Highlights
- Adjusting food systems will be inadequate to mitigate the threats humanity face.
- Effective leverage points address underlying root causes and drivers of issues.
- To overcome policy inertia, recommendations must challenge the status quo.
- Independent expert group reports make the most transformative recommendations.
- System science concepts can practically advance food policy decision-making.
Abstract
Today’s food systems are driving several intersecting public health and ecological crises of global concern. Acknowledging this, numerous major reports have made wide-ranging recommendations for achieving ‘transformative’ food systems change. However, no studies have yet analysed the transformative potential of these recommendations. Here we undertake a documentary analysis to assess the transformative potential of the recommendations of forty-one such reports. The report recommendations were coded against three systems science frameworks and organised by year published and actor type. We found a low number of reports made recommendations tackling food systems leverage points necessary to affect truly transformative change. Recommendations tended to ignore political economy factors, including power asymmetries between actors. The majority of recommendations were limited to adjusting or reforming rather than transforming food systems, indicating a mismatch between rhetoric and potential action.
