102 Chapter 4 Debates on anticipation and transformation are also connected in the food systems domain. Food systems are generally considered to be in need of drastic transformations, including in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation (Dinesh et al., 2021). More sustainable food system futures focus on, amongst others, meeting global food and nutritional demands, reducing inequalities in access to healthy food, and addressing its role in environmental degradation and emissions (Ingram, 2011). The concept of ‘food system’ puts the focus on the interconnected relationships between all activities in the commodity chain, the interactions across scales and socio-economic, environmental, political constraints and impacts (Ingram, 2011; Termeer et al., 2018). Governing future food systems, therefore, entails spanning the boundaries between the diverse sectors, scales, spheres, and between policy and science (Pereira and Drimie, 2016). Various anticipation processes are used to anticipatory govern sustainability transformations of food systems. Anticipation processes are generally considered useful for engaging with system-oriented principles such as those of food systems (on synergies and trade-offs, dynamics and reflexivity). More formal and systematic foresight are considered particularly useful to explore themultitude of dimensions, scales, and temporal dimensions of complexities and uncertainties of global environmental change to which food systems must adapt (Wiebe et al., 2018). Others have used anticipation processes to help new groups of actors collectively explore options for the radical transformation of food systems, focusing on bottom-up initiatives and including marginalized perspectives (Bennett et al., 2016; Pereira et al., 2021). Anticipation processes in the food systems domain thus take on a variety of methodological approaches in a diversity of methods and tools. They range from global modeling (Mason-D’Croz et al., 2016) and global environmental assessments (van Vuuren et al., 2012) to participatory processes (Hebinck et al., 2018), cost-effectiveness analysis (Landert et al., 2017) and seed initiatives (Bennett et al., 2016) - or combinations of the above (Palazzo et al., 2017) each having their specific foci and limitations regarding what and whose futures can be imagined. These processes also contribute to different forms of guiding actions in the present. Some discussions are about making food systems more adaptive to global environmental and societal change (Ingram and Zurek, 2018) and investments have been allocated to contribute to incremental change rather than accelerating transformations (Dinesh et al., 2021). Others have used anticipation processes to help new groups of actors collectively explore options for the radical transformation of future food systems through bottom-up initiatives (Bennett et al., 2016; Koretskaya and Feola, 2020). There are thus diverse conceptions of the future embedded in these processes of anticipation as well as different ideas on how anticipation can guide sustainability transformations in the present. These assumptions give shape to decisions regarding who gets to decide
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