Positive Tipping Points in the Food Systems: the Role of Scales

The global food system is at a critical inflection point with rising awareness of the need for change and progress on several fronts, pertaining both human health and the environment. One of the ten critical transitions envisioned by the Food and Land Use Coalitions states that global diets need to converge towards local variations of the “human and planetary healthy diet” which includes more protective foods a diverse protein supply, and reduced consumption of sugar, salt and highly processed foods.

Positive tipping points (PTP) offer a new perspective to support and boost the implementation of solutions for sustainable and healthy food systems. A PTP in the food system can be seen as critical points where targeted interventions lead to large and long-term consequences on the evolution of that system, profoundly altering its modes of operation. While discussions on food PTP dynamics are an intriguing theoretical debate, we still lack empirical evidence if and how such dynamics unfold in practice, especially in the food sector. Literature on inducing positive tipping and feedback dynamics in sustainability transitions almost exclusively focuses on the energy sector, leaving an important gap in the empirical research on the specific enabling factors for triggering these dynamics in respect to food and global diets transformation.