Dominant food systems are configured from the productivist paradigm, which focuses on producing large amounts of inexpensive and standardized foods. Although these food systems continue being supported worldwide, they are no longer considered fit-for-purpose as they have been proven unsustainable in environmental and social terms. A large body of scientific literature argues that a transition from the dominant food systems to alternative ones built around the wider principles of sustainable production and rural development is needed. Promoting such a sustainability transition would benefit from a diagnosis of food system types to identify those systems that may harbor promising characteristics for a transition to sustainable food systems. While research on food system transitions abounds, an operational approach to characterize the diversity of food systems taking a system perspective is still lacking. In this paper we review the literature on how transitions to sustainable food systems may play out and present a framework based on the Multi-Level Perspective on Socio-Technical Transitions, which builds upon conceptual developments from social and natural science disciplines. The objectives of the framework are to (i) characterize the diversity of existing food systems at a certain geographical scale based on a set of structural characteristics and (ii) classify the food systems in terms of their support by mainstream practices, i.e., dominant food systems connected to regimes; deviate radically from them, niche food systems such as those based on grassroots innovation; or share elements of dominant and niche food systems, i.e., hybrid food systems. An example is given of application of our framework to vegetable food systems with a focus on production, distribution, and consumption of low-or-no pesticide vegetables in Chile. Drawing on this illustrative example we reflect on usefulness, shortcomings, and further development and use of the diagnostic framework.

中文翻译：

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鉴于可持续性转型，描述粮食系统的多样性。回顾。

占主导地位的粮食系统是根据生产力主义范式配置的，其重点是生产大量廉价和标准化的食品。尽管这些粮食系统继续在全世界范围内得到支持，但它们不再被认为适合其用途，因为它们已被证明在环境和社会方面是不可持续的。大量科学文献认为，需要从占主导地位的粮食系统过渡到围绕可持续生产和农村发展的更广泛原则建立的替代系统。促进这种可持续性转型将受益于对粮食系统类型的诊断，以确定那些可能具有向可持续粮食系统转型的有希望特征的系统。尽管关于粮食系统转型的研究比比皆是，但仍然缺乏从系统角度来描述粮食系统多样性的可操作方法。在本文中，我们回顾了有关向可持续粮食系统转型如何展开的文献，并提出了一个基于社会技术转型多层次视角的框架，该框架建立在社会和自然科学学科概念发展的基础上。该框架的目标是（i）根据一组结构特征描述一定地理范围内现有粮食系统的多样性，以及（ii）根据主流做法（即主导粮食）的支持对粮食系统进行分类与政权相关的系统；与它们根本不同的是，利基粮食系统，例如基于草根创新的粮食系统；或共享主导和小众粮食系统的要素，即混合粮食系统。我们举了一个例子，将我们的框架应用于蔬菜食品系统，重点关注智利低农药或无农药蔬菜的生产、分销和消费。利用这个说明性的例子，我们反思了诊断框架的有用性、缺点以及进一步的开发和使用。