Demystifying food systems transformation

Summary

This article uses a semi-systematic review of academic and grey literature from the past three decades to explore how the concept of food system transformation has developed and evolved. The authors place their review amid increasing use of the term within academia, government and NGO circles. They emphasise that currently, what is exactly meant by food system transformation is unclear and in danger of becoming an overused, or even meaningless buzzword. The article provides a historical analysis of the term, the different ways food systems themselves are understood within the research community and a concluding contribution to a definition of the concept. 

The article points to a 1994 paper published in Futures by Kenneth Dahlberg as an origin point for the concept. Dahlberg called for a transition to a “regenerative food system” to combat a host of social and ecological challenges. Dalhberg built this concept from decolonization theory and a mindset that there was a need to restructure industrial agriculture, protect indigenous food systems and shift values towards health rather than productivity. In the analysis of the literature, the authors use Dahlberg’s initial framing as a benchmark for the development of underpinning theory and conceptualisations of food system transformations. 

The authors find that food system transformation literature builds arguments from different conceptual understandings of change, ranging from subtle reformations to radical reconfigurations. They note, however, that the literature often lacks explicit guidance on the components necessary for change. These include the specific strategies for change, the desired goals or outcomes of the change and the agents needed to achieve the prescribed change. The authors cite a review of food systems transformation by Weber et al. (2020) who found five distinct approaches oriented towards: sustainable diets, food as commons, sustainable agriculture, alternative food movements, and healthy and diverse societies. Within each of these approaches, academics align (explicitly or not) with other academic theories; mainly socio-technical transition theory or socio-ecological transformation theory. Socio-technical transition theory deals with systemic processes of change which include technological changes. Socio-ecological transformation theory is often concerned with the process of entirely new systems emerging from existing ones. That is to say, the various approaches to food system transformation research have different theoretical frameworks and understandings of the process of change; which results in different strategies and action for change. 

The researchers used a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse the literature in a three phase process. The authors reviewed articles both in English and in Spanish to try and capture a wider body of literature. They note that generally, articles in Spanish use different terms to discuss what the authors consider to be food system transformation but do not use terms such as “food system transformation” explicitly. The authors found the terms food sovereignty and agroecology were more frequently used in the Spanish literature. In more detail the three phases were as follows:

Phase 1

A statistical analysis of all of the literature from the scoping process was conducted. The authors found a steady increase in food system transformation literature beginning in 2011 from a baseline of about 10 publications a year. Sharp and significant rises in 2015 and 2019 were found with jumps to 20 and over 40 per year respectively. 

Phase 2

Thematic trends and the evolution of debates were analysed by assessing the abstracts of a subset of the entire literature pools. The authors found that after the 1994 Dahlberg publication, no major articles were produced until 2004 but several key publications emerged between 2005 and 2014.Almost 90% of articles found in this review came in the decade between 2015 and 2022. The authors note a rising political edge to the literature during this period, marked by issues like agroecology, food sovereignty and food citizenship. The authors also found a strong link between the UN’s sustainable development goals and food system transformation literature after 2018. 

Phase 3

The final phase identified major theoretical contributions and frameworks to the field by reading an even smaller subset of key articles. The authors cite a wide range of change definitions found in the food system transformation literature. They conclude that on the whole, transformation within the body of literature reviewed is understood as a significant shift (or radical) as opposed to incremental change. More than half of the literature reviewed in this phase cite transition theories while fewer align with transformation theories or some combination of the two or none at all. The authors note, however, that over 65% of the papers reviewed in this phase did not offer a direct definition of food system transformation. Several of the studies offer definitions including: slowly shifting from one state to another (Pitt and Jones, 2016), a non-linear and long-term process of “competition, negotiation and reconfiguration” (Leeuwis et al., 2021) and a significant change away from the dominant industrialised food system (Pereira et al., 2020). Lastly, the authors note Béné (2022) who explored a solutions-oriented definition of food system transformation that acknowledged the political and purposive (as opposed to random) nature of the process.

The authors find that their results confirm previous research which found that proposed strategies or actions for change depend on the different understandings of food systems, the various goals aimed for, and crucially the assumptions underlying these goals. They also note recent efforts to look at the governance of food system change, and the power and politics which hinder or allow change, rather than assuming there is a lack of scientific or technological knowledge or solutions. The authors find that most of the recent literature understood change as a significant shift away from the current industrial agri-food system. The authors stated this was in contrast to reports from the UN, IPES-Food and HLPE. In making this claim, the authors reference other research which argues these reports can co-opt and fuzzy the term transformation and lean towards smaller reforms or adaptations more in line with transition theory.. 

The authors conclude their discussion by noting a general lack of direct definitions of food system transformation within the literature. They offer a definition which states “Food system transformations refer to significant reconfigurations of the assemblage of food system activities, actors, outcomes, and relationships (dynamics) to move away from the current globalized industrial model and ensure sustainable, resilient, and just models of production and consumption.” They emphasise that components of the food system (governance, practices, power and values) critically must be debated and redesigned collectively and inclusively.

Abstract

There is increasing interest and hype around the need for transforming food systems toward sustainability. Today, calls for food systems transformations abound in the scholarly and gray literature, and even major international platforms have brought attention to this argument. However, as happens with many sustainability-related buzzwords, trendy terms can become co-opted, emptied of meaning, or used to refer to very different types of change in relation to goals, processes, or outcomes. In addition, many terms and theories are adopted to speak of and explain change. Therefore, what is meant by food system transformation remains opaque, and underscores the fact that food systems themselves are understood in multiple ways within the research community. As the urgency in accelerating food system transformations worldwide builds up, it is important to understand how this field has evolved and how food system change is conceptualized today. We offer an overview and synthesis of the scholarly literature in English and Spanish anchored on food systems change in the past three decades to shed light on how the theory and literature landscape has evolved, and how concepts are understood. At the same time, we provide an overview of the mechanisms of change that are most prominent and the frameworks that have been proposed. We conclude with what we think is a key definition of this critical concept. Our contribution serves to confirm and expand recent reviews, while mapping out the most prominent contributions to allow fellow researchers to navigate a diverse field and build upon these insights.

Reference

Juri, S., Terry, N., Pereira, L.M., 2024. Demystifying food systems transformation: a review of the state of the field. Ecology and Society 29.

Read more here. See also the TABLE explainer An overview of food system challenges and our recent podcast Is Global Food Security a Solvable Puzzle?