Kumar, S and Das, A and Ghosh, S and Afari-Sefa, V and Schmidt, J O (2026) Editorial: Food systems for nutrition: converging economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Frontiers in Nutrition (TSI), 13. 01-05. ISSN 2296-861X
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Abstract
The global food system stands at a critical juncture. Feeding a world population projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050 demands not just more food but better food, including production, distribution, and consumption that are ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just. The urgency of this challenge is underpinned by a set of converging crises that are both independently severe and deeply interconnected. Roughly 733 million people still face hunger, while over three billion cannot afford a healthy diet (1). These challenges are unevenly distributed, with coastal and island communities dependent on aquatic food systems often overlooked by terrestrial-focused interventions. Food systems account for approximately 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions (2). Diet-related non-communicable diseases have emerged as the leading cause of preventable premature mortality worldwide (3). Climate change is intensifying risks to food production in precisely the regions that are already most food-insecure. These are not separate emergencies to be addressed by separate disciplines. They are symptoms of a food system that prioritizes short-term productivity and economic efficiency over long-term human and planetary health, leaving vulnerable communities exposed to shocks they neither created nor can easily absorb. Addressing these symptoms demands approaches that simultaneously advance economic sustainability, social inclusion, and environmental stewardship, the triple convergence that frames this Research Topic. The concept of food system transformation has gained traction in international policy discourse, most visibly through the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and the Sustainable Development Goals framework. Yet rhetoric has frequently outpaced practice. The gap between ambitious global commitments and ground-level realities, whether on smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa, in hospital kitchens in the Middle East, or in publicly funded nutrition programs in the United States, remains vast and, in many contexts, widening. Closing this gap requires not only better science but also better translation of science into policy and practice, including understanding why transformations succeed or fail in real-world contexts. This Research Topic, published across Frontiers in Nutrition and Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, was designed to advance precisely this transition. It invited interdisciplinary contributions that could not separate agricultural productivity from nutritional outcomes, economic incentives from social equity, or environmental sustainability from cultural acceptability. The response was both wide and substantive: 23 original articles from researchers and practitioners spanning six continents, employing methods as varied as dietary optimization modeling, multi-year household panel data analysis, participatory trait-preference surveys, laboratory-to-practice aquaculture engineering, qualitative clinic-staff interviews, and 50-year historical analyses of agricultural production trends. Together, they constitute a genuinely integrated and internationally grounded contribution to the science and practice of sustainable food systems. The breadth of this Research Topic is one of its strengths, but it warrants some navigational guidance. We have organized our discussion of the 23 contributions into four thematic groupings that reflect the major intellectual threads running through the Research Topic. The first addresses the transformation of agricultural production itself: agroecological and regenerative approaches, the behavioral dimensions of farmer adoption, and innovative circular production systems. The second examines sustainable diets and food environments: dietary optimization and its trade-offs, the distributional costs of dietary transition, the environmental footprint of nutritional guidelines, and the structural and behavioral factors that shape what people actually eat. The third focuses on food loss and waste, both the quantified scale of institutional waste and the relational dynamics of waste reduction among food professionals. The fourth addresses governance, equity, and inclusive food policy across diverse contexts from the Pacific Island governance structures to medically tailored meal programs in the United States. These groupings are not watertight compartments; cross-cutting themes of gender equity, climate resilience, and economic accessibility run through all four. What they offer is orientation rather than partition.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Global Research Program - Enabling Systems Transformation Research Program : West & Central Africa |
| CRP: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, food security, food systems for nutrition, social sustainability |
| Subjects: | Others > Sustainable Agriculture Others > Food and Nutrition Others > Food Security |
| Depositing User: | Mr Nagaraju T |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Aug 2026 05:00 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2026 05:00 |
| URI: | http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/13652 |
| Official URL: | https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/art... |
| Projects: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Funders: | UNSPECIFIED |
| Acknowledgement: | SK, AD, VA-S, and JS acknowledge the funding support from the CGIAR Science Programs- Policy Innovations and Multifunctional Landscape. |
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