Socio-technical transitions and sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean: a systematic review of the literature 2010–2021

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 01 frontiersin.org Socio-technical transitions and sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean: a systematic review of the literature 2010–2021 YuriDurán 1 *, VíctorGómez-Valenzuela 2 and KaterinRamírez 1 1 Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2 Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain The challenges and opportunities Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries face to meet sustainable development force nations to seek technological alternatives to ensure better policy design. It also includes technology transfer for the productive inclusion of the rural population in the region. This paper aims to characterize the conceptual frameworks applied to studying sociotechnical transitions related to sustainable agriculture in the region. A systematic review literature (SRL) was conducted covering 2010–2021. The main findings suggest that the general ideas of socio-technical transition have been used to study sustainable agriculture in LAC. However, its use has been more implicit than explicit, with some predominance of the Strategic Niche Management (SNM) and the Transition Management Approach (TM) frameworks. In addition, the socio-technical transitions as a straightforward approach have started to beincorporated more clearly after 2020. Finally, the leading technologies to foster socio-technical transitions to sustainable agriculture in the region are related to pest control and soil conservation, so social practices such as certifications have had preponderance in this transition. This paper contributes to the existing literature, broadens the frontier of socio-technical analysis in the transition to sustainable agriculture, and expands our knowledge on applying socio-technical analysis in marginal contexts. KEYWORDS socio-technical transitions, sustainable agriculture, a systematic review of literature, Latin America and the Caribbean, agroecology 1. Introduction This paper aims to characterize the conceptual frameworks applied to analyzing sociotechnical transitions related to sustainable agriculture in LAC and identify the technologies supporting these processes. For this purpose, the paper conducts a systematic SRL based on a relevant post mapping approach. This SRL emulates the paper of El Bilali (2020), “Transition heuristic frameworks in research on agro-food sustainability transitions,” which addressed the issue on a global scale. For this case it has been used four analytical frameworks most practiced in the analysis of socio-technical transitions (Markard etal., 2012): Multilevel Perspective (MLP), Technological Innovation Systems (TIS), SNM and Transition Management (TM) approach. The analysis in the LAC context has a special OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Vinod Kumar Singh, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India REVIEWED BY Rebecca McLaren, Johns Hopkins University, UnitedStates Amit Kumar, The ICAR Research Complex for North Eastern Hill Region (ICAR RC NEH), India *CORRESPONDENCE Yuri Durán [email protected] RECEIVED 15 January 2023 ACCEPTED 22 May 2023 PUBLISHED 22 June 2023 CITATION Durán Y, Gómez-Valenzuela V and Ramírez K (2023) Socio-technical transitions and sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean: a systematic review of the literature 2010–2021. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 7:1145263. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Durán, Gómez-Valenzuela and Ramírez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Review PUBLISHED 22 June 2023 DOI 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 02 frontiersin.org significance due to the challenges that the transition towards sustainability in food production must face considering the limited availability of economic and technological resources in most of their countries, in contrast to European or North American countries. In the Latin American region itself, differences can beobserved in the availability of options for the approach: in Brazil, the process goes in hand with financing and technology provided by the governments and corporations from the food sector, while in Cuba the transition is driven by shortages in both aspects. The results of the analysis suggest that these circumstances influence the selection of the analytical frameworks of the sociotechnical transitions towards sustainability. The characterization conducted in this paper provides a better conceptual understanding to promote a more comprehensive policyoriented research agenda. At the same time, it sheds some light on the technological alternatives that would ensure better policy design regarding technology transfer for the productive inclusion of the rural population in the region. Also, it can help formulate public policies appropriate to each country’s environmental, social, and economic environment, contributing to the formulation of their plans in terms of food security, poverty reduction and responsible production. This paper is intended to answer two main research questions: 1. What the literature in LAC countries indicates about the dominant approaches of socio-technical transitions on sustainable agriculture? 2. What does regional literature tell us about the leading technologies supporting a technological transition in sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean? According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the LAC region comprises 42 countries and territories, currently home to 600million people (Fifka etal., 2016). It has a rural population of 123 million (one in five workers are in the rural sector). The poverty rate is 45.7% of the population, with levels two to three times higher in rural areas (Cepal, 2019). Agriculture and practices related to the value chain of food production constitute a vital component of the regional economy linked to other sectors and services of the economy, such as trade, agribusiness, or tourism as the transition of Brazilian agriculture from low productivity and backwardness to its status as a significant player in international markets (Mueller and Mueller, 2016). In the same way, agriculture is relevant as part of the subsistence practices of rural communities and traditional societies that still exist in LAC, as the traditional maize agroecosystem in Mexico (DominguezHernandez etal., 2018). Moreover, to the systemic problem of rural poverty in LAC, new environmental challenges related to climate change, biodiversity conservation and resource depletion are significant challenges that should beconsidered and addressed. The response to these environmental challenges could be tackled from the production systems’ “technological transitions” perspective (Geels, 2010). These changes in the production systems are labeled as “socio-technical” because they involve changes in technologies, markets, user practices, and political and cultural meanings (Geels and Schot, 2007). Geels (2010) states that a transition occurs when the regime is destabilized through pressure. It also may beinfluenced by the interactions among three levels (niche, panorama, and regime), which occur until a new system state is reached. It is not attributable to a single interaction or driving pressure but to processes on multiple levels (Papachristos and Adamides, 2016). Within the studies of socio-technical transitions, two broad approaches can be distinguished: (1) Historical studies of completed socio-technical transitions (such as the replacement of horses by automobiles) and; (2) Studies on current social changes (energy consumption from fossil fuel to renewables sources; Sutherland etal., 2015). After the introduction with the conceptual framework, definitions and concepts of socio-technical analysis and sustainable agriculture made in section 1, the section 2 presents the materials and methods used for the research design, as well as the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the SRL. Section 3 shows the analysis results using a descriptive approach to the publications, and some of the limitations found. The discussion of the results is presented in section 4, with citations of the most relevant findings of the analysis and the section 5 it is dedicated to the conclusions, with the answers to the research questions and suggestions of new perspectives for the analysis. 2. Materials and methods This SRL started from a research problem translated into operational terms in research questions. Then, the scope of the systematic literature review was defined. Afterward, the reference databases’ inclusion criteria for the search were defined. The primary searches were generated, and a characterization scheme was defined to support the analysis of the results. For this SRL reviews papers that address the transition towards sustainable agriculture in LAC published between 2010 and 2021. Table1 shows the search as it was conducted in the Scopus database based on the defined criteria [TITLE-ABS-KEY (transition) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (sustainable*) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (Agri*) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (agro*)]. It was held on October 26, 2021. In this first search, 2,868 papers emerged. In a second step, the search was restricted to papers published after 2010, based on LAC, published in Open Access databases, either in English, Spanish or Portuguese, reducing the list to 187 papers. Finally, only 61 papers addressed the transition to sustainable agriculture in LAC. The inclusion and exclusion criteria used were the country subject of the research (LAC or one of the LAC countries as the subject), type of document (scientific/academic papers), year of publication (from 2010 onwards), and language (English, Spanish or Portuguese). The transition analytical frameworks were used as a reference for classifying the papers. The search exercise used titles and abstracts of the papers as the first filter for selection. Then, the complete papers were read in a second filter. This exercise resulted in the final selection of 63 records. Table1 describes the paper selection process, while Table2 classifies the selected papers by year of publication. Based on the framework of transition analysis and in the methodology, the topic addressed, and the region covered corresponds to step6 (definition of analysis criteria), the papers’ characterization to step7 and based on such steps follows step8 about the analysis of results (step8). Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 03 frontiersin.org 3. Conceptual basis 3.1. Socio-technical analysis Research in socio-technical transitions and innovation systems aims to understand technological changes by analyzing the causes that allow or inhibit a particular level of the system in long-term processes (Papachristos and Adamides, 2016). Below is a summary of the four chosen analysis frameworks for socio-technical analysis in this SRL. The MLP understands transitions in terms of the interactions between niche, landscape, and regime (Rosenbloom and Meadowcroft, 2014). The distinction between the three levels is analytical and not ontological, as the levels are helpful for better categorizing and understanding socio-technical change (Raven etal., 2010). The MLP was created to understand technological transition but was later developed and refined to serve as a heuristic device to study sustainability transitions (Svensson and Nikoleris, 2018). It has developed mainly based on history rather than contemporary cases (Smith and Stirling, 2010), so it should beapplied critically to modern transition cases from the social and technological context (Papachristos, 2014). The TIS approach, is a widely applied framework for analyzing technology development in the context of sustainability transitions (Markard, 2020).The focus on TIS is defined as a network of agents interacting in the economic/industrial area under a particular institutional infrastructure involved in the generation, dissemination, TABLE1 Systematic review literature (SRL) in socio-technical transitions and sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean (2021). Systematic literature review (SRL) step Number of records selected Process description TITLE-ABS-KEY (transition) AND TITLE-ABSKEY (sustainab*) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (agri*) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (agro*) 2,868 Records identified according to search criteria in Scopus Record identification in Scopus 187 Refinement of the search limited to Latin America and the Caribbean, papers in English, Spanish and Portuguese Removal of duplicates 186 One duplicate record removed Selection of papers based on titles 133 Fifty-three records removed133 records focused on the transition to sustainability in sustainable agriculture. Summary-based scrutiny and full-text records to determine eligibility 73 Sixty records were excluded, and 73 selected records focused on the transition to sustainable agriculture. Inclusion of papers for systematic review 63 Nine records were removed, and the remaining 63 selected records focused on the transition to sustainability in sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean. Adapted from El Bilali (2019). TABLE2 Number of records included in a systematic review on the transition to the sustainability of agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean (2021). Year Number of records Reference 2021 6 Cunha etal. (2021), Monjardino etal. (2021), Palestina-González etal. (2021), Perillo etal. (2021), Pompeia and Schneider (2021), Rossing etal. (2021) 2020 17 Benítez etal. (2020), Boza and Kanter (2020), Chaibub etal. (2020), de Souza Amaral etal. (2020), Edivaldo and Rosell (2020), GaitánCremaschi etal. (2020), Garrett etal. (2020), Gassner etal. (2020), Heredia-R etal. (2020), Lucantoni (2020), Mottet etal. (2020), Passos Medaets etal. (2020), Schiller etal. (2020a), Schiller etal. (2020b), Scotton etal. (2020), Tittonell etal. (2020), Van Loon etal. (2020) 2019 5 Coquil etal. (2019), Delgado Berrocal (2019), Paiva etal. (2019), Silva etal. (2019), Yagi etal. (2019) 2018 8 Casimiro Rodríguez and Casimiro González (2018), Coser etal. (2018), Dominguez-Hernandez etal. (2018), Fernandez etal. (2018b), Fernandez etal. (2018a), Ianovali etal. (2018), Teixeira etal. (2018), Withers etal. (2018) 2017 7 Da Silva etal. (2017), Garrett etal. (2017a), Garrett etal. (2017b), Gazzano and Gómez Perazzoli (2017), Latawiec etal. (2017), Reis etal. (2017), Santamaria-Guerra and González (2017) 2016 6 Hammond Wagner etal. (2016), Mueller and Mueller (2016), Pérez Sánchez etal. (2016), Salvini etal. (2016), Tejada etal. (2016), Hammond Wagner etal. (2016) 2015 1 Lima and Vargas (2015) 2014 5 Bonaudo etal. (2014), Jacobi etal. (2014), Leitgeb etal. (2014), Ramirez-Guerrero and Meza-Figueroa (2014), Sherwood and Paredes (2014) 2013 2 Rosas-Baños and Lara-Rodríguez (2013), Rondon etal. (2013) 2012 3 Das Chagas Oliveira etal. (2012), de Souza etal. (2012), Lovatto etal. (2012) 2011 3 Astier etal. (2011), da Silva etal. (2011), Rosset etal. (2011) 2010 0 There was no Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 04 frontiersin.org and use of technology. The TIS framework is a practical tool for analyzing potential discontinuities and policy development possibilities regarding innovation systems across spatial scales (Lukkarinen etal., 2018). The SNM perspective is designed to facilitate the introduction and dissemination of new sustainable technologies through protected social experiments. It is considered a research model and a political tool (Raven etal., 2010). It was developed by Kemp etal. (1998) to analyze how technological change and the acceptance of its social impact evolve together (Mirzania etal., 2020). Transition Management was defined for the first time in 2000, based on the concept of transition, becoming later an operational model and political practice (Raven, 2005). It is a prescriptive framework that suggests policymakers can shape transitions through four sequential steps: (1) Strategic activities in a ‘transition arena’; (2) Development of tactical activities for specific pathways while building agendas and coalitions to support such paths; (3) Operational activities on the ground such as innovation experiments and demonstration projects, aimed at learning by doing; (4) Reflective activities that lead to adjustments in visions and the articulation of best practices (Loorbach, 2010). Loorbach etal. (2017) describe three different approaches in the science of transitions: Socio-technical, socio-institutional, and socioecological. The socio-technical approach emphasizes technological innovation, the socio-institutional approach emphasizes political and institutional change, and the socio-ecological approach the ecological thresholds between the extraction of fossil resources to renewable resources within closed cycles through adaptive management (Visser et al., 2019). Table 3 summarizes the socio-technical analysis’s conceptual elements or dimensions that share or differ from the main transition analysis frameworks studied here. In general, the different analytical frameworks presented in the literature can be ascribed to two major ontologies: (1) the Sociotechnical Transition (STT) and (2) the Socio-Ecological Systems (SES; Ollivier et al., 2018). Since socio-technical transitions are multidimensional phenomena and can bestudied from various angles by different disciplines, each approach is supported by ontologies (Geels, 2010). Ontology is defined as “the assumptions about the nature of the (social) world and its causal relationships” (Geels, 2010, p.2) that underpin and frame ways of looking at transitions (Ollivier etal., 2018). The MLP and the TIS approach correspond to STT ontology but in SNM and TM prevail a SES framework (Geels, 2010). An important consideration is that not all emerging experiments are viable or have proved sustainable (Jurgilevich et al., 2016). There is no guarantee that proposals for implementing sustainable agriculture schemes will beaccepted without a basis demonstrating their feasibility for critical actors. How sustainable agriculture practices will impact the relevant environmental indicators cannot beguaranteed. Here, the SES ontology makes a relevant conceptual and methodological contribution. One example is reducing the impact of climate change in a particular region. When agricultural practices in the traditional regime have a minimal impact on climate change, farmers are likely to show more resistance if they do not feel the guarantees that the transition would provide them with the tools to cope with risk. Concerning SES, Biggs etal. (2012) identify three properties of the socio-ecological system to be managed: (1) biological and social diversity-redundancy; (2) connectivity between biophysical and social entities, and (3) the state of slow variables (organic matter, water, resources, management agencies, social values) that determines the dynamics of rapid variables (field management, water extractions, authorization to access resources) in complex systems. Several authors have constructed their classifications on sociotechnical systems. For example, starting from the approach, different systems are distinguished: socio-technical (energy, mobility, water, and waste), institutional or socio-economic (education, work, finance) and socio-ecological (forestry, fisheries, agriculture, culture). Røpke (2016) distinguishes resource and waste systems, supply or sociotechnical systems, distribution and geography, governance, and economic and financial jurisdictions (cities, economies). Patterson etal. (2017) focused on change processes and distinguished four approaches: socio-technical transition, socio-ecological transitions, sustainability pathways, and transformative adaptation (Geels, 2019). 3.2. Understanding transitions Regions are the source of niche innovations that will eventually transform regimes with actions that, while modest, are essential (Gibbs and O'Neill, 2014). Sustainability transitions are geographical processes: they are not ubiquitous, but rather, they occur in specific places, that is, in real geographical locations with materiality for them (Hansen and Coenen, 2015). The influence of the region can beseen in urban climate change experiments show that the actor constellations behind vary considerable between different parts of the world (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013) or the important of geographical proximity between agents in the development of niches (Truffer and TABLE3 Summary of the conceptual elements or dimensions of socio-technical analysis that share or differ from the main frameworks of transition analysis. Transition analysis framework Type of cases Applications Approach Multilevel Perspective (MLP) Historical Addressing the socio-technical change of large-scale infrastructures. Socio-technical transitions/Technological transition/Sustainability transitions Technological Innovation Systems TIS Contemporary Study of actors and institutions involved in the propagation of innovations. Socio-technical transitions Strategic Niche Management (SNM) Contemporary Introduction and dissemination of new technologies. Socio-ecological system/Socio-technical transitions Transition Management Approach (TM) Contemporary Modeling transitions through strategic, tactical, operational, and reflective activities. Socio-ecological system/Social transitions Author’s elaboration (2021). Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 05 frontiersin.org Coenen, 2012). In the case of transition to sustainability of agriculture in LAC, it is a force that comes from outside the niche (international organizations, NGOs, authorities, customers, and others), so the transition depends on the institution’s strength that promotes it. According to Geels (2010), in the regime, the elements can be tangible (laws, regulations, protocols, standards) or intangible (political paradigms, shared visions and beliefs, social norms, cognitive routines; El Bilali, 2019). Of the three types of rules in sociotechnical regimes (regulatory, normative, and cognitive), academia focuses on regulatory ones because they are more tangible than the other two categories (El Bilali, 2019). The above characteristic may condition the success of the transition toward sustainability in agricultural practices. In LAC, except for the case of Brazil, is low the presence of a regime successful supported by the government, and the drivers are mostly export markets that condition niches to certain practices. One example is the regulation and standard for organic production. 3.3. Transition to sustainable agriculture The analysis of socio-technical transitions from the perspective of the four selected frameworks applied in agriculture seeks to identify success stories that serve as models in the transition towards sustainability in agricultural production in LAC in their context, in accordance with the objectives of this SRL. The modernization of agriculture has resulted in a complete disregard for the negative externalities. The multiple ecological crises force us to ponder the transition toward sustainable agricultural systems by identifying alternative models that make them sustainable and exploring how to build them from the existing systems (Griffon etal., 2021). The triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity is a significant challenge to food system resilience (Hastings etal., 2021). Nonetheless, environmental issues became public problems, and stakeholders became aware of the connections between what they did and the ecological processes at various spatial and temporal scales (Steyaert etal., 2016). Within this framework, the idea of a ‘green economy’ emerges, which promises itself as a remedy to the ecological crisis, and is, simultaneously “in favor of growth, employment, and poverty reduction (Gibbs and O'Neill, 2014). According to Cooke, green economic development aims to mitigate the environmental damage caused by the overexploitation of waste and resources and moderate human contributions to climate change (Gibbs and O'Neill, 2014). Achieving more sustainable food, feed, and bioenergy systems will require interventions such as increased recycling of nutrients and coordination of biomass flows among farms (Fernandez-Mena etal., 2020). Several technologies for sustainable agriculture have been proposed, including green fertilizers (GFT), biodiversity-based agriculture, and recycling. Legume production and consumption have been reinvented in many products and included in conservation agriculture, organic production, intercropping, and crop rotation (Ferreira etal., 2021). Two applications are crop waste as animal fertilizer or fertilizer released from control (Adnan etal., 2018) and biopesticides that act only against the target pathogen (Ram etal., 2018). However, the isolated application of these technologies cannot be seen as a panacea. For example, the adoption rate of GFT is unsatisfactory in most developing countries, given that the cost of production is considerably higher (Adnan et al., 2018). There is increasing interest in agroecology to move toward more sustainable agriculture and food systems, but its contribution to sustainability remains fragmented (Mottet etal., 2020). 4. Results The selected papers highlighted the consistent increase in research on the transition to sustainable agriculture in LAC after 2016 when 49 of the 63 chosen works were published. Further, only 5 of these works used the framework of socio-technical transitions to analyze these processes. They were all bepublished in 2020 or afterward. Table4 shows the distribution of the five papers using the approach to sociotechnical transitions. By examining the contents of the papers, using TM approach, Rossing etal. (2021) focus on co-innovation, governance, and management of ecological intensification in Uruguay and the European Union, showing more significant contributions to sustainability transitions were associated project preparation, a focus at the farm-level, connections with regional actors, and its interactions. Meanwhile, Scotton etal. (2020) investigated the influence of TM on the transition from conventional to organic agriculture in Mogi Guaçú, SP, Brazil, highlighted the influence of the management system employed, contrasting richness and diversity indices were higher under TM versus conventional TABLE4 Use of socio-technical transition analysis framework in papers on transitions to the sustainability of agriculture in LAC (2021). Year Transition framework Document type Reference Case study Country 2021 Transition Management (TM) Paper Rossing etal. (2021) Use of co-innovation in eco-intensification projects Uruguay/European Union 2020 Multilevel Perspective (MLP) Paper Schiller etal. (2020a) Role of agroecology in agricultural transformation Nicaragua 2020 Multilevel Perspective (MLP) Paper Passos Medaets etal. (2020) Role of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Organic Certification Programs Brazil 2020 Transition Management (TM) Paper Scotton etal. (2020) Influence of transitional management from conventional to organic agriculture Brazil 2020 Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) Paper Schiller etal. (2020b) Examining systemic barriers to the agroecological transition Nicaragua Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 06 frontiersin.org management. Passos Medaets et al. (2020) used the MLP to examine Brazil’s Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and organic certification programs, founding that GAP compliance programs represent an adjustment to refit modern agriculture to new expectations created at the level of the landscape and of the incumbent regime. Schiller etal. (2020a) used MLP to examine Nicaragua’s barriers to agroecological transition, finding that although the term ‘agroecology’ is used widely by government, incentives for transitions to agroecology are weakly implemented. Also in Nicaragua, Schiller etal. (2020b) highlight the importance of using TIS approach to understand national agroecological transitions, where systemic barriers to the agroecological transition and cycles of blockages caused by barriers’ interactions make change difficult. This sample of cases where the four analysis frameworks of sociotechnical transitions selected for the SRL were expressly applied show the potential of their use in the study of the transition towards sustainability of agriculture in LAC, presenting options to the researchers according to the context. In addition to the four approaches for sociotechnical transitions analysis selected for this SRL, the other articles published between 2010 and 2021 can beassociated with several frameworks. Table5 lists the papers addressing the transition to sustainable agriculture in LAC with their respective associated approaches. For example, social practice approach groups the papers that deal with market concerns related to their own health, social commitment, food and nutrition security, adequate nutrition, alternative agri-food system, sustainable production models and food consumption. While agricultural techniques, soil technologies, software and simulations are referred to the use of different technologies to address transitions towards sustainability in agricultural production, the combined breeding and harvesting and agri-forestry deal with mixed production. The most considerable number of papers on the transition to sustainability in agriculture, 23, were related to the approach of social practices, a study framework whose application lends itself to low-resource contexts like that of Cuba in recent years. The first of these in this country was by Rosset etal. (2011), which dealt with the impact of agroecology and the Campesino a Campesino movement, where peasants boost food production substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems, including additional benefits from resilience to climate change. Leitgeb etal. (2014) examined the themes, resources, sources, motives, methods, and results of farmers’ experiments toward sustainable production, where results reveal those are an integral part of farming. Casimiro Rodríguez and Casimiro González (2018) share the experiences of a farm representative in Cuba’s cooperative sector in a longitudinal study of the agroecological transition using the Socio-Ecological Resilience Assessment Methodology during three periods of transition between 1995 and 2015. These three papers are a sample of the benefits that the study of sociotechnical transitions to the consolidation of agroecology in each territory can bring. Also in the approach of social practices group, the role of associativity in the transition to sustainability has some cases, like Mexico, where Rosas-Baños and Lara-Rodríguez (2013) analyze the creation of the Communal Forestry Company in San Pedro El Alto, which proposes a transition from subsistence agriculture to a type of production that would increase the quality of life and achieved a certain degree of development (Rosas-Baños and Lara-Rodríguez, 2013). In Brazil is addressed by Lima and Vargas (2015) a review of the case related to the Association for Sustainable Rural Development in Serra da Baixa Verde, it was observed, the critical importance of the role of the association to the farmers, without which, they could TABLE5 Research focuses on the transition to sustainable agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean from 2010 to 2021. Approaches Number of records Reference Social practice approach 23 Pompeia and Schneider (2021), de Souza Amaral etal. (2020) , Gassner etal. (2020), Gaitán-Cremaschi etal. (2020), Boza and Kanter (2020), Delgado Berrocal (2019), Paiva etal. (2019), Silva etal. (2019), Coquil etal. (2019), Ianovali etal. (2018), Teixeira etal. (2018), Casimiro Rodríguez and Casimiro González (2018), Santamaria-Guerra and González (2017), Reis etal. (2017), Da Silva etal. (2017), Hammond Wagner etal. (2016), Mueller and Mueller (2016), Salvini etal. (2016), Pérez Sánchez etal. (2016), Lima and Vargas (2015), Leitgeb etal. (2014), Rosas-Baños and Lara-Rodríguez (2013), Rosset etal. (2011) Agricultural Techniques/ Technologies 10 Perillo etal. (2021), Chaibub etal. (2020), Van Loon etal. (2020), Edivaldo and Rosell (2020), Hammond Wagner etal. (2016), Sherwood and Paredes (2014), Ramirez-Guerrero and Meza-Figueroa (2014), Rondon etal. (2013), Lovatto etal. (2012), de Souza etal. (2012). Transitional management Approach 5Mottet etal. (2020), Heredia-R etal. (2020), Dominguez-Hernandez etal. (2018), Fernandez etal. (2018a), Fernandez etal. (2018b) Soil Technologies 4 Cunha etal. (2021), Yagi etal. (2019), Withers etal. (2018), Garrett etal. (2017a) Sustainability indicators 4 da Silva etal. (2011), Astier etal. (2011), Das Chagas Oliveira etal. (2012), Palestina-González etal. (2021) Combined breeding and harvesting 3Bonaudo etal. (2014), Latawiec etal. (2017), Garrett etal. (2017b) Software and simulations/ Technological Innovation Systems 3Tejada etal. (2016), Schiller etal. (2020b), Monjardino etal. (2021), Garrett etal. (2017b) Agri-Forestry 2 Coser etal. (2018), Jacobi etal. (2014) Strategic Niche Management (SNM)/Niche Studies 2Benítez etal. (2020), Lucantoni (2020) Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 07 frontiersin.org hardly make possible their production. Contrast the results of Da Silva etal. (2017) and Coquil etal. (2019) studies. The first reviewed the agroecological transition in France and Brazil where although PAIS can promote the adoption of more sustainable practices, is limited in promoting the agroecological transition, meanwhile two networks studied for the second contribute to the development of agroecological, more self-sufficient farming systems, which demonstrates that not all cases of transition towards sustainability will besuccessful. Additionally, another group of papers incorporates the influence that the market can exert in the transition towards sustainability. de Souza Amaral etal. (2020) include an analysis of the impact of the short food supply chain created by the Center for the Marketing of Family Farming in Rio Grande do Norte, highlighting the role of farmers and their organizations in guaranteeing the volume and diversity of products and showing the impact of certification on organic production. Similarly, in Brazil, Salvini etal. (2016) evaluates the application of a role-playing game (RPG) to promote climatesmart agriculture in three groups of farmers in the southern Amazon, demonstrating this practice induced not only technical learning, but also socio-institutional learning and engagement for collective action. Mueller and Mueller (2016) analyze the transition of Brazilian agriculture from low productivity and backwardness to its status as a significant player in international markets, highlight the importance of the underlying institutional setting on the impact of agricultural policy and the need of inclusive and sustainable institutions created a fiscal, monetary, and political environment. Reis etal. (2017) explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of women farmers working in tobacco products on this activity’s social, environmental, and health impacts, showing that an integrated approach is needed to deal with tobacco farmers’ problems, considering a balance between their beliefs and government decisions. A review of the social aspects of the transition to sustainable agriculture has focused on the issues of nutrition and food security. It includes an analysis of the food security and individual nutritional status based on the Body Mass Index in Antioquia, Colombia, by Pérez Sánchez etal. (2016), which showed agro-ecosystem features could threaten in the medium-term current food security conditions and the need of protection against this eventuality. Cepal (2019) analyze the establishment of the expression “adequate and healthy diet” in Brazil and the transition of the conception of healthy eating, incorporating the understandings and debates in the fields of food and nutrition security. Boza and Kanter (2020), discuss the key drivers of the transition to agroecological food systems through sustainable diets and provide viable solutions based on existing global experiences around the concepts of local diets, sustainable diets and agroecology practice, enhance the synergies between its. Gaitán-Cremaschi et al. (2020) empirically analyze plant food systems in Chile and assess their potential to support transition pathways to sustainability from ecological intensification, concluding that requires actions to remove barriers in the relations with the agrifood regime and among themselves. Gassner etal. (2020) analyze how the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity can influence international policy to favor local production and marketing capacity investments to replace imported food and beverages in the Southern Cone, inviting it to recognize the importance of mixed, diverse agricultural landscapes for their contribution to the conservation of wild biodiversity. Similarly, Pompeia and Schneider (2021) analyze how food and nutrition security narratives and adequate nutrition agendas have been mobilized and modified to respond to criticism and legitimize claims about Brazil’s public policies and legislative proposals, concluding that commodity chains begin to privilege discourses that stress their contributions to the exports, while food to health gains momentum. Finally, Ianovali et al. (2018) evaluated the productivity and sustainability of different farming systems, including the migratory agriculture system and the economic impacts on Quilombola communities, recognizing that permanent agriculture was more efficient in terms of income and the use of labor than shifting cultivation system, but it is also part of a complex socioenvironmental relations. Also, in Brazil, Teixeira etal. (2018) developed a farm typology that combines participatory and quantitative methodologies to develop strategies to promote agroecological transitions, findings that farmers differ in their management strategies, had stronger engagements in a network composed of farmers’ organizations, showed great potential to provide a wide range of ecosystem services and it is crucial to recognize peasant knowledge. Meanwhile, Silva etal. (2019) pointed out the microlearning process’s importance in supporting agroecological transitions, showing that ecolearning processes foster robust ecologization processes and reinforce farmers’ systemic visions of their activities. In Panama, Santamaria-Guerra and González (2017) reconstructed the recent past and the current situation of agroecological initiatives, portraying the contribution of the incorporation of agroecological practices to small-scale family agriculture in this country. In Peru, Delgado Berrocal (2019) studied the landscapes created in the central Andes and the exemplary local conservation and territorial management practices that can serve as a model of socio-ecological transition to mitigate and adapt to the negative effects of anthropogenic climate change. In the 12 years covered by this paper, several works related to agricultural technologies, fertilization and pest control were identified, including one by de Souza et al. (2012), which conducted experimentation in the coffee agroforestry system in Brazil using several technologies, finding agroforestry coffee (AF) was more profitable than sun coffee (SC). Another example can befound in Rondon etal. (2013), who studied the allocation of potato plantings to 1 of 4 transition systems and their impact on beetle control, providing information for growers making transition from conventional to organic potato production. Ramirez-Guerrero and Meza-Figueroa (2014) studied the effects of composting on soil and potato growth, development, and nutrition in Venezuela, finding that the values of phosphorus, calcium or magnesium content in the soil increased with the use of compost (chicken, bovine or and pigs). Sherwood and Paredes (2014) researched the impact of pesticide use on agriculture in Ecuador, showing the study how actors cooperate, collude, and collide in advancing certain technological agenda, even when against public interests. Hammond Wagner et al. (2016) presented a case study on pest management strategies in small-scale agriculture concluding that opportunities to transition to sustainable on this issue at the local level in Latin American through interventions countering the lock-in of synthetic pesticides. Edivaldo and Rosell (2020) studied the use of slash and burn in black bean production in Brazil, to which it corresponds to 30% of the total bean yield in Prudentópolis, playing a vital role for local food production and a sustainable eco-system. Van Loon etal. (2020) applied the Scaling Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 08 frontiersin.org Scan tool to evaluate agricultural mechanization projects in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh, finding limitations for the development of suppliers of the value chain according to the market. Chaibub etal. (2020) investigated the application of biological pest control in rice production in Brazil, concluding that the treatments, microbiolized rice seeds or plant sprayed facilitate the agroecological transition. Finally, Perillo etal. (2021) focused their study on the GHG estimation of sugarcane cultivation in Brazil, formulated from the transitional management approach, finding that the gradual transition of pre-harvest burning contributes to the reduction of GHG emission. The application of TM is recent in LAC and began with Fernandez et al. (2018a), who synthesized the successes and deficiencies of agroecology in Cuba, presenting specific information and experiences to discuss successes and challenges of transition to sustainability. Dominguez-Hernandez etal. (2018) evaluated the sustainability of the traditional maize agroecosystem in Ahuazotepec, Mexico, using the Framework for The Assessment of the Sustainability of Natural Resource Management Systems approach, showing that productivity was the most influential attribute. Heredia-R etal. (2020) evaluated the sustainability of smallholder farmers using a traditional agroforestry system (chakra) within the buffer and transition zones and core of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in the Amazon. In the period covered, four papers were found addressing issues related to soil technologies. One corresponds to Garrett etal. (2017a), which addressed the integration of agricultural and livestock systems on the same ground, focusing on how federal policies in Brazil, NewZealand and the UnitedStates encourage or discourage this practice. Withers etal. (2018) analyzed Brazil’s current and future phosphorus supply and explored the alternative use of livestock manure and residues from sugarcane processing as its substitute. Yagi etal. (2019) addressed soil fertilization using various proportions of bird manure in Brazil, identifying the benefits of the splitting of the poultry litter rate during the rainy season. In soil conservation practice in Piauí, Brazil, Cunha et al. (2021) evaluated the effects of monoculture on the soil organic carbon’s microbiological characteristics, finding the transition to agricultural areas caused changes in the soil microbiological indicators. Papers focusing on sustainability indicators include Astier etal. (2011), who applied a sustainability assessment framework for peasant systems in more than 40 case studies in Latin America, focusing on the choice of indicators, the effects of alternative strategies on agroecosystems’ sustainability, and the trade-offs involved. Da Silva etal. (2011) diagnosed the Economic Sustainability of the properties in the Sanga Guabiroba micro-basin in Brazil using sustainability indicators (land and buildings, capital improvements, equity in machinery and equipment, property, and animals in permanent crops). Das Chagas Oliveira etal. (2012) used the MESMIS method to evaluate the degree of sustainability of peasant agroecosystems and their strategies to promote the emergence of innovations in Brazil locally, showing the relevance of local knowledge as a key factor in policies that promote the sustainability of family systems. Finally, in Mexico, Palestina-González etal. (2021) built a Sustainability Index for Traditional Agroecosystems composed of 16 indicators to analyze diversity-resilience, self-management-autonomy, integration, and selfsufficiency finding that these indicators increased the sustainability of home gardens. Three papers were produced on the transition in activities that combine animal husbandry with agricultural production. Bonaudo etal. (2014) analyzed how agroecological principles can help farmers redesign and improve resilience, self-sufficiency, productivity, and efficiency within integrated crop and livestock systems (ICLC). Latawiec et al. (2017) used focus groups and semi-structured interviews with farmers in the state of Mato Grosso in the Amazon to identify the underlying factors that lead to or inhibit improvements in land management in pursuit of the transition that leads to the expansion of Brazilian agriculture with zero-deforestation. Garrett etal. (2017b) provided a comprehensive historical and international perspective on why integrated crop and livestock systems have declined in most regions and what conditions have fostered their persistence and resurgence. Regarding using the TIS approach, Tejada etal. (2016) explore land-use modeling to simulate how the growing land demand could affect future deforestation trends in Bolivia. Schiller etal. (2020b) introduced the TIS approach to examine systemic barriers to agroecological transition in Nicaragua and cycles of blockades caused by the interactions of the barriers. Monjardino etal. (2021) applied an integrated framework that combines bioeconomic simulation, risk analysis, adoption theory, and impact assessment to investigate various combinations of conservation agriculture components in a case study from central Mexico. Two of the papers published between 2010 and 2021 were on SNM. For instance, Location (2020) analyzed the agroecological conversion process implemented by a family farm in Cuba, and Benítez et al. (2020) conducted a case study of Cuba’s Local Agricultural Innovation Project, focusing on gender-specific elements. Two papers addressing agroforestry used the SNM approach. The first paper by Jacobi etal. (2014) analyzes aerial and underground carbon stocks and tree diversity in different cocoa farming systems in Bolivia. The second paper refers to a comparison by Coser etal. (2018). They took the native vegetation of the Cerrado in Brazil to conduct a study to evaluate the transition from a low-productivity pasture to an agroforestry system. The geographical distribution of these academic results can beseen in Table6. It is noteworthy that 53 of the 63 papers had a single country as an object (84.1%), and nine involved two or more countries or regions (14.3%; see Tables 6, 7). Brazil hosted more than half of them (52.8%), leading the regional production of publications on the subject, followed by Cuba (13.2%) and Mexico (9.4%). The rest of the papers were distributed among Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Peru, with two papers per country and one for Chile, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Brazil participated in two multinational studies, one with France and another with the UnitedStates and NewZealand. Other studies were regional, one in South America and another in South America and Western Europe, including two global research studies. Another involved Uruguay with the European Union and Mexico/Zimbabwe/ Bangladesh. Table7 summarizes the findings of international research conducted in collaboration with LAC countries. 5. Discussion Only five of the papers published on the transition to sustainable agriculture in LAC used one of the four frameworks for sociotechnical transitions selected for this SRL to analyze it. The five papers were published after 2020 and represented 22% of the 23 Durán et al. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1145263 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 09 frontiersin.org analyzed papers. They were published in the last 2 years of the analyzed period, of which 17 were published in 2020 and 6in 2021. It may presage a better future for applying these frameworks with greater rigor. Both the work by El Bilali (2019) and Giganti and Falcone (2022) shows the lag of LAC in using such analytical frameworks to study transition processes. Considering the purpose of facilitating the transition towards sustainability, the strict application of these methodological frameworks could increase their contribution to the transitions underway in contexts like those studied, whether it is addressing the socio-technical change, study of actors and institutions involved, the introduction and dissemination of new technologies or modeling transitions through strategic, tactical, operational, and reflective activities. Looking at how transitions to sustainable agriculture have been framed within the approaches to studying socio-technical transitions, the 5 cases of stated application correspond to contemporary transitions. There is no historical analysis between them. However, this cannot beseen as a negative fact. According to Genus and Coles (2008), research on transitions has faced two challenges: (i) creating and improving the understanding of historical transitions and (Lukkarinen etal., 2018) (ii) advancing and refining the frameworks and tools used for the analysis of contemporary socio-technical transitions (Papachristos and Adamides, 2016). When the observation is expanded to establish trends, and all the selected papers published since 2016 are considered, some works explore historical-cultural aspects to respond to that first challenge. It includes Heredia-R etal. (2020) (traditional production systems of the Kichwa in Brazil); Garrett etal. (2020) (combined cultivation and livestock systems in Brazil), Delgado Berrocal (2019) (practices and techniques of the Waris and the Incas in Peru) and Ianovali etal. (2018) (Quilombola migratory cultivation system in Brazil). Transition research has a solid analytical core based on historical socio-technical data from the cases studies (Elzen etal., 2004; Geels, 2005). The trend that has followed the application of transitions towards sustainability in LAC is to take advantage of the study of historical cases to facilitate contemporary transitions. Overall, identifying windows of opportunity and the first signs of an imminent transition is necessary to formulate policies to direct the system toward the desired trajectory, something that does not necessarily apply to historical studies (Papachristos, 2014). The 23 papers addressing social practices (Table 5), of which 19 were published after 2016 (83%), are hopeful signs because experimenting in niches is crucial to learning about social challenges and stimulating transitions (Raven etal., 2010). The SNM, the related approach to social practices, was used in 23 of 63 publications for 36.5% of the total sample. The results suggest that socio-ecological and socio-technical systems similarly conceptualize their objects of study, showing complex, dynamic, multiscale, and adaptive properties (Smith and Stirling, 2010). Therefore, the leading technologies on which the experiences of technological transitions in favor of sustainable agriculture in LAC are based must include a look at social practices. In agricultural techniques/technologies, there is a wide range of alternatives. Some are relatively inexpensive, such as avoiding burning in cane cultivation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Perillo etal., 2021) to slashing and burning in the cultivation of black beans (Edivaldo and Rosell, 2020). Other low-cost technologies include chicken compost, bovine vermicompost, and pig vermicompost (Ramirez-Guerrero and Meza-Figueroa, 2014). Table 5 shows that works related to agricultural techniques/ technologies (10), soil technologies (4), combined breeding and harvesting (3), software and simulations/TIS (3) and agroforestry (2) represent 33% of the total selected cases. Techniques for pest control have high skill requirements, including the use of C24G agent as a biological control in rice plantations (Chaibub etal., 2020), the use of ground beetles in potato production (Rondon etal., 2013), and the use of sustainable pest management strategies (Lovatto et al., 2012; Hammond Wagner etal., 2016). There is also the call to pay more attention to the human face of socio-technical change against the actors cooperating, colluding, and colliding in favor of synthetic pesticides (Sherwood and Paredes, 2014). As the only case in the SRL, the escalation in agricultural mechanization was seen in three different contexts. Van Loon etal. (2020) recognize that the availability of resources is a handicap in its implementation and propose using providers that offer the service to multiple users. In this way, the organizational point of view takes the technological aspect into the background. Implementing integrated agricultural production systems is considered a promising strategy for sustainable agricultural intensification (Cunha etal., 2021). Several examples of integrated TABLE6 Distribution of country where research on the transition to sustainability in agriculture in LAC were developed. Country Number of papers Percentage Brazil 28 52.8 Cuba 7 13.2 Mexico 5 9.4 Bolivia 2 3.8 Ecuador 2 3.8 Nicaragua 2 3.8 Peru 2 3.8 Chile 1 1.9 Colombia 1 1.9 Panama 1 1.9 Uruguay 1 1.9 Venezuela 1 1.9 Total 53 100.0 TABLE7 Multinational research on the transition to sustainability in agriculture. Countries/regions involved Number of papers Brazil/France 2 United States/New Zealand/Brazil 1 Mexico/Zimbabwe/Bangladesh 1 South America 1 South America/Western Europe 1 Uruguay/European Union 1 Global 2 Total 9