Six research leverage points capable of accelerating food systems transformation

Today’s food systems are under immense pressure. As they attempt to nourish a growing population and sustain livelihoods across the globe, they must also protect biodiversity and both withstand and respond to the increasing threats of climate change. And unfortunately, many funding and research models still prioritize easily quantifiable, short-term gains like higher yields, new inputs or ‘silver-bullet’ technologies — without confronting the political, economic and social forces that keep unsustainable and unequal systems in place. 

A Matter of Principles: Leveraging Research for Food Systems Transformation offers a glimpse into a different prospective future. This new report synthesizes ten scoping studies and two research programs led by IDRC that span Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Using the Agroecology finance assessment tool as a key methodology, it applies the 13 principles of agroecology to identify where research and investment can have the greatest systemic impact.  

Its message is clear: research must extend beyond production and the farm gate to address power, participation, markets, equity and governance — and the ways in which we develop and value knowledge. 

To explore this, the report identifies six interconnected leverage points meant to help guide researchers, food systems actors and donors in their work. Like a set of pulleys, they work best together, distributing effort across the system and increasing the potential for lasting change. 

Lever 1: Dismantle the barriers that uphold the status quo

Promising innovations cannot flourish when factors like subsidies, regulations, tax incentives, land concentration, research structures and corporate influence continue to favour modern industrial food systems. Research can help identify, confront and transcend these barriers by exploring pathways to strengthen public support, improve access to resources, challenge the concentration of power, improve accountability and shift prevailing narratives about who feeds the world — and with what. Research and investment approaches rooted in political –economy-, political –ecology- and rights-based approaches are the most likely to identify and dismantle these structural constraints.  

Lever 2: Build power from the bottom up

Small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, women and youth all hold essential knowledge that drive agroecological transitions, but these groups remain chronically underfunded and underrepresented in global fora. Long-term support for coalitions, cooperatives, research networks and South–South knowledge exchange can strengthen the means of these key voices to set agendas, co-create knowledge and influence policy. This means creating funding opportunities that nourish and strengthen relationships and institutional capacities — not just those that support applied research projects. Trust, collective learning and lasting change require time. 

Lever 3: Invest at the territorial- and landscape-scale

Research that moves beyond the farm level to advance transitions at the landscape- and territorial-scales can strengthen locally owned coalitions, inclusive governance and viable economic models and markets that feed back into farm-level gains and community resilience. Landscape-scale research takes a place-based, holistic and transdisciplinary approach to examining the social, political, economic and cultural processes that must shift in order for agroecology to thrive. Public procurement and other market-shaping policy interventions, Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) and inter-sectoral coordination are examples of promising research areas that already have high traction. Investing and producing evidence at the territorial level links territorial innovations to larger public budgets and policy processes.  

Lever 4: Centre equity, inclusion and human rights

Equity is not a secondary benefit: it is a necessary condition for transformation. Women and equity-seeking groups are at the centre of food systems, whether in food production, seed stewardship, processing or markets — but they face significant barriers in accessing land, finance and innovative technology and have little decision-making power or recognition for their work. Food systems transformation can be greatly accelerated through research and investments that identify and challenge the legal, sociocultural and institutional roots of exclusion, while using intersectional approaches that consider factors such as age, class, disability, ethnicity and other aspects of identity. Rights-based and feminist research approaches can be powerful tools to assess whether agency, resources and power have genuinely shifted. 

Lever 5: Ensure approaches to governance, research and innovation shift power

Inviting key voices into predetermined processes is not the same as truly sharing power. Participatory governance, community-led inquiry, Indigenous-led research, farmer-driven innovation and safeguards against the dominance of powerful interests are urgently needed in multi-stakeholder spaces. Research funders must support the co-governance of research agendas and decision-making, compensate participation fairly and build longer and more flexible timelines that enable trust, dialogue and increased capacity. 

Lever 6: Measure what matters

Conventional metrics often prioritize data that is easy to count, like yields, inputs and productivity. But food systems transformation also depends on fairness, participation, cultural relevance, autonomy, wellbeing and inclusive governance. These outcomes might be more difficult to measure and are often overlooked in research initiatives, but they are no less consequential. Research funders can instead aim to support harmonized, principles-aligned frameworks that combine both quantitative and qualitative evidence, remain adaptable to context, recognize multiple knowledge systems and keep data under appropriate local control. 

A funding agenda equal to the challenge

These levers provide valuable guidance, but acting upon them will require more than simply increasing the volume of investment. Technical research projects still have an important role to play, but they must be intentionally connected to the structural levers that enable broader change.  

This report therefore indicates a strong need for:  

• Principles-based funding; 
• Increased, long-term and flexible support; 
• A diversity of smaller and mid-sized grants that can reach smallholder farmers and other equity-seeking groups; 
• Co-governance of research investments with affected communities;  
• Proportionate monitoring requirements; and 
• Greater coordination among donors to influence public investment. 

The question is no longer whether transformation is needed, but whether funding practices and priorities are designed to make it possible. Echoing a growing body of international and regional organizations already calling for systemic shifts towards transformational funding priorities and practices, A Matter of Principles proposes an ambitious agenda for fully tapping into the power of research by orienting it where it would have the greatest impact. In times of multiple crises and reduced ODA funding, this report offers an innovative roadmap to unlock food systems transformation and proposes concrete ways to action it now.  

The message to the research for development and funding community is ultimately one of opportunity. Research can achieve much more than documenting food systems crises and goes beyond improving isolated, farm-based practices. When guided by shared principles and anchored in these six leverage points, it can help redistribute power, reshape institutions and build food systems that are more resilient, equitable and nourishing.