Capacity building for food justice in England: the contribution of charity-led community food initiatives

This paper discusses the extent to which charity-led initiatives can contribute to capacity building for food justice in England. The paper draws on evaluations of two projects run by the charity Garden Organic: the Master Gardener Programme, operating a network of volunteers who mentor households, schools and community groups to support local food growing, and the Sowing New Seeds programme, which engages “Seed Stewards” to work with communities to encourage the growing and cooking of “exotic” crops. Based on qualitative data about peoples’ motivations for participation and the benefits that are experienced, we interpret these projects as examples of capacity building for food justice. We suggest that whilst currently depoliticised, the “quiet” process of reskilling and awareness raising that occurs through shared gardening projects could have transformative potential for people’s relationship with food. Finally, we use our findings to raise critical questions and propose future research about food justice concepts and practices.     

The convergence of alternative food networks within “rural development” initiatives: the case of the New Rural Reconstruction Movement in China†

Rural sociologists and geographers have conceptualised different rural development trajectories including “the agri-industrial model”, “the post-productivist model” and “the rural development model”. Alternative food networks (AFNs) are increasingly recognised as a “forerunner” and a critical component of the emerging “rural development model” in the West. Meanwhile, Marsden and Franklin [2013. Replacing neoliberalism: theoretical implications of the rise of local food movements. Local Environment, 18 (5), 636–641] pointed out that there is a “local trap” in the current conceptualisation of AFNs that overemphasises their local embeddedness and heterogeneity. This “local trap” marginalises AFNs and, therefore, hinders their potential for transforming the industrialised conventional food system. The convergence and scaling-up of fragmented AFNs have been recognised as important ways to address this marginalisation issue and thus have attracted considerable attention. However, current studies of the convergence of AFNs focus mainly on the role of food-centred organisations without recognising the role of the emerging “rural development” initiatives in the convergence of AFNs. Based on in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and analysis of secondary data, this paper uses the New Rural Reconstruction Movement (NRRM), an emerging alternative rural development movement in China, as an example to illustrate how the NRRM opens up a novel space for the convergence of AFNs. We argue that the interrelationship between AFNs and rural development is indeed reciprocal. The NRRM, following the “rural development” trajectory, functions as a hub for the convergence and scaling-up of various alternative food initiatives. Strategies for achieving convergence include constructing a “common ground” for these initiatives, establishing national alliances and organisations, sharing knowledge and exchanging personnel among them.     

Cultivating hybrid collectives: research methods for enacting community food economies in Australia and the Philippines

Across the globe, groups are experimenting with initiatives to create alternatives to the dominant food system. What role might research play in helping to strengthen and multiply these initiatives? In this paper we discuss two research projects in Australia and the Philippines in which we have cultivated hybrid collectives of academic researchers, lay researchers and various non-human others with the intention of enacting community food economies. We feature three critical interactions in the “hybrid collective research method”: gathering, which brings together those who share concerns about community food economies; reassembling, in which material gathered is deliberatively rebundled to amplify particular insights; and translating, by which reassembled ideas are taken up by other collectives so they may continue to “do work”. We argue that in a climate-changing world, the hybrid collective research method fosters opportunities for a range of human and non-human participants to act in concert to build community food economies.     

Institutional innovation in urban governance: The case of climate change adaptation

Urban governance systems need to be adaptive to deal with emerging uncertainties and pressures, including those related to climate change. Realising adaptive urban governance systems requires attention to institutions, and in particular, processes of institutional innovation. Interestingly, understanding of how institutional innovation and change occurs remains a key conceptual weakness in urban climate change governance. This paper explores how institutional innovation in urban climate change governance can be conceptualised and analysed. We develop a heuristic involving three levels: (1) “visible” changes in institutional arrangements, (2) changes in underlying “rules-in-use”, and (3) the relationship to broader “governance dilemmas”. We then explore the utility of this heuristic through an exploratory case study of urban water governance in Santiago, Chile. The approach presented opens up novel possibilities for studying institutional innovation and evaluating changes in governance systems. The paper contributes to debates on innovation and its effects in urban governance, particularly under climate change.     

“The right to food is nature too”: food justice and everyday environmental expertise in the Salvadoran permaculture movement

In El Salvador a growing permaculture movement attunes small-scale farming activities to principles of ecological observation. The premise is twofold: close-grained appreciation of already-interacting biophysical processes allows for the design of complementary social and agricultural systems requiring minimum energy inputs. Secondly, the insistence on campesino smallholders as actors in the design of sustainable food systems directly addresses decades of “top-down” developmental interventions, from Green Revolution experiments in the 1960s and 1970s to international food security programmes in the 1990s. Permaculture connects food insecurity to the delegitimisation of smallholder innovation and insists that, through sharing simple techniques, campesino farmers can contribute towards future-oriented questions of environmental sustainability. This repositioning is brought about through the mobilisation of pedagogical techniques that legitimise the experiences and expertise of small-scale farmers, while standardising experimental methods for testing, evaluating and sharing agroecological practices. Like food sovereignty and food justice movements, Salvadoran permaculture links hunger with longer histories of (uneven) capital accumulation and dispossession and renders campesino farmers its protagonists. By modelling a form of expertise premised in intimate involvement with specific environments, permaculture goes still further, seeking to dislodge a pervasive knowledge politics that situates some as knowers and innovators, and others as passive recipients. This grounds human rights in an ethos of caring for the “more-than-human” world and places emphasis on a corollary right as part of food justice, increasingly being demanded “from below”: the right to know.     

Sustainable innovation journeys: exploring the dynamics of firm practices as part of transitions to more sustainable food and farming

Deep structural and sustained change is necessary to tackle contemporary environmental challenges. How such change emerges and can be governed has been explored through the notion of sustainable innovation journeys. To date research had conceptualised such journeys as transitions to more sustainable socio-technical systems, e.g. mobility, shelter, food and farming. However, there is a paucity of how innovation proceeds in firms as part of sustainable innovation journeys. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. A longitudinal case study was completed of a medium-sized food-processing firm in the UK. Qualitative data were collected using ethnographic methods such as participant observation. Drawing on practice theory, a conceptual framework was developed which enabled us to explore and make sense of the firm's sustainable innovation journey conceptualised as practices. Findings show that we can usefully treat a firm as a flow of practices that either resist or otherwise accommodate new practices deemed more sustainable.     

Household food waste: the implications of consumer choice in food from purchase to disposal

Food and food-related waste is a high priority in terms of waste minimisation in New Zealand. Over the summer of 2012–2013, a survey of 147 participants was conducted on a range of views and practices related to environmental challenges and understandings. The survey, undertaken in Palmerston North, New Zealand, captured a wide socio-demographic. This article focuses on respondents’ food practices from purchase, to plate, to disposal and the environmental implications of these practices. The survey data have allowed an enriched understanding of both individual and structural level challenges as well as incentives towards improving environmental practices in relation to household food waste minimisation. The results indicated that, in keeping with other research in this area, food waste increases according to the number of individuals in a household, and in particular the number of younger people. Also, while the majority of participants were at least “somewhat concerned” about their households’ environmental impact, over three quarters of participant households put food waste into their rubbish bin. Some solutions and directions to further progress research, policy, and practice in this area are offered, and include the need for more direct and personalised communication regarding waste minimisation, along with the provision of kerbside food waste collections. It is clear that individual- or household-level changes are important and must be supported systemically by both local body and state level legislation and initiatives, if there is to be any substantial decline in food waste going to landfill.     

Food production in the city: (re)negotiating land,food and property

This paper addresses issues of access to land for food production in Toronto by offering fresh perspectives on urban agriculture in the neo-liberal city of the global north. It examines attempts to scale up urban agriculture that emphasise changing the relationships between land access, property and new collaborative relationships among different stakeholders. These initiatives involve renegotiating access to land for growing food between private property owners and landless growers, concomitant shifts in control over valued resources and commercialisation. These shifts are often based on relations of trust within a sharing economy rather than public battles over political decisions to develop urban agriculture lands. Growing food on private lands in the city is political in challenging taken-for-granted ideas and practices of property and urban agriculture. New approaches offer options for training and income, as well as expanding the land base for urban agriculture. Small-scale farming projects are affirmative political manoeuvres. They challenge urban residents to consider land for food production across the categories of public and private property. We document three approaches that challenge current property relations: temporary use of a development site through “soft” squatting; redesignating suburban backyards for farmer training and community-based and private food production; and garden sharing of private home backyards for urban food production and commercial growing. Such initiatives articulate alternative visions of sustainability and food security that rely on principles of collaboration and a sharing economy that challenge prevailing notions of property ownership and food security.     

Connecting resourcefulness and social innovation: exploring conditions and processes in community gardens in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Resourcefulness, a community’s capacity to engage with their local resource base, is essential in contributing to resilience, the potential to adapt to external challenges and shocks. Resourcefulness and social innovation have some overlapping qualities, however, the academic connection between the two concepts is yet to be explored. Social innovations include new practices, ideas, and initiatives that meet societal needs and contribute to social change and empowerment. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, this study researches conditions and processes of resourcefulness in facilitating social innovation in rural, peri-urban, and urban community gardens in the North of the Netherlands. Comparing differing contexts, five main enablers for altering social relations and community empowerment have been identified: (1) clear goals and motivations; (2) diversity in garden resources; (3) experimental knowledge processes; (4) strong internal support and recognition; and (5) place-based practices. Above all, this research stresses the importance of defining resourcefulness as a process and foregrounding the place-based contextual nature of innovative collective food system practices.     

Community energy initiatives to alleviate fuel poverty: the material politics of Energy Cafés

Community action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions to sustainability. Initiatives such as community energy projects, community gardens, local food networks and car sharing clubs provide new spaces for sustainable consumption, and combinations of technological and social innovations. These initiatives, which are often driven by social good rather than by pure monetary motives, have been conceptualised as grassroots innovations. Previous research in grassroots innovations has largely focused on conceptualising such initiatives and analysing their potential for replication and diffusion; there has been less research in the politics involved in these initiatives. We examine grassroots innovations as forms of political engagement that is different from the 1970s’ alternative technology movements. Through an analysis of community-run Energy Cafés in the United Kingdom, we argue that while present-day grassroots innovations appear less explicitly political than their predecessors, they can still represent a form of political participation. Through the analytical lens of material politics, we investigate how Energy Cafés engage in diverse – explicit and implicit, more or less conscious – forms of political engagement. In particular, their work to “demystify” clients’ energy bills can unravel into various forms of advocacy and engagement with energy technologies and practices in the home. Some Energy Café practices also make space for a needs-driven approach that acknowledges the embeddedness of energy in the household and wider society.     

Facing Animals: A Relational,Other-Oriented Approach to Moral Standing

In this essay we reflect critically on how animal ethics, and in particular thinking about moral standing, is currently configured. Starting from the work of two influential “analytic” thinkers in this field, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, we examine some basic assumptions shared by these positions and demonstrate their conceptual failings—ones that have, despite efforts to the contrary, the general effect of marginalizing and excluding others. Inspired by the so-called “continental” philosophical tradition (in particular Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida), we then argue that what is needed is a change in the rules of the game, a change of the question. We alter the (pre-) normative question from “What properties does the animal have?” to “What are the conditions under which an entity becomes a moral subject?” This leads us to consider the role of language, personal relations, and material-technological contexts. What is needed then in response to the moral standing problem, is not more of the same—yet another, more refined criterion and argumentation concerning moral standing, or a “final” rational argumentation that would be able to settle the animal question once and for all—but a turning or transformation in both our thinking about and our relations to animals, through language, through technology, and through the various place-ordering practices in which we participate.     

Impact of climate change on food security of small islands: The case of Mauritius

This paper studies the implications of high food prices resulting from climate change on food security in small islands, using Mauritius as a case‐study. Climate change may adversely impact prices of agricultural commodities. The study derives and calculates the government costs and the welfare effects of an increase in the world price of rice on consumers in Mauritius. Using an equilibrium displacement model, this study finds that an increase in the price of rice by 35%, as predicted by the literature on climate change and rice prices, will result in an increase of 28.8% in government spending, representing the additional outlays to support the subsidy scheme for food security. Using 2012 as the baseline, the welfare analysis results suggest that consumer surplus for ration rice consumers increases by 626 million Mauritian Rupees (MUR) or US$18 million while consumer surplus decreases by MUR454 million (US$13 million) for basmati rice consumers.     

Food Citizenship: Is There a Duty for Responsible Consumption?

Labeling of food consumption is related to food safety, food quality, environmental, safety, and social concerns. Future politics of food will be based on a redefinition of commodity food consumption as an expression of citizenship. “Citizen-consumers” realize that they could use their buying power in order to develop a new terrain of social agency and political action. It takes for granted kinds of moral selfhood in which human responsibility is bound into human agency based on knowledge and recognition. This requires new kinds of food labeling practices. Existing research on consumer’s preferences often fails to recognize the full complexity of the motivations and intentions through which the identity of the moral self is built up in relation to food consumption practices. For citizens, not only food production practices matter but also the impact of what we eat on who we are and the ecological foot print of our food stuff. Two major drivers for this are the idea that we ourselves have to take care of our own bodies (“We are what we eat”) and that we are responsible for Planet Earth. Since both obesity and climate change have become major public concerns, also governments develop an increasing interest in defining how citizens ought to behave as consumers and how retailers and producers should facilitate such responsible behavior. Since they are supposed to defend the “bonum commune,” e.g., the public health of their citizens and a sound common future for all, a new consensus on “appropriate” consumption choices has to be found, balancing beneficence and autonomy.     

More than a response to food insecurity: demographics and social networks of urban dumpster divers

Paradoxically, cities in the developed world are simultaneously increasing levels of food waste and food insecurity. Social assistance programmes intend to provide vulnerable populations with food, but many people instead choose to collect food from municipal waste streams, including “dumpster diving”. Most food-insecure people who dumpster dive do so from need, to supplement food from, or avoid stigma related to, social assistance programmes. However, it is increasingly common for food-secure people to choose to dumpster dive. We used participant observation and semi-structured interviews to characterise urban dumpster divers in Montréal, Quebec, identify what items they dive for, and describe their social connectivity. We found that while some divers identified as food insecure and extremely poor, most did not; primarily, divers were Caucasian, university students, holding an “alternative” identity, and without a full-time job or children. Divers required specialised knowledge and mostly recuperated food waste from grocery stores and bakeries (e.g. breads, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy products) that significantly improved the composition and quality of their diets. Unused goods were largely gifted and rarely sold. Food-insecure divers tended to be isolated, while food-secure divers had strong social connections because they frequently exchanged knowledge and goods and held common values. Our findings indicate that the dumpster diving community in Montréal is a heterogeneous group recuperating a range of goods for a variety of reasons that reduces food waste and alleviates food insecurity. We suggest that municipal policy-makers encourage the redistribution of potentially useful goods between local businesses and willing recuperators.     

Radical,reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal: coming to terms with urban agriculture's contradictions

For many activists and scholars, urban agriculture in the Global North has become synonymous with sustainable food systems, standing in opposition to the dominant industrial agri-food system. At the same time, critical social scientists increasingly argue that urban agriculture programmes, by filling the void left by the “rolling back” of the social safety net, underwrite neoliberalisation. I argue that such contradictions are central to urban agriculture. Drawing on existing literature and fieldwork in Oakland, CA, I explain how urban agriculture arises from a protective counter-movement, while at the same time entrenching the neoliberal organisation of contemporary urban political economies through its entanglement with multiple processes of neoliberalisation. By focusing on one function or the other, however, rather than understanding such contradictions as internal and inherent, we risk undermining urban agriculture's transformative potential. Coming to terms with its internal contradictions can help activists, policy-makers and practitioners better position urban agriculture within coordinated efforts for structural change, one of many means to an end rather than an end unto itself.     

UK allotments and urban food initiatives: (limited?) potential for reducing inequalities

The number of urban food initiatives in many regions of the world, notably Europe and the USA, has burgeoned in recent years, and analyses of the impacts of these activities on people and environments are the focus of an increasing academic literature. The impacts documented include enhanced food security, cohesive neighbourhoods, sustainability, and food justice. Yet, another literature presents opposing analyses and focuses on exclusionary aspects of projects and their enabling of a continued neo-liberal reduction in state welfare provision. As a result, there has been an impasse in debates over the potential of urban food projects to reduce inequalities. This paper proposes that the benchmark of the UK allotment system provides a means to examine these opposing positions. It uses the conceptual frameworks of diverse economies and the capital assets framework to attain clarity in the analysis of the many kinds of food-related activities seen in (peri-)urban areas. Drawing on empirical work in Plymouth, UK, it focuses on the potential of the different food ventures to reduce inequalities, given certain contingent economic and political factors. It also presents evidence that the allotment movement despite its initially radical roots can be seen as largely apolitical in the present day and has no leverage over allocation of land to allotment sites. Even so, evidence is growing that both allotments and the newer forms of urban food activities contribute to meeting national and city-level policy objectives, with the potential to enhance food justice and reduce inequalities.     

Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in Eastern Ontario

Despite their opposition to the dominant agri-food system, alternative agri-food initiatives may unwittingly reproduce central features of neoliberalism. Julie Guthman has been a particularly strong proponent of this view, arguing that food activism and neoliberalism have shaped one another dialectically in California in recent decades. This paper responds to her argument, with a view to distinguishing between what it reveals and what it may conceal about the transformative potential of alternative agri-food initiatives in North America. Drawing on primary research on a variety of community-based food initiatives in Eastern Ontario, Canada, we show how a neoliberal lens does help to illuminate some problematic characteristics of these initiatives, including assumptions about market-based solutions and focus on self-improvement at the expense of state involvement. However, this lens underestimates those aspects of community-based food initiatives that may appear commensurate with neoliberal rationalities but which also push in more progressive directions.     

Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems*

How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the “youth as consumer” frame to a food justice youth development (FJYD) approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives. The research was designed to gain insight about youths’ knowledge of food, health, and community food systems. Drawing upon the youth group’s insights, we build a framework for building critical consciousness through FJYD.     

Taming the Unruly Side of Ethics: Overcoming Challenges of a Bottom-Up Approach to Ethics in the Areas of Food Policy and Climate Change

Here, I investigate the challenges involved in addressing ethical questions related to food policy, food security, and climate change in a public engagement atmosphere where “experts” (e.g., scientists and scholars), policy-makers and laypersons interact. My focus is on the intersection between food and climate in the state of Alaska, located in the circumpolar north. The intersection of food security and climate represents a “wicked problem.” This wicked problem is plagued by “unruliness,” characterized by disruptive mechanisms that can impede how ethical issues in policy-making are broached. Unruliness is exacerbated by conditions of engagement that can be characterized as occurring in a “fog.” In this fog, interlocutors encounter both moral and epistemological conundrums. In considering how to mitigate unruliness, a bottom-up approach is recommended. I discuss “taming” strategies for addressing these ethical concerns; modest suggestions on what should be taken into count when confronting issues of science and ethics within the context of promoting greater deliberative discourse regarding food security issues at more local levels. My recommendations are made in light of developments in food policy in Alaska and may be instructive for other regions pursuing cold climate agricultural expansion, for example.