Sustainable rural development and food production has faced significant new challenges since the early 2000s. Cheap food is no longer readily available, and climate change and depleting natural resources have created the conditions for a contested and unstable political economy. A new understanding of agri-food and its relationships with rural and urban development is vital to tackling the demands for sustainability and security in our globalized and vulnerable world. This volume offers a thorough investigation of different sets of justifications for sustainability: political, scientific, technological and social. Despite widespread agreement about the importance of a sustainable future, the form this should take is contested by public, private and civic interests. Moving beyond the compromises of late 20th century post-productivism, this ambitious study suggests guiding principles and frameworks for a new phase of sustainable development in a world which is fast exceeding its natural resources.