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Systematic Review

Conceptualizing Agrifood Systems for a Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Transformation: A Systematic Scoping Review

by
Sydney Pryor
*,
Trevor Casey
and
William H. Dietz
Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20037, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2024, 16(22), 9862; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229862
Submission received: 26 September 2024 / Revised: 1 November 2024 / Accepted: 9 November 2024 / Published: 12 November 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Environment, Economy, Society and Policy—Series II)
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Abstract

:
Human and planetary health are interconnected through food and agriculture. Food production and consumption patterns continue to drive the global burden of malnutrition, diet-related disease, climate change, and environmental degradation. There is an urgent need to identify pathways for transforming agrifood systems to be increasingly healthy, sustainable, and just, but conceptual frameworks necessary for visualizing these complex relationships are limited. This systematic scoping review identified existing frameworks for analyzing human and environmental outcomes of agrifood systems and evaluated their inclusion of policy and governance. Frameworks have evolved to increasingly consider the food supply chain activities and actors, the drivers that shape them, and the outcomes of these interactions. The findings of the review were used to develop a conceptual framework specific to modern industrialized agrifood systems where policy landscape is an explicit component. The framework is tailored to researchers and policymakers with the intention of providing a foundation for analyzing and communicating agrifood system issues, including identifying facilitators and barriers to effective policy, places to intervene in the system, and windows of opportunity for successful transformation.

1. Introduction

The agrifood system’s ability to produce healthy diets for a projected population of 9.7 billion people by 2050 is a pressing societal challenge. An even greater challenge is doing so without irreversible environmental damage. Agrifood systems encompass all actors involved in food production, processing, distribution, purchasing, consumption, and disposal [1,2,3,4,5]. The interconnections between these activities and actors are shaped by social, economic, political, and environmental factors. Over time, modern industrialized agrifood systems have accomplished great feats of innovation to increase productivity, efficiency, affordability, nutrient content, safety, taste, and more, but at what cost [6,7]? Agrifood systems account for approximately one-third of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally [8]. High production and consumption of animal-source foods in particular are a key contributor to the climate crisis [8,9,10]. Without climate action in food and agriculture, experts suggest global warming will go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which is the threshold set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [11,12]. Surpassing this threshold will lead to more intense and frequent climate and weather events, including heat waves, severe drought, and heavy precipitation, with disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable communities [11,12]. Significant loss in the quality and availability of natural resources will impact the productivity of agrifood systems and the safety and stability of the food supply [13,14,15]. Furthermore, a heating climate and related weather extremes will directly threaten the health and safety of the agricultural workforce and local communities [14,15,16]. Current diets are also driving the global burden of diet-related disease through malnutrition in the form of both undernutrition and overnutrition [13,17,18].

The Call for an Agrifood System Transformation

Defined by Burlingame, sustainable diets “protect and respect biodiversity and ecosystems, are culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair, and affordable, nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy, while optimizing natural and human resources” [17,19,20,21]. Researchers and advocates continue to call for a global shift to healthy and sustainable diets as a strategy to meet climate change mitigation targets, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty to limit warming below the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold [22]. The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health has referred to healthy and sustainable diets as a “win–win” climate and health strategy [10,17,23,24]. Given the scale, complexity, and heterogeneity of agrifood systems, a global shift to “win–win” diets has been referred to as an agrifood system transformation [17].
To begin to conceptualize the complexity of agrifood systems, the relationships between components, and their impact on human and planetary health, Ericksen in 2008 developed a food systems framework (Figure 1) to analyze food security and global environmental change [4]. Ericksen proposed the need to expand ‘food systems’ to represent more than just the activities from production to consumption; the framework included these activities, their socioeconomic and environmental drivers, related outcomes, and the feedback among them as the key components of agrifood systems [4]. Drivers are characterized as changes in the natural and human environments and their interactions that influence agrifood system activities. The activities include the sectors of the food supply chain from production to consumption. Production represents all of the activities involved in the production, growing, and harvesting of raw food materials, including both plant and animal production [4]. Processing, manufacturing, and packaging represent the various transformations that raw food material (vegetables, fruit, animals) undergo to “add value” to the raw product [4]. Distribution and retail are the processes through which food products move between production and processing to their final retail destination and the ways in which they are marketed. Consumption represents the process of preparing, eating, and digesting food products [4]. The food system outcomes in Ericksen’s framework include food security, environmental security, and social welfare, with a focus on food security and its determinants, such as food utilization, food availability, and food access. Feedback represents the eventual impact of these activities and outcomes on the environmental and socioeconomic drivers, such as impacts on natural resource quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and livelihoods [4,25].
In addition to visualizing the complex interactions underlying food systems, Ericksen and others have highlighted the ability to identify potential trade-offs and synergies between agrifood system outcomes as another strength of a more holistic systems approach to food systems research [4,5,26]. A systems thinking approach to agrifood system research, often referred to as a food systems approach (FSA), has been growing [26]. Prior research has concluded that FSAs must be “useful to decision makers, which requires more explicit depiction of the interactions and dynamics of agrifood systems and the pathways through which they could change” [26,27].
Policy and governance structures and the relationships between diverse actors in the agrifood system are necessary dynamics to understand, particularly given the urgency of mitigating the agrifood system’s double burden on human and planetary health and the need to identify effective pathways for agrifood system transformation. However, there is a paucity of policy-oriented frameworks. Ericksen highlighted food system governance as an area in need of further analysis, and although attention to governance in food systems research has increased, it is still unclear to what extent more recent conceptual frameworks have considered policy or governance structures [4,28]. Thus, our primary research question is ‘How do policy and governance structures influence the complex relationships between agrifood systems and human and environmental outcomes?’ The aim of this paper is to synthesize the key components of existing frameworks and identify gaps in their applicability to policy decision-making to develop an updated conceptual framework for agrifood systems transformation research that is grounded in the literature and explicitly policy-oriented. This paper presents a systematic scoping review that was conducted to understand to what extent existing frameworks for analyzing human and environmental outcomes of agrifood systems have conceptualized the role of policy and governance in upholding current systems and as potential levers for change.

2. Methods

A systematic scoping review of academic and grey literature was conducted to identify conceptual frameworks for analyzing human and environmental outcomes of agrifood systems published between 2008 and 2023, with a focus on research from both industrialized and developing nations. Scoping reviews are particularly useful for complex and interdisciplinary research topics and are commonly used to clarify conceptual boundaries of a field, accompanied by the limitations of a broad rather than narrow research scope [29,30]. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) standards were followed and documented using the PRISMA-ScR Checklist [31] to maintain transparency in the research process. Using the methodological framework of Arksey and O’Malley, and recommendations from Levac et al. and Currie et al., we completed this review in 5 steps [32,33,34].
Step 1. Identify research questions considering the purpose of the scoping review is to understand to what extent existing frameworks for analyzing human and environmental outcomes of agrifood systems have conceptualized the role of policy and governance in upholding current systems and as potential levers for change.
  • What are the research objectives, context, application, and policy relevance of existing agrifood system frameworks that address human and planetary health outcomes?
  • What are the key components and interactions (drivers, activities, outcomes, feedback) underlying the complex relationships between agrifood systems and human and planetary health outcomes?
  • How have policy and governance structures been included in conceptualizations of agrifood systems?
Step 2. Identify relevant studies
A systematic scoping review protocol was developed in collaboration with a research librarian to guide this review. A systematic search of the literature was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar to identify relevant journal articles and grey literature. The search terms are detailed in Table 1. The title, abstract, and full-text of identified studies were compiled using Covidence to prepare for the following screening and data extraction processes.
Step 3. Study Selection
The identified studies were screened following predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria (Table 2). Publications were limited to the English language and the years 2008 to 2023. 2008 represents the publication year of Ericksen’s framework, which acts as a foundation for many of the frameworks that followed and for this research [4,5,35,36]. Publications after this year also increasingly acknowledge the drivers of agrifood systems and there is a growing focus on sustainable agrifood systems, reflected by a steady increase in the number of publications related to food system policy and governance over the 2007–2014 period [28,37,38,39].
Two reviewers (SP and TC) independently screened the titles and abstracts of publications using the eligibility criteria. The publication content had to include a high-level analysis of agrifood systems that considered both human health and environmental outcomes. Studies focused specifically on one supply chain, one policy or sector of the food system, or a particular set of outcomes that did not encompass both human and environmental impacts were excluded. Further assessment of publications in the full-text screening was completed to confirm the content was aligned with the research question. A framework that visually conceptualized agrifood system drivers, activities, outcomes, and feedback was also required for inclusion in the review. Disagreement between reviewers was resolved through consensus.
Step 4. Charting the data
Relevant publications containing conceptual frameworks that matched the inclusion criteria were then evaluated relative to the research questions. We extracted relevant data points including general publication characteristics (Table 3) and specific characteristics of the included conceptual frameworks (Table 4), including framework context and application, agrifood system components organized by Ericksen’s framework—(1) drivers, (2) activities, (3) outcomes, and (4) feedback—and documented how the publications included policy and governance in their conceptual frameworks [4].
Step 5. Summarizing and reporting the results
The extracted data for each included publication and conceptual framework are summarized in Tables S1 and S2 and in narrative format. The data were analyzed in the context of the research questions to synthesize how frameworks conceptualize agrifood systems, their similarities and differences in drivers, activities, outcomes, and feedback included over time, and the extent to which policy and governance are a part of these dynamics. Further inductive analysis was used to identify strengths in existing frameworks’ ability to conceptualize complex interactions between agrifood systems and human and planetary health outcomes and to identify gaps in the applicability of existing agrifood system frameworks for effective policy decision-making.

3. Results

The process and results of the study identification, screening, and selection were documented using the PRISMA flowchart for scoping reviews (Figure 2) [31]. Research publications including high-level frameworks conceptualizing agrifood system components and their interrelationships with human and planetary health outcomes (N = 8) were identified, reviewed, and summarized based on their objectives, application to food systems research, and relevance for policy decision-making (Table S1). As specified in the inclusion criteria, all publications framed agrifood systems as influential for both human and planetary health outcomes.

3.1. Overview of Included Conceptual Frameworks

All publications discussed the benefit of applying a food systems approach to improve understanding of the complex influence of food system activities and actors on various outcomes, as well as the overarching drivers and non-linear feedback loops throughout the system. Researchers applied a variety of methods to developing conceptual frameworks, including literature reviews and syntheses and consensus-based development. All included frameworks are multi-scale, suggesting their generalizability across one or more scales (i.e., global, national, subnational), and only two are considered context-specific. Van Berkum et al. and Zurek et al. focused specifically on agrifood systems in the context of the Netherlands and the European Union (EU), respectively [38,40]. While the majority of reviewed frameworks suggest they are generalizable to agrifood systems at various scales, the components and characteristics included are more closely aligned to industrialized agrifood systems and Western diets. Individuals in these frameworks are represented as actors across several highly coordinated and technical food system sectors that operate at scale. The industrialized perspective of these frameworks is also reflected in their representation of policy and governments as the organized process and entity through which changes to the food system can be made. Researchers, policymakers, and public health practitioners were all named as potential end users of these frameworks.
Publications were evaluated by the content included in their conceptual frameworks, organized by drivers, activities, outcomes, feedback, and policy/governance as described previously (Table S2) [4]. All publications included in the review referenced Ericksen in their description of how food systems are conceptualized, and their conceptual frameworks largely build on each other. Over time, researchers have made significant additions to food system frameworks for evaluating multiple food system outcomes. These updates aim to increase end users’ ability to adequately understand the interconnectedness of agrifood system drivers, agrifood system activities, and multiple related outcomes. The evolution of these conceptual frameworks over time reflects growing attention to the interrelationships between agrifood systems and human and planetary health. This attention also reflects an increasing acceptance of systems approaches and the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of various elements within agrifood systems.

3.2. Components of Included Conceptual Frameworks

Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson conceptualize food systems as the biophysical (natural), socioeconomic, political, and demographic environments that drive the food supply chain activities and related actors from production through consumption and ultimately the environmental, socioeconomic, and health and nutrition outcomes that feedback to change the drivers [41]. Their framework also highlights the bidirectional relationship between the food supply chain components and system agent behavior, representing how actors and their decisions influence and are influenced by the system [41]. Lawrence et al. connect the food system to the environment and public health nutrition, representing the feedback between food supply chain activities (the same as introduced by Ericksen) and human health and environmental outcomes [36]. Lawrence et al. also expand on the interconnectedness of food system activities themselves by including multiple arrows between production, processing and packaging, distribution and retail, and consumption, rather than presenting a traditional linear food supply chain with no feedback. Meybeck and Gitz later conceptualized food systems with a specific focus on the contribution of diets and consumer behavior to the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of food systems [42]. Their conceptual framework drew specific attention to the influence of attitudes and lifestyle (as cultural drivers) on food choice behavior and ultimately diets, in addition to the environmental, economic, and social drivers of agrifood system activities.
In 2017, the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) classified drivers of agrifood systems into five primary categories: biophysical and environmental drivers, innovation and technological drivers, political and economic drivers, social and cultural drivers, and demographic drivers, building on the work of Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson [39,41]. Food system researchers have continued to apply these categories of drivers in their approaches and conceptual frameworks [38,43].
Biophysical and environmental drivers include natural resources, ecological systems, and climate change.
Innovation, technology, and infrastructure drivers include new technologies and growing infrastructure that can influence the efficiency or sustainability of food system activities.
Political and economic drivers include specific food, agriculture, and nutrition policies, trade policies, and governance structures that function as the underlying mechanics of each sector of the food supply chain. Political and economic drivers also influence the market structure related to food and agriculture and changes in supply and demand of certain products and services over time [2].
Sociocultural drivers include the subjective components of food, social norms, and culturally relevant factors influencing behavior.
Demographic drivers include population changes in size, age composition, and geographic distribution.
Like Meybeck and Gitz, the HLPE framework centered on the role of diets, which are influenced by consumer behavior, in linking food systems, human health and nutrition outcomes, and other social, economic, and environmental impacts [39,42]. Consumer behavior was defined as the “choices and decisions made by consumers, at the household or individual level, on what foods to acquire, store, prepare, cook and eat, and on the allocation of food within the household” and is influenced by personal preferences (taste, convenience, values, traditions, culture, beliefs) and the food environment [39]. Consumer behavior along with food supply chains (including actors) and food environments represent the three distinct, but interrelated activities of the agrifood system in the HLPE framework and act as points of intervention for nutrition.
The inclusion of food environments distinguishes the HLPE framework from previous conceptualizations. Food environments are defined as “factors that mediate the acquisition of foods by people within the wider food system”, including availability and physical access (proximity), economic access (affordability), promotion, advertising and information, and food quality and safety [39,44].
Van Berkum et al. build heavily on the HLPE framework and other international reports to conceptualize the food system impact of environmental change on food security with the goal of identifying policies to improve food and nutrition security within environmental limits in the Netherlands [38]. Like Ericksen, Van Berkum et al. include socio-economic and environmental drivers of food systems, and food security, socioeconomic, and environmental outcomes of food systems [4,38]. Van Berkum et al. also add ‘enabling environment’, or the factors that create the conditions within which the system functions, as a food system activity. The factors of an enabling environment include transport networks, regulations, institutional arrangements, and research infrastructure [38]. Zurek et al. conceptual framework focuses on assessing food and nutrition security and sustainability in the EU food system and highlights the need to consider equity in food system conditions and outcomes [40]. Zurek et al. highlight indirect food system drivers, similar to HLPE, as well as direct drivers of actors within the food system [39,40]. Unique to Zurek et al. is that the food system activities in the framework are highly interconnected and include disposal/reuse.
Bene et al. developed a conceptual framework based on a literature review to formally define ‘food system driver’ as it had not been previously defined, and identified key drivers supported by the literature based on this definition [37]. Bene et al. defined three necessary characteristics of a food system driver: (1) durably affects the actors and/or activities of the system; (2) does not replicate another driver; and (3) their origin (external or internal) and the nature of their impact (intentional or unintentional) is clear [37]. Using this updated definition, they identified 12 key drivers and categorized them into 3 categories (production/supply, distribution/trade, and consumption/demand) to facilitate the understanding of each driver’s influence along the food supply chain [37].
“Production and supply drivers include technological innovations, intensification and homogenization of agriculture, infrastructure, and policies, such as farm, labor, and trade. Production and supply also depend on natural resource availability (land, water, minerals, air, and forests), which are adversely affected by climate change and environmental degradation. Climate change and environmental degradation also exist as outcomes of agricultural production. Impacts to the biophysical environment feed back as inputs to the system as the natural resource base.
Distribution and trade drivers include trade policies, internationalization of private investments, and growing concerns for food safety.
Consumption and demand drivers include urbanization and related lifestyle changes, population growth, consumer sociodemographic characteristics, such as income, culture, preferences, such as taste, and concerns such as food safety” [37].
Although not specified in their framework, Bene et al. are the first to distinguish between intentional and unintentional agrifood system drivers, such as policy and climate change [37].
With respect to policy and governance, two publications did not include policy within their visual conceptual framework [36,42]. Lawrence et al. explicitly identified their framework as part of a policy formulation tool to promote healthy and sustainable diets [36]. However, policies are not represented within the conceptual framework itself, but rather in an ‘Orders of Food System Change’ schema. Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson’s framework included governance along with institutions and policies to represent the political environment as a driver of food system activities and decisions [41]. The other frameworks presented policies, most often trade policy, as one of the many drivers of agrifood system activities [37,38]. HLPE presented political, program, and institutional actions as influencing the drivers, which included the food supply chain, food environment, and consumer behavior, and being influenced by the health, social, environmental, and economic impacts of the agrifood system [39]. Institutional arrangements and regulations were also depicted in van Berkum et al.’s framework within the enabling environment [38]. Zurek et al. addressed policy and governance by depicting EU and national policymakers and other food system influencers, such as NGOs, as the pathway through which EU policy goals for sustainable food and nutrition security are realized and included these policy goals within the framework [40].

3.3. Significant Additions to Conceptual Framework Components over Time

Significant additions and revisions have been made to these food system frameworks over their evolution that have strengthened their ability to address complex agrifood system research questions. These updates are outlined in chronological order by publication date in Table 5, organized by food system component (drivers, activities, outcomes, feedback, and policy/governance). The evolution of these frameworks was largely centered around expanding the concept of food system activities to better understand how they influence the food system outcomes. Frameworks progressed from a linear representation of a food supply chain to an interconnected set of activities and actions that include the food supply chain as well as the food environment within which individuals make their food choices. The inclusion of the food environment and food choices reflects researchers’ shift in focus to understanding consumer behavior as a driver of diets and the agrifood systems’ impact on human and planetary health. Recognizing the role of consumers as a decision-maker within the broader system is critical to understanding and changing problematic trends and improving outcomes.
Following Ericksen’s framework, researchers have consistently considered the environmental, socioeconomic, and nutritional outcomes of food systems in their conceptualizations. Later frameworks more explicitly address the interactions between these outcomes in the form of trade-offs and synergies. They also include the distribution of these effects between actors as part of the outcomes. The feedback between these outcomes and the drivers of food systems in these frameworks have become more nuanced over time as well, solidifying the idea of the food system as a complex and adaptive system over time. Ericksen’s environmental and socioeconomic drivers of agrifood system change have been added to and adapted over time. However, less attention was given to food system drivers relative to the food system activities until later frameworks, particularly when Bene et al. formalized the concept as described [37]. In general, frameworks progressively included more nuanced feedback between and within components.
With respect to policy and governance, frameworks followed less of a trend in their evolution compared to the other components. Building on Ericksen’s call to prioritize governance in food system frameworks, all included publications discussed the implications of a food systems framework for policy decision-making, with some attention to the ability to identify leverage points to change the system and to evaluate ‘tradeoffs and synergies’ between policies and across outcomes [4]. However, the explicit inclusion of policy and governance structures within frameworks was limited and differed significantly between frameworks. The earliest and only publication that explicitly included governance in the framework was that of Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson in 2011 [41]. Later frameworks included political and institutional actions in their conceptual frameworks but varied in how they conceptualized the relationships between these factors and the activities and actors within the food system. Without specific analysis of these relationships, the influence of these policy or regulatory variables over the activities or outcomes of the system remained unclear.

3.4. Gaps for Policy Decision-Making in Included Frameworks

The review of existing frameworks identified two gaps that limit their applicability for policy decision-making and solutions-oriented insights. These include the frameworks’ generalizability despite heterogeneity across contexts, and limited attention to analyzing political economy.
The burdens and inequities of food systems and the challenges of changing them to be healthy, sustainable, and just differ between regional and country contexts. Accordingly, the impact of various drivers and policies is highly dependent on the type of food system being discussed [2,39]. HLPE distinguished between three broad types of food systems (traditional, mixed, and modern) and highlighted the heterogeneity of food supply chains and food environments between different food system types [39]. The diverse components and structures of food systems between contexts suggest the need for context-specific solutions. Thus, a conceptual framework that is specific to a certain typology may lend itself to an increased understanding of the food system components and their interrelationships, and how they collectively contribute to and are impacted by food system outcomes.
The actual applicability of the existing frameworks for effective policy decision-making is also unclear. HLPE and Van Berkum et al. demonstrated how their framework can be used to trace policies through the agrifood system activities to outcomes, which is helpful to visualize feedback throughout the system [38,39]. However, how agrifood systems change is not solely driven by policies and policymakers, but more broadly by actors throughout the system representing diverse, often disparate, and even conflicting, interests. The authors of the existing frameworks acknowledge the importance of multiple decisions made by multiple actors/stakeholder groups throughout food supply chains, but these dynamics and relationships are not addressed within the conceptual frameworks or further analyzed. Without the additional analysis of political economy, researchers cannot adequately identify policy trade-offs and synergies [27,45,46]. Political economy is included in the Bene et al. framework as part of the general context within which food systems operate, but they do not specify an approach to analyze the role of various actors and their decisions in the political process [37]. Relatedly, Zurek et al. concluded that effective governance requires that decision-makers understand how complex food system components interact to influence outcomes, and also understand the effect of policies or other innovations on different actors [40].

3.5. A Conceptual Framework for Modern Industrialized Agrifood Systems

To address these gaps, we developed an agrifood system conceptual framework (Figure 3) that integrates components of existing food system frameworks with two specific additions. First, to improve the agrifood system framework’s ability to generate practical, relevant, and solutions-oriented insights, our framework is specific to ‘modern and industrialized food systems’, classified by Marshall et al. as part of a typology to account for heterogeneity between food system types [39,47,48]. This heterogeneity provides the rationale for specifying the development of a new framework specific to modern industrialized agrifood systems, particularly as the production-oriented industrialized system dominates at the expense of health and well-being globally with disproportionate impacts on developing countries [49]. Moreover, prior frameworks suggested their generalizability, but largely reflected the components and structure of modern industrialized agrifood systems. Modern industrialized food systems are associated with increased agricultural productivity, supermarket availability, dietary diversity, and urbanization [48]. They are also typically characterized by several actors with various roles throughout the system, significant processing and packaging of foods, reliable storage and transport infrastructure, high monitoring of food safety, increased food-related information for consumers, and differential access to and availability of foods by income level [32]. The cost of staple goods is lower relative to animal-source foods; perishable foods and specialty foods such as those produced locally or organically are more expensive [39]. The U.S. is an example of an industrialized agrifood system and will be used as a simple example to apply the conceptual framework. Second, our framework will make explicit the endogenous and exogenous role of policies and governance structures in agrifood systems, including actors and their relationships to one another in influencing agrifood system activities and outcomes, and related policies. This addition provides a political economy lens to understand how the interests and ideas of relevant agrifood system actors and institutions interact to influence policy development and decision-making processes [46,50].

3.6. A Conceptual Framework for Modern Industrialized Agrifood Systems: The Components

The updated conceptual framework (Figure 3) maintains drivers, activities, outcomes, and feedback as the primary components of agrifood systems and proposes policy landscape as a fifth key component. Researchers and policymakers can apply this framework to understand these components and their interactions in the context of their specific research or policy questions. Importantly, feedback is represented broadly throughout the framework as bidirectional arrows and feedback loops within and between each of the agrifood system components. The dotted lines between components also represent the constant interaction and shifting dynamics of modern industrial agrifood systems over time. The visual framework and the following descriptions of the framework components are not intended to be exhaustive or prescriptive but rather to provide a lens through which issues related to industrialized agrifood systems can be analyzed. For example, the framework provides an opportunity to analyze cultural norms as a driver of agrifood system activities, organic farming, and food miles as part of these activities, biodiversity as an environmental outcome as well as a driver, and food security and related inequities as components of consumer behavior and as outcomes relevant to both human health and socioeconomics.

3.6.1. Drivers 

Our framework includes 14 drivers derived from Bene et al.’s recent systematic review, as described previously [37]. In addition to the 12 key drivers Bene et al. identified that influence the supply and demand of agrifood systems, we include cultural and social norms and attention to the environmental impacts of diets as two additional drivers of modern industrialized agrifood systems [37]. Users can conceptualize drivers as intentional or unintentional depending on the context of their research or policy issue; this may be a subjective exercise, but useful for understanding potential places to intervene. Cultural and social norms influence the acceptability, desirability, and thus demand for certain foods [51]. This driver captures the often-overlooked recognition that consumers themselves, through various motivations, can generate social movements and shift food-related norms [52,53,54,55]. Attention to the environmental impacts of diet is also included based on the growing focus on this relationship over time in the literature and by consumers [56,57,58]. The arrows between drivers and the policy landscape depict the role of historical and future policies in shaping these trends, and conversely, the role of these trends in shaping actors’ personal and policy interests.

3.6.2. Activities and Actors 

Our framework utilizes the components of agrifood system activities identified and defined in HLPE, including food supply chains, food environments, and consumer behavior. In our framework, agrifood system activities explicitly include relevant actors to account for the relationship between actors, their decisions, and agrifood system activities [41]. Food supply chain subcomponents include production, processing and packaging, storage and distribution, retail, and consumption as well as disposal/reuse, as included by Zurek et al. [4,39,40]. In modern industrialized food systems, production includes a wide variety of foods produced at farms of various sizes, significantly characterized by large-scale industrialization and productivity. Processing refers to the transformation of raw foods and ingredients into new products. Processing is conducted predominantly by large industries to generate processed and ultra-processed packaged foods that often lack nutrient density, but are developed to be safe, cheap, widely available, hyperpalatable, and have a long shelf life [59]. Storage and distribution reflect the transport and storage of foods between food supply chain actors and modern industrialized food systems. These are characterized by substantial infrastructure that increases the feasibility of these processes as well as the distance between consumers and where their food was produced [60]. Retail refers to the several destinations where food can be marketed and acquired, including supermarkets, farmers and specialty markets, corner stores, full-service, fast-casual, and fast-food restaurants, food trucks, and street vendors [39]. Consumption reflects the process of preparing, eating, and digesting food products, and modern food systems trend toward overconsumption, particularly of animal-source foods [4,47]. Finally, disposal and reuse refer to food that is lost or wasted, which contributes significantly to the environmental burden of modern industrialized food systems [61,62]. Agrifood system actors within the food supply chain include, but are not limited to, producers, laborers, processors and packers, distributors, retailers, food service providers, and consumers [2,28,63].
Food supply chain subcomponents influence each other and act as determinants of the food environment, consumer behavior, and ultimately human health, environmental, and socioeconomic outcomes, and the inequitable distribution of these effects. The food environment refers to the physical, economic, political, and sociocultural conditions that shape dietary preferences, choice, and consumption [64,65]. Food environments are influenced by availability and physical access (proximity), economic access (affordability), promotion, advertising, and marketing, and food quality and safety [39,44]. Although it was not included in our review because it did not meet our inclusion criteria, Raza et al. developed a framework to analyze children’s and adolescents’ diets that added nuance to previous frameworks by dividing the food environment into external and personal domains, based on the work of Turner et al. [43,64]. External food environments are “the retail and commercial markets, schools, and informal vendors where consumers interface with food, and reflect aspects of availability, food price, marketing and advertising, and vendor and product properties” and personal food environments are “the individual and household-level factors that consumers bring to the food environment, such as purchasing power, access, convenience, desirability, and informs why people choose to procure the foods that they do” [64]. This differentiation is highly relevant for modern industrialized food systems and is included in the updated framework as external and personal determinants of the food environment. Just as the food supply chains, food environments, and consumer behavior are highlighted as entry and exit points for nutrition in HLPE, we argue that they are also entry and exit points for sustainability and equity, and represent points of intervention for policymakers and practitioners in modern industrialized food systems [39].

3.6.3. Outcomes 

The outcomes of modern industrialized food systems in the conceptual framework include human health outcomes (food and nutrition security, diet-related chronic disease), planetary health outcomes (greenhouse gas emissions, natural resource utilization, and degradation), and social and economic outcomes (income, livelihoods, distribution of effects). These outcomes are influenced by the food system activities and the actions of various actors. Changes in these outcomes, or the distribution of these outcomes across populations, will feed back to influence the food system activities and actors, primarily as consumers, as well as influence various food system drivers over time. The outcomes of modern industrialized agrifood systems do not exist in isolation. The framework depicts feedback loops between each of the types of outcomes to highlight their interconnectedness. These relationships create trade-offs and synergies between outcomes that decision-makers must consider in attempting to achieve healthy, sustainable, and just agrifood systems [4,37].

3.6.4. Policy Landscape 

Healthy, sustainable, and just agrifood system transformations require action from governments and institutions, which have been explicitly included in the conceptual framework [17]. This addition to agrifood system frameworks is labeled as the policy landscape to reflect the existing policies, regulations, governance structures, institutions and politics that interact with the agrifood system components [38,39,41]. Policy and governance structures can directly shape how activities and actors operate within the agrifood system (endogenous) or indirectly through actions from outside the agrifood system (exogenous) that change outcomes or aspects of the policy process [38,39,41].
Governments, policymakers, regulatory agencies, industries and industry associations, institutions, and public interest organizations are actors within the policy landscape that interact with the activities and outcomes of modern industrialized agrifood systems [2,66]. These actors hold different interests depending on the food system issue being analyzed, the context, and their relationship to one another and the other actors in the food supply chain [5,67]. Food policies are influenced by the interests and power imbalances that exist between these actors [28,66]. As a result, food policies in modern industrialized agrifood systems are often fragmented across sectors and production-oriented to prioritize economic interests, while failing to adequately account for public health and environmental implications [28,68,69,70]. A combination of strategies should be considered to improve healthy and sustainable consumption [71,72].

4. Discussion

The scoping review provided a foundation and guidance for the development of an updated policy-oriented conceptual framework for modern industrialized agrifood systems. The updated framework provides a conceptual tool for policymakers and researchers to understand the linkages between activities and actors within modern industrialized agrifood systems and human health, environmental, social, and economic outcomes, and the endogenous and exogenous policy and governance structures that contribute to these relationships. Importantly, our framework highlights how policies contribute to the current system structure and provide opportunities to influence the system. Collectively these insights can facilitate the identification of places to intervene in the system and windows of opportunity for change.

4.1. Research Contributions

Our integrated agrifood system framework for political economy analysis addresses gaps in prior food systems research and improves the applicability of a food systems approach for both research and policy analysis and decision-making. The updated framework is grounded in the literature on food systems and their impact on human and planetary health. The framework can bolster an understanding of the complex dynamics between the food system drivers, activities, and actors that generate outcomes in modern industrialized food systems. The framework does so by providing a simplified conceptual structure that is relevant to the complexities of modern industrialized agrifood systems, but also adaptable to the context-dependent factors that shape where change might be possible, through who, and how it might influence humans and the environment.
The framework also outlines several potential places to intervene in the system. Depending on the research question, users can apply the framework as a conceptual tool to identify activities throughout the supply chain or actors in the supply chain that offer opportunities for transformation. The agrifood system drivers can facilitate or inhibit the feasibility or effectiveness of intervention targets. Likewise, the framework facilitates the analysis of how an existing policy landscape can support or inhibit new policy action in relevant settings. The systems insights generated from applying the integrated framework can inform the identification, development, and implementation of policy strategies for a healthy, sustainable, and just agrifood system transformation in modern industrialized agrifood systems.

4.2. Practical Application

Our framework can be used by researchers and policymakers to analyze various agrifood system goals and policies through the lens of system transformation. First, users should determine their policy or agrifood system goals of interest specific to a particular context. Examples for a modern industrialized food system include (1) increasing the availability and accessibility of healthy and sustainable diets in the US, particularly for marginalized populations; and (2) decreasing the climate and environmental footprint of US diets. The next step is to identify possible policy objectives, or specific strategies, that can be implemented to achieve these goals [73]. This can be undertaken by identifying where the policy goal fits within the agrifood system components and tracing it downstream and upstream through the conceptual framework to find places to intervene. Alternatively, researchers and policymakers may want to explore the feasibility of specific policy interventions.
For example, one potential policy strategy to improve population and planetary health in the US is to shift federal food procurement standards to procure less beef and more minimally processed plant proteins for federal food programs. After policy strategies are identified, the framework can be used to conduct a more nuanced analysis of factors that may facilitate or inhibit the success of the identified policy strategy. This analysis can determine if a window of opportunity exists for change or if other factors need to change before a policy is practical. The policy landscape component of the agrifood system framework is used to identify actors with a direct interest in the policy process. The food supply chain component also outlines potential actors with direct or indirect interest in the implications of the policy. The interests of all of these actors should be documented and analyzed; if a policy to reduce beef consumption were to be enacted, who wins, who loses, and by how much? Synthesizing actors’ interests relative to one another can assess power imbalances among actors as well as potential unintended consequences or trade-offs that will require attention. As a brief example, if U.S. federal food procurement policy shifted to include more plant-based foods and less beef, cattle ranchers, the beef-packing industry, and policymakers who receive political donations from the cattle industry would likely oppose this shift. An unintended consequence of enacting a new procurement policy may be loss of livelihood for cattle ranchers, which would be offset by increased profits for plant-based producers, increased sustainability of federally procured food, and improved health for those who consume it. Potential synergies may be found while considering trade-offs; for example, this new procurement strategy could be coupled with incentives for producers to transition to regenerative farming or to the production of less resource-intensive crops. Framework users can also assess the context and role of institutions related to the policy issue and proposed strategy. For example, there are strong social norms around beef consumption in the US. These norms may lead policymakers or government agencies, like the US Department of Agriculture, to oppose policies to reduce beef consumption in favor of an alternative policy that is less polarizing and likely less effective, reflecting internal conflicts between the economic success of US agriculture and its human and environmental impact.

4.3. Limitations and Future Research

Despite the ability of a food systems approach to handle complexity, a limitation of this research is the inability to capture all variables and relationships relevant to modern industrialized agrifood systems within a single conceptual framework. Even with our scoping systematic review of the drivers, activities, outcomes, and feedback used to conceptualize agrifood systems and their influence on and by human and planetary health, fully integrating all components, subcomponents, and interactions within each framework was not feasible. Therefore, variables and relationships may have been omitted in the updated framework with the objective of developing a framework that is simple and relevant to the modern industrialized context. Additionally, the scoping systematic review was focused on food system frameworks with specific characteristics and outcomes of interest. Existing frameworks that did not meet our inclusion criteria (i.e., focused on nutrition without environmental considerations) may have been omitted despite containing relevant insights. The inclusion criteria were developed specific to our research question, but future research may benefit from less stringent criteria that allow for the inclusion of frameworks for analyzing agrifood systems of various typologies and with non-specific outcomes.
Alternatives to modern industrialized agrifood systems exist, including rural and traditional, informal and expanding, and emerging and diversifying, as outlined by Marshall et al. [48]. Aspects of non-industrialized systems, including local, traditional, and Indigenous food systems offer opportunities for improving the health and sustainability of agrifood systems globally as well as benefits for social equity and economic well-being [74]. Modern industrialized agrifood systems can and should learn from more traditional systems. The deepest leverage point in a system is the ability to change the values and goals that shape it [75,76]. Users of this framework must consider how agrifood system transformation in industrialized systems may require reorienting the goals and, thus, the overall structure of the system. Likewise, future research should assess how these agrifood system types interact and the implications for human and planetary health.
Future research should prioritize applying the integrated framework to problematic trends or policy goals in modern industrialized food system contexts to demonstrate its applicability for policy decision-making and identify meaningful policy insights. The framework can also be used to map the state of the literature on a given agrifood system issue to identify areas of focus for future research as well as serve as a foundation for a system dynamics (SD) approach. SD is both a qualitative and quantitative modeling approach for understanding dynamic problems within complex systems, identifying places to intervene in the system, and comparing policy options against several outcomes, and may enable several further analyses utilizing this framework.

5. Conclusions

Strategies for achieving healthy, sustainable, and just agrifood system transformations require immediate attention. An integrated conceptual framework for modern industrialized agrifood systems offers a foundation for research and policy analysis. Researchers and policymakers should leverage the use of policy-oriented conceptual frameworks to facilitate political economy analyses and gain a nuanced understanding of issues in the context of modern industrialized agrifood systems. Exploring interconnections between system components, power imbalances between actors, and trade-offs between outcomes can enhance decision-making around existing or proposed policy interventions. Collectively, system insights enable decision-makers to identify and prioritize places to intervene for agrifood system change.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su16229862/s1, Table S1: General characteristics of included publications; Table S2: Specific characteristics of included frameworks.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.P. and W.H.D.; formal analysis, S.P. and T.C.; methodology, S.P. and W.H.D.; investigation, S.P. and W.H.D. data curation, S.P. and T.C.; writing—original draft preparation, S.P.; writing—review and editing, S.P., T.C., and W.H.D.; visualization, S.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Figure 1. Ericksen’s Food Systems Conceptual Framework. The figure presents a conceptual framework of food systems, including global environmental change (GEC) drivers, socioeconomic drivers, food system activities, food system outcomes, and feedback (environmental and socioeconomic) [4].
Figure 1. Ericksen’s Food Systems Conceptual Framework. The figure presents a conceptual framework of food systems, including global environmental change (GEC) drivers, socioeconomic drivers, food system activities, food system outcomes, and feedback (environmental and socioeconomic) [4].
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Figure 2. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for new systematic reviews (databases/registers, other sources).
Figure 2. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for new systematic reviews (databases/registers, other sources).
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Figure 3. Policy-Oriented Conceptual Framework for Modern Industrialized Agrifood Systems.
Figure 3. Policy-Oriented Conceptual Framework for Modern Industrialized Agrifood Systems.
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Table 1. Search Strategy and Terms.
Table 1. Search Strategy and Terms.
DatabaseSearch Terms
PubMed(“food”[mesh] OR “food supply”[mesh] OR “food systems” OR “agricultural systems”) AND (“policy”[mesh] OR “policy making”[mesh] OR “models, theoretical”[mesh] OR “systems analysis”[mesh]) AND framework
Scopus(INDEXTERMS (food) OR INDEXTERMS (“food supply”) OR “food systems” OR “agricultural systems”) AND (INDEXTERMS (“policy”) OR INDEXTERMS (“policy making”)) AND framework AND conceptual
Google Scholar(“food systems” OR “agrifood systems”) AND (“policy” OR “policy making” OR “theoretical models” OR “systems analysis”) AND framework AND concept
Table 2. Screening inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Table 2. Screening inclusion and exclusion criteria.
InclusionExclusion
LanguageEnglishNot English
Research MethodsEmpirical or theoretical; qualitative and quantitative
Time Frame2008+Prior to 2008
Content
High-level analysis of agrifood systems, including both human health and environmental outcomes		YesNo
Conceptual Framework Included:
Visually conceptualizes agrifood system drivers, activities, outcomes, and feedback		YesNo
Table 3. General characteristics of included publications.
Table 3. General characteristics of included publications.
Publication year
Publication type (journal/research article, reports)
Research objective(s)
Research approach
Policy relevance
Table 4. Specific characteristics of included frameworks.
Table 4. Specific characteristics of included frameworks.
Framework context/application:
  • Scale: multi-scale, global, international, national, regional, local
  • Context-specific: yes/no
  • Intended end-user: policymaker, researcher
  • Specified agrifood system/policy goal of interest
Agrifood system component details following Ericksen: [4]
Drivers: changes in the natural and human environments and their interactions that influence the agrifood system activities.
Activities: processes of the food supply chain from production to consumption, including production, processing and packaging, distribution and retail, and consumption.
Outcomes: the multiple health, social, environmental, and economic effects of the activities, such as food security, environmental security, and social welfare, with a focus on food security and its determinants (food utilization, food availability, and food access).
Feedback: the eventual impact of these activities and outcomes on the environmental and socioeconomic drivers, such as impacts on natural resource quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and livelihoods [4,25].
Policy/Governance inclusion (within framework)
Table 5. Strengths and significant additions and revisions to agrifood system frameworks.
Table 5. Strengths and significant additions and revisions to agrifood system frameworks.
Food System ComponentStrengths/Significant Additions and Revisions
DriversPinstrup-Andersen and Watson [41]: 4 environments influencing food system activities (biophysical, socioeconomic, political, demographic)
HLPE [39]: 5 categories of drivers (and the influence of these drivers over various food system activities)
Zurek et al. [40]: indirect drivers of food system and direct drivers of food system actors (exogenous and endogenous drivers of change)
Bene et al. [37]: 3 categories of key drivers (production/supply, distribution/trade, consumption/demand) and typology of food system drivers (internal/endogenous vs. external/exogenous; intended/controllable vs. unintended/accidental)
ActivitiesPinstrup-Andersen and Watson [41]: Imports and exports as components of food system activities that influence and are influenced by other food systems
HLPE [39]: 3 components of food system activities (food supply chain including actors, food environments, consumer behavior)
Zurek et al. [40]: interrelationships within food supply chain activities (adds disposal/reuse) and between actors (trade, money)
Bene et al. [37]: nested approach to food system activities (consumer food choice influenced by food environment, which is influenced by food system supply actors and activities) that collectively influence outcomes
OutcomesZurek et al. [40]: 4 outcomes that are context-specific and related to the EU food system goals (diets and consumption patterns; productivity, profit, and competitiveness; environmental conditions; fair and just social conditions for food system actors)
Bene et al. [37]: 4 outcomes and interactions between them capture trade-offs and synergies (environment; nutrition and health; economic; social)
FeedbackPinstrup-Andersen and Watson [41]: Bidirectional feedback between system agent behavior (decisions of actors in the system) and food system activities
Lawrence et al./Meybeck and Gitz/Zurek et al. [36,40,42]: Bidirectional feedback within food supply chain activities
HLPE [39]: Demonstrates significant feedback between and within food system components (drivers, activities, outcomes), including consumer behavior feeding back to influence food supply chains and food environments
Van Berkum et al./Bene et al. [37,38]: feedback and interactions between drivers and throughout the system
Policy/GovernancePinstrup-Andersen and Watson [41]: Political environment as a driver of food system activities and decisions (governance, institutions, policies); agents as decision-makers in the system
HLPE [39]: Political, program, and institutional actions as drivers and outcomes of agrifood systems with potential to intervene through food supply chains, food environments, and consumer behavior.
Van Berkum et al. [38]: Enabling environment, which includes regulations, included as a food system activity that influences the food supply chain.
Zurek et al. [40]: Specific EU policy goals are included in the framework and shown to influence policymakers and other food system influencers. Regulatory environment is included as a direct driver of food system actors, as determined by agriculture and trade policies.
Bene et al. [37]: Political economy as part of the general context. Classifies policies as intended/controllable drivers.
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MDPI and ACS Style

Pryor, S.; Casey, T.; Dietz, W.H. Conceptualizing Agrifood Systems for a Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Transformation: A Systematic Scoping Review. Sustainability 2024, 16, 9862. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229862

AMA Style

Pryor S, Casey T, Dietz WH. Conceptualizing Agrifood Systems for a Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Transformation: A Systematic Scoping Review. Sustainability. 2024; 16(22):9862. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229862

Chicago/Turabian Style

Pryor, Sydney, Trevor Casey, and William H. Dietz. 2024. "Conceptualizing Agrifood Systems for a Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Transformation: A Systematic Scoping Review" Sustainability 16, no. 22: 9862. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229862

APA Style

Pryor, S., Casey, T., & Dietz, W. H. (2024). Conceptualizing Agrifood Systems for a Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Transformation: A Systematic Scoping Review. Sustainability, 16(22), 9862. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229862

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