Putting agency at the center of food systems transformation: Who holds power in food systems transformation?

As rights holders, knowledge holders, producers, consumers, and leaders, people and communities must have the space and power to shape the decisions that affect food systems.

Food systems transformation is often discussed through policies, pathways, targets, and implementation plans. Yet at the center of every food system are people: those who grow, process, sell, prepare, consume, and depend on food every day.

A webinar organized by the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub (SAC) brought together experts to explore the question, who has the power to shape food systems transformation?

The discussion focused on agency as a critical dimension of inclusive, equitable, and rights-based food systems transformation. Speakers examined how voice, representation, knowledge, rights, and accountability influence the way food systems decisions are made at local, national, and global levels.

Agency beyond consultation

Opening the webinar, Dr Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee, framed agency as a matter of people, power, voice, and representation. She invited participants to reflect on who participates in decision-making, whose knowledge is recognized, and which structural barriers continue to limit meaningful influence.

Prof Barbara Burlingame, Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee and Professor of Public Health, Nutrition and Food Systems at Massey University, situated agency within the broader food security and nutrition agenda. She recalled that the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition proposed agency and sustainability as additional dimensions of food security, alongside availability, access, utilization, and stability.

Agency, she explained, is about the capacity of individuals and groups to make their own decisions about the foods they eat, produce, process, and distribute. It also means being able to engage in the policies and governance processes that shape food systems.

This is especially relevant as countries continue implementing and updating their national food systems pathways. In many pathway documents, agency may not always be named directly, but it often appears through references to choice, participation, livelihoods, resources, and governance. These entry points can help turn consultation into more sustained decision-making power.

Recognizing whose knowledge counts

The webinar also addressed the question of evidence. Food systems policies often rely on scientific and technical knowledge, but speakers stressed that other forms of knowledge must also be recognized.

Co-Chair Burlingame highlighted the importance of Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge, which is sometimes treated as secondary or anecdotal despite being built through generations of observation, practice, and adaptation. In the context of climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and land degradation, this knowledge is essential.

The discussion pointed to a broader issue in food systems governance: advisory processes need to reflect a diversity of disciplines, perspectives, and knowledge systems. Relying on a single institution, method, or perspective risks excluding the people and communities who understand food systems through lived experience.

Rights that can be claimed

Dr Hilal Elver, Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee and former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, brought a human rights-based perspective to the discussion. She stressed that rights cannot remain only in legal texts. They need to be known, claimed, and used.

In this sense, agency is what allows rights holders to make rights real. It gives people and communities the ability to question institutions, demand accountability, and participate in shaping the policies that affect their lives. “Participation is important, but decision-making is essential,” she noted.

A human rights-based approach also requires attention to participation, accountability, non-discrimination, transparency, empowerment, human dignity, and the rule of law. Applied to food systems, this means giving stronger space to smallholder farmers, women, Indigenous Peoples, local producers, civil society organizations, and community-based actors.

Women’s agency and gender justice

Prof Nitya Rao, Scientific Advisory Committee member and Professor of Gender and Development at the University of East Anglia, focused on women’s agency and gender justice in food systems transformation.

Women play a major role across agrifood systems, yet continue to face barriers linked to wages, land ownership, secure tenure, unpaid care work, and limited representation in policymaking. Rao stressed that recognition alone is not enough. Equal entitlements need to be backed by resources, institutional mechanisms, budgets, and representation in decision-making spaces.

She also emphasized the importance of intersectionality. A woman may also be Indigenous, poor, a smallholder farmer, or part of a marginalized group. These overlapping realities affect whether people can participate meaningfully and benefit from food systems transformation.

With 2026 declared as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the discussion highlighted a timely opportunity to strengthen attention to women’s rights, leadership, and decision-making power in food systems.

Making participation count

Participants raised practical questions on women’s legal rights to land, inheritance, and credit; the role of civil society organizations; climate change impacts on agriculture; seed banks; education; and the knowledge of smallholder farmers.

The speakers agreed that formal education should not be the only measure of knowledge or legitimacy. Farmers, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities hold knowledge that is essential for transforming food systems. The challenge is to make this knowledge visible, valued, and connected to policy processes.

The discussion also underlined the importance of engaging with National Convenors and national pathways. As countries continue to advance food systems transformation, these processes offer concrete entry points for people and communities to use their agency, contribute evidence, and hold decision-makers accountable.

Agency as a condition for fairer food systems

The webinar closed with a strong reminder: food systems transformation cannot be inclusive if people are only invited to speak without having the power to shape decisions.

Agency means having the space, resources, recognition, and accountability mechanisms needed to influence food systems governance. It means treating people and communities as rights holders, knowledge holders, and partners in implementation.

As countries continue working through their national food systems pathways, strengthening agency will be essential to ensure that food systems transformation responds to the realities, priorities, and rights of the people it is meant to serve.

Watch the recording