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A widespread sense of the unsustainability of the food system has taken hold in recent years, leading to calls for fundamental change. The role of animal agriculture is central to many of these debates, leading to interest in the possibility of a "protein transition," whereby the production and consumption of animal-derived foods is replaced with plant-based substitutes or "alternative proteins." Despite the potential sustainability implications of this transition, the developmental trajectories and transformative potential of the associated technologies remain underexplored. This article sheds light on these dynamics by addressing two questions: 1) how have alternative protein innovations developed over the past three decades, and 2) what explains their more recent acceleration? To answer these questions, the article makes an empirical analysis of four alternative protein innovations, and the partial destabilization of the animal agriculture system between 1990 and 2021, guided by the multi-level perspective. The analysis highlights an intensification in corporate engagement with alternative protein development and diffusion. This intensification is judged to be consistent with the beginnings of a wider corporate reorientation, occurring alongside a rise in pressures on the animal agriculture system, notably an increasing scientific consensus and societal awareness of the links between climate change and meat-intensive diets. The paper demonstrates how differences in technological maturity across the niche innovations have resulted in potentially transformative pressures, which are consistent with an emerging sustainability transition, manifesting differently in terms of the extent of diffusion of the alternative protein niches.

Purpose: This paper aims to reveal, and contribute to an understanding of, the processes that connect learning and innovation networks in sustainable agriculture to elements of the mainstream agricultural regime. Drawing on the innovations and transition literature, the paper frames the analysis around niche-regime interaction using the notion of niche-regime compatibility. Design/Methodology/Approach: 17 Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture (LINSA) engaged in agricultural food production, non-food and rural development were analyzed. In line with the project's transdisciplinary approach data were collected in a series of participatory workshops. Findings: Five modes of LINSA-regime interaction are distinguished based on compatibility. The level of LINSA-regime compatibility influences the extent of the diffusion of LINSA ideas and practices into the regime. However, interaction processes within these modes reveal multiple and diverse connections between LINSA and regime entities suggesting a more complex relationship exists. Practical implications: A range of connecting processes and activities (for example, certification, exemption from regulation, facilitation of networking) can bring about effective LINSA-regime interaction and could be externally supported. Originality/Value: Empirical evidence from 17 case studies provides valuable insights from a number of different contexts across Europe. By directing analysis of interaction at the level of LINSA (niche project), rather than at the macro level, the study offers an original perspective. It suggests that the transition to sustainable agriculture might be understood as a complex of interactive processes leading to a series of adaptive changes, rather than as regime change.

Endemic problems in EU "lagging rural regions" (LRRs) are well documented and various support mechanisms have long been in place to help overcome structural difficulties. Nevertheless, new rural development architectures are now being sought and some scholars have posited that LRRs may benefit from the "quality (re)turn" in food and a relative shift from long to short food supply chains. The ways in which this "new agriculture" relates to rural development in lagging regions sound fine in theory. However, in practice it is far from clear what will actually happen, where and how. This paper attempts to answer some of these questions and, using a Delphi technique, to forecast those factors likely to influence supply chain development and performance in two LRRs in the UK: West Wales and the Scottish-English Borders. The findings suggest that while most experts willingly accept the socio-economic values that can be gained by localising, shortening and synergising the food chain in LRRs, there are also important barriers that question the emergence of such an agrarian based rural development dynamic. These include the small number and size of "alternative" producers in both locales, with most still locked into industrial forms of production; the restrictive influence of bureaucracy; the shortfall of key intermediaries in both regions' food chains; and the poor provision of key physical infrastructures (e.g. roads, railway and telecommunications). The Delphi method also reveals how expert opinions about rural development in LRRs are contingent and contested, with contradictions emerging within, as well as between, rounds.

• Animal disease eradication is conceptualised as cruel optimism. • Policy mobilities circulate neoliberal affects to promote logics of ownership. • Lived experience of ownership results in disillusion and mental exhaustion. • Policy mobilities serve to hide affectual realities of neoliberalism. • 'Detached attachment' reflects a continued but problematic relation to eradication. Using Berlant's concept of cruel optimism, this paper explores how animal disease eradication can represent an unimaginable fantasy, the pursuit of which is an obstacle to farmers' emotional and financial prosperity. The paper shows how atmospheres of optimism surrounding disease eradication are constructed and linked to policy mobilities. These apparent trans -national circulations of neoliberal logics of 'ownership' provide policy legitimacy at times of crisis, but also disguise the emotional experiences of neoliberal policy lives and serve political interests by marginalising alternatives to the allure of eradication. The paper bases these arguments within an analysis of the development of animal disease policy in England since 1997, and recent interviews and workshops exploring future policy options for disease control with farmers and other stakeholders. Following the development of bovine Tuberculosis policy, the paper shows how the transnational mobility of neoliberal policies promoting farmer ownership were used to legitimise farmer- owned culling companies to control infected wildlife. In describing how these policies unravelled through emotional burnout and disillusion amongst farmers, the paper describes the difficulties of detachment from a relation of cruel optimism, either marked by tragedy and trauma, or an incompleteness defined as 'attached detachment'. In conclusion, the paper calls for further attention to other rural and agricultural fantasies to shed further light on the inequities of neoliberal life and need for just transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The special issue is on dynamics of responsibility in the context of food systems. • Responsibility has growing importance in the context of sustainability transitions. • Responsibility changes and depends on institutional conditions. • Responsibility has three dimensions: temporal, socio-technical and relational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to financing is crucial for farmers to ensure competitiveness and to facilitate change. A better understanding of how farmers can access funds could help farmers to remain profitable and to adopt more sustainable farming practices. However, most of the academic literature discussing agricultural financing depicts farmers' access to funds as impersonal and universal – emerging from the idea of "optimal financial behaviour". This paper takes a different approach and introduces the concept of "financial subjectivities" to show how financial markets are constructed as locally embedded reinterpretations of the financialisation of agriculture that guide local agro-financial relations. We examine financial subjectivities in Latvia, Denmark and the UK respectively to understand how stakeholders co-constitute contextually embedded relations between farmers and banks and to assess processes of agro-financial relations in specific national contexts. The cases illustrate different relationships between banks and farms. In Latvia, agricultural crediting has developed comparatively recently and is heavily supported by government intervention; in Denmark, agriculture has undergone a period of financial crisis, and farmers are struggling to refinance and remain profitable; meanwhile, in the UK, relations between farmers and banks are well established but increasingly strained as agricultural producer returns on investment yield less profit. Each case thus reflects historical development trajectories and the regulatory engagement of agro-financial relations, asserting the importance of embedding analysis of agricultural financing in specific socio-political contexts. • Most farmers do not have resources to make the investments needed to ensure the competitiveness of their farm. • Financialisation is a global phenomenon which is maintained by actors that are global in their nature and foci. • Financial relations are locally embedded and locally reimagined. • Financialisation has to be renegotiated in diverse contexts as part of a broad set of development trajectories. • Financial subjectivities are locally embedded reinterpretations of the financialisation. • Banks play an important role in facilitating a shift towards more sustainable models of farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Vaccination of badgers may reduce the spread of bovine tuberculosis to cattle. • The paper examines evidence of risk compensation and spillover behaviours amongst farmers. • Increased risk taking by farmers is associated with vaccination. • Risk compensation is linked to low self-efficacy amongst farmers. • Lack of spillover behaviour is due to low cultural saliency of vaccination. This paper analyses farmers' behavioural responses to Government attempts to reduce the risk of disease transmission from badgers to cattle through badger vaccination. Evidence for two opposing behavioural adaptions is examined in response to the vaccination of badgers to reduce the risk of transmission to farmed cattle. Risk compensation theory suggests that interventions that reduce risk, such as vaccination, are counterbalanced by negative behavioural adaptions. By contrast, the spillover effect suggests that interventions can prompt further positive behaviours. The paper uses data from a longitudinal mixed methods study of farmers' attitudes to badger vaccination to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis, their reports of biosecurity practices, and cattle movement data in 5 areas of England, one of which experienced badger vaccination. Analysis finds limited evidence of spillover behaviours following vaccination. Lack of spillover is attributed to farmers' beliefs in the effectiveness of biosecurity and the lack of similarity between badger vaccination and vaccination for other animal diseases. Risk compensation behaviours are associated with farmers' beliefs as to who should manage animal disease. Rather than farmers' belief in vaccine effectiveness, it is more likely that farmers' low sense of being able to do anything to prevent disease influences their apparent risk compensation behaviours. These findings address the gap in the literature relating to farmers' behavioural adaptions to vaccine use in the management of animal disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit poses a significant challenge to the future governance of the UK agri-food sector. Policy decisions that will be made in the next few years will initiate a major new phase of agrarian change and regulation. We are seeing signs of this already in agri-food policy discourse, including scenarios related to food and farming futures post-Brexit. Academic representations of Brexit and agriculture are also mostly futures-orientated. This is important analysis; however, Brexit processes are active now, rather than simply in the future, influencing the lives of farming families, farm employees, food chain actors and local communities. This paper examines how Brexit is being discussed now in two key agricultural sectors: cereals and horticulture. Regional newspaper articles are used to provide initial insights into the 'present realities' of Brexit and agriculture. By this we mean how producers, associated food chain actors and the public are engaging with Brexit now, in terms of changes they are making to their livelihoods, and expectations about future uncertainty in the present day. We conclude by making recommendations for future research to contextualize every-day, lived experiences of Brexit in agri-food governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article applies the transition approach to a novel food production context, via an examination of the food production side of permaculture. More specifically, it examines attempts by the permaculture community in England to interact and influence the Agriculture Knowledge System of the mainstream agro‐food regime. Strategic Niche Management and Communities of Practice theory are combined to examine the ways in which the permaculture community has evolved and has sought to develop its agro‐ecology message and influence the agro‐food regime. Evidence of second order learning and networking with stakeholders outside the community of practice is limited. A tension between internal activities that reinforce a boundary between the permaculture knowledge system and the wider Agriculture Knowledge System are evident. Some external activities designed to cross boundaries are noted. However, activities designed to translate permaculture ideas into mainstream agriculture have had limited success. There is some evidence of interaction and lateral linkage with sub‐regimes to enhance capacity but this is usually in individual capacities. Examining the evolution of radical niche innovations such as permaculture thus reveals the way that beliefs, values and epistemologies make the process of sustainability transition challenging and complex, particularly when different knowledge systems clash with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including alternative food networks (AFNs), agri-food research, and food supply chains.

There is a need to identify key existing and emerging issues relevant to digitalisation in agricultural production that would benefit from a stronger evidence base and help steer policy formulation. To address this, a prioritisation exercise was undertaken to identify priority research questions concerning digital agriculture in the UK, but with a view to also informing international contexts. The prioritisation exercise uses an established and effective participatory methodology for capturing and ordering a wide range of views. The method involves identifying a large number of participants and eliciting an initial long list of research questions which is reduced and refined in subsequent voting stages to select the top priorities by theme. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and snowballing to represent a number of sectors, organisations, companies and disciplines across the UK. They were each invited to submit up to 10 questions according to certain criteria, and this resulted in 195 questions from a range of 40 participants (largely from England with some representation from Scotland and Wales). Preliminary analysis and clustering of these questions through iterative analysis identified seven themes as follows: data governance; data management; enabling use of data and technologies; understanding benefits and uptake of data and technologies; optimising data and technologies for performance; impacts of digital agriculture; and new collaborative arrangements. Subsequent stages of voting, using an online ranking exercise and a participant workshop for in-depth discussion, refined the questions to a total of 27 priority research questions categorised into 15 gold, 7 silver and 5 bronze, across the 7 themes. The questions significantly enrich and extend previous clustering and agenda setting using literature sources, and provide a range of new perspectives. The analysis highlights the interconnectedness of themes and questions, and proposes two nexus for future research: the different dimensions of value, and the social and institutional arrangements to support digitalisation in agriculture. These emphasise the importance of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, and the need to tackle the binary nature of current analytical frames. These new insights are equally relevant to contexts outside the UK. This paper highlights the need for research actions to inform policy, not only instrumentally by strengthening the evidence base, but also conceptually, to prompt new thinking. To our knowledge this methodology has not been previously applied to this topic. [Display omitted] • Policy on digital agriculture requires a stronger evidence base. • A prioritisation exercise was conducted in UK to identify priority research questions. • 195 questions from a range of participants were clustered into seven themes. • 27 priority questions (15 gold, 7 silver and 5 bronze) were identified. • The questions provide a research framework to steer policy, both in UK and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite an increasing interest in more sustainable forms of land management, few analyses have examined whether ‘local’ or ‘alternative’ food supply systems are sustainable in environmental, economic and social terms. Using SUSTAIN''s ‘sustainable food’ criteria, this paper analyses the sustainability of a number of ‘speciality’ food supply chains operated by small rural enterprises in the Scottish/English borders. Results indicate that, in the main, the case study businesses are not particularly sustainable; instead, driven by a strong economic imperative, they often have to ‘dip’ into various ‘links’ associated with more conventional (commodity-based) food supply chains. The paper concludes by warning against the tendency to conflate terms such as ‘local’, ‘alternative’, ‘speciality’ and ‘sustainable’. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]