The current industrial agricultural system can provide great amounts of food, but at what price? This report, published by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), argues for a diversification of agricultural practices, as opposed to the industrialised monocultures, in order to reach a more sustainable food system. The authors analyse the main failures related to widespread industrial highly-specialised systems: environmental, economic, and social ones. But, although these drawbacks are real, industrial systems keep thriving and expanding: according to the authors this is because they are strongly tied to a whole industrial food system through feedback loops and ‘lock-ins’, which hinder change. After presenting evidence of the positive sides of diversified agro ecological systems compared with the industrial monocultures in terms of production, health issues, and environmental conservation, the authors develop recommendations, turning the ‘lock-ins’ into opportunities for change: for example, developing new indicators for evaluating the success of agro ecological agriculture, in contrast to the yield focused indicators related to industrial agriculture.