The need for capacity building to accelerate food system transformation

Food systems face several persistent environmental, social, health-related and economic-related problems. To stimulate an urgently needed food system transformation, effective reflexive, integrative and participatory research and innovation approaches are essential. These approaches require different sets of competences for a variety of actors. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge regarding competence development among (future) professionals in relation to food system transformation. We propose the development of competences for food system transformation that are not only tailored to profession, but also to envisioned actor role(s) and argue that competence development should be accompanied by broader capacity-building strategies to stimulate the implementation of transformative transdisciplinary research practices.