Navigating Transitions for Sustainable and Just Food Systems: Pathways, Challenges, and Innovations

As rapid environmental transformation and escalated demands on arable land coincide with the reality that nearly a third of the global human population is unable to afford a healthy diet, the importance of sustainable and just food systems is increasingly apparent. Ongoing global challenges illuminate the need to carefully evaluate and shift the dominant processes of food production, distribution, and consumption. These changes are pivotal not only to ensure more equitable access to food, but also for prioritizing ecological balance, economic sustainability, and just and dignified labor.

This Research Topic seeks to identify and address knowledge gaps related to food systems transitions, with a focus on uncovering approaches to land and food system management that harmonize productivity with environmental and social justice, ecosystem health, and widespread access to nutritious food. Through such explorations, this Research Topic collection seeks to broaden the discourse around food systems transitions by integrating ecological, social, economic, political, cultural, and technological perspectives.

To gather insights into this vital area, we are exclusively inviting contributions from individuals who participated in the 5th Open Science Meeting "Pathways to Sustainable and Just Land Systems," hosted by the Global Land Programme (GLP), and other researchers associated with the GLP. As a mandatory requirement for this Research Topic, please submit a manuscript summary, and include the following information: a brief statement indicating whether you are a member of the Global Land Programme (GLP) and participated in the 5th Open Science Meeting. If not, please describe your relationship with the GLP. Additionally, clearly identify which of the research themes outlined below your paper addresses. We welcome contributions including original research articles, review papers, or case studies that highlight local or regional practices, as well as opinion pieces that discuss current trends or suggest future directions for scholarship, practice, and/or policy. These contributions should address themes such as, but not limited to:

• Food Security and Nutrition: Challenges to and strategies for improving food access, affordability, and dietary quality

• Land Use and Sustainability: The drivers and impacts of land use and land use change; the context-specificity of sustainable land management practices (e.g. agroecology, agroforestry, conservation agriculture, regenerative land practices); and tradeoffs and synergies between land use practices and ecological, social, economic, political, cultural, and/or technological goals

• Justice and Equity: Explorations of the role of power dynamics and inequalities in shaping food systems (e.g., issues of self-determination, labor, migration, citizenship, corporate concentration, etc.) and of how to support more just and equitable food systems

• Trade and Globalization: Food demand, trade policies, and the role of local-to-global supply chains and markets in shaping (un)sustainable and (in)equitable food systems

• Climate Change: Empirical investigations of the climate adaptation and mitigation potential of individual land management practices (e.g., cover cropping, alley cropping) and systems of practices (e.g., agroforestry, agroecology, etc.); the climate impacts of dietary shifts or market changes (e.g., localization); and the vulnerability and resilience of food systems to climate change.

• Technology and Innovation: The possibilities and pitfalls of novel food production methods/strategies (e.g. digital tools, remote sensing, new/emerging agricultural technologies, etc.)

• Policy and Governance: Analyses of any part of sustainable food systems policy or governance, particularly welcoming of participatory and community-engaged approaches

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Food Systems, Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture, Land Use Transition, Social Equity, Land and Food Justice

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.