Abstract
The global community faces the challenge of feeding a growing population with declining resources, making transformation to sustainable agriculture and food systems all the more imperative and ‘innovation’ all the more crucial. In this study, agro-food system innovation (re)defines sustainability transition with a complexity construct of cross-scale interaction and an adaptive cycle of system change. By taking a panarchical view, top-down and bottom-up pathways to innovation can be reconciled and are not contradictory, enabling and constraining innovation at every level. This study breaks down the structure of the agricultural innovation system into four components based on multi-level perspectives of sustainability transition, namely: actors and communities, interaction and intermediaries, coherence and connectedness and regimes rules and landscape. Meanwhile, this research frames the functional construct of system innovation for food and agriculture with five perspectives drawing on broad inputs from different schools of thought, namely: knowledge management, user sophistication, entrepreneurial activities’ directionality and reflexive evaluation. This research advocates for an ecosystem approach to agricultural innovation that gives full play to niche-regime interactions using social-technical perspectives.
Highlights
The global community faces great pressure to feed a growing population
How do these views contribute to the framing of agro-food system innovation and sustainability transition?
Functional analyses of innovation systems tend to abstract functionality from the totality of the structure. Those that oppose the functionalist approach propose a long-term perspective and shift in regimes/paradigms, rather than pursuing the functions in the short run, in order to take into account the complex nature of system innovation in sustainability transition [104,105]
Summary
The global community faces great pressure to feed a growing population. By the end of the 21st century, the world population is projected to reach 11 billion. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6897 commercial farm units and stable economic conditions These conditions are increasingly difficult to guarantee because modern agriculture is no longer used just for production, and for consumption and environmental purposes. Food and agriculture systems cannot be reconfigured by controlling processes, planning, standardization, constancy and predictability They are dynamic, adaptive, uncertain and complex and require socio-technical interaction and cross-sectorial applications, which is known as an approach termed agro-food system innovation towards agroecological transitions [7,8,9,10]. Research and policy institutions continue to characterize agro-food system innovation and sustainability transition as structured and controllable, despite the emerging recognition that they should be flexible and dynamic. Examples of potential applications of this study include the Tropical Agriculture Platform, a G20 initiative to strengthen national innovation systems in developing countries, and the pilot programs of agricultural innovation system (AIS) at the national and territorial levels [21]
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