Defining edible landscapes: a multilingual systematic review

Abstract

The concept of edible landscapes seeks to combine a participatory approach to food production with wider concerns about well-designed, sustainable human-landscape relationships. Despite its decade-long history and seeming potential for holistically addressing multiple intertwined socio-ecological crises, the concept has received much less attention than related ideas such as green infrastructure or nature-based solutions. We conducted a systematic, multilingual review of 79 studies to understand how edible landscapes are defined, what their characteristics are, what trends exist in the literature, and how edible landscapes can be situated in the broader context of food production. Findings suggest that no clear definition of the term ‘edible landscape’ currently exists, although the implicit consensus is that edible landscapes feature food production as well as an aesthetic contribution. The literature holds high expectations but provides only limited empirical evidence for benefits. Edible landscape frames a unique conceptual space, which we visualize by placing it in relation with related concepts. We then propose two concise, genus-differentia definitions as a basis for academic debate, one of which expands the concept to include multispecies agency in designing landscapes. We conclude with a call for more empirical as well as theory-focused research to facilitate edible landscapes’ contributions to more sustainable human-nature relationships.