Against the odds: Network and institutional pathways enabling agricultural diversification

Farming systems that support locally diverse agricultural production and high levels of biodiversity are in rapid decline, despite evidence their benefits for climate, environmental health, food security. Yet, policies, financial incentives, market concentration increasingly constrain the viability diversified farming systems. Here, we present a conceptual framework to identify novel processes promote emergence sustainability systems, using three real-world examples where communities have found pathways diversification major structural constraints. By applying our analyze these bright spots United States, Brazil, Malawi, two distinct pathways—network institutional—to diversification. These emerge through alignment factors related social ecological structure (policies, institutions, conditions) agency (values, collective action, management decisions). We find that, when network institutional operate tandem, potential scale up across farms landscapes increases substantially.