulnerability in rural Ethiopia

Ethiopia??s agriculture is predominantly rainfed and hence any irregularity in weather conditions has adverse welfare implications. Using panel data, this paper analyzes the effect of rainfall shocks on Ethiopian rural households?? food security and vulnerability over time while controlling for a range of other factors. To this end, we generate a time-variant household food security index which is developed by principal components analysis. Based on this index, households are classified into relative food security groups and their socioeconomic differences are assessed. The exploratory results show that compared to the less secured households, the more secured ones have male and literate household heads, tend to have a greater number of economically active household members, own more livestock, experience better rainfall outcome, and participate in local savings groups. Using the food security index as the dependent variable, we use a fixed effects instrumental variable regression model to identify determinants of households?? food security over time and find that rainfall variability is an important factor. Moreover, household size, participation in local savings groups, and livestock ownership positively affect food security. Results from multinomial logistic regression model complement the fixed effects instrumental variable regression results by showing that the level and variability of rainfall are important determinants of persistent food insecurity and vulnerability. The results highlight the need for efficient risk reduction and mitigation programs to improve risk exposure and coping ability of rural households. Careful promotion of investment in infrastructure to support irrigation and water resources development is one aspect worth considering.     

When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts of national policies and assumes that global-level progress is the sum of national, sector-specific gains. In this study, we investigate effects of reforestation programs in China on countries supplying forest and agricultural commodities to China. Using case studies of rubber and palm oil production in Southeast Asian countries, soy production in Brazil and logging in South Pacific Island states, we investigate cross-sector effects of production for and trade to China in these exporting countries. We use a three-step multi-method approach. 1) We identify distal trade flows and the narratives used to justify them, using a telecoupling framework; 2) we design causal loop diagrams to analyse social-ecological processes of change in our case studies driven by trade to China and 3) we link these processes of change to the SDG framework. We find that sustainability progress in China from reforestation is cancelled out by the deforestation and cross-sectoral impacts supporting this reforestation abroad. Narratives of economic development support commodity production abroad through unrealised aims of benefit distribution and assumptions of substitutability of socio-ecological forest systems. Across cases, we find the analysed trade supports unambiguous progress on few SDGs only, and we find many mixed effects – where processes that support the achievement of SDGs exist, but are overshadowed by counterproductive processes. Our study represents a useful approach for tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives and provides cross-scale and cross-sectoral lenses through which to identify drivers of unsustainability that can be addressed in the design of effective sustainability policies.     

Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research

This paper outlines a framework for studying the multiple interactions of broadly defined food systems with global environmental change and evaluating the major societal outcomes affected by these interactions: food security, ecosystem services and social welfare. In building the framework the paper explores and synthesizes disparate literature on food systems food security and global environmental change, bridging social science and natural science perspectives. This collected evidence justifies a representation of food systems, which can be used to identify key processes and determinants of food security in a given place or time, particularly the impacts of environmental change. It also enables analysis of the feedbacks from food system outcomes to drivers of environmental and social change, as well as tradeoffs among the food system outcomes themselves. In food systems these tradeoffs are often between different scales or levels of decision-making or management, so solutions to manage them must be context-specific. With sufficient empirical evidence, the framework could be used to build a database of typologies of food system interactions useful for different management or analytical purposes.     

Globalization,Pacific Islands,and the paradox of resilience

On April 2nd, 2007 a 12 m tsunami struck Simbo, a relatively remote island in Western Province, Solomon Islands. Although Simbo's population continues to depend on their own food production and small-scale governance regimes regulate access to resources, the island's way of life over the last century has increasingly been affected by processes associated with globalization. In this context of a rapidly globalizing world, this article examines the island's resilience and vulnerability to the tsunami and the adaptive capacities that enabled the response and recovery. The tsunami completely destroyed two villages and damaged fringing coral reefs, but casualties were low and social–ecological rebound relatively brisk. By combining social science methods (household surveys, focus group and ethnographic interviews) and underwater reef surveys we identify a number of countervailing challenges and opportunities presented by globalization that both nurture and suppress the island's resilience to high amplitude, low-frequency disturbances like tsunamis. Analysis suggests that certain adaptive capacities that sustain general system resilience come at the cost of more vulnerability to low-probability hazards. We discuss how communities undergoing increasingly complex processes of change must negotiate these kinds of trade-offs as they manage resilience at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Understanding the shifting dynamics of resilience may be critical for Pacific Island communities who seek to leverage globalization in their favor as they adapt to current social–ecological change and prepare for future large-scale ecological disturbances.     

Explaining the ‘hungry farmer paradox’: Smallholders and fair trade cooperatives navigate seasonality and change in Nicaragua's corn and coffee markets

Latin American smallholder coffee farmers linked with fair trade and organic markets are frequently cited as models for sustainable food systems. Yet many experience seasonal hunger, which is a very common, but understudied, form of food insecurity. Northern Nicaragua's highlands include well-organized cooperatives, high rural poverty rates, and rain dependent farms, offering a compelling study area to understand what factors are associated with seasonal hunger. This participatory mixed methods study combines data from observations, interviews and focus groups with results from a survey of 244 cooperative members. It finds that seasonal hunger is influenced by multiple factors, including: (1) annual cycles of precipitation and rising maize prices during the lean months; (2) inter annual droughts and periodic storms; and (3) the long-term inability of coffee harvests and prices to provide sufficient income. Sampled households experienced an average of about 3 months of seasonal hunger in 2009. A series of five least squares regression models find the expected significant impacts of corn harvest quantity, farm area, improved grain storage, and household incomes, all inversely correlated with lean months. Unanticipated results include the finding that households with more fruit trees reported fewer lean months, while the predominant environmentally friendly farming practices had no discernable impacts. The presence of hunger among producers challenges sustainable coffee marketing claims. We describe one example of a partnership-based response that integrates agroecological farm management with the use of fair trade cooperative institutions to re-localize the corn distribution system. Increased investments and integrated strategies will be needed to reduce threats to food security, livelihoods, and biodiversity associated with the rapid spread of coffee leaf rust and falling commodity prices.     

Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways

In the future, the land system will be facing new intersecting challenges. While food demand, especially for resource-intensive livestock based commodities, is expected to increase, the terrestrial system has large potentials for climate change mitigation through improved agricultural management, providing biomass for bioenergy, and conserving or even enhancing carbon stocks of ecosystems. However, uncertainties in future socio-economic land use drivers may result in very different land-use dynamics and consequences for land-based ecosystem services. This is the first study with a systematic interpretation of the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) in terms of possible land-use changes and their consequences for the agricultural system, food provision and prices as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, five alternative Integrated Assessment Models with distinctive land-use modules have been used for the translation of the SSP narratives into quantitative projections. The model results reflect the general storylines of the SSPs and indicate a broad range of potential land-use futures with global agricultural land of 4900 mio ha in 2005 decreasing by 743 mio ha until 2100 at the lower (SSP1) and increasing by 1080 mio ha (SSP3) at the upper end. Greenhouse gas emissions from land use and land use change, as a direct outcome of these diverse land-use dynamics, and agricultural production systems differ strongly across SSPs (e.g. cumulative land use change emissions between 2005 and 2100 range from −54 to 402 Gt CO₂). The inclusion of land-based mitigation efforts, particularly those in the most ambitious mitigation scenarios, further broadens the range of potential land futures and can strongly affect greenhouse gas dynamics and food prices. In general, it can be concluded that low demand for agricultural commodities, rapid growth in agricultural productivity and globalized trade, all most pronounced in a SSP1 world, have the potential to enhance the extent of natural ecosystems, lead to lowest greenhouse gas emissions from the land system and decrease food prices over time. The SSP-based land use pathways presented in this paper aim at supporting future climate research and provide the basis for further regional integrated assessments, biodiversity research and climate impact analysis.     

Meeting future food demand with current agricultural resources

Meeting the food needs of the growing and increasingly affluent human population with the planet’s limited resources is a major challenge of our time. Seen as the preferred approach to global food security issues, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the enhancement of crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts and preserving the ability of future generations to use the land. It is still unclear to what extent sustainable intensification would allow humanity to meet its demand for food commodities. Here we use the footprints for water, nitrogen, carbon and land to quantitatively evaluate resource demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future agriculture and investigate whether an increase in these environmental burdens of food production can be avoided under a variety of dietary scenarios. We calculate average footprints of the current diet and find that animal products account for 43–87% of an individual’s environmental burden – compared to 18% of caloric intake and 39% of protein intake. Interestingly, we find that projected improvements in production efficiency would be insufficient to meet future food demand without also increasing the total environmental burden of food production. Transitioning to less impactful diets would in many cases allow production efficiency to keep pace with growth in human demand while minimizing the food system’s environmental burden. This study provides a useful approach for evaluating the attainability of sustainable targets and for better integrating food security and environmental impacts.     

Governing epidemics in an age of complexity: Narratives,politics and pathways to sustainability

This paper elaborates a ‘pathways approach’ to addressing the governance challenges posed by the dynamics of complex, coupled, multi-scale systems, while incorporating explicit concern for equity, social justice and the wellbeing of poor and marginalised groups. It illustrates the approach in relation to current policy challenges of dealing with epidemics and so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’ such as avian influenza and haemorrhagic fevers, which involve highly dynamic, cross-scale, often-surprising viral–social–political–ecological interactions. Amidst complexity, we show how different actors in the epidemics field produce particular narratives which frame systems and their dynamics in different ways, promote particular goals and values, and justify particular pathways of disease response. These range from ‘outbreak narratives’ emphasising threat to global populations, to alternative but often marginalised narratives variously emphasising long-term structural, land use and environmental change, local knowledge and livelihood goals. We highlight tendencies – supported by cognitive, institutional and political pressures – for powerful actors and institutions to ‘close down’ around narratives that emphasise stability, underplaying longer term, less controllable dynamics. Arguing that governance approaches need to ‘open up’ to embrace strategies for resilience and robustness in relation to epidemics, we outline what some of the routes towards this might involve, and what the resulting governance models might look like. Key are practices and arrangements that involve flexibility, diversity, adaptation, learning and reflexivity, as well as highlighting and supporting alternative pathways within a progressive politics of sustainability.     

Shocks to fish production: Identification,trends, and consequences

Sudden disruptions, or shocks, to food production can adversely impact access to and trade of food commodities. Seafood is the most traded food commodity and is globally important to human nutrition. The seafood production and trade system is exposed to a variety of disruptions including fishery collapses, natural disasters, oil spills, policy changes, and aquaculture disease outbreaks, aquafeed resource access and price spikes. The patterns and trends of these shocks to fisheries and aquaculture are poorly characterized and this limits the ability to generalize or predict responses to political, economic, and environmental changes. We applied a statistical shock detection approach to historic fisheries and aquaculture data to identify shocks over the period 1976–2011. A complementary case study approach was used to identify possible key social and political dynamics related to these shocks. The lack of a trend in the frequency or magnitude of the identified shocks and the range of identified causes suggest shocks are a common feature of these systems which occur due to a variety, and often multiple and simultaneous, causes. Shocks occurred most frequently in the Caribbean and Central America, the Middle East and North Africa, and South America, while the largest magnitude shocks occurred in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Shocks also occurred more frequently in aquaculture systems than in capture systems, particularly in recent years. In response to shocks, countries tend to increase imports and experience decreases in supply. The specific combination of changes in trade and supply are context specific, which is highlighted through four case studies. Historical examples of shocks considered in this study can inform policy for responding to shocks and identify potential risks and opportunities to build resilience in the global food system.     

The impacts of food price and income shocks on household food security and economic well-being: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

This paper examines the combined impacts of food price and income shocks on household food security and economic well-being in low-income rural communities. Using longitudinal survey data of 1800 rural households from 12 districts of Bangladesh over the period 2007–2009, we estimated a three-stage hierarchical logit model to identify the key sources of household food insecurity. The first-difference estimator was then employed to compare pre- and post-shock expenditure for those households that experienced acute food shortages and those that managed to avoid the worst impacts of the shocks. On the basis of our results we conclude that: (1) the soaring food prices of 2007–2009 unequivocally aggravated food insecurity in the rural areas of Bangladesh; (2) the subsequent income shocks of 2007–2009 contributed toward worsening food insecurity; (3) the adverse impacts of these shocks appeared to have faded over time due to labor and commodity market adjustments, regional economic growth, and domestic policy responses, leaving no profound impacts on households’ economic well-being in most cases; and (4) although the immediate adverse consequences of rising food prices were borne disproportionately by the poor, the longer term consequences were distributed more evenly across the rich and poor and were favorable for the day laborers.     

What determines farmers’ resilience towards ENSO-related drought? An empirical assessment in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Crop production in the tropics is subject to considerable climate variability caused by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon that is likely to become even more pronounced during the twenty-first century. Little is known about the impact of ENSO-related drought on crop yields and food security, especially at the household level. This paper seeks to contribute to closing this knowledge gap with a case study from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Its main objective is to measure household resilience towards drought periods and to identify its influencing factors to deduce policy implications. Using indicators for consumption expenditures, we construct an index measuring household drought resilience; we then apply an asset-based livelihood framework to identify its determinants. Most of the drought-affected farm households are forced to substantially reduce expenditures for food and other basic necessities. Households’ drought resilience is strengthened by the possession of liquid assets, access to credit, and the level of technical efficiency in agricultural production. The results suggest a number of policy recommendations, namely improvement of the farmers’ access to ENSO forecasts, the provision of credit and savings products to facilitate consumption smoothing, and the intensification of agricultural extension in view of low levels of productivity found in agricultural production.     

East African food security as influenced by future climate change and land use change at local to regional scales

Climate change impacts food production systems, particularly in locations with large, vulnerable populations. Elevated greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as land cover/land use change (LCLUC), can influence regional climate dynamics. Biophysical factors such as topography, soil type, and seasonal rainfall can strongly affect crop yields. We used a regional climate model derived from the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to compare the effects of projected future GHG and future LCLUC on spatial variability of crop yields in East Africa. Crop yields were estimated with a process-based simulation model. The results suggest that: (1) GHG-influenced and LCLUC-influenced yield changes are highly heterogeneous across this region; (2) LCLUC effects are significant drivers of yield change; and (3) high spatial variability in yield is indicated for several key agricultural sub-regions of East Africa. Food production risk when considered at the household scale is largely dependent on the occurrence of extremes, so mean yield in some cases may be an incomplete predictor of risk. The broad range of projected crop yields reflects enormous variability in key parameters that underlie regional food security; hence, donor institutions’ strategies and investments might benefit from considering the spatial distribution around mean impacts for a given region. Ultimately, global assessments of food security risk would benefit from including regional and local assessments of climate impacts on food production. This may be less of a consideration in other regions. This study supports the concept that LCLUC is a first-order factor in assessing food production risk.     

Linking global and local scales: designing dynamic assessment and management processes

This paper identifies challenges inherent in addressing multi-scale environmental problems, and outlines tentative guidelines for addressing such challenges and linking science and policy across scales. The study and practice of environmental assessment and management increasingly recognize the importance of scale and cross-scale dynamics in understanding and addressing global environmental change. These ongoing efforts, however, lack a systematic way of thinking about and addressing the challenges involved in integrating science and policy across multiple scales, for example, in the design of policy-relevant, scientific assessments of problems such as climate change. These challenges include matching scales of biogeophysical systems with scales of management systems, avoiding scale discordance (matching the scale of the assessment with the scale of management), and accounting for cross-scale dynamics. In this paper we propose tentative guidelines for meeting such challenges for both assessors and decision-makers: (1) utilize boundary organizations — institutions which serve to mediate between scientists and decision-makers, and between these actors at different scales; (2) utilize scale-dependent comparative advantages — coordinating the allocation of resources, technical expertise, and decision-making authority to best capitalize on scale-specific capabilities; and (3) employ adaptive assessment and management strategies — constructing long-term, iterative, experiment-based processes of integrated assessment and management.     

Public policy and financial resource mobilization for wind energy in developing countries: A comparison of approaches and outcomes in China and India

We analyze and contrast how China and India mobilized financial resources to build domestic technological innovation systems in wind energy. To that end, we identify distinct stages of technology diffusion in the two countries in the period 1986–2012, and analyze the interplay between public policies and the development of the technological innovation system across the different stages. We show that the two countries’ distinct development strategies for wind energy – China developed wind energy largely through its state-owned enterprises, while India opened up wind energy investment to the private sector in the early 1990s – influenced system outcomes in terms of technology diffusion, domestic industry structure, competitiveness, and ownership. By unraveling the interplay between public policies, investment risks and returns, and actor characteristics, we explain the differences in system outcomes and identify important policy trade-offs between the two strategies. Our analysis provides novel insights about the process of financial resource mobilization in technological innovation systems, the dynamics of innovation-system growth, and the policy trade-offs that must be reconciled by countries that aim to promote the diffusion of a particular technology.     

Global socio-economic and climate change mitigation scenarios through the lens of structural change

This paper analyses structural change in the economy as a key but largely unexplored aspect of global socio-economic and climate change mitigation scenarios. Structural change can actually drive energy and land use as much as economic growth and influence mitigation opportunities and barriers. Conversely, stringent climate policy is bound to induce specific structural and socio-economic transformations that are still insufficiently understood. We introduce Multi-Sectoral macroeconomic Integrated Assessment Models as tools to capture the key drivers of structural change and we conduct a multi-model study to assess main structural effects – changes of the sectoral composition and intensity of trade of global and regional economies – in a baseline and 2°C policy scenario by 2050. First, the range of baseline projections across models, for which we identify the main drivers, illustrates the uncertainty on future economic pathways – in emerging economies especially – and inform on plausible alternative futures with implications for energy use and emissions. Second, in all models, climate policy in the 2°C scenario imposes only a second-order impact on the economic structure at the macro-sectoral level – agriculture, manufacturing and services - compared to changes modelled in the baseline. However, this hides more radical changes for individual industries – within the energy sector especially. The study, which adopts a top-down framing of global structural change, represents a starting point to kick-start a conversation and propose a new research agenda seeking to improve understanding of the structural change effects in socio-economic and mitigation scenarios, and better inform policy assessments.     

How much climate change can pastoral livelihoods tolerate? Modelling rangeland use and evaluating risk

Livestock is the most important source of income for pastoral livelihoods in drylands. Pastoralists have developed flexible resource utilization strategies that enable them to cope with the high spatio-temporal resource variability typical to these areas. However, climate change in the form of decreasing mean annual precipitation accompanied by increasing variability has important consequences for rangeland productivity and thus pastoral livelihood security. Here, we use a spatial simulation model to assess impacts of changing precipitation regimes, and to identify limits of tolerance for these changes beyond which pastoral livelihoods cannot be secured. We also examine strategies to control these limits.Our results indicate that: (i) while reduced mean annual precipitation always had negative effects, increased precipitation variability can have negative, none or even positive effects, depending on the vegetation's recovery potential. (ii) Depending on income requirements there are limits of tolerance to decreases in mean annual precipitation beyond which precipitation regimes overcharge the coping capacity of the pastoral household and threaten its livelihood. (iii) There are certain strategies, in particular “Increasing mobility” and “Diversifying income for coping with income risks from pastoralism”, that allow the limits of tolerance to be shifted to a certain extent. We conclude that it is important to consider climate change and human requirements together to create appropriate climate change mitigation strategies in pastoral systems. Our results also shed new light on the discussion on disequilibrium rangeland systems by identifying mechanisms that can support fluctuating but non-degrading herbivore-vegetation dynamics. The paper finishes with remarks on the broader potential of the presented modelling approach beyond rangelands.     

Mapping global land system archetypes

Land use is a key driver of global environmental change. Unless major shifts in consumptive behaviours occur, land-based production will have to increase drastically to meet future demands for food and other commodities. One approach to better understand the drivers and impacts of agricultural intensification is the identification of global, archetypical patterns of land systems. Current approaches focus on broad-scale representations of dominant land cover with limited consideration of land-use intensity. In this study, we derived a new global representation of land systems based on more than 30 high-resolution datasets on land-use intensity, environmental conditions and socioeconomic indicators. Using a self-organizing map algorithm, we identified and mapped twelve archetypes of land systems for the year 2005. Our analysis reveals similarities in land systems across the globe but the diverse pattern at sub-national scales implies that there are no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions to sustainable land management. Our results help to identify generic patterns of land pressures and environmental threats and provide means to target regionalized strategies to cope with the challenges of global change. Mapping global archetypes of land systems represents a first step towards better understanding the global patterns of human–environment interactions and the environmental and social outcomes of land system dynamics.     

Bridging organizations in agricultural carbon markets and poverty alleviation: An analysis of pro-Poor carbon market projects in East Africa

International agricultural carbon market projects face significant challenges in delivering greenhouse gas mitigation objectives whilst also seeking to provide additional benefits for poverty alleviation. The carbon credit producer (the smallholder farmer) and carbon credit buyer in the carbon market transaction typically operate at different spatial and temporal scales. Buyers operate at a global scale, responding to opportunities for financial speculation and both private and public climate action plans. Farmers operate within households, farms, and immediate agricultural landscapes, pursuing livelihood and food security needs. These different scales often result in mismatches of timing, payment, and knowledge in market transactions and can be partially rectified by project developers who serve to broker the relationship between the farmers and the buyers. We examined eight East African agricultural carbon market projects to determine how project developers function as bridging organizations and minimize the mismatches between these actors. Results show that projects better bridged the timing and payment gap between buyers and producers when project developers provided non-monetary benefits or direct monetary assistance to farmers. However, knowledge gaps remained a significant barrier for farmers wishing to participate in the market. We discuss how project developers brokered relationships in ways that reflected their interests and highlight the limitations, trade-offs, and challenges that must be overcome if win-win outcomes of poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation are to be realized.     

Seeing the forest and the trees: Facilitating participatory network planning in environmental governance

Governance processes to address environmental change involve many different actors from multiple spatial, temporal and socio-political scales, not all of whom are connected by hierarchy and whose actions cannot always be mandated. In the environmental governance literature, Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been found useful in understanding complex governance arrangements. In this paper we present and reflect on our experience with the Net-Map tool for participatory network mapping. The Net-Map tool was applied in three transdisciplinary case studies for three different purposes: (a) to contribute to an improved understanding of biodiversity knowledge flows in Europe, (b) to explore the interplay between actors with influence on water, agriculture, and energy developments at the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, and (c) to understand the challenges facing stakeholders engaged in conservation and economic development in a Southeast Asian mountain range. The case studies explore how network maps can serve as boundary objects to engage stakeholders of diverse points of view and jointly design strategies to address governance challenges. More specifically they show how network maps are used to gain a better understanding of governance situations, to help stakeholders identify strategies for navigation of the complex networks in which they are embedded and to support transdisciplinary research processes. We close with some reflections on the potential and limitations of the Net-Map tool in facilitating multi-stakeholder processes and disentangling complex governance arrangements.     

What role do climate considerations play in consumption of red meat in Norway?

Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is facilitated by changes in several consumption activities, such as food choices. This paper examines factors explaining red meat consumption in Norway, especially the role of climate concerns. The paper adds to our knowledge as most existing analyses of (red) meat consumption focus on health and animal welfare issues. Moreover, it expands our understanding by drawing on perspectives from both institutional and social psychological theory, including variables emphasizing the social dynamics behind consumption decisions. The study is based on data from a survey of 2000 people aged 18 years or older conducted in 2018. The data are analyzed using structural equation modelling. We find that there is a strong pro-meat culture in Norway, currently rather weakly influenced by climate concerns – specifically, personal norms and social pressures focused on reducing climate impacts. Instead, habits, beliefs about the qualities of red meat (being tasteful, nutritious, healthy) and social norms supporting red meat consumption are the three most important factors explaining the variation observed. Gender and income also influence red meat consumption, but less than found in other studies. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings, including for taxation, point-of-sale information and communicative processes to support changes in the perceptions of what could be a new “normal” diet.