Longue durée study of agricultural transitions in Denmark using Multi-Level Perspective

Agri-food systems in sustainability transition: a systematic literature review on recent developments on the use of the multi-level perspective

“…Within this domain, three areas are apparent: first and the most prominent area, alternative practices and cultivation methods [e.g., manure management, agroecology, organic agriculture, or climate-smart agriculture (e.g., Anderson et al, 2019;Long et al, 2019;López-García et al, 2019;Schiller et al, 2020;Bui, 2021;Salavisa et al, 2021;Anselmi and Vignola, 2022)]; second, animal husbandry (cf. De Herde et al, 2020;Deviney et al, 2020;Averbuch et al, 2021);and third, innovations (technological;e.g., cf. Contesse et al, 2021;Jia, 2021;de Boon et al, 2022).…”

“…A variety of reasons for the necessity of an ST is given (i.e., the why). For instance, ecological crisis, resource depletion, food security and access, severe and inequitable environment, biodiversity loss, or climate change are only a few of the manifold reported reasons (e.g., Anderson et al, 2019;Averbuch et al, 2021;Kaweesa et al, 2021;Giagnocavo et al, 2022;Mehrabi et al, 2022). Some authors approach sustainability through the analysis of their object of study, for instance, a project that aims for "more sustainable urban food systems" (Van Poeck and Östman, 2021, p. 156) or initiatives aiming for alternative food production (Farhangi et al, 2020).…”

“…Thematic fields within the niche range from alternative practices, for instance, agroecology (e.g., Anderson et al, 2019;Dumont et al, 2020;Bui, 2021;Boillat et al, 2022), participatory guarantee systems (Anselmi and Vignola, 2022), organic agriculture (e.g., Heyen and Wolff, 2019;Averbuch et al, 2021;Salavisa et al, 2021), conservation agriculture (Kaweesa et al, 2021), integrated pest management (Contesse et al, 2021), food purchasing groups (Belda-Miquel et al, 2020), or farmers markets (McInnes, 2019) through more technological innovations (e.g., for manure management, in fisheries, pesticide application, and alternatives; Hosseinifarhangi et al, 2019;Jakku et al, 2019;Farhangi et al, 2020;Goulet, 2021) to community concepts, such as ecovillages (Henfrey and Ford, 2018) or eco-friendly school lunch programs (Gaddis and Jeon, 2020). However, different interpretations exist.…”

“…For instance, Wöhler et al (2020) identify "awareness raising, involving education and knowledge transfer" (p. 5) as a niche innovation. Radical visions of new forms of coordination and governance are being developed, rules, power relations, and prevailing structures are being challenged, or social networks are being constructed within the niche level (Henfrey and Ford, 2018;van der Windt and Swart, 2018;Gugerell and Penker, 2020;Averbuch et al, 2021;Bui, 2021). Alternative models and structures, e.g., for production and consumption or value chains, are evolving (Belda-Miquel et al, 2020;De Herde et al, 2020;Polita and Madureira, 2021b).…”

“…In the characterization of the regime level, the scale (1), time (2), stability (3), and lock-ins and path-dependencies (4) stand out. Regarding the scale (1), it is notable that many authors refer to national-level events (e.g., regulations and policies) when they refer to the regime (Farhangi et al, 2020;Schiller et al, 2020;Averbuch et al, 2021;Gudbrandsdottir et al, 2021), such as Dutch food policies (Farhangi et al, 2020) or "national regulatory framework" (Gudbrandsdottir et al, 2021, p. 13). This seems to be independent of the respective territorial focus as Schiller et al (2020) and Averbuch et al (2021) concentrate on national transitions (i.e., Nicaragua and Denmark) and Farhangi et al (2020) on a local scale (i.e., Amsterdam).…”