Many aspects of global food systems are now highly industrialised, meaning they rely on large-scale, mechanised production processes that emphasise efficiency and high yield (Burch and Lawrence 2009). Industrialisation has been accompanied by corporatisation (the concentration of control in large, often multinational corporations) and financialisation (the increasing influence of financial actors, markets and motives over food production and distribution), which together have shaped the structure and operations of the majority of modern food systems (Isakson 2017). These processes have been driven by the interrelated goals of profit and ‘shareholder value’ maximisation, capital accumulation, and GDP growth, reinforcing concentrated corporate interests and intensifying market consolidation (Gertel and Sippel 2016). A key pathway by which financialised food systems have adversely influenced public and planetary health is through driving and reinforcing the production and consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and intensively produced animal source foods (ASFs). These foods constitute substantial and overlapping portions of diets throughout the world, particularly in high income countries, and are increasingly driving food system transitions in low- and middle-income countries (Baker et al. 2020; Miller et al. 2022).

In this paper, we focus on financialisation as it presupposes both industrialisation and corporatisation; thus, addressing financialisation also inherently engages with industrialisation and corporatisation. We argue that financialisation is a core structural force underpinning contemporary food systems. Our analysis focuses on how financialisation has shaped the production and consumption of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs through similar mechanisms. We seek to explore 'common leverage points' to identify interventions that can challenge the corporate power embedded in financialised food systems, disrupting the structures that sustain the dominance of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs. While most previous analyses treat UPFs and intensively produced ASFs as distinct policy challenges, often coupled with consumer-targeted policy responses, this paper centres financialisation as a key driver of their entrenchment within broader food systems. Thus, this commentary seeks to offer a structural critique that identifies pathways for transformative policy and collective actions.

UPFs and intensive ASFs are often tasty, convenient, culturally entrenched and, in some cases, can provide nutritional benefits (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018; Knowles 2022; Monteiro et al. 2013). However, high and excessive production and consumption of these foods are associated with the substitution of healthier foods and eating patterns, as well as various other adverse consequences, including the reinforcement of socio-economic and environmental injustice. In relation to diets high in UPFs, evidence links them with increased risks for diet-related chronic diseases, including common mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression (Elizabeth et al. 2020; Lane et al. 2024). High intake of ASFs (including, but not limited to, ultra-processed meat and dairy) is similarly associated with risks for cardiovascular disease and some cancers (albeit with less scientific consensus), while the intensive production of ASFs is linked to the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and zoonotic disease outbreaks due to high-density farming conditions and the use of antibiotics to sustain productivity (WHO 2023).

While both types of foods (UPFs and ASFs) generate ecological harm, their environmental impact patterns vary in some ways. Evidence related to harmful UPF environmental impacts is emerging, suggesting that mass production is associated with biodiversity loss, high greenhouse gas emissions (based on total production, rather than per product), plastic waste and pollution, land degradation and impacts on water quality and scarcity (Anastasiou et al. 2022). This is mostly due to the large-scale reliance on monoculture cropping for key ingredients, which reduces agricultural biodiversity and depletes soil health, the extensive use of fossil fuel-based packaging materials, high energy consumption in processing and distribution, and the water-intensive nature of both ingredient cultivation and manufacturing processes (Seferidi et al. 2020). Evidence on the environmental impacts of ASF production is more established, particularly in relation to the use of ruminant animals. ASF production, coupled with the animal feed production required for intensive systems, emits the largest proportion of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural practices (Xu et al. 2021). ASF production is also, in many contexts, associated with large-scale deforestation, land conversion, soil erosion, and water and land pollution (WHO 2023).

Crucially, financialised food systems perpetuate profound injustices. Mass production of both UPFs and ASFs (and their inputs) is often facilitated by exploitative labour practices, enabled by weak regulatory protections, as well as land-grabbing, particularly in the global South (Lebaron 2021; McMichael 2022; Nolan and Bott 2018). Simultaneously, it results in the suffering of non-human animals through the use of confinement, painful procedures, and unnatural feeding routines of those used for livestock, as well as the dispossession and destruction of habitats of wildlife (Percival 2022).

While the harms of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs are often examined separately, the industries overlap significantly. The same large-scale mono-cropped globally-traded system that produces feed for animals also produces the main ingredients of many UPFs (soy, wheat, corn and sugar) (Fardet and Rock 2020; IPES-Food 2022). They also share inputs, such as plastics for packaging, and are embedded within an industrial farming complex reliant on capital-intensive technologies and tools designed to maximise efficiency (Suppan 2020; Wiebe 2012; Winders 2017). Furthermore, the outputs from intensive animal agriculture often constitute major ingredients in many UPFs, suggesting mutual reinforcement of these foods, including via ready meals, fast-food, and the use of dairy-based ingredients for confectionery, instant coffee drinks, infant formula, and ice cream (Neri et al. 2023). Moreover, reconstituted meat products, including industrially produced sausages, nuggets and some burgers, are categorised as UPFs (Monteiro et al. 2019).

The proliferation of UPFs and intensive ASFs has had a substantial impact on traditional dietary patterns, resulting in the loss of ‘food cultures’, propelled initially by colonialism and later exacerbated by economic and cultural globalisation, as well as more contemporary forms of economic colonialism (neocolonialism) (Holt Giménez and Shattuck 2011; Otero et al. 2015). It has also been argued that UPF and intensive ASF dominance in the food supply disconnects populations from their traditional diets, reduces culinary skills, and shifts dietary preferences towards UPFs and intensively produced ASFs (Olstad et al. 2023). The disconnection from traditional diets can be linked with broader trends related to the global dominance of financialised capitalism,Footnote 1 including social dislocation and urbanisation in the global South due to the spread of industrialised farming, weak labour protections related to work hours, and over-specialisation of national economies, which has undermined food security (Clapp and Isakson 2018a; Isakson 2017; McMichael 2021; Patel 2012).

There is broad consensus that a global transition to healthier, more environmentally sustainable and equitable food systems is needed to address the multiple environmental crises that are rapidly changing the eco-systems that humans and non-humans need to live (Slater et al. 2022). Moreover, there is widespread acknowledgement that the responsibility to change falls mostly on high income countries in the global North (Friel 2023). As such, there has been increasing academic recognition of the connected public health and environmental impacts of UPFs and intensive ASFs, respectively (Aceves-Martins et al. 2022; Godfray et al. 2018; Liyanapathirana et al. 2023; WHO 2023). However, existing discussions of these products, and associated policy recommendations, have typically occurred in distinct siloes, and often without fully considering the upstream and structural drivers of both UPFs and ASF production and consumption, including, as we detail here, the financialisation of food systems.

This commentary makes a call for more coordinated and collaboratively targeted action on UPFs and intensive ASFs by showing how these areas of food production and consumption overlap materially and via their entrenchment in broader financialised food systems. We then identify key mechanisms through which financialisation drives UPF and ASF expansion, before introducing the concept of common leverage points as a means of advancing transformative interventions. We conclude by discussing the implications for food system governance and advocacy, drawing on the theory of ecological regulation.

The Financialisation of Contemporary Food Systems

This work starts from the premise that financialised food systems, characterised by a set of key institutional arrangements and conditions, drive the production and consumption of both UPFs and intensively produced ASFs. The ‘financialisation’ of global food systems refers to a set of business processes and regulatory conditions marked by the development of new avenues for value to be extracted from farmers, citizen-consumers, and communities, and into the financial sector (Friel et al. 2024; Lawrence et al. 2015; Sippel et al. 2017). Albeit with geographical variances, it describes the transition toward greater involvement of financial motives, markets, actors, and institutions across multiple stages of supply chains, which wield significant influence over how food systems operate and are governed (Martin and Clapp 2015; McMichael 2013). This process unfolds through three interrelated dynamics: the development of new avenues for capital accumulation (e.g., agricultural derivatives, farmland real estate investment trusts); the prioritisation of shareholder value, driving cost-cutting and speculative strategies across agri-food firms; and the increasing penetration of financial logics into the everyday lives of farmers and citizen-consumers, including credit, insurance, and financial risk management tools (Clapp and Isakson 2018b). Large institutional investors, such as hedge funds and pension funds, now make substantial investments in the agri-food sector, where food and agricultural products are commodities traded on futures markets, resulting in price volatility and speculative trading (Burch and Lawrence 2009; Keenan et al. 2023).

Investing in large-scale UPF and intensive ASF producers is arguably more suited to highly financialised firms due to their potential for greater returns on investment (in contrast to small- and middle-sized enterprises). This is due to several reasons. Firstly, large-scale enterprises often leverage their economies-of-scale to produce and distribute products at a lower cost and a larger scale (Wood et al. 2021). In addition, standardisation processes and technologies have enabled large UPF and ASF corporations to build the power and reach of their brands, which are now some of the most valuable assets in the food system. For example, McDonald’s—one of the most prominent global retailers of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs—has an estimated brand value of more than $US220 billion (Statista 2024). More broadly, large agri-food firms also typically hold a substantial share of the market, giving them greater pricing power and influence over supply chains as well as easier access to capital markets to more readily secure large loans and investments. They also benefit from lower borrowing costs, and their global structures afford greater capacity to reduce tax obligations through practices such as profit shifting, further enhancing their financial advantage over smaller competitors (Hager and Baines 2020; Wood et al. 2023a).

Increasing financial sector investment in food and agriculture has arguably contributed to the consolidation of the agri-food industry, including via mergers and acquisitions. In many contexts, a relatively small number of dominant corporations largely dictate which foods are produced, distributed and marketed, driven primarily by the goal of maximising shareholder valueFootnote 2 (Clapp 2018; Keenan et al. 2023). Corporate concentration, in turn, is associated with greater corporate influence and control over food systems including how supply chains operate and what regulations and practices are pursued (Howard 2021).

More broadly, the financialisation of food systems has been enabled and promoted through the pursuit of neoliberal policies and programs, e.g., the liberalisation of markets, trade, and capital flows, accommodating and enhancing the substantial power of transnational food and agricultural corporations, especially those from the United States, Western Europe, and other high-income countries. For example, the US Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 deregulated agricultural commodity futures markets, facilitating speculative trading and permitting institutional investors to expand their presence in the sector (Clapp and Isakson 2018b). Such regulatory environments represent the underlying enablers of the financialisation of food systems, and the expansion of the consumptogenic systemFootnote 3 (including growth in UPF and ASF production and consumption) (Coveney 2013; Dixon and Banwell 2012; Friel et al. 2024; Parker and Johnson 2019).

Entrenching Financialisation: Ideologies and Power Dynamics Supporting the Dominance of UPFs and Intensive ASFs

A number of discursive and institutional (regulation- and policy-related) factors entrench financialised food systems, sustaining the dominance of UPFs and intensive ASFs despite the mounting evidence of their harms. Central to this are neoliberal and capitalist logics, which privilege market efficiency, deregulation, and individual choice as the primary mechanisms of food system governance. These logics prop up beliefs that ‘free’ markets deliver optimal outcomes and that individuals—rather than corporations or states—hold primary responsibility for dietary choices and health. These have subsequently been reinforced through industry messaging, policymaking, and general discourse related to diets and food systems (Ribeiro de Melo et al. 2024). For example, the continuation and expansion of industrial animal agriculture and food ultra-processing are often argued to be vital components of addressing malnutrition (particularly in low- and middle-income populations), food insecurity, and to produce sufficient food for ‘a growing global population’ (Vadiveloo and Gardner 2023; Weis 2020), despite the fact that much of this food is disproportionately allocated to high-income countries (Bryant et al. 2024; Clapp 2025). Moreover, techno-optimism (i.e. the belief that technology can solve any problem, including social and environmental issues), efficiency savings, and GDP growth are also frequently championed as essential, often overshadowing concerns about the impact on environmental sustainability, public health, and human and non-human wellbeing (Jarosz 2014; Sonnino et al. 2016; Tomlinson 2013).

Some proponents of the above ideological principles suggest that negative health and environmental impacts can be addressed by producing more food and providing the consumer with ‘choices’ (Mayes 2014). In part, this idea of providing consumers with choices also underpins many of the current policies being put forward to ameliorate harms resulting from contemporary diets, including public awareness campaigns and nutrition labelling schemes (Taillie et al. 2020; Van Loo et al. 2014). Such policy actions place the onus of responsibility on individual consumers to change their behaviour and select healthier choices, rather than targeting the structural drivers that shape how people eat (Johnson et al. 2023; Mayes and Sassano 2022; Northcott et al. 2025). While there is a role for labels and community education, an overemphasis on these solutions may place undue burden (and associated stigma) onto populations already under substantial resource and time strain (Carrington et al. 2021; Mayes 2014). In addition, informational measures that responsibilise the consumer are likely to favour the commercial interests of large UPF and intensive ASF corporations that can continue to conduct their business mostly as usual, as well as help create new markets, furthering opportunities to make and maximise profits (Northcott et al. 2025). Moreover, the emphasis on consumer-oriented measures and individual responsibility may detract from the salience of other policy solutions and may make it more difficult to build political priority for actions that address the broader commercial and structural drivers of UPFs and intensive ASFs (Parker et al., 2021). It can also contribute to the depoliticisation of food system challenges, not least by treating citizens as, first and foremost, consumers.

Resistance to the need to reduce UPF and intensively produced ASF production and consumption often focuses on aspects unrelated to the power dynamics driving their proliferation. For example, critiques of the UPF concept have mainly revolved around debating the evidence on their relationship to population health and whether associated risks extend beyond their fat, sugar and salt content (Gibney 2019). Additionally, concerns have been raised—likely stemming from the broader emphasis on individual responsibility—about the potential stigmatisation of UPF consumption, particularly due to socioeconomic biases in dietary recommendations (Lockyer et al. 2023) or their risk of promoting eating disorders, such as orthorexia (an eating disorder characterised by an excessive preoccupation with eating ‘healthy’ or ‘clean’ food) (Elias et al. 2022). Much of the opposition to reducing ASFs is grounded in appeals to preserve agricultural traditions (despite the modern realities of industrialised farming) and protect rural livelihoods (Ritchie 2023). Consequently, any recommendations to reduce ASF production and consumption have prompted fears of economic harm to farmers (Leroy and Ederer 2023), questions about the nutritional adequacy of reduced ASF diets (Beal et al. 2023), and concerns about the broader economic impacts on agricultural communities (Trewern et al. 2022). The considerations outlined above do carry some legitimacy and warrant attention from advocates and policymakers. However, we argue that examining the dominance of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs through the lens of financialisation may yield more synergistic outcomes in mitigating their negative impacts.

To date, examples of popular policy measures aimed at mitigating harms from high UPF consumption have orbited around front-of-pack-labels, consumer taxes and marketing restrictions. Proposed (yet rarely enacted) solutions to reduce the consumption of industrially produced meat have also included similar labelling schemes and tax proposals (Klenert et al. 2023), although ASF-related policies have centred more on the environmental harms of production. Examples include innovation in feed technologies and stricter regulation of animal waste products to manage methane, incentives for planting and retaining trees on-farm, and strict biosecurity regulation to manage the risks of AMR and zoonotic disease outbreak (Arcari 2017; Blattner and Ammann 2019; McGregor et al. 2021). Although all of the above proposed measures aim to promote healthy and sustainable food systems, they largely do so in a narrowly instrumental and piecemeal way, with minimal disruption to business activities (Northcott et al. 2023). Moreover, they tend to overlook the structural and systemic drivers of their production and consumption.

Lack of attention to structural and systemic drivers can also uphold financialised systems and reinforce existing power dynamics, while risking unintended consequences. For instance, the development of novel plant-based imitation meat and dairy products, as well as those produced by precision fermentation and cellular agriculture, as a solution to the environmental, food security, and animal welfare issues associated with ASFs. The promise that these novel food technologies will provide solutions has been promoted by tech-entrepreneurs, some governments, and a range of animal-welfare focused not-for-profits (Grosglik et al. 2024; Matwick 2024; Sexton 2020; Simon 2023). However, imitation meats (such as plant-based burger patties) have also garnered some criticism from public health and political economy scholars as they are generally categorised as ultra-processed, and their development has been backed by substantial investment from both the UPF and intensive ASF industries (Howard et al. 2021; Marchese et al. 2024). This has prompted questions about the degree to which they can mitigate the full spectrum of harms related to ASFs (Guthman and Biltekoff 2021; Howard et al. 2021). Some alternative protein producers (such as manufacturers of plant-based substitutes), though operating on a smaller scale, adopt similar financialised business models as both the UPF and intensive ASF industries (in fact, some producers are part of the UPF industry), highlighting mutual interests in these products as financial commodities rather than nourishing foods (Simon 2023). Furthermore, many alternative protein firms have been backed by venture capital, which incentivises rapid growth and eventual high returns, further aligning alternative protein production with the same financial logics driving the UPF and intensive ASF sectors (Mylan et al. 2023; Sievert et al. 2024a). Notwithstanding the potential for alternative proteins to alleviate the harms of intensive ASF at a product level, the entanglement of these industries and their shared roots in financialised food systems highlight the need to address the dominance of UPFs and intensively produced ASFs in an equitable and systematic manner.

While scholarship and advocacy on reducing harms from UPFs and ASFs do, at times, pay attention to financialisation, they often do so in isolation, overlooking the overlapping actors, institutions, and shared dynamics across these sectors. Thus, the interplay between actors and institutions is an important area for common leverage points to be identified. Both the UPF and ASF industries receive substantial support from their respective governments through various forms of corporate welfare, including financial subsidies, tax incentives, and infrastructure investments (Hendrickson et al. 2017; Howard 2019). For example, the U.S. government provides substantial subsidies to corn and soy producers, which indirectly support the production of cheap feed for the livestock industry, thereby reducing costs for intensive ASF producers (Smith 2019). These subsidies also indirectly contribute to the enabling of U.S. dominance in global markets (Clapp 2020). Similarly, an emerging trend in countries like Brazil, China and Russia is the rise in ‘national champion’ style policies, i.e., substantial state investment in firms that have been designated as part of a strategic sector for the economy and receive additional benefits such as preferential access to land, low-interest loans, and lowered regulatory oversight (Kurdin and Shastitko 2020; McMichael 2020). Some of these national champions, such as JBS S.A. (intensive ASF processor from Brazil) and COFCO (UPF producer from China), are now some of the world’s leading firms in intensive ASF and UPF production (Ricz and Schedelik 2023; Sievert et al. 2025; Wesz Jr et al. 2023). These forms of corporate welfare and state support enhance the dominance (and power) of large agri-food firms, while also structuring the conditions under which farmers operate—often limiting their autonomy and binding them to industrial production systems.

A recent example of corporate agri-food actors benefitting from current institutional arrangements was made obvious through their apparent appropriation of farmer protests (starting from December 2023) in Europe and globally. The European Commission's retreat from stringent environmental regulations in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), including derogations for farmland biodiversity and reduced pesticide use, likely reflects the power of corporate agri-food actors to influence regulatory progress in their favour (Chapron 2024). While media coverage of the protests has primarily focused on the interests of farmers, these policy concessions are likely to mostly benefit large agricultural producers and processors, as well as their financial backers (Hadavas 2024). Some suggest that many farmers, both in Europe and many other parts of the world, have limited capacity to adopt more sustainable agriculture due to contract farming arrangements (Lawrence 2017), leading to uniform seed and animal breeds and monoculture practices, dependency on high-cost inputs, monopsony markets, land grabs, supermarket trading practices and the ‘technological treadmill’ (i.e., the process by which farmers are forced to continually adopt new technologies due to contracts with large agri-business firms and the resulting cycle of debt and dependence on these corporations for inputs and markets) (Hendrickson et al. 2017; Lang and Heasman 2015). These dynamics are particularly true for those involved in production of UPFs and intensive ASFs (including inputs), as they are dependent on large-scale operations for mass production. Crucially, as the climate crisis worsens, many farmers will encounter substantial obstacles in maintaining production due to rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns (WHO 2023), whereas the highly financialised firms backing the current system will be able to easily pivot toward a ‘less risky’ and more financially-lucrative commodity. Thus, any strategy to advance genuinely healthy, environmentally sustainable and just food systems will require challenging the institutional structures that entrench financialisation and corporate control over agriculture.

Institutional concessions granted to large transnational agri-food firms operating under financialised models extend to international policy forums (Gonzalez 2002). For instance, during the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), industrial agri-food firms involved in both UPF and intensive ASF production actively lobbied for largely liberalised trade, seeking to reduce barriers where it expanded their export markets, while simultaneously benefiting from tariffs and subsidies in contexts that protected their domestic operations and reinforced supply chain advantages (Friel et al. 2016). Such trade policies, especially in the U.S. and EU, are often used as tools to protect domestic industries and promote exports (Cipollina and Salvatici 2020; Gonzalez 2006). In the case of UPFs and intensive ASFs, these protections on imported ingredients or finished products can reinforce existing food production and consumption systems and further political and economic inequalities between nations. Required policy actions that have previously been identified in this area include creating obligations within trade agreements that specifically seek to limit tariffs on agricultural products used in production of UPFs and ASFs, implementing robust conflict-of-interest policies guiding private sector involvement in setting standards for international trade in food (e.g., related to Codex Alimentarius and other standard setting), and reforming domestic governance of trade negotiations to enhance transparency and civil society participation (Schram and Townsend 2020).

Moving Toward Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Food Systems Through Common Leverage Points

The problems derived from financialised food systems point to the necessity of a new economic paradigm that centres on wellbeing for the promotion of healthy and sustainable diets, i.e., those that promote health and nutrition, are culturally acceptable, accessible, and affordable, and are produced in ways that are environmentally compatible and socially just (FAO and WHO 2019). Shifting to such diets would inevitably result in the reduction in UPFs and intensive ASFs (Bärnthaler et al. 2024). Therefore, conceptualising UPF and intensive ASF dominance through a unified lens (i.e., as an outcome of neoliberalism and financialisation) may reveal concomitant leverage points for policy intervention and identify effective opportunities for collective action, while also connecting with broader equity-based discourses that encourage a focus on their upstream drivers.

From this perspective, a ‘common leverage points’ approach could consider upstream interventions that address the financialised dynamics underpinning excessive corporate power in food systems. For example, a revitalised application of competition policy, particularly in the United States and the European Union where many of the leading agri-food firms are headquartered, to break up large concentrations of agri-food market power could help curb the incentives for rapid expansion and shareholder-driven growth that fuel consolidation (Howard 2021; Wu 2020). Stricter enforced public interest-oriented regulations to address the host of externalities generated by these companies would also challenge the cost-externalising practices enabled by financialisation (Sievert et al. 2024b). This would include higher and more strongly enforced environmental, animal welfare, health and safety and labour standards, and the integration of these standards with food standards (Lawrence et al. 2024). More radical measures could include shifting the purpose of corporations away from solely maximising shareholder value or to legally redefine corporate purpose, and towards mandating corporate directors to consider the interests of a broader range of actors and communities (Wood et al. 2023b). While not a comprehensive list of interventions, they move beyond sector-specific approaches that target the health or environmental harms of UPFs or intensive ASFs in isolation and instead target the financialised systems that sustain and drive their proliferation.

Complementary to efforts challenging the financialisation of food systems, policies that support the flourishing of ‘alternative’ food economies, which do not rely on extractivism and the prioritisation of financial returns, are also crucial. Supporting diversified and decentralised food economies are likely to enhance the resilience of food supply chains, reducing the susceptibility to external shocks that financialised systems are particularly vulnerable to (IPES-Food 2016). One practical example of investment in alternative food economies is the financial support provided across multiple levels of government to agroecological ‘territorial’ food systems in Argentina’s Rosario region. Here, forms of support such as providing tax exemptions to allow low-income urban farmers to use vacant private land for their operations has meant that an agroecological local food system could thrive (IPES-Food 2024), resulting in increasing food access through public markets, more robust farmer support, and increased community engagement. However, scaling up such initiatives would require consideration of, inter alia, governance structures, eligibility criteria, and long-term financial sustainability. For instance, determining which farmers qualify for support, how land access is allocated, and how such initiatives are funded on a broader scale are key challenges that would require coordination at multiple policy levels. Notably, modelling analyses of comparable shifts in France suggest that shifting away from high-yield oriented food systems (with existing high meat and dairy production) can generate various macroeconomic gains for national governments (Batini 2019). There exists a range of alternatives around the world that comprise a diversity of economic and business models, including producer and multi-party cooperatives and social enterprises (such as community-supported agriculture initiatives), that already function to provision much of the food to the global population (ETC Group 2017). However, they face considerable land and resource constraints due to the excessive dominance of financial and corporate actors in food systems with significant power.

Identification of priority actions to curb excessive corporate power enabled by financialisation of food systems has been undertaken by many before us, such as by intergovernmental agencies like the United Nations (OHCHR 2011; UNGC 2000), including the former UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, as well as some civil society organisations like IPES-Food and La Via Campesina. Inherent across all identified priority actions is a need to challenge existing power dynamics. Priority actions from IPES-Food include the creation of clear mechanisms for assessing, monitoring and managing conflicts of interest in food systems governance at every level (including food production and retail, but also adjacent sectors such as environment, finance, trade, and social security) (IPES-Food 2023). They also propose increased political transparency, regulatory limits on corporate involvement in policy and science, and the direction of government funds to public interest over private (IPES-Food 2017, 2023). More broadly, both IPES and La Via Campesina, and grassroots level food organisations, promote the redistribution of power in food systems and a rights-based approachFootnote 4 (IPES-Food 2023; La Via Campesina 2023). Others show how a rights-based approach for animals and nature in food systems can be extended. It is likely that a transformational approach to governance will rely on the creation of new spaces driven by civil society, rather than adapting governance spaces that are, arguably, already compromised by power imbalances.

Re-thinking Approaches to Regulation: A Regulatory Eco-system

In addition to reining in the power of the corporate sphere, food system transformation requires collective commitment from governments and food system actors to finding pathways toward robust and just agri-food systems within thriving eco-social systems. The theory of ecological regulation provides some guidance here (Parker and Haines 2018). An ecological approach to regulation recognises the need for regulation to be embedded in local and global ecosystems, and for regulatory rules and institutions from diverse domains to be oriented towards socio-ecological goals. Ecological regulation contends that policies cannot engage in issues such as the climate crisis without simultaneously engaging in social and economic injustices, given they are intimately entwined. Such a holistic approach ensures that policy efforts are dynamic, cumulative in impact and equitably responsive, carrying fewer unintended negative consequences and challenging the current status quo.

An ecological regulatory approach works from the notion that it should involve “wide-ranging initiatives that are not aimed at solving specific instrumental problems in particular ways—but rather generative of a wide range of ecological and democratic solutions.” (Parker et al. 2018). It relies on a diversity of solutions by a plurality of actors, even if some of those solutions may appear to contradict each other’s theoretical principles. An ecological regulation approach does not require perfect alignment or consensus, meaning that coalitions can focus on common leverage points—such as addressing excessive corporate power, enhancing democratic food governance, and prioritising ecological wellbeing—while still engaging in debate over the precise pathways to achieve these goals. A key factor in La Via Campesina’s success has been its commitment to participatory governance and decentralised decision-making, which has allowed different constituencies to work together while respecting their distinct priorities. For instance, women farmers have been central to the movement, particularly in advocating for gender equality in agricultural policies, while other factions focus on agroecology, land rights, or resisting trade liberalisation (Müller and Froidevaux 2018). Like the proposals from IPES-Food and La Via Campesina, an ecological regulation approach is likely to involve challenging consumptogenic systems through pre-distributive tools, such as those related to democratic financeFootnote 5 and anti-monopoly, as well as redistributive tools, such as those related to ensuring tax justice.

Some examples of measures that may form part of an ecological regulation approach include (but are not limited to) re-orienting agricultural subsidies toward more agroecological operations; prioritising equity focused measures such as a universal basic income (that could help lower production and consumption via increased civic engagement and more diverse economies); land use value taxes (that could be, in turn, used to redistribute private agricultural land to the commons) (Parker et al. 2018). More broadly, conceptualising regulation based on the ecological concept of ‘food webs’, rather than the linear notion of ‘food chains’, is a more effective way to understand the complex and dynamic food systems challenges that face life on Earth (Parker and Johnson 2019). This would mean not only questioning power dynamics between humans, but also the power dynamics between humans, non-humans and eco-systems. An ecological approach to regulating food systems would incorporate the interests of non-human animals (for example, animals used for livestock production) in food system decision making, as has been experimented with in the UK with its first “Interspecies Council” (UK Gov 2024).

Collectively Pursued Implementation of Proposed Policies and Interventions

We have outlined how food systems dominated by UPFs and intensive ASFs emerge from the same set of food systems dynamics, which we have understood through the lens of financialisation. We have also proposed policies targeting these financialised drivers at a structural level. Given these shared drivers, we will go on to propose that a coordinated advocacy approach across diverse actors could amplify collective power and strengthen efforts to transition towards healthier, more environmentally sustainable, and equitable food systems.

Identifying a range of potential opportunities to strengthen support for, and collaboration among, groups in diverse contexts is likely a necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) condition for a social and political transformation as described above. One approach could be emphasising common goals among various groups, such as public health advocates, environmental advocates, and workers/unions, to collectively advocate for policies and interventions that challenge financialised food systems. There exists a range of well-established networks that advocates could join forces with, united over the notion that the institutional promotion of UPFs and intensive ASFs, which are exploitatively produced products, is pathological. Organisations like the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), La Via Campesina, Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), and ETC Group represent diverse movements that promote common leverage points to challenge financialised food systems (IPES-Food 2016).

At the international level, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples' Mechanism (CSIPM)—a civil society mechanism attached to the UN Committee for Food Security—serves as a formal platform for advocates from areas like public health and environmental justice to unite with food sovereignty advocates (CSIPM 2024). By leveraging the CSIPM, proponents could collaborate on policy advocacy and development, promoting a shift away from corporatised and financialised food systems towards those centred around socio-ecological principles. Such united collective action could help amplify the call to shift away from financialised food systems, with the intent to influence policy at national and international levels.

Future analyses on this topic could include an exploration of the institutional and ideological arrangements that are most conducive to propelling food systems transformations, including the role of multilateral governance bodies, national regulatory frameworks, and alternative economic models that challenge corporate concentration and financialisation. Furthermore, future research could develop more empirical evidence on the effectiveness of coordinated and adaptive regulatory approaches, such as investment in territorial markets, in catalysing systemic change. Such evidence would strengthen advocacy efforts and policy proposals, making the case for food system transformation not only conceptually compelling but also politically viable.

Conclusion

While there are myriad ways to envisage food system transformation, our central premise is that addressing financialisation as the fundamental structural drivers of food systems that are dominated by UPFs and intensive ASFs is crucial; otherwise, policy responses will remain fragmented and ineffective. Recognising the role of financialised food systems in driving the production and consumption of ASFs and UPFs provides an opportunity to broaden the solutions developed, necessitating a role for researchers, advocates, and other actors, including small and medium-sized enterprises and governments, to unite in pursuit of common objectives and work together on common leverage points within the food system. This includes combating the excessive concentration of power within the agri-food industry. By fostering collaboration and pooling resources, key actors, including food sovereignty alliances, labour unions, farmers, small-scale agri-food businesses and retailers, consumer groups, animal welfare advocates, and potentially local council representatives and intergovernmental organisations could work together to craft and advance narratives and approaches that serve their mutual interest, as well as those of non-human and planetary communities.