Transforming food systems to improve socio-economic, environmental, and food security outcomes requires improved understanding of how system actors and outcomes interact across different levels and scales. To date, food systems science supporting the Food Systems Transformation (FST) has focused on macro and global or planetary level outcomes, while actor-focused work has occurred at more granular levels in adjacent yet siloed disciplines. This paper develops a cross-scale and cross-level conceptual framework to link food system actors, activities, and system outcomes, emphasising inclusion and justice in transformation processes. The framework shows how outcomes at one level become drivers at another, offering a useful analytical approach for both researchers and decision makers. To illustrate its application, the framework is operationalised with a qualitative case study of Papua New Guinean cocoa smallholder farmers across four communities. Using semi-structured interviews (n = 160), we analyse food system activities, drivers, and feedbacks across scales and levels. The results show that low influence actors, despite limited power in formal governance, play critical roles in shaping food system outcomes, such as land use and food security. Cross-scale interactions, such as between national education policy, local land use decisions, and global market pressures, demonstrate how top-down interventions can reinforce challenges in the system, particularly for low influence actors. By explicitly embedding scale, level, and actor inclusion into food-system analysis, the framework advances conceptual clarity, diagnostic precision, and coordination across research, policy, and governance domains needed for a more just and effective FST. Lastly, it provides an update on food system activities and outcomes in remote PNG communities, for which published data are scarce.

There is increasing concern in many advanced economies about the risks of disruption and crises in agri-food systems. Government departments and non-governmental organisations are working to identify and understand specific risks but struggle to take broad, holistic perspectives and therefore underestimate the potential for civil unrest. In the interests of helping move from understanding to action, we convened a group of experts through a Delphi process to map out potential pathways to acute UK food system crises and identify interventions that would build resilience and sustainability. To this end, we consulted 31 experts, carrying out 15 expert interviews, followed by three surveys and two workshops with a further 16 experts. The experts highlighted the many existing chronic issues creating a tinderbox for an acute risk to lead to a food crisis in the UK. These chronic issues include climate change, poor policy implementation, rising inequality, food supply chain consolidation and the risks from just-in-time supply of food. They voted to include three acute triggers-(a) cyber-attack, (b) a major extreme weather event and (c) a major new international conflict-and described how any combination of these could lead to (d) a UK food availability and/or price shock that could result in widespread fear of unsafe or inadequate food, leading to violence. A total of 7 system-wide interventions were prioritised to help address these pathway elements together and build sustainability, and a further 21 were identified to address elements individually.

The current state of the food system necessitates transformation. However, food policies are typically borne out of siloed departments meaning that decision-makers do not consider the impacts of a given intervention across the entire food system. By viewing the implications across the wide range of food system outcomes in visual format, policy-makers will be better equipped to show any potential synergies (benefits) or trade-offs (unintended consequences) of the specific policy. A visual tool has been developed, the 'Food Co-Centre Sustainability Compass' based on a transdisciplinary multi-stakeholder participatory design approach. Active involvement of stakeholders from the supply chain, public sector, civil society and research communities achieved consensus on which outcomes must be considered specific to Irish and UK food system. Presenting these food systems areas of concern and relevant issues in a visual format facilitates a systems approach to decision-making for diverse range of food systems actors. While the Compass was developed primarily for the Irish and UK food system due to the scope of the project, it is fundamentally applicable in any geography.

Amid intensifying climate change, biodiversity collapse, political instability, and widening inequality, the urgency to reimagine food systems is greater than ever. This commentary builds on the concept of Equitably Transformative Resilience (ETR), first proposed in the 2025 High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) report Building Resilient Food Systems (HLPE, 2025). As elaborated in the report, conventional approaches to resilience emphasize "bouncing back," through privileging risk management and return to its prior state, reinforcing the very structures that generated vulnerability. These framings obscure ecological fragility and entrenched inequities, leaving communities and ecosystems unable to achieve genuine resilience. Drawing on the HLPE report and the wider literature, we use the metaphor of a vision exam to identify six common ways that dominant resilience framings are distorted in relation to food systems: (1) tunnel vision (siloed thinking), (2) bifocalism (separating ecological and social dimensions), (3 and 4) temporal myopias (ignoring historical injustices and short-termism), (5) spatial myopia (overlooking cross-scale dynamics), and (6) overlooking intersectionality. Correcting these distortions illuminates pathways toward ETR.

Using two new common (Phaseolus) dry bean varieties developed for UK growing conditions, the BeanMeals project explored how to pursue 'fork to farm' systemic innovation in the food system to transform institutional catering and home-cooking towards healthier diets with lower environmental impact, while also enhancing local and national enterprise. Action research, underpinned by a new systems thinking framework, centred on six primary schools and ten households in Leicester and Leicestershire (UK), set against a review of city-, county- and national-level school food policies. Three demand scenarios were developed, based on increasing UK average daily consumption from 8.5 g to either 17, 34 or 50 g, together with three enterprise opportunities ('Community Enterprise', 'Artisanal Entrepreneurs' and 'Food Giants'), to satisfy these demands in different ways. The benefits and trade-offs of scaling UK beans were analysed, including assessments of overall benefits to health, benefits to the environment (which depend on the methods of land conversion and weed management used), and economic benefits (which depend on the scaling method employed).This article is part of the theme issue 'Transforming terrestrial food systems for human and planetary health'.

As with any food system around the world today, the food system pan-Ireland and the UK are considered unsustainable as it is adversely affecting the environment and failing to provide the entire population with food and nutrition security. Integrated food systems research is becoming evermore necessary as any interventions targeting food system transformation must consider not only production to consumption but also the wider environmental and socioeconomic context. This paper proposes a new food system conceptual framework (the Food Co-Centre Conceptual Framework) which was developed via multi-stakeholder collaboration through a mixed-methods approach of: interviews, focus groups, webinars and workshops. The conceptual framework conveys the components (activities, drivers, outcomes, feedbacks) encompassed in the Irish and UK food system. Visually representing the food system pan-Ireland and the UK will help stakeholders comprehend the multidimensionality of the food system as well as any trade-offs and synergies. Thus, it is a valuable tool for designing and discussing food system transformation policies and interventions.

The recent global crises suggest that historic and current trends in the food system become less relevant when frequently disrupted by unexpected events, such as trade conflicts, the rise of inward-looking, right-wing governments, or another global pandemic. In the face of food insecurity, the foresight community is more strongly emphasizing the need to consider various plausible scenarios when preparing critical strategies within and around the intricate global food system. As scenarios have been developed for many decades, two questions arise: how is the food system community engaging in scenario planning, particularly given the urgent need for transformation coupled with current poly-crisis; and what is needed to enhance the process of scenario planning for the global food system? Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically review existing scenarios on global food systems, published by key organizations and authors in the last eight years, to identify common themes of plausible food system futures, the key uncertainties and emerging radical ideas. The paper is based on an inductive clustering framework that offers a method for evaluating the potential outcomes of varying governance structures and policy actions within scenario clusters across key dimensions—health and nutrition, livelihoods and equity, and climate and environment. The critical analysis of the scenario clusters leads to two important findings: (i) megatrends such as shifting demography, technology and consumption patterns are often central in reviewed scenario exercises, and radical notions have not significantly evolved but have taken on new dimensions; and (ii) while factors like consumption patterns, technology, and investment influence food systems significantly, governance structures play a crucial role in shaping the environment for these factors to interact. This underscores the importance of adaptive policymaking in responding to evolving uncertainties. This study provides a strong foundation for designing a next-generation global food system scenario exercise. It calls for a more ambitious, inclusive, and innovative approach for delving into a broader range of uncertainties, radical forces of change and prioritizing the interrogation of drivers related to geopolitical tensions, technological innovations, governance, social influences, and social inequalities.

Feeding and nourishing a growing global population in Bangladesh is a major challenge in a changing climate. A multi-level participatory scenario approach with corresponding modeling and decision support tools is developed and applied to support decision-makers in developing scenario-guided enabling policy for food security in the future under climate change. The results presented in this paper show how, under different scenarios, the agri-food system may transform in the next decade as a result of the interaction of intertwined institutional, technological, and market drivers in Bangladesh. For scenario building, the food and agriculture community was brought together with the climate and energy community. We also experimented with different ways to bring voices that are often less included in policymaking, such as poor rural communities and youth. The scenario quantification is performed by MAGNET, a GTAP-based multi-sector and multi-region computable general equilibrium model. The simulation results depict a comprehensive picture of corresponding and varied pressures on agricultural resources and opportunities for economic development and trade in Bangladesh. Finally, we did an ex-ante assessment of the trade-offs and synergies between zero-hunger- and zero-emission-related targets within the Bangladesh Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the developed scenarios.

Investments in research and innovation are critical for transformations toward sustainable agrifood systems and for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. However, the frequent neglect of environmental and social goals by investors remains a major challenge. System-oriented approaches to designing and monitoring innovations can be a promising solution to guide innovations and allow investors to identify those that are more sustainable. This article presents a set of eight ‘Principles for Agrifood Research and Innovation’ developed by an international multi-stakeholder task force including staff of research agencies, funders and impact investors, private sector, non-governmental organizations, and benchmarking organizations. The article explains the rationale for the selection of the principles and describes potential ways forward for their uptake and implementation, building on pilots done by several research and funding organizations.

Introduction Household-level food storage can make food available to consumers, and promotes food security. Nevertheless, attention is mostly devoted to enhancing food storage at the farmer and national levels, neglecting the household level. It is therefore critical to assess food storage practices of households. This study examined food storage practices of households, evaluated expert opinions on household-level food storage, and assessed the effect household characteristics has on food storage and food security. Methods Dzorwulu and Jamestown communities in Accra, Ghana, were chosen as the study locations. The study consisted of a survey, expert interviews and structural equation modeling. For the survey, 400 food household heads selected using systematic sampling method responded to a semi-structured questionnaire. Seventeen (17) experts were also purposively sampled and interviewed. Results and Discussion The results showed that, most households stored foodstuffs they often consumed, with generally low storage of fruits and vegetables. Perishable foods such as cassava, tomato, yam, and banana were stored by 37.8, 42, 38.3 and 43.8% of households, respectively, for 1–3 days. Households often stored food within a period of 2 weeks, due to poor storage facilities and lack of food storage knowledge. About 85.8% of households had never received training on food storage. Most households used baskets, bowls, sacks and polyethylene bags to store food at home, and some used refrigerators and deep freezers. Regarding the link between food storage and food security, household heads’ income showed a significant positive moderating effect ( p ≤ 0.01), households’ socioeconomic status had a positive effect, while household size indicated a significant negative moderating effect ( p ≤ 0.01). The experts asserted that, household-level food storage enhances food security and food safety, and reduces food expenditure and food wastage. The limited food storage knowledge of households should be a basis for intervention to enhance proper food storage practices within households.

We report the results of a structured expert elicitation to identify the most likely types of potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK, focusing on routes to civil unrest. We take a backcasting approach by defining as an end-point a societal event in which 1 in 2000 people have been injured in the UK, which 40% of experts rated as “Possible (20–50%)”, “More likely than not (50–80%)” or “Very likely (>80%)” over the coming decade. Over a timeframe of 50 years, this increased to 80% of experts. The experts considered two food system scenarios and ranked their plausibility of contributing to the given societal scenario. For a timescale of 10 years, the majority identified a food distribution problem as the most likely. Over a timescale of 50 years, the experts were more evenly split between the two scenarios, but over half thought the most likely route to civil unrest would be a lack of total food in the UK. However, the experts stressed that the various causes of food system disruption are interconnected and can create cascading risks, highlighting the importance of a systems approach. We encourage food system stakeholders to use these results in their risk planning and recommend future work to support prevention, preparedness, response and recovery planning.

Without rapid changes to agriculture and food systems, the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change will not be met. Food systems are one of the most important contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but they also need to be adapted to cope with climate change impacts. Although many options exist to reduce GHG emissions in the food system, efforts to develop implementable transformation pathways are hampered by a combination of structural challenges such as fragmented decision-making, vested interests, and power imbalances in the climate policy and food communities, all of which are compounded by a lack of joint vision. New processes and governance arrangements are urgently needed for dealing with potential trade-offs among mitigation options and their food security implications.

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation-the three "Rs"). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors' perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better positioned to address challenges of the future.

Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) - using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.

It is nearly 50 years since David Harvey (1974) famously asked “what kind of geography for what kind of public policy?” (p. 18). We seek to reopen this debate following developments since then which constrain the discipline’s current potential to engage with the practical doing of policy. We suggest that definitional, institutional and structural arrangements are preventing the policy turn from materialising, compounded by the “impact agenda” and university research assessment exercises, which obstruct practical policy work and overlook the potential for generating impact through curricula. Recognising a growing sense of imperative to act among undergraduate students, we prioritise students as our first public (Ward, 2006) to develop a more pedagogically inclined perspective on the policy debate, validating students’ aspirations as a pedagogical driver within a broader push towards reconfiguring geographical policy work.

Household-level food storage can help families save money, minimize food waste, and enhance food safety and security. Storing food within households may, however, be affected by domestic routines, like food shopping and cooking. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate how consumers' attitudes and behaviors influence food storage at the household level. This study aimed to assess the determinants of household-level food storage, ascertain consumers' behavior and perception towards food storage, and assess the effect of household-level food storage on food safety, wastage, food expenditure and security. Dzorwulu and Jamestown, both located in Accra, Ghana, served as the study's primary sites. The study employed a survey and structural equation modeling to evaluate key determinants of household-level food storage practices and their impacts. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 400 food household heads, sampled using a systematic sampling procedure. The results showed that food shopping drives food storage. There was, however, significant negative association (p < 0.001) between food shopping and time of food storage. Although cooking impedes household-level food storage, there was significant positive association (p < 0.001) between frequency of cooking and storage period of food commodities. The findings also revealed that household-level food storage promotes food safety, reduces food expenditure and waste, and contributes to enhancing food security by 43%. To promote household-level food storage and ensure food safety and security, future study should concentrate on enhancing conventional household-level food storage practices that are efficient, cheaper and easily implementable.

Growing acknowledgement that food systems require transformation, demands comprehensive sustainability assessments that can support decision-making and sustainability governance. To do so, assessment frameworks must be able to make trade-offs and synergies visible and allow for inclusive negotiation on food system outcomes relevant to diverse food system actors. This paper reviews literature and frameworks and builds on stakeholder input to present a Sustainability Compass made up of a comprehensive set of metrics for food system assessments. The Compass defines sustainability scores for four societal goals, underpinned by areas of concern. We demonstrate proof of concept of the operationalization of the approach and its metrics. The Sustainability Compass is able to generate comprehensive food system insights that enables reflexive evaluation and multi-actor negotiation for policy making.

Agriculture and food systems are in urgent need of transformation. Various foresight reports unpack food systems’ challenges and propose diverse pathways of change towards sustainability. We interrogate the framings and proposed pathways of eleven selected reports from a food system perspective, with a focus on environmental and climate change implications. We synthesize key drivers of food systems and their impact on food system outcomes. We distil trends and strategies identified across the reports and their scenarios and discuss the diversity of ‘sustainability pathways’ and ‘solution spaces’. There is general agreement that resource protection and adaptation balanced with significant greenhouse gas emission reductions are vital to food system transformation. There is less consensus on the choice of change options and how to address potential trade-offs. While new technologies or consumption changes are described, more attention needs to be paid to overcoming blind spots like implications for equity or changes in governance mechanisms.