Societies around the world are at a critical juncture. As the planetary population grows, there are increasing demands for expanding available food, more nutritious and healthy foods, and contemporaneously the need for greater efficiencies and decreased impacts upon the environment.

The sustainability of food production systems is a complex issue that requires a global and multidisciplinary approach, combining not only agronomy, ecology, nutrition, epidemiology, processing, energy use, but also marketing and sociology. It is within this context that this special issue aims to illustrate, through review articles, case studies, as well as modeling and simulation studies, some means of understanding the integration of food, in a broad sense, within our environment and society.