The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food
The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food (IJSAF) is the primary publication outlet for the Research Committee on Food and Agriculture (RC-40) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). It actively seeks out high-quality manuscripts that present theoretically informed research on issues related to the social organization of food and agriculture. Manuscripts are welcomed from scholars across the social sciences including sociology, science and technology studies, human and cultural geography, political science, consumer management, agricultural economics, anthropology, philiosphy and environmental studies. IJSAF also welcomes manuscripts from and about all regions of the World.
Research Committee on the Sociology of Agriculture and Food (RC-40) of the International Sociological Association (ISA).
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A Discussion of Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge by Charlotte Biltekoff
On November 25th 2024, the RC-40 book club held a meeting to discuss Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge by Charlotte Biltekoff. This review is the product of our collective discussion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Katharine Legun, Madeleine Fairbairn, Xaq Frohlich, Mary Hendrickson, Romain Blancaneaux, Marilyn Asiedu Sefa, Eugene Setsoafia, Mylène Tanferri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Food systems, transformation, and politics
This paper argues agri-food scholars need to engage more critically with conceptualisations of food systems and politics of transformation, given current debates about food system sustainability, climate change, planetary boundaries, resilience and well-being, alongside new politics, social movements and forms of protest that disrupt established ways of deliberating, agreeing and enacting social change. As food systems exceed established ‘thresholds’, transformative change is needed. However, de- and re-politicisation, oscillating from post-political to new modes of hyper-politics, challenge not only food system knowledge production, but also the socio-material actions needed to enact food system transformation pathways at scale. Against this context, the paper summarises the contribution the Special Section makes to food system transformation politics, highlighting a ‘politics of knowledge’, ‘politics of transformation’ and ‘politics of feeling’ nexus of relations. We conclude by calling for further research on food-politics relations given their role in determining whether we achieve or not the food system changes necessary for the health of people and the planet.
Food System Transformation, Politicisation and Depoliticisation
Copyright (c) 2025 Damian Maye, Gianluca Brunori, Allison Loconto, Nadine Arnold, Jessica Duncan, Francesca Galli, Joost Dessein, Ritwick Ghosh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In 2024, a wave of farmers’ protests shook policymaking in the EU. The protests began in reaction to national policy measures and soon coalesced into a unified movement across Europe, directed against the CAP reform (into force since January 2023). The protests took an anti-European tone and were supported by anti-system political forces. In response, European Institutions modified salient environmental aspects of the reform and withdrew, or blocked policy measures proposed within the Farm to Fork strategy. The Head of the EU Commission initiated a “strategic dialogue” with key stakeholders to develop a common vision for the future of the EU agriculture and food sector. This paper examines the relationship between crisis, (de)politicization, and polarization in the CAP reform process, with a focus on how actors mobilize strategies to politicize, depoliticize, or polarize policy debates. Drawing on a conceptual framework that integrates recent literature on (de)politicization and consensus-building, and a thematic analysis of policy discourse from 2021 to 2024, we explore how institutional dynamics and stakeholder interactions shape the prospects for transformative food system change. We argue that consensus or compromise-building is a crucial mechanism for transformational change and the very process of creating it is at the heart of debates on (de)politicization vs (de)polarization. We conclude that deliberative arenas and independent science and media can play a complementary role in this debate, by fostering dialogue, highlighting trade-offs and establishing the basis for finding compromises.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gianluca Brunori, Sabrina Arcuri, Francesca Galli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Combining political ecology and pragmatist sociology to repoliticise agrifood systems’ transformations at the territorial scale
Recent crises have led to an increased framing of agrifood systems transformations through the lens of food supply at different scales (global, national, territorial), sometimes justifying neo-productivist perspectives, and often at the expense of environmental issues and social justice. In turn, this produced a broader depoliticisation of food systems transformations despite an institutional politicisation, i.e. an increased integration in policy narratives, often with limited real effects. We suggest that pragmatist sociology and political ecology might offer fruitful insights for addressing this issue in a repoliticised way. These two literatures show how people identify problems affecting agri-food systems and collectively work to find solutions while, at the same time, recognising the plurality of understandings of transition pathways and highlighting the mechanisms through which some actors and worldviews are neglected when it comes to defining possible paths of transformation. Inspired by these literatures, we have established three key guiding questions dealing with the processes of definition of the food systems’ transformations as a shared and collective problem, the analysis of the reconfigurations of power relations, and the recognition of the diversity of visions of the food system. These guiding questions, that can orientate both analytical and transformative perspectives, emerged and were tested in three territorial case studies in France and Brazil. They appear useful not only for the scientific analysis of de/repoliticisation processes, primarily because they reveal the contrasted effects of the increasing institutionalisation and legitimisation of agrifood transitions but also for developing a transformative approach allowing to repoliticise this issue.
Copyright (c) 2018 Claire Lamine, Juliano Palm, Martina Tuscano, Claudia Schmitt, Morgan Jenatton, Terry Marsden https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring the Contribution of Public Policies to the Scaling Up of Agroecology in Peru
This article evaluates the combined contribution of Peruvian public policies to laying a foundation for scaling up agroecology. Through qualitative content analysis, the study explores Peruvian public policies and identifies the conditions they foster or fail to support, which may respectively facilitate or hinder the scaling up of agroecology in the country. Results show that, although agroecology gained limited institutional recognition in Peru in 2021, public policies remain largely focused on economic growth, agribusiness development, and market integration. While some measures support ecological practices and acknowledge cultural and social aspects, these are often framed within goals of productivity and profitability or directed toward organic agriculture, thereby hindering the comprehensive scaling up of agroecology. Nevertheless, the research identifies openings in public policy, such as efforts to strengthen governance structures among smallholder and family farmers, legitimize rural communities' rights, and recognize diverse knowledge systems, that present opportunities for grassroots agroecological initiatives to expand. The study concludes that for agroecology to meaningfully scale up in Peru, public policy must shift from an economic-centric model to one that fosters ecologically sound, culturally grounded, and socially just farming systems, with greater autonomy for local producers from global markets.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cesar Manuel Llanos Puga, Joost Dessein, Jonas Adriaensens https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper explores how organic farming unfolds in Bogor Regency, Indonesia, by looking closely at the power dynamics that shape its meaning, practices, and governance. Rather than treating organic farming as a fixed technical system, we approach it as a contested space where farmers, state agencies, NGOs, certification bodies, and private actors bring different values, interests, and forms of authority. Using a combination of stakeholder power analysis (SPA), political ecology, and food regime theory, the research draws on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in two villages with contrasting institutional landscapes. We find that key barriers, such as high certification costs, limited market support, and fragmented policy implementation, are not simply technical problems but reflect deeper struggles over who gets to define sustainability. In response, smallholder farmers and civil society actors are creating grassroots innovations, including peer-to-peer mentoring systems and participatory guarantee schemes, that reclaim agency from top-down structures. Still, institutional silos and the lack of meaningful coordination continue to undermine inclusive progress. Our findings call for stronger connections across institutional boundaries. We argue that building trust-based spaces of dialogue between certification agencies, advisory services, and farmer networks is essential not only to make organic farming more viable, but also to ensure that it reflects the lived realities and aspirations of those who practice it. By foregrounding local knowledge and ethical commitments, this study contributes to broader conversations on agroecological transitions and more just food systems.
Copyright (c) 2025 Handoyo, Subarudi, Syahyuti, Lukas Rumboko Wibowo, Kushartati Budiningsih, Alfonsus H. Harianja, Atika Zahra Rahmayanti, Mohamad Iqbal, Ane Dwi Septina, Tria Anggita Hafsari, Sanusi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Rethinking Agrifood Systems in (Post-)Pandemic Times
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant changes in the global agri-food system. It disrupted food supply chains, created labour shortages, instilled fears of food insecurity, and altered market dynamics. The pandemic also highlighted the resilience of alternative food systems through the shortening of food supply chains, a greater appreciation for local agricultural production, increased focus on sustainable practices, the use of technological platforms for direct farmer-to-consumer sales, and policy interventions providing financial and regulatory support to ensure food security. The two special sections of IJSAF titled “The Food System in the (Post-)Pandemic World: Disruptions, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Alternatives” offer an in-depth exploration of the challenges faced by food systems and how various actors - populations, policymakers, and food producers - responded to the disruptions caused by COVID-19. The nine articles included in these sections present ethnographic and qualitative research from different parts of the world and engage critically in discussions regarding disruptions and resilience within agrifood systems during the pandemic. The authors explore how COVID-19 influenced power dynamics among various actors in the food system. These articles are selected from papers presented at the mini-conference of the ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Agriculture and Food (RC40), which took place in October 2022 at Leipzig University. Drawing from the conference and the published articles, this editorial introduction discusses the methodological and theoretical strengths and challenges faced by critical agrifood studies in times of crisis.
The Food System in the (Post-)Pandemic World
Copyright (c) 2024 Atakan Büke, José Duarte Ribeiro Ribeiro , Hilde Bjørkhaug, Sarah Ruth Sippel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The concept of seasonality is both quietly and publicly discursive, with everyday consumers referring artlessly to seasons for consumption and seasons for production in the same terms, and producers exploiting these expectations to expand seasons for commercial reasons. Seasons are nationalized, both to frame cultural identity and to create the foundation for consumptive activities, such as festivals, holidays, and regional food. In this way, seasonality can be constitutive of both cultural and economic value, with each sustaining the other endogenously. The consequence is a concept of seasonality that is both conceptually stuffed with expedient markers of consumption and production, but also hollow, lacking an anchor in the natural phenomena, such as agricultural cycles. We argue that this artifice, the disembedding of seasonality from environmental phenomena, is facilitated by two processes: the engagement of capital to expand, change or discipline agricultural cycles; and the elaboration of seasonality ‘labeling’ through the converging interests of marketers, tourism promoters, and governments. The success of these processes can be seen in the enduring value of temporal notions of “seasonal”, which consumers continue to respect and uphold in consumption valorization, even as its basis is quietly undermined by the processes above. We present the case of Japan, where conspicuous references to seasonality are widespread, and in which adherence to seasonality is considered superior to other regions. We find that the potential cognitive dissonance related to contradictions against environmental seasons is minimized by the mobilization of coercive marketing and propaganda that can normalize hyper-modern forms of seasonality.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hart Feuer, Romain Blancaneaux https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This study investigates the phenomenon of meat consumption among meat-avoiding consumer groups, such as vegetarians and vegans. While previous research has found the phenomenon to be relatively common, knowledge about why it occurs remains limited. Drawing on interviews with 15 young Danish meat avoiders, the study addresses this gap and challenges conceptualisations of vegetarian meat consumption as dietary lapses or violations. It explores how participants use dietary labels and how meat consumption is organized in their everyday lives. The findings show that labels such as "vegetarian" or "vegan" are often used to communicate usual dietary practices, either due to the lack of an appropriate alternative label or as a rejection of strict adherence as a prerequisite for using dietary labels. Additionally, the study finds that instances of meat consumption often result from meat avoiders navigating competing end-goals and social procedures of proper conduct across different meal situations. The study concludes that vegetarian meat consumption is ordinary and expectable behaviour among socially sensitive meat-avoiding consumers, who balance multiple priorities in daily life. By showing vegetarian meat consumption to be a socially situated practice rather than a deviation, the article contributes a more nuanced understanding of consumers' use of dietary labels. The study concludes with implications for research and policy and discusses implications for the public understanding of meat-avoiding consumers' use of dietary labels.
Copyright (c) 2025 Morten Wendler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This study analyses the political dynamics of nitrogen governance in Flanders, a contentious issue shaped by the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. Combining the Policy Arrangement Approach with theories of (de)politicisation, we trace the policy’s evolution from Natura 2000 implementation to the 2024 decree. We identify a recurring cycle: judicial interventions, particularly concerning Article 6 of the Habitats Directive, temporarily disrupt a closed political process by imposing new evidential standards. However, these openings are quickly reabsorbed. Administrative mechanisms—technical thresholds, model-based attribution, and neo-corporatist bargaining—systematically re-channel conflict into narrow, technical procedures While consultation appears to expand, the influence of alternative claims and knowledge remains minimal, constrained by calculative tools and cabinet politics. Consequently, potential synergies between agriculture and nature, such as agroecology, are depoliticised; their discourses gain visibility but leave budgets and core instruments unchanged. The current shift towards emission-based instruments risks repeating this cycle if treated as a mere technical fix. For nitrogen governance to be both effective and democratically robust, it requires deliberative spaces for co-designing policy, transparent evidence practices open to counter-expertise, and financing that enables systemic transition rather than incremental pollution abatement.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maarten Crivits, Louis Tessier, David De Pue , Lies Messely https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Knowledge on agroecology disseminated by the FAO
This study assesses the knowledge on agroecology disseminated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) through its Agroecology Knowledge Hub (AKH), from a human-nature relationship perspective. It focuses on the knowledge contained in scientific articles published between 2014 and 2023. Using a theoretical framework based on the concept of human-nature relationship and a methodology rooted in content analysis techniques, the study seeks to answer the following research question: What knowledge on agroecology that contributes to the reconnection between humans and nature has the FAO disseminated during the period 2014-2023? To this end, the study: (1) depicts the main trends and geopolitical distribution of the knowledge disseminated through the AKH during the specified period, (2) reveals the human-nature relationship perspectives embodied in this knowledge, and (3) delves into the state of this knowledge. The findings suggest that the knowledge disseminated through the FAO’s AKH does not fully contribute to the reconnection between humans and nature within the agricultural realm. The discrepancy may be attributed to patterns of coloniality of knowledge, the preference for disseminating knowledge rooted in positivist/post-positivist foundations and in an extractivist logic and a mechanistic view of nature, and the potential perpetuation of the Western worldview in the production of knowledge. The study concludes by urging the FAO to take ethical responsibility for its knowledge dissemination, and recommends that knowledge producers challenge prevailing theoretical frameworks and epistemological positions guiding the generation of knowledge on agroecology.
Copyright (c) 2025 Federico Augusto Murriel Gonzales https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This research examines the impact of authentic local cuisine on tourist satisfaction and revisit intention, with a focus on the mediating roles of destination image and destination branding. Utilizing a conceptual model and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), this study analyzes data from 203 tourists. The findings reveal that authentic local cuisine significantly and positively influences tourist satisfaction, both directly and indirectly through destination image and destination branding. Furthermore, tourist satisfaction is identified as the most critical factor influencing revisit intention. The study provides valuable insights for destination marketers and policymakers, highlighting the competitive advantage of leveraging authentic cuisine as an effective branding strategy and offering practical steps to enhance tourist satisfaction and revisit intention.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alvaro Dias, Anastasiia Posheliuznaia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Social movements play a critical role in politicising food systems, often contesting and moralising markets to advance their social change agenda. To induce moralisation processes, social movements frequently deploy market devices. Examining the case of the creation and development of the Swiss fair trade flower market over time (1990–2005), we investigate how several market devices are being used in moralising a market, including the intended and unintended consequences of this process. Our findings reveal how the sequencing of devices—the gradual build-up of various devices upon one another—enabled the market-pioneering movement to first ‘heat up’ moral concerns and raise awareness, and later ‘cool down’ these concerns by specifying accountabilities and obligations to scale the market. However, the sequencing of devices resulted in a moralised market concentrated on a powerful device—a certification standard for plantations—which in turn triggered tensions within the fair trade movement. The market pioneers became marginalised, and the initial fair trade idea—supporting smallholders—became fundamentally renegotiated at international level. These findings advance our understanding of the mainstreaming process of fair trade, explain how fair trade has come to encompass its first non-food product (i.e., flowers) and planation production, and contribute to research on movement-induced markets by highlighting the unintended consequences and intra-movement conflicts of building moralised markets through devising.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nadine Arnold, Birthe Soppe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Empowering Farmers for Sustainable Food Security
This study investigates the role of structural empowerment in promoting sustainable food security in rural south-eastern Tehran, Iran. Despite its agricultural potential, the region faces persistent challenges due to weak empowerment structures. While most previous studies have focused on psychological or gender-based empowerment, this research applies Kanter's structural empowerment theory—initially developed for formal organisations—to rural agriculture. It examines how access to information, resources, power, and support influences food security across environmental-ecological, socio-economic, political-cultural, and infrastructural dimensions. Data from 400 farmers across 37 villages were analysed using multiple linear regression and structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings reveal significant positive impacts of structural empowerment on sustainable food security. These impacts arise from awareness, knowledge, and skills, along with training, association, and both formal and informal power. In contrast, institutionalism exhibited no statistically significant effect, highlighting the region's formal structures' inefficiency. These results underscore the importance of social networks, informal institutions, and collective agency in enhancing farmers' resilience and decision-making capacity. The study advocates shifting from top-down, technocratic policies to participatory, bottom-up empowerment strategies and recommends institutional reform, education and strengthening of local associations as key steps toward improving food system sustainability. This research offers a novel contribution by localising structural empowerment theory within an underexplored rural setting, providing valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars in agricultural development. It calls for multidimensional policy interventions that address both individual and structural factors. Future studies should investigate gender disparities, conduct cross-regional comparisons, and refine empowerment metrics to enhance the applicability and relevance of findings across contexts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Naser Shafieisabet, Neginsadat Mirvahedi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Advancing early-career agri-food researchers publishing opportunities in Sub Saharan Africa
Social science researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa are underrepresented in internationally published and peer-reviewed journals. Their low representation is often attributed to factors such as limited funding, unfamiliarity with scholarly styles and language, and the lack of a support network that provides mentoring. Recognizing the knowledge gaps resulting from lack of training and exposure, the Research Committee on Sociology of Agriculture and Food (RC40) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) supported the development of a two-and-a-half-day virtual workshop and conference participation to address these concerns. Based on our experience, it is evident that virtual workshops provide an inexpensive and rapid avenue for capacity building. However, proficiency in producing high-quality publications requires continuous training and strong support from a mentoring network. Common difficulties observed include the lack of a conceptual framework to position field survey (or qualitative) results within current scientific debates. Weak engagement with theoretical concepts constantly debated in the social sciences also suggest that enduring competencies cannot be achieved through a short online workshop alone.
Emerging Scholars of Agriculture and Food
Copyright (c) 2024 Fridah Mubichi-Kut, Allison Marie Loconto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sustainability assessment methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are becoming increasingly prevalent in the evaluation of agri-food value-chains. Proponents of such assessment methodologies argue that they offer a factual and robust measure of the sustainability impacts of food production. Yet, assessment methodologies have attracted criticism for portraying a partial representation of the phenomenon. For example, existing LCA models tend to operationalize simplified and generalizable ideals of sustainability. These operationalizations mobilize understandings of sustainability that may clash with the grounded, experientially-based understandings of local actors such as farmers. Using a theory of translation and the concept of immutable mobiles, we consider how LCA seeks to stabilize a definition of sustainability by delineating what aspects of agriculture may be considered relevant for sustainability and what is irrelevant, what is made visible in sustainability discourse, and what can be ignored. We then apply our analysis to a case study of quinoa farming in Europe. We compare what quinoa farmers identify as central to sustainability to what is included in dominant LCA methodologies to highlight what is excluded from LCAs: bodies, place, and qualitative aspects of the farm. In describing what is excluded, we consider how farmers are disempowered through definitions of sustainability evolved through new assessment tools, and consider how these elements of the farm become a moot point for sustainable assessment and instead are central to political contestation. Finally, the paper argues for the transformation of power relations in the sustainability sector, which tend to isolate farmers, through the construction of new relationships between farmers and the research sector, as well as the valorization of farmers' knowledge in the definition of sustainable agriculture being advanced in policy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Giulia Volpini, Katharine Legun, Mark Vicol, Federico Andreotti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Integrating Land-Use and Food Planning for the Re-territorialisation of Agricultural Activities
The re-territorialisation of agricultural activities (RAA) refers to the promotion of local food production and its diversification geared towards local consumption. RAA helps to shape the local food system, a subject that is increasingly studied with regard to planning. Land-use and food planning are two local policy areas associated with RAA, yet the way in which they interact to facilitate RAA remains unclear. This research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the integration between land-use and food planning by reviewing the scientific literature in these planning fields in the Global North over the past 24 years. We reviewed 161 publications pertaining to RAA-related interests and instruments, intersecting action fields and governance mechanisms. The literature shows the complementarity between land-use and food planning in areas related to RAA, and the consequent need to develop coherent planning strategies to improve the effective implementation of RAA. Land-use planning has a spatial dimension with regulatory instruments, whereas food planning often has a food system and life cycle dimension with strategic instruments. Access to land, collective food infrastructures, and farming practices are three areas around which land-use and food planning can have synergies. Coherence and synergy can also be favoured by a well-established co-governance model, which implies collaboration between sectors, multi-level governmental actors, and a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes. We conclude with suggestions for planning practitioners and provide a future research agenda by appealing for more empirical studies on the intersectional fields of land-use and food planning.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tianzhu Liu, Romain Melot, Frédéric Wallet, Coline Perrin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Analysis of the Narrative Grammars of Cultured Meat in UK Food and Farming Media
Cultured meat (CM), meat produced through animal-derived cell cultures, has garnered considerable media attention. At the moment, there is a set of ‘loud’ voices and particular ‘grammars’ that primarily dictate the current media framings of CM. To date, very little research has attempted to understand what the food and farming sector think of CM and, moreover, its potential impacts on farmers, their livelihoods and the farming sector more broadly. This study looks to bring to the fore these more marginalised and understudied food and farming voices, in the form of their legacy media and social media narratives, to explore and analyse the construction and circulation of the grammars of CM in digital, online spaces. To this end, through an iterative sampling procedure, we collected and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed the framing grammars of 147 pieces of online discursive and visual media discussing CM from 2017 to 2023. Analysing the discursive grammars of CM suggested three prominent grammars of CM: 1) CM is a ‘solutionist’ technofix for the UK and explicitly Britain post-Brexit, 2) CM is a ‘virtuous’ technology given its environmental and food security possibilities, and 3) CM is ‘in tension’ with the farming sector as well as consumers’ health and taste buds. Farmers in particular perceive CM as an existential threat to their livelihoods and livestock farming, with some of these grammars verging on the conspiratorial. Yet, some farmers did not see CM as a realistic or potential threat. A final grammar surrounded the affordability of CM.
Copyright (c) 2024 Michael Goodman, Adele Wylie, Alexandra Sexton, Katherine Lewis, David Rose, Tom MacMillan, Louise Manning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In many places worldwide, government-imposed lockdowns during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in harshening food insecurity for urban residents. The lockdowns had contrasting effects in the rural areas of the Cayambe canton, north of Ecuador. This article shows the different forms of solidarity and reciprocity that emerged amongst consumers and producers from Kayambi communities during the pandemic. Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork amongst agroecological producers in 2020 and 2021, I describe their challenges in guaranteeing food security and their strategies for generating new local markets for agroecological production. At first, like peasants in other parts of the world, producers in Cayambe faced challenges in distributing food in mainstream distribution channels, a worldwide phenomenon of food surplus accumulation (de Wit 2020). Later, a shift towards increasing agrobiodiversity and decentralizing agroecological markets became the primary strategy of Kayambis. In dialogue with Altieri and Nicholls (2020), I expand on the relevance of agroecology to reconstructing agriculture in the post-covid. I show that when capitalist structures fail to guarantee peoples’ food security, other economic principles become more evident in daily life practices.
Copyright (c) 2024 Larissa da Silva Araujo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Introducing “warm glow” as a key psychological motive on consumer willingness to consume organic food
There has been an upsurge of purchasing of green products in Indonesia in recent years, accompanied by increasing consumer expectations as regards the value of the products they consume. This study shows that one of the key factors influencing consumer attitudes and willingness to consume (WTC) organic foods is the warm glow effect, whereas altruistic and egoistic values ​​were previously put forward as the main drivers of organic consumption. This study applied a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) to 337 Indonesian respondents. The findings show that while altruistic and egoistic values influence consumer behaviour, the warm glow motive provides additional benefits for consumers of organic food. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications.
Copyright (c) 2025 Dhika Cahyasita, Irham Irham, Jamhari https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Values of “alternative food initiatives” as expressions of “embeddedness”
Values are essential leverage points in the pursuit of sustainability transformations, especially within food systems. In agrifood studies, they are often linked to various forms of alterity relating to food and food systems, which we broadly conceptualize as “alternative food initiatives” (AFIs). This paper explores the role of values within AFIs by enriching Holloway et al.’s (2007) heuristic analytical framework with the concept of “embeddedness” to offer a comparative analysis of how AFIs reconfigure food production, distribution, and consumption through values-based practices. The paper’s analysis focuses on four key dimensions of embeddedness: social, economic, ecological, and spatial. Examining nine case studies across three countries (Switzerland, Czechia, and Argentina) using a qualitative approach, we find that values are neither universal nor neutral; instead, they are shaped by local contexts, influenced by power dynamics, institutional settings, and cultural norms. The paper further finds that the contributions and impacts of values are more diverse than binary understandings of “alternativeness” would suggest, underlining the importance of values for transformations toward sustainable food systems. This research contributes to agrifood studies by illuminating the role of values as leverage points for sustainability, underscoring the importance of contextualized, value-driven approaches in advancing food system transformation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rike Stotten, Anna-Maria Brunner, Nora Katharina Faltmann, Paul Froning, Michaela Pixová, Christina Plank https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The alterity of alternative food networks (AFN) is increasingly difficult to define, given the multiplicity of their ‘hybrid practices’ that intersect both the ‘alternative’ and the ‘conventional’. This article proposes the framework of bricolage to address the alterity-hybridity tension. Building on the post-binary construal that sees both the alternative and the conventional as hybrid collectives, bricolage registers the alterity of AFN and their transformative potential in the mode in which resources and values are hybridised. With the ethnographic account of how a famers’ market in Beijing ‘makes do’ with the available resources in its multi-layered environment, and subsequently ‘skews’ and subverts the ‘conventional’ from within, the article demonstrates that it is through the distinct modus operandi of hybridity that the prospects of doing food otherwise are opened.
Copyright (c) 2025 Chenjia Xu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Food systems frameworks are useful analytical tools for understanding the functioning of a complex set of activities, stakeholders, and system outcomes, and for developing interventions for more desirable futures. Despite the rapid proliferation of food systems framings in recent decades, the field remains under-theorised with inconsistent andambiguous terminology for core concepts like 'drivers', 'outcomes', and 'feedbacks'. This lack of clarity hinders effective communication, research, and intervention design. This paper argues that clarifying these terms is essential for advancing food systems understanding and informing transformative action. We begin by critically examining how these terms are currently used in the food systems literature, highlighting inconsistencies and potential implications. Drawing upon geography literature, which usefully examines spatial dynamics, scale, and human-environment interactions, we then explore how analogous concepts are employed, seeking potential cross-disciplinary learning and enrichment. Geographical perspectives, with their emphasis on spatial dynamics, scale, and human-environment interactions, offer valuable insights for refining our understanding of food system processes. Drawing on this interdisciplinary exploration, we propose that researchers more clearly indicate how the key concepts of 'drivers', 'outcomes', and 'feedbacks' within food systems analyses are being used and offer a distillation of their relationships with each other as key system elements. This will promote more rigorous and consistent approaches to studying food system dynamics, facilitating more effective research, policy development, and practical interventions. Ultimately, this paper underscores the importance of terminological clarity and interdisciplinary collaboration for addressing the complex challenges facing food systems and achieving a more just and sustainable food future.
Copyright (c) 2025 Saher Hasnain, Genia Hill https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The food system concept has become the ‘go-to’ framework to galvanise discussion and bring together academics, policymakers and industry stakeholders to debate changes needed in how our food is grown, made, sold, eaten and governed. The concept is not new, but the paper shows a resurgence in application across science and social science in recent years. What is lacking, however, is more critical analysis as to why this concept is increasingly mobilised and what it offers agri-food scholarship going forward. Inspired by Jackson et al’s (2006) analysis of the food commodity chain as ‘chaotic concept’, this paper undertakes a critical review of the peer-reviewed, English language literature on food system(s) nationally in the UK and internationally. The analysis begins with a review of food system scholarship to explain concept origins and key features of systems thinking. The second part examines uptake in the wider literature. This spans 1987-2024 and reviews trends from Scopus and Web of Knowledge, followed by a structured review of social science articles for two case studies concerning respectively ‘food system transformation and crisis’ (process-based) and ‘food system and the urban’ (place-based). The analysis reveals a pattern of bi-polarisation: the first mobilises the food system as a heurist framing in contrast to the second more systemic framing. The former dominates the material reviewed. The paper argues that recognising not only different mobilisations but also the dominance of heuristic food system uses is important, given its prominence to support changes in the governance and politics of food.
Copyright (c) 2025 Damian Maye, Richard Helliwell, Carol Morris https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Gaining a common understanding of transformation pathways in agri-food
Researchers across scientific disciplines widely agree that agri-food systems need transformation, yet they rarely agree on the specific form this transformation should take. This study makes researchers' views of desirable agri-food systems transformation pathways explicit. Using the repertory grid methodology, we elicited personal constructs from researchers with expertise in 101 European initiatives, representing diverse scales, approaches, and objectives of transformation. Embedded in this methodology, personal construct elicitation reveals researchers' tacit knowledge and implicit assumptions. Results from this study reveal high convergence among researchers on the importance of stakeholder inclusion, autonomy, scope of ambitions, and anchoring in farming practices in transformation initiatives. However, researchers diverge in their views on how market orientation relates to transformative potential. Our findings demonstrate that while researchers broadly agree on key dimensions for describing transformation pathways in agri-food systems, they differ in their assessment of what makes initiatives truly transformative. Implications from these findings highlight the need for interdisciplinary research projects to reflect on how, when, and to what extent to engage in stakeholder participation and farmer engagement, as well as on whether transformative actions should be planned or emergent, and adaptive or disruptive, depending on the desired agri-food systems transformation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rebekka Frick, Marija Roglic, Domenico Dentoni, Robert Home https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The global food system—encompassing production, consumption, and disposal—has been widely recognized as unsustainable, contributing significantly to environmental degradation and social disparities. In response to these challenges, the transition toward more equitable food systems has become imperative. Despite the widely acknowledged need to change Western eating habits, the transition toward more sustainable diets appears as a “false wicked problem” being characterized by intricate trade-offs between economic, ethical, societal, and environmental issues. This paper examines the crucial role of policy interventions in steering the shift and in considering the role that the emergence of novel foods and alternative proteins – such as cultured meat – might play within it. By employing a qualitative methodology, the study maps the policies governing novel foods in Europe, with a specific emphasis on the three tools of regulations, informational campaigns, and incentives. This paper gives particular attention to the cultured meat debate in Italy as a case study for approaching not only the multifaceted nature of food—an interplay of cultural values, economic interests, and political decision-making—but also the staunch resistance that such transition is likely to encounter. The main highlights underscore the need for a comprehensive and balanced approach to integrate regulatory measures, consumer education, and inclusive stakeholder engagement while stressing the importance of evidence-based choices, transparent communication, and the recognition of the socio-cultural dimensions in shaping food policies.
Copyright (c) 2024 Rita Salvatore, Simone Busetti, Emilio Chiodo, Maria Angela Perito https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
There is widespread agreement on the need to radically transform food systems. Some scholars have argued that such transformations demand an engagement with 'the political': that is, with the competing understandings, values, and ambitions that mark society. However, it remains unclear how networks of actors govern processes in ways that make space for 'the political' without undermining collective action. In this paper, we explore the role of 'the political' in the internal governance of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) by advancing a locally-adapted framework for experimentalist governance. Taking the case of Campi Aperti, an AFN in Bologna, Italy, we show how the internal governance structures of AFNs, when shaped by elements of a localised approach to experimentalist governance, can facilitate engagement with 'the political' by navigating power dynamics and strategic uncertainties that influence their capacity for transformative change. In turn, our framework and analysis make visible the political potential of Campi Aperti as facilitated through its internal governance. Our findings illustrate how governance innovations emerge predominantly inside the network but struggle to receive support from other actors, notably public policy actors like the Municipality and regional authority. In this way, we contribute to understanding the internal governance of AFNs and respond to calls for deeper inquiry into their political dimensions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sara Chinaglia, Jessica Duncun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Novel Foods: a Technological Pathway to Food System Transformation?
This Special Section intends to contribute to the debate within the social sciences on ‘novel foods’, broadly understood as foods providing proteins alternative to animal proteins. These are derived from a variety of new bioscientific and engineering technologies spanning cell tissue development; organisms covering plants, fungi, algae and microbes, and insects. The articles gathered in this Special Section are the outcome of the biennial 2023 Conference of the Center for Food Studies of The American University of Rome. Novel Foods are discussed from different disciplinary perspectives and their various configurations, regulatory challenges and degree of social acceptance are considered in a variety of economic, political, social and cultural contexts. Taken together, the articles reveal the array of social science questions to be tackled if ‘novel foods’ are to be part of a transition towards food system transformation, or whether they will ultimately accentuate ‘high-tech solutionism’ and associated narratives that work to the detriment of deeper and more democratic analyses and solutions.
Copyright (c) 2024 Maria Grazia Quieti, Colin Sage, Rita Salvatore, John Wilkinson, Maria Fonte https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Challenging high-tech solutionism in an era of polycrisis
Considering the contemporary global landscape of interlocking environmental, economic and political challenges - labelled as a polycrisis - the paper takes issue with an influential narrative of technological solutionism. Both within the rapidly digitalizing agricultural sector that is reshaping industrial farming and across the novel foods category engaged in scaling protein production, there is a tendency to proclaim new technologies as providing singular remedies to existential problems. While conceding that new technologies may have an important role to play as we navigate uncertainty in striving for healthy, sustainable diets, this commentary argues that such efforts ought to be informed by a wider vision embracing complexity and scientific humility and capable of scrutinising the purpose of such innovations while ensuring the inclusion of valued social and cultural attributes of food. Ultimately, challenging dominant narratives of technological solutionism requires civil society to develop alternative discourses that speak to human and ecological wellbeing above purely technocratically defined objectives.
Copyright (c) 2024 Colin Sage https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Loconto, A and Constance D (eds.) 2024. Agrifood Transitions in the Anthropocene, Challenges, Contested Knowledge, and the Need for Change London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
In July 2024, an author meets critics session was organized at the Rural Sociological Society’s Annual meeting that was held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In this session, the co-editors (Allison Loconto and Doug Constance) of the book Agrifood Transitions in the Anthropocene: Challenges, Contested Knowledge, and the Need for Change met co-authors Elizabeth Ransom and Claire Lamine to discuss the contents of the book. They also met two critics - one in person and one at a distance - in order to debate the pertinance, the interest and the contribution of the book to the epistemic community gathered in Madison. This article publishes these two critiques back-to-back as a means to stimulate further debate and discussion in the sociology of agriculture and food community.
Copyright (c) 2024 Michael Bell, William Lacy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0