For society to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the agri-food industry needs a substantial sustainability transition toward food systems capable of delivering greater volumes of nutritious food, while simultaneously lowering the environmental footprint. This issue of AHV focuses on the big picture—on mechanisms of sustainability transition, from social innovation, to models of finance and institutional systems, and calls for business and agricultural researchers to transform the sector together. Contributors to this issue embrace a transdisciplinary outlook, including scientific, technical, social and (...) political dimensions of agroecology. This issue is a call to action: to encourage the community of social entrepreneurs, ecosystem players and researchers to contribute analytical methods, experiences and scientific insights on emerging social innovations related to food, agriculture and rural–urban transformation. (shrink)

Industrial agriculture has extensive environmental and social costs, and efforts to create alternative farming systems are widespread if not yet widely successful. This study explored how a set of grain farmers and rotational graziers in Iowa transitioned to agroecological management practices. Our focus on the resources and strategies that farmers mobilized to develop opportunities for, and overcome barriers to, transitioning to alternative practices allows us to go beyond the existing literature focused on why farmers transition. We attend to both the (...) ecological and socioeconomic context of innovation by comparing processes of technical change in two contrasting regions of Iowa. Farmers cultivated farm-level biodiversity and enterprise diversity, developed new cognitive and psychological competencies, and overcame barriers to innovation by developing external network linkages with peers, knowledge organizations, and federal policies. Our research provides insights into how biophysical, cognitive, structural and market considerations can be integrated into research efforts that aim to make sense of innovation toward sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

Farm to institution (FTI) efforts aim to increase the amount of locally produced foods, typically fruits and vegetables, served by institutions such as schools, colleges, hospitals, senior meal sites, and correctional facilities. Scholars have cited these efforts as contributing to public health and community-based food systems goals. Prior research has found that relationships based on shared values have played a critical role in motivating and sustaining FTI efforts. We review previous studies, discussing values that motivate participation, and affect practices and (...) relationships in FTI supply chains. We use semi-structured interviews to better understand supply chain actors’ values and motivations and how they affect behaviors, with the aim of informing efforts to increase the scope and effectiveness of FTI efforts. All participants are currently engaged in FTI efforts. We find a mix of social and economic values were present for farmers, distributors, and buyers. Our implications focus on the importance of shared values and relationships, the benefit of local food for businesses along the supply chain, and the potential of non-school institution markets as entry points for farmers. (shrink)

The Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy has gained prominence as an agricultural R&D agenda of the European Union. Specific research policies are justified as necessary to create a KBBE for societal progress. Playing the role of a master narrative, the KBBE attracts rival visions; each favours a different diagnosis of unsustainable agriculture and its remedies in agro-food innovation. Each vision links a technoscientific paradigm with a quality paradigm: the dominant life sciences vision combines converging technologies with decomposability, while a marginal one combines agro-ecology (...) with integral product integrity. From these divergent visions, rival stakeholder networks contend for influence over research policies and priorities, especially within the Framework Programme 7 on Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology, which has aimed to promote a Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy. Although the FAFB programme has favoured a life sciences vision, agro-ecological approaches have gained a presence, thus overcoming their general lock-out from agricultural research agendas. In their own way, each rival paradigm emphasises the need for collective systems to gather information for linking producers with users, as a rationale for the public sector to fund distinctive research priorities. (shrink)

In this paper I examine how knowledge claims operating through two types of governance techniques can guide product innovations in the agri-food sector. The notion that knowledge claims have strong social and material components informs the analysis undertaken, developed through a discussion of social science approaches to the role of human groups and biophysical properties in social change. I apply this socio-technical perspective to two case studies: defining dietary fiber and reducing saturated fat. The first involves attempts to produce an (...) international definition of dietary fiber standards in the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The second involves efforts by food manufacturers to reduce the saturated fat content of food products in line with UK government guidelines. The case studies draw upon observations, document analysis, and over forty interviews. I suggest that although knowledge claims are active constituents of both governance processes, important differences are evident and arise from the history of scientific and technical controversies, and from the scope for articulating broader questions. In particular, the different criteria for judging “success” guide how knowledge claims are implicated in the governance of product innovation. I suggest that further work is required to understand the wider implications of efforts to change the composition of foods, not only for public heath, but also in relation to food security, quality, safety, and availability in a rapidly changing context. In order to do this successfully, knowledge claims made about the material properties of food should be made objects of social science analysis. (shrink)

The discourses of agricultural extension reveal how actors represent their scientific activities and goals. The “transfer of technology” discourse developed with the professional U.S. extension service, reproducing its expert/lay power relations. Agroecology is emerging as a systems approach to preventing agricultural pollution. Its theoreticians argue that agroecology cannot be transferred like technology but must be extended through networks of participatory social learning. In California, hundreds of actors and dozens of institutions have cocreated agroecological partnerships using this alternative extension model. They (...) have developed three alternative extension discourses to represent and explain their activities. Bruno Latour's “circulatory system of science” model provides a superior theoretical framework for interpreting the participation and discourses of diverse actors in this extension practice. (shrink)

This paper draws on ideas about policy innovation and adaptation to assess the extent to which ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) can be seen as a challenge to traditionally more bureaucratic, state-centered ways of paying for the provisioning of environmental goods from agricultural landscapes through agri environmental policy (AEP). Focussing on recent experience in the United States and the UK, the paper documents the extent to which PES is now an established term of reference in AEP research and debate in (...) both countries and postulates that this may usher in a new discourse of environmental provisioning in agriculture. The PES landscape is, however, currently highly fragmented and largely experimental, with ‘PES-like’ approaches being piloted in the field through partnerships between state agencies and localized private and charitable interests. State-supported AEP programs remain substantially intact, and rather than any displacement of state action, there appears to be a more gradual insertion of PES approaches and metrics into standard AEP operating procedures. This institutional stickiness is partly due to the continuing difficulty of agreeing the metrics necessary for measuring outcomes but may also be due to the politically well defended nature of traditional AEP entitlements and associated policy networks. We conclude by suggesting a need for further research to better understand these specifically political constraints and sources of resistance to PES and the ambiguous consequences for institutions, policy networks, rural communities and environment. (shrink)