About this Research Topic

Background

The Secretary-General's recent report on progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlights that only about 12% of targets with data are on track to be achieved by 2030, while nearly half are moderately or severely off track, and 30% have seen no progress or have regressed below the 2015 baseline. Transforming food systems is essential to achieving the 17 UN SDGs (Caron et al., 2018).

Global and regional agri-food systems face unprecedented challenges, including climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, chronic illnesses, ecosystem degradation, and profound social inequalities (Ewert et al., 2023; Webb et al., 2020). While the 17 SDGs offer a framework for global sustainability by 2030, measuring progress, particularly within food systems, remains challenging. Existing metrics often lack scientific robustness and fail to capture the complex social, economic, cultural, and ecological dimensions of food systems, hindering effective policy interventions and stakeholder actions.

To effectively assess progress towards the SDGs, food system transformation requires rigorous, science-based monitoring that supports public and private decision-making and holds leaders accountable (Fanzo et al. 2021; Schneider et al. 2023; FAO 2024). The scarcity of robust scientific indicators and metrics for tracking progress poses a significant challenge in assessing and advancing food system transformation efforts at all levels (Allen et al. 2021; Springer et al. 2022).

This Frontiers Research Topic (RT) seeks to bridge this gap by soliciting manuscripts on scientific indicators, metric systems, and monitoring frameworks tailored to the unique dynamics and impacts of food systems, enabling informed decision-making and fostering transformative change. Without comprehensive monitoring, tracking progress, identifying gaps, and evaluating the impact of public policy and investment decisions will be nearly impossible. Scientific indicators and metric systems can provide actionable insights and support evidence-based policymaking, accountability, and data-driven strategies for achieving sustainable and equitable food systems (Bene et al., 2024).

Despite growing awareness of the need to address urgent global and regional food system issues (Webb et al., 2020; Zurek et al. 2022), the lack of standardized and comprehensive measurement tools hampers effective monitoring and evaluation. Existing indicators vary widely, impeding comparability and accountability, undermining efforts to prioritize interventions and allocate resources efficiently. Interdisciplinary research and collaboration are urgently needed to develop scientifically sound indicators that accurately reflect the complex nature of sustainable food systems, facilitating informed decision-making and transformative change on all scales.

This Special Research Topic in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems aims to present current theory, science, and practice in developing robust sustainability measurement and monitoring frameworks aligned with the 17 UN SDGs. The research contributes to academic discourse and provides practical insights for policymakers, businesses, and civil society to foster transformative change toward healthy, equitable, resilient, and ecologically sustainable food systems.
Key Topics & Expected Outcomes:

● Develop novel frameworks for scientific indicators and metrics to measure food system sustainability aligned with the UN SDGs

● Clarify scientific research methodologies for creating comprehensive scientific indicators for agri-food systems

● Detail key data analytics approaches evaluating measures of the UN SDGs

● Provide significant insights into stakeholder perspectives on sustainability indicators and metrics for food systems

● Present empirical evidence on the feasibility of implementing comprehensive scientific indicator systems in diverse real-world contexts

● Detail important policy and investment recommendations for using the sustainability measurement framework to drive agri-food system changes toward the SDGs

Manuscript Types:
We encourage submissions of original research, methodological papers, reviews, syntheses, case studies, and perspectives that address the topics and objectives outlined above.

Please be aware that a manuscript summary with scope statement is mandatory for this particular collection. Please do not attempt to download or edit this document, instead copy and paste the questions and address each one when submitting your manuscript summary: document and answer these ahead of your manuscript summary.

Significance:
By addressing the need for rigorous sustainability measurement in food systems, this research topic contributes to both academic scholarship and real-world sustainability efforts, potentially guiding regional, state and national food system planning and policy interventions, private investment, corporate strategies, and community agri-food initiatives toward a more healthy, equitable, resilient, and sustainable food future. The development and adoption of robust indicators and metric systems will enable stakeholders to make evidence-based decisions, optimize resource allocation, evaluate returns on investments, and continuously adjust strategies to achieve long-term sustainability goals aligned with the SDGs.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: SDGs, Metrics, Social Inequality, Food Systems

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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