Can Cybernetic Twins Function as Regulators for Sustainable (Sea)Food Systems?

Feeding the growing global population without permanently overshooting local-to-planetary boundaries demands a transition from conventional resource extraction to holistic models. Current digital twin applications in (sea)food systems primarily focus on predictive monitoring but fail to holistically integrate socio-economic-ecological systems (SEES) and their emergent properties (e.g., sustainability, stability, dynamism, and circularity). However, it remains unknown whether a unified cybernetic architecture can simultaneously satisfy SEES-level properties by bridging asynchronous global supply-demand chains through embedded spatiotemporal feedback loops. This conceptual review argues that a cybernetic twin—defined as the continuous, bidirectional fusion of a SEES and its digital counterpart via recursively coupled algorithms—can bridge this gap by operating across seven interacting phases of the global food continuum at multiple spatiotemporal resolutions. By integrating ecosystem dynamics with real-time simulations, the twin would interact with decision-making processes by rendering transparent and dynamic interactions among SEES-level pathways across aquatic-terrestrial food systems. We propose how a cybernetic twin can be leveraged to achieve sustainable (sea)food quantity and quality in SEES.