Innovation, governance, and sustainability in food systems: Structural tensions shaping digital transformation and stakeholder engagement

Sustainable food systems are now negotiated within a polycrisis defined by climate and biodiversity breakdown, persistent malnutrition, geopolitical fragmentation, and accelerating technological change. However, the prevailing innovation discourse in agri-food systems remains constrained by two recurring simplifications: an economistic framing of ‘innovation’ as productivity enhancement, and a technocratic framing of ‘digital transformation’ as inherently progressive. In this editorial, we position the International Journal of Innovation Studies special issue on Digital Transformation, Stakeholder Engagement, and Innovation in Sustainable Food Systems as an opportunity to re-politicise the agri-food innovation agenda. Drawing on a socio-technical transition lens and a co-creation perspective, we identify three structural tensions that shape contemporary agri-food innovation: (i) regeneration versus extraction, (ii) participation versus capture, and (iii) data sovereignty versus data enclosure. We argue that the credibility of sustainability-oriented innovation depends less on the novelty of technologies than on how innovation is governed, whose knowledge counts, and how risks, costs, and value are distributed across actors and territories. We also introduce the contributions in this special issue, showing how they illuminate the politics of trust, legitimacy, participation, and public value in digital and institutional innovation across food consumption, governance, and producer engagement. We close with a research agenda centred on ethical experimentation, accountable AI, and mission-oriented governance that prioritizes planetary boundaries, distributive justice, and epistemic pluralism in agri-food transformation.