Responsible Transitions in Agri-Food: Towards a Sustainable Future

Dear Colleagues,

Agri-food sectors need to change drastically to realize a more sustainable and healthier food system that responds adequately to challenges related to climate change, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, social injustice, public health decline and frail food security and animal welfare. This asks for a transition which will have effect on all actors in these sectors who have a role in the value-chains, ranging from primary producers and input suppliers to retailers and consumers, as well as on their collaboration with governmental institutes and NGO’s.  Routines and behaviour of all chain actors have to be changed, as well as the societal norms and values concerning food and food production that usually guide their (inter)actions. Careful thought should go into the (re-)distribution of responsibilities between businesses, governmental institutes and citizen actors, as well as the knowledge and technology that should support all these changes.

Alternative products, production approaches and consumptions patterns are key to changing the status quo. Although several promising sustainability innovations and initiatives are available (such as plant-based meat substitutes or agro-ecological production systems) their market share is minimal and growth is difficult to change-resistant dynamics such as vested economic interests, established routines, dependencies and infrastructures. This means that not only individuals have to do an effort to change their behaviour, or adopt new technologies which allow them to use more sustainable production methods. It also demands contextual changes, including revisions of institutional structures and collaborations between public organizations and private companies.

Transitions demand (joint) efforts from a lot of people, yet ‘responsibility’ is most commonly understood as a capacity of individuals. Responsibility presupposes a person’s preferences regarding different available choice alternatives and a capacity to reason about these alternatives. A rational individual is assumed to be able to take into account the relevant available information and probability of events, potential costs and benefits for oneself and others and (moral) values in his or her reasoning about choice alternatives. What constitutes ‘responsibility’ depends generally on the type of considerations that an individual takes into account in this reasoning. In the field of responsible research and innovation, however, ‘responsibility’ is usually interpreted in a social manner. It means being ‘responsive’ to the values of stakeholders. In order to innovate responsibly, one therefore has to find out what values various stakeholders hold dear in relation to the innovation, and take those into consideration in the further development of the innovative product (such as a technology, or a new type of food) or the innovation trajectory. Doing that may occasionally mean that individual actors do effort to find out about the values of stakeholders, but more often it means that the various actors who have a role in innovation make sure that it is  ‘responsive’; that is, that it is well aligned with or responds to values of end-users and other stakeholders. (Owen et al. 2012; Owen et al 2013; Van de Poel et al. 2018)

The question is what responsible transitioning is and how it can be effectuated in the agri-food sector to realize a more sustainable future.

The need for a responsible transition triggered the development of this special issue. We invite multidisciplinary perspectives on the meaning and content of transitioning responsibly to a more sustainable agri-food system, based on scholarship in transition theory, responsible and social innovation, behavioural psychology and economics, moral philosophy and ethics.  Both conceptual papers and case studies are welcomed. Questions we seek to answer are for example:

• What makes a transition towards a sustainable agrifood system ‘responsible’?
• Who are the relevant (market)actors involved? What is their role in transitioning responsibly toward more sustainable ways of working?
• How can behaviour change of the relevant (market)actors involved be realized in this transition?
• What can be learned about the practice of responsible transitions from regional, sectoral or niche case studies?
• Which friction and traction between stakeholder groups hamper or support responsible transitions?
• What is the role of markets in transitions toward a more sustainable agri-food sectors (taking into account that?

References

Owen, R., Stilgoe, J., Macnaghten, P., Gorman, M., Fisher, E., & Guston, D. (2013). A framework for responsible innovation. Responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society, 31, 27-50. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1002/9781118551424.ch2

Owen, R., Macnaghten, P., & Stilgoe, J. (2012). Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society. Science and public policy, 39(6), 751-760. DOI: https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1093/scipol/scs093

Van de Poel, I., & Sand, M. (2018). Varieties of responsibility: Two problems of responsible innovation. Synthese, 1-19. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1093/scipol/scs09310.1007/s11229-018-01951-7

Dr. Carolien C. de Lauwere
Dr. Simone van der Burg
Dr. Anne-Charlotte Hoes
Guest Editors

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• responsible transition
• futureproof agrifood systems
• social innovation
• behaviour change
• ethical and sustainable markets
• responsiveness