Beyond The Buzz: Monitoring Food Systems And Navigating Trade-Offs And Synergies For A Sustainable Future

It is globally recognized that food systems need to change radically if humanity is to reach the Sustainable Development Goals within a safe operating space, i.e. the planetary boundaries. Yet, most transformation paradigms and existing instruments are highly normative and apply a one-dimensional approach to tackle food and nutrition security, the need to increase agricultural productivity, tackling rising poverty and biodiversity loss, and the urgent need for thorough climate mitigation or adaptation.
Food systems encompass all the elements and activities related to producing and consuming food, including economic and social, human and environmental health outcomes as well as their connections and interdependencies. To draw robust and credible policy recommendations stemming from the food systems discourse and to scale up positive impact in a sustainable manner, it is imperative to base decisions on informed and empirical findings. To this aim, it is essential to develop monitoring and evaluation systems that allow us to track systemic change and iteratively adapt our strategies, as well as to navigate trade-offs and synergies, i.e. between different sustainability dimensions (environmental, economic, and social).
In this research topic, we call on a selection of empirical studies, methods, and tools that (a.) address trade-offs and synergies in food systems (between climate adaptation, mitigation, economic development, agricultural productivity, food, and nutrition security), (b.) that negotiate costs associated with possible transformation scenarios, (c.) that measure systemic change (incl. system behavior, system structures, and paradigms).
In particular, we are interested in submissions that address one of the following topics:
1. How can systemic change be measured and monitored, e.g., as a basis to understand and plan for progress towards desired impact and outcomes such as enhanced sustainability and resilience?
2. True costs accounting of (climate-smart) food systems: what are the social and environmental costs of food systems and how can trade-offs be negotiated?
3. What are applied decision support tools for trade-offs and synergies in food system interventions, with a special focus on poverty, food and nutrition security, biodiversity, and climate adaptation and mitigation?
4. Case studies on identifying leverage points for food systems transformation towards sustainable and resilient food systems.
5. Examination of the approaches, challenges, and opportunities in scaling food system interventions for sustainable impact.

We welcome submissions on original research papers, case studies, methods, policy briefs as well as review papers.