Exploring alternative pathways toward more sustainable regional food systems by foodshed assessment – City region examples from Vienna and Bristol

Highlights: • A foodshed model assessing self-sufficiency has been applied to Vienna and Bristol. • There, high self-sufficiency is theoretically achievable but far away from its realization. • Regionalisation, organic farming and dietary shift are triggers of food system transformation. • Local food policies should adopt a sustainable city-region food system based on a foodshed delimitation. The resilience of the food supply system has become a vital issue for many countries especially under substantial international supply disturbances (e.g. the effects of COVID-19 restrictions). Regionalizing diets and increasing food self-sufficiency contribute greatly to shortening food supply chains and, therefore, to increasing the resilience of the food system. Simultaneously, food supply disturbances can offer a chance for food system transition toward implementing sustainable management practices in agriculture (e.g. organic farming), increasing the sustainability of food production. In this study, we have proposed a foodshed for the cities of Vienna and Bristol, delineating the spatial extent for such a regionalization and self-sufficiency discussion. We used the Metropolitan Foodshed and Self-sufficiency Scenario model to assess the potential self-sufficiency of these areas under different pathways involving more sustainable and resilient food system scenarios by distinguishing: i) The regionalization, ii) production system, iii) food losses and wastage, and iv) population growth until 2050. Furthermore, we have found the main local food policies and studies involving both cities, linking them to the current self-sufficiency levels and proposing pathways to increase them. Our results suggest that the foodsheds proposed are suitable to achieve a high degree of potential self-sufficiency when shifting consumers' behavior toward sustainably produced regional products, and reducing food wastes in households and food losses in agriculture. This should be accompanied in parallel by an increase in the diversification of regional crop production managed sustainably. We call for the adoption of the foodshed approach – based on the concept of sustainable city region food systems – so that it can be integrated into the food policies to increase food self-sufficiency sustainably.