Internship offer (Canton de Vaud – Switzerland)

Context

In addition to the already visible consequences of climate change (rise of the average temperature and increase in extreme events such as droughts, floods, hail…) on the agriculture, the Swiss food system has suffered from several unexpected challenges in recent years. In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted the value chains due to the lockdown and the closure of the borders. In 2022, the Ukrainian war has severe consequences on food security, also in Switzerland due to rising prices. It is urgent to develop strategies and policies that helps food systems become more resilient to help them facing future known and unknown challenges. It is vital to deal with sustainability and resilience simultaneously to prevent locking the system into a very resilient undesired state and allow for change towards more sustainability.

Food systems comprise actors determining how to produce, distribute, and consume food. Food systems can have different dimensions, ranging from global to local, leading to supply chains of different length that differs from one system to another. The Swiss agricultural policy encourages the development of regional food systems through financing rural development projects (RDP). We have noticed that, due to the youth of this support, there is scarce knowledge and a lack of tools to accompany the changes at the regional level.

The thesis/internship is embedded in a broader PhD whose objective is to better understand what defines the resilience and the sustainability of a food system at the regional level and how these concepts can be operationalized. It will support the operationalization of the concept by focusing on the region of “Gros de Vaud” on the Swiss plateau close to Lausanne, which major production is cereals. The thesis/internship aims at helping to build the RDP and testing in a different region the methodology developed for assessing the resilience and the sustainability of the regional food systems.