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This book addresses the thorny and fascinating question of how food and voucher programs, despite theory and evidence generally favoring cash, remain relevant, have evolved, and, in most circumstances, have improved over time. In doing so, we take an evolutionary and pragmatic view; we are interested in understanding why food-based programs exist and how countries can benefit from transformations such as that of Chhattisgarh, not in determining whether those programs should exist.

Animal foraging and competition are defined by the partitioning of three primary niche axes: space, time, and resources. Human disturbance is rapidly altering the spatial and temporal niches of animals, but the impact of humans on resource consumption and partitioning—arguably the most important niche axis—is poorly understood. We assessed resource consumption and trophic niche partitioning as a function of human disturbance at the individual, population, and community levels using stable isotope analysis of 684 carnivores from seven communities in North America. We detected significant responses to human disturbance at all three levels of biological organization: individual carnivores consumed more human food subsidies in disturbed landscapes, leading to significant increases in trophic niche width and trophic niche overlap among species ranging from mesocarnivores to apex predators. Trophic niche partitioning is the primary mechanism regulating coexistence in many communities, and our results indicate that humans fundamentally alter resource niches and competitive interactions among terrestrial consumers. Among carnivores, niche overlap can trigger interspecific competition and intraguild predation, while the consumption of human foods significantly increases human–carnivore conflict. Our results suggest that human disturbances, especially in the form of food subsidies, may threaten carnivores by increasing the probability of both interspecific competition and human–carnivore conflict. Ultimately, these findings illustrate a potential decoupling of predator–prey dynamics, with impacts likely cascading to populations, communities, and ecosystems.

AIM: Anthropogenic food subsidies are increasingly present in ecosystems, but their impacts remain poorly understood. Big game hunting is a growing activity that annually subsidizes ecosystems with tonnes of carrion world‐wide. By feeding on carrion, scavengers support key ecosystem functions and services, becoming key vectors to transfer the impacts of human‐mediated food subsidies across ecosystems. We characterize and compare the structure of vertebrate communities feeding on these subsidies, namely big game hunting remains, at a global scale. LOCATION: Global. METHODS: We collected data from a countrywide field study in Spain and broadened it up to nine regions in four continents by reviewing scientific literature. We analysed the structure of the scavenger communities considering species composition, richness and scavenging frequency. RESULTS: Seventy‐nine vertebrate species, 19% globally threatened, scavenged food subsidies from big game hunting world‐wide. Scavenger richness (2.0–11.0% of vertebrates/region) positively correlated with total vertebrate richness. Although scavenger communities at hunting remains varied among regions, we describe a general structural pattern. Birds and mammals dominate consumption, with birds scavenging twice more frequently than mammals – but more mammal species scavenge compared to birds. Generalists dominate scavenging globally, especially where the presence of obligate scavengers (vultures) and apex predators (e.g. wolves, hyenas, eagles) is low. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Anthropogenic food from hunting subsidizes many vertebrate species from different trophic levels and conservation status and thus is expected to affect from populations to ecosystems. Obligate scavengers and apex predators seem to play a key role structuring the scavenger community through top‐down mechanisms. The general structure of scavenger communities we describe here provides a benchmark for comparisons of subsidized and non‐subsidized communities. More data on the spatio‐temporal availability of anthropogenic food subsidies and their consumption by scavengers world‐wide are needed to efficiently preserve biodiversity, and the associated ecological functions and services, in increasingly subsidized ecosystems.

The British Columbia Farmers' Market Nutrition Coupon Program (FMNCP) provides low-income households with coupons valued at $21/week for 16 weeks to purchase healthy foods in farmers' markets. Our objective was to explore FMNCP participants' experiences of accessing nutritious foods, and perceived programme outcomes. The current study used qualitative description methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with FMNCP participants during the 2019 farmers' market season. Directed content analysis was used to analyse the data, whereby the five domains of Freedman et al.'s framework of nutritious food access provided the basis for an initial coding scheme. Data that did not fit within the framework's domains were coded inductively. One urban and two rural communities in British Columbia, Canada. Twenty-eight adults who were participating in the FMNCP. Three themes emerged: autonomy and dignity, social connections and community building, and environmental and programmatic constraints. Firstly, the programme promoted a sense of autonomy and dignity through financial support, increased access to high-quality produce, food-related education and skill development and mitigating stigma and shame. Secondly, shopping in farmers' markets increased social connections and fostered a sense of community. Finally, participants experienced limited food variety in rural farmers' markets, lack of transportation and challenges with redeeming coupons. Participation in the FMNCP facilitated access to nutritious foods and enhanced participants' diet quality, well-being and health. Strategies such as increasing the amount and duration of subsidies and expanding programmes may help improve participants' experiences and outcomes of farmers' market food subsidy programmes.

Demand for sustainably produced biomass is expected to increase with the need to provide renewable commodities, improve resource security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with COP26 commitments. Studies have demonstrated additional environmental benefits of using perennial biomass crops (PBCs), when produced appropriately, as a feedstock for the growing bioeconomy, including utilisation for bioenergy (with or without carbon capture and storage). PBCs can potentially contribute to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (2023–27) objectives provided they are carefully integrated into farming systems and landscapes. Despite significant research and development (R&D) investment over decades in herbaceous and coppiced woody PBCs, deployment has largely stagnated due to social, economic and policy uncertainties. This paper identifies the challenges in creating policies that are acceptable to all actors. Development will need to be informed by measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of greenhouse gas emissions reductions and other environmental, economic and social metrics. It discusses interlinked issues that must be considered in the expansion of PBC production: (i) available land; (ii) yield potential; (iii) integration into farming systems; (iv) R&D requirements; (v) utilisation options; and (vi) market systems and the socio‐economic environment. It makes policy recommendations that would enable greater PBC deployment: (1) incentivise farmers and land managers through specific policy measures, including carbon pricing, to allocate their less productive and less profitable land for uses which deliver demonstrable greenhouse gas reductions; (2) enable greenhouse gas mitigation markets to develop and offer secure contracts for commercial developers of verifiable low‐carbon bioenergy and bioproducts; (3) support innovation in biomass utilisation value chains; and (4) continue long‐term, strategic R&D and education for positive environmental, economic and social sustainability impacts. Perennial biomass crops (PBCs) can potentially contribute to Common Agricultural Policy (2023–27) objectives provided they are carefully integrated into farming systems and landscapes. Despite significant research and development (R&D) investment over decades in herbaceous and coppiced woody PBCs, deployment has largely stagnated due to social, economic and policy uncertainties. This paper identifies the challenges in creating policies that are acceptable to all actors and discusses the interlinked issues: (i) available land; (ii) yield potential; (iii) integration into farming systems; (iv) R&D requirements; (v) utilisation options; and (vi) market systems and the socio‐economic environment.

This study explored programme recipients' and deliverers' experiences and perceived outcomes of accessing or facilitating a grocery gift card (GGC) programme from I Can for Kids (iCAN), a community-based programme that provides GGC to low-income families with children. This qualitative descriptive study used Freedman et al's framework of nutritious food access to guide data generation and analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between August and November 2020. Data were analysed using directed content analysis with a deductive-inductive approach. Fifty-four participants were purposively recruited, including thirty-seven programme recipients who accessed iCAN's GGC programme and seventeen programme deliverers who facilitated it. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Three themes were generated from the data. First, iCAN's GGC programme promoted a sense of autonomy and dignity among programme recipients as they appreciated receiving financial support, the flexibility and convenience of using GGC, and the freedom to select foods they desired. Recipients perceived these benefits improved their social and emotional well-being. Second, recipients reported that the use of GGC improved their households' dietary patterns and food skills. Third, both participant groups identified programmatic strengths and limitations. Programme recipients reported that iCAN's GGC programme provided them with dignified access to nutritious food and improved their households' finances, dietary patterns, and social and emotional well-being. Increasing the number of GGC provided to households on each occasion, establishing clear and consistent criteria for distributing GGC to recipients, and increasing potential donors' awareness of iCAN's GGC programme may augment the amount of support iCAN could provide to households.

This paper provides evidence on the effectiveness of one of the most common policies to improve nutrition among the poor, that is, a food subsidy. We study the case of subsidies on pulses in select Indian states and their impact on consumption and ultimately nutrition (protein intake). As a natural experiment, we use the introduction of pulses into India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) where the variations in prices were brought about by the inclusion of pulses in the PDS in some states and not in others. Our difference in difference (DID) estimates show that change in the consumption of pulses because of their inclusion in the PDS, though statistically significant, was of a small order. The impact was not large enough to bring about any sizable difference in consumption of pulses or the total protein intake. The results withstand several robustness checks including randomized inference and triple differencing based on location and other consumer characteristics.

Ecosystem engineers alter habitat and resource availability within ecosystems, but the magnitude of these effects depends on abiotic context and spatial scale. We examined how the effects of freshwater mussels, an ecosystem engineer, changed with spatial scale. We combined a field enclosure experiment and comparative field study to evaluate associations among mussels and macroinvertebrate communities across three spatial scales: mussel individuals (~ 0.01 m2), patches of mussels (0.25 m2), and large aggregations of many mussel patches (mussel beds, ~ 1000 m2). We used canonical correspondence analysis and variation partitioning to evaluate how mussel abundance, food availability, substrate heterogeneity, and flow influenced macroinvertebrate communities. We found that mussels’ influence on macroinvertebrate communities differed among spatial scales. At the smallest scale, macroinvertebrate density increased on the shells of live mussels, likely due to mussel influences on food availability to grazers. At the patch scale, we found no mussel effects, likely because they were overridden by a flood event. At the mussel bed scale, macroinvertebrate communities were primarily controlled by flow and secondarily by food availability. As such, the continued loss of freshwater mussels means the loss of habitat creation and food provisioning for other aquatic groups, and alteration of facilitation landscapes within streams.

The control of overabundant vertebrates is often problematic. Much work has focused on population-level responses and overabundance due to anthropogenic subsidies. However, far less work has been directed at investigating responses following the removal of subsidies. We investigate the consequences of two consecutive perturbations, the closure of a landfill and an inadvertent poisoning event, on the trophic ecology (δ 13 C, δ 15 N, and δ 34 S), survival, and population size of an overabundant generalist seabird species, the Yellow-legged Gull ( Larus michahellis ). We expected that the landfill closure would cause a strong dietary shift and the inadvertent poisoning a decrease in gull population size. As a long-lived species, we also anticipated adult survival to be buffered against the decrease in food availability but not against the inadvertent poisoning event. Stable isotope analysis confirmed the dietary shift towards marine resources after the disappearance of the landfill. Although the survival model was inconclusive, it did suggest that the perturbations had a negative effect on survival, which was followed by a recovery back to average values. Food limitation likely triggered dispersal to other populations, while poisoning may have increased mortality; these two processes were likely responsible for the large fall in population size that occurred after the two consecutive perturbations. Life-history theory suggests that perturbations may encourage species to halt existing breeding investment in order to ensure future survival. However, under strong perturbation pulses the resilience threshold might be surpassed and changes in population density can arise. Consecutive perturbations may effectively manage overabundant species.

Populations of species typically considered trophic generalists may include specialized individuals consistently feeding on certain resources. Optimal foraging theory states that individuals should feed on those resources most valuable to them. This, however, may vary according to individual differences in detecting or processing resources, different optimization criteria, and competitive abilities. White Storks ( Ciconia ciconia ) are trophic generalists at the population level. Their European population recovery has been attributed to increased wintering in southern Europe (rather than Africa) where they feed upon new anthropogenic food subsidies: predictable dumps and less predictable and more difficult to detect, but abundant, invasive Procambarus clarkii crayfishes in ricefields. We studied the foraging strategies of resident and wintering storks in southwestern Spain in ricefields and dumps, predicting that more experience in the study area (residents vs. immigrants, old vs. young) would increase ricefield specialization. We developed the first multi-event capture-recapture model to evaluate behavioral consistency, analyzing 3042 observations of 1684 banded storks. There were more specialists among residents (72%) than immigrants (40%). All resident specialists foraged in ricefields, and ricefield use increased with individual age. In contrast, some immigrants specialized on either dumps (24%) or ricefields (16%), but the majority were generalists (60%). Our results provide empirical evidence of high individual foraging consistency within a generalist species and a differential resource selection by individuals of different ages and origins, probably related to their previous experience in the foraging area. Thus, future changes in food resource availability at either of the two anthropogenic subsidies (ricefields or dumps) may differentially impact individuals of different ages and origins making up the wintering population. The use of multi-event capture-recapture modeling has proven useful for studying interindividual variability in behavior.