The terms 'regenerative agriculture' and 'nature-based solutions' have gained prominence in policy and funding spaces related to food systems. Global policy fora like the UN Food Systems Summit and the UN climate and biodiversity conferences have recently used these terms as bywords for sustainable development. They add to a collection of terms and ideas that claim to present sustainable solutions for food systems, including agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, sustainable intensification, conservation agriculture, zero-carbon agriculture, permaculture, biodynamic farming, organic agriculture, holistic resource management, and so on. Although there is broad agreement about the need to transform food systems and make them more sustainable, there are different interpretations about what that means in practice, and there is growing competition between different approaches and terminology.

This study was motivated by concerns that a narrow set of actors is driving debates and shaping policy processes related to the sustainable transformation of food systems. More specifically, there are concerns that the mainstreaming of agroecology—a concept that has long combined ecological and social aspects— and its amalgamation with other ideas linked to the sustainability discourse, result in emptying the concept of its social and political underpinnings. This study aims to identify and critically analyze competing framings and narratives connected to agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and nature-based solutions in agriculture and food. It investigates how and why these terms have been taken up in recent global policy spaces and funding streams.