Shalander Kumar

The concept of food system transformation has gained traction in international policy discourse, most visibly through the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and the Sustainable Development Goals framework. Yet rhetoric has frequently outpaced practice. The gap between ambitious global commitments and ground-level realities, whether on smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa, in hospital kitchens in the Middle East, or in publicly funded nutrition programs in the United States, remains vast and, in many contexts, widening.Closing this gap requires not only better science but also better translation of science into policy and practice, including understanding why transformations succeed or fail in realworld contexts. This Research Topic, published across Frontiers in Nutrition and Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, was designed to advance precisely this transition. It invited interdisciplinary contributions that could not separate agricultural productivity from nutritional outcomes, economic incentives from social equity, or environmental sustainability from cultural acceptability. The response was both wide and substantive: 23 original articles from researchers and practitioners spanning six continents, employing methods as varied as dietary optimization modelling, multi-year household panel data analysis, participatory trait-preference surveys, laboratory-to-practice aquaculture engineering, qualitative clinicstaff interviews, and fifty-year historical analyses of agricultural production trends.Together, they constitute a genuinely integrated and internationally grounded contribution to the science and practice of sustainable food systems.The breadth of this collection is one of its strengths, but it warrants some navigational guidance. We have organized our discussion of the 23 contributions into four thematic groupings that reflect the major intellectual threads running through the collection. The first addresses the transformation of agricultural production itself: agroecological and regenerative approaches, the behavioral dimensions of farmer adoption, and innovative circular production systems. The second examines sustainable diets and food environments: dietary optimization and its trade-offs, the distributional costs of dietary transition, the environmental footprint of nutritional guidelines, and the structural and behavioral factors that shape what people actually eat. The third focuses on food loss and waste, both the quantified scale of institutional waste and the relational dynamics of waste reduction among food professionals. The fourth addresses governance, equity, and inclusive food policy across diverse contexts from the Pacific Island governance structures to medically tailored meal programs in the United States. These groupings are not watertight compartments; cross-cutting themes of gender equity, climate resilience, and economic accessibility run through all four. What they offer is orientation rather than partition.Agriculture is where food systems begin and where many of their most consequential tradeoffs are established. The seven contributions in this grouping examine how production practices, farmer motivations, and system designs can be reoriented toward outcomes that are simultaneously more nutritious and more ecologically sound, drawing on evidence from India, China, Malawi, West Africa, including one from China's aquaculture sector.Divyanshu and colleagues open the section with a field-level comparison of nature-friendly and conventional apple cultivation in Himachal Pradesh, India. Farms that had transitioned away from chemical-intensive inputs demonstrated healthier soil organic matter profiles, reduced disease incidence, and greater agro-biodiversity. The study is candid about transitional costs, yields, and revenues, and acknowledges that they face short-term pressure, but provides grounded evidence that ecological gains are achievable and that market linkages for premium, nature-friendly produce are a necessary complement to agronomic change. Rosier and colleagues broaden this perspective considerably in their review of regenerative agriculture, making the case that restoring soil health is a nutritional as much as an environmental imperative. Their evidence linking soil microbiome diversity to crop micronutrient density argues that the documented decline in nutrient density of many staple crops over recent decades reflects, in part, the depletion of soil biological communities under industrial farming. Their call for a unified but flexible certification framework for regenerative agriculture reflects the difficulty of scaling inherently contextspecific practices without losing their ecological integrity.The behavioral dimensions of agricultural transition receive rigorous attention from two complementary Chinese studies. Zhang, Mao, and colleagues examine how livelihood capital, including physical, human, financial, social, and natural, shapes green production behaviors among professional grain farmers in Jiangxi Province, while Zhang, Cai, and colleagues apply an integrated Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of PlannedBehavior framework to understand the psychological and normative drivers of farmers' willingness to cultivate high-quality rice. Together, they make the point that policy too often ignores: sustainable practice adoption is mediated by multiple forms of capital and subjective perceptions of ease, usefulness, and social expectations. Interventions attending only to the technical or economic dimensions of adoption are likely to disappoint.Munthali and colleagues contribute field evidence from Malawi, where conservation agriculture technologies, including crop rotation, intercropping, mulching, and no-till, have generated meaningful gains in food production and food security in Mzimba district, while candidly mapping the informational and economic barriers that continue to slow uptake.Mitchodigni and colleagues add a critical market...

Introduction: Senegal’s groundnut value chain covers approximately 1.25 million hectares and underpins the food security and livelihoods of a large rural population. Yet it is beset by persistent structural constraints across both supply and demand dimensions, including weak seed systems, fragmented input delivery, volatile prices, low processing capacity utilization, and climate-driven production risks, that limit its efficiency, inclusiveness, and resilience. Methods: This study combined large-scale primary data collection with a participatory Group Model Building (GMB) approach. A baseline household survey was conducted with 503 groundnut farmers across 18 villages in the peanut basin of Senegal (regions of Kaffrine, Louga, and Thiès), supplemented by 20 Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews with processors, traders, government representatives, cooperatives, and research institutions. Two GMB workshops were facilitated in Dakar in March and April 2023, convening 14 participants representing diverse value chain stakeholders. Causal Loop Diagrams were developed iteratively through structured elicitation, plenary validation, and post-workshop verification to map feedback structures and identify leverage points. Results: The household survey identified poor access to quality seed (86.77% of respondents), climate-related crop losses (75.88%), unstable market prices (79.96%), and high fertilizer costs (47.67%) as the most prevalent constraints. The GMB process revealed these challenges as components of self-reinforcing feedback loops: a low-productivity trap in the seed system rooted in insufficient ISRA breeder seed capacity; a processor marginalization loop driven by Chinese trader dominance that diverts raw material away from SONACOS (operating at 35–40% capacity); and a cross-sectoral institutional misalignment trap in which subsidy capture, weak seed quality enforcement, and misaligned export policies operate as mutually reinforcing barriers. Discussion: Policy pathways emerging from GMB deliberations include strengthening ISRA’s breeder seed capacity; reforming fertilizer subsidy delivery through cooperatives; expanding scale-appropriate mechanization; integrating climate information services; establishing price stabilization mechanisms; and introducing dynamic export regulation to balance farmer income with domestic processor viability. Underpinning all recommendations is the need for a coordinated governance structure that addresses institutional misalignments and enables equitable, resilient, and sustainable growth across Senegal’s groundnut value chain.

Our study analyzes the determinants, sources, and levels of protein consumption among 785 households across nine districts in six Indian states in the semi-arid tropics. We found that 80% of these households consumed less protein than recommended and relied on cereals for 60–75% of their protein intake. Notably, even when protein-rich foods are accessible to households, they still consume them insufficiently. We found that their protein intake deficiency is driven by a lack of diversity of protein sources (in particular, legumes, millets, and livestock), as well as by a dearth of women's education and role in household decision-making and low incomes and assets. We advocate for initiatives to raise nutrition awareness, empower women, and adopt a nutrition-centric farming approach.

The resilience capacity of smallholder households is one of the main drivers of their ability to continue to farm and make investments in the fragile dryland regions. This paper aims to assess the resilience profile of smallholder farmers in the face of climate change and the factors influencing it in three dryland sub-regions of Senegal, namely, Louga, Kaffrine, and Thies. We developed a composite index of climate resilience (CICR) using data on farmers' perceptions of climate variability and their perceived ability to withstand, adapt, and bounce back in the event of climatic shocks. Drought, strong winds, and soil fertility decline because of climate change emerged as the main climate hazards impacting smallholder farming systems. The CICR value ranged from −2 for the most vulnerable households to +2 for the most resilient households. On average, all the households were found to be vulnerable, with an average CICR value of −0.2. The LOUGA region was the most vulnerable, with an average CICR value of −0.36, followed by THIES (-0.2). The KAFFRINE region was relatively less vulnerable, with a CICR value of −0.1. Ordered logit model estimates show that the chances of improving CICR decrease with the increase of the household head's age until 59 years. Access to training on climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and climate information appeared to have the potential to increase by 171% the chance of the household improving its resilience status. Analysis also shows that one more woman working off-farm or in-home gardening has the potential to multiply by four times the chances of households being more resilient. This highlights the importance of empowering women to enhance household resilience to climate change. The off-farm revenue increased the chance to improve the resilience status of the farm household by 62% and the receipt of transfer revenue by 50%. This study provides a robust method for quantifying resilience or wellbeing and its drivers and enriches our understanding of the resilience ability of farmers to climate change in a West African context. It can be useful in designing effective adaptation interventions and improving the overall wellbeing of smallholder farmers.

Sustainable livelihoods (SL) have emerged as a crucial area of focus in global environmental change research, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This field is rapidly gaining prominence in sustainability science and has become one of the primary research paradigms. In our study, we conducted scientometrics analysis using the ISI Web of Science core collection database to examine research patterns and frontier areas in SL research. We selected 6441 papers and 265,759 references related to SL published from 1991 to 2020. To achieve this, we employed advanced quantitative analysis tools such as CiteSpace and VOSviewer to quantitatively analyze and visualize the evolution of literature in the SL research field. Our overarching objectives were to understand historical research characteristics, identify the knowledge base, and determine future research trends. The results revealed an exponential increase in SL research documentation since 1991, with the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Center (CGIAR) contributing the highest volume of research documents and citations. Key journals in this field included World Development, Global Environmental Change, Ecological Economics, and Ecology and Society. Notably, Singh RK and Shackleton CM emerged as prolific authors in SL research. Through our analysis, we identified six primary clusters of research areas: livelihoods, conservation, food security, management, climate change, and ecosystem services. Additionally, we found that tags such as rural household, agricultural intensification, cultural intensification, and livelihoods vulnerability remained relevant and represented active research hotspots. By analyzing keyword score relevance, we identified frontier areas in SL research, including mass tourism, solar home systems, artisanal and small-scale mining, forest quality, marine-protected areas, agricultural sustainability, sustainable rangeland management, and indigenous knowledge. These findings provide valuable insights to stakeholders regarding the historical, current, and future trends in SL research, offering strategic opportunities to enhance the sustainability of livelihoods for farmers and rural communities in alignment with the SDGs.

Groundnut crop is one of the major sources of financial and food security for a large number of Tanzanian smallholder farmers. However, the production of groundnuts in Tanzania is underdeveloped, and yields are reportedly 2.5 to 3 times lower than in other African nations such as Nigeria. There are a number of factors that contribute to lower yields including the cultivation of outdated plant varieties, increased climate variability, the infestation of pests and diseases, and the use of outdated farming techniques. To analyze the scope for increasing groundnut production, this study investigates and compares the technical efficiencies (TEs) and technological gap ratios (TGRs) in Tanzania's four main groundnut-producing regions, namely the Central zone, Lake Zone, Southern zone, Southern highland zone, by using a two-step meta frontier model. We used ICRISAT data collected under the Tropical Legume-III project during 2017–18. Our results show a very low level of technical efficiency of groundnut production in the regions and significant regional differences in TEs, TGRs, and Meta Technical Efficiencies (MTEs). The study identifies a tremendous scope to increase groundnut productivity and production in Tanzania by enhancing its production efficiency and the key drivers that may help harness this potential.