While dramatic advances in human well-being have been achieved worldwide through technological and institutional innovations in agri-food systems, adverse impacts on climate, the natural environment, public health, and social justice increasingly impede further, sustained progress. How humanity can innovate to bring about local and global agri-food systems that more equitably, healthfully and sustainably expand on past progress is the fundamental question posed in Socio-Technical Innovation Bundles for Agri-Food System Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), a synthesis of the current state of the world’s agri-food systems, and an examination of key external drivers of change anticipated over the next 25–50 years.

In a live, in-person  Chats in the Stacks book talk Chris Barrett, lead author and the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School and in the Brooks School of Public Policy, Rebecca Nelson, professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science and the Department of Global Development, Mario Herrero, professor of sustainable food systems and global change in the Department of Global Development, and Daniel Mason-D'Croz, senior research associate in the Department of Global Development, will discuss the report, commissioned by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and the journal Nature Sustainability, which constitutes the most authoritative study to date on the future of local and global agri-food systems.