It is now widely accepted that fundamental changes are needed across the food system to address the climate emergency, food insecurity, tackle an escalating global public health crisis, and ensure resilient livelihoods for food and farmworkers. Over recent decades, agroecology has risen to meet the challenge, offering a holistic framework to address current food systems’ environmental, social and economic failings. At the same time, the steady growth of the organic market has made a strong impact on the global development of standards and regulatory requirements. Additional – and occasionally competing – approaches, such as regenerative agriculture, ecological organic agriculture and others have also increasingly been taken up in different regions of the world.

This session at Oxford Real Farming Conference 2021, organized by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), discussed agroecology contributions and other approaches as an alternative to developing sustainable food systems. It particularly examined common principles related to recognizing the risks of "greenwashing" and "co-opting" in the context of current debates about the future of global agriculture and the food system.