This workshop explored Southern variation in just transitions in the livestock sector, comparing South African and Nigerian vantage points. We unpacked complexities, navigated the grey areas between food sovereignty and a fully industrialised economy and emphasised intervention points in food system governance to co-create socially just and sustainable livestock systems with farmers, researchers, government and civil society.

Andrew Bennie (Institute of Economic Justice, South Africa) presented available routes for a just transition of the beef sector in South Africa, which has predominant arrangements of industrial animal agriculture characterised by socio-economic inequalities. Opeyemi Elujulo (Youth in Agroecology Restoration Network, Nigeria) presented participatory and democratic processes for just transitions to agroecology in Nigeria, where the livestock sector is changing rapidly in response to foreign investments into infrastructure for industrial animal agriculture and regional demographic and economic changes. This workshop was chaired by Sol Cuevas (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC, Spain).