A Case for Clarity Defining Food System Drivers, Outcomes, and Feedbacks
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.sidebar##
Published
07-11-2025
Saher Hasnain
Genia Hill
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5072-0776
Abstract
Food systems frameworks are useful analytical tools for understanding the functioning of a complex set of activities, stakeholders, and system outcomes, and for developing interventions for more desirable futures. Despite the rapid proliferation of food systems framings in recent decades, the field remains under-theorised with inconsistent andambiguous terminology for core concepts like 'drivers', 'outcomes', and 'feedbacks'. This lack of clarity hinders effective communication, research, and intervention design. This paper argues that clarifying these terms is essential for advancing food systems understanding and informing transformative action. We begin by critically examining how these terms are currently used in the food systems literature, highlighting inconsistencies and potential implications. Drawing upon geography literature, which usefully examines spatial dynamics, scale, and human-environment interactions, we then explore how analogous concepts are employed, seeking potential cross-disciplinary learning and enrichment. Geographical perspectives, with their emphasis on spatial dynamics, scale, and human-environment interactions, offer valuable insights for refining our understanding of food system processes. Drawing on this interdisciplinary exploration, we propose that researchers more clearly indicate how the key concepts of 'drivers', 'outcomes', and 'feedbacks' within food systems analyses are being used and offer a distillation of their relationships with each other as key system elements. This will promote more rigorous and consistent approaches to studying food system dynamics, facilitating more effective research, policy development, and practical interventions. Ultimately, this paper underscores the importance of terminological clarity and interdisciplinary collaboration for addressing the complex challenges facing food systems and achieving a more just and sustainable food future.
How to Cite
Hasnain, S. and Hill, G. (2025) “A Case for Clarity: Defining Food System Drivers, Outcomes, and Feedbacks”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 31(1), pp. 235–253. doi:10.48416/ijsaf.v31i1.662.
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.details##
Keywords
food systems, food systems transformation, drivers, embedded systems, food geography
References
Ambikapathi, R., Schneider, K.R., Davis, B., Herrero, M., Winters, P. and Fanzo, J.C. (2022) ‘Global food systems transitions have enabled affordable diets but had less favourable outcomes for nutrition, environmental health, inclusion and equity’, Nature Food, 3(9), pp. 764–779.
Béné, C., Prager, S.D., Achicanoy, H.A.E., Toro, P.A., Lamotte, L., Cedrez, C.B. and Mapes, B.R. (2019) ‘Understanding food systems drivers: A critical review of the literature’, Global Food Security, 23, pp. 149–159.
Blackstone, N.T., Battaglia, K., Rodríguez-Huerta, E., Bell, B.M., Decker Sparks, J.L., Cash, S.B., Conrad, Z., Nikkhah, A., Jackson, B., Matteson, J., Gao, S., Fuller, K., Zhang, F.F. and Webb, P. (2024) ‘Diets cannot be sustainable without ensuring the well-being of communities, workers and animals in food value chains’, Nature Food, 5(10), pp. 818–824.
Brinkley, C. (2017) ‘Visualizing the social and geographical embeddedness of local food systems’, Journal of Rural Studies, 54, pp. 314–325.
Brouwer, I.D., McDermott, J. and Ruben, R. (2020) ‘Food systems everywhere: Improving relevance in practice’, Global Food Security, 26, p. 100398.
Bustamante, M., Vidueira, P. and Baker, L. (2024) ‘Insights from systems thinking and complexity science to strengthen food systems frameworks’, Global Food Security, 42, p. 100777.
Cash, D.W., Adger, W.N., Berkes, F., Garden, P., Lebel, L., Olsson, P., Pritchard, L. and Young, O. (2006) ‘Scale and cross-scale dynamics: governance and information in a multilevel world’, Ecology and Society, 11(2).
Caspi, C.E., Sorensen, G., Subramanian, S.V. and Kawachi, I. (2012) ‘The local food environment and diet: a systematic review’, Health & Place, 18(5), pp. 1172–1187.
Chase, L. and Grubinger, V. (2014) Food, farms, and community: Exploring food systems. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press.
Clancy, K. and Ruhf, K. (2010) ‘Is local enough? Some arguments for regional food systems’, Choices, 25(1).
Dalin, C. and Rodríguez-Iturbe, I. (2016) ‘Environmental impacts of food trade via resource use and greenhouse gas emissions’, Environmental Research Letters, 11(3), p. 035012.
Downs, S.M., Ahmed, S., Fanzo, J. and Herforth, A. (2020) ‘Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets’, Foods, 9(4), p. 532.
Eakin, H., Rueda, X. and Mahanti, A. (2017) ‘Transforming governance in telecoupled food systems’, Ecology and Society, 22(3).
Ericksen, P.J. (2008) ‘Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research’, Global Environmental Change, 18(1), pp. 234–245.
Fanzo, J., Haddad, L., McLaren, R., Marshall, Q., Davis, C., Herforth, A., Jones, A., Beal, T., Tschirley, D., Bellows, A., Miachon, L., Gu, Y., Bloem, M. and Kapuria, A. (2020) ‘The Food Systems Dashboard is a new tool to inform better food policy’, Nature Food, 1(5), pp. 243–246.
Fanzo, J., Haddad, L., Schneider, K.R., Béné, C., Covic, N.M., Guarin, A., Herforth, A.W., Herrero, M., Sumaila, U.R., Aburto, N.J., Amuyunzu-Nyamongo, M., Barquera, S., Battersby, J., Beal, T., Bizzotto Molina, P., Brusset, E., Cafiero, C., Campeau, C., Caron, P., Cattaneo, A., Conforti, P., Davis, C., DeClerck, F.A.J., Elouafi, I., Fabi, C., Gephart, J.A., Golden, C.D., Hendriks, S.L., Huang, J., Laar, A., Lal, R., Lidder, P., Loken, B., Marshall, Q., Masuda, Y.J., McLaren, R., Neufeld, L.M., Nordhagen, S., Remans, R., Resnick, D., Silverberg, M., Torero Cullen, M., Tubiello, F.N., Vivero-Pol, J.-L., Wei, S. and Rosero Moncayo, J. (2021) ‘Viewpoint: Rigorous monitoring is necessary to guide food system transformation in the countdown to the 2030 global goals’, Food Policy, 104, p. 102163.
Fuentes, M. and Fuentes, C. (2022) ‘Reconfiguring food materialities: plant-based food consumption practices in antagonistic landscapes’, Food, Culture & Society, 25(4), pp. 520–539.
Galli, F., Grando, S., Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Bjørkhaug, H., Czekaj, M., Duckett, D.G., Almaas, H., Karanikolas, P., Moreno-Pérez, O.M., Ortiz-Miranda, D. and Pinto-Correia, T. (2020) ‘How do small farms contribute to food and nutrition security? Linking European small farms, strategies and outcomes in territorial food systems’, Global Food Security, 26, p. 100427.
García, R. (1984) ‘Food systems and society: a conceptual and methodological challenge’.
Gliessman, S. (2016) ‘Transforming food systems with agroecology’, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40(3), pp. 187–189.
Godfray, H.C.J., Beddington, J.R., Crute, I.R., Haddad, L., Lawrence, D., Muir, J.F., Pretty, J., Robinson, S., Thomas, S.M. and Toulmin, C. (2010) ‘Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people’, Science, 327(5967), pp. 812–818.
Grant, M. (2015) ‘A food systems approach for food and nutrition security’, Sight and Life, 29(1), pp. 87–90.
Guptill, A. and Peine, E. (2021) ‘Feeding relations: applying Luhmann’s operational theory to the food system’, Agriculture and Human Values, 38(3), pp. 741–752.
Harris-White, B. and Krishnamurthy, M. (2021) Agro-food Systems and Public Policy for Food and Agricultural Markets. Available at: (Accessed: 15 June 2024).
Hinrichs, C.C. (2000) ‘Embeddedness and local food systems: notes on two types of direct agricultural market’, Journal of Rural Studies, 16(3), pp. 295–303.
HLPE (2017) Nutrition and food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. Rome: HLPE.
Holsten, J.E. (2009) ‘Obesity and the community food environment: a systematic review’, Public Health Nutrition, 12(3), pp. 397–405.
Ingram, J. (2011) ‘A food systems approach to researching food security and its interactions with global environmental change’, Food Security, 3(4), pp. 417–431.
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Technical Manual Version 3.1. Evidence and Standards for Better Food Security and Nutrition Decisions (2021). Rome: IPC Global Partners.
Lamine, C., Renting, H., Rossi, A., Wiskerke, J.S.C. and Brunori, G. (2012) ‘Agri-food systems and territorial development: innovations, new dynamics and changing governance mechanisms’, in Darnhofer, I., Gibbon, D. and Dedieu, B. (eds.) Farming systems research into the 21st century: The new dynamic. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 229–256.
Linnér, B.-O. and Wibeck, V. (2021) ‘Drivers of sustainability transformations: leverage points, contexts and conjunctures’, Sustainability Science, 16(3), pp. 889–900.
McMichael, P. (2021) ‘Political economy of the global food and agriculture system’, in Rethinking Food and Agriculture. Elsevier, pp. 53–75.
Morales-Muñoz, H., Jha, S., Bonatti, M., Alff, H., Kurtenbach, S. and Sieber, S. (2020) ‘Exploring connections—Environmental change, food security and violence as drivers of migration—A critical review of research’, Sustainability, 12(14), p. 5702.
Morris, C. and Kirwan, J. (2011) ‘Ecological embeddedness: An interrogation and refinement of the concept within the context of alternative food networks in the UK’, Journal of Rural Studies, 27(3), pp. 322–330.
Nguyen, H. (2018) Sustainable food systems: concept and framework. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Parsons, K., Hawkes, C. and Wells, R. (2019) Brief 2. What is the food system? A Food policy perspective. London: Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London.
Pinstrup-Andersen, P. and Watson, D.D., II (2011) Food policy for developing countries: The role of government in global, national, and local food systems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Robinson, G.M. (2018) ‘New frontiers in agricultural geography: Transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change’, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (76), pp. 1–48.
Ruben, R., Cavatassi, R., Lipper, L., Smaling, E. and Winters, P. (2021) ‘Towards food systems transformation—five paradigm shifts for healthy, inclusive and sustainable food systems’, Food Security, 13(6), pp. 1423–1430. Centre
Serraj, R. and Pingali, P. (2018) Agriculture & Food Systems to 2050: Global Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. World Scientific Series in Grand Public Policy Challenges of the 21st Century. World Scientific.
Soja, E.W. (2009) ‘The city and spatial justice’, Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice, 1(1), pp. 1–5.
Sonnino, R. (2007) ‘The power of place: embeddedness and local food systems in Italy and the UK’, Anthropology of Food, (S2).
Stave, K.A. and Kopainsky, B. (2015) ‘A system dynamics approach for examining mechanisms and pathways of food supply vulnerability’, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 5(3), pp. 321–336.
Stefanovic, L., Freytag-Leyer, B. and Kahl, J. (2020) ‘Food System Outcomes: An Overview and the Contribution to Food Systems Transformation’, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4.
Tendall, D.M., Joerin, J., Kopainsky, B., Edwards, P., Shreck, A., Le, Q.B., Kruetli, P., Grant, M. and Six, J. (2015) ‘Food system resilience: Defining the concept’, Global Food Security, 6, pp. 17–23.
Turner, C., Aggarwal, A., Walls, H., Herforth, A., Drewnowski, A., Coates, J., Kalamatianou, S. and Kadiyala, S. (2018) ‘Concepts and critical perspectives for food environment research: A global framework with implications for action in low- and middle-income countries’, Global Food Security, 18, pp. 93–101.
Vallejo-Rojas, V., Ravera, F. and Rivera-Ferre, M.G. (2016) ‘Developing an integrated framework to assess agri-food systems and its application in the Ecuadorian Andes’, Regional Environmental Change, 16(8), pp. 2171–2185.
Webb, P., Livingston Staffier, K., Lee, H., Howell, B., Battaglia, K., Bell, B.M., Matteson, J., McKeown, N.M., Cash, S.B., Zhang, F.F., Decker Sparks, J.L. and Blackstone, N.T. (2023) ‘Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps’, Frontiers in Nutrition, 10.
Westhoek, H., Ingram, J., van Berkum, S. and Hajer, M. (2016) Food systems and natural resources. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.
Wood, B., Garton, K., Milsom, P., Baker, P., Anastasiou, K., Clark, J., Swinburn, B. and Sacks, G. (2025) ‘Using a systems thinking approach to map the global rise of ultra-processed foods in population diets’, Obesity Reviews, 26(4), p. e13877.
Woodhill, J. (2019) The Dynamics of Food Systems – A Conceptual Model. Available at: (Accessed: 6 June 2024).
Zimmerer, K.S. (2013) ‘The compatibility of agricultural intensification in a global hotspot of smallholder agrobiodiversity (Bolivia)’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(8), pp. 2769–2774.
Zurek, M., Hebinck, A., Leip, A., Vervoort, J., Kuiper, M., Garrone, M., Havlík, P., Heckelei, T., Hornborg, S., Ingram, J., et al. (2018) ‘Assessing sustainable food and nutrition security of the EU food system—an integrated approach’, Sustainability, 10(11), p. 4271.
Béné, C., Prager, S.D., Achicanoy, H.A.E., Toro, P.A., Lamotte, L., Cedrez, C.B. and Mapes, B.R. (2019) ‘Understanding food systems drivers: A critical review of the literature’, Global Food Security, 23, pp. 149–159.
Blackstone, N.T., Battaglia, K., Rodríguez-Huerta, E., Bell, B.M., Decker Sparks, J.L., Cash, S.B., Conrad, Z., Nikkhah, A., Jackson, B., Matteson, J., Gao, S., Fuller, K., Zhang, F.F. and Webb, P. (2024) ‘Diets cannot be sustainable without ensuring the well-being of communities, workers and animals in food value chains’, Nature Food, 5(10), pp. 818–824.
Brinkley, C. (2017) ‘Visualizing the social and geographical embeddedness of local food systems’, Journal of Rural Studies, 54, pp. 314–325.
Brouwer, I.D., McDermott, J. and Ruben, R. (2020) ‘Food systems everywhere: Improving relevance in practice’, Global Food Security, 26, p. 100398.
Bustamante, M., Vidueira, P. and Baker, L. (2024) ‘Insights from systems thinking and complexity science to strengthen food systems frameworks’, Global Food Security, 42, p. 100777.
Cash, D.W., Adger, W.N., Berkes, F., Garden, P., Lebel, L., Olsson, P., Pritchard, L. and Young, O. (2006) ‘Scale and cross-scale dynamics: governance and information in a multilevel world’, Ecology and Society, 11(2).
Caspi, C.E., Sorensen, G., Subramanian, S.V. and Kawachi, I. (2012) ‘The local food environment and diet: a systematic review’, Health & Place, 18(5), pp. 1172–1187.
Chase, L. and Grubinger, V. (2014) Food, farms, and community: Exploring food systems. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press.
Clancy, K. and Ruhf, K. (2010) ‘Is local enough? Some arguments for regional food systems’, Choices, 25(1).
Dalin, C. and Rodríguez-Iturbe, I. (2016) ‘Environmental impacts of food trade via resource use and greenhouse gas emissions’, Environmental Research Letters, 11(3), p. 035012.
Downs, S.M., Ahmed, S., Fanzo, J. and Herforth, A. (2020) ‘Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets’, Foods, 9(4), p. 532.
Eakin, H., Rueda, X. and Mahanti, A. (2017) ‘Transforming governance in telecoupled food systems’, Ecology and Society, 22(3).
Ericksen, P.J. (2008) ‘Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research’, Global Environmental Change, 18(1), pp. 234–245.
Fanzo, J., Haddad, L., McLaren, R., Marshall, Q., Davis, C., Herforth, A., Jones, A., Beal, T., Tschirley, D., Bellows, A., Miachon, L., Gu, Y., Bloem, M. and Kapuria, A. (2020) ‘The Food Systems Dashboard is a new tool to inform better food policy’, Nature Food, 1(5), pp. 243–246.
Fanzo, J., Haddad, L., Schneider, K.R., Béné, C., Covic, N.M., Guarin, A., Herforth, A.W., Herrero, M., Sumaila, U.R., Aburto, N.J., Amuyunzu-Nyamongo, M., Barquera, S., Battersby, J., Beal, T., Bizzotto Molina, P., Brusset, E., Cafiero, C., Campeau, C., Caron, P., Cattaneo, A., Conforti, P., Davis, C., DeClerck, F.A.J., Elouafi, I., Fabi, C., Gephart, J.A., Golden, C.D., Hendriks, S.L., Huang, J., Laar, A., Lal, R., Lidder, P., Loken, B., Marshall, Q., Masuda, Y.J., McLaren, R., Neufeld, L.M., Nordhagen, S., Remans, R., Resnick, D., Silverberg, M., Torero Cullen, M., Tubiello, F.N., Vivero-Pol, J.-L., Wei, S. and Rosero Moncayo, J. (2021) ‘Viewpoint: Rigorous monitoring is necessary to guide food system transformation in the countdown to the 2030 global goals’, Food Policy, 104, p. 102163.
Fuentes, M. and Fuentes, C. (2022) ‘Reconfiguring food materialities: plant-based food consumption practices in antagonistic landscapes’, Food, Culture & Society, 25(4), pp. 520–539.
Galli, F., Grando, S., Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Bjørkhaug, H., Czekaj, M., Duckett, D.G., Almaas, H., Karanikolas, P., Moreno-Pérez, O.M., Ortiz-Miranda, D. and Pinto-Correia, T. (2020) ‘How do small farms contribute to food and nutrition security? Linking European small farms, strategies and outcomes in territorial food systems’, Global Food Security, 26, p. 100427.
García, R. (1984) ‘Food systems and society: a conceptual and methodological challenge’.
Gliessman, S. (2016) ‘Transforming food systems with agroecology’, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 40(3), pp. 187–189.
Godfray, H.C.J., Beddington, J.R., Crute, I.R., Haddad, L., Lawrence, D., Muir, J.F., Pretty, J., Robinson, S., Thomas, S.M. and Toulmin, C. (2010) ‘Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people’, Science, 327(5967), pp. 812–818.
Grant, M. (2015) ‘A food systems approach for food and nutrition security’, Sight and Life, 29(1), pp. 87–90.
Guptill, A. and Peine, E. (2021) ‘Feeding relations: applying Luhmann’s operational theory to the food system’, Agriculture and Human Values, 38(3), pp. 741–752.
Harris-White, B. and Krishnamurthy, M. (2021) Agro-food Systems and Public Policy for Food and Agricultural Markets. Available at: (Accessed: 15 June 2024).
Hinrichs, C.C. (2000) ‘Embeddedness and local food systems: notes on two types of direct agricultural market’, Journal of Rural Studies, 16(3), pp. 295–303.
HLPE (2017) Nutrition and food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. Rome: HLPE.
Holsten, J.E. (2009) ‘Obesity and the community food environment: a systematic review’, Public Health Nutrition, 12(3), pp. 397–405.
Ingram, J. (2011) ‘A food systems approach to researching food security and its interactions with global environmental change’, Food Security, 3(4), pp. 417–431.
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Technical Manual Version 3.1. Evidence and Standards for Better Food Security and Nutrition Decisions (2021). Rome: IPC Global Partners.
Lamine, C., Renting, H., Rossi, A., Wiskerke, J.S.C. and Brunori, G. (2012) ‘Agri-food systems and territorial development: innovations, new dynamics and changing governance mechanisms’, in Darnhofer, I., Gibbon, D. and Dedieu, B. (eds.) Farming systems research into the 21st century: The new dynamic. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 229–256.
Linnér, B.-O. and Wibeck, V. (2021) ‘Drivers of sustainability transformations: leverage points, contexts and conjunctures’, Sustainability Science, 16(3), pp. 889–900.
McMichael, P. (2021) ‘Political economy of the global food and agriculture system’, in Rethinking Food and Agriculture. Elsevier, pp. 53–75.
Morales-Muñoz, H., Jha, S., Bonatti, M., Alff, H., Kurtenbach, S. and Sieber, S. (2020) ‘Exploring connections—Environmental change, food security and violence as drivers of migration—A critical review of research’, Sustainability, 12(14), p. 5702.
Morris, C. and Kirwan, J. (2011) ‘Ecological embeddedness: An interrogation and refinement of the concept within the context of alternative food networks in the UK’, Journal of Rural Studies, 27(3), pp. 322–330.
Nguyen, H. (2018) Sustainable food systems: concept and framework. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Parsons, K., Hawkes, C. and Wells, R. (2019) Brief 2. What is the food system? A Food policy perspective. London: Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London.
Pinstrup-Andersen, P. and Watson, D.D., II (2011) Food policy for developing countries: The role of government in global, national, and local food systems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Robinson, G.M. (2018) ‘New frontiers in agricultural geography: Transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change’, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (76), pp. 1–48.
Ruben, R., Cavatassi, R., Lipper, L., Smaling, E. and Winters, P. (2021) ‘Towards food systems transformation—five paradigm shifts for healthy, inclusive and sustainable food systems’, Food Security, 13(6), pp. 1423–1430. Centre
Serraj, R. and Pingali, P. (2018) Agriculture & Food Systems to 2050: Global Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. World Scientific Series in Grand Public Policy Challenges of the 21st Century. World Scientific.
Soja, E.W. (2009) ‘The city and spatial justice’, Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice, 1(1), pp. 1–5.
Sonnino, R. (2007) ‘The power of place: embeddedness and local food systems in Italy and the UK’, Anthropology of Food, (S2).
Stave, K.A. and Kopainsky, B. (2015) ‘A system dynamics approach for examining mechanisms and pathways of food supply vulnerability’, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 5(3), pp. 321–336.
Stefanovic, L., Freytag-Leyer, B. and Kahl, J. (2020) ‘Food System Outcomes: An Overview and the Contribution to Food Systems Transformation’, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4.
Tendall, D.M., Joerin, J., Kopainsky, B., Edwards, P., Shreck, A., Le, Q.B., Kruetli, P., Grant, M. and Six, J. (2015) ‘Food system resilience: Defining the concept’, Global Food Security, 6, pp. 17–23.
Turner, C., Aggarwal, A., Walls, H., Herforth, A., Drewnowski, A., Coates, J., Kalamatianou, S. and Kadiyala, S. (2018) ‘Concepts and critical perspectives for food environment research: A global framework with implications for action in low- and middle-income countries’, Global Food Security, 18, pp. 93–101.
Vallejo-Rojas, V., Ravera, F. and Rivera-Ferre, M.G. (2016) ‘Developing an integrated framework to assess agri-food systems and its application in the Ecuadorian Andes’, Regional Environmental Change, 16(8), pp. 2171–2185.
Webb, P., Livingston Staffier, K., Lee, H., Howell, B., Battaglia, K., Bell, B.M., Matteson, J., McKeown, N.M., Cash, S.B., Zhang, F.F., Decker Sparks, J.L. and Blackstone, N.T. (2023) ‘Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps’, Frontiers in Nutrition, 10.
Westhoek, H., Ingram, J., van Berkum, S. and Hajer, M. (2016) Food systems and natural resources. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.
Wood, B., Garton, K., Milsom, P., Baker, P., Anastasiou, K., Clark, J., Swinburn, B. and Sacks, G. (2025) ‘Using a systems thinking approach to map the global rise of ultra-processed foods in population diets’, Obesity Reviews, 26(4), p. e13877.
Woodhill, J. (2019) The Dynamics of Food Systems – A Conceptual Model. Available at: (Accessed: 6 June 2024).
Zimmerer, K.S. (2013) ‘The compatibility of agricultural intensification in a global hotspot of smallholder agrobiodiversity (Bolivia)’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(8), pp. 2769–2774.
Zurek, M., Hebinck, A., Leip, A., Vervoort, J., Kuiper, M., Garrone, M., Havlík, P., Heckelei, T., Hornborg, S., Ingram, J., et al. (2018) ‘Assessing sustainable food and nutrition security of the EU food system—an integrated approach’, Sustainability, 10(11), p. 4271.
Issue
Section
Food System Transformation, Politicisation and Depoliticisation
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
This license is acceptable for Free Cultural Works.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
How to Cite
Hasnain, S. and Hill, G. (2025) “A Case for Clarity: Defining Food System Drivers, Outcomes, and Feedbacks”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 31(1), pp. 235–253. doi:10.48416/ijsaf.v31i1.662.
Funding data
-
UK Research and Innovation
Grant numbers EP/X011062/1