Beyond the Green Revolution: A roadmap for sustainable food systems research and action
Date
2022-09-29
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Environmental Research Letters
Abstract
The Green Revolution produced remarkable achievements in increasing food supply while leading to a suite of compromises for economic, social, and environmental outcomes [1]—including ongoing needs for rural development [2], persistent widespread malnutrition [3] and the transgression of multiple planetary boundaries [4]. To sustainably meet the grand challenge of feeding a growing and more affluent population in the coming decades, there is wide recognition that food system transitions must build upon the benefits of past food system advances while overcoming their many shortcomings [5–7]—a problem further complicated by an increasingly interconnected food system [8–11] and its interactions with a changing climate [12–14]. Food system actors—including policy makers, corporations, farmers, and consumers—must meet this challenge while considering potentially conflicting priorities [15], such as environmental sustainability, economic viability, nutrition and human health, and resilience to climate change and other environmental and socio-political disruptions. Successfully navigating this deep and growing complexity to meet multiple goals simultaneously—while avoiding or minimizing tradeoffs (e.g. [16])—is the crux of achieving sustainable and resilient food systems. New thinking is needed to shed light on the solutions for food system sustainability and the pathways to its realization, including overcoming political economy constraints to effective policy change. Here we take the pulse of our emerging understanding of food system sustainability—drawing from new food systems work in this Focus Issue—and outline three key aims to guide future research and action.
Description
This article was originally published in Environmental Research Letters. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9425
Keywords
Citation
Davis, Kyle Frankel, Carole Dalin, Matti Kummu, Landon Marston, Prabhu Pingali, and Marta Tuninetti. “Beyond the Green Revolution: A Roadmap for Sustainable Food Systems Research and Action.” Environmental Research Letters 17, no. 10 (September 2022): 100401. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9425.