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Technological and institutional innovationsin agri-food systems (AFSs) over the past century have brought dramatic advances in human well-being worldwide.

One might reasonably invoke Dickens in describing AFSs and AVCs today: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

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As detailed in Marshall et al. (Quinn Marshall, Jessica Fanzo, Christopher B. Barrett, Andrew D. Jones, Anna Herforth, and Rebecca McLaren, “Building a global food systems typology: A new tool for reducing complexity in food systems analysis,” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, vol. 5 (November 2021): 746512), the food systemstypologies we and the Food Systems Dashboard use were developed using a method that began with a structured scoping review of the existing food systems literature.

Because AFSs are diverse, dynamic, and evolve continuously, they require massive continuous investment to enable ongoing discovery and adaptation merely to prevent backsliding.

So how do we reverse the growing carbon, land, and toxic chemical footprint of contemporary AVCs; expand the nutrient-rich food supply; and induce more equitable, inclusive, healthier food environments—and thus consumption patterns—so as to navigate from today’s unsustainable and precarious AVCs to a warmer, more urban, more African, and shock-prone world in which wealthier consumers place an ever-growing premium on the non-nutritive attributes of the foods they buy? Given the climate change, population and income growth, and urbanization baked into AFSs already, beneficial innovation is the only feasible pathway. And because innovation takes time, typically measurable in decades, we urgently need to accelerate innovative activity.

As we look 25–50 years, or more, into the future, we must also keep in mind how very different tomorrow’s world will inevitably look. Three big, inevitable changes stand out, with serious implications for AFS and AVC innovations.