Abstract for: Modeling Food Insecurity as a Dynamic System: Feedback Mechanisms, Structural Drivers, and Leverage Points for Policy

Food insecurity remains a persistent global challenge shaped by interacting economic, social, environmental, and institutional factors. Despite substantial investments in agricultural production, food assistance, and social protection programs, progress toward sustained food security has been uneven and often temporary. This study conceptualizes food-insecurity as an emergent property of a complex system rather than the result of isolated drivers. Drawing on the six-pillar food security framework and prior literature, we developed a high-level system dynamics (SD) model to represent the key determinants of food insecurity and their interactions over time. The model captures reinforcing and balancing feedback loops across different domains. Our analysis demonstrates how interacting feedback processes can generate persistent or worsening food insecurity. By identifying key feedback structures, this study underscores the value of a systems approach for designing more integrated food security policies. Our analysis demonstrates how interacting high-level feedback processes can generate persistent or worsening food insecurity. In the next step, we aim to develop a more detailed, context-specific causal loop diagram (CLD) that captures the institutional and socioeconomic characteristics of the U.S. food system.