From local landscapes to global: A cross-scale and cross-level framework for a more just food systems transformation

Transforming food systems to improve socio-economic, environmental, and food security outcomes requires improved understanding of how system actors and outcomes interact across different levels and scales. To date, food systems science supporting the Food Systems Transformation (FST) has focused on macro and global or planetary level outcomes, while actor-focused work has occurred at more granular levels in adjacent yet siloed disciplines. This paper develops a cross-scale and cross-level conceptual framework to link food system actors, activities, and system outcomes, emphasising inclusion and justice in transformation processes. The framework shows how outcomes at one level become drivers at another, offering a useful analytical approach for both researchers and decision makers. To illustrate its application, the framework is operationalised with a qualitative case study of Papua New Guinean cocoa smallholder farmers across four communities. Using semi-structured interviews (n = 160), we analyse food system activities, drivers, and feedbacks across scales and levels. The results show that low influence actors, despite limited power in formal governance, play critical roles in shaping food system outcomes, such as land use and food security. Cross-scale interactions, such as between national education policy, local land use decisions, and global market pressures, demonstrate how top-down interventions can reinforce challenges in the system, particularly for low influence actors. By explicitly embedding scale, level, and actor inclusion into food-system analysis, the framework advances conceptual clarity, diagnostic precision, and coordination across research, policy, and governance domains needed for a more just and effective FST. Lastly, it provides an update on food system activities and outcomes in remote PNG communities, for which published data are scarce. • Here we present a cross-scale, cross-level framework linking food system actors, drivers, and outcomes to improve transformations. • The framework shows how scale and level reveal complex dynamics and feedbacks in actor decision making, supported by empirical evidence. • A case with PNG smallholders illustrates how land use choices shape multi-level, multi-scale outcomes and why they must be included in governance. • We offer an analytical tool to connect local actor-focused work with global food system goals for more coherent and just transformation.