Agroecological transitions towards climate-resilient food systems are essential for sustainable environmental, food security and livelihood outcomes. Transitioning to resilient, environmentally sustainable agroecological models of production requires overcoming major barriers to scaling at multiple levels (farms, landscapes, national & global value chains). Research and innovation activities are needed to enable scaling of agroecological innovations and evidence-based transitions to climate-resilience food systems across interlinked urban, peri-urban and rural communities.

EcoFoodSystems recognises the food systems connectivity between rural hinterlands and city regions as a key nexus for agroecological transitions towards more climate-resilient food systems. By 2050, more than two thirds of the world population will be living in urban areas, the majority living in cities.

A rural-urban food systems transition focus is critical to ensuring sustainable rural development in concert with transitioning of food
systems in city regions towards more sustainable, resilient, and healthy dietary outcomes.

Despite important advances around national scale food system data (e.g. Food System Dashboards), significant gaps remain on how to translate data into actionable information for decision makers, especially at the subnational level. The EcoFoodSystems project will place particular emphasis on linking national to subnational food systems (including data systems for decision-support) in the three countries under study: Colombia, Ethiopia and Vietnam. EcoFoodSystems will demonstrate how to generate sustainable data streams for decision-making that are relevant and actionable on both a national and subnational scale.