Food Security and Food Technology in a Shrinking Society: A Socio-Technical Transition Perspective

Conventional food security strategies have largely been formulated under assumptions of population growth, abundant agricultural labor, and stable global trade. However, many advanced economies—particularly in East Asia—are entering a shrinking-society context characterized by population decline, rapid aging, and regional depopulation. This paper argues that demographic shrinkage should be understood not as a peripheral trend but as a landscape-level structural pressure that destabilizes incumbent agri-food systems. Drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), the study conceptualizes demographic shrinkage as a cumulative force that erodes the labor base, productive capacity, and institutional stability of food systems, thereby weakening regime path dependence. Building on this framework, it advances Food Security 3.0 as a theory-driven contribution to sustainability research. Food Security 3.0 reconceptualizes food security under shrinkage conditions as a problem of systemic resilience rather than production expansion or import diversification, and theorizes food technology—including smart and automated agriculture, alternative proteins, and AI-enabled supply chains—as transitional infrastructure enabling regime reconfiguration under structural constraints. By integrating demographic change, socio-technical transitions, and governance, the study reframes food security as a question of resilience-oriented system design, strategic self-reliance, and integrated food-system governance. While anchored in the East Asian experience, the framework offers theoretical and policy-relevant insights for shrinking societies confronting overlapping demographic, climatic, and geopolitical pressures.