Innovation for the people: evolving local crowds to develop sustainable food systems

Food systems are directly linked to people's everyday lives in their local contexts and vice versa. However, food policy and economic developments in the food sector usually evolve far away from these local contexts and - apart from the business objectives of the food and agribusiness industry (product development, marketing, etc.) - also far away from the actors who buy and eat the food. The paper presents a new model of how the sphere of (local) food system actors (agricultural and industrial producers) on the one hand and the sphere of local actors (academia, civil society and the state) can be productively linked with the goal of a more sustainable food system. Based on a scoping review (Web of Science and SCOPUS) of international studies, we will filter out which good practices can be found for participatory processes that (1) aim at building more sustainable agricultural systems and/or (2) already show results and impacts of participatory processes and new (local) networks.