As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant (...) farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when increasingly its demands for fair food systems are urban in nature. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice. Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism. However, we find that food justice was reported as an approach more aligned with the socio-historical context in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles. (shrink)

Food sovereignty can be conceptualized as a political proposal for social change in the field of agri-food relations. However, specific strategies of how to achieve this transformative potential are diverse, and context-dependent. The paper explores this diversity by examining discourses on the food sovereignty construction process in Catalonia. Using Q methodology we have explored visions held by individuals participating in the social movement for food sovereignty, identifying five discourses: activism, anti-purism, self-management, pedagogy, and pragmatism. Key strategies of transformation include social (...) mobilization, institutional negotiation, self-management, education to foster value change, and politics of the possible. The relevance assigned to ideological affinity explains different views on the subject of transformation, particularly regarding the involvement of the administration and the productive sector. As regards transformative strategies, discourses assign differing importance to the role of agency for effecting social transformation, which influences their assessment of individual actions as an effective means for social change. Forms of individualized and classic collective action currently coexist within the Catalan agri-food movement, but such diversity is not acknowledged as an effective alliance towards food sovereignty. Moreover, all discourses agree to a dual definition of food sovereignty, both as a process, that is, as democratization of the decision-making process in the agri-food sector, and as a result, that is, establishing an agri-food model alternative to the neo-liberal one. However, the discourses share an unclear view of democracy as decentralized collective decision-making that does not make explicit how this model should be implemented to achieve social control of the agri-food system. (shrink)

Whereas hundreds of social movements and NGOs all over the world have embraced the concept of food sovereignty, not many public authorities at the national and international level have adopted the food sovereignty paradigm as a normative basis for alternative agriculture and food policy. A common explanation of the limited role of food sovereignty in food and agriculture policy is that existing power structures are biased towards maintaining the corporatist food regime and neo-liberal thinking about food security. This article sets (...) out to provide an alternative explanation for this limited role by critically reflecting on the debate about food sovereignty itself. The main argument is that this debate is characterized by deadlock. Two mechanisms underlying the deadlock are analyzed: confusion about the concept of sovereignty and the failure of the epistemic community to debate how to reconcile conflicting values, discourses, and institutions regarding food. To overcome this deadlock and organize meaningful debate with public authorities, it is proposed that the food sovereignty movement uses insights from legal pluralism and debates on governance and adopts the ending of “food violence” as a new objective and common frame. (shrink)

This article defends a republican understanding of food sovereignty, according to which food sovereignty is the freedom of people to make choices related to food production, distribution and consum...

Food citizenship is considered a helpful tool for extending the debate about the rights and duties of citizens to the field of food, and for fomenting participation of all actors in the governance of agri-food systems. Despite its generalized use, this concept has still to be systematically defined. The objective of this article is to apply the analytical framework of citizenship to the food dimension in order to identify the features which, from an analytical perspective, characterise food citizenship. By reviewing (...) the available literature, we identify which are the constituent elements associated with the current concept of citizenship and we explore the treatment that different food theory approaches give to them. We also analyze what are the characteristics attributed to food citizenship by scholars and food movement practitioners. In addition, we propose a theoretical model of food citizenship structured into eight propositions. These propositions have as core ideas an extended concept of the right to food, the assumption of obligations, the combination of public and private behavior, the individual and collective participation, the empowerment of all actors of the agri-food system, the promotion of justice, fairness and sustainability in food systems, and a cosmopolitan character of food citizenship. The theoretical model of food citizenship we propose is a framework under construction, but we believe it to be a useful tool to stimulate theoretical debate about the concept, guide empirical research and foment citizen awareness about food issues. (shrink)

Indicators of food sovereignty and food democracy center on people having the right and ability to define their food polices and strategies with respect to food culture, food security, sustainability and use of natural resources. Yet food sovereignty, like democracy, exists on multiple and competing scales, and policymakers and citizens often have different agendas and priorities. In passing a ban on the use of genetically-modified seeds in agriculture, Jackson County, Oregon has obtained some measure of food sovereignty. Between 2016 and (...) 2017 ethnographic research was undertaken in rural Southern Oregon where local community and State of Oregon priorities regarding the use of GMO crops are in conflict. This article presents ethnographic research findings about the expression and negotiation of multiple food sovereignties by civil society in rural southern Oregon and the State of Oregon via democratic processes. In particular, these findings illustrate the effects of socio-political power dynamics on local and state acts of food sovereignty, democracy and agrifood policy by analyzing what the different expressions of food sovereignty reveal for its implementation at the local level. (shrink)

Local sustainable food systems have captured the popular imagination as a progressive, if not radical, pillar of a sustainable food future. Yet these grassroots innovations are embedded in a dominant food regime that reflects productivist, industrial, and neoliberal policies and institutions. Understanding the relationship between these emerging grassroots efforts and the dominant food regime is of central importance in any transition to a more sustainable food system. In this study, we examine the encounters of direct farm marketers with food safety (...) regulations and other government policies and the role of this interface in shaping the potential of local food in a wider transition to sustainable agri-food systems. This mixed methods research involved interview and survey data with farmers and ranchers in both the USA and Canada and an in-depth case study in the province of Manitoba. We identified four distinct types of interactions between government and farmers: containing, coopting, contesting, and collaborating. The inconsistent enforcement of food safety regulations is found to contain progressive efforts to change food systems. While government support programs for local food were helpful in some regards, they were often considered to be inadequate or inappropriate and thus served to coopt discourse and practice by primarily supporting initiatives that conform to more mainstream approaches. Farmers and other grassroots actors contested these food safety regulations and inadequate government support programs through both individual and collective action. Finally, farmers found ways to collaborate with governments to work towards mutually defined solutions. While containing and coopting reflect technologies of governmentality that reinforce the status quo, both collaborating and contesting reflect opportunities to affect or even transform the dominant regime by engaging in alternative economic activities as part of the ‘politics of possibility’. Developing a better understanding of the nature of these interactions will help grassroots movements to create effective strategies for achieving more sustainable and just food systems. (shrink)

This paper examines the scientific controversy over the yields of genetically modified [GM] crops as a case study in epistemologically deep disagreements. Appeals to “the evidence” are inadequate to resolve such disagreements; not because the interlocutors have radically different metaphysical views (as in cases of incommensurability), but instead because they assume rival epistemological frameworks and so have incompatible views about what kinds of research methods and claims count as evidence. Specifically, I show that, in the yield debate, proponents and opponents (...) of GM crops cite two different sets of claims as evidence, which correspond to two rival epistemological frameworks, classical experimental epistemology and Nancy Cartwright's evidence for use. I go on to argue that, even if both sides of the debate accepted Cartwright's view, they might still disagree over what counts as evidence, because evidence for use ties standards of evidence to what is sometimes called the “context of application.”. (shrink)

Food security scholarship and policy tends to embrace the nutrition status of individual men, women and children as the end-goal of food security efforts. While there has been much value in investigating and trying to ensure sufficient nutrition for struggling households around the world, this overriding emphasis on nutrition status has reduced our understandings of what constitutes food adequacy. While token attention has been paid to more qualitative ideas like “cultural appropriateness,” food security scholars and policy makers have been unable (...) to understand the broader value of food, which exceeds its caloric and nutrient counts. Drawing on empirical work from Medellín, Colombia, the paper argues that having adequate food means much more than simply sufficient nutrient intake, perhaps especially among marginalized groups. Exploring the case of food insecure women from Colombia who were forcibly displaced from rural to urban, we demonstrate how understandings of food adequacy must consider the social and environmental imaginaries of marginalized groups. (shrink)

The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the journal _Agriculture and Human Values_ provided a crucial intellectual space for the early transdisciplinary critique of the industrial agrifood system. This paper describes that process and presents the concept of “The Doctors of Agrifood Studies” as a metaphor for the key role critical agrifood social scientists played in documenting the unsustainability of conventional agriculture and working to create an alternative, ethical, sustainable agrifood system. After the introduction, the paper details the “Critical (...) Turn” in agrifood studies, followed by a reconsideration of my “Four Questions” framework, focusing on the current tension between the food security and food sovereignty discourses and movements. (shrink)

New techniques in genome editing have led to a controversial debate about the opportunities and uncertainties they present for agricultural food production and consumption. In July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union defined genome editing as a new process of mutagenesis, which implies that the resulting organisms count as genetically modified and are subject, in principle, to the obligations of EU Directive 2001/18/EG. This paper examines how key protagonists from academia, politics, and the economy strategically framed the (...) debate around genome editing in agriculture in Germany prior to its legal classification by the Court of Justice. It is based on an analysis of 96 official statements, including position papers, press releases, and information brochures. Our study reveals eight strategic frames used in the discourse on genome editing and uncovers the strategies used to disconnect from or connect with the previous discourse on green genetic engineering in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Building on competitive framing theory, the study provides explanations for the use and emergence of counter-framing strategies and their success or failure in the debate around genome editing. (shrink)

The focus of this article is community supported agriculture (CSA) as an alternative food movement and a bottom-up response to the problems of the dominant food systems. By utilizing social innovation approach that explores the relationship between causes for human needs and emergence of socially innovative food initiatives, the article examines how the CSA projects emerge and why, what is their innovative role as part of the social economy and what is their transformative potential. Based on qualitative data from four (...) different models of CSA case studies in different regions of Wales, UK, and by using concepts from an alternative model for social innovation (ALMOLIN) as analytical tool, the article demonstrates that the Welsh CSA cases play distinctive roles as part of the social economy. They satisfy the needs for ecologically sound and ethically produced food, grown within communities of like-minded people and they empower individuals and communities at micro level, while at the same time experiment with how to be economically sustainable and resilient on a small scale. The paper argues that in order to become ‘workable utopias’, the CSA initiatives need to overcome the barriers that prevent them from replicating, participating in policies and decision-making at macro level, and scaling up. (shrink)

More and more cities develop urban food strategies to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation. In this paper, we discuss the findings of an exploratory document analysis (...) of the social justice-oriented ambitions, motivations, current practices and policy trajectories articulated in sixteen European UFSs. We reflect on the food-related resource allocations, value patterns and decision rules these cities propose to alter and the target groups they propose to support, empower or include. Overall, we find that UFSs make little explicit reference to social justice and justice-oriented food concepts, such as food security, food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty. Nevertheless, the identified resources, services and target groups indicate that the three dimensions of Fraser are at the heart of many of the measures described. We argue that implicit, fragmentary and unspecified adoption of social justice in European UFSs is problematic, as it may hold back public consciousness, debate and collective action regarding food system inequalities and may be easily disregarded in policy budgeting, implementation and evaluation trajectories. As a path forward, we present our plans for the RE-ADJUSTool that would enable UFS stakeholders to reflect on how their UFS can incorporate social justice and who to involve in this pursuit. (shrink)

Development scholars and practitioners are promoting food security, food sovereignty, and the localization of food systems to prepare for the projected negative impacts of climate change. The implementation of biodiverse homegardens is often seen as a way not only to localize food production but also as a strategy in alignment with a food sovereignty agenda. While much scholarship has characterized and critiqued food security and sovereignty conceptualizations, relatively little research has examined people’s lived experiences in order to test how such (...) theoretical visions play out on the ground in farming communities. Based on a case study of four coffee cooperatives in northern Nicaragua, we examine a non-governmental organization (NGO)-supported project promoting food security and sovereignty through development of homegardens. We ask: To what extent are homegardens an effective strategy to reach food sovereignty? And, why may farmers be resistant to changing their food production and consumption strategies to embrace biodiverse homegardens when they improve food security? We discuss characteristics of agroecological homegardens, the distinctions between food security, food sovereignty and dominant discourses of development, the history of food sovereignty in Nicaragua, and farmer perspectives on homegarden implementation. Despite historic critiques, NGOs are poised to facilitate the transformation of food and agricultural development by employing counter development strategies, a necessary step if homegardens are to be successful in the long term. To conclude, we propose some strategies NGOs and communities might pursue to move forward with homegardens as a food sovereignty strategy. This research suggests that a food sovereignty approach still rooted in mainstream development models faces significant obstacles to moving beyond food security and into a farmer-led food sovereignty agenda. (shrink)

Attempts to democratize the food system and make it more equitable through food sovereignty take many forms across space. In Cuba, food sovereignty is perceived as the promotion of small-scale farming methods informed by agroecology and permaculture. However, these practices are mediated by discourses of self-sufficiency in the context of the US blockade. Simultaneously, in Basque country, Spain, food sovereignty shapes community-supported agriculture initiatives, farmer union and cooperative-based work, and a deep appreciation for regional foods. In this context, food sovereignty (...) is perceived as part of the struggle to maintain Basque identity and autonomy. In this paper, I discuss how food sovereignty is defined and understood by outside actors who traveled to either Cuba or Basque country to understand how food sovereignty is being practiced in place. As educators, farmers, students, retirees, farmworker organizers, and activists meet in these spaces, I ask how do definitions of food sovereignty differ? I argue that food sovereignty ‘sits in places’ and travelers have difficulty discerning what food sovereignty is when confronted with unfamiliar practices. Findings suggest that such educational tourism is an attempt to create a meaningful space for dialogue about food sovereignty and as a touchstone it offers opportunities for participant discussions, however, understandings of food sovereignty are subject to confusion and alternate conceptions and thus, do not always travel well. (shrink)

For society to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the agri-food industry needs a substantial sustainability transition toward food systems capable of delivering greater volumes of nutritious food, while simultaneously lowering the environmental footprint. This issue of AHV focuses on the big picture—on mechanisms of sustainability transition, from social innovation, to models of finance and institutional systems, and calls for business and agricultural researchers to transform the sector together. Contributors to this issue embrace a transdisciplinary outlook, including scientific, technical, social and (...) political dimensions of agroecology. This issue is a call to action: to encourage the community of social entrepreneurs, ecosystem players and researchers to contribute analytical methods, experiences and scientific insights on emerging social innovations related to food, agriculture and rural–urban transformation. (shrink)

This paper builds on previous research about the potential downsides of food sovereignty activism in relatively wealthy societies by developing a three-part taxonomy of harms that may arise in such contexts. These are direct opposition, false equivalence, and diluted goals and methods. While this paper provides reasons to resist complacency about wealthy-world food sovereignty, we are optimistic about the potential for food sovereignty in wealthy societies, and we conclude by describing how wealthy-world food sovereignty can be a location of either (...) transnational solidarity or nonharmful forms of cooptation. (shrink)

Whether the food movement is most likely to transform the food system through ‘alternative’ or ‘oppositional’ initiatives has been the focus of considerable scholarly debate. Alternative initiatives are widespread but risk reinforcing the conventional food system by supporting neoliberal discourse and governance mechanisms, including localism, consumer choice, entrepreneurialism and self-help. While oppositional initiatives such as political advocacy have the potential for system-wide change, the current neoliberal political and ideological context dominant in Canada poses difficulties for initiatives that explicitly oppose the (...) conventional food system. As such, some argue that the food movement requires convergence between alternative and oppositional initiatives. In this paper, we investigate convergence using survey results from 143 food movement organizations in four Canadian provinces. Results based on cluster analysis and descriptive statistics on organizational discourse, activities and visions of sustainable food systems demonstrate convergence around neoliberal discourse and governance mechanisms. Localism and consumer education characteristics are particularly prominent, with a majority of respondents describing their organizations as ‘local’, engaging in consumer education activities, and stating the importance of consumer education activities, indicating convergence around alternative, rather than oppositional, initiatives. While convergence around these discourse and strategies may limit the transformative potential of the food system when interpreted as neoliberalisation of the movement, such a reading does not demonstrate their full potential, as survey results also indicate trends of transformative visions of change and political engagement, particularly at the municipal level. This research demonstrates that the movement can work simultaneously within, and opposed to, the conventional food system, and provides understanding of both neoliberal leanings and the politics of the possible of the food movement. (shrink)