The role of knowledge in transitions to sustainable food systems: examples from institutional innovations

Knowledge is fundamental to our ability to change practices from unsustainable to sustainable ones (Grin, Rotmans and Schot, 2010). However, sustainability has often been described as a “wicked problem”, where the knowledge needed to make this transition is often inconclusive and contested (Batie, 2008; Levin et al., 2012; Peters and Pierre, 2014). These “knowledge politics” (Baert and Rubio, 2012) suggest that we should be asking important questions as we develop policy advice, such as what types of knowledge and whose knowledge is taken into consideration in the development of sustainable food systems. If we look at food systems as the value chains and institutional arrangements that connect consumption and production, we see that different actors need different types of information and are willing to trust different types of knowledge about sustainable practices. Drawing upon results from an international survey of 15 institutional innovations in linking sustainable practices with markets that was carried out by FAO and INRA, we reflect upon how these innovations are placing an emphasis on different types of knowledge as the basis for the adoption of sustainable practices. These results shed light on the type of information and knowledge required by different actors in sustainable food systems