The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) emphasise the need to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and
promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2). They also highlight the need to shift towards responsible
consumption and production practices throughout the food system (SDG12). On a European level, the
Farm to Fork Strategy forms a central component of the European Green Deal and aims to make the
European food systems more sustainable by 2030. Various regional and national policies have also
recognised the need to renew food systems, and different grassroot initiatives aim to support local
changes in food production and consumption.
Food systems serve a basic human need – nutrition – and has a major economic, social and environmental
importance. For example, some 13 million enterprises and 29 million workers produce, process, distribute,
prepare and sell food and beverages in the EU (EPRS, 2020). The food and drink industry is the largest
manufacturing sector in the EU economy. Agriculture is the source of 11% of all greenhouse gases emitted
in the EU, and it remains a significant contributor to biodiversity and habitat loss and to the emissions of
harmful air pollutants, such as ammonia as well as the most significant pressure impacting both surface
and groundwaters (EEA, 2017, 2024). Moreover, unhealthy diets, exposure to chemical residues in food
and packaging, and contamination of drinking water affect human health.
A rich array of issues needs to be addressed in order to successfully guide the food systems towards a
more sustainable direction. Abundant research has focused on identifying the key components of change
(Eakin et al., 2017; EEA, 2017; Kennedy et al., 2021; Maynard et al., 2020), including environmental issues
of food production and consumption, such as combating climate change and biodiversity loss, resource
overuse, and promoting circular economy. Social well-being also plays a crucial role, encompassing fair
working conditions throughout the food chain, promoting healthy diets for all, and reducing food waste.
Furthermore, ensuring economic viability of food systems involves keeping agriculture and aquaculture
competitive and resilient, supporting farmers and fishers in adopting sustainable practices, and generating
new economic opportunities through regeneration and renewal.
This complexity and diversity of issues pose a challenge for monitoring and assessing change but at the
same time they make food systems an interesting case. The overall goal of this scoping review is to support
the development of sustainability transition monitoring. More specifically, the aim is to build a prototype
framework featuring criteria, characteristics, and logic for monitoring systemic changes in food systems.
To achieve this, the report reviews various indicator sets, academic studies and case reports. It utilises and
builds on previous EEA and ETC ST (European Topic Centre on Sustainability Transition) work on food
systems sustainability measurement and assessment, while reviewing a variety of other selected cases. Particular emphasis is given to comprehensive or “holistic” indicator frameworks that aim to
characterise drivers and dynamics of systemic change throughout the food value chain, covering the
agriculture, aquaculture, and fisheries sectors. Sustainability indices aiming to aggregate multidimensional
issues into a single figure are not considered here.
This study employs a scoping study approach aiming for a wide-based overall picture. Instead of
conducting a systematic review focused on specific topics, perspectives or approaches, or an analysis
delving deep into individual cases or methods, it aims to select and compare a diverse set of cases that
illustrate different, potentially useful ways to use indicators to describe food systems transitions. Food
systems’ studies are considered a promising field that is highly relevant for sustainability transition, but
that remains relatively uncharted. For example, energy or transportation systems are much more often
addressed by transition studies and have more advanced and internationally established reporting and
monitoring schemes.
The scoping utilised the snowballing method, drawing on existing ETC work (e.g. Lorenz et al., 2024;
Haraldsson et al., 2024) and team members’ expert knowledge on relevant publications to review. The
project team initiated the mapping based on previous ETC ST work and other pertinent reports suggested
by EEA project managers (Chapter 2). Selection criterion during the pre-screening phase included the
capability to describe food systems in a comprehensive manner, potential for cross-country comparisons,
policy relevance and data availability. The chosen cases prioritise diversity in conceptual backgrounds,
institutional settings, and data sources, while avoiding overlaps.
The list of pre-screened cases is presented in Annex 1: From this list, the 18 most prominent and promising
cases were selected for analysis. A set of criteria to evaluate the selected cases was developed, aiming to
capture the essence of food systemstransition (Chapter 3). The criteria emphasise (i) the elements of food
systems identified, (ii) the relationships between the elements, and (iii) sustainability considerations.
Based on the evaluation, concrete proposals for food systems transition indicators are made (Chapter 4).
It should be noted that the main bulk of proposed indicators are already in use and represent readily
available cross-national and reliable data. This is supplemented with the project team’s indicator proposals
per evaluation criteria. The selection also indirectly highlights further development needs and data gaps –
various experimental indicators currently not capable of providing reliable cross-national picture exist.
Overall, the challenges and opportunities of sustainability transition monitoring faced in the food sector
provide lessons applicable to other sectors as well. Lessons for developing the European state of the
environment reporting beyond 2025 are drawn in Chapter 5.