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Front-of-package food labelling (FOPL) is a mechanism to inform consumers on food nutrients content and risks for health. Each country, within its own institutional framework, defines methods and protocols to formulate rules capable of influencing organizations and the behavior of agents. The paper aims at evaluating the role of some meso-institutions in shaping arenas for policymaking on FOPL based on an exploratory study in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. A documental analysis and literature review were employed, followed by in-depth interviews. The relevant aspects of FOPL assessed were thresholds for sugar, fats, and sodium; marketing restrictions, and timeframe given for compliance with the new rules. The contribution of this article is to illuminate the way in which meso-institutions operate in a specific context, namely the development of food labelling standards. The focus is to find the rules that allowed the participation of stakeholders in the process of defining normative acts intended to regulate food labelling. The discussion of mandatory FOPL can be interpreted as a struggle to define proper rights for the food industry and the consumer. Meso-institutions, as translators of general normative principles in specific contexts, can encourage or restrict stakeholder participation in policymaking. Besides political arena, the participation can be done in other arenas, such as legislature, regulatory agencies, scientific community, media and public opinion. Institutions that encourage stakeholder participation increase the probability of obtaining widely accepted specific rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regenerative agriculture offers important solutions to the enormous challenges that the climate crisis poses on food production. However, there are doubts about the possibility of implementing many of these solutions in a particularly important sector: the large scale. This paper addresses the issue, presenting examples of large-scale vineyard soil microbiome manipulation in Chile. The South American country has strongly faced the effects of climate change during the last decade and the organic viticulture sector is actively seeking strategies to adapt to the new climatic reality. Here the results of 4 experiments under real production conditions are shown. The experiments were designed to assess the effects of adding various microbial consortia to the soil on key agronomic parameters. Successful as well as unsuccessful cases are presented, allowing discussion of some conditions under which the microbiome manipulation can be expected to have positive effects. It was found that under good management conditions, incorporating effective microorganisms has positive effects on important production parameters (yield, root and vegetative growth). However, when fields yields are trending downward for prolonged periods, the incorporation of effective microbial consortia (e.g., antagonistic fungi, nutrientfixing and nutrient-solubilizing bacteria) does not have a positive effect on the vineyard trend immediately. Similarly, even in favorable conditions the positive effects cannot be expected to be expressed in the short term (i.e., in just a few months). Therefore, its use should be conceived as a long-term strategy, not as an immediate solution to urgent management problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]