Skip to main content
Close
Login Register
Search
  • About
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
  • Our Writing
    • Explainers
    • Essays
    • Letterbox
    • More
  • Podcasts
  • Our Events
  • Projects
    • Power In The Food Systems
    • Local-Global Scale Project
    • MEAT: The Four Futures Podcast
    • Fuel To Fork
    • Nature
    • Reckoning with Regeneration
    • SHIFT
    • Rethinking the Global Soy Dilemma
  • Resources
  • Opportunities
    • Jobs
    • Funding
    • Courses
    • Collaborations
    • Events
  • Newsletter
  • TABLE (EN)
Search
Back

Food systems: research methods

Image
Board game. Credit: Ylanite Koppens via Pexels
Journal articles
Food system games for sustainability transformation – A review
This research review argues that serious interactive games showed potential in transforming mindsets of a niche group of food system actors. 
Read
Image
Photo of wheat stalks in the foreground with agricultural landscape in the background. Photo by Veronica White via UnSplash.
Publication
Tomorrow on the table: The politics and economics of food system transformation
In October 2024, TABLE brought together a diverse range of stakeholders across the food system with the aim of exploring how they envisaged a better food future, and what system transformations would be needed to get there. The participants included non-governmental and civil society organisations, policymakers, philanthropists, community leaders, and academics from diverse disciplines. Over the course of the workshop, they together discussed, developed and refined different visions for the future of the food system based on three initially conceived visions: market-led, state-led, and bottom-up. This report synthesises the workshop methods and dialogue process, the discussions participants had and the areas of agreement that emerged. https://www.doi.org/10.56661/421fa6df
Read
Image
Picture of a bubble and reflection. Credit: Pixabay
Journal articles
Reflexivity as a transformative capacity for sustainability science: introducing a critical systems approach
This article suggests that transdisciplinary sustainability research can become more transformative by encouraging reflexivity –  active individual and collective critical reflection, helping decisions that influence which perspectives are included or excluded in research explicit. 
Read
Image
A field of wheat with a raining storm cloud in the distance. Image by Ottó from Pixabay
Journal articles
Accounting for diversity of practices in conservation agriculture
This article assesses the diversity of practices being implemented in Walloon, Belgium, which are considered to align with conservation agriculture’s three agronomic pillars (or principles): (i) minimum mechanical soil disturbance, (ii) permanent soil organic cover, and (iii) species diversification (FAO 2023). The authors aimed to determine the diversity of practices in a given area to understand the impacts of these practices and why farmers adopt them. They also sought to guide policy decisions and improve communication within the scientific community and between science and field actors. The authors present a novel classification method to categorise the diversity of CA practices on a regional scale that they present as applicable for comparing and assessing CA in different regions and other agricultural systems such as regenerative farming and organic farming. 
Read
Image
Peanut butter spread on toast. Image by Robert Owen-Wahl from Pixabay
Journal articles
Multi-method evaluation to understand food system interventions
This article uses a mixed methods approach to evaluate food system interventions which aim to raise consumption of nutritious foods. The researchers assess the Marketplace for Nutritious Foods (MNF) project which was implemented by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) in Kenya. The project is used as a case study to open up a broader discussion on the impact of complex food system interventions and the methods used to evaluate these interventions. The author's main call is for an expansion of methods used for similar interventions, methods which build from food systems approaches. They also call for exploration of new methodological approaches from outside traditional economic and nutrition studies
Read
Image
A caterpillar preparing to transform. Image by Charles Davis from Pixabay
Journal articles
Demystifying food systems transformation
This article examines the scholarly literature in English and Spanish to outline a series of insights related to the development and evolution of the term food system transformation. The authors find a rising use of the term in the literature but note a lack of coherent and consistent definition and an underpinning theoretical framework of change. The authors warn against the possible loss of the term’s meaning as it becomes increasingly popular and used without specific intention. The authors seek to provide insights into the complex and overlapping body of literature and offer a unique definition which attempts to fill gaps identified through the review process.
Read
Image
Photo of a fruiting shrub in a forest landscape. Image by PROJETO CAFÉ GATO-MOURISCO via Unsplash
News and resources
AGROECOLOGY Partnership releases a pre-announcement for an upcoming research call on ''Fostering agroecology at farm and landscape levels"
A recent press release by FACCE-JPI, a joint EU programming initiative on agriculture, food security and climate change, has detailed a pre-announcement for an upcoming research call on ''Fostering agroecology at farm and landscape levels.”
Read
Image
Farming with the Environment: Thirty Years of Allerton Project Research
Books
Farming with the environment
This book presents 30 years of research from the Allerton Project, a research and demonstration farm in the UK which assesses the effects of different farming methods on wildlife and the environment. It is aimed at farmers, practitioners and policymakers.
Read
Image
Image: christels, Desert locust insect, Pixabay, Pixabay Licence
Journal articles
Research priorities for global food security
This paper identifies research priorities relating to threats to global food security caused by extreme events such as heat waves, floods, war or financial crises. Focusing on the next two decades, the authors asked experts for emerging threats to food security as well as research questions, which were then ranked according to their potential impact and effort required to answer them.
Read
  • VIEW MORE

Sign up for Fodder, our newsletter covering sustainable food news.

Sign up
  • Glossary
  • About
  • Our Writing
  • Podcasts
  • Resources

Social

YouTube Facebook Instagram

© Copyright 2025

A collaboration between: