How Agri-food Ecosystems are Organized for Implementing Ecological Sustainability: Systematic Review

Transitioning towards more sustainable agri-food ecosystems amidst the current global environmental change requires a shift in perspective. A perspective wherein agri-food ecosystems enact business strategies incorporating ecological concerns to address emerging environmental challenges. To unravel this perspective, we systematically reviewed the literature with the intent to extract information about: 1) the environmental challenges faced by agri-food ecosystems; 2) the business strategies incorporating ecological sustainability which are established to address the above challenges; 3) the design of agri-food ecosystems involved in the above business strategies and described as a constellation of actors, practices they enact and technological means they adopt. Drawing on this integrated view of ecological sustainability work, we discussed the configuration of agri-food ecosystems for addressing the different emerging challenges, provide the theoretical and practical contributions of the study and introduce future research avenues.