Transition heuristic frameworks in research on agro-food sustainability transitions

By H. El Bilali. 2020

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The agro-food system needs a genuine sustainability transition to achieve sustainable food and nutrition security in the face of climate change, population growth, ecosystem degradation and increasing resource scarcity. Agro-food sustainability transitions refer to transformation processes needed to move towards sustainable agriculture and food systems. There is a broad range of theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have been used to understand and promote transition towards sustainability. These include the multi-level perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions, transition management (TM), strategic niche management (SNM), technological innovation system (TIS) and social practice approach (SPA). The paper analyses the use of these heuristic frameworks in research on agro-food sustainability transitions. A search carried out in March 2018 on Scopus yielded 791 documents, and 127 research articles underwent a systematic review. Results show that more than three-fifths of research papers dealing with sustainability transitions in agriculture, food processing, distribution and consumption use at least one of the five heuristic frameworks (MLP, TM, SNM, TIS and SPA). The MLP is the most prominent framework in research on agro-food sustainability transitions, followed by TM, SPA, SNM and then TIS. Nevertheless, MLP is increasingly complemented with frameworks that focus on human-related and social factors (SPA), management and governance (TM, SNM) or agency and interactions between actors (TIS) in sustainability transitions processes. Therefore, the paper makes the case for more integration of transition frameworks in order to better nurture and foster transitions towards sustainable agro-food systems.

Subfields: Ecology, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7914e9ea2db086401e16a057a4b3b02b859ad23f

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In Ecology

1. E. Schimmenti
2. V. Borsellino
3. H. El Bilali

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. E. Schimmenti
2. V. Borsellino
3. H. El Bilali

In Plant Science

1. E. Schimmenti
2. V. Borsellino
3. H. El Bilali

Citations in the corpus

• Agri-Food Markets towards Sustainable Patterns (2020, background): “Nevertheless, the systematic review carried out by El Bilali [168] shows that power and politics are sufficiently addressed in the field.”
• Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways? (2020, unknown): “…and have cross-connections with each other), selection (some technologies will not become dominant) and retention (some technologies will evolve into new dominant designs and corresponding social, market and policy structures) occur (El Bilali, 2018; Geels and Schot, 2007; Loorbach et al., 2017).”