Decolonising Food Systems Research and Governance: Epistemic Justice and Knowledge Sovereignty

Food systems research and governance have long been shaped by unequal power relations. Many widely used ideas, such as sustainability, productivity, efficiency, and governance, are often defined by institutions and re-search traditions from the Global North. As a result, Indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, peasant move-ments, and communities in the Global South are frequently treated as data sources or beneficiaries rather than as knowledge holders and decision-makers. At the same time, these communities maintain rich knowledge on seeds, biodiversity, land, water, agroecology, food culture, and resilience. This Research Topic is timely because sustainable food system transformation cannot be achieved without recognizing whose knowledge counts and who has the authority to shape research and policy.

The main research gap is simple and urgent: food systems research often discusses sustainability and food se-curity without directly addressing knowledge justice. There is still limited space for work that asks how colonial histories, unequal institutions, and dominant research methods shape what is studied, funded, measured, and accepted as evidence. This collection will address the following questions: Who produces food systems knowledge? Whose knowledge is trusted in policy and governance? How can Indigenous, Southern, peasant, and community knowledge systems be protected, respected, and used without appropriation? How can partici-patory and community-led methods make research more democratic and useful? The objective is to bring to-gether clear theoretical, empirical, methodological, and policy contributions that support more plural, fair, and accountable food systems governance.

This collection focuses on decolonising food systems research, policy, and governance. It welcomes papers that show how power shapes knowledge, institutions, methods, and decisions in food systems, and how more just and community-grounded approaches can be built.

• Colonial legacies in food systems science, policy, land relations, monoculture expansion, and international governance.

• Epistemic justice, knowledge sovereignty, food sovereignty, and the politics of whose knowledge counts.

• Indigenous, traditional ecological, peasant, and community-held knowledge in seeds, biodiversity, agroecolo-gy, land management, and resilience.

• Decolonising institutions such as FAO, CGIAR, World Bank, WTO, UN food systems processes, research fun-ders, and global policy platforms.

• Participatory action research, co-production, community-based research, transdisciplinary methods, data ownership, benefit sharing, and ethical dissemination.

• Southern perspectives, South-South knowledge exchange, seed sovereignty, genetic resources, bioprospect-ing, and practical pathways for plural and accountable governance.

Manuscript types: Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Mini-Review, Perspective, Policy and Practice Review, Brief Research Report, Case Report, and Data Report.

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
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... 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
• 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: decolonising food systems, epistemic justice, knowledge sovereignty, food sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, food systems governance, agroecology, seed sovereignty, Global South, partic-ipatory research, community based reseached

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.