scholarly journals Planning for change: Transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Pereira ◽  
Scott Drimie ◽  
Olive Zgambo ◽  
Reinette Biggs
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Transformative Change

AbstractThere has been a call for more participatory processes to feed into urban planning for more resilient food systems. This paper describes a process of knowledge co-production for transforming towards an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. A ‘transformative space’ was created though a T-Lab process involving change-agents advocating for an alternative food system, and was designed to discuss challenges in the local food system from a range of perspectives, in order to co-develop potentially transformative innovations that could feed into government planning. In this paper, we describe and reflect on the T-lab in order to consider whether its design was able to meet its objective: to initiate an experimental phase of coalition-building by diverse actors that could feed into the provincial government’s strategic focus on food and nutrition security. Our findings indicate that T-labs have the potential to be important mechanisms for initiating and sustaining transformative change. They can be complementary to urban planning processes seeking to transform complex social-ecological systems onto more sustainable development pathways. However, as with all experimental co-production processes, there is significant learning and refinement that is necessary to ensure the process can reach its full potential. A key challenge we encountered was how to foster diversity and difference in opinions in the context of significant historical legacies of inequality, whilst simultaneously acting for ‘the common good’ and seeking ways to scale impact across different contexts. The paper concludes with deliberations on the nature of planning and navigating towards systemic transformative change.

Fulfilling the Right to Food for South Africa: Justice, Security, Sovereignty and the Politics of Malnutrition

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-152
Author(s):  
Busiso Helard Moyo ◽  
Anne Marie Thompson Thow
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Right To Food ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

Despite South Africa’s celebrated constitutional commitments that have expanded and deepened South Africa’s commitment to realise socio-economic rights, limited progress in implementing right to food policies stands to compromise the country’s developmental path. If not a deliberate policy choice, the persistence of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms is a deep policy failure.  Food system transformation in South Africa requires addressing wider issues of who controls the food supply, thus influencing the food chain and the food choices of the individual and communities. This paper examines three global rights-based paradigms – ‘food justice’, ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ – that inform activism on the right to food globally and their relevance to food system change in South Africa; for both fulfilling the right to food and addressing all forms of malnutrition. We conclude that the emerging concept of food sovereignty has important yet largely unexplored possibilities for democratically managing food systems for better health outcomes.

scholarly journals Alternative Agri-Food Systems Under a Market Agencements Approach: The Case of Multifunctional Farming Activity in a Peri-Urban Area

Environments ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Maria Cecilia Mancini ◽  
Filippo Arfini ◽  
Federico Antonioli ◽  
Marianna Guareschi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Trade Offs

(1) Background: A large body of literature is available on the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of alternative food systems, but not much of it is devoted to the dynamics underlying their design and implementation, more specifically the processes that make an alternative food system successful or not in terms of its sustainability aims. This gap seems to be particularly critical in studies concerning alternative food systems in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA). This paper explores how the design and implementation of multifunctional farming activity in a peri-urban area surrounding the city of Reggio Emilia in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy impact the achievement of its sustainability aims. (2) Methods: The environmental, social, and economic components of this project are explored in light of the sociology of market agencements. This method brings up the motivations of the human entities involved in the project, the role played by nonhuman entities, and the technical devices used for the fulfillment of the project’s aims. (3) Results: The alternative food system under study lacked a robust design phase and a shared definition of the project aims among all the stakeholders involved. This ended in a substantial mismatch between project aims and consumer expectations. (4) Conclusions: When a comprehensive design stage is neglected, the threefold aim concerning sustainability might not be achievable. In particular, the design of alternative food systems must take into account the social environment where it is intended to be put in place, especially in UPA, where consumers often live in suburban neighborhoods wherein the sense of community is not strong, thus preventing them from getting involved in a community-based project. In such cases, hybridization can play a role in the sustainability of alternative food networks, provided that some trade-offs occur among the different components of sustainability—some components of sustainability will be fully achieved, while others will not.

scholarly journals The Small World of the Alternative Food Network

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Brinkley
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Small World ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Term Survival ◽  
Food Network ◽  
Robust Network Design ◽  
Alternative Food Network

This research offers the first use of graph theory mathematics in social network analysis to explore relationships built through an alternative food network. The local food system is visualized using geo-social data from 110 farms and 224 markets around Baltimore County, Maryland, with 699 connections between them. Network behavior is explored through policy document review and interviews. The findings revealed a small-world architecture, with system resiliency built-in by diversified marketing practices at central nodes. This robust network design helps to explain the long-term survival of local food systems despite the meteoric rise of global industrial food supply chains. Modern alternative food networks are an example of a movement that seeks to reorient economic power structures in response to a variety of food system-related issues not limited to consumer health but including environmental impacts. Uncovering the underlying network architecture of this sustainability-oriented social movement helps reveal how it weaves systemic change more broadly. The methods used in this study demonstrate how social values, social networks, markets, and governance systems embed to transform both physical landscapes and human bodies. Network actors crafted informal policy reports, which were directly incorporated in state and local official land-use and economic planning documents. Community governance over land-use policy suggests a powerful mechanism for further localizing food systems.

scholarly journals Urban Gardening in the Crisis Conjuncture

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-172
Author(s):  
Christopher Maughan ◽  
Christopher Maughan
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Urban Community ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Current Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Urban Gardening ◽  
Alternative Food Movements

Urban gardening finds itself at a juncture – not only are crises caused and exacerbated by the industrial food system urgently demonstrating the need for more localised, sustainable, and democratically-determined food systems, but alternative food movements are increasingly negotiating crises of their own. Critical Foodscapes was a one-day conference part-funded by Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) and the Food GRP. The conference was put together with the intention of bringing a ‘critical studies’ approach to the emerging research area of urban community food growing; namely, to put critical – but constructive – pressure on some of the assumptions which underlie current theory and practice of the various forms of urban food growing. This article offers some reflections on the conference itself as well as on the prospects for urban gardening more generally.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Hope Alkon ◽  
Julie Guthman
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
To Come ◽  
Economic Inequalities

This chapter argues that food activists need to look beyond the politics of their plates to engage with broader questions of racial and economic inequalities, strategy and political transformation. It grounds the examples that follow in two ongoing scholarly debates. The first regards the role of inequalities, particularly of race and class, in shaping past and present industrial and alternative food systems. The second looks to strategies and tactics. While some have argued that the provision of relatively apolitical alternatives to industrial food systems lays the groundwork for transformative change, the editors of this volume urge activists to follow those profiled in this book towards more cooperative, oppositional and collective strategic choices. The introduction ends with an overview of the chapters to come.

scholarly journals For food space: theorizing alternative food networks beyond alterity

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Renata Blumberg ◽  
Helga Leitner ◽  
Kirsten Valentine Cadieux
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Sustainable Livelihood ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Food Networks

<p>In response to calls by scholars to deepen theoretical engagement in research on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), in this article we critically discuss and assess major theoretical approaches deployed in the study of AFNs. After highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theoretical approach, we provide an alternative framework – which we refer to as the Geographical Political Ecology of Food Systems – that integrates the contributions that have emerged in the study of the alternative geographies of food with an understanding of capitalist processes in the food system. We do this by bringing together literature on the political ecology of food systems and multiple spatialities, including Doreen Massey's understanding of space as a heterogeneous multiplicity and Eric Sheppard's conceptualization of sociospatial positionality. We utilize research on agrarian change and AFNs in Eastern Europe to elaborate this approach. We argue that this new perspective helps navigate tensions in AFN scholarship, and provides new avenues for research and action. We focus particularly on the ability of AFNs to provide a sustainable livelihood for participating farmers, thus far a neglected topic in AFN research in Europe.</p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Alternative Food Networks, Eastern Europe, spatialities, positionality, livelihoods</p>

scholarly journals COVID-19 and Sustainable Food Systems: What Should We Learn Before the Next Emergency

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Bisoffi ◽  
Lilia Ahrné ◽  
Jessica Aschemann-Witzel ◽  
András Báldi ◽  
Kerstin Cuhls ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Healthy Diets

Three key transitions leading to a “safe and just” operating space, with a focus on food systems, emerged during the development of a Foresight study promoted by SCAR (Standing Committee on Agricultural Research1): (a) sustainable and healthy diets for all; (b) full circularity in the use of resources; (c) diversity as a key component of stable systems. As consequence of COVID-19, food emerged again as a central element of life, along with health, after decades in which food security was taken for granted, at least in most developed countries. The COVID-19 outbreak offered the opportunity for a reflection on the importance of resilience in emergencies. Sustainable and healthy diets for all, was shown, during the pandemic, to depend much more on social and economic conditions than on technical aspects of food production and processing. Agriculture and the agro-industry have now a potential to absorb, at least temporarily, workers laid out in other sectors; the pandemic could be an opportunity to re-think and re-value labor relationships in the sector as well as local productions and supply chains. A full circularity in food systems also would benefit from stronger links established at the territorial level and increase the attention on the quality of the environment, leading to the adoption of benign practices, regenerating rather than impoverishing natural resources. Diversity is a key component of a resilient system, both in the biophysical sphere and in the social sphere: new business models, new knowledge-sharing networks, new markets. The three transitions would operate in synergy and contribute to the resilience of the whole food system and its preparation for a possible next emergency. Science can support policy making; however, science needs to be better embedded in society, to have a clear direction toward the grand challenges, to address the social, economic, behavioral spheres, to aim clearly at the common good. We need to re-think the conundrum between competition and cooperation in research, devising ways to boost the latter without sacrificing excellence. We need to improve the way knowledge is generated and shared and we need to ensure that information is accessible and unbiased by vested interests.

scholarly journals Exploring the transformative potential of urban food: a future research agenda

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniek Hebinck ◽  
Odirilwe Selomane ◽  
Esther Veen ◽  
Anke de Vrieze ◽  
Saher Hasnain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Food Research ◽  
Future Research Agenda ◽  
Transformative Potential

Urban food systems are a key lever for transformative change towards sustainability, and research reporting on the role of urban food initiatives in supporting sustainability is increasing. However, an overview of such initiatives and their transformative potential is lacking, as contextual and disciplinary-fragmented research complicates what insights can be drawn to support larger-scale sustainability transformations. We provide such an overview by synthesizing multidisciplinary research on urban food initiatives and by exploring their transformative potential. We developed a typology for urban food initiatives and present a framework of processes and outcomes that are steppingstones to sustainable food system transformation. We show that different types of urban food initiatives perform distinct roles that support sustainability. Unpacking three areas of concern, we conclude with a future research agenda. This is a first step towards integration of urban food research and of providing urban food governance with the tools to shape more sustainable systems.

Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony and Food Systems Literacy: Transforming the Global Industrial Food System

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rose ◽  
Izo Lourival
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Food Citizenship ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

AbstractNational and global food systems are beset by intersecting and mutually reinforcing crises of public and ecological health. The locus of these crises resides primarily in the excessive concentration of corporate power and control. Deploying a Gramscian theory of politics as a contribution to the ongoing development of a critical food-based environmental education pedagogy, this article argues that transformative change requires the mass exercise of food citizenship directed towards the realisation of a socially just and ecologically sustainable food system, as contemplated by the principles of food sovereignty. The article argues further that food citizenship in turn presupposes levels of engagement and motivation that will only come from processes of transformative learning and critical consciousness-raising through an emerging form of environmental education: critical food systems literacy.

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