Narrative Analysis of Biodiversity in Food System Transformation Literature

A new report from Wageningen Social & Economic Research looks at seven key narratives that are often used when we talk about transforming food systems: food sovereignty, agroecology, One Health, more than human, multifunctional landscapes, market-based frameworks and regenerative food systems. It asks how these narratives are constructed, how they position biodiversity, and what assumptions and blind spots sit behind them.

One of the main messages is that biodiversity is rarely a central theme. It is usually talked about indirectly as "biodiversity loss" or treated as one environmental factor among many, often becoming part of broader sustainability language. This means its complexity, values, risks and opportunities are not fully explored. Most narratives stay quite anthropocentric, with the exception of the more than human narrative, and they differ in where they sit on familiar tensions such as top down vs bottom up, radical vs reformist and techno-optimistic vs techno-skeptical.

The study also points to shared blind spots: there is limited attention to how to phase out harmful practices or engage dominant actors in the current industrial food system, and biodiversity is often framed in mainly instrumental terms, overlooking its intrinsic and relational values. At the same time, the dialogue sessions that were part of the research spotlighted how working with narratives can make hidden values, emotions and power dynamics more visible and turn potential barriers into bridges for connection and learning.

NFP contributed to this work through the Biodiversity and Food Systems partnership. The seven narratives were collectively identified and selected in a joint mapping exercise, focusing on those narratives that best illustrate the diversity of thinking on biodiversity and food system transformation. NFP also helped bring in perspectives from policy, practice and research through a stakeholder dialogue session with members of the partnership that validated and enriched the findings.

For this community, the report can be a useful mirror: which of these seven narratives feels closest to your own work, in your personal life, and where do you see room to bring biodiversity more to the center?

Van Doorninck, Hermans, Bizzotto Molina, Minderhoud, Fernandez De Cordoba Farini, Remans, Karssenberg, 2025. Narrative Analysis of Biodiversity in Food System Transformation Literature. Wageningen, Wageningen Social & Economic Research, Report 2025-142-1. 54 pp.; 2 fig.; 2 tab.; 56 ref.

With expert input from
Katie Minderhoud, Claudia Fernandez De Cordoba Farini, Roseline Remans, Mariëlle Karssenberg