Key messages:

• The current debate around the need to change the way food is produced, valued, and consumed involves a wide range of actors, from civil society and expert groups to corporations, governmental and intergovernmental organizations.
• Based on numerous scientific studies showing that current agri-food systems do not deliver healthy food for all people yet contribute to many of the world’s sustainability problems, a consensus has emerged that incremental changes are no longer enough and that a transformation of the agri-food system is needed. However, there is not yet consensus on how to achieve this, and a variety of approaches have been advanced.
• Although the proposed approaches aim for different solutions to the problems, they can all be positioned within the three thematic areas of people, planet, and prosperity.
• Broadly speaking, the different approaches and transformation pathways can be divided into those that propose structural changes and those that propose technical or technological fixes.
• There is general agreement among stakeholders that a transformed food production system should deliver nutritious food to people and equity to farmers, but not at the cost of human and planetary health.
• Several issues that are absent or inadequately addressed in the debate. These include inefficient governance of agri-food systems and transformation processes, polarization of opinions hampering a coherent strategy for transformation, ignoring traditional knowledge and practices, externalized costs, and role of trade dynamics in agri-food systems transformation.