title: Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.
abstract: Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework.
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Nathaniel P
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Springer
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Garbach
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kathleen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Guillozet
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Van R
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Haden
authors.affiliation: Information Center for the Environment, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Prashant
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hedao
authors.affiliation: Information Center for the Environment, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Allan D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Hollander
authors.affiliation: Information Center for the Environment, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Patrick R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ingersoll
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Langner
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lipari
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Yaser
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Mohammadi
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Ruthie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Musker
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Piatto
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Courtney
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Riggle
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schweisguth
authors.affiliation: Information Center for the Environment, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sin
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Snider
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Nataša
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vidic
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Aubrey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sonja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brodt
authors.affiliation: Information Center for the Environment, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: James F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Quinn
authors.affiliation: Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Thomas P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Tomich
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation