About this Research Topic

Background

Considerable progress has been witnessed in food production, reduction in hunger, and malnutrition during the 20th century driven by advances in the ‘green revolution' technologies. Some estimates suggest that between 2000 and 2020, around 90 million people per year received sufficient calories to enable them to lead healthy and active lives. Yet many challenges remain for the global agri-food systems. These challenges emphasize the limits of technology-driven approaches that dominated much of the 20th-century green revolution.

Where the green revolution has been successful - such as in some parts of South Asia – these initiatives were based on massive public support in the form of input subsidies that have led to the unsustainable use of inputs, environmental pollution from excessive use of cheap and subsidized fertilizers and groundwater depletion. In most African settings, efforts at securing a green revolution have, so far, fallen short, leaving most of the continent (especially south of the Sahara) still having to contend with malnutrition and food insecurity, soil degradation, and deforestation.

These widely reported challenges suggest that beyond the promise of genetic, mechanical, and chemical technologies, fundamental institutional and systems innovations are needed to foster truly sustainable agri-food systems. Reducing the land, water and climate change footprint of food systems are the immediate concerns. Being the largest economic system around the globe, employing half of the 1.3 billion workers globally, food systems are at the center of achieving multiple SDGs such as those concerning nutrition and health, income growth and poverty reduction, social inclusion and gender equality, climate change mitigation and adaptation and environmental health and diversity.

Presently, system transformation is entering into mainstream thinking regarding agricultural and food systems development. The CGIAR (a multi-center “global research partnership for a food secure future dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources” see https://www.cgiar.org), a major player in global agricultural development research, employs systems transformation (involving policies, markets, and institutions) as one of the three pillars of its work (the other two being genetic sciences and other natural and physical sciences applied to agricultural-resilient agri-food systems). This broad recognition emphasizes the need for both social and institutional innovations as the key enablers for sustainable technological advancement to achieve multifaceted SDGs. Achieving the SDGs will require more than technological innovations to include a broader and deliberate combination of socio-technical innovation bundles. These innovations are enabled by scientific advancements that are, in turn, enabled and directed by forces emanating from business, government, and society.

In this collection, we encourage the submission of empirical and review papers that combine the following: technological proof of concepts with requisite social; governance, and institutional innovations to achieve better outcomes in at least two dimensions of reducing environmental footprint; GHG reduction and climate adaptation; gender equality and social inclusion, and shared improvements in nutrition, income growth, and economic opportunities. Papers that identify governance and policy innovations are highly encouraged. Original research, review, and synthesis papers are welcome to contribute. Selected authors will be invited to present at a post-publication policy roundtable where the published authors will have the opportunity to present their work and describe its relevance to global development.

Proposed papers should focus on any of the following themes:

a) Institutional innovations fostering farmer-researcher feedback loops for contextual relevance and multidimensional impacts that highlight the relevant SDG such as SDG1 (no poverty), SDG2 (zero hunger), SDG5 (gender equality), SDG13 (climate action), etc.

b) Social and institutional innovations for addressing gender gaps in access to agriculture technologies with proven productivity impacts and positive (minimum neutral) environmental and climate footprint.

c) Comparative analyses of alternative institutional policy and market innovations to scale technologies with proven productivity impacts and positive (minimum neutral) environmental and climate footprint.

d) The role of the digital revolution in the adoption of sustainable and climate-positive technologies improving citizen participation in research priorities and generally giving voice to those at the political social and economic margins.

Keywords: sustainable intensification, gender, social inclusion, policies, markets, smallholder agriculture

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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