Forword: sustainability in agrifood chains and networks

To feed this and the next generations, sustainable development is considered the only viable future for agriculture. The successful implementation of sustainable development has remained an elusive goal in agriculture. Innovation initiatives in agriculture, such as TransForum in the Netherlands, have tried to provide best practice to start such innovations in agrifood chains and networks. In its 6 year existence, between 2004 and 2010, Transforum has been an intermediary between knowledge institutes, entrepreneurs, NGO's and governmental organisations. This has resulted in several successful innovation initiatives in Dutch agriculture and a wealth of knowledge on organising networks and chains for sustainable innovation. TransForum has operated from its vision that metropolitan agriculture is the way forward for sustainable development in the Dutch agriculture sector and posited 4 central elements of successful innovation: (1) shared image creation; (2) relevant inventions for sustainability; (3) dealing with institutional context; and (4) the creation of market directed chains for sustainable products (Fischer et al., 2012; Veldkamp et al., 2009)