Crossing Sociological, Ecological, and Nutritional Perspectives on Agrifood Systems Transitions: Towards a Transdisciplinary Territorial Approach

Abstract

The need to reconnect agriculture, environment, food, and health when addressing agrifood system transitions is widely acknowledged. However, most analytical frameworks, especially in the expanding literature about “system approaches”, rely on impact-based approaches and, thus, tend to overlook ecological processes as well as social ones. This article aims at demonstrating that a territorial approach to agrifood system transitions is more appropriate to tackle the reconnection between agriculture, food, environment, and health than the larger scales (global or national food systems) or the smaller ones (such as those of alternative food systems) usually addressed in the literature. Co-elaborated by a sociologist, an ecologist, and a nutritionist, this article is based on a focused analysis of the literature that has addressed agrifood system transitions in the food and health sciences and in the social sciences and on the reflexive analysis of two past projects dealing with such transitions. It shows that a territorial approach allows including in the analysis the diverse agrifood systems’ components as well the ecological and social processes that may create functionalities for improving agrifood systems’ sustainability. This territorial approach is based on systemic and processual thinking and on a transdisciplinary perspective combining an objectification stance and a pragmatist constructivist one. It should allow actors and researchers to build a shared understanding of the transition processes within their shared territorial agrifood system, despite possibly different and diverging views.

Product Qualification as a Means of Identifying Sustainability Pathways for Place-Based Agri-Food Systems: The Case of the GI Corsican Grapefruit (France)

“…This perspective is consistent with the work on local products and their embeddedness [17,58]. This concept also builds on recent work in agroecological transition, which acknowledges that transformations in agri-food systems towards greater sustainability take shape at the territorial level, at the intersection between health, food, environment, and agriculture [20,59,60].…”

Stakeholder Perceptions of Policy Tools in Support of Sustainable Food Consumption in Europe: Policy Implications

“…Seasonality can be interpreted in two distinct ways: from a global perspective (i.e., a natural production season consumed elsewhere in the world) and from a local perspective (i.e., a natural production season consumed within the same climatic region) [68]. Territoriality has been proposed as a concept to address the need for more locally-focused (bottom-up) versus national/regional-level (top-down) approaches which take into account the specific requirements of rural versus urban areas [69][70][71].…”

Sharing Values for Changing Practices, a Lever for Sustainable Transformation? The Case of Farmers and Processors in Interaction within Localized Cheese Sectors

“…Environmental and sanitary issues are more and more questioning the way food production is organized and realized nowadays [1]. At various levels, from global policymaking to scientific commissions and local societies, a need of evolution in production, processing, and marketing practices is strongly expressed for enhancing transition towards sustainable food [2,3]. One main issue which remains to be identified is the "seeds of change" [4], that is to say the sources of sustainable transformation that may effectively support such engagements [5].…”