Agri-food system dynamics: pathways to sustainability in an era of uncertainty

This document examines the key issues surrounding agri-food system dynamics and sustainability. It looks at the causes and consequences of key economic, ecological and social forces that are driving change in food systems, sets out the characterising features of agriculture that make it distinct from other sectors and analyses how the prevailing narratives of technological change, on the one hand, and economic growth, on the other, have come to dominate key food and agriculture policy debates. <br /><br />The authors argue that agricultural policy and practice in the developing world is encountering a number of limitations which reveal inadequacies in its long-term sustainability and its capacity to meet the range of objectives that it is expected to deliver. These include concerns about chronic hunger and malnutrition, adverse environmental changes, increasing land degradation, the loss of biodiversity, and the continuing poverty of agricultural communities. These concerns arise because the prevailing approach to agricultural science often fails to provide sustainable outcomes, particularly at larger scales and for large numbers of poor people. <br /><br />The paper concludes by outlining an interdisciplinary research agenda on agri-food systems for STEPS. Key concluding points include: the &lsquo;modernist&rsquo; project that has come to dominate food and agricultural policy has failed to provide sustainable outcomes for many poor people in developing countries there is a need for normative focus on poverty reduction and concern for the distributional consequences of dynamic changes in agri-food systems, rather than aggregates and averages A&nbsp;STEPS research agenda on agri-food systems should focus on; framing the sustainability challenge, exploring multiple pathways, scales of analysis, dynamic system properties, governance analysis, and&nbsp;cross cutting elements from analysis to practice. <br />