Regarding mainly these two questions:
"What are the main types of vulnerabilities facing food supply chains and what are the potential consequences for food system actors (including input suppliers, food producers, traders, food system workers and consumers), considering different kinds of potential shocks?
What kind of inequities and power imbalances are present in food systems and how do they affect resilient FSN and especially for those groups facing multidimensional and intersectional aspects of inequality and vulnerability?"
I would like to raise the topic of gender differences in food systems. Differences related to gender (but most times in intersection with other axes of possible discrimination) have been found in all stages of the food system, and I believe it is relevant to mention them explicitly to make sure they don't remain invisible.
Gender disaggregated data should be collected to make such differences more visible, but after data is available, a further step to operationalize actions that address them is needed. This step is however impossible without the data.
It is also very relevant to act in a twofold way on gender equality: from one side, women have traditionally been more in charge of household nutrition and often their education and empowerment is related to a more food secure household. From the other side, though, it is important to implement a process of co-responsabilization to make sure this task (which is unpaid and often unrecognized, but still a type of work) stops weighting so disproportionately on women's shoulders, and that the objective of more food secure households does not become (or remain) a mostly feminine responsibility.
Literature on this is vast, I will only cite some examples:
P. Allen, and C. Sachs. 2007. “Women and Food Chains: The Gendered Politics of Food.” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 1–23.
A. V. Avakian, B. Haber, Feminist Food Studies: A Brief History, 2005.
C. Bergonzini, "Just food transition: For a gender mainstreaming approach in urban food policies. A review of 20 cities", Cities, 148, 2024.
M. L. DeVault, Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
J. Halliday, D. Joshi, L. Young, and R. van Veenhuizen. 2020. "Gender in Urban Food Systems". 37. Urban Agriculture Magazine. RUAF.
OECD (2022) Gender and food systems: overcoming evidence gaps. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/publications/gender-and-food-systems-355ba4ee-en.h…;
Chiara Bergonzini