Transdisciplinary perspectives to investigate sustainable food system transitions

The Anthropocene is an unprecedented geological period characterised by large-scale socio-ecological crises, including biodiversity loss, climate change, ocean acidification and irreversible deterioration of soil health, among others. These crises have created concerns among scientists, who are now openly discussing scenarios in which humanity will not be able to inhabit this planet and challenging how they can respond to these mounting challenges. Given this dramatic and contested context, in this essay we pose the following questions: what are the fields of knowledge we need (to collectively create) to solve the crises of a planet in chaos? What (type of) knowledge do we need? From whom and for whom? We tackle these questions by looking at the opportunity to collectively develop transdisciplinary knowledge that would help investigate sustainability transitions as ways in which humanity can respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene and to design systemic change. Among these transitions, we focus on circular and regenerative principles and look at the case of protein transitions as well as agroecology and circular food systems. This informs our discussion on the emergence of transdisciplinary pathways in which agricultural economists can and should have a key role.