Thesis structure

To advance the study of discourse within food systems, I have structured this thesis into two major sections, with a third synthesis section. I first present a methodological development section (Chapters 2-4), and second an empirical testing of theory through case studies (Chapters 5-7). The adaptive approach embedded in the design of this study means that the application of the framework throughout the research enabled me to test how human ecology, as a systems-based analytical framework, illustrates the links between food discourses and food systems research. In Chapter 8, I

synthesise the different scales and issues covered into the major knowledge contributions of the thesis.

This is a thesis by compilation. All five core chapters (Chapters 3 to 7) have been written as academic research manuscripts and at time of submission are either published, submitted, under review, or in advanced preparation. Along with the manuscripts, I have produced three additional chapters: This introduction (Chapter 1), the methodological approach (Chapter 2), and a concluding discussion which synthesises the major arguments (Chapter 8).

In Chapter 2, I document my ontological, epistemological, and theoretical foundations. These foundations position human ecology as my overall methodological approach towards studying discourses in food systems. Human ecology provides the conceptual platform for looking at the literature and data analysis carried out in the rest of the thesis.

In Chapter 3, I document how the human ecology Cultural Adaptation Template (the CAT) acts as an organisational framework for analysing literature using two different discourses analytically (Davila and Dyball, 2018). Through focusing on the food security and food sovereignty discourses as introduced in this chapter, Chapter 3 provides an example of how human ecology enables analysis of food systems literature and the discourses embedded within it.

In Chapter 4, I introduce an in-depth human ecological and historical overview of the Philippines food system. Using interdisciplinary literature from economics, history, agriculture, social science, sustainability science, I narrate how the macro-economics of the Philippine food system has led to a maladaptive system. Maladaptation, as per human ecologist Stephen Boyden (Boyden, 2016), is defined throughout the thesis as the situation that emerges from lengthy cultural and institutional processes that have led to unnecessary distress in human wellbeing and ecosystems. In such maladaptive systems, smallholders are unable to overcome poverty traps created by historical legacies that have supported policies incentivising the production of cash commodities. The paper demonstrates how human ecology is a valuable conceptual framework for identifying the competing discourses in a particular food system, and their historical origins.

In Chapter 5, I demonstrate how systems thinking and human ecology can be used by food systems practitioners and researchers in an applied context. Leveraging from regional initiatives to advance transdisciplinary food systems research in Southeast Asia, I document how researchers and policy-makers from four Southeast Asian countries conceptualise issues of food and nutrition security, and the subsequent implication of these framings for emerging transdisciplinary research agendas in the region. The analysis of workshop findings shows that even though there is high interest in implementing transdisciplinary research, smallholder farmers are continuously framed as passive recipients of technical services and agricultural extensions. I argue that such framings are incompatible with the explicit objectives of regional agendas to expand transdisciplinary and participatory food systems research.

Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 include a human ecological analysis of semi-structured interview data from smallholder farmers in Inopacan, Leyte, the Philippines. Both chapters present a detailed case study of smallholders’ experiences in working in a cash commodity system, and the implications of this system for their immediate household food and nutrition security. Chapter 6 focuses on the way smallholder farmers frame food security, and the implications of this framing for the type of support they seek and receive in their food system. The interviews present narratives of food security as market driven, perpetuating discourses that food security is attained through maintaining the current food systems. I argue that this leads to systemic behaviours that enable poverty traps, hindering farmers’ capacity to diversify and to break socio-political barriers in their food system. Chapter 7 presents smallholders’ perceptions of pathways to improve food and nutrition security while adapting to environmental change. I present two discourses that exist in a relational manner, responding to the economic and environmental context of agricultural production in Inopacan. Smallholders speak of ‘cleaning the land’, clearing forest understoreys as a strategy simplify agricultural landscapes, which they perceive as an adequate strategy to produce more coconuts. At the same time, smallholders discuss the urgency to adapt to environmental change, experienced in the form of intense weather events, increased heat stress, declining soil quality, and lack of access to freshwater resources. To adapt to climate change, smallholders discuss agroforestry and diversification into high value trees for timber and fruits as a way of using markets to improve food security and simultaneously adapt to a changing environment. This pathway, however, does not receive the institutional policy support to enable farmers to change their practices, essentially locking them into the ‘cleaning the land’ discourse and its associated practices. Chapter 8 provides a synthesis of the five academic manuscripts produced, and the theoretical, research, and policy implications of my thesis.

An overview summary of the thesis structure and relevant questions is in Table 1.

Table 1: Thesis questions and relevant chapters Primary Research Question:

To what extent does a human ecology framework help capture links between food discourses and institutional behaviours in food systems?

Answered throughout thesis, summary in Chapter 8

Sub-question Relevant Chapter

How does the human ecology framework help guide analysis of food system discourses?

Chapter 3, Chapter 4

What discourses exist among policy and research groups responsible for food and nutrition security activities?

Chapter 5

What is the relational nature between discourses embedded among Filipino smallholder farmers’ experiences of agriculture?

How do these theoretical and empirical findings contribute to advancing food systems and human ecology scholarship?

Chapter 8

The manuscripts published or under review for this thesis (Chapters 3-7) may vary slightly in language and spelling to adhere to specific journal requirement. For coherence, I have made all figures and tables follow standard numeric sequence for the full thesis. Besides figure and table captions and in-text reference changes, all of Chapters 3-7 are as published or as under review by the relevant publication.