world—through changes in agriculture, diet and food systems in NAE—have increased.

8. The main drivers of NAE AKST in relation to devel­opment and sustainability goals were advancements in KST and changes in societal circumstances and in­terlinked shifts in paradigms. Societal demand, mar­kets and policies (and consequently AKS) evolved under the influence of these developments.
•     Throughout NAE, AKST made a higher degree of indus­trialization and technological development as well as ur­banization possible, but were also crucially affected by these changes. Following the Second World War there was a strong focus in Europe on increasing food supply to ensure food sufficiency and one characteristic of the rebuilding period was a faith in technology throughout NAE. This led to the narrow focus of AKST during this time and further to the adverse environmental and so­cial impacts, which started to gain attention from the 1960/70s onwards.
•     In North America and Western Europe in the 1970s, the food crisis had been largely solved, a shift had oc­curred towards increasing economic liberalization and agriculture by then played a less significant role in the economy. As a result AKST in this region experienced budget cuts. Since the 1990s policies increasingly took into account the multiple interdependent roles of agri­culture. Thus AKST started to cover more comprehen­sively issues relevant to development and sustainability goals.
•     In Central and Eastern Europe, the societal restructur­ing in the late 1980s and 1990s had a dramatic effect on AKST. At the start of the 21st century the fulfillment of the accessional requirements became a main driver of AKST in the countries which joined the EU during this time.
•     The wealth differences between NAE and the develop­ing world as well as conflicts outside NAE have contrib­uted to the continued inequity in AKST between NAE and other parts of the world.

4.1    Lessons Learned: A Synthesis
Paradigm shifts seem to have been major drivers for the changes that have taken place in NAE AKST after the Sec­ond World War. The main lesson learned, based on the changes in organization and institutions of AKST in NAE and their consequences, is that the dominant paradigms can substantially influence meeting development and sus­tainability goals of reduced hunger and poverty, improved nutrition and human health, enhanced rural livelihoods and equity, environmental sustainability and sustainable economic  development.  Institutional  and  organizational changes in AKST seem to be important factors in helping to meet these goals.

Goals and scope of AKST
The goal of food sufficiency was successfully met in North America and Western Europe through focusing AKST on the productivity of land and labor and on farmer profits. This goal was not achieved to the same extent in Eastern Europe largely due to the socioeconomic and political con-

ditions, a centralized approach to AKST, restructuring and instability. However, the food systems developed in NAE do not provide full food security within all parts of NAE itself due to societal circumstances. They also rely to a large extent on resources outside NAE, which has not only re­sulted in inequity but also hinders meeting development and sustainability goals outside NAE (see Chapters 2 and 3 of this assessment). Negative consequences of this devel­opment of AKST and agriculture in NAE were great envi­ronmental, animal welfare and social costs, which did not remain within the NAE borders (see Chapter 3). Many of these costs are difficult to quantify and were initially largely ignored. Such negative externalities are increasingly being addressed but impacts can be difficult and sometimes im­possible to recover (e.g., species loss, soil erosion). As dis­cussed in the following subchapters, the attempts of NAE to assist by means of AKST in reducing hunger outside NAE were only partially successful.
     The potential of AKST to contribute to meeting devel­opment and sustainability goals might have been consider­ably greater if the scope of AKST had broadened earlier and not only since the 1990s, to embrace whole food systems integrating all its dimensions (social, economic and ecologi­cal), levels (including e.g., inputs such as financing, agricul­ture, processing, transportation, trade, consumption, waste, public goods and costs) and scales (from local to global) with varied perspectives of their actors and of multiple dis­ciplines. This broadening of the view helped AKST on a new track of providing knowledge of the kinds of food systems, which would help to meet the goals and how such food sys­tems might be achieved. AKST has now more potential to cope with the varied societal contexts and preconditions and strive for diverse systems with synergy among the different dimensions of sustainable development.

Approaches and tools of AKST
The increasing deficits in integration of the scientific com­munities and varied voices (especially of the most vulnerable beneficiaries) in the AKST processes after the Second World War contributed to the partial failure of AKST and agricul­ture in terms of development and sustainability goals. Since the 1970s, the problems caused by these structural changes in AKST were relieved through a gradual emergence of more systems oriented approaches, more participation of varied stakeholders in AKST and increased interaction between the agricultural, environmental and social sciences. This process started in international development research and similar approaches have been increasingly adopted within NAE.
     Interdisciplinarity is more widely accepted as the pre­ferred approach for AKST rather than continuous emergence of new disciplines by unifying old ones. Interdisciplinarity still has a variety of barriers to overcome. Communication across disciplinary borders seems to be the most crucial barrier to achieve true interdisciplinarity. Organizational structures based on the basic sciences as well as disciplinary traditions in funding and merit systems have created disin­centives to interdisciplinarity. Demands have increased for appropriate education and training to understand diverse science philosophic approaches, for conceptual tools to facilitate the process and for the development of interdis-