The transition to a circular food system is crucial to address the environmental pressures, inefficiencies, and socioeconomic inequalities inherent in "linear" food systems. Cities as dense population hubs with substantial food consumption and waste generation, possess considerable-though largely untapped-potential in steering food provisioning systems from a consumption perspective, particularly when equipped with the institutional, economic, and behavioral dimensions for transformative change. Conceptualizing urban food systems as networks of actors, institutions and resources interacting across spatial scales, we argue that food system circularity is critically dependent on multi-level relations and governance structures that go beyond the material dimension of urban food provisioning. Rooted in food system thinking, this paper explores social science approaches to understanding if and how cities can drive and scale food system transitions on the basis of circular principles and practices. We conceptualize circularity as a transformative design principle from an urban food consumption perspective, and identify three key areas where we challenge social scientists and policymakers to seize opportunities for a richer social science perspective on food system circularity: (1) equitable economic relations and (spatial) interdependencies; (2) governance of the social dimension of circularity and (3) implications for everyday food practices and urban resilience. We explore current advancements in each of these social science approaches and provide a roadmap toward food system circularity from an urban perspective.

One largely neglected focus in the analysis of mission-oriented innovation policies is mission cocreation between stakeholder groups advocating different solution directions. In this paper, we introduce the innovation management concept of ambidexterity to study how mission cocreation in different mission arenas is influenced by actors aiming to continue existing innovation pathways (exploitative innovation) and actors advocating alternative pathways (explorative innovation). Our case study on the Dutch circular agriculture mission highlights how an initial top-down strategy development was dominated by exploitative forces, despite ambitions to secure broad stakeholder participation. Government-led efforts to still engage exploration-minded actors, and restore ambidexterity, were hampered by potential contributors feeling excluded from the policy process. These findings underline the risk that openness of missions, required for broad stakeholder involvement, might also reinforce preexisting contestation and innovation pathways. Overall, our findings demonstrate a trade-off between maximizing efficiency and speed versus obtaining novel perspectives and wide societal legitimacy.

Mission-oriented innovation policies are gaining popularity across national contexts to support transformation of specific socio-technical systems. Yet up to date, there is little empirical evidence on how missions come into existence and how that affects its impact. In this paper, we introduce policy assemblage thinking as conceptual lens to gain insights in how strategic choices around mission directionality, ambidexterity and incumbency were made by whom and how this crystallizes in transformative missions. As case study, we use the recently implemented circular agricultural mission in the Netherlands, which is part of new Dutch Mission-oriented Topsector innovation policy. Findings reveal how the mission assemblage was dominated by incumbencies and old infrastructures, pulling the mission back into the regime. A principal implication is that while mission oriented innovation policy often proposes transformative goals, the innovation systems and policy structures that enact it would also need transformation to fully enact this sort of policy.

This article analyses the progress made in the UK with regard to tackling antibiotic “misuse and overuse” in food-producing animals. Moving beyond statistical realities, the paper examines how the UK's industry-led policy approach is shaping practice. Using a multi-sited ethnography situated in Actor Network Theory and Callon's sociology of markets, the UK dairy supply chain policies and practices were studied. Findings reveal that dairy industry policies only partially address the complex network of people, animals, and the environment in which dairy antibiotics circulate. Antibiotic “misuse and overuse” in agriculture is far from a behavioural matter, with solely farmers and veterinarians to blame. Instead, antibiotic use in food animals is embedded in complex economic networks that constrain radical changes in dairy husbandry management and antibiotic use on farms. More attention toward the needs of the dairy supply chain actors and wider environmental considerations is essential to reduce the dairy sector's dependency on antibiotics and support transition toward responsible farming in the UK.

Agricultural innovation systems has become a popular approach to understand and facilitate agricultural innovation. However, there is often no explicit reflection on the role of agricultural innovation systems in food systems transformation and how they relate to transformative concepts and visions (e.g. agroecology, digital agriculture, Agriculture 4.0, AgTech and FoodTech, vertical agriculture, protein transitions). To support such reflection we elaborate on the importance of a mission-oriented perspective on agricultural innovation systems. We review pertinent literature from innovation, transition and policy sciences, and argue that a mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems (MAIS) approach can help understand how agricultural innovation systems at different geographical scales develop to enable food systems transformation, in terms of forces, catalysts, and barriers in transformative food systems change. Focus points can be in the mapping of missions and sub-missions of MAIS within and across countries, or understanding the drivers, networks, governance, theories of change, evolution and impacts of MAIS. Future work is needed on further conceptual and empirical development of MAIS and its connections with existing food systems transformation frameworks. Also, we argue that agricultural systems scholars and practitioners need to reflect on how the technologies and concepts they work on relate to MAIS, how these represent a particular directionality in innovation, and whether these also may support exnovation.

The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of how different countries formulate and regulate antibiotic use in animals raised for human consumption. A comparative case study was undertaken, analysing historical documents from the 1950s to the 1990s from the UK, the first country to produce a scientific report on the public health risks of agricultural antibiotic use; and Sweden, the first country to produce legislation on the growth promotor use of antibiotics in food animals. Sheila Jasanoff's concepts of 'co-production' and 'political cultures' have been used to explore how both countries used different styles of scientific reasoning and justification of the risks of agricultural antibiotic use. It will be argued that national dynamics between policy, science and public knowledges co-produced different risk classifications and patterns of agricultural antibiotic use between both countries. UK's political culture used 'expert committees' to remove the issue from public debate and to inform agricultural antibiotic policies. In contrast, the Swedish 'consensus-oriented' political culture made concerns related to agricultural antibiotic use into a cooperative debate that included multiple discourses. Understanding how national policies, science and public knowledges interact with the risks related to agricultural antibiotic use can provide valuable insights in understanding and addressing countries agricultural use of antibiotics.