While there have been many studies on the political economy of food prices and subsidies and how they relate to hunger, and global food production and consumption, addressing today’s food challenges necessitates a broader perspective that accounts for both the growing diversity of actors within the food system and an expansive set of policy objectives beyond just providing sufficient calories.

The Book brings together a global group of interdisciplinary and applied scholars examining different political economy elements as they relate to the food system. This book demonstrates how incentive structures, mobilizational modalities, policy designs, and drivers of adaptation intersect and shape the menu of viable options to advance the ambitious transformation agenda. Articles apply political economy analysis on questions of repurposing subsidies, bundling on-farm innovations, and reducing over-consumption of sugar and meat, and ecosystem services, among others and looks at a global range of country case studies further showing how political economy factors vary across disparate levels of economic development and political systems.

The books offers a holistic compilation of the political economy considerations that must be confronted to meaningfully transform food systems in ways that resonate with local livelihoods and global realities. Indeed, while the needed policies to achieve a food system that contributes to human and planetary health might be technical, the pathways to those policies will almost always be political.

Case-studies:

Zambia: What happens when a relatively new set of aims—around reducing malnutrition—is introduced into a relatively stable food policy sub-system—focusing on grain production for rural livelihoods and food security

Ghana: Why do people with high incomes in middle- and low-income countries consume more ultra-processed foods which leads to overweight, obesity, and central adiposity?

Bangladesh and India: why was Bt brinjal accepted and diffused broadly in Bangladesh, with favorable agronomic, economic, and environmental impacts, while it failed to secure approval in India?

The conclusions summarize potential areas for further research:

1. Little is known on the optimal food system transformation policy package. It is impossible to fully uncover the true winners and losers from reforms. 

2. Tactics of negotiation between interest groups or coalitions with political actors and how those have, and will continue to, change with the rise of new political configurations is important and widely unkown. This need to be kept in mind when considering how different types of evidence, policy objectives, and coalitions may rise and fall in the food systems space in the years to come due to shifting partisan attachments.

3. Citizen trust in their governments is paramount for reforms that involve intertemporal trade-offs and uncertainty .

4. How to generate politically influential constituencies for needed reforms. Particularly in low-income countries, where there is less private sector investment in agriculture R&D, governments still play a central role. Yet, governments often underinvest in this area because of its high uncertainty, low salience to voters, and the long temporal lag between allocation and final delivery of service .

5. More detailed studies are needed that show the simultaneous international and domestic political economy dynamics that surround policies with large externalities. For instance, the new sustainability standards incorporated into the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy, which require reduced pesticide and fertilizer use and harmonization of phytosanitary regulations, will have impacts on major African exporters of agricultural products into the EU. This will potentially generate a new set of lobbying between value chain actors and their governments in certain African countries for policy reforms to meet these new standards.