Aims and scope
Aims and Scope
Food is a common good. Food security is a universal human right. The current status of food security and its future are important questions, which is addressed by Food Security— The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food. This journal wants to do so through the best available science, to be published and read globally.
Food Security is a wide-audience, interdisciplinary, international journal dedicated to the production, to the access (economic and physical), and to the nutritional quality of food. The scales considered in Food Security include: the individual, the household, the community, the country, and the world. We strive to publish high-quality scientific articles, where quality includes, but is not limited to, the quality and clarity of text, and the validity of methods and approaches.
Food Security is the initiative of a distinguished international group of scientists with deep concerns about food security globally, who consider that the power of shared knowledge is a means of meeting the challenges that food security faces. The journal therefore addresses all the constraints - physical, biological, socio-economic, and policy or political – to achieve food security. Our vision is that food must be nutritious: no society could possibly exist without nutritious food. Food security, therefore, implies proper nutrition.
Food Security publishes three types of peer-reviewed articles: Research, Reviews, and Opinions, together with Book Reviews and Editorials. Book Reviews and Editorials are prepared by the Editorial Board of the Journal. All the dimensions of food security, and therefore all disciplinary scientific fields, are covered by the Food Security: food production and stability; access (physical and economic) to food; stocks, markets and trade (local to global); the nutritional value of food; and the spatial constraints to the functioning of food systems.
Submissions taking a synthetic view of food security are the essence of Food Security: Food Security does not seek to duplicate the coverage ensured by many journals that are focused on component disciplines.
From this perspective, the journal covers the following areas:
• Global food needs: the mismatch between population and the ability to provide adequate nutrition.
• Food production potential vs. actual production of food.
• Constraints to ensure global food needs as a result of (1) climate, climate variability, and climate change; (2) desertification and flooding; (3) natural disasters; (4) soils, soil quality and threats to soils, abiotic production-limiting factors; (5) biological reducing factors of food production and post-harvest: pathogens, pests, and weeds. The sociological contexts of food production, access, quality, and consumption. Nutrition, food quality, and food safety.
• The social, economic, policy, and political factors that prevent satisfying food needs, including: (1) land, access to agricultural land, agricultural and food policy; (2) international relations and trade; (3) access to food; (4) financial policies; (5) research policies and priorities (6) extension and advisory systems, (7) wars and conflicts.
This array of topics may be seen through a series of editorial lines:
1. Poverty and chronic food insecurity
2. Ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable food production
3. Climate change, climate change adaptation, and food production
4. Spatial structures of food systems underpinning food (in)security
5. Food security policies at any scale (individual to global)
6. Global trade and stocks – distributional crises and resilience of food systems
7. Improving nutrition at any scale (individual to global)
8. Peri-urban and urban agriculture, house-hold (backyard-, family-) gardens
9. The poor and vulnerable: women, children, and the elderly – nutritional justice
10. Policies to ensure food security
11. Science and research strategies for food Security
These editorial lines are not to be seen as sections coordinated by specific Editors. On the contrary, they are inter-disciplinary themes where several Editors of Food Security are involved. These editorial lines are not static. Instead, they are meant to evolve according to views of the Editorial Board and of the Advisory Board.
Submissions that do not fall in these editorial lines will also be considered.