On a global scale agriculture and food will face key challenges of properly feeding a population of nine billion individuals in 2050, while preserving the ecosystems from which other services are also expected, such as bioenergy production, biodiversity use and conservation, carbon storage and climate regulation. To develop future sustainable agricultural production and food systems, agronomic, ecological, economic and social challenges have to simultaneously be taken into account. The framework of agroecology applied on the food system could be a useful concept to support this development. Although the scale and dimension of scientific research in agroecology has been enlarged in the last years towards the food system approach, it is still difficult to outline clear concepts, new models and new methods that specify it.
