Main 2023 analysis explores how agrifood is coming into its subsequent sustainable growth section. By analyzing key insights from previous analysis, the business learns what it means for sector progress and evolution in 2024 and past.
Right here, we take a look at three research that set up the function of real-world change processes, the advantage of those in assembly environmental goals and the effectiveness of transferring in the direction of this method over future meals targets.
Meals system diversification not but resulting in sustainable meals
Of their 2023 perspective paper on meals techniques, Lamine and Marsden analysed developments in UK and French meals techniques over three intervals: agricultural modernisation and intensification based mostly on excessive inputs (1950-1985), ecological modernisation to deal with unintended penalties similar to environmental issues and overproduction (1985-2008), and the emergence and proliferation of radical niche-innovations (2008-2020).
“One vital contribution to higher understanding change processes is that the growing meals system diversification in peripheral niches shouldn’t be but resulting in wider meals system transitions in additional sustainable instructions,” Professor Frank Geels, Professor of System Innovation, IMP Innovation, Technique and Sustainability at Alliance Manchester Enterprise Faculty and Co-Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute on the College of Manchester, advised FoodNavigator.
As well as, one other vital discovering and contribution is that area of interest improvements that match higher with the prevailing regime, similar to climate-smart agriculture and sustainable intensification, are diffusing sooner than radical area of interest improvements like agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and various meals networks with brief provide chains.
In consequence, the analysis suggests the transfer away from area of interest improvements to deeper change mimicked in different industries similar to wind, solar-PV, and electrical autos shouldn’t be current in agrifood but. The business, subsequently, wants to put extra emphasis on socio-ecological and spatial dimensions to progress the sector in the direction of meals system diversification.
New agrifood practices
The paper by Schiller, Klerkx, Centenno and Poortvliet extra deeply explored the emergence and diffusion of agroecology in Nicaragua. The nation, Geels mentioned “is among the world’s main international locations on this innovation requiring substantial modifications in farming practices”.
Specializing in information flows over 40 years, the 2023 analysis paper exhibits how new concepts and practices emerged by native experimentation and trial-and-error initiatives within the first interval (1986-1997).
The examine then confirmed that information and greatest practices stabilised within the second interval (1988-2006) by systematisation, standardisation and codification. They unfold extra extensively within the third interval, between 2007 and 2022, by nationwide congresses and alliances between corporations, policymakers, and civil society organisations and had been anchored in rules and requirements.
“The paper deepens our understanding of the emergence and stabilisation of radical improvements, displaying that totally different actors play various roles in subsequent intervals,” mentioned Geels. It additionally exhibits that middleman actors such because the Nicaraguan Environmental Motion and the Alliance for Agroecology play particularly vital roles in connecting and brokering disparate actors and studying experiences to foster new agrifood practices.
Shifting away from animal agriculture
A 2023 analysis examine by Mylan, Andrews and Maye focuses on the rising ‘protein’ transition, the place animal-derived meals are changed with various proteins. They analysed the event of 4 various protein improvements, starting from Quorn to cultured meat, over the previous three many years and clarify the current acceleration of their diffusion. “Most of the environmental considerations related to presently dominant meals techniques stem from animal-based agriculture,” confirmed Geels.
Discovering an growing company engagement with various protein growth and diffusion, the researchers acknowledged this “may probably be an indication for a wider company reorientation of regime incumbents, as a result of growing pressures on the animal agriculture system due to a scientific consensus and societal consciousness of the hyperlinks between local weather change and animal-produce intensive diets”.
Regardless of these pressures for change, political, regulatory, and cultural obstacles stay and inconsistently have an effect on the prospects of the 4 improvements within the evaluation, Geels famous. “The paper exhibits a partial destabilisation of the presently dominant animal meals regime and a tentative reorientation throughout Europe and the US,” Geels added.
Nonetheless, a possible various ‘protein’ transition continues to be in its early phases. It, subsequently, hints on the significance of niche-regime interactions and their timing. Geels mentioned: “To what extent does regime destabilisation result in a fast transition, which is partly based mostly on the event of alternate options?”. The present obstacles to various protein applied sciences, impression the chance to advance the animal-based “protein transition”.
