Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices 9780367436469, 9781003004820

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Chapter 1 Food for degrowth
Degrowth movement and terms
The degrowth movement meets alternative food networks
The book’s structure
Frugal abundance (Part 1)
Degrowth collectives (Part 2)
Degrowth networks
Narratives: contexts and futures (Part 4)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Part 1 Frugal abundance
Chapter 2 Replacing growth with belonging economies: A neopeasant response
Realising the limits: what is to be done?
Feeding the world
Planning
Money
Security
Neopeasant hedonism
Access to land
Land sovereignty
Skilling up and changing behaviours
Relationships
Belonging
References
Chapter 3 Quietly degrowing: Food self-provisioning in Central Europe
On the continuing popularity of food self-provisioning in Central Europe
Food self-provisioning as a highly productive and enjoyable activity
Growing food, cultivating friendships
Quiet sustainability
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4 Learning degrowth from women’s food knowledge and care in Kenya
Background and research methods
Wanjira’s kitchen
Theorising care, sustainable livelihoods and gender
Women’s recipes for degrowth
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5 Caring dachas: Food self-provisioning in Eastern Europe through the lens of care
‘Blind spots’: Reproduction and care
Promises of the global agri-food system and the postcolonial discourse about FSP
Methodology
The ecological dimension of the FSP practice
The social dimension of the FSP practice
The individual dimension of the FSP practice
‘Loud’ and ‘quiet’ manifestations of care
Conclusion
References
Part 2 Degrowth collectives
Chapter 6 Germinating degrowth? On-farm adaptation and survival in Hungarian alternative food networks
Changing the system: agriculture and organic production in Hungary
Making the case for the market garden
Establishing a market garden: essential considerations
Zsámboki Biokert
Focus on experiences: different marketing strategies
Degrowth lessons from existing organic market gardens and micro-farms
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7 Nourishing self-planned socioecological transformations: Glocal community supported agriculture in Veneto, Italy
CSAs as the decommodification of food
The CSA Veneto project
Vision, assets and perspectives
References
Chapter 8 Sustaining caring livelihoods: Agroecological cooperativism in Catalonia
The evolution of food cooperative models in Catalonia
Exploring tensions of self-management, mutuality and responsibilities
Individual versus collective needs and possible solutions
Proximity between consumers and producers
Scales of care: livelihood sustainability and solidarity
The market squeeze: paid and unpaid work
Conclusion: sustaining agroecological cooperativism in a capitalist world
References
Part 3 Degrowth networks
Chapter 9 Co-creation for transformation: Food for degrowth in Budapest Food City Lab initiatives
Budapest’s urban food system
The Fit4Food approach
Various outcomes and outputs
Themes for food degrowth
Leverage points and agency
Agendas for change: outcomes from the Fit4Food2030 co-creation workshops
Conclusion
References
Chapter 10 Technology for degrowth: Implementing digital platforms for community supported agriculture
Key concepts and values for technology for degrowth
Degrowth and CSAs in Catalonia
Methodology
Are digital technologies viable and feasible for CSAs?
Do digital technologies support fair and ethical consumption?
Does technology support or stifle conviviality?
Do technologies support specific political agendas?
Does technology support ‘appropriate’ cooperation?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11 Institutionalising degrowth: Exploring multilevel food governance
The need for a food MLG approach
Research design
ESAN-CPLP and AlimentAção!
EdiCitNet
The creation of cross-sectorial platforms
Equitable representation for food governance
Local government: a crucial node for MLG
Discussion: from principle to practice
Conclusion
References
Part 4 Narratives: degrowth contexts and futures
Chapter 12 Recycling old ideals? A utopian reading of ‘circular’ food imaginaries
Food and degrowth in key utopian works
Food in News from Nowhere and Utopia
Food in Looking Backward
The utopian imaginary
A circular imaginary: between utopia and ideology
Circular imaginaries in Brussels
Concluding remarks
References
Chapter 13 Degrowth, decolonisation and food sovereignty in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi
Degrowth and Indigenous perspectives
Food security and food sovereignty
Historical context of the Chisasibi foodscapes
The northern bio-food research project
Conclusion: Indigenous foodways, culture and degrowth
References
Chapter 14 Food waste or surplus? Reading between the lines of discourse and action
Defining food ‘waste’
Critical discourse analysis
Analysing discourse to FAO documents
Applying discourse within wider social practice: Rude Food
Discussion: reading between the lines
Conclusion
References
Chapter 15 A degrowth scenario: Can permaculture feed Melbourne?
Quantitative and qualitative challenges
Degrowth and settlement design: urbanists versus decentralisers
Current problems with agriculture
The urbanites’ Melbourne food bowl and Foodprint research
The permaculture alternative
Ted Trainer: the simpler way model
Günther’s ruralisation: solving the phosphate problem
Melbourne: how much land is required for food
Factoring in fuel wood
Conclusions
References
Chapter 16 Future research directions: Food for degrowth
Frugal abundance
Degrowth collectives
Degrowth networks
Narratives: contexts and futures
In summary
References
Index

Citation preview

Food for Degrowth

This collection breaks new ground by investigating applications of degrowth in a range of geographic, practical and theoretical contexts along the food chain. Degrowth challenges growth and advocates for everyday practices that limit socio-metabolic energy and material fows within planetary constraints. As such, the editors intend to map possibilities for food for degrowth to become established as a feld of study. International contributors offer a range of examples and possibilities to develop more sustainable, localised, resilient and healthy food systems using degrowth principles of suffciency, frugal abundance, security, autonomy and conviviality. Chapters are clustered in parts that critically examine food for degrowth in spheres of the household, collectives, networks, and narratives of broader activism and discourses. Themes include broadening and deepening concepts of care in food provisioning and social contexts; critically applying appropriate technologies; appreciating and integrating indigenous perspectives; challenging notions of ‘waste’, ‘circular economies’ and commodifcation; and addressing the ever-present impacts of market logic framed by growth. This book will be of greatest interest to students and scholars of critical food studies, sustainability studies, urban political ecology, geography, environmental studies such as environmental sociology, anthropology, ethnography, ecological economics and urban design and planning. Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar, Honorary Principal Fellow and Associate Professor in the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne (Australia). Her works include Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (co-author 2020), Housing For Degrowth: Principles, Practices, Challenges and Opportunities (co-editor, 2018), Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (author, 2018) and Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (co-editor, 2011). Ferne Edwards is Postdoctoral Fellow in Socially and Environmentally Just Transitions, Department of Design, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. Previously Research Fellow, RMIT University Centre for Urban Research (Melbourne, Australia) and Work Package Lead of the EU EdiCitNet project at RMIT Europe (Barcelona, Spain), Ferne is a cultural anthropologist researching edible cities, food waste, urban beekeeping, non-monetary food economies and food sharing.

Routledge Environmental Humanities

Series editors: Scott Slovic (University of Idaho, USA), Joni Adamson (Arizona State University, USA) and Yuki Masami (Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan) Editorial Board Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia Georgina Endfeld, Liverpool, UK Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Australia Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA Iain McCalman, University of Sydney, Australia Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, USA International Advisory Board William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA Kirsten Wehner, University of London, UK The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture. The reality of understanding and fnding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicentre of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientifc and technological framework to one that depends on the human-focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences. We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change.

Food for Degrowth Perspectives and Practices

Edited by Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-43646-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00482-0 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

1

List of fgures List of tables List of contributors Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations

viii ix x xvii xviii xx

Food for degrowth

1

ANITRA NELSON AND FERNE EDWARDS

PART 1

Frugal abundance 2

Replacing growth with belonging economies: A neopeasant response

17 19

PATRICK JONES AND MEG ULMAN

3

Quietly degrowing: Food self-provisioning in Central Europe

33

PETR DANĚK AND PETR JEHLIČKA

4

Learning degrowth from women’s food knowledge and care in Kenya

45

MEIKE BRÜCKNER

5

Caring dachas: Food self-provisioning in Eastern Europe through the lens of care LILIAN PUNGAS

59

vi

Contents

PART 2

Degrowth collectives 6 Germinating degrowth? On-farm adaptation and survival in Hungarian alternative food networks

75 77

LOGAN STRENCHOCK

7 Nourishing self-planned socioecological transformations: Glocal community supported agriculture in Veneto, Italy

90

SILVIO CRISTIANO, MARCO AURIEMMA, PAOLO CACCIARI, MANOLA CERVESATO, DOMENICO MAFFEO, PAOLA MALGARETTO AND FRANCESCO NORDIO

8 Sustaining caring livelihoods: Agroecological cooperativism in Catalonia

100

PATRICIA HOMS, GEMMA FLORES-PONS AND ADRIÀ MARTÍN MAYOR

PART 3

Degrowth networks 9 Co-creation for transformation: Food for degrowth in Budapest Food City Lab initiatives

113 115

DIANA SZAKÁL AND BÁLINT BALÁZS

10 Technology for degrowth: Implementing digital platforms for community supported agriculture

128

FERNE EDWARDS AND RICARD ESPELT

11 Institutionalising degrowth: Exploring multilevel food governance

141

FERNE EDWARDS, SÉRGIO PEDRO AND SARA ROCHA

PART 4

Narratives: Degrowth contexts and futures

157

12 Recycling old ideals? A utopian reading of ‘circular’ food imaginaries

159

DEBORAH LAMBERT

Contents 13 Degrowth, decolonisation and food sovereignty in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi

vii 173

IOANA RADU, ÉMILIE PARENT, GABRIEL SNOWBOY, BERTIE WAPACHEE AND GENEVIÈVE BEAULIEU

14 Food waste or surplus? Reading between the lines of discourse and action

186

CONSTANZA HEPP

15 A degrowth scenario: Can permaculture feed Melbourne?

198

TERRY LEAHY

16 Future research directions: Food for degrowth

213

FERNE EDWARDS AND ANITRA NELSON

Index

227

Figures

1.1 Family of activists Patrick Jones, Blackwood Ulman Jones and Meg Ulman at a climate change rally, Melbourne 2019. Photographer: Brett Adamson 2.1 Daylesford (Victoria, Australia) food commons. Graphic: Patrick Jones (2013, 133) 2.2 The wheel of ecological culture. Graphic: Patrick Jones (2019) 3.1 Main reasons for growing food at home (%) (N = 2,058). Source: survey conducted by Daněk and Jehlička in the Czech Republic, 2015 5.1 Distinctions between monetised and maintenance economies. Source: adapted from ‘The Monetized vs. The Maintaining’ depiction by Dengler and Strunk (2018, 163), a refinement of the ‘ideas, connections, extensions’ ICE Model in Jochimsen and Knobloch (1997, 109) 9.1 Co-creation processes of the Budapest Food City Lab 10.1 Barcelona CSAs distribution by neighbourhood, following Espelt (2018) 11.1 The governance structure of ESAN-CPLP and its integration at the global level. Source: Pedro (2020) 11.2 Timeline of Food Councils prior to creation of CONSANP 11.3 Representation of stakeholders in EdiCitNet city teams and CONSAN-CPLP 13.1 NCCS team receives provincial government visit in 2018. (Community greenhouse in foreground, with James Bay Eeyou School experimental plots.) Photographer: Ioana Radu 13.2 Gabriel Snowboy leading a community workshop on food production at the greenhouse (2018). Photographer: Gabriel Snowboy

7 24 31

38

61 119 130 145 147 149

180

181

Tables

3.1 Sources of selected types of food in food-growing households: based on respondents’ estimates 3.2 Subgroups defined on the basis of the extent of food production and sharing 3.3 Types of food sharing interaction: non-monetary, interhousehold food transfers only 6.1 Essential considerations for establishing a market garden 6.2 Benefits and challenges associated with different marketing strategies for farmers 9.1 Outcomes of the co-creation workshops, Budapest Food City Lab 10.1 The top five digital platforms for CSAs in Catalonia 14.1 Codes and keywords used in the second part of the analysis, following Hepp (2016) 15.1 Land required to feed Melbourne household (5) with maize as the staple crop 15.2 Land required to feed a Melbourne household (5) with wheat as the staple crop 15.3 Space for food provisioning in a small sample of Melbournian suburbs

36 40 41 82 86 124 133 191 206 207 208

Contributors

Editors Anitra Nelson is Associate Professor, Honorary Principal Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne (Melbourne, Australia). An activist-scholar with special interests in post-capitalism and non-monetary economies, in collectively establishing and maintaining caring local-to-global communities, and living in environmentally sustainable ways – Anitra is author of Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018), co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020), and co-editor of Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (2011) See more here: https://anitranelson.info/. Ferne Edwards is Postdoctoral Fellow in Socially and Environmentally Just Transitions, Department of Design, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. Previously Research Fellow, RMIT University Centre for Urban Research (Melbourne, Australia) and Work Package Lead of the EU EdiCitNet project at RMIT Europe (Barcelona, Spain), Ferne is a cultural anthropologist researching edible cities, food waste, urban beekeeping, non-monetary food economies and food sharing. Her work extends from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (Australia); Ciudad Bolivar, Merida and Caracas (Venezuela); and, recently, Dublin, Barcelona, Letchworth, San Feliu de Llobregat, Berlin, Andernach, Rotterdam, Oslo, Sempeter, Carthage, Lome and Montevideo. See Bees and the City: Multispecies Encounters and Sustainable Urban Futures (2021) and Food Resistance Movements: Journeying through Alternative Food Networks (2021).

Chapters Marco Auriemma graduated in Visual and Multimedia Communication from Università Iuav di Venezia (Venice, Italy) in 2010 and works as a senior graphic designer and photographer. Since 2017, Marco has offered his skills to social

Contributors

xi

solidarity economy district OltreConfn and to CSA Veneto – Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura, Preganziol (Treviso), Italy. Bálint Balázs is Senior Researcher and Executive Manager of the transdisciplinary Environmental Social Science Research Group (Budapest, Hungary). He obtained a PhD in the environmental sciences, an MA in history and an MA in sociology. He has international research experience in European Union projects in the felds of sustainable and local food systems, transitions to sustainability and policy analysis. He is involved with public engagement, science-policy dialogues, cooperative research and participatory action research. Geneviève Beaulieu is a psychoeducator who teaches psychology in the Humanities Department of Cégep de Victoriaville (Canada). She has expertise in working with children and teenagers with developmental diffculties and in humanities research. Since January 2019, she has been collaborating with the Centre d’Innovation Sociale en Agriculture (CISA) on multiple research projects especially those concerning food security and sovereignty in native communities in Canada. Meike Brückner gained her PhD in Agricultural Science from Humboldt University of Berlin (2020). Her thesis Biodiversity in the Kitchen: Cooking and Caring for African Indigenous Vegetables in Kenya takes a feminist approach to food sovereignty and examines how practices of producing, cooking and caring for African indigenous vegetables in Kenya contribute to biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Currently, she works in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Division of Gender and Globalisation at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany) where she researches and teaches on the practice and politics of food and agriculture, feminist political ecology and qualitative research. Paolo Cacciari is a journalist committed to social and environmental movements and projects, such as CSA Veneto – Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura, Preganziol (Treviso), Italy. A former deputy and local administrator, he has published many books on degrowth, commons and the eco-solidarity economy, such as 101 Piccole Rivoluzioni. Storie di Economia Solidale e Buone Pratiche dal Basso (2016, Altreconomia). Manola Cervesato graduated with an MSc Industrial Design from Università Iuav di Venezia (Venice, Italy), where she served as a teaching assistant in editorial design. Manola works as a graphic designer and illustrator for large communication agencies and is a volunteer with the CSA Veneto – Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura, Preganziol (Treviso), Italy. Silvio Cristiano is affliated with both the Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia (Venice, Italy) and the Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’ (Naples, Italy) as a postdoctoral scholar in cross-disciplinary sustainability science. He merges ecological and societal issues through systems thinking and addresses

xii

Contributors food topics from both urban metabolism and urban ecology academic research combined with active experience in the feld.

Petr Daněk is a lecturer in human geography at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. His research interests span topics in political studies, development and environmental geography. His publications include the books Approaching the Other (2008), Geographic Thought (2013) and India: Society and Economy in Transformation (2014). Currently he leads a multidisciplinary team within the project Spaces of Quiet Sustainability, supported by the Czech Science Foundation. He lives in Brno, a city of 400,000 inhabitants, surrounded by allotments and home gardens. Ricard Espelt is a senior researcher at Dimmons Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) – Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. A graduate in Fine Arts at University of Barcelona, his doctoral thesis – Agroecology Platform Cooperative Consumption: The Role of Information and Communications Technology in Agroecological Cooperative Consumption – was framed in the Programme of Information Society and Knowledge (IN3-UOC). His research focusses on platform cooperativism, agroecological cooperativism and art. Currently, he is a team member of the DEcentralised Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem and PLUS: Platform Labour in Urban Spaces (DECODE) project, a consortium of 15 Partners across Europe. Gemma Flores-Pons has a doctorate in Social Psychology (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB) and teaches qualitative methodology in postgraduate programmes. She has been member of the GESCIT and GIMC research groups in the UAB Social Psychology Department. As a member of the L’Aresta Agroecological Cooperative since 2013, she carries out projects intersecting agroecology, social and solidary economy, cooperativism, food sovereignty for local development and social transformation. She works at Coopcamp, a public-cooperative organisation promoting cooperatives and the social economy regionally. Constanza Hepp studied Journalism in Santiago (Chile) and Human Ecology at Lund University in Lund (Sweden). She is currently living in northern Italy, caring for her young family and establishing a community supported agriculture project. She aims to create bridges between academic activism and social practices with potential towards enacting systemic change. Patricia Homs is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Barcelona (UB). She is a member of the ERC Grassroots Economics project research team. Her research interests include agroecology, cooperatives, the social and solidarity economy, and agrofood systems especially. She has been a member of the Reciprocity Studies Group (UB) since 2012, and of L’Aresta Agroecological Cooperative since 2015. Recent publications include ‘Within and beyond the market system: Organic food

Contributors

xiii

cooperatives in Catalonia’ in Food Values in Europe (2019) and ‘(Des)encuentros entre las instituciones y la economía social y solidaria en Cataluña’ in Revista de Antropología Social (2019). Petr Jehlička recently moved to his native Czechia after 20 years at the Department of Geography, Open University (UK). Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague) and a team member of the Spaces of Quiet Sustainability project, Masaryk University (Brno), his research is broadly located in agrofood studies and revolves around everyday environmentalism and sustainable food consumption at the intersection of formal and informal food economies. Recently, he has explored these topics in relation to the geopolitics of knowledge production, co-authoring book chapters and articles, including for the Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Geoforum and Local Environment. Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman are belonging economy artists, permaculture teachers and storytellers living on Djaara peoples’ country in Central Victoria. Together they have established the School of Applied Neopeasantry at their Tree Elbow University, situated around their quarter-acre permaculture garden-ecology on the margins of the small town of Daylesford and the Wombat Forest, where they facilitate both community gardens and forestry. They live with one of their two children, their dogkin Jack Russell, a herd of goats, an apiary of bees, a coop of chickens and ducks, and a myriad number of songful other-than-humans. Deborah Lambert is a doctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Belgium) exploring the rise of Brussels’ circular food economy through the prism of imaginaries, policies and practices and their roles in urban transformations. She uses utopian approaches to understand relationships between imaginaries and practices and how these relationships engender emancipatory practices. After completing a master’s degree in economics and management, she worked for several years as a campaigner with environmental justice organisations, leading campaigns on private actors’ policies and practices, and impacts on people’s rights. After a second master’s degrees in geography, she joined the VUB as a researcher. Terry Leahy is a sociologist and a conjoint lecturer with University of Newcastle, Newcastle (Australia). His research focuses on sustainable food security, philosophy of the social sciences, responses to the environmental crisis and anarchist theory. Two recent books, published with Routledge, are Humanist Realism for Sociologists (2016) and Food Security for Rural Africa: Feeding the Farmers First (2018). The latter explains why food security projects in Africa are failing to make signifcant impacts and how they might work better. He is co-producer of a documentary on a permaculture project in Zimbabwe, The Chikukwa Project (2013).

xiv

Contributors

Domenico Maffeo is a neo-rural farmer. After graduating in architecture and cooperating in Africa, Domenico has committed himself to the Earth, to sustainability dynamics and to the weaving of social economy networks. He is Vice President of Biofattoria Didattica Rio Selva, an educational organic farm and CoHousing Rio Selva, Preganziol (Treviso, Italy) and President of social solidarity economy district OltreConfn. Paola Malgaretto is an architect and educator who trained in bio-climatics and bio-architecture. Currently a consultant for design frms, schools and public administration around the themes of housing quality, energy saving and environmental protection, she is an activist in several local groups and associations, such as CSA Veneto – Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura, Preganziol (Treviso), Italy. Adrià Martín Mayor has master’s degrees in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine and in Social Psychology Research from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB, Catalonia). He develops research and interventions in the felds of social studies of science, agroecology, food sovereignty and cooperativism. He has been a member of l’Aresta Agroecological Cooperative since 2013. He works at Coopcamp, a public-cooperative organisation promoting the social economy and cooperativism regionally. Recent publications include ‘Cooperativisme i agroecologia a Barcelona’ in Comanegra (2018). Francesco Nordio is a neo-rural farmer and artist with a BA in Theatre and Visual Arts. Frascesco has been committed to cultural change such as degrowth, commons, liberation, cultural autonomy and direct democracy. Originally involved through artistic creation and teaching assistance, he has gone on to work directly in the social solidarity economy and agriculture, such as CSA Veneto – Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura, Preganziol (Treviso), Italy. Émilie Parent is Project Manager at the Centre for Social Innovation in Agriculture, Cégep de Victoriaville (Canada), where she is responsible for indigenous partnerships. She currently works with the communities of Chisasibi, Opitciwan and Wemotaci on food sovereignty projects. She advocates a methodological approach that emphasises the intersection between a participatory approach and new technologies. In 2020, she is a doctoral student in Anthropology at University of Montreal fnalising her thesis on tribal healing practices in India. Sérgio Pedro is Research Fellow at the Ecology and Society Lab, Centre for Social Studies, and Scientifc Manager for Strategic Area – Environment, Natural Resources and Agrifood, at University of Coimbra (Portugal). He has a MSc in Public Law, specialising in human rights and public policy, and international and national experience coordinating human rights networks, legal consultancy, project management and research in the third sector and academia. He has interests as a professional and citizen in the transdisciplinary

Contributors

xv

intersection between environmental sociology, political economy, human rights and public policy. Lilian Pungas is a researcher at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and a degrowth activist based in Berlin (Germany). Originally from Estonia, she developed interests in region-specifc degrowth-aligned practices and lowcarbon lifestyles in post-socialist Europe. Currently she is conducting a qualitative case study on semi-subsistence farming and structural changes in the Eastern Estonian oil shale industry region within the junior research group Mentalities in Flux (fumen) at University of Jena. She is a board member and coordinator of the large degrowth online platform Wachstumswende and is active in climate justice and the food sovereignty movement. Ioana Radu is Research Associate with the Aboriginal Peoples Research and Knowledge Network (DIALOG) at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifque, and part-time faculty at the School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University (Montreal). She is a self-identifed settler scholar, an interdisciplinary community-engaged researcher and educator whose research focuses on indigenous wellbeing, knowledge mobilisation and oral history. Sara Rocha is a postgraduate of Social Intervention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of Coimbra (UC, Portugal). She has collaborated on UC research and researched sustainable development, social innovation and solidarity economy at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). She has worked on farms, and has had experience in the Transition Movement, other environmental associations and food sovereignty. Currently, she is an advocacy offcer at NGO ACTUAR (Coimbra, Portugal) with a focus on building sustainable food systems in an approach to the human right to adequate food. Gabriel Snowboy is from the Cree Nation of Chisasibi and is founder and President of Nihtaauchin Chisasibi Centre for Sustainability (Canada). He has a Specialist High Skills Major in Agriculture (SHSM – Agriculture) from Algonquin College and is certifed in construction trades from the Commission de la Construction du Québec. Since the mid-2010s he has managed the local greenhouse and various northern agriculture and food security initiatives in Chisasibi. Logan Strenchock is the Environmental and Sustainability Offcer at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), a garden team member at Zsámboki Biokert, a four-hectare organic fruit and vegetable farm in Hungary and a cofounder of Cargonomia, a community cargobike centre and local food distribution point in Budapest. He enjoys getting his hands dirty in mixing research and practice in degrowth-inspired experimentation with a diverse team of collaborators living in Hungary.

xvi

Contributors

Diana Szakál is the coordinator responsible for the implementation of the Budapest Food City Lab activities of the Fit4Food2030 project, which focuses on the transformative potential of alternative and niche food initiatives. She facilitates the development of a transformative network of food actors, and the co-creation of education modules, and research and innovation agendas. Meg Ulman – see Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman Bertie Wapachee is originally from the Cree Nation of Nemaska and is General Manager of the Chisasibi Business Service Centre (Canada). He is an experienced negotiator and policy adviser, having held a variety of leadership positions within the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee (James Bay, Québec). Increasing local capacity for self-suffciency and protecting Cree ancestral territories have always been foundational aims of his work, which is balanced between maintaining Cree cultural values while being open to the world.

Preface

This international collection Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices intentionally follows the Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities collection published in the Routledge Environmental Humanities series in 2018. We hope that they will form the frst two of an extensive future degrowth mini-series. Both collections evolved from calls associated with biennial international degrowth conferences. Both beneftted from the generosity of degrowth activists and degrowth scholars who directly and indirectly contributed to the project. This book was edited with interested public and activists in mind even if mainly aimed at a scholarly readership of researchers, practitioners and generic, specifc and professional tertiary courses in degrowth, sustainable cities, sustainable landscapes, social change, social movements, permaculture, alternative food production and consumption, organic food production and consumption. It will attract those leading or taking courses in the disciplines and felds of critical food studies, urban political ecology, environmental humanities, ecological economics, sociology, anthropology/ethnography, geography, environmental studies, community development, social studies, and urban design and planning. As such, the chapters are accessibly written to engage curious citizens and both social and environmental activists who want to learn, or learn more, about alternative food movements; food for degrowth activities at various scales and in different global contexts; how to improve their current practices and enhance their networks; and how to fnd out about a range of initiatives which they might join or use as inspiration to initiate local activities. In short, as with Housing for Degrowth, this collection presents an emerging feld of studies in a scholarly yet accessible way.

Acknowledgements

Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards gratefully acknowledge permission granted by photographer Brett Adamson – and subjects Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman (co-authors of Chapter 2, this collection) – for the photograph in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.1 Family of activists Patrick Jones, Blackwood Ulman Jones and Meg Ulman at a climate change rally, Melbourne 2019). Petr Daněk and Petr Jehlička gratefully acknowledge that all three tables in Chapter 3 derive from their article ‘Rendering the actually existing sharing economy visible: home-grown food and the pleasure of sharing’ published in 2017 in the journal of the European Society for Rural Sociology Sociologia Ruralis 57: 274–96. Their work on Chapter 3 was supported by the Czech Science Foundation grant No. 19-10694S ‘Spaces of Quiet Sustainability: Self-provisioning and Sharing’. Meike Brückner gratefully acknowledges that Chapter 4 draws on research conducted in the HORTINLEA ‘Meal Cultures in Market Trends and Consumption Habits’ sub-project (SP7) that interrogated food habits and meal cultures to reveal the cultural, social and gendered embeddedness of food security (http://www.hortinlea.org/about-hortinlea.html) funded by the German Federal Ministries of Education and Research, and of Economic Cooperation and Development. The African Centre for Technology Studies (Nairobi, Kenya), the Division of Gender and Globalisation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Nairobi) were partners on this project. Patricia Homs, Gemma Flores-Pons and Adrià Martín Mayor gratefully acknowledge the support of Fundació Roca i Galès and Associació Catalana de Comptabilitat i Direcció during feldwork that they have drawn on for Chapter 8. Likewise, the project Grassroots Economics: Meaning, Project and Practice in the Pursuit of Livelihood, PI Narotzky, European Research Council Advanced Grant 2012, IDEAS-ERC FP7, Project Number: 323743, 2013–2018. Diana Szakál and Bálint Balázs gratefully acknowledge that their Chapter 9 is based on research carried out as part of the Fit4Food2030 project (https://ft4food2030.eu/) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement 774088. Moreover, researchers have benefted from being partners in the Dynaversity (EU H2020 No. 773814), InSPIRES (EU H2020 No. 741677) and TRUE (EU H2020 No.

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727973) projects. However, the views expressed in the chapter are the collective responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily refect the views of the European Union. Ferne Edwards and Ricard Espelt gratefully acknowledge that data collection for the research on which Chapter 10 is based was funded by the European Research Council as part of the SHARECITY project at Trinity College Dublin, Grant Agreement Number: 646883 and by the Industrial Doctorate project of Ideograma and UOC, Grant Agreement Number: 2014 DI 028. With respect to Chapter 11, Ferne Edwards gratefully acknowledges that the EdiCitNet project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 776665. Moreover, Sérgio Pedro and Sara Rocha gratefully acknowledge that the AlimentAção! campaign received funding from the Portuguese Network for Rural Development under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the Rural Development Program 2014–2020. Furthermore, Ferne Edwards, Sérgio Pedro and Sara Rocha gratefully acknowledge that their Figure 11.1 has been reprinted with permission from Springer (New York), from Sérgio Pedro’s 2020 publication ‘Food governance: Multistakeholder and multilevel food councils’ in W. Leal (ed.) Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Vol 2. Zero Hunger: 1–9.

Abbreviations

ACB AFN AFSA AIV aka ANZECC BiGH CE CEO CBSC CTA CSA CSIRO DIY EMF ESAN-CPLP EU FAO FNFNES FSP GDP GMO ha ICT IFOAM IPCC JBNQA kg kW m

African Centre for Biodiversity Alternative food networks Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa African indigenous leafy vegetable also known as Australian and New Zealand Environmental Conservation Council Building Integrated Greenhouse circular economy chief executive offcer Chisasibi Business Service Centre Cree Trappers Association Community supported agriculture Commonwealth Scientifc and Industrial Research Organisation do it yourself Ellen MacArthur Foundation Regional Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries European Union Food and Agriculture Organisation First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment (study) food self-provision(ing) gross domestic product genetically modifed organism hectare/s information and communication technologies International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement kilogram/s kilowatt metre/s

Abbreviations m2 mn MLG N NCCS NFB NY NGO OFN REDSAN-CPLP SEN SSE TFSSE TGTG UK ULL UN US WCED WEA WHO

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square metre/s million multi-level governance number/total Nihtaauchin Chisasibi Centre for Sustainability Nutritious Food Basket New York non-government organisation Open Food Network Civil Society Network for Food and Nutritional Security of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries seed exchange network social and solidarity economy Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UN Inter-agency) Too Good to Go United Kingdom urban living lab United Nations United States (of America) World Commission on Environment and Development World Economics Association World Health Organisation

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Food for degrowth Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards

Food is a basic need for human survival. Beyond material sustenance, food has signifcant economic, social and cultural dimensions. Food suffciency, food security and food sovereignty have become critical concerns in the twenty-frst century. Moreover, food provisioning is a key space for contemporary efforts to transform practices to achieve global environmental sustainability. Indeed, ‘degrowth’ has emerged as a major approach within a suite of movements aiming to achieve sustainable livelihoods, sustainable systems of production and consumption and a sustainable society more generally. Degrowth as a concept, approach and practice challenges both economic growth and excessive resource consumption to advocate for practices that limit socio-metabolic energy and material fows with respect to planetary limits. This collection offers a representative sample of food for degrowth topics, research areas and themes. It is not comprehensive in terms of the multiple directions and expressions of food for degrowth but we are confdent that it offers both newcomers and those knowledgeable and experienced in degrowth new perspectives and ideas that are, moreover, presented in an orderly fashion. The curation of the collection follows a distinctively practical, political and regenerative degrowth logic that is in sharp contrast to the just-in-time supply chain of the agrifood sector characterised by capitalist logic, production for trade, market dynamics, profts and state regulations. In this mainstream system, most quality food is relatively unaffordable while many fast and cheap foods lack nutrition and even pose health threats in terms of chemical additives in processing. Indeed, much commercially sold food is not fresh and energy is overconsumed to refrigerate and transport food. Other seriously damaging environmental consequences of commodifying food production and exchange include resource depletion by farming with massive machinery using non-renewable fuels and applying fertilisers with polluting and toxic ingredients. As the World Health Organisation (WHO 2019) reports that 1 in 9 people go hungry, 1 in 4 are severely or moderately food insecure, and that more than 1 in 4 children under 5 are affected by stunting, wasting or obesity – convivial degrowth acts of growing and eating together, and sharing what we have, offer ways to reconsider how we might improve our food practices in terms of sociopolitical acts. Chapters in this collection offer insights into more

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sustainable, resilient and healthy food systems within a relocalised and integrated food systems logic. The contributors drill down into aspects of the social relations of care, alternative economic models, and more holistic, hybrid food systems. We focus not only on cities that grow increasingly important with the global trend of urbanisation and its consequences for just and accessible fresh food sources. This collection also explores connections, fows and relationships to hinterlands, and decentralisation within rural regions. Detailed accounts of experiences recount stories of barely visible and unconscious degrowing, decolonisation, conscientious initiatives to establish degrowth, postcommunist contexts, and ecofeminist themes of care highlighting traditional ecological practices and knowledge.

Degrowth movement and terms Degrowth emerged very early this century as a provocative slogan with economic, scientifc and philosophical roots. Despite rising attraction and interest, the degrowth movement has no headquarters. Advocates and campaigners intentionally remain decentralised in ‘a horizontal, multilayered and open network of activists’ who operate at many scales to apply degrowth principles to their everyday lives and ways of relating to others and Earth (Liegey and Nelson 2020). This means working towards ecologically effcient, regenerative and convivial ways of living, producing and consuming. A degrowth approach to work includes minimising paid work to focus on collective self-provisioning to fulfl people’s basic needs in housing, food, clothing and attending to care and wellbeing. In particular, Jones and Ulman (Chapter 2) spell out how this happens in practice, with an emphasis on food. The degrowth movement celebrates ecological and political principles of frugal abundance, autonomy, commoning, conviviality, decolonising productivist imaginaries and open relocalisation. Given these concepts are unfamiliar to many outside the degrowth and associated movements, brief explanations follow. To begin, in a transformation from growthism, a central concept and objective is to ‘decolonise productivist imaginaries’. This means deconstructing concepts and beliefs associated with the ideals and practices that support growth dynamics and symbolism in contemporary societies across the globe. Going beyond the commonsense conclusion that another world is impossible, degrowth advocates evoke ways of being that celebrate diversity and quality of life. The principles of radically reducing social and economic inequality, making sure everyone’s basic needs are satisfed, reducing exploitation of the earth and living within its limits are universally applied in localised degrowth practices and strategies, thus forming ‘glocal’ initiatives. The degrowth concept of autonomy is primarily infuenced by the works of Cornelius Castoriadis (Garner n.d.) and has synergies with theories of autonomist Marxists (Cleaver n.d.). John Holloway (2002) has affected how degrowth activists conceive of power and infuence in horizontalist and collaborative ways. Direct governance, co-governance, and personal and collective agency prioritise

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local power following the principle of subsidiarity. Not surprisingly, a degrowth ideal within cultural and ecological activities is commoning (Vivero-Pol et al. 2018). ‘Conviviality’ was defned by a pioneer of degrowth, Ivan Illich, to mean a cooperative, mutual, sociable and sharing approach complementing autonomy. For instance, citizens rather than experts or technocrats directly control technologies and institutions (thus, ‘convivial tools’). Degrowth abundance is frugal: frugal use of Earth while living in, and with, personal, emotional and philosophical abundance. Think ‘small is beautiful’ (Schumacher 1999 [1973]) and that care of one another, solidarity, regenerating and nurturing our ecosystems, producing for quality, wellbeing and simplicity all carry a wealth of meaning and self-fulflment. ‘Frugal abundance’ – also referred to as ‘happy sobriety’ – is practised in the context of ‘open relocalisation’ whereby goods and services are produced and shared locally to achieve social and environmental effciencies. This enables direct governance of the local economy and polity. ‘Open’ relocalisation points to the celebration of diversity within locality and the maintenance of communications and free transference of knowledge and skills between such localities. The degrowth movement emerged in Europe, initially in France, to spread most rapidly in the English-speaking world since the mid-2010s. This collection simply confrms its internationalisation. The academic editors are a Welsh-Australian who has published on degrowth as an international phenomenon (Nelson and Schneider 2018; Liegey and Nelson 2020) and an Australian who has worked for many years on food projects in Australia since 2004, Venezuela (2009–2012), Dublin (2016–2018), Barcelona (2017–2020) and ten key European, African and South American cities (2018–2020). Chapters 3, 5, 6 and 9 focus on postcommunist central European countries, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic. Chapter 4 is based on feldwork in Nairobi, in the Central African country of Kenya, by an academic based in Germany while Chapter 15 draws, in part, on research in the Chikukwa permaculture project in Zimbabwe. Chapter 12 refers to work across the globe. Chapter 13 interrogates decolonisation and food sovereignty in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi. Chapters in Part 3 explore projects and networks in Italy (Veneto), Spain (Catalonia and Barcelona) and the Portuguesespeaking world. Chapter 14 refers to food projects in Sweden. The collection proper begins with an Australian rural family revealing and analysing how they practice frugal abundance in food (Chapter 2) to end with a thought experiment on degrowth food supplies in the future of Melbourne (Australia), a state capital forecast to support a population of 8.5mn in 2050 (Chapter 15).

The degrowth movement meets alternative food networks The emergence of the degrowth movement coalesces with a wide variety of alternative food networks (AFNs) spreading across the world. AFNs often describe their produce as ‘fresh, diverse, organic, quality and “slow”’ and their networks as ‘small-scale, short, traditional, community, local and embedded’ (Edwards 2016). A broad movement of food practices, AFNs are built on an ethics of social justice,

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environmental sustainability and animal welfare. They grew in popularity during the 1990s in response to increasingly apparent issues inherent within the industrial food system. AFNs seek to promote diverse alternatives to transform the food chain, support a return to community production, and connect ethical producers and consumers in local and direct ways. AFNs come in many forms, such as community supported agriculture (CSA), exist at different scales, are located in many places and support similar preexisting food movements, such as varieties of urban and organic agriculture and the slow movement. Often considered socially innovative, many AFNs place a contemporary twist on traditional practices. AFNs often put many values and objectives of degrowth into practice but are not often mentioned in degrowth literature. When they are, there is an emphasis on productive AFNs or traditional food movements ignoring a food systems perspective, modern applications and the collective power of food movements. Such a disconnect between degrowth and AFNs can obscure and disempower while alliances of shared values can illuminate common ground to catalyse greater uptake overall of sustainable and just practices – as demonstrated in the recent degrowth collection (Burkhart et al. 2020). Similarly, certain chapters in our collection seek to highlight the diversity and contributions that such distinctive movements offer each other in achieving joint aims. The following discussion of AFN projects from points of production through to distribution, consumption and waste provides a context for the landscape of food for degrowth initiatives – samples of which appear in this volume – and a holistic understanding of alternatives emerging from a coalescence of movements. Production A wide diversity of productive degrowth food initiatives utilise ethical and sustainable resource use methods. Widely acknowledged approaches include self-provisioning, permaculture and agro-ecology, community gardens and the keeping of livestock, such as bees and chickens. Less apparent is a variety of, often adaptable, approaches. For example, recognising conficts over urban space, the City of Melbourne (Australia) experimented with vertical and walk-through community gardens, while Huertos in the Sky, a social enterprise based in Barcelona (Spain) recuperates terraces to establish urban gardens. Another not-for-proft, The Lemon Tree Project, uses something as simple as a lemon tree to create spaces of encounter to promote both fresh food and social cohesion, while grassroots collectives proactively take over street verges to grow their own food (Frost 2019). The Council of Oslo works with migrant communities to grow micro-greens in the basement of housing blocks to supplement diets with fresh produce in on-site canteens. Technologies of production come in a variety of forms enabling both simple and complex approaches. For example, an aquaponic kit may use many parts that few can beneft from or remain quite simple for the beneft of many as in neighbourhood aquaponic experiments in Caracas (Edwards, forthcoming 2021). Food for degrowth occupies a gradient from ‘lighter’ transitions to ‘darker’ transformations. Steps to a fully realised degrowth project recognise that small transitionary

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stages are needed to secure long-term transformational goals. Concepts and practices of food security may meet immediate needs while, like degrowth, food sovereignty considers holistic goals of autonomy and the power of choice to make decisions (Agarwal 2014). As shown in chapters in this volume, understanding the complex cultural context of local transitions is paramount. Distribution and consumption A wide variety of distribution and consumption options for AFNs speak to degrowth themes, such as CSAs and ‘food hubs’ that Blay-Palmer et al. (2013, 524) defne as ‘networks and intersections of grassroots, community-based organisations and individuals that work together to build increasingly socially just, economically robust and ecologically sound food systems that connect farmers with consumers as directly as possible’. Other alternatives include ‘cow-share’ and ‘hive-share’ programmes where small groups care for livestock together to share production. ‘Rent-A-Chook’ in Sydney (Australia) provides fexible and accessible forms of ownership and offers keeping chickens at home trials. Various food box delivery programmes such as CERES (Community Environment Park) Fair Food in Melbourne (Australia), support local producers throughout the year, asylum and migrant workers, waste minimisation and educate. Embedded ethics, a principle shared with degrowth, carries over into ethical diets, where individuals practice ‘political consumption’ not only consuming store-bought alternatives but also ‘gleaning, growing and gifting’ meals outside the marketplace (Edwards 2015). AFNs include foraging, dumpster diving, ‘freegans’ – who choose to consume food from waste as a protest against overconsumption and hunger (Edwards and Mercer 2013) – and ethical consumption of ‘wild’ indigenous foods. One can learn skills to go edible weed foraging with Diego Bonetto ‘The Weed One’ if one lives in Sydney, or ‘Wildman’ Steve Brill in New York. Many cultures hold fast traditional practices of ‘mushroom hunting’ and nut and fruit gathering. Sensual engagements with food include activism through harvesting crops in Sardinia to ‘make sense’ of food’s political implications (Counihan forthcoming 2021), enabling ‘eaters’ to practice the degrowth’s principle of ‘direct participation in decision making’ (SICED 2010). Where ‘the collaborative growing, cooking, eating and distributing of food, as well as the sharing of food related skills, spaces and tools’ has come to the fore, with whom one eats is a factor (Edwards and Davies 2018, 1). A practice from the origins of humanity, feasting is gaining appeal extending to social factors of conviviality, social cohesion and identity building (Marovelli 2019) to supporting the degrowth interest in care and wellbeing. Waste Food waste became an increasingly global concern in the early 2000s with estimates that more than one third of what was produced went to waste (Cox and Downing 2007). Degrowth advocates recognise the social and political sources

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of material food waste, just as food waste subcultures, such as freeganism, challenge conventional modes of capitalist consumption, encouraging broader communities to follow suit to socioenvironmental change. While food waste receives attention from international policies and programmes to urban strategies – from informal and not-for-proft food-rescue organisations through to commercial digital applications – to fulfl degrowth principles, deeming food waste a ‘resource’ needs to resist co-option to serve capitalist proft (Chapter 14). This brief overview illustrates intersections between AFNs and degrowth principles and practices to reinforce common threads such as predispositions to social, shared, simple and slow approaches where aspects of quality, autonomy, frugality, reuse, ethics, reciprocity, traditional approaches and a connection to people, nature and place are valued over economic gain. At the same time, this comparison brings certain unique features of degrowth to the fore. Degrowth is a decidedly anti-capitalist, and more broadly anti-productivist, movement with links with many movements, including food-based ones (Burkhart et al. 2020). Degrowth is a whole-of-life and whole-of-society vision within which a seedto-compost approach to food is just one element of local self-provisioning and autonomous governance. These dimensions are most clear in Chapter 2 and Chapter 13. We expect convivial approaches to tools, technology, collaboration and reduction are likely to be more apparent in degrowth initiatives. From this base, we deep dive into all the themes and case studies canvassed.

The book’s structure Chapters have been clustered under headings reminiscent of the ‘spheres’ of contemporary degrowth activism outlined in the third chapter of Liegey and Nelson (2020), i.e. the sphere of the individual, the sphere of the collective, a sphere of resistance and the sphere of a degrowth agenda, strategies and project. We start, in Part I, with the individual person or household exploring aspects of degrowth practices, such as living the principles of frugal abundance, food self-provisioning and care. Part 2 expands to collective food endeavours, collaborative activities of producing, sharing the product, consuming and relating using degrowth principles and practices. When such activities spawn and link with non-food initiatives, they can comprise an embryonic local degrowth ‘formation’ clearly pointing in the direction of a degrowth future (ibid.). In a complementary way, degrowth collectives network with like collectives, the focus of Part 3. Finally, Part 4 considers contexts for food for degrowth within broader utopian narratives, current decolonising and indigenous contexts, mainstream narratives of capitalist advertising and slick imaging and, fnally, addresses the question as to whether future settlement planning needs to focus on urbanisation or decentralisation. As is customary, we conclude with a chapter addressing research futures, for food for degrowth.

Frugal abundance (Part 1) The theoretical challenges of framing, researching and making meaning of self-provisioning practices that continue as an adapted ‘tradition today’ prompt, on the one

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hand, Jones and Ulman to develop the notion ‘neo-peasantry’ (Chapter 2) and, on the other hand, Daněk and Jehlička to apply the concept ‘re-peasantisation’ (Chapter 3). While Brückner (Chapter 4) analyses unconscious degrowth practices in a case from the Global South, in this part on frugal abundance Pungas (Chapter 5) frames food for degrowth self-provisioning within ‘care’ discourses. Jones and Ulman coined ‘permacultural neopeasantry’ to acknowledge their carbon-positive ancestors. After a decade of step-by-step divesting from monetised food and energy resources, 70 percent of their household’s economy – inclusive of food – is nonmonetary and they only spend four out of every 14 days working for a monetary income. They estimate their food consumption as 55 percent homegrown; 5 percent foraged and hunted; 20 percent grown by other locals, including fellow fow-of-gift gardeners; the remaining 20 percent drawn from their town’s not-for-proft food cooperatives and local family-run grocery store. They use auto-ethnography and critical discourse to show how they engage in everyday barter and a gift economy of free sharing with more than 80 townspeople beyond self-provisioning for their small household. As such, Chapter 2 shows how individuals can pursue household-level degrowth and broader political and economic transformation (see Figure 1.1). Their most signifcant challenge is decolonisation: ‘How can we reclaim a belonging and honouring of the living of the world when the dismantling of such cosmology spans so many centuries, and we stand upon non-ceded Aboriginal land?’ Petr Daněk and Petr Jehlička (Chapter 3) point out that most degrowth and food studies literatures focus attention on novel community gardening and CSAs

Figure 1.1 Family of activists Patrick Jones, Blackwood Ulman Jones and Meg Ulman at a climate change rally, Melbourne 2019. Photographer: Brett Adamson.

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to the detriment of traditional household food production – often interpreted as a remnant of precapitalist production or survival strategies of those in need. Instead, they portray traditional Central European food self-provisioning as a ‘quiet’ (largely politically invisible), widespread, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable activity. They analyse food self-provisioning data to show that household food production is secondary to market production yet makes up a signifcant share of total food consumed by households they surveyed. Rather than a survival strategy, self-provisioning is a pleasurable activity enjoyed across social classes and educational and income cohorts. Using natural fertilisers makes this production highly environmentally sustainable and gardeners directly connect to their natural surrounds. Social ties are established and maintained through gardening, and sharing home-grown food strengthens friendships, trust and integrity. Degrowth advocates can refer to such cases to show how self-provisioning is already practised as pleasurable and useful, and has great potential for achieving resilient, sustainable and socially inclusive cities and villages. Degrowth strategies for sustainable food production rely on local and regional food provisioning and household agency. Consumption habits need (re)embedding in knowledge and capacities around self-provisioning. In Nairobi (Kenya), certain women resist pressures to absorb capitalist supermarket and fast-food habits, choices, cooking and meal rituals by using and celebrating African indigenous leafy vegetables, a traditional set of food plants that recent commercial development has marginalised. Using participatory and qualitative research methods, gendered experiences and strategies are analysed in Chapter 4 to illustrate a form of people care and Earth care that degrowth highly values. Brückner explores multiple practices performed by women who open up alternative spaces within households and communities: self-provisioning in kitchen gardens, supporting diverse economies of food provisioning in and beyond the city, and sharing culinary knowledge, capacities and recipes in communal cooking sessions. They illustrate resistance to a colonising capitalist growth imaginary. Typical of current Global North and South dynamics and cultures, the Kenyan women do not identify as degrowth advocates or activists but unconsciously illustrate many of the movement’s principles and values. Brückner shows them offering ‘recipes for degrowth’ with ‘recipe’ used in the widest sense of the word. Analysis through the lens of ‘care’ deepens the degrowth discourse on what makes us human, i.e. nurturing, tending, learning and teaching respect and balance within the beyond-human world. Cultivating land is not often seen as classical care work but Chapter 5 shows how notions of care and stewardship ground practices of food production from ploughing the soil and sowing, to harvesting, cooking, preserving and composting. Pungas reinforces and enriches discourse on care in degrowth scholarship by interpreting food self-provisioning as care and stewardship, as social acts connected to soil and ecosystems as ‘other’. Tronto’s (1993) categorisation of four distinct expressions of care are both applied and challenged to show that food self-provisioning is a rational act of care based on a deep understanding of interdependence and mutual vulnerability between humans and nonhuman nature. In short, motivation, intentionality and expression are

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explored through the lens of care. Chapter 5 concludes that by contributing to ecological, social and individual wellbeing, food self-provisioning epitomises the notion of a good life well lived and frugal abundance.

Degrowth collectives (Part 2) Chapters in Part 2 identify the potential and limits of CSAs and agro-ecological cooperatives as alternative models aiming to make the production, distribution and consumption of food more local, community-oriented and ecologically sustainable. By testing and refning an alternative form of production that enables participants to reduce consumption and endorse the socio-environmental values of their diets, CSAs aim to directly link good intentions between country and city and promote ethical degrowth livelihoods. Authors interrogate economic, organisational and agricultural innovation, diversity and hybridity. All draw on ethnographic research and some employ participatory action research techniques. Indeed, one chapter is co-written by seven activist-scholars. Based on commercial cases in Budapest and its surrounds, Chapter 6 analyses the challenges of operating a four-hectare organic fruit and vegetable garden that services community food distribution initiatives in Budapest. If Chapter 6 is somewhat economic in its focus, in Chapter 7 Cristiano et al. analyse their Italian (Veneto) collective CSA enterprise from more socioecological perspectives. A similar emphasis is taken by Homs et al. (Chapter 8), who explore care and everyday life for participants in agroecological cooperatives in Catalonia (Spain). While Strenchock (Chapter 6) and Cristiano et al. write refectively from personal, yet collective, experiences, Homs et al. take a more critical and generic approach. Strenchock points out that short food supply chains and direct collaboration with ecological farmers are regularly cited as tangible, practical examples of degrowth – achieving material effciencies, relocalised food production and consumption, and meaningful work cooperating with nature. However, degrowth and alternative agriculture literatures often fail to examine key decision-making processes, production practices and challenges for environmentally aware farmers struggling to maintain farms while pursuing solidarity-motivated marketing practices. Therefore, Chapter 6 examines conditions for creating, adapting and sustaining alternative food communities by focusing on farm-based experiences of Zsamboki Biokert, an organic fruit and vegetable garden that partners with community food initiatives in and around Budapest (Hungary). For a decade, the farm has marketed organic fruits and vegetables in producer markets, community-supported subscription systems, weekly food box distribution networks, food cooperatives, local shops and other hybrid models. Strenchock identifes the challenges for such producers in sustaining production for novel models and traditional markets, and the nonmonetary and social benefts of their collaborative efforts. Food suffciency and sustainability essential for degrowth means freeing agriculture from synthetic inputs, genetically modifed organisms and exploitative

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working conditions. Cristiano et al. (Chapter 7) characterise food autonomy and food sovereignty as emerging from self-provisioning through diverse, participatory and self-governing agroecological collectives with agreements between producers and consumers who, thereby, become prosumers. Without food waste or packaging, total transparency of expenses and no third-party traders, organically certifed food is decommodifed in a mutualist system, an explicit alternative to the dominant agrifood model. The case of CSA Veneto – integrated within a local social and solidarity economy district (Oltreconfn), consolidating several organic farms in the urban-rural sprawl between Venice-Mestre and Treviso – illustrates their arguments. This practical experiment for socioeconomic transition of agroecological regeneration and urban food ecology involved genuine and intentional processes of self-organised inhabitants-cum-producers. In contrast to market-based CSAs, they argue that the socially transformative potential of CSAs relies on strong politicoeconomic prosumer relations. CSA Veneto integrates volunteers with the self-employed, facilitating local not-for-market work with friends to self-provision and for nonmonetary production within prosumer cooperatives. CSA Veneto aspires to noncapitalism or postcapitalism, as in social and solidarity economy initiatives and the community economies feld inspired by GibsonGraham (2006). They regard disruptive forms of food provisioning as constructive levers for degrowth transformation. Holistic community building supports the transition by deconstructing, decolonising and reconstructing socially just and ecologically sustainable futures. Chapter 8 interrogates the lived experiences of participants in the Catalan agroecological movement inspired, and supported by, the degrowth movement during the 2010s. Homs et al. explore the potential and limits of a regional model based on proximity food provisioning networks comprised of consumers’ food cooperatives and small organic food producers using distinct forms of cooperation and reciprocity in their socioeconomic exchanges. Homs et al. address issues raised in serious internal debates emerging in the mid-2010s as waiting lists dwindled, participants withdrew, as production proved to be a precarious and heavy burden and pressing socioeconomic conditions limited the heterogeneity of consumers. Focusing on the often invisible tasks necessary for sustaining such projects, and tensions that emerge with care work in other areas of participants’ lives, they found that cooperative workloads often conficted with the time and effort required to care for children, paid work and other forms of activism. The constructive outcome has been new models that diversify degrees and types of participation, reformulate the practice of self-management, and make workloads more fexible to enhance inclusion and to ensure social sustainability and balance. In short, Chapter 8 explores how care impacts on such transformative practices and analyses the effects of this model in the expansion of the degrowth movement more generally.

Degrowth networks Part 3 on networks comprises a cluster of three chapters with distinct foci and themes, each relating to key characteristics of the networks in question: sharing

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knowledge and skills across a variety of project types (Chapter 9), technological assistance to replicate and upscale transitions (Chapter 10) and governance (Chapter 11). Chapter 9 examines an urban living lab (ULL) hub for entrepreneurial food initiatives. Budapest Food City Lab offers a space to share knowledge and skills and explore trajectories for change-makers regarding food and nutrition. The case study indicates that resistance, defending ‘food as commons’, requires multiple internetworked projects to create change and transition from capitalism using a degrowth paradigm. As experienced in many cities, the regional relocalising food movement is highly fragmented. Several innovative niche activities struggle to remain economically feasible and transformational within large-scale market operations. The Fit4Food2030 platform brings together a host of food for degrowth initiatives using co-creation techniques to identify strategic areas for future cooperative research and action. Co-creation methods are becoming a steadfast component of European funding projects seeking to install participative engagement processes across sectors to enable actors to co-design complex sustainability solutions. ULLs are a popular strategy. Participative processes endorse degrowth horizontal governance. Establishing degrowth-oriented communities of practice, such initiatives collaborate to solve wicked food sustainability problems. Accordingly, the Budapest Food City Lab organised workshops to collect data and seek a common, coordinated strategy for a more local urban food system offering food suffciency and resilience; sustainable, ethical and healthy eating; co-creating educational modules and a transdisciplinary learning network; and setting a novel research agenda. They have reevaluated and reconceptualised the eight principles of degrowth defned by Latouche (2009) whereas many other initiatives create alternative trajectories and support transitions via a hybrid system. Based on ethnographic research of Barcelonian cooperative L’Aixada, complemented by extensive research and mapping of cooperatives across Catalonia, Chapter 10 joins qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate how digital platforms can facilitate the transition from traditional Spanish agroecological cooperatives into new forms preserving the political goals of their members. Technology for degrowth is important to consider as cities become ‘smarter’ and forms of communication and participation are increasingly virtual. Recognising that CSAs vary in alignment to degrowth values, Chapter 10 focuses on CSAs within the alternative grassroots and citizen-led Catalan social and solidarity economy movement that questions capitalist priorities and reorients economies towards ‘solidarity, equity, human and Earth rights, self-determination, mutuality and cooperation’ (RIPESS 2020). CSAs develop an array of technological applications to share knowledge and skills but, predominantly share open source platforms to achieve shared goals. Drawing on Kerschner et al. (2018), this chapter asks whether such digital technologies are viable, feasible and ‘appropriate’ for CSAs. Do they support fair and ethical consumption, conviviality and specifc political agendas? While technology is embraced to support logistics and show that alternatives are possible, Chapter 10 interrogates the roles, frames and

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assumptions embedded within technological tools and their infuence on societal transitions. Finally, Chapter 11 explores governance for degrowth in two cases, the regional Council for Food Security and Nutrition of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries and its national arm AlimentAção! (a Portuguese food relocalisation campaign) and EdiCitNet, an international ‘Edible Cities Network’ across ten cities supporting local, healthy and inclusive urban food systems through innovative ‘Edible City Solutions’. Both initiatives align with degrowth by making visible the benefts of local fresh food and promoting recycled resources, while valuing social aspects such as the right to food, social inclusion and wellbeing. Recognising that limited resources and size can constrain grassroots degrowth initiatives and that top-down initiatives can fail to be applied across all local degrowth contexts, Chapter 11 explores governance approaches involving such multiple sectors, levels and stakeholders. Both initiatives endeavour to scale up degrowth and to retain democratic participation through the creation of networks. A comparative analysis offers rich territory from which to unpick implications and future possibilities. Three shared strategies are selected for closer analysis – establishing cross-sectoral platforms, co-creation as a core method, and specifc roles for local government to facilitate their goals.

Narratives: contexts and futures (Part 4) Part 4 concerns the contexts and futures of degrowth at various scales. The rest of the collection is more about practices, while this one focuses on ‘perspectives’, as in the book’s title. Contributors position themselves critically within a contemporary capitalist paradigm to make interventions on numerous aspects of future-oriented utopian, sustainability and urban discourses. All contributors to some extent or another expose and engage with tensions between degrowth and mainstream growthism, between reformist approaches and radical degrowth positions. While certain authors draw on ethnographic work, all the contributors to this specifc part of the book are, essentially, highly critical and cultural in their approach and argumentation. Leahy conducts a thought experiment by drawing on select and signifcant recent work. Hepp draws us back into the world of mainstream perceptions and practices to remind us of ‘real world’ barriers and challenges. Certain chapters in particular impinge on the debates on roles of degrowth within other current movements, as in Bukhart et al. 2020, incorporating themes such as decolonisation, food sovereignty, permaculture and radical urban planning. Just as food for degrowth initiatives struggle to survive and gain coherence in the all-pervading context of capitalist food systems, growthism is so omnipotent that degrowth arguments and narratives are constantly disrupted and fragment. In Chapter 12, Lambert highlights food for degrowth within a discourse of utopian literature, then compares and contrasts practical representations of the reformist sustainability-oriented circular economy movement with the radical degrowth imaginary. In Chapter 13, Parent et al. use a participative and

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collaborative research project conducted with the Cree Nation of Chisasibi in Eeyou Istchee (northern Quebec, Canada) to show that once Chisasibi regained self-provisioning in food they unintentionally confrmed how degrowth initiatives can advance food security, decolonisation and offer healthy diets. Hepp applies critical discourse analysis to attitudes to surplus food in Chapter 14, contrasting the pervasive capitalist-economic discourse in documents produced by the highly infuential United Nations (UN) Food for Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to perspectives of volunteers for the Swedish Malmö-based food-rescue initiative Rude Food. Finally, in Chapter 15, Leahy ruptures certain assumptions in contemporary sustainability scenarios for urban food systems. Lambert (Chapter 12) uses the concept of utopia to critically interrogate mainstream and bottom-up imaginaries of circular urban food systems in postgrowth futures. After reviewing characteristics of food portrayed in classic utopian fctions, Lambert shows that the currently fashionable circular economy narrative fails to critique the established order in the radical way that degrowth does by incorporating ethnographic research in an analysis of contemporary circular food policies and practices in Belgian initiatives in Brussels. As such, this chapter critically interrogates the roles of certain competing imaginaries in our current conjuncture, enriching the discourse around imaginaries within and beyond growthism. Chisasibi maintain their original occupation of the island of Fort George. Chapter 13 draws on fndings of a participative collaborative research project that aimed to understand the food system, including traditional foods, of one small indigenous village; study past agricultural activities and issues of injustice and lack of access within the mainstream food chain; and implement a pilot project to strengthen food security by developing gardening activities and an experimental potato feld. Parent et al. found that challenges associated with food availability, prices and quality were due more to structural barriers than to remoteness and local climate. Once Chisasibi took control of their food resources and built a local food system through agricultural and gardening initiatives, they unintentionally confrmed the degrowth movement’s approach to autonomy, food security and decolonisation. They also demonstrated ways that local agriculture and traditional food can offer healthy diets for indigenous communities in the Canadian North. Food waste refects a structural failure of overproduction due to systemic growth. Ineffcient capitalist food production and food waste are key foci of degrowth critics. Within contemporary capitalism food waste has become normalised and is socially obscured. Chapter 14 brings into conversation certain discursive text found in UN FAO documents with expressions of volunteers from the Swedish Malmö-based food-rescue initiative Rude Food. By applying the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough (1992), Hepp shows how FAO discourses on food waste inappropriately frame the problem of surplus and discarded food. Findings highlight the pervasiveness of capitalist-economic discourse in FAO documents and the shifting orders of discourse for Rude Food volunteers.

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Chapter 15 critically reviews a small number of select sustainability works on Melbourne (the capital of the Australian state of Victoria) in a hypothetical that challenges certain degrowth permaculture and relocalisation strategies. These works recommend ways to reduce Melbournians use of materials and energy to a maximum of one planet footprint each. Leahy engages in a debate within the degrowth movement, between those who prefer cities as the optimum settlement pattern and others who insist that decentralisation is imperative. Using a future Melbourne as the subject of a thought experiment, Leahy outlines the challenges of food self-provisioning in a city of several million residents. Drawing on degrowth and sustainability works that focus on food, as well as feldwork in rural Africa, Leahy assesses options for Melbourne in a future scenario with drastically reduced energy use to conclude that decentralisation offers more opportunities for sustainable collective suffciency in food than the current global trend of citifcation.

Conclusion This collection explores certain degrowth themes, debates, experimental projects and existing emerging formations. Contributors explore how degrowth principles revalue people, places and produce in socio-cultural and environmental ways. Numerous challenges arise from hybrid forms made necessary to both exist in a market economy and perform progressively more radical transformational activities realising postgrowth futures – a leitmotif within the collection. Nevertheless, the models and cases analysed prove valuable reference points when advocating for sustainable and socially just changes to the failing mainstream food system. Rather than focus on one scale, discipline or place, the book offers degrowth analyses at various levels and in diverse contexts to provide holistic appreciations of food for degrowth.

Bibliography Agarwal, B (2014) ‘Food sovereignty, food security and democratic choice: Critical contradictions, diffcult conciliations’, Journal of Peasant Studies 41(6): 1247–68. Blay-Palmer A, Landman K, Knezevic I and Hayhurst R (2013) ‘Constructing resilient, transformative communities through sustainable “food hubs”’, Local Environment 18 (5): 521–28. Burkhart C, Schmelzer M and Treu N (2020) Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation. Alresford: John Hunt Publishing. Cleaver H (n.d.) Economics 387L: Autonomist Marxism. Harry Cleaver site. Accessed 17 March 2020 – http://http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/387Lautonomistmarxism. html. Counihan C (forthcoming, 2021) ‘Food activism and sensuous human activity in Cagliari, Italy’ in Edwards F, Gerrtisen R and Wesser G (eds) Food, Senses and the City. Abingdon: Routledge. Counihan C, Van Esterik P and Julier A (eds) (2018) Food and Culture: A Reader. 4th edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Cox J and Downing P (2007) Food Behaviour Consumer Research: Quantitative Phase. Banbury (UK): Brook Lyndhurst & Waste and Resources Action Programme. Accessed 30 March 2020 – http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/fles/wrap/Food%20behaviour%20c onsumer%20research%20quantitative%20jun%202007.pdf. Edwards F (forthcoming, 2021) Food Resistance Movements: Journeying through Alternative Food Networks. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Edwards F (2015) Gleaned, grown and gifted: The signifcance of social food economies in productive cities. Doctoral thesis, submitted 12 May to National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra (ACT). Edwards F (2016) ‘Alternative food networks’ in Thompson P and Kaplan D (eds) Encyclopaedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. 2nd edition. New York/Heidelberg/ Dortrecht/London: Springer. Edwards F and Davies A (2018) ‘Connective consumptions: Mapping Melbourne’s food sharing ecosystem’, Urban Policy and Research 36(4): 476–95. Edwards F and Mercer D (2013) ‘Food waste in Australia: The freegan response’ in Evans D, Campbell H and Murcott A (eds) Putting Waste on the Food Studies Agenda: Production, Politics and Everyday Life. London: Wiley-Blackwell: 174–191. Fairclough N (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity. Frost N (2019) ‘Like a verge: The streets are getting greener’, Domain, 14 February. Accessed 25 March 2020 – https://www.domain.com.au/news/green-edges-how-ver ge-gardening-is-taking-off-799467/. Garner John V (n.d.) ‘Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997)’ in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource. Accessed 17 March 2020 – https:// www.iep.utm.edu/castoria/. Gibson-Graham J K (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Holmgren D (2018) RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future. Hepburn Springs: Melliodora Publishing. Holloway J (2002) Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. London: Pluto Press. Kerschner C, Wächter P, Nierling L and Ehlers M H (2018) ‘Degrowth and technology: Towards feasible, viable, appropriate and convivial imaginaries’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1619–36. Latouche S (2009) Farewell to Growth. Cambridge (UK): Polity. Liegey V and Nelson A (2020) Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide. London: Pluto Press. Marovelli B (2019) ‘Cooking and eating together in London: Food sharing initiatives as collective spaces of encounter’, Geoforum 99(February): 190–201. Nelson A and Schneider F (2018) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities, Abingdon: Routledge. RIPESS (2020) ‘What is the social solidarity economy’, RIPESS: International Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy. Assessed 20 March 2020 – http://www .ripess.org/what-is-sse/what-is-social-solidarity-economy/?lang=en. SICED (2010) ‘Degrowth declaration Barcelona 2010’, Second International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, in Barcelona (Spain). Accessed 25 March 2020 – https://www.degrowth.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ Degrowth_Declaration_Barcelona_2010. Schumacher E F (1999 [1973]) Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered – 25 Years Later with Commentaries. Point Roberts (WA)/Vancourver (BC): Hartley & Marks Publishers.

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Tigner A L and Carruth A (2017) Literature and Food Studies. Abingdon: Routledge. Tronto J (1993) Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge. Vivero-Pol J L, Ferrando T, De Schutter O and Mattei U (eds) (2018) Routledge Handbook of Food as Commons. Abingdon: Routledge. WHO (2019) World hunger is still not going down after three years and obesity is still growing: UN report, World Health Organisation news release, 15 July. Accessed 17 March 2020 – https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/15-07-2019-world-hunger -is-still-not-going-down-after-three-years-and-obesity-is-still-growing-un-report.

Part 1

Frugal abundance

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Replacing growth with belonging economies A neopeasant response Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman

When we put our hands on the soil before a meal and speak into the living of the world – acknowledging that our all our fuel, food, shelter, drink, clothes, tools and much more besides, come from a truly giving Earth – we begin to tell another story of economy, another story of culture. It is this return to an animist honouring, this ‘fessing up’ with gratitude to what our lives are actually indebted to, and upon what our lives stand, that enables our senses to merge into a deeper belonging with the communities of life, much more than human, that make more life possible. We were not always so conscious of what supports us and makes more life. Our industrial schooling and early enculturation into White modernity had little consideration or acknowledgement of ‘world’ being larger than human. There were no ceremonies or festivals that honoured nonhuman life, that we were part of. Our enculturation was ‘hyper-technocivil’, i.e. an extreme human-centric urbanism. Yet, our ancestors held ceremonies and rituals to celebrate the giving of life, the transitions of the seasons and the sun, and various rites of passage. Our advancement of neopeasantry is a reclaiming of ancestral honouring, which we will come to better explain. This chapter is an unpacking of our path from hypertechnocivility, from resource and world intransigence, into the relational realm of resource and world honouring of the labourings and makings that we call neopeasantry. It is the story of our family’s step-by-step embrace of the ethics and politics of degrowth, made possible by our concurrent practice of permaculture principles and our own way of neopeasant culturing. It is also the story of our household’s merge into community suffciency and how growing both the informal subsistence economies of homeplace with numerous others has enabled a 70 percent degrowth of the formal economy. In other words, we are only 30 percent reliant on the global monetary economy. We have found that by growing, foraging, fshing, hunting and gleaning our food, we have been able to transform both our economic and cultural lifeways.

Realising the limits: what is to be done? In recent times the Left has shied away from personal accountability. It’s become politically more expedient to point the fnger at big business than to encourage

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a culture that takes responsibility for its actions and divest from such power. For subjects of capital, taking personal responsibility for how we live has been in decline for decades as governments have regulated social life to such an extent that personal accountability has become increasingly diffcult. As a result, nanny state paternalism has fourished in the rich countries where life is approached as something to control and to construct certainty. This attempt to establish ‘assurance’ – the idea, for example, that a food product like Vegemite will always be there to purchase as long as you go to work to raise the money to afford it – constructs the illusion that industrial food systems are permanent and the world can keep offering itself up to maintain such an ideology. Under the order of industrial food systems, the whole world is in a form of bondage, determined by an ever-greater panic to meet growing demands. Yet, for most of human existence, societies have presented an entirely different cosmology for life-making based upon a fuctuating engagement with seasonal and biome variation. Therefore, life-making is dependent on relationships with that which makes more life possible and, thus, when it comes to provisioning food, relationships are foregrounded and technology backgrounded (Rose 1992). In our own story of addressing paternalistic and unwitting participation in the global marketplace we had become acutely conscious of limits to growth. We read reports, we studied graphs, charts and statistics. We watched documentaries and TED talks and downloaded innumerable podcasts. We cross-referenced thousands of voices from indigenous speakers, climate scientists, ecological philosophers and cultural commentators. We recognised that within our historical privilege we have a greater responsibility to act, which included reducing our privilege in the formal economy because of its direct impact on the interrelated complex of climate, species, social and ecological crises. We became increasingly aware of the logic and imperatives of degrowth as an essential economic, ecologic and social strategy. Degrowth is a much needed and overdue response to the Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al. 1972), and to overconsumption of the world’s resources through an entrenched cultural akrasia. But we didn’t know what monetary degrowth looked like up close. How do you live it? What does a degrowth lunch look like? How do you bring up your children to embrace degrowth in a world of endless choices and celebrated consumptive behaviours? Is it possible to fnd joy in degrowth? How do we begin our journey of degrowth when the very term sounds so grim and austere? It would be ideal if global monetary degrowth and localised economic growth were implemented as planned strategies augmented at all levels of government and society. But reading through Australia’s recent federal budget as well as the budget of our local shire council, the idea of contracting our economic systems has not even begun to germinate in the minds of those who manage such institutions. This is why the storying of degrowth at a grassroots level, the seeding of it in small and diverse narratives lived, not just abstractly conceived, is so important. Rather than wishfully wait for ministers and CEOs, treasurers and institutional economists to roll out fairer, regenerative and fuctuating economies that

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listen to the land’s actual capacity, as a family we practice and celebrate the ethics and pragmatics of degrowth with every choice and action we make. Whether it’s in what we wear, what we eat, how we move around, gather our basic materials or how we heat our home, all our decisions are based upon divestment from monetised growth economics, while growing an indebtedness and dependency on what we call our local economies of belonging. Degrowth food is central to this economic transformation that is rooted in place. One ecocritical social commentator (Rigby 2016) wrote of our family’s response that ‘not everyone will want to join this radical experiment, though most would agree if our words aren’t connected to deeds then we’re just fddling while Rome burns’. Because of the failures of governments, the infnite-growthon-a-fnite-planet imperatives of business, and the consumptive-destructive values of modernity, such a ‘radical experiment’ of simple, carbon-positive, relational and lived monetary degrowth may well become a new norm. Some will call this poverty, and many will resist returning to a general state of frugalism. It is diffcult to transition backwards from comfort, although the possibility for ‘frugal hedonism’ (Raser-Rowland 2016) is territory that will be further explored as degrowth unfolds in both planned and chaotic circumstances. Few now believe the myth of endless growth. Some will engage in the possibility of renewal and other forms of growth in this anticipated contraction. Some will fear and resent it, and in doing so give greater power to law makers and institutions. Cities may become more authoritarian, and there is evidence of this trend already with new laws restricting protest, while basic services will decline in rural and remote areas, even though it will give greater scope for people to augment their local economic and cultural realities. To do the necessary work of reframing, and of living economy and culture into degrowth in a state of mass panic will be more diffcult than to respond now, while there is relative affuence. Turning back is never a true going back, as there is always a taking forward with what we’ve learnt along the way. Like life itself, this path is not linear and the future is never really subject to Christian calendars and clock time, but it will probably mean that at least one in every household will be growing and preserving food and, thus, will be bringing the stories of land and nonhuman relating back to our kitchen tables. Food is the basis of belonging cultures of place, the word ‘culture’ derives from the Latin cultura, which means to cultivate the soil. With degrowth of the formal economy there will have to be much more growth in informal nonmonetary economies, and small-scale food production will be central to this change. As the Australian environmental lawyer and sustainability activist Michael Mobbs (2012) discovered, housing is important to sustainability, but food is central to addressing environmental, species and climates crises. David Holmgren and Bill Mollison had this realisation back in the 1970s, triggered by the Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al. 1972). Holmgren’s most recent book RetroSuburbia (2018), is a practical manual for a lived degrowth for people wishing to take personal responsibility, especially for their food, medicine and energy needs in a suburban context, where the majority of the world’s populations live. He breaks

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the book into three parts – the built, the biological and the behavioural. While we’re featured throughout, it is in the behavioural section where much of our work is referenced. Some days it has felt like an impossible venture to live outside corporatised, digi-industrial food and energy systems. The learning we have gone through over the past decade to put nourishing food on our plates and keep warm by our own labour has been extensive. Despairing after another crop failed; another year of our feijoa bushes not fruiting; another technical failure, such as our bicycle trailer towing-bracket breaking while hauling home 80kg of frewood; another row of tender leafy green seedlings devoured by snails, mice and slugs; coming home empty-handed after a futile mushroom forage; or hungry from checking an empty rabbit snare; nothing to boast of in our fsh bag; or trying to dry out our year’s supply of acorn meal in a low oven, only to forget about it and have this precious food ending up as char. Despite such innumerable failings, and because of these hard won learnings, we have been able to transition from 100 percent reliance upon the monetary economy to just 30 percent in the space of a decade, gifting and trading with around 80 other households and individuals in our town, and gradually reclaiming the skills of our land encultured ancestors. By consciously putting the monetary economy into degrowth we have been able to grow informal subsistence economies – community and home gardening, foraging and hunting, natural beekeeping and goat grazing on common land. In doing so we have left behind our stressful money-earning days, a time when we believed we needed to work hard in the formal economy to afford some time to simply breathe, to go away, to not feel time-pressured. Only when we began to untie ourselves from our monetary obligations did we realise that pursuing money had only incarcerated us further. The more we focussed on money to fnd some level of respite from time poverty, the more in debt we became and, thus, the more we needed to spend (consume, pollute, burn carbon) to fll the hole of our despair. We were not living according to our values, though we didn’t know it then. What follows is a brief insight into what our highly conscious divorce from monetary growth has looked like over the past decade.

Feeding the world The provisioning, processing and storing of our food resources takes about three hours each a day. Energy – retrieval, cutting and storing of wood – equates to about one hour per day. Meg has a job two days a week outside the home servicing much of our monetary needs, while Patrick is seven days in the nonmonetary home and community economies, occasionally receiving paid work as a writer, scholar and environmental consultant. Our two children have been taught our neopeasant life skills, which we accumulated over the years, as have our friends,

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volunteers and community others. We have learnt from many people and continue to share this knowledge in nonmonetary workshops and in less formal arrangements. We follow our individual interests and the seasons to determine what we do and make. Patrick volunteers his time at Feral & Free, a bush school he set up to share with young people the arts and crafts of belonging to a forest ecology. Patrick is an active participant of the local Bushfre Mitigation Group, co-facilitator of Goathand Cooperative and facilitates the running of three local community gardens. Meg is one of the convenors of Hepburn Relocalisation Network, which organises free monthly workshops in fermenting, herbal medicine, seed saving and natural beekeeping. We have mapped our town’s food commons (Figure 2.1). We organise flm nights, solstice and equinox dinners, guest speaking events and community group work to develop social permaculture. For the last several years we’ve run nonmonetary permaculture living courses where volunteers reside with us exchanging their labour for learning, food and board so they can embody the lifeways we’ve been developing over the past decade ‘reclaiming our domesticity from consumer culture’ (Hayes 2010).

Planning To begin the process, we wrote down all the items and associated outgoing costs we believed we could give up. Not all at once, but rather an initial check list that we would start to delete from as we changed how we lived. In the early days it was a range of things such as bin liners, journal subscriptions, tampons, toilet paper, haircuts, café meals, credit cards, plane travel, new clothes, new tools, monthly mobile phone plans and so on. By going without these things, we found that we had more spare time as we didn’t have to work as much to afford things. Conscious of our privilege, we began to refuse money work. We started this degrowth early on in our relationship, and it probably wouldn’t have got rolling if only one of us was on board. Despite the long list of things we decided we could live without, nothing attended to our total dependency on money more dramatically than becoming car free. Owning, maintaining and fuelling our two cars consumed a huge proportion of our annual expenditure. In the frst few years we were able to shed about 50 percent of our required income. Becoming carless was a large chunk of this percentage. Once we had naturalised going without items of modern life often thought essential, we were able to plan the next stage. We found that if we attempted to give up too many things too soon, we became demoralised and, similarly, if our transition from money was too slow it felt like our process had stopped. We came to understand the process needed an aggregating step-by-step strategy, a slow disentangling from hypertechnocivility that eventually would fourish into full-blown neopeasantry.

Figure 2.1 Daylesford (Victoria, Australia) food commons. Graphic: Patrick Jones (2013, 133)

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Money Reducing our hours of paid work had a two-fold beneft. Firstly, we could be more selective about what paid work we wanted to do and do less of it and, secondly, we had more time at home to begin taking the steps to make our household economy fourish. Weaning ourselves off money was helped when Patrick received a scholarship to do his doctoral work, which centred on our household and community transition from reliance on hypertechnocivility. Our household lived off this modest stipend for three and one-half years. In this time, we didn’t have to worry where money was coming from. We made the income go far, establishing open source community gardens, becoming better growers and preservers, cheesemakers and scavengers, and learning about more than 100 species of edible fora, fauna and fungi that we could procure and process as valuable gifts to grow our degrowth transition. Building trusting relationships was also an essential part of this adaptation, as was beginning to barter and gift for things we needed but didn’t make ourselves. A competitive capitalist market by its very nature destroys social bonds by valuing narrow self-interest. It advances debt but degrades indebtedness. While it’s true we still live with some money and participate a little in the monetary economy (mostly because we are repaying a mortgage), we do not share the monetary economy’s values of hierarchical power and dominance and the disrespect it brings to life that is much more than human. We have scrutinised our fnancial institutions and have moved our mortgage, debit accounts and Meg’s meagre superannuation to community-based institutions that have divested from fossil fuels. What we can’t provision for ourselves we trade, swap, buy directly from local growers, farmer’s markets, food co-ops and occasionally from our town’s family-run grocery store. We don’t drive cars, though we enjoy hitch-hiking, sharing a ride offered if the carbon is already committed in the direction we are going, thus lowering the footprint of an otherwise solo traveller. We still directly give money to petroleum companies, though less that $100 per annum, for fuel which we use to fll our lawn mower and chainsaw throughout the year. We don’t consume commercial alcohol, opting instead to drink our homebrewed and medicinal ciders (such as stinging nettle cider) and root beers (including burdock, parsnip and dandelion) and mead made using the honey from our bees. Divestment from the growth alcohol industry is not just for monetary reasons but for health too. Industrial strains of yeasts and plant crops grown elsewhere (often requiring herbicides and the mass killing of wild birds to produce them) don’t nourish us like our wild fermented brews made from what we grow or wild harvest. Nourishment also comes from being in the story of these gifts of the earth. Every week we buy ten litres of unpasteurised cow’s milk from a local farmer for $7, from which we make butter, cheese, yoghurt and kefr. We don’t buy meat, and only eat animals that we have killed respectfully ourselves or have been killed by experienced friends. We breed chickens and ducks for eggs and

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meat, we fsh in the local lake, we catch yabbies and snare rabbits, and we breed meat goats which we keep on common land as part of a cooperative. After learning how to tell if an animal is unwell or diseased, we also butcher and eat roadkill, adding possum and kangaroo protein to our diet. All these behavioural changes and learnt skills have enabled us to divest from industrial food supply chains in a very direct and conscious way.

Security We were both schooled to believe that security meant money. The myth of the capitalist matrix went something like this: if you study hard and get a good job you will make more money, which will lead to a life of assurance, security and fulflment. For a short while we swallowed this myth. While our degrowth food, energy and medicinal economies sit upon stolen Aboriginal land (which we speak to below), and we’re afforded some security to plant trees and a garden, we’re not overinvesting in this lifeway. We’re also teaching ourselves, our children and innumerable others how to live on the road (Jones and Ulman 2015), how to live on tenacious weeds and feral plants, as we may well be climate refugees in the future. Adding a survivalist set of skills to permaculture keeps us open to radical change and enables us to embrace uncertainty as it arises. Without money to count on, what does security mean? On one day security means an abundant patch of parsley growing with a plethora of other herbs in the food forest part of the garden, on another day security means a freezer full of gifted home-killed and dressed roosters. On one day security means the saving and storing of next season’s pumpkin seeds, on another day it means the physical labour and the quality food we eat keeping us from reliance on the pharmaceutical industry. On yet another day security means a fully stacked woodpile and food cellar before heading into the winter months. The defnitions of security we had grown up with now seems narrow and naïve, and a deliberate way of keeping people held hostage to the growth capital matrix.

Neopeasant hedonism As our skills grew and our mistakes lessened, we began to relish the home economy and ourselves as homemakers. We were inspired by people who were also living in nonmonetary home economies, from pioneers of permaculture to skilful grandparents. Rather than seeing them through modernity’s eyes as irrelevant, because they weren’t participating in the workforce, they became our cohort. Each time we walked by a café with our full thermos and homecooked biscuits or past a new clothes shop on the way to the op-shop we felt a sense of great accomplishment, as though we’d overcome signifcant addictions of privilege. Credit cards became a thing of the past; a single debit card each replaced them. We only had what we had. We were no longer servicing our basic needs on a system of unaccountable fgurative wealth, with the exception of our mortgage.

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After several weeks volunteering at an anti-coal seam gas blockade, we started to plan how we could turn off the gas to our home. We replaced our gas heating, cooking and hot water system with a glass doored wood-fred oven, which we now use for nine appliances: heater, oven, toaster, clothes dryer, hot water service, kettle, dehydrator, stove top and, as we also like to add, our television too. It took two years to pay for and fully install the wood-fred system. With wood and kindling collected from the nearby forest in wheelbarrows (as part of sensitive fuel and weed reduction work we do with our neighbours) or from the local tip using bike trailers, we are now responsible for a large chunk of our energy resources, supplemented by our small 1kW solar powered electricity system. As a result, we are more in relationship with our local biosphere and more observing and honouring of the sun. While keeping fallen wood on the ground for habitat and soil production is important, there is an oversupply of such material, which poses a fre threat. We also keep ft collecting these resources and have the satisfaction of knowing that what we use to warm ourselves and cook our meals has not been mined and transported, but is a renewable resource that we can contribute to replenishing through our community forestry practices. Some might refer to our apparent neopeasant hedonism as ‘libertine’. The reality is we believe in lore that protects local communities, human and more than human, and we work to reestablish such relationships to land.

Access to land When we frst hooked up as a couple, we were living in separate rentals. Fairly quickly we moved in together and began sharing everything. By our mid-to-late thirties, we’d accumulated enough savings for a deposit on a quarter-acre block in a town that was, back then, only mildly affected by the property bubble. We put a small relocatable house on it and even though the monthly mortgage repayments worked out to be the same as our previous rental costs, at frst, they were a struggle to cover. Only now we could plant tree crops, grow vegetables, keep bees and poultry with the security of knowing we are not going to be given six weeks’ notice to vacate. As a result of increasingly living a time-rich/cash-poor economy, we found we had time to help establish and facilitate three community gardens in the town, serving (beyond our own provisioning) the possibility of growing organic food on public land that isn’t under economic lock and key. Despite our mistrust of and radical decoupling from social media dependency, we have established the near self-maintaining Land Share Central Victoria Facebook group to connect those who have surplus access to land with those who would like access to land. The group’s successes include people moving into granny fats, studios and moving their mobile tiny houses onto land where they can grow food. Some arrangements are based on money, or partial money, and some purely on a work or produce exchange. Over the last ten years, we have hosted hundreds of visitors coming on house and garden tours or as volunteers to live and labour with us, all to experience

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the possibility of a neopeasant lifeway. We currently have two doctoral students from Europe living with us for six months. They are collecting and analysing White ethnographies involving permaculture transitions. With access to land we have been able to not only establish post-capital food, energy and medicine but also a self-appointed university based upon nonmonetary exchange. Volunteers, including visiting scholars, embody neopeasantry, they get to live its possibilities. From reclaimed materials, we have built two small dwellings to house such guests. If the housing bubble bursts, as predicted, and climate change continues to savage the formal economy, these dwellings will become homes for people to come and live permanently, while they contribute to strengthening the home and community economies.

Land sovereignty Our land access sits on the back of the legal historical fction terra nullius, which property law is founded upon in Australia. We could choose to ignore this legal and historical fabrication defended by the Australian army and state police forces and pretend that this system was decided outside our control many generations earlier. However, be we mortgage holders, renters or living on so-called public land as squatters or homeless subjects of competitive capitalism, as nonIndigenous Australians we must accept this land has been stolen and land titles fabricated. This situation in Australia is an example of the neocolonialism that degrowth advocates acknowledge and seriously aim to address. The annual Terra Nullius breakfast we established several years ago, which takes place outside the local town hall on what is offcially called Australia Day on 26 January, is what we call White-fella business. This breakfast is our ‘fessing up’ to historical wrongs and keeping on the table the movement to dissolve private property and properly address indigenous sovereignty. While we have found that exiting the matrix of food, energy and medicine growth economies is possible in a relatively short focussed period of time, the bigger project of the capitalisation of never ceded land will take decades. To dismantle capital growth ideology starts with what is possible, establishing partial postgrowth economies and reclaiming skills our ancestors held.

Skilling up and changing behaviours With more time on our hands we began to realise that there were large gaps in our knowledge and skills bank. If we wanted to move further away from the monetary economy, then we needed to dedicate ourselves to learning new skills. We joined workshops, read widely, watched online tutorials and learned from friends and volunteers. Much of this learning came from a commons of information or we exchanged something for workshops or assisted a class in exchange for learning.

Replacing growth with belonging economies

29

But mostly we engaged in slow trial-and-error processes of fguring stuff out for ourselves. We began to see that in order to recreate food, medicine and energy economies postgrowth we needed to learn about every edible weed and feral species in our walked-for locasphere. We needed to learn about preserving and how fermentation can delay our food’s decay and, in doing so, improve its nutrition. We needed to learn about the soil’s communities and what they require to produce an abundance of vegetables. We needed to learn how to make snares, slingshots and longbows for low-tech retrieval of feral animals otherwise poisoned by the State. We needed to learn about tree care, what to prune, what to leave, how to treat pests without industrial and monetised products, and the cycles of nutrient returns needed for the fruits to keep fowing. We needed to learn how to safely compost our own human waste, recognising that we are the largest mammals on our quarter-acre block and, therefore, our humanure is a form of gold for the soil communities growing our food. Moreover, recognising that globally we are at post-peak phosphate rock and that safely processed humanure can replace superphosphate. We needed to learn about our local waste food streams and how to glean that waste respectfully. We knocked on peoples’ doors to ask whether we could pick up fallen fruit lying under their trees – that we’d noticed by having the time to observe and being on foot. We provided 25 litre buckets to cafés for their scraps that we would collect every few days to compost into soil. We needed to learn how to critically look for building and fuel materials at the council tip site, how to seek quality warm clothes and tools from op-shops, markets and garage sales. And, most importantly, we needed to learn how to make rituals of returns to the garden and forest communities that we were becoming bonded to and nourished by.

Relationships Understanding the importance of relationships throughout our transition has been essential. Relationships with soil communities, with individual trees, with messenger birds, with clouds, with dogkin, goats, bees, microbes, with one another and with ourselves. Relating in the monetary economy is straightforward. If you’d like a bottle of cider, then you hand over money and it is handed to you in exchange. In a nonmonetary economy, it is more involved and far more nuanced. We need to give up our jobs so that we are not always pressed for time. We need to walk through our neighbourhood commons. We need to pay attention. We need to be able to recognise what an apple tree looks like, and the cankers that can be cut out to aid its health. We need to watch for when the fruit is ripe. We need to be quick to beat the birds from taking it all, but not so quick to retard ripening. We need to have the means to carry the fruit home. We need to be ft enough in our bodies to shoulder or pedal the haul. We need to have a way to extract the

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juice from the fruit. We need to have a means to discard the pulp in a nonpolluting way. We need a vessel in which to ferment the juice. We need the knowhow to turn the juice into cider through processes of wild fermentation. We need to know what to do with all the vinegar when our process fails or we intentionally allow for the vinegar molecules to overcome the cider yeasts. We need to know how to give value to our learnings, so when a friend comes over with a loaf of bread, she is not disappointed when we give her a bottle of peach-pip vinegar or wild apple cider in return. Money in the bank is not security for us, nor are stacked supermarket shelves, or jobs to pay for petrol, depreciation, wear and tear, insurance, traffc infringement fnes, parking and the servicing of cars. Instead we are framed within a wheel of ecological culture (Figure 2.2). What makes us feel secure is our bicycle maintenance knowledge, a full cellar of preserves, ferments and stored fresh produce, a diverse bank of saved seeds, a full wood stack and, perhaps most importantly, our ability to relate, care for and rely on, a diverse range of people in our region made up of family, friends and community allies. Our welfare derives from the solidarity and reciprocity of this community as well as deepening our ways of relating with more-than-humans such as dogs, goats, messenger birds and trees. We need to know how to listen to each tree’s will and not impose ourselves upon it. This is a new language for us.

Belonging Born within a ‘White-fella’ nation-state cultural context of Being There rather than Belonging Here, the most serious question for us looks something like this: How can we reclaim a belonging and honouring of the living of the world when the dismantling of such cosmology spans so many centuries, and we stand upon non-ceded Aboriginal land? Our reply-in-progress has two parts. The frst is that the great lie of terra nullius is a long-term project of societal admission. The second is that our food, medicine and energy resources in their industrial-capital forms can be radically composted in the short term by any willing household and community group, providing there is some form of access to land. All migrants, including White descendants of colonists and their convict subjects, want to make home. There seems to be a natural human will or tendency to fall in love with a place, for that place to belong to you as you belong to it. To grow fond of a homeplace, to listen deeply to it, to belong vulnerably held within its shapeshifting and giving entities, is to suggest an economy predicated on a fow of gifts where the food produced and gathered comes wrapped in story and origin. Did the sun grow this food? Did the rain? Did the soil? Did the plant? Did we? Who are all these actors that make our lives possible? For our form of neopeasantry, we seek to be in relationship with a walked-for world, a belonging to life’s sympoethic nourishment as eaters and, eventually, as food.

Figure 2.2 The wheel of ecological culture. Graphic: Patrick Jones (2019).

Replacing growth with belonging economies 31

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References Hayes S (2010) Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. Richmondville (NY): Left to Write Press. Holmgren D (2018) RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future. Hepburn: Melliodora Publishing. Jones P (2013) Walking for Food. Unpublished PhD thesis: Writing and Society Research Group, Doctorate of Arts (Ecological Humanities), University of Western Sydney, Bankstown (NSW). Jones P (2019) Submission to Hepburn Shire Council, Re General Local Law No. 2 of 2019 Community Amenity & Municipal Places (draft), Thursday 17 October 2019. Jones P and Ulman M (2015) The Art of Free Travel: A Frugal Family Adventure. Sydney (NSW): NewSouth Publishing. Meadows D H, Meadows D L, Randers J and Behrens III, W W (1972) The Limits to Growth: A Report for THE CLUB OF ROME’S Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books. Mobbs M (2012) Sustainable Food: Growing Food in the City. Sydney (NSW): NewSouth Publishing. Raser-Rowland A (2016) The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More. Hepburn: Melliodora Publishing. Rigby K (2016) ‘Ecopoetics’ in Adamson, Joni, Gleason, William A, and Pellow, David N (eds) Keywords for Environmental Studies. New York: New York University Press: 79–81. Rose, D B (1992) Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3

Quietly degrowing Food self-provisioning in Central Europe Petr Daněk and Petr Jehlička

Nowhere is the crisis of neoliberalism more exposed than in the globalised system of food production. Exploitation of scientifc and technological advancements by allied forces of market capitalism and neoliberal governance created an effcient system of food production that postponed the Malthusian threat but replaced it with several more immediate threats: environmental, social and health related. The Marxian concept of metabolic rift offers a useful tool for a brief and incomplete reminder of threats brought by the neoliberal system of food production and consumption. Metabolic rift has three dimensions: ecological, social and individual (Anguelowski 2015). The rift in ecological relationships is caused by the ceaseless search for new spaces for capitalist accumulation, which has transformed agriculture into an industrialised system of food production dependent on intensive use of industrially produced fertilisers and pesticides, the modifcation of seeds, machinery, fuels and water and long-distance trade. A social rift is brought about by commodifcation of land, labour and food, resulting in the marginalisation of small producers and dispossession of rural populations, simultaneous with the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few multinational corporations and fnancial speculation on future markets involving agricultural commodities (Clapp 2016). An individual rift relates to the alienation of people from nature and products of their labour – exemplifed by growing food-related health risks, loss of traditional ecological knowledge and growing dependence on information platforms together with the weakening of simple face-to-face social relations (Anguelowski 2015). Given the extent and consequences of the global food crisis (Young 2012), it is not surprising that a variety of alternative approaches to food provisioning have been proposed as remedies or partial solutions to some of the food crisis’s most negative expressions. These alternatives include fair trade, organic farms, farmer’s markets, community supported agriculture and urban gardening. Such alternatives are extremely important because they highlight various dimensions of the food crisis and draw attention to experiments with novel approaches. At the same time, however, globally as well as locally, they are small-scale and niche-oriented: only a tiny part of food is produced, exchanged or consumed within these alternatives, and only specifc social groups are involved actively, most typically young, middle-class students or activist groups. These initiatives

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are also often dependent on the unpaid work of activists or temporary funding by private donors or public authorities (Sonnino and Griggs-Trevarthen 2013). Largely overlooked in the growing scholarship on alternative food initiatives is more traditional food self-provisioning (FSP) in home gardens and on allotments. This chapter seeks to move this neglected set of practices to centre stage of academic debates on responses to the food crisis. Drawing on research in the Czech Republic we will expose, frst, the scale of home FSP and motivations behind it; second, the social networks established through FSP; and third, its environmental effects. Inspired by the groundbreaking exploration by Lilian Pungas (2019) – author of Chapter 5, this volume – of the potential of Estonian FSP as a response to metabolic rift, the concluding discussion relates the FSP practices of Central European households to the three already outlined dimensions of metabolic rift. We argue that FSP is a ‘quiet’, i.e. commonsense and non-activist, way of food production, distribution and consumption which, compared to other ‘alternative’ food initiatives is large-scale, socially inclusive and longstanding. At the same time, we claim that FSP is compatible with principles of degrowth in its objectives, methods and outcomes. Following Mladen Domazet and Branko Ančić (2017, 159), we understand degrowth in a broad sense as an opportunity to open up the debate on ‘appropriate and socially acceptable mechanisms of socio-ecological transformation’. These authors also understand degrowth as a critique of hegemonic development models which highlights the urgent need for exploration of locally contextualised alternatives. This chapter puts forward, and provides evidence for, the claim that Central European FSP is a paradigmatic example of such relocalised development alternatives.

On the continuing popularity of food self-provisioning in Central Europe Allotment gardens appeared in Central European towns and cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. They sprang up on unused land on what was then city outskirts during waves of rapid industrialisation and migration from the countryside. The largely spontaneous development of gardens was promoted by city councils and governments as a means to provide poor families with an opportunity to enhance their diet. The coping-with-scarcity function of allotments and home gardens gained importance during economic crises and especially during the two world wars, when gardens became precious sources of a healthy diet. Such historical connections between allotments, home gardens and scarcity are likely to be one of the reasons for the dominantly negative perception in the social sciences of FSP as a coping strategy for poor segments of society, a perception that has prevailed, until recently, in this research area. In this literature, FSP has been interpreted as either a remnant of a traditional, pre-capitalist mode of production or as a survival strategy – a passive resistance to hardship – retained by the poor or those at the margins. In both cases FSP was viewed as a strategy that was deemed to disappear with growing commodifcation, affuence and marketisation and, for the same reason, not deserving of academic attention. When

Food self-provisioning in Central Europe 35 compared to West European countries, the relative prevalence of home gardening in Central Europe has been explained, deductively, as a sign of incomplete modernity, insuffciently developed markets and general economic and social underdevelopment. However, such a simplistic reading cannot explain the continuing popularity of home gardening in contemporary Central Europe, which has not shown signs of considerable decline even after three decades of ‘successful’ capitalist market proliferation and the growing affuence of society both before and after the 2008 economic crisis. In the mid-2010s, 36 percent of households in Hungary, 38 percent of households in the Czech Republic and 54 percent of households in Poland have been growing some of their own food in their gardens (Jehlička et al. 2018). This extent of FSP in relatively affuent northern societies is no longer explicable as declining residuum of the past or a coping strategy, protecting economically disadvantaged social strata from contingencies of the market. This puzzle calls for a new interpretation.

Food self-provisioning as a highly productive and enjoyable activity In the Czech Republic, 40 percent of households have ‘access to land’, by which we mean the ability to productively use this land to grow fruit, vegetables and other food items irrespective of the size of the plot and form of ownership. In some cases, this land is also used for rearing animals such as chickens or rabbits. In the vast majority of cases, this land is gardens located either close to homes, in allotments or at summer cottages. Professional farmers, who make up less than 2 percent of the national population, have been excluded from this analysis. Our extensive nationwide survey, conducted in 2015 and in which 2,058 households participated, revealed that all but 4 percent of households with access to land (i.e. 38 percent of all Czech households) use their plot for growing some food. The survey population was selected to replicate characteristics representative of the Czech population over the age of 18  years in terms of gender, age, education level, population size of municipality and region of residence (Jehlička and Daněk 2017). One-third of all vegetables and fruits, and slightly more than one-quarter of potatoes and eggs, that were consumed in food-growing households had been produced in their gardens (Table 3.1). When gifts and other forms of sharing are included, then the share of non-market produce of vegetables and fruits reaches two-ffths of consumption. If we include households without access to land, then 19 percent of the total Czech household consumption of vegetables, and 20 percent of fruits were either home-grown or received as gifts (Jehlička et al. 2018). Using another method – detailed food-logs kept by 13 households with a plot on two allotment sites in the second largest city in the Czech Republic, Brno, for six consecutive months – Lucie Sovová (2015) found out that on average 46 percent of the consumption of vegetables and fruits consumed in the households in her study, was of home-grown food.

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Such quantitative data on the scope of FSP allow us to revise our explanations of food home production, which appear in the established literature as residual habits or defensive strategies. The concept of diverse economies, developed by Gibson-Graham (2006), enables us to bring informal economies, including informal food production and consumption, from the margins to the centre of academic and political debates. Gibson-Graham claimed that the dominance of capitalism was more discursive than real, and that our imagination was colonised by capitalocentric interpretations of modern economics. In the diverse economies perspective, FSP becomes an important source of food in modern societies, one among several alternative, non-hierarchical sources such as capitalist market, alternative markets and barter. Adapted to food, in other contexts the diverse economies perspective has parallels with the concept of hybrid (food) economies (see Buchanan’s (2014) work on Australia’s indigenous communities). The majority of Czech food-growing households purchase most of their food in shops or supermarkets (Table 3.1). However, the capitalist market is not the sole source of food and we would caution against valorising it as either the most desirable, useful or sought-after source. A modifed version of Sen’s (1984) concepts of endowments and entitlements offers another opportunity for emancipation of home-grown food from its negative conceptualisation in the literature. A person’s entitlement set constitutes all possible combinations of goods and services that a person can legally obtain by using the resources of his or her endowment set (a combination of tangible and intangible resources, such as land and skills). The resources in an endowment set can be used in several ways to obtain food: (1) exchange (using monetary remuneration from labour to purchase food); (2) transfer (using membership in a community to obtain food as a gift) and (3) direct production (using land and skills). Most people in countries of the Global North (and increasingly in ‘emerging’ economies as well) are dependent on markets as the only or dominant source of food, which threatens their food security due to social processes such as economic crises or market disturbances. Home production of food and the sharing of home-grown food creates greater diversity of entitlements available to a person, household or community, and this greater diversity of entitlements makes them Table 3.1 Sources of selected types of food in food-growing households: based on respondents’ estimates Type of food

Household selfprovisioning (%)

Received gifts or Purchase (%) Total (%) sharing (%)

Vegetables Fruits Potatoes Eggs Meat Honey

34.8 32.6 27.9 27.4 8.4 4.7

5.8 7.6 6.7 10.2 4.3 22.5

Source: Jehlička and Daněk (2017)

59.4 59.8 65.4 62.4 87.3 72.8

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Food self-provisioning in Central Europe 37 less vulnerable to market failures and, consequently, they are more food secure and resilient (Jehlička et al. 2018). Data from our Czech household survey offers two strong arguments in support of the claim that FSP is a more a convivial and pleasurable activity rather than a coping strategy. First, when all 2,058 surveyed households are sorted into two groups – one growing at least some of their food, the other not – there is no signifcant difference between these two groups in terms of education level, social class, income or type of employment. If the coping strategy explanation were relevant, then FSP would be concentrated in poorer sections of society. But this is emphatically not the case: all social groups enjoy home gardening equally. It must be noted that gender differences could not be analysed because survey participants were asked to speak for their households. Nevertheless, it is clear that FSP is not an activity of people on the margins of society. Nor is it an activity concentrated in geographical peripheries. If households in prosperous metropolises are compared with those in regions that lag behind economically, there are few differences between them. If there are signifcant differences at all, they point in the other direction, with lower engagement in FSP in poorer regions. Even in Prague, the country’s affuent capital where access to land is scarce, almost onequarter (23 percent) of all households were growing some of their food. Waiting lists for leasing plots on Prague allotment sites keep growing. Older households, particularly pensioners, grow their food more often than younger households. However, even though such households are often poorer than the younger and middle-age households, FSP is not so much a coping strategy as a leisure activity that they can enjoy more than those employed, who do have not enough time for it (Jehlička and Daněk 2017). The second argument against the explanation of FSP as a coping strategy is based on an enquiry made within the survey into reasons for growing food. Participants were asked to select three out of eight pre-defned reasons for growing food, and to rank them accordingly. The primary motives for FSP turned out to be to get fresh food (30 percent) and to get healthy food (20 percent) (Figure  3.1). Therefore, growing food can be considered a household-level attempt at solving problems created by the globalised food system, particularly its perceived inability to deliver fresh and healthy food. Feeling proud of homegrown food, based on the perceived quality of tangible results of one’s own labour, is common as expressed by a gardener in research by Sovová (2015, 18): When you compare strawberries from the garden with the ones you buy, there is a huge difference. Anything that is grown in the garden is of much higher quality than when you buy it in the supermarket. However, economic reasons for FSP cannot be entirely dismissed. ‘Saving money’ ranked third among reasons for FSP and it was the most important reason for 17 percent of food-growing households. Interestingly, cost savings were considered a more important motivation for FSP by a signifcantly higher percentage of the survey participants who did not grow their food than by gardeners themselves.

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Figure 3.1 Main reasons for growing food at home (%) (N = 2,058). Source: survey conducted by Daněk and Jehlička in the Czech Republic, 2015.

It seems that the perception of FSP as an activity driven primarily by economic need is still rooted in some parts of society, in particular among those who have no direct experience of engaging in FSP. The analysis of motivations suggests that FSP is an activity driven mainly by individual self-interests, not by an activist struggle to remediate the negative consequences of globalised food systems. Environmental reasons for FSP are by far the least important motivation. Only a tiny minority of respondents mentioned it as their most important reason (Figure  3.1). However, fundamentally selfsh desires for fresh, local and healthy food sought by a large number of people can have, unintentionally, a remarkably positive impact on the global system of food provisioning and, by extension, on the planetary ecosystem (Vávra et al. 2018).

Growing food, cultivating friendships Home-grown food has a strong capacity to nurture social ties. The yields in a garden are conditioned by natural processes and sometimes the harvest exceeds the gardeners’ consumption capacity. In such situations, friends and relatives are invited to help collect and consume the produce. At other times, a jar of homemade jam or pickles becomes a suitable gift for friends or when extended family members come for a visit. The gift of home-grown or home-prepared food has a high symbolic value, which includes the labour and knowledge of the giver and the maintenance of social relations on both sides. To understand the sharing economy of home-made food, the surveyed households that grew some of their food (N = 782) were divided into four subgroups according to the level of their food self-suffciency and their degree of

Food self-provisioning in Central Europe 39 involvement in food sharing practices (Table 3.2). Sharing has been defned as non-monetary exchange or gift giving outside the household. The information on the amount of shared food in our survey was based on respondents’ estimates. Sharing home-grown food is a common practice in the Czech Republic: 64 percent of FSP households shared at least a small portion of their produce. Twelve percent of households could be described as living within a thriving informal food economy, as they produce at least one-half of their yearly consumption of fruits, vegetables or other food items listed in the note to Table 3.2. At the same time, these households gave away at least one-quarter of their produce. Such households make up 4.5 percent of all Czech households, while 14 percent of all Czech households were sharing at least one-tenth of their domestic food production. Similar to home food production, this informal food distribution is equally common in all surveyed social groups and geographical regions. To test the thesis that food sharing is primarily driven by economic needs and, as such, concentrated in rural peripheries, we divided the participants in the survey into six groups along the rural–urban continuum. It turned out that there were no discernible trends in food sharing behaviour in different types of settlements. The households that shared more than one-quarter of their produce (Subgroup 1 in Table 3.2) made up 17 percent of FSP households even in the major cities (categorised as cities with populations of 50,000 or more), which is a higher share than in the rural periphery category (11 percent) or the survey average (12 percent). Giving a gift can establish relations of obligation and reciprocity (Belk 2010). However, in most cases, social relations that evolved within these food sharing networks did not display these characteristics. We discovered that this type of sharing is mostly a pleasurable, voluntary and obligation-free practice. Such a claim can be supported by two insights revealed by close examination of the survey data. The frst insight stems from answers given to a direct question about reasons for sharing home-produced food: ‘What reasons do you have for giving away food that you have grown or produced yourself?’ When ranked by the number of answers by participants who share more than one-tenth of their produce (only 3 percent of all answers in that group), the least often chosen answer on the list of ten pre-selected reasons was: ‘Obligation: to give something in return’. ‘Joy of pleasing other people’ (21 percent) and ‘feeling good about giving a gift’ (another 21 percent) were the most frequent answers, followed by what can be labelled as ‘social motivations’ (‘to enjoy time with friends’ and ‘to maintain good relations with friends and neighbours’). Individual, possibly selfsh, enjoyment coming from sharing and caring for good social relations seems to be the main reason driving home-made food sharing. The second insight is based on the fact that food sharing networks extend well beyond households growing food and include a large number of households without access to land. Only 36 percent of surveyed households (indicating, by extension, of all Czech households) are not involved in such networks (Table  3.3). Hypothetically, food sharing could be based on mutuality (reciprocity and obligation) and viewed as an indicator of economic hardship and strategy to achieve

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Table 3.2 Subgroups defined on the basis of the extent of food production and sharing Subcategory

Defnition of category

Number of Percentage of households FSP households (absolute fgures)

92 Households sharing 25 percent or more of their domestic food production and whose domestic food production meets at least 50 percent of yearly consumption of at least one of the listed food items 199 Sharing 1/10+ Households sharing between 10 percent and 25 percent of their domestic food production and whose domestic food production meets at least 25 percent of their yearly consumption of at least one of listed food items 209 Sharing less Households sharing than 1/10 less than 10 percent of their domestic food production and whose domestic food production meets at least 10 percent of their yearly consumption of at least one of listed food items No sharing All other households that 282 produce some food Sample of FSP All households that 782 households produce some food Total survey All households in the 2,058 sample survey

Sharing 1/4+

Percentage of category in total sample

11.8

4.5

25.4

9.7

26.7

10.2

36.1

13.7

100.0

38.0

N/A

100.0

Source: Jehlička and Daněk (2017). Note: the following types of food define the subcategories: vegetables, fruits, potatoes, meat, eggs, honey and preserved foods

Food self-provisioning in Central Europe 41 Table 3.3 Types of food sharing interaction: non-monetary, inter-household food transfers only Type of transaction: households

Number of households

Receive and give 584 Receive only 673 Give only 53 Neither receive nor give 748 Total 2,058

Percentage (total Percentage if only those who sample, N = 2,058) share are counted (N = 1,310) 28.4 32.7 2.6 36.3 100.0

44.6 51.4 4.0 N/A 100.0

Source: Jehlička and Daněk (2017).

food security. Our data does not allow us to determine the exact extent of strictly reciprocal exchanges (between the same households). However, given that the majority of sharing interactions are either in the category of receiving only (51 percent of households participating in the food sharing economy) or giving only (4 percent), it seems safe to assume that Czech food sharing is largely a non-reciprocal behaviour and is driven mostly by generosity and social motives (Table 3.3). The social networks established through sharing home-grown food are not based on hierarchical relationships in terms of richer donors giving to poorer recipients. On the contrary, the most affuent households are more numerous than the least affuent ones in the receive-only category. Thus, somewhat counter-intuitively, the main benefciaries of informal food sharing appear to be people who are more affuent. The networks are fairly local: in 81 percent of cases network participants live within 10 km of each other. At the same time, they are quite small in size – 61 percent of networks are made up of just three or four people, while 20 percent of networks consist of fve or more members. Family ties are an important element of sharing networks, but the majority of them are not based solely on kinship relations: 65 percent of respondents were engaged in sharing networks in which at least one person was not a member of their extended family (Jehlička and Daněk 2017).

Quiet sustainability Gardening is a more sustainable form of food production and distribution than the conventional capitalist agriculture and food supply chain. FSP has detectable, positive environmental impacts as evidenced, for example, in calculations by Vávra et al. (2018) of the actual extent of food produced in Czech FSP households. Compared to the same amount of market-bought food, FSP practices decrease food-related greenhouse gases emissions by three to fve percent. Other positive effects relate to the limited use of industrially produced fertilisers: only 39 percent of gardeners use industrially produced fertilisers (mostly in addition to organic fertilisers such as compost), while 44 percent of gardeners use only organic fertilisers, and 17 percent of gardeners use no fertilisers at all.

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Social pressure on ecosystems is further reduced by food re-localisation given the short geographical distances between gardens, homes of FSP households and other participants in food sharing networks. Moreover, gardens help to retain water in cities, enhance biodiversity and provide green spaces for city dwellers. Recent research conducted in the Czech Republic has also found that the practice and experience of home-grown food relate to efforts to limit food waste (Sosna et al. 2019). Despite all of these, and other, environmental effects, gardeners are not activists fghting for a greener planet. Environmental reasons are the least important motivations for their activities (Figure  3.1). Their environmentally benefcial behaviour is unintentional. Smith and Jehlička (2013) labelled this behaviour ‘quiet sustainability’, unintentionally benefcial for the environment and social relations. Unlike activists emphasising the imperative of voluntary modesty or self-restraint for the sake of environmental protection, people producing and sharing home-grown food tend to follow more individual, selfsh desires for healthy living in a friendly environment. By following these intrinsically human interests they construct spaces that are not actively opposing growth-dependent processes of capital accumulation, including the global food system, but largely stand aside from and alongside the working of capitalist processes.

Conclusion During the four decades of the communist regime that was in power until 1989, home gardens, allotments and gardens by summer cottages provided islands of common sense normalcy amid perpetual ideological mobilisation of the ‘masses’ by the regime. These islands were largely ignored because the practices were considered marginal and unimportant. They stood not against but largely outside of the regime’s control, but were vital for retaining an autonomous space distant from communist projects of planned economy and perpetual political mobilisation. Non-ideological, commonsense moral values and social relations could thus be preserved and nurtured in these spaces, along with growing vegetables and fruits, and developing skills needed for gardening. The continuing popularity of gardening decades after the regime’s fall suggests that gardens as spaces, and FSP as a practice, retain similar social and environmental functions within the neoliberal regime and its market ideology, as those they had during the communist era. The analysis of the data from our extensive survey allowed us to challenge previous interpretations of FSP in Central Europe as either residual or a coping strategy of the poor. In our reading, for most of its practitioners FSP is a pleasurable activity. It is not driven by economic needs but by the simple objectives of getting fresh and healthy food while, at the same time, developing friendly social relations. Returning to the concept of metabolic rift exacerbated by neoliberal ideology, we claim that FSP can be seen as an albeit incomplete response to all three dimensions of the rift. First, while production of fresh and healthy food is the major motivation for FSP, the practice is free from the capitalist imperative

Food self-provisioning in Central Europe 43 of accumulation and related principles such as competition, proft seeking and market exchange. Motivated by the quality of such food produced and the enjoyment of growing and sharing, FSP is based on methods of production which, in most cases, are compatible with that integrity of ecosystems rather than with the principle of proft maximisation. As argued above, the volume of production can be signifcant even when using largely sustainable methods. Second, FSP can be seen as a response to the social rift because it values land for its fertility and related functions, such as green space for recreation, and not as a commodity. In a similar way, labour is not valued for its capacity to make a proft, but for its capacity to care, creatively and responsibly, for local natural resources, such as land and seeds. As such, FSP has a capacity to create non-hierarchical and socially inclusive networks of production and distribution, connecting different social groups and settlement types, based on enjoyment and feelings of being useful. Third, a solution to the individuality rift is offered by direct, localised, immediately visible and sensible relations between inputs, say in the form of seeds or labour, and outputs, in the form of food and the resulting valorisation of skills and knowledge. Spaces of home-based food production and sharing are based on growing. However, interwoven in these spaces, quietly and unintentionally, is a responsibility to the needs of the natural environment and to society in a local context and based on local knowledge. FSP practices are not just alternative but antithetical to principles of growth on which neoliberal capitalism is dependent. As such, gardens and sharing networks cannot be considered negatively as residual and defensive spaces but rather as emancipated, as nuclei of degrowth society valuing conviviality, creativity and productivity for the sake of local people and ecosystems, not distant ideologies. Informal food production in gardens and the distribution of produce in food sharing networks are not utopias. We are careful to not idealise the social relations established by FSP practices, but we would, nevertheless, highlight their quality of everyday normalcy as a refection of human nature unmediated by ideologies. It is perhaps such normalcy which gives rise to the strong sense of resilience of FSP vis-à-vis the hegemonic ideologies of both communism and neoliberalism with all their destructive economic implications. As such, Central European FSP offers an inspiring, effective and enjoyable response to acute problems of the contemporary global food crisis.

References Anguelowski I (2015) ‘Urban gardening’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. Abingdon: Routledge: 226–8. Belk R (2010) ‘Sharing’, Journal of Consumer Research 36: 715–34. Buchanan G (2014) ‘Hybrid economy research in remote Indigenous Australia: Seeing and supporting the customary in community food economies’, Local Environment 19(1): 10–32. Clapp J (2016) Food. Second edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Domazet M and Ančić B (2017) ‘How far for the money? Affuence and democratic degrowth potential in Europe’ in Telešienė A and Gross M (eds) Green European: Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes in Europe in a Historical and Cross-Cultural Comparative Perspective. Abingdon: Routledge: 157–81. Gibson-Graham J K (2006) A Post-Capitalist Politics. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Jehlička P and Daněk P (2017) ‘Rendering the actually existing sharing economy visible: Home-grown food and the pleasure of sharing’, Sociologia Ruralis 57: 274–96. Jehlička P, Daněk P and Vávra J (2018) ‘Rethinking resilience: Home gardening, food sharing and everyday resistance’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies 40(4): 511–27. Pungas L (2019) ‘Food self-provisioning as an answer to the metabolic rift: The case of “Dacha Resilience” in Estonia’, Journal of Rural Studies 68: 75–86. Sen A (1984) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith J and Jehlička P (2013) ‘Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners’, Journal of Rural Studies 32: 148–57. Sonnino R and Griggs-Trevarthen C (2013) ‘A resilient social economy? Insights from the Community Food Sector in the UK’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 25(3–4): 272–92. Sosna D, Brunclíková L and Galeta P (2019) ‘Rescuing things: Food waste in the rural environment in the Czech Republic’, Journal of Cleaner Production 214: 319–30. Sovová L (2015) ‘Self-provisioning, sustainability and environmental consciousness in Brno allotment gardens’, Sociální Studia 12(3): 11–26. Vávra J, Daněk P and Jehlička P (2018) ‘What is the contribution of food self-provisioning towards environmental sustainability? A case study of active gardeners’, Journal of Cleaner Production 185: 1015–23. Young E M (2012) Food and Development. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Learning degrowth from women’s food knowledge and care in Kenya Meike Brückner

Cultivating and sharing knowledge on African indigenous leafy vegetables (AIVs) is a signifcant activity of urban women in Nairobi. This chapter elaborates on these women’s knowledge and care in rethinking and repractising a food system based on sustainable, solidarity-oriented and careful relationships and livelihoods. Care is conceptualised from a socioecological perspective, understood as a strong, creative and life-sustaining practice. Discourses on both food and degrowth share a search for alternatives. With its critique of dominating growth narratives, practices and policies, degrowth discourse has parallels with indigenous and sovereignty movements in the area of food. Both focus on sustainable use of natural resources. The food sovereignty movement gaining ground in Africa emphasises the need to safeguard indigenous knowledge and crops for a diverse ecosystem (AFSA 2011; ACB et al. 2017). Building on these synergies I show how practices that might be seen pejoratively as ‘hanging on to old ways’ are, in fact, postmodern and can set an example for postgrowth practices.

Background and research methods A rich variety of AIVs exist in Kenya – around 200 species are recorded, and about 20 are identifed as commonly consumed (Opiyo 2014). Varieties such as spider plant (Gynandropsis/Cleome gynandra), African nightshade (Solanum scabrum), amaranth (Amaranthus blitum) and cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) are popular. AIVs are slowly making a comeback in everyday food practices after being marginalised and stigmatised as ‘weeds’, mainly due to colonial practices and a growth-oriented agrifood system. These vegetables were collected from the wild or found between other cultivated crops rather than being produced for the commercial sector. During colonisation, exotic crops, such as kale and cabbage, were introduced by British settlers. Colonial politics and cultures favoured monoculture cropping, cash crops and export commodities. The settlers mainly focused on exportable goods such as tobacco, coffee and tea, consequently neglecting traditional varieties and cultural practices associated with consuming them as food and for other purposes.

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However, AIVs have been rediscovered and are regaining their popularity – even as a ‘superfood’ (Cernansky 2015). Nongovernment organisations and institutions such as Bioversity International support this trend with research and promotion of leafy greens (Bioversity International and EIARD 2013). AIVs have much potential. Most AIVs can be harvested several times per year, thus providing a continuous supply. They are recommended for their drought tolerance, an important feature in changing climatic conditions (Chepkoech et al. 2018) and are recognised as rich in micro-nutrients (Abukutsa-Onyango et al. 2010), especially when compared to exotic counterparts such as kale and cabbage. Traditionally considered ‘women’s crops’, highlighting the preeminent role women play in their conservation, this status is slowly changing (Oketch et al. forthcoming). Although this chapter focuses on fndings in Nairobi, the case study was based on feldwork – with Anne Aswani and Gülay Caglar in the HORTINLEA Meal Cultures in Market Trends and Consumption Habits project (see Acknowledgements, this volume) – during 2015–2017 in three locations (Kakamega, Nakuru and Nairobi). The research team conducted ‘cook-along interviews’, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and meal cartographies in Nairobi with 28 participants/ households identifed through purposive sampling. We applied a mixture of methods: conventional methods such as in-depth interviews and group discussions, and participatory methods such as the cook-along interviews and meal cartographies. During the cook-along interviews we observed and interviewed participants in action during cooking. The meal cartographies mapped participants’ methods and routines in obtaining food and refected how everyday activities of mobility, work, childcare and work affect food practices. Most of the interviews in Nairobi were conducted in English, a few in Kiswahili or local languages. In most cases, the interview team recorded direct translations to English, but some interviews were translated at a later stage, during data processing.

Wanjira’s kitchen Beyond recognising the need to preserve traditional crops, embodied and performed knowledge in households needs to receive greater attention from researchers in both felds of degrowth and food. One of my frst feld visits to Kenya made that clear as I met, observed, listened and talked to a woman named Wanjira (a pseudonym). Wanjira passionately cooked her AIVs. If the taste of her vegetables revealed her culinary skill, creativity and knowledge, how she cared for the vegetables revealed her capacity to embed food choices and routines in a larger socioecological context – in which to opt for indigenous varieties effectively meant supporting biodiversity and creating and maintaining social bonds in the community. Wanjira moved to Nairobi in the 1970s and was living in the Eastern part of the city. She had two children who had already left home. Wanjira was retired but, to sustain herself, farmed a feld outside of Nairobi where she grew maize, beans and indigenous vegetables. Behind her house she kept chickens. She was proud

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to be a farmer and partly independent from the market, however she depended on the availability of rain to irrigate her feld. What stood out was her sense of responsibility and commitment towards sharing her food knowledge. She invited family, friends and acquaintances to cook together. In her kitchen she created, on the one hand, an intimate space for learning and experimenting and, on the other hand, community and solidarity. If the home kitchen is often regarded as a private and isolated space in academic debates, Wanjira actively used her kitchen for exchanges on cooking, for instance on how to create a certain taste, cut down cooking time or cook in an energy-saving way. In Wanjira’s life food was not just a social connector and subject for continuous education, it was also medicinal. Her passion for AIVs was partly due to her diagnosis with arthritis, prompting an internet search for healthy food alternatives. There she learned more about the medicinal value of AIVs. Wanjira is passionate about equipping others with the capacity to cook a tasty meal and the knowledge about benefts of traditional food to maintain physical health. In building and sharing these different ways of socioecological care, she cultivates food knowledge and creates a path for others to follow. But, how can the above example from Kenya inform or inspire the degrowth movement? Questions of how to connect degrowth in the Global North and South, how to learn from each other, are highly topical. Escobar (2015, 456) argues that ‘explicit bridges between transition narratives in the North and in the South’ need to be built. Bendisch (2018) elaborates on how, having lived as a person from the North in the South, one can support degrowth practices. Dengler and Seebacher (2019) criticise the colonialism of degrowth, urging us to consider global dimensions and suggest a feminist decolonial degrowth approach. Our empirical research in Kenya contributes to this discussion by focusing on sustainability and degrowth in food production and consumption. I reverse the perspective of degrowth in the North by learning from the South – in a way similar to Edwards (2016) – convinced that the degrowth debate in industrialised countries needs inspiration from practices elsewhere in the world. We need to rethink our food practices to transition towards degrowth and a gender perspective is crucial to this endeavour. Taking this approach, frst, I introduce a theoretical overview that builds a foundation for starting a conversation involving care and sustainable livelihoods as an alternative to common development and growth narratives that dominate agrifood studies. Second, I draw on empirical data to explore how women’s ‘recipes’ of local production and consumption, biodiversity conservation and the support of diverse food economies can inspire alternative degrowth strategies. Finally, I refect on the broader politics of food and potential lessons of this case study for degrowth.

Theorising care, sustainable livelihoods and gender Decisions and practices of everyday consumption are activities central to environmental change towards sustainability, however, they are often deeply gendered.

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Women make most of these decisions as they, primarily, take care of household consumption. Empirical studies indicate that food and household consumption is primarily women’s responsibility, in both the Global North and Global South settings (Miller 1998; Holtzmann 2009; Chapman and Beagan 2013; Wane 2014). However, gendered processes of decision-making and practices of consumption are often neglected as ‘a side dish’ taking place in the private realm. The private-public dichotomy has, for a long time, divided day-to-day activities, responsibilities, workloads, politics and economics along gender lines and still remains largely unchallenged except by feminist scholars. This binary creates different norms and associations for women and men, for instance that masculinity is associated with the public (sphere of power) and femininity with the private (sphere of love) (Bauhardt 2014). This manifests as a symbolic gender order that reinscribes care work to women. Feminist economists coined the term ‘care economy’, in order to claim that the economy depends on care and to counteract the understanding that care work is not an activity of labour but of love (Folbre and Nelson 2000). A gender lens to food takes into account that care work and the knowledge needed for it is performed and embodied by women. The marginalisation of gender as an analytical category or starting point of debates that can dismantle injustices and inequalities and practices of agency and resistance is also apparent within degrowth debates. However, feminist scholars criticise inadequacies in both awareness of gender and attention given to care work (Demaria et al. 2013; D’Alisa et al. 2015; Picchio 2015; Saave-Harnack et al. 2019). For instance, Bauhardt (2014, 65) has argued that: The post-growth society has to address these implicit gender assumptions in its theoretical framework in order to develop an understanding of their negative effects on the gender hierarchy, and also in order to consider positive possibilities regarding fair gender relations in the future. Dengler and Strunk (2018, 173) go a step further, making a nuanced claim that ‘not only can a feminist perspective on care pave the way for degrowth, but also degrowth can pave the way for a caring economy’. Here I propose a recentring on care activities – for oneself, others and other beings – in the feld of degrowth and agrifood studies. Care is fundamental for wellbeing and sustainability in society and greater attention to care has the potential to identify additional knowledge, skills and practices necessary for socioecological transformation. This requires a broader understanding of care: to frame care not only in a social context and elaborate on how humans care for one another but also to locate how people care in an ecological context, as care for the natural environment. Moreover, it is signifcant to acknowledge that ecosystems care for us: foods are a basic necessity for humans and specifc foods enable us to improve our health and wellbeing and can deliver feelings of satisfaction and joy. That said, I understand care as analytically and practically related to both food production and food consumption. I aim to conceptualise these processes as coupled in

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an attempt to frame care in a socioecological context, which can be a starting point to connect debates around gender and care work with discourse around sustainability and resource use. Through their alternative development theories and practices, feminists have criticised the growth narrative explicit in the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987, 40) and, thus, share strong synergies with degrowth theorists. While the notion of sustainable development with its sociocultural, ecologic and economic aspects is still a dominant narrative in scientifc and policy discourses, from early on feminists challenged the notion and instead used the approach of ‘sustainable livelihoods’ (Wichterich 2004; Harcourt 2012; Krishna 2012). This concept centring on people’s livelihoods and wellbeing had become known by 1990, when it was understood ‘as an advance over SD [sustainable development] and earlier poverty alleviation approaches for meeting basic needs through a narrow focus on employment and income generation’ (Krishna 2012, 13) but gender issues were not integral to this approach then. Nevertheless, sustainable livelihood approaches conceptualised sustainability very differently from mainstream growth-oriented framings. Sustainable livelihoods are not about intensifed growth and a monetarised economy and explicitly focus on dynamics between genders and with natural environments. In short, this chapter takes feminist approaches to care and to sustainability. These approaches are critical to my analysis of agricultural and food practices and understanding of women’s socioecological experience of, and engagement with, AIVs. By observing their alternative practices of economy, ecology and knowledge, we can see the personal transformations they achieve for their own livelihoods and the sustainability of the natural environments within which they live and/or act.

Women’s recipes for degrowth The convivial, unifying and social power of food in bringing people together to eat is widely recognised. However, food-related care work in households is conventionally seen as a private concern based on individual decision-making. Feminist critiques are starting to dismantle this depoliticised narration of food and meal work. For instance, Trubek et al. (2017, 303) introduce the idea of ‘food agency’ to argue that taking care of everyday food provisioning (from planning to cooking) is a skilful act with capacities and abilities, and is especially necessary in contemporary contexts ‘when it is easy, even easiest, to remain a passive consumer’ (ibid. 303) as other actors in the food chain do the work. Women’s creative agency in food provisioning in the Mijikenda fshing community in coastal Kenya has been explored by Kawarazuka et al. (2019) as a challenge to patriarchy. Kamwendo and Kamwendo (2014) and Shah et al. (2018) argue that traditional and local food knowledge can lead to food security and, thus, become a powerful strategy in securing daily nutrition. However, power and agency in food provisioning and care – whether in a food secure or insecure context – and the knowledge and know-how associated with it, is most often neither recognised

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nor valued. Yet it is precisely emerging degrowth perspectives that acknowledge, indeed highlight, such everyday practices in terms of such agency. The examples that follow focus specifcally on food provisioning, care and knowledge as strong, creative and life-sustaining practices. I try to show how women’s practices and knowledge are critical in re-thinking a food system based on sustainable livelihoods and ‘care’ful relationships. Thus, I explore multiple practices, women’s ‘recipes for degrowth’, that open up alternative spaces within the household and wider community: self-provisioning in community and kitchen gardens; support of diverse economies of food provisioning in and beyond the city; and, sharing culinary knowledge in communal cooking sessions. These lessons from the Global South challenge us to rethink what constitutes degrowth consumption patterns. Urban community and kitchen garden: ‘The street is eating our garden’ We visited an urban farming group during the dry season because, with not much farming going on at that time, the group could sit down with us to talk about and cook AIVs. They had built up a space for farming to nourish themselves and their families. The group consisted of farmers from different ethnic communities. They started the farm shortly after the postelection conficts in Kenya, 2007– 2008. Ideally, farming creates ties beyond and across ethnic lines, and belonging. However, like many green spaces in Nairobi, this farm was under pressure from road infrastructure being built at the expense of the farmers. It was an ambiguous and frustrating image: the garden that gave them food and hope was being impinged upon by a new street construction. As one female farmer symbolically stated: ‘The street is eating our garden’. We were literally sitting and cooking next to the construction site. The farmers knew and feared that their garden had to make way for the street but they were still hoping to fnd a place to which to relocate. It seemed as if they wanted to stay until the last minute to protect their garden and, ultimately, their livelihood and sovereignty. When we talked to the participants of our study about the possibility of cultivating their own food, we could see that most of them had signifcant agricultural skills and knowledge to nourish themselves. Out of the 28 feld visits made in Nairobi, 15 individuals or groups had access to a farm while ten had no access to a farm, and three were unspecifc. We encountered various agricultural experiences in urban locations, including kitchen gardens adjacent to individual households, collective farming groups, individually owned plots in the periurban area and sack gardening in small spaces, such as balconies. This helped participants achieve a certain degree of food self-suffciency, to control their food, trace the agricultural and postharvest practices that created their food and enabled them to connect more with living ecosystems. Choosing and accessing fresh vegetables was central to all the women farmers. One woman, who had a kitchen garden behind her house, made a direct link between her farming and what she was digesting, and was thinking of expanding:

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I have been considering to grow my own [AIVs] but I don’t know where to get the seeds. Actually I am under pressure from my nanny to grow them, because we keep saying you are in control of what goes into your belly because we are thinking of organic, organically grown. So I have been growing pumpkin in my backyard, but now I wanted to venture into more. Those without access to land in Nairobi often maintained strong ties to family farms or other farmers ‘upcountry’ in their rural homelands in order to access fresh produce. AIVs play a central role for urban female farmers due to nutritional, agroecological benefts and as food that belongs to traditional ways they have followed all their life (Syhre and Brückner 2019). Even though women are highly involved in urban agriculture, they are often marginalised, due to insecure access to land and the limited ability to access agricultural training programmes that mainly target farmers’ groups instead of individual farming in kitchen gardens (ibid.). Despite such diffculties, farming gave these women a sense of self-fulflment and strength. They farmed on top of all their other daily chores, which was especially demanding during harvest cycles as they had to manage care of the family, the household and their jobs. Some were deriving proft from selling vegetables, while others did not. Instead, the reward was controlling their self-provisioned food, described as making them more food secure. Farming is a practice that they hold dear as they can actively shape their agricultural and food environments. They are creating a local food landscape by acting on their own principles of what is meant by ‘good’ food and agriculture. Diverse food economies: ‘When she says the ones are from home I trust her’ Through what channels, people and places does food reach the plates of households? Asking this question helped us understand food routines embedded in regional food provisioning networks and economies. It quickly became clear that the women are not just embedded but create and support a diversity of food economies many of which are not at the centre of academic discussions revolving around food access and availability. We observed a complex diversity in how people sourced food, including AIVs, in Nairobi. Open-air markets were the most common source. Other sources mentioned included kiosks, street sellers, sharing among neighbours and going to supermarkets. Several women distrusted supermarkets, in contrast highlighting the value of going to open-air markets and buying directly from the seller. A working woman described why she favoured open-air markets, when we asked whether the preparation of AIVs was too time-consuming: The time consuming bit is the … plucking and I don’t even do it unless I really have to. But I get somebody to do that for me. For example, the lady that sells them: I want this quantity but please prepare them for me, I will do the cooking …

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Meike Brückner I just call her, I want to prepare 1, 2, 3 … I have the habit of buying things from the same person, if it is in the market I go to the same person. If she does not have something that I need then she will get it from somebody else and then I just pay her.

This woman appreciates how she can prearrange everything by phone, trust her seller to do the plucking and even assembling the food items she needs. Delegating such work, however, is a result of the diffculties with being employed and having to take care of household consumption. Others prefer to do the plucking themselves; they do not trust sellers based on suspicions of poor hygiene and the delicacy that the process requires. Another reason for buying from known sellers was being able to buy on credit. This showed how daily reality and market logic directly confict when having to pay immediately, for example in supermarkets. The relationship between seller and consumer is often gendered and ethnicised. Women are mainly responsible for taking care of acquiring AIVs. The ones selling AIVs on the markets are women called ‘mama mboga’ (mboga Kiswahili are vegetables). Quite often the woman selling the vegetables would come from the same ethnic community or home place as the buyer. Ethnicity strongly infuences consumption of AIVs in terms of knowledge of use of certain varieties and associations with home. Obtaining AIVs from a person from the same community guarantees women access to varieties they are used to and to know-how for preparation. However, boundaries blur in the urban context as consumers diversify their diets. We observed how interaction between communities increased the acceptance of AIV varieties previously unknown to a specifc community. A woman from Nairobi reported ‘getting to know the vegetables from other communities and learning how to cook it from them’, adding that ‘I actually do eat a lot of traditional vegetables that are not directly linked to my community’. Another common strategy and alternative way of food provisioning was sending food from home, which I term ‘travelling food’, ‘travelling’ as in the transportation system of intercity coaches that are used to bring and deliver food to Nairobi. With this strategy, setting up their own networks of food distribution and provisioning, women self-manage food acquisition, which contributes to their independence from markets. For them it is a method to counter the lack of transparency of the food economy and counteracts price volatilities as they negotiate the price or get produce for free if it comes from their family. They develop individual agency and reject the given market economy. Furthermore, they are committed to supporting the business of rural farming women and, thus, to contribute to regional sustainable livelihoods. One woman explained how she got delivered African vine spinach (Nnderema) – hard to obtain in Nairobi – so she could consume the AIVs that she was accustomed to: It is so hard for us to get these vegetables but on these buses of ours that go upcountry. You just go to town and tell them to bring for you from upcountry.

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Again we have ladies who do business from our place, and because they know we are here, they go and bring them for us. The motivations for these ways of provisioning from a trusted seller or from distant farms did not seem to be primarily economic. Rather it was important to know how the food was cultivated, who worked the soil and who provided care for and raised the vegetables. These are the same impulses that drive the community supported agriculture initiatives of degrowth activists (see Cristiano et al., Chapter 7 this volume). Motivations of people to join urban gardens or other alternative food networks in the Global North are similar, as shown in studies by Wells and Gradwell (2001), Dowler et al. (2010) and Wember (2019). In our study, the women sought a middle road to act sustainably and satisfy their food needs and desires. Establishing such food networks was not a given; it entailed a lot of contextual knowledge about, communication with, and trust of, different actors in the food chain. The gains were being able to make betterinformed food decisions and being in control. These fndings contrast with conventional understandings of food provisioning as highly routinised; in our case study of Nairobi women food provisioning was practised in very diverse ways and varied depending on many factors, such as seasonality, price, regional particularities, social networks, time and personal food preferences. The reciprocity observed in their relations to farmers from home and support of small-scale farming networks meant that the women were practising what Jarosz (2011) has described as feminist ‘ethics of care’, understood as ‘centred upon nourishing oneself and others’ (ibid. 308) and at scales that are ‘unbounded’ and relational. These women and households built and shaped alternative food economies (Grasseni 2013, Holloway and Kneafsey 2017) based on their food needs and in solidarity with farmers. These everyday acts were not marginal but, rather, common forms of resistance to agrifood systems incapable of providing trusted food, supporting local produce(rs) and respecting consumers as active agents. Sharing food knowledge: ‘We go to the kitchen together’ The results of our feld work highlighted the important role of sharing knowledge on AIV preparation, nutrition and ecology. Cooking is a collectively built space for biodiversity conservation, a space in which to disrupt the narrow and depoliticised construction of mainstream cooking. Elsewhere we have emphasised the importance of women’s food knowledge to change the perception of AIVs as a ‘poor people’s’ or ‘backward’ food (Brückner and Aswani 2017). Based on the extensive knowledge women held on AIVs in the spheres of production and consumption, we see them as key agents in changing such negative perceptions. They can bring awareness about indigenous vegetables to consumers by equipping them with knowledge of different varieties, their cultivation and cooking. AIVs are rather unpopular because they are bitter in taste but these women show how to circumvent such bitterness with specifc cooking methods that sweeten the vegetables. Most importantly, the women are familiar with the medicinal

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benefts of AIVs and they can spread this knowledge among family members, friends and in public discussions to create health awareness on indigenous crops. These practical suggestions have the potential both to change the image of indigenous vegetables and to demonstrate the power women’s knowledge holds. Richardson-Ngwenya and Nightingale (2019, 156) argue that ‘learning in itself is a dimension of value; value that cannot be measured through metrics or economic gains’. This resonates well with how learning, experimenting and sharing experiences about cooking offers a ‘recipe’ for women to gain experience and skills, to have fun and to connect generations and people. The women want their knowledge disseminated, especially because knowledge on AIVs is rarely written down or formalised but mainly shared by word of mouth and through observation. Most of our respondents acquired their knowledge about AIVs from female family members: mothers, grandmothers and aunts. In practice, culinary knowledge in Nairobi is shared both within the family and with the wider community. Firstly, women equip their children with such knowledge from an early age: often transgressing gendered expectations and norms, they teach their sons how to cook. They reported wanting their sons to have a profound knowledge of cooking, even if the kitchen is seen culturally as a female space and, for some, it is not acceptable that men cook. Secondly, the women organised joint cooking sessions in their private homes, inviting friends and acquaintances from the neighbourhood or church groups. We directly observed this during our feld work: we arranged an interview with one woman but found ourselves in the kitchen with several women standing around the cooking pot. The women we observed used this cook-along interview as an opportunity to learn new ways of preparing AIVs and to discuss practical challenges. How is it possible to reduce bitterness? How can the cooking time be shortened? How can we cook this variety? How can one recognise ‘good’ agricultural practice? They discussed how to ensure food safety when obtaining vegetables, and their contacts to farmers and sellers. In a focus group discussion, a woman explained that her sources of knowledge were: ‘from the internet’, ‘from friends’ and ‘we go to the kitchen together’. Here, AIVs constitute social relations of coming together. Similarly, AIVs constitute ecological relations as women share knowledge and experience the ecological characteristics and benefts of AIVs, including resistance to pests or drought tolerance. Thus, the kitchen is a place of socioenvironmental interaction, even transformation or decolonisation, reappropriation of control against market and modernising forces. While long disregarded, recent scholarly work does document the pleasures and joys of both sharing food knowledge and cooking more generally (Cairns and Johnston 2010; Wolfson et al. 2016). If we think preparing AIVs is timeconsuming and tedious we could ask why the women cook them and do not switch to exotic vegetables that are less time-consuming to prepare and cheaper? The women in our case study narrated enjoyment as crucial. One 70-year-old woman who we interviewed with her husband, described the pleasure of cooking by saying, ‘If you do something with your heart, it makes it easy and you also enjoy [doing it]’.

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The health benefts of AIVs were central attractions, as a 39-year-old woman with three children explained: I read a lot about anything and everything … my husband is into health issues …. Because of that we … get to hear a lot and what encouraged me most is when I look at my parents. My mother is so ft, she is so ft that she doesn’t even need a help, every time I suggest her help she says ‘No’, she will do the work herself. And that is what she feeds on, the traditional greens. And when I started feeding on that I have also been getting the same compliments, that I look good. So I told myself, ‘OK, then I should feed on this, this is what’s making me look good.’ So I tend to read more and realised, this is better than all those other [foods]. These examples demonstrate that acquiring and sharing knowledge, on cooking techniques, health or ecological benefts of food and specifcally AIVs, is done in very different ways. In showing how women develop networks of knowledge and spaces of learning, I have teased out alternative ways of engaging with food and care. It is important to understand the effects of such women’s efforts to produce and reproduce skill, capacities and information that can stimulate consumption and awareness of indigenous food and its importance for sustainable livelihoods.

Conclusion This chapter investigated food practices in the Global South exemplifed by AIVs in Kenya. The fndings revealed diverse ‘recipes for degrowth’ practised by women in their gardens, kitchens and communities – important ingredients towards thinking, discussing and living alternative, degrowth, production and consumption patterns. Patterns that are grounded in socioecological care and oriented towards local production and consumption, diverse economies, biodiversity and ultimately sustainable livelihoods. As such, the presented practices and narratives of women push academic discussions on food in the Global South in as much as debates have largely focused on hunger, malnutrition and poverty narratives supporting a stereotyped vision of food practices and neglecting forms of care and sustainability. Instead, acknowledging the agency and potential of the practices described broadens food discourses to uncover knowledge, capacities and skill that already exist, a base to work from in building a sustainable future from the ground up. Food production in Kenya is largely embedded in the world food economy. One of the frst African countries to enter international export value chains, the economy is, to a large extent, built on exports of products such as beans, fruits and vegetables. Domestic food prices are affected by the global food market. Furthermore, the consequences of a colonised food system are noticeable, especially in the case of AIVs and indigenous crops. But the women studied in this chapter set examples of alterity. They exemplify resistance and the decolonising, convivial and celebratory characteristics and strategies of degrowth

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– all unconsciously, without the banners and slogans and political intent of the degrowth movement. Focusing on women’s knowledge and values of care, I grasp and envision what ‘food for degrowth’ can mean and does mean as practised in the Global South. Paradoxically embedded in the current agrifood system, such women resist and express agency by sticking to growing and eating local, culturally and ecologically appropriate vegetables. As the case study demonstrates, women’s ‘recipes’ against the loss of biodiversity, an increasingly commodifed agrifood system and the neglect of knowledge on indigenous food set an example of a postgrowth relationship to food and agriculture and, more broadly speaking, to the environment. They serve as a strong example for everyday forms of socioecological care because their practices have benefcial environmental, as well as social, outcomes.

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Demaria F, Schneider F, Sekulova F and Martínez-Alier J (2013) ‘What is Degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement’, Environmental Values 22(2): 191–215. Dengler C and Seebacher L M (2019) ‘What about the Global South? Towards a feminist decolonial degrowth approach’, Ecological Economics 157: 246–52. Dengler D and Strunk B (2018) ‘The monetized economy versus care and the environment: Degrowth perspectives on reconciling an antagonism’, Feminist Economics 24(3): 160–83. Dowler E, Kneafsey M, Cox R and Holloway L (2010) ‘Doing food differently: Reconnecting biological and social relationships through care for food’, The Sociological Review 57(2): 200–21. Edwards F (2016) ‘Alternative food networks’ in Thompson P and Kaplan D (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Second edition. Berlin: Springer: 1–7. Escobar A (2015) ‘Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation’, Sustainability Science 10(3): 451–462. Folbre N and Nelson J A (2000) ‘For love or money – Or both?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(4): 123–40. Grasseni C (2013) Beyond Alternative Food Networks. Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups. Oxford: Bloomsbury. Harcourt W (ed.) (2012) Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained. London: Palgrave. Holloway L and Kneafsey M (2017) ‘Producing-consuming food: Closeness, connectedness and rurality in four “Alternative’ food networks”’ in Kneafsey M and Holloway L (eds) Geographies of Rural Cultures and Societies. London: Routledge: 262–82. Holtzmann J (2009) Uncertain Tastes: Memory, Ambivalence, and the Politics of Eating in Samburu, Northern Kenya. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jarosz L (2011) ‘Nourishing women: Toward a feminist political ecology of community supported agriculture in the United States’, Gender, Place & Culture 18(3): 307–26. Kamwendo G and Kamwendo J (2014) ‘Indigenous knowledge-systems and food security: Some examples from Malawi’, Journal of Human Ecology 48(1): 97–101. Kawarazuka N, Locke C and Seeley J (2019) ‘Women bargaining with patriarchy in coastal Kenya: Contradictions, creative agency and food provisioning’, Gender, Place & Culture 26(3), 384–404. Krishna S (2012) ‘Redefning sustainable livelihoods’ in Harcourt W (ed.) Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods. Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained. London: Palgrave: 12–19. Miller D (1998) A Theory of Shopping. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Oketch E, Githiga R, Brückner M, Kuskow V, Bauhardt C and Çağlar G (forthcoming) ‘Gender analysis towards sustainable food systems: The case of African indigenous vegetables in Kenya’ in Crafting Knowledge for Sustainable Food Systems. Wallingford: CABI Publishing. Opiyo A M (2014) ‘Traditional leafy vegetables: Status and future prospects’, Presentation, HORTINLEA Summer School. Kenyatta University, Nairobi. Picchio A (2015) ‘Feminist economics’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era. New York: Routledge: 208–11. Richardson-Ngwenya P and Nightingale A (2019) ‘Diverse ethics for diverse economies: Considering the ethics of embodiment, difference and inter-corporeality at Kufunda’ in Bauhardt C and Harcourt W (eds) Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives. Abingdon: Routledge: 131–61. Saave-Harnack A, Dengler C and Muraca B (2019) ‘Feminisms and degrowth – Alliance or foundational relation?’ Global Dialogue 9(1): 29–30.

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Shah S, Moroca A and Bhat J A (2018) ‘Neo-traditional approaches for ensuring food security in Fiji Islands’, Environmental Development 28: 83–100. Syhre J-A and Brückner M (2019) ‘“The garden has improved my life”: Agency and food sovereignty of women in urban agriculture in Nairobi’ in Bauhardt C and Harcourt W (eds) Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives. Abingdon: Routledge: 189–210. Trubek A B, Carabello M, Morgan C and Lahne J (2017) ‘Empowered to cook: The crucial role of ‘food agency’ in making meals’, Appetite 116: 297–305. Wane N N (2014) Indigenous African Knowledge Production: Food-Processing Practices Among Kenyan Rural Women. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. WCED (1987) Our Common Future. World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wells B L and Gradwell S (2001) ‘Gender and resource management: Community supported agriculture as caring-practice’, Agriculture and Human Values 18(1): 107–19. Wember C (2019) ‘Striving towards what we do not know yet: Living feminist political ecology in Toronto’s food network’ in Bauhardt C and Harcourt W (eds) Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives. New York: Routledge: 162–88. Wichterich C (2004) Überlebenssicherung, Gender und Globalisierung. Soziale Reproduktion und Livelihood-Rechte in der Neoliberalen Globalisierung. Wuppertal: Wuppertal Inst. für Klima, Umwelt, Energie. Wolfson J A, Bleich S N, Smith K C and Frattaroli S (2016) ‘What does cooking mean to you? Perceptions of cooking and factors related to cooking behavior’, Appetite 97(1): 146–54.

5

Caring dachas Food self-provisioning in Eastern Europe through the lens of care Lilian Pungas

The notions of care and stewardship are at the root of all practices concerning food production – from ploughing the soil and sowing, to harvesting, cooking, preserving and composting. Yet, in contrast to cooking, cultivating land is often not perceived as ‘classical’ care work. Instead, care is mostly framed as an interhuman activity concerned with human sustenance and reproduction and, therefore, associated mostly with household work, raising children and taking care of the elderly (Waerness 1984; Jochimsen 2003). Given that care remains a rather marginalised category, my goal in this chapter is to reinforce and enrich the discourse on care in degrowth scholarship by demonstrating how food self-provisioning (FSP) in both urban and periurban areas is grounded in ideas of care and stewardship, not only as an interhuman act, but also in connection to the soil and surrounding environment. In this sense, caring means ‘reaching out to something other than the self’ (Tronto 1993, 102) implying a deep empathy with other (living) beings, as well as being followed by some form of action. Drawing on four of Tronto’s (1993) fve expressions of care, I demonstrate that, despite seeming ‘irrational’ in economic terms, FSP is essentially a very rational act of care based on a deep understanding of interdependence and mutual vulnerability between humans and nonhuman nature (Gottschlich 2012). Care manifests as reciprocal ‘caring about’, ‘care-giving’ and ‘care-receiving’ with the surrounding environment, the gardener’s community and oneself. In this case study, I explore how notions of care are expressed in FSP, and how they can all be recognised as predominant intrinsic motives behind this practice. In contrast, I display how promises and narratives of industrial agriculture fall into Tronto’s fourth category (‘taking care of’) as rather ‘masculine’, ‘public’ and ‘loud’ manifestations of care. Tronto’s (2013) subsequent, ffth, dimension of care (‘caring with’) constitutes a less hierarchical relationship as well as a complex interdependence between both counterparts (care-giver and care-receiver) so might provide an additional (potentially more appropriate) framework for analysing care in FSP practice. However, in this chapter the focus lies on the four dimensions of care as identifed above for the sake of nuanced analysis of specifc aspects and motives of care practice with regard to FSP. FSP can be defned as a practice of ‘growing and consuming one’s own food using one’s own (predominantly nonmonetary) resources’ (De Hoop and Jehlička

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2017, 811) that takes place outside of the conventional agri-food system. Using periurban agriculture as the spatial framing meant that I did not include professional farmers or agricultural gardens and ‘typical’ summer houses – privately owned properties with an often relatively large land area in comparison to the periurban cooperatives’ garden plots – in Estonian rural areas. Instead, I assessed the so-called dachas in current or former garden cooperatives as spaces that are stigmatised partially due to their location (urban wasteland, roadside), housing restrictions, emphasis on food produce (in contrast to recreational area and lawn) and due to consequent ‘crisis discourse’ such as ‘survival strategy of the poor’. In some cases, dachas were ‘merely’ denounced as obstacles to development in revalued periurban areas in times of economic growth. In Estonia, such garden plots are called garden cooperatives (aiandus- ja suvilakoperatiivid in Estonian) or dachas (summer cottage in Russian). Dachas in Estonia appeared mostly during the Soviet era as space for growing one’s own food (mostly with regard to food security or better food supply) and/or as an additional living space for summer. They were given or leased to the factory employees and, in some cases, became privatised during the 1990s. The biggest dacha cooperatives are located in Eastern Estonia, where most of the industry was (and still is) based, and are predominantly inhabited by the Russian-speaking minority that was relocated to Estonia as a work force during the Soviet era.

‘Blind spots’: Reproduction and care Feminist economists have long pointed to the methodological blindness of established economic theory in which care and nature are ‘blind spots’ systemically devalued by the ‘growth-based capitalist economic paradigm’ (Perkins 2007, 228). Consequently, the structural separation between the productive and the reproductive has given rise to the present socioecological crises: capitalism is destroying its own base because its productivity is built on, and essentially encompasses, the animate reproductive functions that are in crisis due to the prevalent system (O’Hara 1997; Mies 2005). Compared to the productive sphere in the economy, reproduction is processual, oriented towards preservation and regeneration, often remaining within the nonmonetised, invisible ‘private’ sphere (Biesecker and Hofmeister 2010, 1709). According to the ‘ICE model’ of Jochimsen and Knobloch (1997, 109), the two spheres laying the ‘maintenance’ basis for the industrial production processes (I) are ecological processes (E) and caring activities (C). Elaborating on this ‘ICE model’ of Jochimsen and Knobloch (1997, 108), Dengler and Strunk (2018, 163) demonstrate how the visibility of the monetised economy and the invisibility of ecological processes and caring activities  –  summarised as the maintenance economy  –  constitute themselves through the structural separation between productive and reproductive spheres, as demonstrated in Figure 5.1. Despite the fact that the sphere of industrial production processes is essentially dependent on, and limited by, ecological processes, due to devalued ecological

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Monetized Economy BOUNDARY

productive

valuable

focus

counted

inside

reproductive

valueless

blind spots

unaccounted

outside

Ecological Processes

Caring Activities Maintenance Economy

Figure 5.1 Distinctions between monetised and maintenance economies. Source: adapted from ‘The Monetized vs. The Maintaining’ depiction by Dengler and Strunk (2018, 163), a refnement of the ‘ideas, connections, extensions’ ICE Model in Jochimsen and Knobloch (1997, 109).

reproduction processes it tends to destroy and exhaust the natural taps and sinks in the process, and externalise the environmentally negative effects (Dengler and Strunk 2018). In addition, industrial production processes do the same with interhuman caring activities, pushing them into the private sphere and failing to recognise (or neglecting) that caring activities constitute social foundations for the functioning of industrial processes (Jochimsen and Knobloch 1997, 110). Therefore, both reproductive spheres are systematically and structurally devalued, which leads to their constant exhaustion. As a result, there is increasing demand from degrowth activists and scholars to put care and reproduction at the centre of societal analysis and attention. As Dengler and Strunk (2018) demonstrate, degrowth has the potential to structurally revalue both ecological and social reproduction. Yet, such restructuring would not only require radical rethinking of (non) human relations and needs but also overcoming prevalent dualisms and asymmetries that are implicit in the prevalent discourses about economy, work and care (Gottschlich and Bellina 2017). Tronto (1993) has differentiated between fve expressions of care, as mentioned, four are applied here. Her typology allows one to refect and understand why certain categories of care might be more visible, recognised and valued (even monetarily) than others. Tronto’s (1993) four categories are: frst, ‘caring about’, which implies the perception of a need for care and the subsequent assessment that this need should be met; second, ‘taking care of’, which involves notions of agency and responsibility in responding to the identifed need and choices on how to respond to it; third, ‘care-giving’, which implies commitment and concrete physical work for meeting the needs of care, and generally

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requires a direct relationship between the care-giver and the care-receiver; fourth, ‘care-receiving’, in which the receiver responds to the care received and can, accordingly, show if it is for their beneft or, alternatively, address the ineffciency or inappropriateness of the care offered (Tronto 1993, 106ff). In her analysis, Tronto (1993, 115) demonstrates that ‘taking care of’ is rather associated with masculine and public sphere roles and challenges, whereas ‘caring about’, ‘care-giving’ and ‘care-receiving’ are, rather, linked to women and/ or the ‘private’ sphere and are often embedded in intimate human relations. Against the backdrop of Tronto’s four categories, I refect on the FSP practice and global agri-food system as specifc expressions of care, and elaborate on their impacts, recognition and visibility.

Promises of the global agri-food system and the postcolonial discourse about FSP The global agri-food system is not only accountable for numerous environmental problems such as deforestation, desertifcation, decreasing soil fertility, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity and habitats (Chemnitz et al. 2017; Beus and Dunlap 1990; Ramankutty et al. 2008) but also contributes up to 30 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions (Garnett 2011). On a social level, the current agri-food system involves exploitative working conditions, uneven distribution of food, violence, exacerbating inequalities and large-scale land grabbing (Patel 2012; Bales 2016; Allen and Sachs 2012). However, ironically, the prevalent narrative of biotech companies and agroenterprises is still the promise to ‘take care of’ the challenges and crises arising from hunger and food security issues that are caused by changing climate, harsh droughts, foods and low yields. Promises such as ‘biotechnology helping to heal, fuel and feed the world’ (BIO 2019) and agri-businesses ‘fghting hunger’ by simply producing more food might initially sound tempting, yet industrial, corporate-driven food systems have failed to deliver food security for everyone. Since they severely and systemically harm both nature and the people on whom they depend, they will not be able to do so in the future either (Chemnitz et al. 2017, 32). The promise to simply ‘take care of’ the hungry – who are often themselves farm workers, yet without access to suffcient nutritious food – cannot be kept because the global agri-food system is blind towards its own reproductive foundations, i.e. humans (for example, farm workers) and nature (for example, fertile soil) alike. By claiming to ‘take care of’ the problem, the industrial food system fails to recognise or acknowledge that its activity is exhausting the ecological and social foundations it depends on. Thus, not only is the industrial food system itself the cause for these crises, but systematically  –  as does capitalism in general – it depletes its existential resource base, while publicly asserting to ‘take care of’ the problem, and, by doing so, legitimising its business as usual. This discourse strongly contrasts with various notions of care expressed by the (semi) subsistence farmers and FSP practitioners, who, as I will demonstrate below, are predominantly guided by the ideas of stewardship for, and empathy with, nature

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as well as by a deep understanding of the complex interdependence and mutual vulnerability between human and nonhuman nature. The call of the World Bank president Robert S. McNamara in 1975 for a global transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture for the sake of agricultural ‘modernisation’ demonstrated the stated goal of a new era of development policy  –  to eradicate the subsistence economy (along with subsistence farming) from cultural heritage. According to this view, the subsistence economy contradicts the human principles of providing oneself and fellow humans with ‘what one needs to live well’ (Bennholdt-Thomsen 2015, 163; Payer 1979). The previous ‘economy of livelihoods’ had thus become a contemptible ‘subsistence’ in the eyes of the ‘developed’ world, a synonym for ‘under-development’ (Bennholdt-Thomsen 2015). The new, publicly declared objective was to overcome ‘under-development’ and lead the whole world into an economy of real ‘development’, that is, of progress and growth. As such, the colonisation project and racism simply got a new face: to be ‘under-developed’ is to be inferior and only those who are ‘developed’ are superior. The equation of subsistence (farming) with ‘under-development’ suggests that a subsistence economy means poverty, absence of markets and division of labour, constant shortage and a ‘bad’ life. Yet, as Bennholdt-Thomsen (2015, 163) argues, this is not the case. The original meaning of the word is ‘the action of maintaining or supporting oneself’ – in contrast to, for example, accumulating resources – which makes it obvious why the proponents of economic growth and the advocates of expanding conventional agriculture neglect the idea of subsistence. Subsistence follows the maternal principle of nurturing and caring, and is embedded in the natural rhythm of life as well as in its limited resources (Bennholdt-Thomsen 2015, 163), whereas most agro-enterprises operate on the logic of proft and expansion. In a logic similar to the one that disregarded subsistence farming as ‘underdeveloped’, FSP practice in Eastern Europe has often been considered an irrational practice by economist observers. Whereas the current Western conceptualisations of FSP such as urban gardening, community gardens and other similar forms of alternative food networks are being embraced as important sites of transformative action regarding food justice, food security, environmental sustainability and community-building (McClintock 2010), post-socialist FSP in Eastern Europe has rarely been considered in comparable framings or as having such potential (De Hoop and Jehlička 2017; Smith and Jehlička 2013). Instead, FSP has been addressed dismissively as ‘an index of path dependency, an economic coping strategy or as a faintly embarrassing cultural remnant’ (Jehlička and Smith 2012, 79). Many scholars have even portrayed the practice as evidence for processes of demodernisation in the post-socialist societies and have underlined such representation of FSP as ‘backward’ and ‘anti-modern’ with their narrative about the ‘urban peasant’ (Rose and Tikhomirov 1993; Alber and Kohler 2008). These framings have a long history and, according to scholars such as Dirks (1992), Kuus (2004), Boatcă (2006) and Buchowski (2006), are a result of a century-long legacy of ‘othering’ of Eastern Europe. They contribute to postcolonial discursive

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practices through which the West constructs the East as inherently anti-modern, unable to change (Buchowski 2006), as Europe’s incomplete Self (Todorova 1997) that is neither ‘fully civilised nor fully savage’ (Owczarzak 2009, 6). This discursive maltreatment (Boatcă 2006) has thus created stereotyped visions that manifest themselves particularly visibly within the discourse about post-socialist FSP in comparison to their Western counterparts. Unfortunately, the narratives of ‘modernising the underdeveloped’ and ‘catching up with the West’ have, to a large extent, also been adopted by the Eastern European policy actors themselves. Hence, it seems that the post-socialist FSP needs a reframing for mainstream academia and policy makers alike.

Methodology Data collection was conducted through site visits, observations, ten semi-structured in-depth interviews and informal conversations with gardeners in August 2017 in urban and periurban dacha cooperatives in Estonia. The ages of respondents varied between 51 and 87 years (four were retired); interviews involved Estonians (2), Russians (7) and a Belorussian (1) and the professional and educational background of respondents varied from blue-collar workers to highly educated specialists. Unfortunately, male and female respondents were not equally represented in the interviews since only female gardeners agreed to have interviews. Out of ten gardens, four were managed alone, three with a partner and another three with parents (see Pungas 2019, 78 for a more detailed methodology). I analysed the data by creating categories, and by defning and differentiating links between them (Corbin and Strauss 2008). Interview responses were recorded, transcribed and, if necessary, translated from Russian. Since the conclusions presented in this article were drawn from ten interviews, which were conducted only with female, and mostly Russian, FSP gardeners, the full range of FSP practice and motives in Estonia might not be refected and, therefore, my conclusions can hardly be a basis for generalisations. However, I have identifed some common and telling patterns, many of which merit further investigation. I assessed the concept of care (work), with regard to both ecological processes and caring activities by exploring: 1. The methods and the extent to which the FSP farmers’ actions in their gardens (and urban homes) can potentially beneft the regenerative ecological processes, such as the nutrient cycle in the soil and the environment in general 2. How the gardeners reason their relationship with, and concern for, nature 3. Who benefts from the FSP practice on a social level, why and how 4. The aspect of self-care in the FSP practice. By exploring these aspects of FSP I also focused on different notions of ‘care’ as manifested in the responses and shared refections of interviewed gardeners.

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The ecological dimension of the FSP practice The data showed that gardeners manage their food production at very high environmental standards. When asked how they improve the soil conditions, all gardeners said that they applied manure, and almost all (9 of 10) used compost. The manure had mostly been bought or exchanged with neighbours, acquaintances or relatives and originated from local livestock. In addition, half of the respondents applied green manure (beans, peas and white mustard). All gardeners stated that they do not use any chemical pesticides (only one gardener said that she had done so in some rare cases), but some (4) applied organic methods, such as selfproduced nettle spray. When asked about the reasons why they do not use pesticides, gardeners explained that: ‘then this would not be “real” food anymore’. One respondent stated that ‘it is very important for me to know that this food is without chemistry’. Another gardener told me that there have been cases where canola pesticides have killed many bees and that this ‘behaviour is irresponsible’. In addition, when asked about more general pro-environmental behaviour, such as water and electricity saving and waste recycling, almost all (9 of 10) gardeners said that they aim to save both water and electricity. This is not done out of mere thrift, as one woman explained: ‘My son thinks I am cheap, but I tell him, no-one has to do it, since it [the water] comes from the nature, and is thus limited’. In addition to composting in their dacha gardens, most respondents (8) also recycle waste in their homes and some even voiced complaints about the lack of a recycling infrastructure in their garden collectives. As follows, in their FSP practice, the gardeners aim to improve regenerative nutrient cycles in the soil without using chemical pesticides or fertilisers, and they additionally demonstrate certain pro-environmental behaviour regarding their water and electricity consumption as well as waste recycling. When compared with the global agri-food system, I can therefore conclude that FSP practitioners’ actions aim at contributing to the ecological processes of nature, instead of using and exhausting them. Care for nature When I asked the gardeners about the levels of and the reasons for their environmental concern, every single respondent expressed a (very) high concern. The stated reason (8 of 10) was mostly a felt responsibility as humans to protect and steward the surrounding environment, since it constitutes the existential basis for humanity’s survival. One gardener emphasised humans’ dependence on nature: ‘Yes, I worry a lot about the environment – because it can disappear. It can be destroyed so quickly and then humans disappear as well, within a couple of years at the latest’. Another gardener stated that: ‘there should be more control and stricter regulations over the practices in conventional agriculture, as well as less chemistry [chemicals] and GMOs, in general’. Explicit ideas of mutual stewardship and reciprocity between humans and nature were voiced by some: ‘One has to respect nature and then nature respects one in return’ and ‘We are part of

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nature and we depend heavily on it. Humans should not interfere much with nature, but instead steward and protect it’. Interestingly, most respondents voiced their concern about nature in terms like ‘caring (more) for/about’ and/or ‘giving (more) care’. Deep environmental concern did not arise as a result of a mere acknowledgement of specifc environmental problems, perceived as ‘problems to be taken care of’. Instead, the concern voiced by the respondents was embedded in rather intimate feelings of empathy towards nature and unease with the ecological crises caused by humanity. Therefore, contrary to techno-optimistic visions of geoengineering and ‘green growth’, there seems to be a deep understanding that natural resources and ecological processes are not only the basis of human life (and thus we depend on them), but that they are also limited (in both spatial and temporal senses). Tronto’s (1993) ‘caring about’, as a perception of the need, as well as the personal and social recognition for, the need of care manifested itself in various expressions of environmental concern voiced by all respondents. Even more, the idea of ‘care-giving’ which, according to Tronto (1993) implies commitment, responsibility and concrete work for the satisfaction of needs, and normally requires a direct relationship between the care-giver and care-receiver, was inherent in most answers and, furthermore, put into practice through gardening work.

The social dimension of the FSP practice The social motives and aspects of the FSP practice are at least as important as the ecological ones. Economic restructuring (for example, declining wages and unemployment, especially in rural areas) and recession in the 1990s allowed FSP to respond as a ‘coping strategy’, thus signifcantly subsidising social reproduction costs (Polanyi 2001; McClintock 2010, 198). Almost all gardeners (9 of 10) stated that FSP had been of big importance as a ‘fall-back option, as a means to survive in times of sudden economic crisis’ (Visser et al. 2015, 9), personal misfortune or in case of supply shortages, confrming the essential aspect of the FSP as a materialised socioeconomic resilience structure (Pungas 2019; Ehlers 1994, 2010; Rose and Tikhomirov 1993). Furthermore, two retired gardeners stated that they are still partially dependent on the garden produce, mostly due to meagre pensions. FSP also plays a central role for community cohesion and social networks. Every respondent stated that they have good relations with neighbours and that they help each other if needed. In contrast to urban housing where many inhabitants do not know their neighbours, in the dacha cooperatives close ties with neighbours are essential. One gardener described her garden cooperative with the following words: ‘It feels like people here are better people’. It is common to regularly communicate, help each other, share or exchange seedlings in the spring and garden surplus in the autumn. Widows often receive help with construction works from the husbands of their neighbours, and some gardeners give their keys to neighbours for watering their plants when going back to the city.

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Furthermore, every respondent shares their garden produce at least with some family members. One retired woman explained, ‘We have three families to feed  –  ourselves, our daughter’s and our granddaughter’s family’. Another one added that her daughter gives to her children only self-grown ‘clean’ vegetables and that providing her grandchildren with healthy food is one of her main motives for working hard. According to Ries (2009), such exchange of food generates a sociality that is highly valued and has a long cultural history in postsocialist countries. At the same time, it offers a ‘purposeful parallel to market exchange in agribusiness’ (Visser et al. 2015, 14). Care for people and food Care as a general concept is not only a basis for doing garden work and growing food in an environmentally friendly way, but in the case of FSP manifests explicitly in terms of ‘caring about’ and ‘care-giving’ through the physical labour of, for example, grandmothers who want their (grand) children to have only the healthiest and tastiest ‘clean’ food. If simply providing food for (grand) children would be their only motive and they would, thus, want to ‘take care of’ the hunger, it would be more effcient for them to go to the nearest supermarket. However, it seems essential for the gardeners to offer (only) healthy food. They deeply care about the quality and taste of the food they serve to their (grand) children at table. Yet, the self-grown food is not only healthier and tastier, as emphasised by almost all gardeners (8 of 10), but also has ‘their own heart in it’. All respondents reported a very high emotional value of self-grown food: ‘self-grown is self-grown’ or ‘for me it is very important to have my own, self-grown food’. Therefore, selfgrown is also emotionally perceived as the most appreciated food category and a valuable gift to be offered to and shared with family members. The perception of self-grown food being valuable not (only) in monetary terms, but also in and of itself because of its intrinsic qualities and due to the labour invested, suggests FSP also as a process of food decommodifcation (Pungas 2019, 82). The prevalent alienation from food, manifesting itself in the perception of food as a mere ‘means to an end’ or ‘intake of calories’ in case of hunger, is countered by savouring and celebrating self-grown food. As such, food is being reembedded into a complex and meaningful net of sociocultural relations that are inherent in its production, distribution, preparation and consumption (De Hoop and Jehlička 2017, 811; McClintock 2010, 199). These aspects reveal two types of care in the practice of FSP: ‘caring about’ the good and healthy food as well as about their family members that deserve the highest quality food, and ‘giving care’, which manifests in the processes of cultivating, processing, preparing and, serving food. As DeVault (1991) describes, food work is not merely physical but involves relentless mental and caring labour – worrying about nutrition, and planning and preparing meals. Therefore, food is not only a means to ‘care about’ and ‘give care’ to family members but, within the

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FSP practice, the relationship between the gardener and the food manifests itself through the feelings and motives of ‘caring about’ and ‘care giving’.

The individual dimension of the FSP practice An important aspect in practices of FSP is the manifestation of self-care when cultivating the garden. The main motivation for FSP for almost all the respondents (9 of 10) was the aspect of ‘nature’, a strong need to ‘be’ in nature and/or in fresh air, to work with the land and soil and have a connection to it. Building on Marx’s analysis, McClintock (2010, 201) describes that alienation from nature manifests itself ‘as the perception of self as external to the environment’. FSP practice seems to revive humanity’s distinctive role as the ‘self-mediating being of nature’ (Foster 2014) by countering feelings of alienation from nature, as described by one respondent: ‘I really want to be here in nature, I want to have my fngers in the soil. My husband is the same, we have that in common, that connects us, too’. Another gardener added that, in case the garden would be taken away from her due to some new development projects, she would buy a new one, for which she is already saving up money, because she ‘does not know how to live without the land anymore’. Not only does FSP meet the need of gardeners to be connected with the nature and soil, thus de-alienating them from their natural environment, but also FSP enhances their emotional and psychological wellbeing. One respondent emphasised this to be her ‘therapy’: ‘After [an] exhausting working day at kindergarten, the garden calms me down and I forget all my concerns when working here’. Another gardener described the importance of FSP for her wellbeing as follows: Garden [work] is a big moral support and help, it helps me to ‘recharge’ and gives me satisfaction with my life. When I’m frustrated, I just come here and dig the soil for a while and everything feels better afterwards. These aspects of enhanced psychological resilience and wellbeing through ‘active leisure’ and ‘digging the soil’ have also been revealed in Zavisca’s (2003) fndings. Care for oneself Self-care in this case means ‘caring about’ one’s needs for deep(er) connection with nature by engaging in meaningful activities in the natural environment that help to reduce (or overcome) this alienation, at the same time establishing feelings of self-realisation and ‘rootedness’ in (peri) urban spaces (Schmelzkopf 1995; Battersby and Marshak 2013). Furthermore, by buying a garden plot or going there in their free time, the gardeners were also ‘giving care’ to themselves. When they felt unbalanced or anxious, gardening (work) offered them stress relief and tranquillity. Various scholars have established that gardening can enforce feelings of self-worth, a sense of accomplishment, pride and enhance general

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(psychological) wellbeing (Jamison 1985; Armstrong 2000; Zavisca 2003). The growing body of research on horticulture therapy, on the benefts of gardening for individuals in achieving different therapeutic goals, also demonstrates that it improves gardeners’ mental and physical health, decreases their stress and anxiety levels, counters feelings of dependence and uselessness, and offers spiritual benefts through a meaningful activity (Morris and Zidenberg-Cherr 2002; Twiss et al. 2011). A beautiful example of self-care was voiced by one gardener who responded to the question about economic proftability of cultivating a garden in the following words: ‘See, the rose is blossoming, and I am relaxing, why should I then calculate the costs?’ Even though FSP might be economically ‘irrational’ for some gardeners, it brings numerous advantages for individual wellbeing, which outweigh other, for example monetary, costs.

‘Loud’ and ‘quiet’ manifestations of care Contrary to the FSP practices described here, the global agri-food system follows a very different logic of care. The rather ‘masculine’, ‘public’ and ‘loud’ declarations of care in the promises of global agro-enterprises manifest themselves with the aim of ‘taking care of’ the food security crises (while also gaining the maximum proft). In contrast to this, FSP expresses its care rather ‘quietly’ in the private sphere and does so in terms of ‘caring about’ and ‘care-giving’ – see ‘quietly degrowing’ in Daněk and Jehlička, this volume, ‘quiet food sovereignty’ in Visser et al. (2015) and ‘quiet everyday resistance’ in Pungas (2019). However, as is common in reproductive care work, the multidimensional benefts and manifestations of care within FSP practice remain largely invisible to broader society or to the political elite. As Biesecker (2009) has demonstrated, there seems to be a completely ‘artifcial’ separation of productive and reproductive processes in such cases: producing valuable soil through wage labour is categorised automatically as a productive labour and valued in monetary means whereas, when the natural ecological processes (or in this case also the FSP practitioners) are doing exactly the same, it is classifed as a reproductive process and thus remains invisible and devalued in monetary means. This distinction seems to be even more discernible within Estonian society due to prevalent associations of the dachas with outdated practices, shortage economy (Kornai 1980) and cultural remnants of the socialist era. By not being ‘new’, ‘modern’ or ‘Western’ manifestations of care – such as fashionable community gardens that have appeared in the capital in the last years – the ‘care value’ of the dachas not only remains invisible for broader society, but also seems to be neglected as intrinsically valuable by many stakeholders such as state and city offcials. Contrary to prevalent perceptions of FSP in postsocialist Europe as a stigmatised ‘coping strategy’ and cultural remnant motivated solely by poverty and ‘backward traditions’, we have demonstrated that the practice of FSP stems from and expresses itself in, above all, the desire and commitment to care for and to steward – the environment, the community and oneself.

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Conclusion Care is a fundamental yet often overlooked factor in building sustainable food systems. The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (World Bank 2007, 4) concludes that ‘business as usual in the way agriculture uses natural resources is not an option’. Meanwhile ‘sustainable development’, as defned in the Brundtland Report, essentially demands care, in order to meet ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Brundtland et al. 1987). Therefore, alternative food (production) systems and practices need to be urgently (re)considered, (re)explored and encouraged. The dachas in Estonia (and elsewhere) provide an example of care that epitomises preservation and regeneration of natural environment and humans alike. Agricultural practices guided by the ideas and principles of subsistence, suffciency and care (in the sense of ‘caring about’ and ‘giving care’) not only seem to present an ecologically sane and socially just alternative to the current agri-food system, but they also hold an unexplored potential to systemically rethink and revalue care and reproductive work contributed by nature and humans alike. Therefore, if care and reproduction are to be put at the centre of a degrowth society, it is crucial to learn from already existing examples of suffciency and moral economy. FSP provides such an example – in its practice, relationships between humans and nature are no longer assessed (only) in terms of ‘productive viability’ but are, instead, guided by values of mutual aid, reciprocity and care.

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Jochimsen M A (2003) Careful Economics: Integrating Caring Activities and Economic Science. Berlin: Springer Science+Business Media. Kornai J (1980) Economics of Shortage. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Kuus M (2004) ‘Europe’s eastern expansion and the reinscription of otherness in EastCentral Europe’, Progress in Human Geography 28: 472–89. McClintock N (2010) ‘Why farm the city? Theorizing urban agriculture through a lens of metabolic rift’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3: 191–207. Mies M (2005) ‘Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale revisited’. Keynote lecture at the Green Economics Institute, Reading, 29 October 2005. International Journal of Green Economics 1: 268–75. Morris J L and Zidenberg-Cherr S (2002) ‘Garden-enhanced nutrition curriculum improves fourth-grade school children’s knowledge of nutrition and preferences for some vegetables’, Journal of the American Dietetic Association 102: 91–3. O’Hara S U (1997) ‘Toward a sustaining production theory’, Ecological Economics, 20: 141–54. Owczarzak J (2009) ‘Introduction: Postcolonial studies and postsocialism in Eastern Europe’, Focaal 53: 3–19. Patel R (2012) Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Brooklyn (NY): Melville House. Payer C (1979) ‘The World Bank and the small farmers’, Journal of Peace Research, 16: 293–312. Perkins P E (2007) ‘Feminist ecological economics and sustainability’, Journal of Bioeconomics 9: 227–44. Polanyi K [1944] (2001) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon. Pungas L (2019) ‘Food self-provisioning as an answer to the metabolic rift: The case of “Dacha Resilience” in Estonia’, Journal of Rural Studies 68: 75–86. Ramankutty N, Evan A T, Monfreda C and Foley J A (2008) ‘Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000’, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 22(1): GB 1003, doi:10.1029/2007GB002952. Ries N (2009) ‘Potato ontology: Surviving postsocialism in Russia’, Cultural Anthropololgy 24: 181–212. Rose R and Tikhomirov Y (1993) ‘Who grows food in Russia and Eastern Europe?’, PostSoviet Geography 34: 111–26. Schmelzkopf K (1995) ‘Urban community gardens as contested space’, Geographical Review 85: 364–81. Smith J and Jehlička P (2013) ‘Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners’, Journal of Rural Studies 32: 148–57. Todorova M (1997) ‘Identity (trans)formation among Pomaks in Bulgaria’, in Kürti L and Langman J (eds) Beyond Borders: Remaking Cultural Identities in the New East and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press: 63–82. Tronto J (1993) Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge. Tronto J C (2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York: NYU Press. Twiss J, Dickinson J, Duma S, Kleinman T, Paulsen H and Rilveria L (2011) ‘Community gardens: Lessons learned from California healthy cities and communities’, American Journal of Public Health 93: 1435–38.

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Visser O, Mamonova N, Spoor M and Nikulin A (2015) ‘“Quiet food sovereignty” as food sovereignty without a movement? Insights from post-socialist Russia’, Globalizations 12: 513–28. Waerness K (1984) ‘The rationality of caring’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 5: 185–211. World Bank (2007) World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. Accessed 30 May 2020 – https://openknowledge.wor ldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/5990/WDR%202008%20-%20English.pdf. Zavisca J (2003) ‘Contesting capitalism at the Post-Soviet Dacha: The meaning of food cultivation for urban Russians’, Slavic Review 62: 786–810.

Part 2

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Germinating degrowth? On-farm adaptation and survival in Hungarian alternative food networks Logan Strenchock

This chapter presents experiential knowledge ‘behind the vegetable box or market stand’ collected while working as a gardener on a small-scale organic farm and as a local food advocate in Budapest (2014–2019). In digging, hoeing, weeding and sowing to support local food experiments, I accumulated insights often overlooked in academic texts that chronicle rural livelihoods. Here, I provide an overview of the challenges and survival techniques of organic market gardens in Hungary. Sustainable agriculture and related movements have been widely examined in technical and socioanthropological literature but knowledge gaps that exist in the research include real-life perspectives of on-farm decision-making practices – addressing how farmers balance production methods in relation to environmental and social commitments, why human-scale farming provides both unique opportunities and specifc challenges, and the challenges associated in maintaining small but dynamic ‘gardening families’. While degrowth research has identifed the necessity to transform agricultural systems, most publications present a primitive understanding of ground-level farming realities and economic pressures on producers (Gomiero 2018). I advocate the benefts of pushing boundaries between research and practice within academic work that focuses on gaining a richer understanding of the fragile but inspirational quest of self-organised alternative farming initiatives. This chapter defnes the role that market gardens play in helping to build and rebuild ecologically sustainable, diverse and socially meaningful food networks, while clarifying ‘human-scale’ gardening activities. Although market gardens represent a singular framework for agricultural production, in practice they take different forms, and use varying exchange networks with consumers, food communities and retail markets. The challenges and benefts of various marketing opportunities are analysed through the lens of practical experiences within Central Europe, specifcally direct marketing of local organic vegetables and fruits in Hungary. The spread of the market gardening model has particular relevance in this region given the crisis of the agricultural sector, favourable climatic and geographical conditions for all-season production, agricultural heritage and knowledge, and the growing divide in rural-urban population and social demographics. I conclude by describing the ideal supports

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that researchers, activists and advocates can offer to help stabilise and spread ‘degrowth’ compatible food networks.

Changing the system: agriculture and organic production in Hungary  The agricultural sector in Hungary is in a state of crisis and contradiction due to the gradual reduction in total agricultural output in the last three decades, an unfavourable trading position within the European Union (EU) and international food market, bureaucracy and limitations in domestic processing and distribution capacity for in-country producers, and changes in demographics of farms and farm managers. Production yields in Hungary peaked in 1990, before the regime change, largely bolstered by artifcial targets implemented within the state-planned economy. Before EU accession (mid-2004), much hope was placed in gaining entry to the liberalised food market which, it seemed, would guarantee higher prices for food commodities. After accession, producers were largely left on the losing end of export-oriented sales strategies. Costs of production were undercut by cheaper labour prices in countries further east and access to fnancial support for increased mechanisation was never competitive with conditions for producers in Western Europe, resulting in products sold at a loss. Moreover, EU accession encouraged a rapid change in the food retail sector as large international food corporations entered and infuenced consumption habits from urban centres to rural villages. Within a decade, international retailers and hypermarkets came to dominate food retailing, reducing possibilities for domestic sales and eroding local direct markets. Vegetable and fruit producers deal with the highest value added tax at 27 percent for fresh products in any EU country, while recent selective value added tax reductions for meat, poultry and eggs (5 percent) and for bread and dairy products (18 percent) have not bolstered domestic production and distribution, especially in meat and dairy industries (Balázs 2019). Since 2000, there have been 400,000 fewer people employed in agriculture, the sector is in the midst of a consolidation crisis, concentrating control of land resources. Holdings under 2 ha make up 80 percent of all landholdings but occupy only 3 percent of the utilised agricultural area. Meanwhile, just 2 percent of all holders control 75 percent of the utilised agricultural area – largely mechanised farms above 50 ha (EC 2019). Such consolidation has been encouraged through the favourable reprivatisation and sale of state agricultural lands to select oligarchs, a form of institutional land grabbing implemented by the governing Fidesz party since its rise to majority power in 2010 (Gonda 2019). In addition, the average age of farm holders has increased, with nearly 60 percent 55+ years of age (more than 27 percent 55–64 years old and more than 30 percent 64+ years) (EC 2019). Support programmes for young farmers have not been successful as young people largely consider that working the land belongs to their grandparents’ era of struggle and sacrifce. Agroecology and certifed organic agriculture has a nearly three-decade tradition in Hungary but remains a relatively small percentage of overall agricultural

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activity – while two-thirds of Hungarian land is agricultural, only 3–4 percent is certifed organic (Meredith and Willer 2016). The agroecology movement started in the 1980s with informal groups of growers sharing interests in chemical-free agriculture, low input production and family health. The frst offcial associations and certifcation organisations began in the 1990s. Currently, ‘institutionalised’ organic producers are distinct from ‘informal’ ecologically conscious gardeners through certifcation, but both play an integral role in developing local food networks (Strenchock 2012). The optimistic outlook for organic production in the early 2000s waned with stagnating adoption of such practices post-EU accession. Organic agriculture has grown slower in Hungary than in neighbouring countries. During the 2010s, incentives for larger landholders to convert have reduced due to reliance on exporting  –  around 85 percent of Hungary’s organic produce is exported, mostly feed crops for animal husbandry – and overall low prices for raw goods (Dezsény and Drexler 2012). The informal and formal ecological agriculture movements face many of the same challenges as the conventional sector. The most pressing issues include marginalisation of Hungarian organics within the EU and international markets; a raw-commodity export-oriented tendency; market saturation with imports; low recognition of Hungarian products within the domestic market; diffculty in acquiring retail space in conventional shopping outlets; weak representation within the political sphere; insuffcient communication between growers, organic advocates, support organisations and research institutes; weak policy initiatives and structural support systems, and a disproportionate reliance on demand in urban locations to drive direct sales (Strenchock 2012). In spite of these challenges, a small but committed movement of mostly younger, college educated, formerly urban professionals work together with other citizens to establish new  –  or reestablish former  –  direct marketing chains in rural and periurban locations. The market gardening model adopted by many new growers presents an opportunity for small farmers to experiment with establishing novel, functioning models of food provisioning, prioritising direct contact with local customer groups.

Making the case for the market garden Most easily accessed foods in the Western world, whether organic or conventional, are products of industrial agriculture systems making use of economies of scale, standardised and mechanised production, and artifcial nutrient and plant protection applications. A quest to imagine a degrowth compatible food system transition must start with acknowledging the inherent risk in attempting to secure a livelihood following practices which counter industrial agriculture. The market garden movement sets an example for experienced and novice growers to establish niches in existing and new spaces outside of dominant food chains. Market gardens provide a framework for creating dynamic and fnancially viable micro-scale growing systems that personify degrowth compatible principles of

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material and nutrient fow balance, equality and social cohesion, waste reduction both on farm and in distribution, and ecosystem enhancement. Market gardens are oriented to produce a diversity of fruits, vegetables and animal food products on relatively small parcels of outdoor land in combination with polytunnels (usually up to 5 ha in total). They sell fresh and minimally processed products directly to food communities, typically employing a higher number of workers per hectare than conventional farms. Producing food for local markets is not novel, but contemporary gardeners face obstacles where local channels of distribution have disappeared, cooking habits have changed and supermarket culture dominates. Market gardeners attempt to fnd the right recipe for creating economically stable, intensive and diverse crop production plans while farming with less mechanisation and fewer chemical inputs. I focus on market gardens because of the numerous resiliency principles embedded within the market garden model and their potential for empowering proximate food networks taking into account conditions in Central and Eastern Europe. Market gardens vary in typology, scale and orientation based on available personnel, land and fnancial resources, geographic location, and philosophical and business goals. However, three general typologies appear in recent research (Morel et al. 2017): manual microagriculture, biointensive market gardening and classic diversifed market gardening. This classifcation refers to characteristics such as relative reliance on machines (versus human labour), soil cultivation practices (no or minimal tilling, horse-powered cultivation or light mechanisation, mixed tilling and mechanical cultivation with tractors) and diversity of crops produced (such as in the number of seasonal varieties, cropping density, on-site nutrient management through composting or green manures, usage of standard or heirloom varieties and mixed-modal). In addition, farms are differentiated by preferred marketing and social outreach philosophies, which can contribute to or impede fnancial viability and interaction with food communities. Helpful roadmaps published for aspiring market gardeners have gained popularity in gardener communities, including numerous publications on all-season biointensive gardening by Eliot Coleman (2018), Jean-Martin Fortier (2014) The Market Gardener and Josh Volk’s 2017 summary collection of functioning Compact Gardens. Whether experienced agriculturalists downscaling to market gardens or novice gardeners escaping from city life, all micro-farming attempts to capitalise on advantageous principles embedded in less capital-intensive ‘human-scale’ models. Some core benefts of market gardening include: • • • •

Lower upfront costs in establishing farms that intensively cultivate small areas with reduced reliance on machines Maintaining models independent of size- or yield-based subsidies Avoiding common pitfalls of attempting to recoup fnancial losses by gradually increasing cultivated areas and yields Opportunities for higher prices per unit for premium products and greater control over price-setting

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Increased resilience against impacts of crop losses caused by unfavourable seasonal conditions, pests or blight through crop diversifcation Diversifed income from on farm events, training and community days Greater ability to develop loyalty through direct connections with customers.

However, a precise recipe for succeeding in this style of farming does not exist and limited information is available on the overall fnancial viability for this farming model within market conditions across geographic locations. The potential success of projects relies on business savviness; developing time- and cost-effcient production models; willingness to invest long, physical work hours for comparably limited income; and fnding the right marketing strategy in a competitive, evolving, and unstable market. Nevertheless, a high number of small holders are pursuing market gardening with the aim of constructing more socially and environmentally equitable food networks. Envisioning food systems for degrowth requires a greater understanding of decision-making processes of farmers and the intricacies of supplying products to consumer bases in short food supply chains. Thus, the next section focuses on farm design and management in specifc conditions, contexts and settings.

Establishing a market garden: essential considerations  The decision to establish a market garden is complex and involves a number of key factors based on the mission, interests, technical knowledge base and resources of founders. The process includes answering basic ‘what, where, who and how’ questions regarding a farm’s orientation and operation (Table 6.1). A farm’s location is of paramount importance as it serves as the source of almost all the raw materials and inputs required to produce an eventual product, with physical properties having a major impact on the eventual success of a garden. A garden organiser must decide whether to manage the operation individually, as a small team or through group participation in production and distribution activities. Managing human resources and maintaining high staff morale while engaging in work which is physically demanding and vulnerable to seasonal weather conditions is a challenge. It becomes essential to refect throughout the growing season on the stability of the farm fnancially, the success and effciency of production, and if prioritised, social and communal outreach impacts, along with the satisfaction and wellbeing of the farm team. A vision for a farm is not complete until a precise set of goals for the production style in combination with a compatible marketing strategy are developed, essentially answering the question of ‘how’ the farm will support itself. The diffculties in developing a production strategy concurrently with farm infrastructure conducive to time-effcient work are exacerbated by the fact that farms develop over time. Farmers are pressured to engage in projects with production goals that are not supported by minimal farm infrastructure at the onset of a project. An individual or team might not have the capability to answer all of the questions summarised in Table 6.1 at the outset. However, the difference between

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Table 6.1 Essential considerations for establishing a market garden Strategic focus areas Where

What

Who

How

Key factors

Location of farm Proximity to market outlets

Soil quality, existing infrastructure, land properties and topography (slope, pitch, drainage), climatic conditions, previous land usage, location of consumer base, land and real estate prices Organisational structure Management and ownership model, production model, quantity of land utilised, crops cultivated, fnancial goals and income requirements Core social, economic and Business versus social vs. communal farming environmental goals orientation, quality certifcation methods, community building On-farm team On-farm skills: production, business management, Ancillary collaborators communication, marketing, social outreach, Customer-patrons technical and infrastructure repair Partnerships: activists, food communities, advocates Customers: local and extended consumer base Outreach: students, trainees and apprentice gardeners Launch and development Initiating the project: launch and strategic development Production philosophy Farm layout, scale, mechanical vs. physical labor Soil nutrient and biodiversity management Environmental commitments Marketing strategy Marketing products effciently and transparently All-year or seasonal production Social outreach Social outreach, education and stakeholder communication

an enduring market garden and one that does not survive its frst years relies on the ability to react quickly to new challenges, adapt production and marketing strategies on the fy, while keeping an eye on long-term developments in land, infrastructure and human capacity. Next, we briefy sketch the case of Zsámboki Biokert, a market garden which has embedded this quest since its establishment in 2010.

Zsámboki Biokert Zsámboki Biokert is a 3.5 ha organically certifed and practising biodynamic farm that has operated since 2010 in the village Zsámbok, Hungary. One hectare is an outdoor vegetable production area. The 3000 m2 orchard of around 100 heirloom fruit trees was planted in the farm’s frst year. It has 2000 m2 of unheated polytunnels and 3 ha of pastureland. The garden was founded by Matthew Hayes, a practitioner and teacher of organic gardening in Hungary for over 25 years.

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The garden’s size is ‘human-scale’: all on-farm activities are by human and horse power, the farm team of eight to ten workers completes tasks in close contact with each other and the producing environment. The garden is oriented to produce vegetables all year round and has no heat supplementary to the sun for its polytunnels while growing hearty winter greens following cold weather production models. The model is labour intensive, with most sowing, harvesting, weeding and feld preparation done by hand, assisted with a draught horse, with a walking rototiller when time or space restrictions encourage it. The farm’s mission statement which guides season to season planning and refection follows. We want to grow food as a group of people who love the land and love working together, and look forward to seeing how we can involve others who can also beneft from growing food close to nature. We are committed to growing quality food which meets people’s real needs in a way which benefts the earth, its biodiversity, and our community. The farm plot was originally assembled by three partners who purchased parcels next to each other with the intention to develop a farming community. The location was decided on soil quality, proximity to the Budapest market and the relatively affordable price of land in this village. At the time of its establishment, the farm plot contained a number of dwellings and basic infrastructure (electricity, water and numerous small storage structures). On-farm infrastructure was developed in stages as resources allowed and now includes a washing area, chicken house, irrigation infrastructure, a composting area, a plant nursery, a horse barn, polytunnels and numerous vegetable preparation and storage spaces. Guided by its mission statement, the farm has evolved from the available physical and fnancial capacities, and production and marketing strategies were adjusted to local market realities, refecting opportunities and limitations in Hungary. The production model was originally oriented to focus mainly on producing fresh seasonable vegetables, specialising in common and unique leafy greens, for direct sales to consumers in the nearest city, Gödöllö, and closest large market in Budapest. The farm has relied on a stable income from Budapest’s weekly organic producer’s market, one of the largest certifed organic markets in Europe. A few years after its establishment, the farm developed a fxed weekly box system – delivering prepared boxes of farm-selected food to self-managed distribution points within the region. The system was inspired by community supported agriculture (CSA) models, but did not require annual or seasonal subscriptions, rather the option to purchase boxes when inclined. The farm eventually evolved a hybrid model, which allows customers to choose from a fxed large or small box, along with the option to create an ‘à la carte’ box from a weekly vegetable list. For the last fve years, Zsámboki Biokert has sold vegetables to Szatyor Bolt, a food cooperative in Budapest that sources produce directly from organically certifed and noncertifed small-scale producers within the region. This three-fold

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marketing scheme and corresponding production model is responsive to changing consumer trends and the quest to develop a cost and time effcient cultivation strategy. Throughout its existence the farm has served as a pioneer of social outreach through on-farm learning opportunities and sustainable agriculture advocacy. On-farm activities and outreach, necessary due to the lack of institutional support for small scale organic growers, are time and cost intensive and must be balanced carefully within the organisation’s capacity. It is still rare to directly market organic goods in Hungary, even with interest in chemical free and healthier foods rising. In the farm’s frst nine years of operation, it has sustained itself but has not been fnancially stable enough to either secure its future or allow the highly valued goal of further development of a more comprehensive social-care farming project on site. Deciding the right combination of marketing opportunities and building a production system which supports, but does not supersede, market demand is a delicate challenge that all market gardeners must solve to sustain themselves fnancially. Cultivating too large an area, and producing surpluses increases labour costs not recoverable through sales. All marketing mechanisms involve considerations of costs in time, money and resource investments. Staying small, effcient and cost sensitive may mean that a farm does not have suffcient surplus resources for social outreach, especially if an employer seeks to offer permanent, all-season rural employment. The following section analyses the pros and cons of different marketing options based on Zsámboki Biokert’s experiences during the 2010s. There are vast differences between the planning, time investment and practical considerations required for commercial gardens and hobby, part-time or project-based gardens. For a family or group to earn a livelihood from farming, they need to develop a self-sustaining garden within the time their initial investment allows. A garden that is not fnancially viable within its frst few years is unlikely to survive in the long run without updating its approach.

Focus on experiences: different marketing strategies In alternative agriculture and degrowth academic literature, more credence is often given to types of farm marketing and exchange activities that overturn traditional market-based relationships between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’. The real challenge, however, is to explain why many market gardeners start with a vested interest in developing food provisioning models embedded in the principles of solidarity, transparency and exchange but are forced to make compromises based on fnancial realities of earning a living from the unpredictable, physically and mentally demanding occupation of growing and selling food. As advocates and researchers, we have the capacity to make more realistic and accurate commentary on spreading equitable and sustainable food models if we have a clearer understanding of different marketing options, and their

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implications. A summary of benefts, challenges and key outcomes for various types of marketing strategies appears in Table 6.2.

Degrowth lessons from existing organic market gardens and micro-farms I have analysed key factors to consider in the viability of organic market gardens and the impacts that micro-farms can have on creating food systems with positive social and environmental impacts synergistic with degrowth. I aimed to provide a better understanding of the benefts, challenges and mind sets of growers and food entrepreneurs who attempt to bring their own operations to life. Although I have highlighted numerous challenges for gardening teams, as interest in conscious food consumption increases, a new, more knowledgeable, experienced and skilled wave of growers can bring energy, innovation and traditional approaches to farming to signifcantly impact rural livelihoods. Thus, we need to continue to promote new supports for practitioners striving to fnd a working model in a transitional food sector still dominated by industrial agriculture and long-distance food chains. By way of a conclusion, I identify four encouraging strategies for local food and degrowth advocates, researchers and active citizens who aim to play a role in supporting conscious food producers and the further development of short food supply chains. These suggestions are specifcally relevant in Central Europe where fair access to retail and exchange space is limited, and the marginalisation of small-scale food producers within agricultural structural support policy continues to impede progress. However, in numbers of other places such factors also impact attempts to establish food for degrowth systems. Experimenting with collaborations between unique partners Access to fair exchange and retail spaces and smart logistical solutions are key challenges for market gardeners. Researchers and food advocates with knowledge of social and communal spaces in cities can assist producers in establishing new food distribution points. Unique collaborations help improve communication and network building between food consumers, advocates and producers. New partnerships, such as food producers collaborating with neighbourhood groups, artisan craftspeople, bike messengers, DIY enthusiasts or other civic organisations can identify mutually benefcial collaboration mechanisms and represent solidarity-based community building while helping introduce local food to new and underserved audiences. Participation: equality- and practice-oriented research Researchers must integrate research with practice and develop inclusive projects that prioritise the direct involvement of practitioners to create more collaborative relationships. Project foci and target goals can be developed mutually, resources

Ability to standardise production Price received for goods based on based on expected demand, international market prices; low simplifed production, optimising prices for raw/fresh products; seasonal what can be grown effciently conditions infuence yield and quality; need to produce high amounts to be competitive; reliance on mechanisation Exporting processed Ability to earn higher prices for Must establish processing infrastructure in products preprocessed and processed compliance with local and international products for which storage and health and safety requirements transport may be simplifed Domestic wholesale Tighter/proximate supply chains Low prices for products; diffculties supermarkets and complying with aesthetic and uniformity and ability to sell higher traders standards of wholesalers; larger sellers quantities of fresh products in fewer locations often not interested in lesser known and seasonal vegetables Domestic retail: Smaller operations may not possess Tighter/proximate supply chains; restaurants, organic the logistical capacity to regularly ability to receive a better price shops and web for goods; greater willingness supply products and/or fulfl retailers’ retailers expectations re. quantity and uniformity to accept diverse and seasonal produce On-farm sales: stands, Low marketing costs because Logistically problematic if consumers box pick up and consumers come to the arrive at irregular times and disrupt harvest your own other work; only feasible in ideal production site; can earn more while selling at lower prices locations near consumer bases or touristic areas Direct sales: farm shop An ideal location can serve as a Farmer must incur cost of maintaining/ or road stand fairer retail space which can renting shop or stand and attract a result in premium prices for sales signifcant amount of traffc in a select of products time frame to be worthwhile

Exporting fresh/raw products

Likely only successful in proximity to large customer bases or higher income neighbourhoods.

The market for sales of locally produced seasonal products in restaurants, bio-shops and online portals is still emerging in Central and Eastern Europe Often only feasible for supplementary income or for farms in periurban locations near wealthy customer bases

Establishing lasting relationships with wholesalers is time-consuming, prices are dictated by regional and international markets

Higher upfront investments to establish processing infrastructure

Export-oriented farms often support themselves by cultivating large areas and producing fewer varieties, less impact on relocalisation

Marketing option

Key outcomes

Table 6.2 Benefits and challenges associated with different marketing strategies for farmers Challenges

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High time investment required to create Production oriented to produce a relationship with community bases, ensure quantity of products to satisfy the minimum number of subscriptions, known demand, subscriptions farms often only employ through and prepayments can offer the growing season leaving seasonal reliable regular fnance for farm employees wanting in off-seasons; High activities throughout the seasons, customer turnover season to season high transparency Direct sales: producers’ Grower can orient production with High competition at popular markets; market a vision of expected sales base, diffcult to establish visibility as a premium price received for sales new grower; high time investment to and potentially lower marketing harvest and sell goods; often cater to costs higher income neighbourhoods, a mix of conventional and organic producers can confuse customers’ expectations re. price and aesthetics Food cooperatives Food communities can offer a fairer Requires time investment and creativity and local food exchange relationship, ability to from active citizens, cooperatives communities include advocacy and education face challenges in generating enough while helping sell products income to secure operating space, must be compliant with health and safety standards and retail legislation High time investment is required to Hybrid box system Provide more fexibility than develop weekly box offerings which are Models traditional CSA models, which attractive, individual, unique box orders attract a higher number of requiring more preparation than fxed customers; can be adapted to predetermined boxes provide a box offering throughout all seasons Production plan can satisfy the Require a high amount of trust and a close Self-0rganised or needs of a group living in close relationship between families living, communal food proximity, simplifying production and cooperating, close to the site of provisioning, and securing income with no or production; maintaining relationships is land-sharing and low marketing costs challenging. planned agricultural communities

Traditional CSA and weekly box system

Communal farming is predicated on close relationships and long-term commitments that tend, therefore, to be either very successful or very unsuccessful

Hybrid weekly box system models can cater to a larger customer base than fxed box systems but require more administrative and direct labour

CSA systems help share the risks associated with production and can provide income stability to producers, but still require a signifcant amount of time investment in communication and outreach Established direct markets can provide stability but require time and effort to develop, markets must differentiate organic/ecological producers from conventional ones, and communicate clearly differentiated locality, seasonality and production practices. Food communities play a key role in educating consumer bases and advocating for differentiated food provisioning choices

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shared between researchers and those being researched, and research outputs must reach stakeholders directly. Participatory action research and ethnographic methods – such as the autoethnography illustrated here – are most relevant. Advocates, activists and researchers can physically participate in different stages of local food networks to gain a better understanding of day-to-day challenges of producers, or to play a role in increasing access to locally produced food in a region. As with action research, stakeholders can decide on the best use of researchers’ skills, networking and individual capacities to decide on what section of local food chains might have greatest impact. Those with an interest in becoming producers can develop skills while learning and providing support to local practitioners in their vicinity. Such research can enhance degrowth both in theory and practice. Degrowth-inspired food and agricultural policy reform advocacy Researchers can play key roles in disseminating best practices on and off the farm, advocating for human-scale producers and acknowledging them within local food policy development, agricultural policy reform, and the continuing education of food consumers and families whose choices affect local producers. Advocates must campaign for aggressive urban and rural food policy reform to increase access to sustainably produced local foods; for agricultural policies that shift away from land- and production-based payments and, instead, incentivise agroecology, soil conservation, biodiverse production and regenerative practices that acknowledge planetary biophysical limits on which degrowth literature focuses. Conscious local food entrepreneurship There remains space for developing new ways to increase access to local food products in urban locations. Practitioners have been very creative in establishing functioning marketing chains in the form of markets, box systems, CSA programmes and traditional retail sales, but supporters can continue to help experimentation with new degrowth-inspired marketing mechanisms to impact food producers. Much potential remains for linking the entrepreneurial spirit which empowers diverse gastro-food culture in cities, and locally produced, seasonal products. Examples include burgeoning fermentation and other value-adding processes of niche retail stores and specifc caterers. Integrating conscious food consumption principles into catering and restaurants, food processing, public canteens and street food movements evolving in cities can be led by people from diverse professional and research backgrounds. New food entrepreneurship supports producers on the ground while providing employment in a system based on fair exchange and equality throughout the different phases of production and consumption of food products.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the practicalities of self-organised alternative farming initiatives, specifcally market gardens, to show economic and organisational

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challenges at play in real-world projects that are furthering ecologically sustainable, diverse and socially meaningful food production and distribution networks. Ways forward include forming tighter and richer partnerships between novel groups, new forms of entrepreneurship and participation in food self-provisioning and distribution, research collaborations and policy reforms. Without refective analyses of such real-world practices, seeds of degrowth theory have no soil in which to grow.

References Balázs B (2019) Socioeconomic analysis of alternative agri-food networks in Hungary. Summary in unpublished PhD dissertation: Environmental Sciences Doctoral School, Szent Istvan University, Gödöllő, Hungary. Coleman E (2018) The New Organic Grower: 30th Anniversary Edition. White River Junction (Vermont, US): Chelsea Green Publishing. Dezsény Z and Drexler D (2012) ‘Past, present and future: Organic agriculture in Hungary’, Country Report, Ecology and Farming, 3–2012. Accessed 4 February 2020 – http://org prints.org/26264/1/Organic%20Agriculture%20in%20Hungary%20-%20Ecology% 20%26%20Farming.pdf. EC (2019) Agriculture in the European Union and the Member States  –  Statistical factsheets: Hungary. European Commission site. Accessed 4 February 2020 – https://ht tp://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/statistics/factsheets_en. Fortier J M (2014) The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers. Gomiero T (2018) ‘Agriculture and degrowth: State of the art and assessment of organic and biotech-based agriculture from a degrowth perspective’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1823–39. Gonda N (2019) ‘Land grabbing and the making of an authoritarian populist regime in Hungary’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 46(3): 606–25. Meredith S and Willer H (2016) Organic in Europe: Prospects and Developments 2016. Belgium: IFOAM EU and FIBL Group. Accessed 4 February – https://www.ifoam-eu .org/sites/default/fles/ifoameu_organic_in_europe_2016.pdf. Morel K, San Cristobal M and Léger F G (2017) ‘Small can be beautiful for organic market gardens: An exploration of the economic viability of French microfarms using MERLIN’, Agricultural Studies 158: 39–49. Strenchock L (2012) Local food systems in Budapest: Citizen driven conscious food consumption initiatives and their ability to shape new food paradigms in Hungary. Unpublished Master of Science thesis: Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Volk J (2017) Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less. North Adams (MA): Storey Publishing, LLC.

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Nourishing self-planned socioecological transformations Glocal community supported agriculture in Veneto, Italy Silvio Cristiano, Marco Auriemma, Paolo Cacciari, Manola Cervesato, Domenico Maffeo, Paola Malgaretto and Francesco Nordio

Degrowth shares a signifcant prefx with those powerful words deconstruction and decolonisation, and all point to a transformation from an unjust and unsustainable economistic growth imaginary (Castoriadis 2016; Latouche 2015). Degrowth offers a guiding transformative narrative supported by distinct material and social values, institutions, practices and societal organisation. The focus here on degrowth-related changes in provisioning the basic need of food shows the potential to initiate a more holistic transformation from the current ecologically unsustainable and socially unjust system. ‘Food autonomy’ is sometimes referred to as ‘food sovereignty’ (soberanía alimentaria in Latin America), as demanded by the international peasant movement Via Campesina (Rosset 2003; La Via Campesina 2019). Both claim control over access to suffcient, nutritious and healthy food as a basic need. Achieving food autonomy depends on certain socioeconomic preconditions and, hence, raises questions of power dynamics in our current system, such as monopolies over land and centralised control over major decision-making and other processes. The path to food suffciency, sustainability and health demands liberation from persistent and current inequalities in contemporary socioeconomic relations (Cristiano 2018). Contemporary land and agricultural systems result in inequitable access to decent quality food while relying upon harmful synthetic agrochemicals, genetically modifed organisms and exploitative working conditions. The dictates of proft and the industrial approach of the agrifood sector tends to favour oligopolies from seed collection through to retailing. Framed in an oil-fuelled, proft-making market economy, our productive system is unable to offer access to enough food for everyone and contributes to ongoing ecological crises, as shown by authors such as Magdoff et al. (2000). Going beyond this agrosystem implicitly involves all the dimensions of human action – individual and collective, public and private – and is a multiscalar process.

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The frst step usually requires raising the consciousness of individuals and households around the impacts of their own and broader cultural food habits, processes and practices. Such a critique is essential for creating and maintaining responsible attitudes in practice. The search for food autonomy often starts with self-provisioning, such as creating private vegetable gardens, shared gardens and community gardens, including school gardens. The second step is based on the birth of self-managed groups that make agreements and set up organisations between producers and consumers, thus becoming ‘prosumers’. Such compacts and organisations display many variants and organisational possibilities. In this chapter, we present an Italian example of communal self-management of agricultural production and food acquisition, drawing inspiration from the ‘community supported agriculture’ (CSA) model – the most familiar and, arguably, most advanced of existing food provisioning systems. CSAs are potentially major bearers of signifcant social innovation (Lamb 1994; Volz et al. 2016). Nevertheless, we maintain that CSAs can only be socially transformative if strong prosumer relations, as described in this chapter, are present. In fact, there are many market-based CSA projects with marked distinctions between producers and consumers and weak or nonexistent political consciousness of social transformation. In addition to the relocalisation of food production, prosumer-based collective CSAs offer new material and social mechanisms for a community-led social transformation, which can envision and practice socially open alternatives to unjust and unsustainable mainstream food production and consumption. Some such mechanisms have evolved with ideas and actions of movements known as the ‘social and solidarity economy’ (Mance 2007; Fonteneau et al. 2010, 2011; UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy 2018). The discursive and analytical approach here draws on the perspective of integrated sustainability, implicating discourses on the resilience of entire communities to ever-changing glocal (local and global) conditions, starting from our primary biological need for nutritious food. This chapter is based on a form of participatory action research that started two years before reporting on it here in 2019. This research was mostly conducted throughout regular management processes and convivial occasions intrinsically offered by the project (as detailed in the text). All co-authors were actively involved in such processes. As such it is collective, refective autoethnography akin to participatory action research.

CSAs as the decommodifcation of food An embryonic form of CSA developed in Japan by the early 1970s, the teikei system creating alternative direct distribution systems removed from the conventional retail market (Kondoh 2015). Consumers grouped together and actively contributed to food distribution. Apparently, this model was transferred from Japan to Northern Europe and gradually to the rest of the world, developing

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in distinct ways to become known as CSA (Biolghini forthcoming; Brown and Miller 2008). Nevertheless, the model refers to several different forms of collaboration between producers and consumers, the main distinctions being within producers’ and consumers’ interactions and roles. Many projects are limited to teikei-like systems such as the Italian-based ethical-purchasing groups (‘gruppi di acquisto solidale’) (Brunori et al. 2012; Graziano and Forno 2012). However, other models have evolved signifcant participatory forms of self-managing democracy, such as assemblies, working groups and agro-technical committees. This chapter focuses on the case of a participatory CSA model. In such a community, local demand is translated into crop planning and, as a consequence, production meets a specifc and precise demand. Advantages of such a production-on-demand model are clear, such as: no food waste, no packaging, total transparency of expenses, food quality, seasonality, no labour exploitation, and no need for third party certifcation as with organic farming. This is decommodifed food, ‘degrowth food’, released from the mainstream competitive and proft-driven market circuit. Production costs, including salaries and funds for contingencies and solidarity, are contributed by CSA members based on quotas. A secret offer-and-check mechanism compensates for differences in individual members’ fnancial conditions. An agriculture-supporting community is, therefore, a mutualist system. As long as it is functional and replicable, such a CSA system offers an alternative to the conventional and dominant agrifood model. In a transition to a growth-free economy, a CSA can represent a catalyst for change in its ability to affect the economic, environmental and social spheres altogether. The CSA model shows ways to gradually build community-based networks that potentially satisfy the food requirements of neighbourhoods and precincts, entire villages, regions and even cities. CSA networks also engender dialogue and non-material exchanges for supra-regional and supranational engagement.

The CSA Veneto project Our case study is located in the urban sprawl between Treviso and Venice-Mestre, in the Italian north-eastern region Veneto, which is renowned for its blooming industrial era in the second half of the twentieth century, although it has an older farming tradition. The CSA Veneto (2019) project started in early 2018, after a six-month trial period with a preexisting local ethical-purchasing group. The founding members beneft from valuable tutoring from another Italian CSA in Arvaia, Bologna (CSA Arvaia 2019). CSA Veneto makes use of the historic organic farm Biofattoria Didattica Rio Selva in Preganziol, near Treviso, which was dedicating most of its felds to the CSA project by late 2019. Since its foundation, the average number of shares has ranged been between 40 and 50, with many co-owned shares, making a membership of at least 100. Also, the farmers involved hold some shares. CSA Veneto is framed by, and contained within, the social and solidarity economy district OltreConfn (literally translated as ‘beyond borders’). This

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district embraces several organic farms in the vast urban sprawl of the Veneto region, but also involves local networks and associations, including the Italian association for degrowth, Associazione per la Decrescita (2019). This CSA is a conscious act, one of a set of experiments directed towards socioeconomic transformation associated with agro-ecological regeneration and urban food ecology with tools and policies adapted and tailored for this specifc context. This orientation can neither be described as a market strategy nor does it represent a niche marketing operation but rather the genuine outcome of real everyday processes of aware and self-organised inhabitant-producers pursuing self-determination. In this community, the farmer and consumer merge thanks to food provision planning that overlaps with planning the crop calendar and involves sharing production costs and decisions, risks and vegetal yield. It operates on land borrowed from a third party. At the beginning of each agricultural year, a crop calendar is formulated by an agrotechnical working group and approved by a plenary assembly. The variety and quantity of the vegetables that the community actually needs are discussed and defned to plan for producing crops according to the real and actual requirements of the fnal consumers. Based on the type of local soil to be used during the year, an evaluation is made of the most suitable seeds to plant. In parallel, a production and organisational plan is drafted in order to estimate, then discuss and decide on production costs, available materials, the farmers’ salaries, the operating costs of distribution (such as the cost of fuel when no alternative is present) and, fnally, the total budget is completed. The total of funds required is divided by the number of participants or households in the assembly in order to calculate an average share cost to support the project for the following semester. Starting from this reference point, a secret ‘auction’ begins during which anyone can offer, anonymously, whatever amount they wish to, and are capable of, contributing. These are the ways that social inclusion, mutual aid and redistribution of fnancial wealth are practised. If the total amount necessary is not reached, the quasi-auction is repeated, after which production and distribution phases start. As farm production progresses, every week volunteers take vegetables to the fve distribution points – three larger urban spots in Treviso, Mestre and old town Venice, and two smaller suburban or perirural points, Preganziol and Mogliano Veneto. These points are, on average, 15 km away from the farm. Some distances are covered by carts. Participants pick up their food from these distribution points. It is not delivered in prepackaged crates but, rather, each of them flls bags that they bring with them with quantities of vegetables as indicated on a blackboard where every share can access an equivalent amount of the weekly harvest. Participants are usually eager to help out with CSA tasks, such as supporting farming, food distribution, graphic design, communications, outreach, writing and networking. They have accepted all the advantages and benefts of their common enterprise: in the case of abundant harvesting everyone has more food than in the case of crop losses, say due to extreme weather or pests, when everyone ends up with less. Sharing the risk of a poor yield gives the farm greater resilience than a privately run company. This approach helps preserve small ethical

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projects from being absorbed within conventional large-scale production and distribution, which would most likely result in them losing their autonomy and values. The benefts of the entire process are clear from both technical and social perspectives. In addition to the mentioned extremely low wastage, zero packaging and avoided certifcation, all expenditures are transparent. The CSA exists in a context that is conducive to promoting the building of further food supply chains that might involve products such as bread and legumes. Moreover, it is possible for participants to make mutually agreeable exchanges when they interact at the distribution points or other meetings. Members are generally careful not to take all the best products because they know that a friend or acquaintance needs their fair share too. Participants tend to be highly conscious, gender-neutral and gender-neutralising in their interactions and expectations of one another (see Homs et al., Chapter 8, this book). Decisions are made in open and transparent ways. However, members’ daily commitments to the common enterprise differ, in terms of their attendance at monthly meetings and the amount of voluntary work they do for distribution, transportation, setting-up and clearing-up. These distinctions are mainly due to time constraints caused by members’ other workloads or even follow habitual delegation and market-based approaches typical of the mainstream economy and society. We would expect such conventional approaches to change if members can experience more expansive, holistic and ambitious socioecological degrowth transformation capable of affecting all aspects of their lives. Collection time being limited, coincidental encounters and formal discussions are encouraged. Debates, book presentations, flm screenings and convivial meals are regularly organised within groups of members that belong to the same local distribution point and at the broader level of the entire CSA community. Finally, there is an ever-increasing awareness of the food production process and related efforts; the hard work behind growing the produce becomes clearer to all members. Decommodifying food production and distribution relies on the participatory character of the CSA’s internal administration where self-managed democracy is practised, for instance using elaboration groups and agro-technical committees. Most signifcantly, in this model there is no leader. Moreover, the CSA consciously works towards transforming company property into commons. The CSA is managed by an ‘Elaboration Group’ (gruppo di elaborazione), which is an administrative body open to anyone willing to participate and deliberate on general issues. In addition to half-yearly plenary decisions, daily governance is open to all members in order to ensure high levels of self-management. In a free spirit, participation is encouraged but not demanded, which has resulted in an average of 20 percent participation in the monthly meetings of the Elaboration Group. For operational decision-making there are working groups inspired by the same open and voluntary criteria. Given that such forms of self-management are somewhat similar to the concept and operation of sociocracy, CSA Veneto has recently started auto-training to manage the whole enterprise following techniques proposed by sociocracy

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(Rios 2011; Christian 2013). In addition to material, social and other exchanges within the OltreConfn social and solidarity network, CSA Veneto participates in the international CSA network URGENCI (2019). This means that a CSA can have broader-than-local interrelationships among other local systems within an inter(bio)regional level (Magnaghi 2014) and, furthermore, at a supranational, intercontinental scale. In mid-2019 this engagement included evaluating opportunities of loose forms of cooperation among CSA projects.

Vision, assets and perspectives A glocal CSA project such as the one in Veneto, Italy, is a transformational project starting from, but not limited to, food autonomy. The initial outcomes centre on the resilience and sustainability of local food provision for consumers. Consumers do not depend on the market, on long distance trade or geopolitical equilibria. Given its small scale and strong ethical principles, such an organic food production enterprise can be established even by a small number of individuals without signifcant fnancial capital. Instead, risks are shared by the entire community in material terms so that everyone eats a little more or a little less, and differently, depending on the weather. In monetary or time-use terms, risks are shared: everyone might spend more or less, but both money and time come from diverse sources. This makes the CSA a more resilient model than competing family farms. However, major achievements go beyond the level of food autonomy gained: the CSA is already proving a catalyst of enthusiasm, in general and for creating other projects. We have watched members and observers become deeply motivated and more committed and oriented to new forms of activism. They are inspired by other aspects of ecological sustainability and social equity, and to build communities based on such shared values. Once food autonomy in terms of their vegetables is addressed, it seems very likely – and has proven so in places in practice – to start thinking of the production and/or distribution of other types of foods and even of expanding to fnancial, energy and cultural autonomies. In general, it seems that the catalytic action of the CSA has the potential to change views of production and social systems, inevitably leading to rethinking familiar cultural and political models. After all, a conscious choice of how to feed ourselves can be seen as an introspective act to fulfl our most authentic needs; an act of liberation from external conditioning and act of rebellion to unfair and unsustainable market mechanisms. Such experiments can extend to needs beyond food within the hierarchy of needs, which is an ensemble of personal, regenerative, decisional, social, aggregative and community actions. Looking at the future, members of the CSA Veneto have a growing sense of the potential of living in local communities that are more cohesive, more aware and truly sustainable. This can be seen as a means to practice human respect for the environment in all its agro-ecological and animal components, including rejecting the exploitation of humans by humans. We can see ways to build more balanced and fair economies, going beyond the

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dichotomous monocultures of compulsive proft and compulsive consumption to a healthier balance at personal, collective and ecosystem levels. The management of CSA Veneto already represents an experiment with forms of self-managed democracy –  to be replicated in other felds  –  with assemblies and open voluntary elaboration groups for general decision-making, and specifc working groups and committees following strong principles, with an explicit will to remain leaderless. Here, the tasks of a board of directors of a conventional enterprise have been transformed into participatory decision-making practised in an assembly, and the functions of business managers are taken on by an open and transparent elaboration group which, theoretically, overlaps with the general assembly. A CSA project like this experiences the frst steps of establishing commons (Ostrom 1990) – an organic CSA as a form of collective caring and redistributional management of commons, involving soil and landscapes. With systemic feedbacks, we might even expect it to produce preventive and self-healing effects on the complex interconnected world surrounding and involving us, namely on its physical and psychological aspects. Of course, if seen simply as a CSA involving 40 to 50 shares associated with 100 or so members, it might be considered just a tiny step towards social change. Nevertheless, there is increasingly positive interest in this CSA’s constructive community environment, so a possible expansion has been scoped. However, the physical limits of land for cropping and the risks of diluting our sense of community if numbers grow too high are both disincentives for envisaging and pursuing an ever-expanding CSA. On the contrary, following degrowth preferences for quality over quantity, we hypothesise a possible future ‘gemmation’. The natural core groups for any future dispersal are those consolidating around the local distribution points. Such groups might develop a critical mass and opt to separate and follow a new autonomous adventure, perhaps temporarily even while collaborating with their parent CSA. They might fnd felds closer to them, and new roles, including as farmers. They might innovate ways to approach their CSA project according to their particular preferences, those of new members and/or the very nature of their territory, their landscape. The various types of CSAs might be seen as possible stepping stones on a gradual path to build community networks, becoming progressively released from mainstream constraints that have challenged them since their frst appearance. Timider conventional approaches are the only ones reported on by the FAO (2011). But, at the other end of the spectrum, there are CSA practitioners that aspire to satisfy the requirements of entire villages, and even cities. Those with such a vision of food autonomy for an entire urban and/or rural population debate whether there is any role in such a future for mainstream socioeconomic institutions and models and local governmental organisations in the form they currently exist in. Independent projects for socioeconomic transformation in the vein of agroecological regeneration and urban food ecology – inspired by but not limited to Food Policy Councils or City-Countryside agreements (Calori et al. 2017) – would need to be open, neither preformulated nor prescriptive and, above all, would

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need to break completely from ‘business as usual’ approaches for niche consumers. This more radical vision is meant to trigger real processes for growth in the practical self-determination, consciousness, awareness and self-organisation of inhabitants-cum-producers-cum-citizens. It is no secret that this is not an easy process. The risk of subsumption by, and assimilation into, the mainstream market and conventional political dynamics is ever-present. Therefore, actions need to be accompanied by a collective degrowth consciousness of deconstructing and decolonising the existing unjust and unsustainable economistic imaginary and guiding mainstream growth narrative. From a systemic perspective, part of the process of degrowth is likely to involve reconsidering one’s individual needs within a collective approach to labour, thus creating interfaces between society, culture(s) and the rest of nature (Cristiano 2018). Starting with food, a community-based relocalisation of production is an opportunity to rethink and better satisfy basic material and social human needs, from nutritional to relational spheres. Social and ecological dimensions are, of course, implicated in the redistributional mutualism of CSA Veneto and other agriculture-supporting communities that effectively remove food from an unjust and predatory market economy. By way of a regional example, exploitation in agricultural production includes the Southern Italian phenomenon of caporalato, which is the illegal hiring of mainly refugees and other migrants as agricultural workers, who are paid less than the national minimum wage and have no access to social or medical care. Reducing consumption and production means using fewer resources and, consequently, reducing pollution of air, water and soil. The supply chain of food for degrowth is very short. Similarly, local varieties regenerate once land is vacated or used less intensively. Such regeneration of ecological biodiversity helps local communities to rediscover local foods, to invent ways of preparing and using them, creating recipes and forming new practices. Far from identity sectarianism and related closures, such experiences embrace the spirit of open localism (Schneider and Nelson 2018): local vocations and relations are dignifed as a form of decolonisation from the banality of globalised mainstream supermarkets and fast foods. Those who experience such developments learn from them. They become very open to sharing and to spontaneous, non-heterodirected cultural exchanges, sharing experiences with those all over the world, as attested by fourishing relations among local systems at an interregional and international scales. The type of CSA case analysed here brings together volunteering and selfemployment, not-for-market work in neighbourhoods and among friends and, above all, self-provisioning, nonmonetised production and producer-consumer cooperatives. As the advanced CSA experience of CSA Veneto illustrates, such frms aspiring to be noncapitalist can grow along the lines of the submerged diverse community economy iceberg proposed by Gibson-Graham (2006). In that other iceberg of systems thinking (Meadows 2008), the invisible part offers major potential for change with relatively minor effort, in other words what, in systems thinking, is usually defned as a leverage point. Disruptive forms of food

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provision can be such a leverage of change, a transitional step in a degrowth transformation. By engaging theoretical models and cultural shifts, we conclude that achieving food autonomy via community building is a promising method to transition out of the current global socioeconomic system towards deconstructing, decolonising and reconstructing a socially just and ecologically sustainable future.

References Associazione per la Decrescita (2019) ‘La Decrescita site’. Accessed 13 October 2019 – http://www.decrescita.it/. Biolghini D (2019) ‘Terra e cibo, per costruire una comunità resiliente’, Scienze del Territorio 7: 166–75. https://doi.org/10.13128/sdt-10962 Brown C and Miller S (2008) ‘The impacts of local markets: A review of research on farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSA)’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 90(5): 1298–1302. Brunori G, Rossi A and Guidi F (2012) ‘On the new social relations around and beyond food. Analysing consumers’ role and action in Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (Solidarity Purchasing Groups)’, Sociologia Ruralis 52(1): 1–30. Calori A, Dansero E, Pettenati G and Toldo A (2017) ‘Urban food planning in Italian cities: A comparative analysis of the cases of Milan and Turin’, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 41(8): 1026–46. Castoriadis C (2016) ‘Radical imagination and the social instituting imaginary’ in Robinson G and Rundell J F (eds) Rethinking Imagination. Abingdon, UK: Routledge: 136–54. Christian D L (2013) ‘Self-governance with circles and double links: How sociocracy can help communities Part II’, Communities 161: 61. Cristiano S (2018) ‘Systemic thoughts on ecology, society, and labour’ in Cristiano S (ed.) Through the Working Class Ecology and Society Investigated Through the Lens of Labour. Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari: 9–23. CSA Arvaia (2019) ‘Arvaia: Cittadini, Coltivatoribiologici, site’. Accessed 19 August 2019 – http://www.arvaia.it/. CSA Venetio (2019) ‘Comunità che Supporta l’Agricoltura: CSA, Progetto Veneto website’. Accessed 17 August 2019 – https://csaveneto.wordpress.com/. FAO (2011) ‘Setting up a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)’, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Accessed 4 February 2020 – www.f ao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/425142/. Fonteneau B, Neamtam N, Wanyama F, Pereira Morais L and de Poorter M (2010) Social and Solidarity Economy: Building a Common Understanding. Turin: ILO Publications. Fonteneau B, Neamtan N, Wanyama F, Morais L, Poorter M D and Ojong N (2011) Social and Solidarity Economy: Our Common Road Towards Decent Work. Turin: ILO Publications. Gibson-Graham J K (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Graziano P R and Forno F (2012) ‘Political consumerism and new forms of political participation: The Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale in Italy’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644(1): 121–33.

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Kondoh K (2015) ‘The alternative food movement in Japan: Challenges, limits, and resilience of the teikei system’, Agriculture and Human Values 32(1): 143–53. La Via Campesina (2019) La Via Campesina site. Accessed 13 October 2019 – https:// viacampesina.org/en/. Lamb G (1994) ‘Community supported agriculture’, Threefold Review 11: 39–43. Latouche S (2015) ‘Decolonization of imaginary’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. Abingdon, UK: Routledge: 117–20. Magdoff F, Foster J B and Buttel F H (eds) (2000) Hungry for Proft: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and the Environment. New York: New York University Press. Magnaghi A (ed.) (2014) La Regola e il Progetto. Firenze: Firenze University Press. Mance E A (2007) Solidarity Economics. Curitiba: IFiL. Accessed 17 March 2020 – http:// solidarius.com.br/mance/biblioteca/turbulence-en.pdf. Meadows D H (2008) Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Ostrom E (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rios M (2011) ‘Sociocracy: A permaculture approach to community evolution’, Communities 153: 20. Rosset P (2003) ‘Food sovereignty: Global rallying cry of farmer movements’, Food First Backgrounder 9(4): 1–4. Schneider F and Nelson A (2018) ‘“Open localism” – on Xue and Vansintjan III’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon, UK: Routledge: 223–30. UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (2018) Mapping of Intergovernmental Documentation on Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). Geneva, Switzerland: TFSSE Publications. URGENCI (2019) ‘International network for community supported agriculture’. Accessed 13 October 2019 – http://www.urgenci.net. Volz P, Weckenbrock P, Nicolas C, Jocelyn P and Dezsény Z (2016) Overview of Community Supported Agriculture in Europe. Aubagne, France: European CSA Research Group.

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Sustaining caring livelihoods Agroecological cooperativism in Catalonia Patricia Homs, Gemma Flores-Pons and Adrià Martín Mayor

In the 2010s, the agroecological movement, inspired and supported by degrowth principles, expanded in Catalonia, Spain, leading to an increase in the number of food cooperatives in the region. Food cooperatives include several collectives that self-manage food provisioning through cooperative practices such as consumption groups (grupos de consumo), consumer cooperatives (cooperativas de consumo) and different types of consumer associations. Despite their potential (Espelt 2018), this chapter explores the limits of proximity-based food provisioning networks that are composed of consumers’ food cooperatives and small organic food producers. Since 2014 we observed such provisioning networks experiencing serious challenges that included dwindling waiting lists, withdrawal of participation, precarious, heavily burdened producers, and homogeneity in socioeconomic conditions among consumers. This outcome is partially explained by the expansion of organic products through conventional distribution channels in the region coupled by the effects of the fnancial and economic crisis during recent years. Nevertheless, other issues hinder the sustainability of productive projects and the scaling up of agroecological cooperativism for achieving food sovereignty. In particular, we analyse the often-invisible reproductive tasks that are indispensable to the sustenance of these projects, as well as the tensions which emerge with care work in other areas of life. In this chapter we explore what factors have led to changes in the Catalonian agroecological movement and how the role of care impacts their sustainability. Furthermore, we analyse the effects of this model in the expansion of the degrowth movement.

The evolution of food cooperative models in Catalonia Different kinds of organic food provisioning systems have expanded in the last two decades across Catalonia. Following the global fnancial crisis of 2007–2008, the presence of organic products in conventional supermarkets and distribution companies as well as the number of food cooperatives increased signifcantly. Namely, in Catalonia the global sales revenue of organic products was 34.5mn euros in 2003 while, in 2017, it reached 584mn euros. The number of agroecological food

Sustaining caring livelihoods 101 cooperatives increased from a dozen to at least 160 between 2000 and 2017 (Badal et al. 2011; Espelt 2018). In addition, many of the region’s counter-movements such as the Crisis Collective (Col·lectiu Crisi), the Degrowth movement (Entesa pel Decreixement), Coalition for Food Sovereignty of Catalonia (Aliança per la Sobirania Alimentaria a Catalunya, ASAC) and 15M expressed disappointment with the hegemonic socioeconomic system and endeavoured to self-manage many aspects of everyday life such as housing, food, health and education. Hence, they pointed to food cooperatives as a possible model for urban alternative food provisioning systems (Watts et al. 2005). Furthermore, Catalonia has a long history of agrarian and consumption cooperatives beginning in the nineteenth century and this tradition has continued up to the present day (Pérez Baró 1989; Dalmau and Miró 2010). While there is great diversity of agroecological provisioning systems in Catalonia as well as in other regions, the dominant model is based on groups of consumers that establish direct relationships with producers (López and López 2003; López and Badal 2006; Grasseni 2013; Counihan and Siniscalchi 2014). Most consumer groups are usually called organic consumption cooperatives and have between 15 and 30 consumption units. Each unit can be a family or a group of friends or neighbours, with their size averaging three individuals. Very few groups are legal cooperatives. Many are associations or are not legally constituted. Nevertheless, we maintain the emic terminology consumption cooperatives because cooperative practices are central to the organisation and functioning of these collectives. Most consumption cooperatives do not have a store to sell to nonmembers and their sustainability is based on unpaid work carried out by ‘voluntary’ members. The organisation of the group is often based on committees or working groups such as a group devoted to internal and external communication or to economic issues, and assemblies are the spaces where decisions are made. The most common model maintains a reduced size with the aim of ensuring good governance and guaranteeing the participation of members. As a consequence, the growth model has been based on the multiplication and replication of groups. On many occasions, veteran projects accompany new collectives in their frst steps. For their part, consumers have prioritised a direct relationship with producers, knowing how they produce and transform, as well as being aware of their political project and their working conditions (Homs 2013). Many people join food cooperatives motivated primarily by environmental and health issues rather than to form a collective and political project; often only after participating in a food cooperative for a time do they become involved in other socioeconomic and political aims of the project (Homs 2013). Since 2014, several questions have been raised within the networks during different public and internal debates refecting on the current state of the agroecological cooperativist movement. The research underpinning this chapter draws on this refection to address two main goals. First, we sought to better understand the (un)sustainability of agroecological projects. What are the factors that have led to changes in participation within the agroecological movement? How do producers explain that their

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projects continue to be precarious and very time-consuming? Second, we sought to understand the role of care tasks in the sustainability of the projects such as the personal involvement required in order to produce or consume agroecological food. We address the limitations of these agroecological provisioning networks focusing on the sustainability of the projects, their potential for achieving food sovereignty and degrowth, and their articulation with diverse care responsibilities and practices at different scales (namely individual, household and collective). The research included 15 semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and participant observation over a period of 12 months in 2015 and 2016. Interviews were conducted with participants of provisioning networks, consumers and producers, and other key agents such as researchers, distributors and activists. All names have been anonymised. This specifc research extends previous research conducted by the authors (see Martín et al. 2017) that included 47 interviews and participant observation from 2008 to 2014.

Exploring tensions of self-management, mutuality and responsibilities Some of the strongest tensions in these provisioning systems emerge when talking about the meaning of self-management, a main pillar of agroecological cooperativism. In most food cooperatives of the region, self-management has been a key tool for solving people’s needs without requiring external control or supervision. The self-management imaginary has often considered its practices incompatible with the remuneration and professionalisation of tasks and irreconcilable with a possible increase in the size of the project for fear of losing participation, horizontal decision-making and collective organisation. A consumer from a food cooperative explains its organisational model as follows: No one is hired. We do everything ourselves. But you have to do it well … [Members practice self-management] because it works and because it’s very close to the roots of the project. And what is done for the cooperative is done because we are part of the project. The truth is that we have never raised the issue [of hiring someone] and if someone from the group would eventually consider it, we would all feel like … mmm … what has happened? However, maintaining a small size does not guarantee adequate participation or a well-functioning group. Thus, in small cooperatives, participation is often unequal and generally there is only a reduced group of members who are highly involved in the project. Moreover, we noted that power relations are very common in the assemblies and it is common to encounter logistical ineffciencies that limit the functioning of the group (Vercauteren et al. 2010; Lorenzo and Martínez 2001). By way of an example, according to the self-managed imaginary most extensive in these groups, all members are required to carry out mandatory and unpaid tasks. First, each member must prepare food boxes for the cooperative’s consumers. A calendar is used to distribute this task equally among members. However, the

Sustaining caring livelihoods 103 distribution is organised without considering any initial inequalities in time availability or care tasks and needs among members, leading to certain unjust situations. Second, members must participate in assemblies that are usually celebrated every two or three months and in a work group that carries out specifc tasks for the organisation and functioning of the cooperative in order to do one or more essential tasks, such as taking care of paying producers monthly or cleaning the space. Such a demanding schedule prevents every member from getting involved due to lack of time or incompatibility with work and other care tasks. Furthermore, it can disadvantage some members who see their time availability changing at different periods of their lives. For instance, a consumer from a food cooperative explained how they managed a specifc case of maternity in her collective: We have many examples, like that of people who had been in the cooperative for a long time [and had twins], and at that moment they were unable to manage the weekly order and come here and … I think that it is more a question of how you place it in your order of priorities. That’s it … we try to be alert to this kind of thing … and adapt the cooperative to the personal rhythms that each one may have. Adapt, means to change of task … but sometimes we don’t succeed. And it’s true that sometimes people have left the food coop, and maybe it has been because we have not been paying enough attention to this kind of things. In other cases, the diffculty with participating in a food cooperative is caused by a change in the work schedule. In fact, in most cooperatives, there are only a couple of hours per week when people can pick up their groceries as a consumer from a food cooperative explains: If I do not have time to participate, you’re forcing me to go to Veritas [a supermarket from a larger conventional agro-food distributor that exclusively sells organic products]. On Thursday, from 20:00 to 22:00, I can’t come and get the basket …. The fexibility to be able to [actively] participate or not. That … if at this moment of my life I cannot, or I have kids, or I am working and I can’t participate actively or I have another type of work, then, I cannot be part of a cooperative. Finally, there are many activists who participate in several other collectives who have no time to dedicate to food cooperatives. They also complain that they cannot self-manage all aspects of their lives if they have to dedicate so much time in each area.

Individual versus collective needs and possible solutions Although these situations are very common in food cooperatives, they are often addressed as individual situations with most solutions offered on an ad hoc basis.

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It proves diffcult to fnd a solution that fts an individual’s or domestic situation’s needs and, in most cases, people in this situation abandon the group. A few groups have attempted to address such tensions by creating childcare and children-friendly spaces. Others have increased the size of the group and have started to pay for some daily tasks to be done by a professional member. Some, in turn, have established different levels of involvement to increase fexibility of participation. In these cases, extensive involvement is not required and, while encouraged, participation is not mandatory. We consider these examples to be collective attempts to address individual needs (Pérez-Orozco 2014; Federici 2013) rather than placing the cooperative’s needs as central and expecting people to adapt to its requirements. Indeed, people appreciate the results achieved from these mechanisms, as expressed by a member of a food cooperative of 250 members that pays several workers to manage its daily tasks: I feel much more comfortable with this model because you have more fexibility of participation …. It allows you to participate in more complex tasks and not only in the daily organisation of the group. Daily issues are already solved and ensured …. It also eliminates tensions because the food coop doesn’t rest on all the members’ participation.

Proximity between consumers and producers A second pillar of agroecological cooperativism is the establishment of a direct relationship between consumption and production. These direct relationships have contributed to establishing mechanisms for solving specifc needs, both for consumers and producers. Indeed, food cooperatives support productive projects through purchasing commitments weekly, and producers offer agroecological products at a just price. But limitations also exist in these direct relationships. Scale can be a concern, where consumer groups may purchase insuffcient volumes, especially in relation to the commercial management and time-consumption that maintaining a trustful and direct relationship implies. We also observe that in many cases consumers’ commitment remains focused on buying and does not engage in deeper practices of coresponsibility. For example, the agreement to share risks of production, such as possible losses due to weather or pests, is quite rare. Nor is it usual for participants to assume responsibility for access to means of production, fnancing, production planning, or the achievement of good working conditions. Therefore, the proximity of direct links between consumer collectives and producers is not synonymous with mutual responsibility and would be better described, as some consumers express it: ‘we get to know each other’. We have found that, for many producers, a direct relationship with consumers creates commercial diffculties because they have to distribute small volumes of food directly to a large number of cooperatives and this scale of supply makes it diffcult for them to articulate the various projects they handle. Furthermore, moving small volumes of stock can generate logistic and economic diffculties that make inter-cooperation among producers unfeasible.

Sustaining caring livelihoods 105 Attempts to exchange products, coordinate transport or do joint marketing do not often eventuate due to the costs and ineffciencies associated with failing to achieve economies of scale. This point connects directly with the question of distribution and intermediaries. Agroecological discourse has strongly emphasised the need to avoid intermediaries as they could fracture direct relationships between consumption and production, reduce self-management practices, cause unfair prices or support the unethical redistribution of economic benefts. However, this research reveals the frequent use of intermediate companies that are not considered to be agroecological. Intermediaries are employed due to a shortage of agroecological supply as well as the logistic diffculties of agroecological networks: producers are unable to sell all their products through agroecological networks, and consumer cooperatives are unable to maintain a direct relationship for all the products they need. This limitation has led to an emergence of projects that try to carry out this mediation from an ethical stance and guarantee agroecological values along distribution practices; for instance, by ensuring just prices to producers and consumers. Nevertheless, their potential cannot be evaluated at the moment because they are still facing diffculties of acceptance in agroecological networks. Indeed, intermediation is mostly done by conventional enterprises that operate using capitalist logic and impede the construction of degrowth practices all along the food system. Moreover, the present distribution system does not ensure environmental sustainability; thus, it implies moving small volumes of food and a high environmental footprint in their transport.

Scales of care: livelihood sustainability and solidarity During the feldwork we observed that gender division of roles and tasks in food cooperatives occur as might be expected in a patriarchal society (Federici 2018). Gender issues are not central in most food cooperative debates. Care work is essential for the sustainability of food cooperatives yet often remains invisible. This assumed care often clashes with care work required in other realms of life, such as childcare, paid work or activism in areas other than food. In food cooperatives there is the additional peculiarity that family consumption roles are carried out in a collectivised and political space (Narotzky 2004). A consumer from a food cooperative of 22 units of consumption from a small city remarked: At the cooperative, I see that those who are going to fetch the vegetables are mostly men. I think it’s [that women say to men] ‘you are going to pick up the vegetables’. They are the ones that go and carry. Basically, they are the ones who are going to collect it. The purchase is made by women, the order, and they [men] go to pick up the box and sometimes they do not know exactly what they have ... but it is them who are going to collect it. If we keep this perspective in mind and examine the participation in the assemblies, then some questions arise. Who writes down the minutes? Who speaks?

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Who interrupts? Who participates in the different committees? Who takes care of conficts and cleans the cooperative? Or, who takes on the work of juggling the everyday lifestyle with what it requires to be in the cooperative? Who plans and decides what it is necessary to buy, who designs appropriate menus for the season and explores how to cook products that are uncommon? Who assumes the extra time involved in cooking fresh foods as opposed to other options, such as purchasing prepared food? On the other hand, who goes to the public and social space to fetch the basket, who participates in the assemblies and the decisionmaking, and who takes care of the kids meanwhile? Further research is needed to analyse the detailed division of tasks and roles in agroecological collectives. From this research, initial results reveal a trend towards the typical gender division of a patriarchal society and a lack of questioning of roles and tasks (Cruz et al. 2006). As with gender, purchasing power is a divisive element within these networks and economic diffculties often impede wider agroecological consumption. While some producers have mechanisms to make their products available to those who cannot afford them, for instance, exchanging food for labour in the feld, few apply these strategies. Most cooperatives have not considered how to deal with economic accessibilities for consumers, while some have addressed them on a case-by-case basis. Few are even aware of opportunities to explore and fnd new collective tools for inclusion. Such strategies are acutely relevant in the context of the socioeconomic crisis that partially explains the decreasing involvement in agroecological cooperativism in the last fve years. Nevertheless, some food cooperatives have established different fxed quotas depending on the economic situation of consumers or provide the possibility of adjusting them afterwards. In general, these are sensitive situations. As a food cooperative consumer and organic farmer explained, while sometimes mechanisms such as a solidarity basket for the unemployed exist, it is diffcult for people to accept: people do not want it. They leave. They leave before, the idea of solidarity, no … Not even for receiving solidarity, people prefer to leave. Hence care as solidarity, here, may be understood as humiliating and avoided, as the autonomy of being a member of a project such as the agroecological cooperative blends into a form of charity. As detailed in several interviews, producers feel that they are in a constantly precarious situation, to the extent that precariousness is often naturalised as inherent to agroecological production. Furthermore, most producers come from an urban context, lacking expert knowledge, land and means of production which increases the ordinary diffculties of farmers. Questioning assumed precariousness is often linked to changes in the needs and personal life situation of producers, for instance, in periods when care for oneself, friends and kin may become necessary due to illness, death and so on. In these cases, it is very diffcult to simultaneously sustain both activities, that is the productive project and care work beyond the project.

Sustaining caring livelihoods 107 Although this dilemma could apply to most forms of work, farming has inherent features that make it diffcult to replace or postpone the work of producers where vegetable gardens or a fock of sheep are involved. Maternity, or paternity, constitutes one of these care needs that place producers in a diffcult and challenging position of combining both activities. This situation depends on the producer’s income and availability of time and commitment. Members might belong to these productive projects right up to the point of deciding that working in the productive project and maternity are exclusive. Thus, the degrowth aspiration to reduce time dedicated to productive activities and place social reproduction at the centre clashes with the need to sustain production.

The market squeeze: paid and unpaid work Price fxing is a crucial issue for the sustainability of productive projects, not only from an economic viability point of view but also from a wider perspective that includes social, cultural and political dimensions. Producers establish prices that often do not cover production costs due to a lack of price references at the beginning of the project. Moreover, some tasks remain invisible and unpaid due to the pressure and fear of fxing high prices, combined with the aspiration that agroecological products should be affordable for everyone. Nevertheless, consumers from food cooperatives are quite homogeneous socioeconomically; there is little participation by impoverished sectors of society. An organic farmer, founder of a still active 19-year-old collective project said: One problem, diffculty or limitation, is not having … initial references. Then we spoiled it with the initial measure that we set out: well, the basket must have this price. What did it allow us? What did it really allow us to maintain the project? Just as it is happening now, because there were many hours of work that were not charged, and these hours will never be paid … this wrong evaluation, since the beginning, has made it very diffcult for us to approach the real value, because it implied a price increase … mmm … very shocking for some consumers who said: ‘shit, how is it possible that you want to increase [by] a euro the price of the basket?’ Hence, there is a certain concern in raising prices for fear of consumers’ reactions. Furthermore, some producers are ashamed to explain the market economy reality of the project, which is usually lived as an individual limitation, and as specifc to their project rather than as a collective or social situation. On the other side, some consumers corroborate this analysis and assume that precariousness is due to specifc farmer’s ineffciencies and inexperience. A producer who has been growing organic vegetables for seven years shared their refections: People accept that if you ask a carpenter for a handmade piece of furniture, you will not have [to pay] the same price as if you buy a piece of furniture

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Homs, Flores-Pons and Martín Mayor coming from China or IKEA, won’t they? Well, that must be assumed …. It is a struggle to sell at a deserving price, and yet people still complain.

In this sense, several invisible and unpaid tasks in these agroecological provisioning systems are justifed morally and a supposed innate passion of producers for their work. On the one hand, it is considered that some work must be done because of activism, commitment and a feeling of responsibility and self-motivation. On the other hand, the work involved in making a product of quality and with certain values is considered as a passion, a natural and spontaneous love of producers for their work. These productive projects highlight many reproductive tasks in daily activities such as: traditional knowledge recovery, community creation, recovery of land in disuse, recuperation of biodiversity and old varieties, the direct relationship with consumers, assemblies with consumers and other producers. All these care or stewardship tasks are often unpaid. However, producers do not consider that all of them should be paid but at least it would be suitable to fnd ‘a healthy equilibrium’, in the words of an agroecological producer: ‘We continue putting [in] many hours of work. Many hours of work that we do not get paid’. Care involved in the agroecological producer’s work needs to be considered, as skilled labour and personal investment in the product, and should be valued differently from conventional agroindustry that ignores environmental, social and cultural values. Nevertheless, the framework of discussion remains the capitalist hegemonic context in which prices are based on exploitation, the invisibility of care work and unjust market practices for small farmers (Narotzky 2016). Thus, these social and environmental values are put aside during discussions that involve agreeing on prices between producers and consumers. This is why producers in agroecological projects feel that it is unjust to have to defend and justify prices all the time. According to farmers participating in this research, the price they expect is fair for the work done and there is no capitalist accumulation. In addition, many producer projects have strategies to avoid fuctuations in prices such as ‘closed baskets’, where farmers decide the quantity and diversity of the content in boxes that have a fxed and stable price over time, independent of seasonal or accidental variations in food quantity and quality. Alternatively, producers may set similar prices to different kind of breads made with different fours, including old varieties of wheat (Alquézar et al. 2014). Producers are trapped in a tension between producing commodities and simultaneously creating an incommensurable value of care work via unpaid skills and reproductive tasks. As another producer clarifes, before consumers challenge prices, she asks them to take into account all the work behind the food and to have a critical approach to their own economic organisation of their cooperatives: I work all these hours and I earn this amount each month, how much do you earn? If we go to the personal stuff, we play with all the cards on the table, that is, show your cards, too. How are you using your income, and me, what am I doing with my salary? I mean, everyone is free to decide, isn’t it? But,

Sustaining caring livelihoods 109 if you are telling me how I have to do my job and sell my product, I ask you how you live your life and how you spend your money. This quote invites us to think more deeply about situations where prices are questioned, to examine who is making the requirement and from what socioeconomic position (Bourdieu 1988). Both from the side of the producer and from that of the consumer, people are sacrifcing and risking their lives in different ways to develop social transformation projects. However, there is a certain trend where political and social motivations become an expression of romanticism or activism, thus, hiding how these projects involve real necessities of people. An organic farmer who had been participating in a productive project for seven years expressed it this way: I think that with the economic crisis we have lost an opportunity. The efforts that come from romanticism or from activism are very good, we have all done it but it does not last forever. If it is an effort that comes from necessity, then you are really looking for mechanisms. Degrowth and agroecology movements aspire to place people, social reproduction and life in the centre of the economy while the capitalist economy places capital growth and accumulation as its main and exclusive goals. Thus, the capitalist socioeconomic model based on exploitation tends to eliminate any contrahegemonic proposal that does not ft in with the capitalocentric model (Narotzky 2004). Despite the fact that these agroecological networks try to go beyond the market, their daily practices are embedded in socioeconomic capitalist relations where their sustainability is threatened. Hence, agroecological networks are developing mechanisms that allow for a change of scale in their provisioning systems to ensure their sustainability. Indeed, producers cannot sustain prices as low as those of conventional markets nor can consumers dedicate much more of their income to food.

Conclusion: sustaining agroecological cooperativism in a capitalist world Agroecological food networks are one of the most developed and extensive attempts of alternative provisioning systems supporting degrowth principles in Catalonia. The most common model of agroecological provisioning systems found in Catalan as well as other regions is unsustainable, especially for producers who, through their daily lives, resist agroindustrial integration. Moreover, the dominant food cooperative model experiences diffculties in expanding to society more broadly and often fails in its purpose to achieve food sovereignty. While both producer and consumer projects aim to place people’s lives at the centre of their practices and value reproductive tasks such as care with their concept of sustainability, projects’ productive priorities are often positioned above other

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needs  –  showing diffculties in establishing practices beyond the market economy. Hence, the reproductive sphere remains subordinate to the productive one dominated by the market economy. This reality clashes with the main principles of feminist economies (Mansilla and Ezquerra 2018), the agroecological movement and degrowth theory. In this chapter, we detailed some of the diffculties that Catalan agroecological networks experience at present, and some strategies employed to resist the movement of capitalist agroindustry into the feld of organic food as a niche market. This chapter cites different models that attempt to deal with these issues, such as hiring workers to manage the daily tasks of the group in spite of the importance of the self-management imaginary that implies that work must be done by voluntary members. Another strategy is to employ intermediaries in these provisioning systems, thus loosening the direct relationship between producers and consumers. Yet another is to increase fexible workloads by changing the scale and exposing care tasks (Martín et al. 2017). Nevertheless, developments and results of this changeable situation need continued examination as new threats and limits appear in the currently violent capitalist market economy.

References Alquézar R, Homs P, Morelló N and Sarkis Fernández D (2014) ‘Prácticas cooperativas: ¿Estrategias de supervivencia, movimientos alternativos o reincrustación capitalista?’ Ars & Humanitas, Special issue: Reciprocity and Solidarity 8: 151–64. Badal M, Binimelis R, Gamboa G, Heras M and Tendero G (2011) Arran de Terra: Indicadors Participatius de Sobirania Alimentària a Catalunya. Associació Entrepobles i Institut d’Economia Ecològica i Ecologia Política. Barcelona: El Tinter. Bourdieu P (1988 [1979]) La Distinción. Criterios y Bases Sociales del Gusto. Madrid: Taurus. Counihan C and Siniscalchi V (2014) Food Activism Agency, Democracy and Economy. London: Bloomsbury. Cruz A, López D, Ortiz P, Rodríguez R and Del Valle J (2006) ‘La apasionante relación entre mujeres y hombres en nuestros proyectos: Por una militancia mixta’ in López D and Badal M (eds) Los Pies en la Tierra. Barcelona: Virus, 157–70. Dalmau M and Miró I (2010) Les Cooperatives Obreres de Sants. Barcelona: La Ciutat Invisible Edicions. Espelt R (2018) Cooperatives de consum agroecològic de plataforma. El paper de les Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació en el consum cooperatiu de productes agroecològics. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Barcelona, Spain: IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Federici S (2013) Revolución en Punto Cero: Trabajo Doméstico, Reproducción y Luchas Feministas. Madrid: Trafcantes de Sueños. Federici S (2018) El Patriarcat del Salari. Crítiques Feministes al Marxisme. Manresa: Tigre de Paper. Grasseni C (2013) Beyond Alternative Food Networks: Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups. London: Bloomsbury. Homs P (2013) El dualisme natura/cultura en ecologia: Pensament margalefà i les cooperatives de consum ecològic. Unpublished PhD Thesis Barcelona, Spain: Philosophy Department, Universitat de Barcelona.

Sustaining caring livelihoods 111 López D and Badal M (eds) (2006) Los Pies en la Tierra. Barcelona: Virus. López D and López A (2003) Con la Comida No Se Puega. Madrid: Trafcantes de Sueños. Lorenzo A R and Martínez M (2001) Asambleas y Reuniones. Madrid: Trafcantes de Sueños. Mansilla E and Ezquerra S (2018) Economia de les Cures i Política Municipal: Cap a una Democratització de la Cura a la Ciutat de Barcelona. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Martín A, Homs P, Flores-Pons G (2017) El Canvi d’Escala: Un Revulsiu per a la Sostenibilitat del Cooperativisme Agroecològic? Final Report. Barcelona: L’Aresta Cooperativa. Narotzky S (2004) Antropología Económica: Nuevas Tendencias. Barcelona: Melusina. Narotzky S (2016) ‘Where have all the peasants gone?’, Annual Review of Anthropology 45: 19.1–19.18. Pérez Baró A (1989) Història de les Cooperatives a Catalunya. Barcelona: Crítica. Pérez Orozco A (2014) Subversión Feminista de la Economía: Aportes Para un Debate sobre el Conficto Capital–Vida. Madrid: Trafcantes de Sueños. Vercauteren D, Müller T and Crabbé O M (2010) Micropolíticas de los Grupos. Madrid: Trafcantes de Sueños. Watts D C H, Ilbery B and Maye D (2005) ‘Making reconnections in agro-food geography: Alternative systems of food provision’, Progress in Human Geography 29(1): 22–40.

Part 3

Degrowth networks

9

Co-creation for transformation Food for degrowth in Budapest Food City Lab initiatives Diana Szakál and Bálint Balázs

Food sovereignty movements and degrowth are much aligned in their goals and vision and, thus, can beneft from coupling (Salzer and Fehlinger 2017). From its beginnings, degrowth has regarded alternative food provisioning as a starting point for its implementation (Latouche 2010) that could easily extend to more fundamental economic and fnancial forms of self-suffciency. The proliferation of seed swapping, food self-provisioning, food cooperatives, and ethical food (justice) initiatives has been witnessed worldwide. These alternative food practices have often been in contrast to the industrial, placeless and seasonless food of the global food system. Such alternative agro-food practices and forms of sustainable consumption are regarded as champions and pioneers of a new community economy and, therefore, considered an indispensable element of a radical change to our dominant economic thinking, towards sustainability and equality. However, while food system-focused degrowth is gaining more traction as a movement, as a slogan and in the scientifc community alike (Dombi 2015; Salzer and Fehlinger 2017; Weiss and Cattaneo 2017), primary research about the initiatives that aim to achieve the principles of degrowth in the urban food scene in Hungary is lacking. This chapter aims to bridge this gap by providing an overview of the Hungarian urban food scene through the lens of degrowth, shedding light on some of the characteristics of the not frequently discussed postsocialist Central and Eastern European region. Also, it showcases a model for understanding and supporting a local ecosystem of food system actors in their transition towards degrowth. After introducing the reader to the Hungarian urban food scene, we focus on the co-creation process initiated in the framework of the Fit4Food2030 project to introduce its process, architecture, main actors and stakeholders. The primary outcomes of the process are described, followed by a refection on the themes for degrowth that have emerged from this process. Finally, leverage points for agency are identifed that have the potential to serve as valuable starting points of experimentation for different local contexts.

Budapest’s urban food system In Hungary, local food culture remained strong even after the Socialist regime. It frequently built on persisting local markets and remnants of informal economies

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through family households that maintained traditional agricultural practices. Overall, Hungary is still going through post-socialist cultural transformation. However, in Hungary’s capital city of Budapest, the local food system is highly fragmented. Several innovative niche activities struggle to remain economically feasible within the industrial food system that dominates the market. Although there are network initiatives among them, there is not one umbrella organisation or network that encompasses all. The fact that these initiatives often do not know of each other or cooperate can create possible lock-ins for the local system. In addition, the transformative potential of these initiatives is often low since the pressure for fnancial sustainability is very high and they must focus on creating economically viable solutions (Balázs 2015; Balázs et al. 2015). This hinders new initiatives from being able to radically transform the growth imaginary; despite their focus on transparency, re-localisation and shared work, they still need to compete with larger players who rely on economies of scale and have practices, processes and governance models that are not compatible with the principles of degrowth. Nevertheless, several arenas of experimentation are present that allow for the creation of socially embedded sharing economies in the agro-food domain. Food sovereignty is enacted through various initiatives and alternative approaches. Three approaches can be highlighted for their efforts to produce and consume food for degrowth: community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives, food selfprovisioning (FSP) and seed exchange networks (SEN). Community supported agriculture CSAs offer a remarkable alternative vision of the futures of food, which implies lifestyle changes, food activism and experimentation. CSAs create preferred futures where the growing and preparation of food is celebrated and honoured as signifcant work in the world. The various CSA models exhibit experimentation not only by reevaluating and reconceptualising production and consumption practices but also by creating new culturescapes and relationships via increased producer-consumer cooperation. According to data from the Association of Conscious Consumers (Tudatos Vásárló 2017), there are 17 CSAs and six box schemes in Hungary, half of which are active in the Budapest region. The development of CSAs also illustrates the transformation of the attitudes and expectations of citizens. While consumers were not ready for the new model introduced by the frst round of CSAs in 1999, which subsequently failed, from the 2010s their number has been growing (Dezsény 2016). While some Hungarian CSAs use community shared farm, subscription CSA group or community-producer partnership models, most of them operate according to the farmer-led share model (Dezsény 2016). In this case, CSA members sign a contract with the farmer in advance, which is valid for varying periods, and for the agreed period pay a membership fee. In exchange, they receive varying amounts and types of produce according to what is available on the farm.

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The potential of CSAs to act as change agents and arenas of transformation is signifcant on two levels. On one level, their attempt to transform the economic roles of consumer and producer into a social relationship, where consumers become members of a community can lay the cultural, social and ideological foundations for economic restructuring in the future. On another level, these relatively new and specifc types of farmer-led CSAs can launch a learning process by educating members for consuming in a healthier and more environmentally friendly way. Being ideologically oriented, CSA farmers successfully create a moral economy, build solidarity, catalyse members’ ethical principles and moral feelings. Nevertheless, CSA farmers face many challenges. Operating in a fragmented ecosystem which is characterised by low levels of civic engagement and trust, they need to take on the roles mentioned above of community building and teaching and simultaneously apply a coping strategy so that they do not share all the risks and costs with the members from the start. Instead, in the initial stages of the CSA they rely on other sources of funding, keeping their prices low until the commitment of their members increases. This results in a radically different approach than what is practised in most North American and Western European CSAs. The resulting structures could be characterised as ‘agriculture-supported communities’ (Balázs et al. 2017), where farmers can act as catalysts for transformation, providing the necessary encouragement for community engagement in a context where a low level of participation is the norm. Food self-provisioning Although the economic signifcance of FSP has often been downplayed or coined marginal, our representative 2013 survey found an unexpectedly high proportion of FSP in the Hungarian population (Balázs et al. 2016). Moreover, 36 percent of the respondents has or uses a garden, feld or orchard, either by the house where they live or elsewhere. While the most important motivators for FSP are economic and health benefts, collective values, such as family food traditions, also play a role. Nevertheless, the divide between rural and urban areas is signifcant. While 56 percent of people living in rural areas are active in FSP, in Budapest, this proportion is only 7 percent. Several initiatives are currently trying to leverage the potential of FSP to increase food for degrowth in the urban setting. One of them is the community garden movement, which reached Budapest quite late compared to the ‘liberty gardens’ in the United States or the ‘allotment gardens’ in Germany (Anguelovski 2015), with the opening of the frst community garden in 2011. Out of the 41 community gardens that have opened in Budapest, 31 are active as of publication (KÉK 2019). As opposed to the modern community gardens of the United States, that appeared after the 1970s recession, the gardens of Budapest were not initiated due to economic motivations, but rather with the aim of community building and most have been created through a top-down approach (Bende and Nagy 2016). Despite the potential of community gardens to mitigate

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inequalities in urban food provisioning (Anguelovski 2015), this aspect is less prevalent. In addition to community gardens, vertical gardening is on the rise, and new arenas of experimentation have emerged, such as urban agroforestry that operates according to the principles of commoning to create an edible, organic, public garden and the innovative use of school gardens. Seed exchange networks SENs go beyond the material exchange. Material exchanges entail interpersonal sharing of knowledge and values, know-how and experience and acts as an intermediary that changes social relations. The grassroots, bottom-up and organic development of the SEN also encourages people to regain their autonomy which, in turn, supports the rebuilding of social relations and the creation, revival and strengthening of communities.

The Fit4Food approach In the framework of the Fit4Food2030 project, we aim to bridge the previously mentioned gaps by analysing the alternative trajectories of changemakers in the Budapest region around food and nutrition security. The Fit4Food approach provides a participatory multi-stakeholder framework for food system transformation. Our co-researchers represent diverse groups of stakeholders from all dimensions of the quintuple helix innovation model (Carayannis and Campbell 2012). These stakeholders do not regularly meet, cooperate or even interact with each other, modelling the fragmented nature of the local food system. The project provides the opportunity for initiating a co-creation process. Our co-creative, collaborative research opens up the established systems of knowledge creation by bringing together enthusiastic stakeholders to deliberate about future pathways using a food systems transition approach. Figure 9.1 depicts the main stages of the process. In the Budapest Food City Lab, we organised four workshops with stakeholders between 26 April 2018 and 28 March 2019 to collect data and to seek a collective and coordinated strategy for a more local urban food system characterised by (1) food suffciency and food resilience; (2) sustainable, ethical and healthy eating; (3) co-creation of educational modules; (4) novel research agenda setting and (5) fostering a learning network on principles of co-creation and transdisciplinarity. We aimed at identifying a range of initiatives that produce, consume and preserve food for degrowth in Budapest, and leverage points, and potential breakthrough areas that could serve as the foundation for future cooperative and action research, as well as degrowth-oriented action. In the preparation phase, we carried out an iterative stakeholder mapping process that incorporated secondary sources, individual consultations with local experts and a co-creation workshop with 26 participants. Based on the mapping, invitations to participate in the co-creation process were sent out to a curated group of stakeholders. We aimed to include both the regime and niche actors that

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Figure 9.1 Co-creation processes of the Budapest Food City Lab.

were representatives of the following groups: researchers, policy makers, citizens, and the representatives of businesses, educational and knowledge institutions, non-government organisations and civil society organisations. In addition, we aimed to support marginalised voices in the dialogue. More than 70 stakeholders participated in the frst part of the co-creation process that focused on system understanding and laying the foundations for potential transformation. It lasted 11 months, and the elements belonging to this frst part of the process are illustrated in Figure 9.1. About 25 percent of the stakeholders were able to engage in more than one element of the frst phase, and they made up the core group of the City Lab. The frst workshop was aimed at the co-creation of a common vision of the local food system, which served as the foundation for the following meetings, where we focused on identifying potential leverage points and breakthrough areas, and on identifying competencies and skills currently under-represented in education and/or practice, and that needed to be urgently developed in order to meet the local vision and desired transformation in the food system.

Various outcomes and outputs The workshops have laid the foundation for three parallel processes, all aspiring to create and strengthen an ecosystem that fosters innovation and food system transformation for degrowth in the Budapest area. These processes are: 1. Co-creation of educational modules that aim to develop competencies and methods of innovation needed for a future-proofed food system. The modules specifcally target the competencies that were identifed during the

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co-creation process and developed and implemented in cooperation with different stakeholders of the Budapest Food City Lab. 2. A novel way of research agenda setting that aims to redefne the currently existing science shop model. As a result of this process, four thematic areas were identifed as leverage points for action. The process has strengthened the role of the Environmental Social Science Research Group as a platform for cooperation and an intermediary actor. After receiving the research needs and problems of the various stakeholders involved in the Budapest Food City Lab, we were able to provide them with the necessary information or connect them with other research-performing organisations. This also resulted in two workshops and several smaller stakeholder meetings and consultations and a potential science shop project involving a small organisation and the teachers and students of a Budapest-based university. 3. Simultaneously, we saw the seeds of a learning community of degrowthoriented initiatives by creating a new knowledge network of scholars, practitioners and activists committed to solve wicked sustainability issues in our food system. The participants’ dedication to achieving positive change serves as a fertile base for creating a transformative network that will not only connect the existing initiatives, networks, and communities active in the feld of food system sustainability but will also support and strengthen them.

Themes for food degrowth Several topics surfaced during the conversations, which are worthy of further deliberation and action both in the development of research and innovation agendas, and as starting points for grassroots’ initiatives and new cooperation. The variety of individual visions, as well as the differences in perception and understanding of the stakeholders regarding certain concepts like ‘community’ or ‘food quality’ became apparent from the start. The value added by the co-creation process was that it was simultaneously able to bring some of the disagreements about the desired future food system to the surface – especially apparent regarding the role of organic agriculture in the transformation – and identify some common themes that could unite stakeholders. The various exercises and the safe environment that we were able to create in the workshops allowed participants to re-evaluate and re-conceptualise how the current system worked and identify shared values as the base of a new system. Most of the central values that participants identifed were in alignment with the values of degrowth, namely freedom, solidarity, openness, transparency, simplicity and accountability. The importance of the democratisation of access to quality, healthy and fresh foods emerged as a shared and fundamental theme, together with the need to elevate the level of consciousness of citizens regarding the impact of the current institutional structure, operation and processes of the food system. Nevertheless, the need for convenient and immediate solutions was voiced and, although stakeholders agreed that growth was not desirable, most of

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the potential solutions and opportunities for agent action were conceptualised within the framework of the current capitalist system. All actions pressed for a more localised food system through the redesign of urban food provisioning towards food suffciency and resilience by the following means or thematic areas: • • • •

Introducing sustainable and healthy diets, such as ethical eating Reducing food waste and increasing redistribution, such as re-using surplus food Establishing solidarity with small-scale farmers Doing better public food procurement.

Leverage points and agency The high level of fragmentation and incoherent operation of the system and the question of responsibility emerged as primary concerns for all four thematic areas. For long-term change, it is essential to identify common interests, establish coordination and strengthen cooperation between the different groups. The four core issues identifed by stakeholders are not only considered focal components of the food system to induce transformative change, but also enjoy strong support by more than one organisation acting as change agents. It is important to note that these thematic areas are not intended to be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they are highly interconnected. However, they all enjoy the support of a large number of stakeholders in the local network and provide valuable arenas for agency. This section paints a brief picture of the state of each issue in the Budapest context, of intended achievements in the four main areas, identifying the knowledge gaps that seek cooperative research and, fnally, stakeholders’ self-defned roles in the transformation towards a food system that operates according to the principles of degrowth. Healthy and sustainable diets There have been major shifts and a large number of initiatives that aim to support the transition towards healthier and sustainable diets in production and consumption alike. There is a large diversity of actors working towards more sustainable, healthy and ethical food provisioning in the city, from the previously mentioned CSAs, farmers markets and the strengthening community garden, urban gardening and permaculture movement, to initiatives that aim to educate consumers via introducing new labels or sharing information in forms of online media or courses and workshops. Nevertheless, considering the prevalence of diet-related and cardiovascular illnesses, Hungary is among the worst in European rankings, cardiovascular diseases and cancer being the leading cause of death in 2016 (OGYEI 2014; OECD 2019). Almost 40 percent of diseases in Hungary are caused by unhealthy lifestyles,

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which means that a signifcant proportion of diseases could be prevented by lifestyle changes and healthier diets (IHME 2016). Although alternative concepts that support the conceptualisation of food as other than commodity  –  such as food as medicine (Tirado-von der Pahlen 2019) – can be observed, a systemic perspective is often missing, resulting in tensions and trade-offs between environmental sustainability and health. Several areas of intervention were identifed. Examples of concrete actions that actors plan to implement include an idea generator session with a focus on the food system, an online community space and resource centre, engaging thought leaders and developing educational programmes for the younger generation. Food waste A lack of transparency and accountability and need for systematic solutions emerged regarding the theme of food waste. The simultaneous agency of state and non-state actors emerged as an essential component for transformation. The National Food Safety Offce has been active in citizen education and awareness raising since 2016 but, while the majority of the population is aware of the importance of food waste and considers it a signifcant problem in Hungary, personallevel refection is missing (Szabó-Bódi and Kasza 2017). Although the number of initiatives that aim to create alternative structures for food distribution and consumption is growing – for instance, three new zero waste or packaging free food stores opened in the city over the past year  –  they only represent small arenas of experimentation. The organisations that took part in the co-creation process were mostly focusing on reduction, recycling and redistribution principles in their attempts to reduce and eliminate food waste. It was the easiest area for regime actors to see their transformative role since, due to the direct relationship between waste reduction and economic benefts, they could envision steps for change without radical systemic transformation. Participants identifed three main areas of action for the following two years: education (both in the context of formal institutions and via communication campaigns), network building and strengthening cooperation with legislative bodies for more holistic and systemic solutions. Local food systems and small-scale production The local food movement was initiated by the alliance of civic food networks whose primary aim is to ease the enormous amount of legislation that must be met by local food system actors. In 2012, the National Agricultural and Rural Development Strategy initiated institutional changes to localise the food system in Hungary. Although this strategy provides a source of legitimacy for various alternative pathways of food provisioning such as CSAs, food box delivery, buying groups, farmers’ markets, farm-gate sales, pick-your-own and local food festivals, the necessary institutional support – for example, alleviating the still rather

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high organisational and administrative burdens of small farmers – is still missing. Nevertheless, locally grown food is, in general, more valorised and increasingly more market opportunities are created for small-scale family farmers. Due to the proliferation of CSAs and FSP, it can be said that this area of leverage is the most advanced in terms of experimenting with alternative pathways for degrowth. These practices not only help to reconceptualise the operation of the mainstream food system but also support restructuring via relocalisation. During the co-creation process, the need for an innovation ecosystem emerged as the primary approach to support food for degrowth. While establishing hubs is a well-known best practice in the case of technological innovations, this approach is not yet widespread in the food sector. A strengthened innovation ecosystem could support small farmers in creating new partnerships with other farmers, and with different actors of the food system and, thus, could provide a solution for the high level of fragmentation that is currently present in the network. Besides, it could ensure more effcient professional support for small farmers in various areas, such as logistics or marketing. Public school procurement While the area of public food procurement emerged as the most diffcult to target and most unresponsive to bottom-up initiatives, it was simultaneously deemed to be the one with the most leverage. School food procurement has a signifcant infuence on all the other three areas that were identifed as primary leverage points for food system transformation. On average, 35–65 percent of Hungarian children’s daily energy intake comes from school canteens (Horváth as cited in Balázs et al. 2019, 59). This is especially signifcant considering Hungary’s low ranking in Europe in terms of the prevalence of diet-related and cardiovascular illnesses (OGYEI 2014) and that childhood obesity is on the rise (Erdei et al. 2018). In addition, action in this part of the food system could have a huge impact on decreasing overall food waste, since 20–25 percent of the food served in schools is wasted (Bittsánszky as cited in Balázs et al. 2019, 66). While the public school procurement system provides a leverage point for transitioning towards a relocalised system by supporting and securing a livelihood for small farmers, the number of local and/or organic suppliers did not increase between 2013 and 2017 (OGYEI 2018). Over the past 19 years, several attempts have been made both by regulatory authorities and by professional and civil society organisations to bring changes in the sub-system of public school food provisioning (Balázs et al. 2019). These intended reforms, however, mostly focused on partial elements, such as nutritional values and the physical environment and did not target the reconceptualisation and restructuring of institutional dynamics. The diffculties that this area exhibits illustrate the need for coordination and cooperation between top-down, policy or regulation-led efforts and bottom-up private and citizen-led initiatives that have the power to create the necessary social and cultural environment and awareness for the acceptance of the changes.

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Agendas for change: outcomes from the Fit4Food2030 co-creation workshops The agenda action points identifed by the participants of the co-creation workshops in Table 9.1 all aim to foster changes towards a more healthy and sustainable food system. In each thematic area, there are specifc actions that target raising awareness and reconceptualisation of our current reality that could support a degrowth transition. The action points simultaneously call for top-down interventions, for example legislative changes, and point out the importance of cooperation and the empowerment of individuals and communities  –  both of which are crucial for achieving higher levels of food sovereignty. While in some thematic areas, namely food waste and local food systems the contribution to degrowth is more pronounced and direct, in other areas the actions points aim to create an environment which could support degrowth in the future.

Conclusion Beyond a comprehensive analysis of the cause of the crisis, we lack knowledge and vision on how change towards a degrowth society will emerge (Kallis 2011; Latouche 2004; Beling et al. 2018; Kallis et al. 2018). Much literature is overly optimistic about the desirability and chances for the presence of seeds of transition that endeavour to localise food systems based on food self-suffciency, agroecology, urban gardening, short food supply chains, organic farming and sustainable consumption (O’Neill 2012; Kallis 2015). Gomiero (2018) argues that more rigorous analysis is essential to ascertain the viability of food for degrowth.

Table 9.1 Outcomes of the co-creation workshops, Budapest Food City Lab Healthy and sustainable diets

Food waste

Local food systems and Public school small-scale production procurement

Idea generator session with a focus on the food system Online community space and resource centre Engaging thought leaders Developing educational programmes for the younger generation

Increasing Establishing hubs Educational coordination that support the programmes and cooperation local innovation in schools and between top-down ecosystem universities and bottom-up Providing professional Communication initiatives support to small campaigns Food environment farmers (e.g. in Network building mapping in and marketing, fnance Strengthening around schools and logistics) cooperation with legislative bodies for Transforming the legislative more holistic and and funding systemic solutions environment to support local and small-scale production

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The case of the Budapest urban food system also illustrates that none of the existing initiatives can fully operate according to the principles of degrowth. They are struggling to fnd alternative pathways among capitalist market conditions, creating hybrid structures for which it is often challenging to survive, due to their need to compete with large businesses that have the advantage of economies of scale. While the initiatives greatly differ in relation to the framework of the current system, the desire for transition towards a more sustainable food system is an overarching broad vision that unites them all. This positive vision of a future society allows for creating alternative values for doing, organising, framing and knowing. Food for degrowth initiatives that are capable of going beyond dissatisfaction with existing conditions are able to create empowering arenas of experimentation, self-expression and agency. They are not only infuential in the areas of production and consumption but also create models of non-radical agency, play and revolt, bottom-up engagement and grassroots mobilisation that can be dispersed and expanded to other contexts. Nevertheless, as these arenas of experimentation are surrounded by the system of the dominant regime where they create small islands of adjacent realities, most of them are not able to successfully challenge dominant social structures and economies. The counter-hegemonic resistance defending ‘food as commons’ requires multiple internetworked projects that encourage dialogue not only between those organising small experiments and alternative initiatives but also between niche and regime actors in order to create change and transition towards a degrowth paradigm.

References Anguelovski I (2015) ‘Urban gardening’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. Abingdon: Routledge: 226–28. Balázs B (2015) Analysis of stability and tensions in incumbent socio-technical regimes: Regime analysis of the HU agro‐food system. Deliverable D2.2 of the PATHWAYS project funded under the European Union’s FP-7’, Grant Agreement No. 603942. Accessed 26 March 2020  –  https://www.pathwaysproject.nl/sites/default/fles/Coun try%20report%209%20Hungarian%20agro-food%20regime.pdf. Balázs B, Bertényi G, Králl A, Pintér L and Strenchock L (2015) Green niche‐innovations in the Hungarian agro‐food system. Deliverable D2.1 of PATHWAYS project funded under the European Union FP-7, Grant Agreement No. 603942. Accessed 26 March 2020  –  https://www.pathwaysproject.nl/sites/default/fles/Country%20report%20 10%20Hungarian%20agrofood%20niches.pdf. Balázs B, Pataki G and Lazányi O (2016) ‘Prospects for the future: Community supported agriculture in Hungary’, Futures 83: 100–111. Balázs B, Pataky G and Lazányi O (2017) ‘Socio-economics of CSAs in Hungary’ in Elzen B, Augustyn A M, Barbier M and van Mierlo B (eds) AgroEcological Transitions: Changes and Breakthroughs in the Making. Wageningen: Wageningen University and Research: 73–83. Balázs B, Kelemen E, Centofani T, Díaz de Astarloa D, Szakál D, Rees B, Maaß H, Schmidt-Cotta V, Zikeli S, Trstenjak M, Topol J, Hamann K, Iannetta P, Squire G,

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Tran F, Vickers R, Oliviera B and Varandas E (2019) Co-production of the Policy Assessment. Deliverable 7.2 (D41) of the TRUE project, funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, Grant Agreement No. 727973. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https://www.true-project.eu/publications-resources /deliverables/. Beling A E, Vanhulst J, Demaria F, Rabi, V, Carballo A E and Pelenc J (2018) ‘Discursive synergies for a “great transformation” towards sustainability: Pragmatic contributions to a necessary dialogue between human development, degrowth, and buen vivir’, Ecological Economics 144: 304–13. Bende C and Nagy G (2016) ‘Effects of community gardens on local society: The case of two community gardens in Szeged’, Belvedere Meridionale 28(2): 89–105. Carayannis E and Campbell D (2012) ‘Triple helix, quadruple helix and quintuple helix and how do knowledge, innovation and the environment relate to each other?’, International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development 1: 41–69. Dezsény Z (2016) ‘Hungary’, in European CSA Research Group, Overview of Community Supported Agriculture in Europe. Report funded by CONCORD: 50–54. Accessed 26 March 2020  –  urgenci.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Overview-of-Community -Supported-Agriculture-in-Europe-F.pdf. Dombi J (2015) ‘Sustainable consumption in the de-growth transition. The case of local foods’, in Hetesi E and Vas Zs (eds) 2015: New Ideas in a Changing World of Business Management and Marketing. Szeged: University of Szeged, Doctoral School in Economics: 109–23. Erdei G, Bakacs M, Illés É, Nagy B, Kaposvari Cs, Mák E, Sarkadi Nagy E, Cserháti Z and Kovács V A (2018) ‘Substantial variation across geographic regions in the obesity prevalence among 6–8 years old Hungarian children (COSI Hungary 2016)’, BMC Public Health 18: 611–20. Gomiero T (2018) ‘Agriculture and degrowth: State of the art and assessment of organic and biotech-based agriculture from a degrowth perspective’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1823–39. IHME (2016) Hungary. Global Health Data Exchange. Accessed 15 October 2019 – http: //ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool. Kallis G (2011) ‘In defence of degrowth’, Ecological Economics 70 (5): 873–80. Kallis G (2015) ‘The degrowth alternative’, Great transition initiative: Toward a transformative vision and practice, February. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https://greattr ansition.org/publication/the-degrowth-alternative. Kallis G, Kostakis V, Lange S, Muraca B, Paulson S and Schmelzer M (2018) ‘Research on degrowth’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 291–316. KÉK (2019) ‘Te is kertészkednél?’, Közösségi Kertek. Accessed 26 March 2020 – http:// kozossegikertek.hu/kertek/. Latouche S (2004) ‘Why less should be so much more: Degrowth economics’, Le Monde Diplomatique, 11. Accessed 26 March 2020  –  https://mondediplo.com/2004/11/14la touche. Latouche S (2010) Farewell to Growth. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. OECD (2019) Hungary: Country Health Profle 2019, State of Health in the EU. Brussels: OECD Publishing/Paris: European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https://doi.org/10.1787/4b7ba48c-en. OGYEI (2014) Hungarian Diet and Nutritional Status Survey 2014. Országos Gyógyszerészeti és Élelmezés-egészségügyi Intézet. Budapest: OGYÉI. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https:// www.ogyei.gov.hu/otap_2014/.

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OGYEI (2018) Országos Iskolai MENZA Körkép 2017. Országos Gyógyszerészeti és Élelmezésegészségügyi Intézet. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https://www.ogyei.gov.hu/dynamic/Or szagos-iskolai-MENZA-korkep-2017-181212-2-web.pdf. O’Neill D W (2012) ‘Measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy’, Ecological Economics 84: 221–31. Salzer I and Fehlinger J (2017) ‘Food sovereignty: Neither growing nor yielding, but fghting for good food for all!’, Degrowth in Movement(s) section at Degrowth.info, 17 January 2017. Accessed 26 March 2020  –  https://www.degrowth.info/en/dim/de growth-in-movements/food-sovereignty/. Szabó-Bódi B and Kasza Gy (2017) Maradék Nélkül Program: Kutatási Eredmények Összefoglalása. NÉBIH: Termőföldtől az Asztalig. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https:// portal.nebih.gov.hu/documents/10182/21442/Kutata%CC%81si+adatok+-+Marade %CC%81k+ne%CC%81lku%CC%88l_Honlapra.pdf/de561fed-aa16-4e1e-9f76-9 451c68f9ffc. Tirado-von der Pahlen C (2019) ‘Climate change, the food commons and human health’, in Vivero-Pol et al. (eds) Handbook of Food as a Commons. London: Routledge: 356–70. Tudatos Vásárló (2017) ‘Közösségi gazdaságok, dobozrendszerek és bevásárlóközösségek’, TUDATOS VÁSÁRLÓ, 15 January. Accessed 26 March 2020 – https://tudatosvasar lo.hu/cikk/mukodo-kozossegi-mezogazdasagi-csoportok-bevasarlokozossegek. Weiss M and Cattaneo C (2017) ‘Degrowth: Taking stock and reviewing an emerging academic paradigm’, Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics 137: 220–30.

10 Technology for degrowth Implementing digital platforms for community supported agriculture Ferne Edwards and Ricard Espelt

Since the early 2000s there has been a noticeable spike in the uptake of technologies to support food sharing activities (Davies 2019). Community supported agriculture (CSA), a form of community food exchange where members work together to redistribute fresh food while supporting farmers to develop ecological approaches for production, is one such area where digital platforms are being introduced to facilitate alternative consumption. However, technology for degrowth raises issues about both the impacts from technology and the politics of consumption. Questions include: Are digital technologies viable and feasible for degrowth-oriented CSAs? Do they support goals of fair, ethical, convivial, appropriate and political consumption? This chapter investigates the uptake of digital platforms for CSAs to explore their application, barriers and outcomes in Catalonia. It is contextualised in extensive research and mapping of cooperatives across Catalonia and grounded in participant experiences from ethnographic research conducted at the L’Aixada cooperative in Barcelona (see Acknowledgements, this volume).

Key concepts and values for technology for degrowth Degrowth is defned by Kallis et al. (2018, 42) as ‘a process of political and social transformation that reduces a society’s throughput (of material and energy) while improving the quality of life’. Adjustments extend beyond material and economic aspects to include social considerations of wellbeing, gender, equity and justice. Such transformations require what Sekulova et al. (2013, 1) refer to as ‘a collective and deliberative process’ to rethink ‘the role of markets and commercial exchanges as a central organizing principle of human lives’. Jarvis (2019, 262) articulates four tiers of transformation towards a degrowth society – embracing human rather than market relations, deepening democracy, protecting ecosystems and realising more equitable wealth distribution. While technology for degrowth ideally supports these four tiers, there is consumption-related criticism regarding how ‘high’ and ‘low’ types of technology are applied. For example, ‘high tech’ might not ‘signifcantly challenge highconsumption lifestyles or the dominant macroeconomics of growth’ (Alexander and Yacoumis 2018, 1840) because people might simply purchase more gadgets

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in pursuit of a ‘sustainable life’. In contrast, ‘low-tech’ alternatives are perceived as more favourable degrowth approaches as they do ‘not require electricity or fossil fuels to operate’ or use more ‘passive or direct (non-electric) solar, wind, or human-powered energy’ (ibid., 1841). Furthermore, Kerschner et al. (2018) break down technology for degrowth into classifcations of feasibility, viability, conviviality and appropriateness. ‘Feasibility’ and ‘viability’ refer to a technology’s physical and material structure, exploring implicit and embodied energy consumption of technologies and their sustained impact upon the greater environment. Alternatively, ‘conviviality’ and ‘appropriateness’ extend a social focus and context to degrowth activities. Conviviality draws on ‘convivial tools’ by Illich (1975), later reinterpreted by Vetter (2018) as ‘convivial technologies’ to include institutions and products, to recognise the social impacts and relationships emerging from their use. Appropriateness is drawn from Schumacher (1973) where ‘appropriate’ accords with the values and desires of participants (Alexander and Yacoumis 2018). Consequently, technology can be used in many ways to realise different consumption (and other) outcomes, here defned as ‘a tool, method, or design practice  that helps humans solve problems and achieve goals’ (ibid., 1841). Information and communication technologies (ICT) can create a network of interconnections within the emergence of the online ‘network society’ (Castells 2000). These networks can either be dense and enclosed, narrowing relationships between members, or open and diffuse due to organisational fexibility (Wellman 1997). Social network platforms can also create value by generating knowledge responding to users’ interaction (Miralbell 2012). Social media platforms facilitate interactions between groups, such as digital platforms that typically establish an online platform between suppliers and consumers. Digital technologies can endorse or stife collaborative practices. Platform cooperativism promotes digital platforms based on cooperative principles and practices that include collective ownership and decision-making, decent pay and income security, transparency and portability of data, recognition of value, and a legal framework and processes that protect workers’ rights (including against arbitrary behaviour in the rating system, excessive vigilance in the workplace and their right to disconnect) and their social benefts (Scholz 2016). Fuster emphasises attention to detail in construction of technological platforms is critical where platform cooperativism should employ an open cooperative model (Bauwens 2014), in antithesis to unicorn platforms that represent corporate, hierarchical and proprietary software (Fuster 2016).

Degrowth and CSAs in Catalonia CSAs are representative of both socially innovative practices (Blanco et al. 2015) and alternative food networks (Goodman et al. 2011), sharing a degrowth philosophy in terms of supporting quality human relationships (aka conviviality), democracy, sustainability and justice. By enabling members to reduce resource consumption and endorse social and environmental values in their diets,

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CSAs nurture good intentions between country and city, promoting an ethical, local, degrowth lifestyle. Agrarian and consumption cooperatives were created in Catalonia in the second half of the nineteenth century in response to the socio-economic fallout from the industrial revolution (Dalmau and Miró 2010). Despite the subsequent disappearance of many cooperatives, interest in agroecological consumption remained due to the Spanish dictatorship and spread of capitalism. In the early 1980s, citizen interest piqued once more corresponding to ‘the acquisition of ecological products and towards a self-managed consumption model based on fairer conditions both for producers and consumers’ (Huerta and Ponce 2010, 1) and reactivated the agroecology movement. Today, Barcelona has the highest volume of CSAs in Catalonia with 56 collectives representing 157 producers and 13 intermediaries (Espelt 2018; Espelt et al. 2015). The distribution of CSAs in Figure 10.1 resembles traditional cooperativist areas where Vila de Gràcia (188), La Bordeta de Sants (145) and Poblenou (137) have the highest density of units of consumption. Pursuing self-management and seeking direct supply between consumers and producers, many CSAs (91 percent) function thanks to the voluntary

Figure 10.1 Barcelona CSAs distribution by neighbourhood, following Espelt (2018).

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commitment of their affliates. The remainder rely on professionals who care for specifc tasks, such as orders and logistics. Despite being fewer in number, professional CSAs have a higher average number of affliates (72 percent) compared to those run by volunteers (29 percent). Professional groups do not set a specifc growth limit, while volunteer groups do, producing waiting lists when new members want to join  –  a condition that promotes the creation of new groups (Espelt 2018). Many CSAs are also political: through short food supply chains they stimulate goals of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) (Espelt et al. 2018). The SSE is a global movement that emerged from grassroots, citizen-led practices and seeks to reorient market-led capitalism to alternative economic practices based on a broad framework of ‘solidarity, equity, human and Earth rights, self-determination, mutuality and cooperation’ (RIPESS 2020). The SSE is pronounced in Barcelona where the City Council supports its existence in various documents and projects (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2020). Catalonia’s main SSE organisations  –  XES and Pam-A-Pam to name but two  –  analyse the production, distribution and consumption of a product or service to support transformative socio-economic change. For CSAs, the SSE prioritises the proximity of a provider, fair relations between producers and consumers, and the interactions the organisation has with other organisations, where fows strengthen a social market based on democratic and ecological values (Garcia 2002; Martín-Mayor et al. 2017). In addition, the SSE considers an organisation’s use of digital tools, where digital commons promote open data and technology in line with SSE values. Many CSAs in Barcelona are beginning to use technology in new ways with trends for cooperatives to adopt private software, especially Google tools, or to develop software based on the digital commons (Aplicoop, for example). Moreover in as much as SSE activities value short supply chains that reduce resource consumption, endorse ethical supply and promote political awareness, critique and transformation, they represent degrowth activities.

Methodology Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were applied, frst, to contextualise the state of CSAs in Catalonia and, second, to explore human-technological relationships grounded in practice. The frst approach, led by Espelt, applied data from research conducted with Pam-A-Pam, a not-for-proft organisation that uses surveys to assess the degree of conformity with SSE principles by applying 15 criteria. These criteria are categorised into three key areas: social impact, environmental impact and the organisation of work (XES and SETEM 2015). For this research three indicators – proximity, fair trade and cooperation – were selected. The frst indicator (proximity or distance from producer to consumer) determined if an organisation could be considered within the SSE, with other indicators (fair trade and cooperation) illustrating the degree of commitment to SSE values. Digital aspects were also assessed, acknowledging the value that organisations assigned ICT, the tools they applied and their digital footprint.

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The second approach, led by Edwards, conducted qualitative research from March to June in 2017 at a CSA called L’Aixada. L’Aixada was established in 2001 and has had a fuctuating membership with an ideal number of 40 consumer units. Many of L’Aixada’s initial members were families who expressed health as a key motivation. Members of L’Aixada strive to self-manage the distribution of healthy, local and ecological food. Members joined a long waiting list for fellow cooperative la Tòfona (then called ‘la Gleva’) with L’Aixada later established as an additional cooperative. The eight qualitative interviews and 18 participantobservations of events at L’Aixada provide a thick description of the lived experience of socio-technological assemblages. Contributing to a larger study on urban food sharing (Davies 2019), additional interviews were conducted to provide a broad context of food sharing across Barcelona, including with representatives from government (in food health and safety and planning), from food sharing networks, academia, community organisations and other local food sharing case studies. All interviews were taped, with recordings transcribed and coded using NVivo qualitative data analysis software, and pseudonyms deployed. The two complementary lenses of analysis apply both ethic and emic viewpoints. Espelt is a local. Edwards is not but was assisted by an intern who spoke Spanish and Catalan.

Are digital technologies viable and feasible for CSAs? CSAs use ‘high’ and ‘low’ technologies as hybrid forms, where a high tech computer interface enables exchange beyond the householder. The research found that digital technologies meet logistical needs (organising food purchases in the cooperatives and by compiling orders for producers) and expand values associated with agroecology to the wider community, such as proximity, fair trade and ecological production. Forty-seven of the 56 CSAs in Barcelona use fve predominant types of digital platforms (Table 10.1). There is no signifcant variation between volunteer and professional groups grading the importance of ICT (79 percent average, across both groups). The most popular technology is Google, while some organisations developed or adapted open source software (Espelt 2018). Examples in Table 10.1 demonstrate a technological evolution, from CSAs that developed digital tools for their own activities to initiatives that share their technology to support other groups while developing new forms and abilities. The ability for CSAs to incorporate new technologies into their logistics and communication processes is often initiated from the member skill base or established relationships with other CSAs. For example, at L’Aixada a small team of tech-savy members developed their technology, a change tolerated by older members. New applications can help support logistics, reducing workload stress on members and enabling expansion and free time for other tasks. Viable and feasible support tools can, thus, lighten barriers experienced by traditional CSAs, barriers that include ‘dwindling waiting lists, withdrawal of participation, precarious and heavily burdened producers, and homogeneity in socio-economic conditions

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Table 10.1 The top five digital platforms for CSAs in Catalonia Digital platform and/or Exemplar function For internal use CSA El Bròquil del Gòtic launched in 2010 has approximately within a single 30 consumer units. A volunteer developed a digital platform group used internally within the group. For shared use across Germinal is one of the frst and largest agroecology CSAs in a number of Barcelona, launched in 1993 in Sants as a cooperative. The groups model allowed the creation of different groups in other neighbourhoods and cities abroad. Germinal developed a platform which allows management by the different groups. As an open source CSA L’Aixada, launched their software in 2013 as an open platform that can source platform built to manage the ordering, buying, be replicated by selling and handling of products between consumers and others producers. This software platform was frst used in L’Aixada where it distributes over 700 products from approximately 60 local, organic providers to 40 households. It helps manage cooperative members, keeps track of product stock, fnances and consumption patterns. An open source Aplicoop 3.0 is an application (launched 2009) that allows platform for use at consumers to shop online and to manage groups of purchases, a local level to prepare food baskets, collections and payments. It was developed for a CSA where all partners are volunteers. An open source Katuma is a CSA platform based on commons collaborative platform for use at economy values started in 2012 and developed by Coopdevs, an international a non-proft association focused on free and open source level software to promote social and solidarity economy projects. From early 2017, Katuma is part of the international project Open Food Network.

among consumers’ (Homs et al., Chapter 8, this volume). Many programmes are available – such as the cloud, video conferencing, ‘apps’ and project management tools – that can diversify membership and increase work fexibility. Increased physical and social proximity in cities also makes CSAs more viable. Barcelona is one of Europe’s most densely populated cities with than fve million people in its metropolitan area, with a population density of 16,000 people per square kilometre (WPR 2020). Catalonia has a history of community-led change. Gràcia in northern Barcelona has a distinct identity and strong sense of community. A long-term member of L’Aixiada explains that: In the past, Gràcia was a town apart from Barcelona. People here say that they are from Gràcia. Maybe the parents and grandparents of these people were from Gràcia and this feeling soaked through them. Many urban CSAs emerge as a result of grassroots’ action when members identify spaces near where they live to meet, often within walking or cycling distance, to

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exchange food and to participate in other community activities. Physical proximity makes weekly visits practical, face-to-face contact strengthening pre-existing ties with people who share identities and values, who, in turn, extend these ties to strengthen urban-rural linkages. L’Aixada is based at Rosa de Foc, a self-declared ‘space of action and critical thinking’ (http://rosadefoc.info/) where a cluster of activities occur, that include three other consumer cooperatives, a choir, shared meals, producer information nights, and feld visits. CSAs promote alternative food consumption based on resocialisation (Edwards 2015; Jarosz 2008; Goodman et al. 2011). Some members of CSAs later become producers, to then supply the same CSAs with local products, in contrast to people who frst grow their own to later establish networks (see Cristiano et al., Chapter 7 this volume). Surveyed cases showed characteristics of local supply (67 percent), fair trade (70 percent) and cooperation (50 percent). Relocalisation is a feature of degrowth minimising or avoiding use of petroleum products (Alexander and Yacoumis 2018). Digital applications are feasible and viable in CSAs in many places where a strong social element is both pre-existing and enduring, and that supports, and is supported by, high proximity and locality. In contrast to consumer alternatives linked to local products where technology is an essential part – such as The Food Assembly (Espelt et al. 2017) – CSAs amplify SSE values, reinforcing the value of the social market through self-management.

Do digital technologies support fair and ethical consumption? Digital platforms support fair and ethical consumption: in our study both volunteer groups (73 percent) and professional groups (72 percent) demonstrate substantial efforts to purchase fair trade products, their producers receiving decent salaries and minimising intermediaries. Ethical trading principles go beyond price or product to consider factors that support the community, health and ethics of the food system, and the economy of local small farms. Fair and ethical consumption is understood as an iterative, holistic and refexive process. A member from L’Aixada explains what ethical consumption means for her: [Before] I considered the ecological term [to be] something very technical … food which is not grown using pesticides, chemicals, etc. Here I discovered that the ‘ecological’ term works in a different way. Ecological is sustainable in environmental terms but also in social terms, because it is related to social and environmental justice …. Here I learned about this, also about the seed issue … about the biodiversity, the native species. This is political in a wider sense …. How we self-organise, what we want to support or not, which business models, this is really important because we focus on small projects, where there were not capitalist or working members and those whose produce follows the cooperative trends. Group processes and policies support ethical priorities by limiting the geographical scope of products, and by informing eaters about the realities of

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the food system. Many consumer groups visit their producers, display interest in their labour and encourage farmers, likewise, to participate in their assemblies. Some groups help producers in sowing or harvesting crops where members embody a sense of how their food is produced through hard work, further politicising the effort embedded within consumption (Counihan, forthcoming). The second key application of CSAs, communicating their values to others, is strengthened by members taking pictures to celebrate connections with their producers, a practice that seldom occurs with supermarket produce. For example, members from l’Economat Social, a CSA from the Sants neighbourhood, visit their main producer, Cal Notari in Sant Boi the Llobregat, each year to celebrate a calçotada (a traditional Catalan barbeque of spring onions), to later upload their pictures on social networks. Technology thus makes visible alternative practices, expressing emotional bonds between producer and consumer within spaces of ‘virtual reconnection’ (Bos and Owen 2016) telling the world that alternatives exist, and that rural producers and urban consumers care enough to create alternative distribution systems to support them. However, the extent to which social media is embraced varies greatly across CSAs. Cooperatives (56 percent) have the lowest interest in communicating their activities in social media, compared to producers (69 percent) and intermediaries (69 percent), perhaps refecting an economic imperative. Nonetheless, usage varies signifcantly with some groups posting often, linking to salient topics in their sector as they refer to producers or participate in educational or political campaigns, such as international trade policies or food waste concerns. Alternatively, others seldom engage online, do not participate at all or keep their social media profle private, as explained in more detail below.

Does technology support or stife conviviality? While digital platforms may, like social networks, have a collaborative and convivial capacity, not all participants welcome their engagement in this respect. For example, L’Aixada has chosen as a group to remain fxed in the present and their locale by choosing an offine digital platform requiring members to physically attend the CSA to place orders, to collect their baskets, and to attend and make decisions in the assembly. A member of L’Aixada’s information commission explains members’ hesitancy to take up new technology: At the beginning some people stopped the [internet] process …. People were afraid that if we make comments [place orders] from home that maybe the people don’t come to the cooperative. For the reason that our philosophy is to be part and to share and to talk, we don’t make these kinds of things – at the beginning, maybe ten years ago .… These people are changing .… Not now, but maybe in some months we will change, and we will have internet.

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Consensus, a highly valued decision-making process, is one feature considered to be diffcult to replicate online because, as one member pointed out, ‘Consensus just takes time, talking … everybody can show their position’. Relationships with suppliers are maintained by assemblies and site visits when possible. While site visits were infrequent during the research period, members noted that initial producer-consumer relationships were often based on personal friendships. By pro-actively monitoring such processes, it would be unlikely for L’Aixada to be co-opted by technology. Instead, they create frm rules to maintain technology as a tool of their own choosing and deployment. This CSA demonstrates the autonomy and conviviality that degrowth values.

Do technologies support specifc political agendas? Members of CSAs intend to transform societal consumption by creating the desire and support for alternatives to persist. Members of L’Aixada acknowledge that they support, even create, the sole demand for certain niche suppliers because they are prepared to pay more for their produce than supermarkets. CSAs also provide economic outliers within the informal sector with funding to continue. Examples include bakers who cannot sell because: None of these has the ‘eco’ stamp and they don’t fulfl all the requisites, but we work by trust. And in this sense, we transform, when it is diffcult to do. CSAs broker trust through local relationships that are maintained through careful containment of technology, retaining a CSA’s identity, purpose and longevity. However, CSAs recognise that they also exist within a space that has been co-opted by green capitalism, where supermarket products do not have ‘the social component’. By prioritising people over tools, social and environmental values over economic ones and by carefully using technology to bring the world and people closer, CSAs provide an experience-rich alternative to a resourcedepleted capitalist world. Digital platforms are becoming a participative space in the context of platform cooperativism. In Catalonia, cooperatives like Suara (a home-services and care cooperative) and Som Energia (a renewable energy cooperative) are adopting ‘Decidim’, a techno-politico platform that provides a free open source participatory democracy platform to support local governments, cooperatives, collectives and others to democratically make decisions. Currently, a group of people inspired by organisations like the Park Slope Food Coop in New York are promoting the creation of a food cooperative supermarket called ‘Food Coop Barcelona’ using Decidim to improve decision-making processes. Decidim provides Food Coop Barcelona with tools for announcing initiatives and consultations, participative processes, and an assembly organiser to enrich its internal democracy. However, as a technology’s constitution infuences its political application, many CSAs tend to seek technologies that can be shared with others within their CSA or with other CSAs, and that allow them to stay small and to care for

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personal connections. This prioritisation aligns with characteristics of socially innovative alternative food networks that are ‘small, shared and slow’, where ‘small’ refers to ‘small in number, short in supply chain, and simple in their structure and technologies’ (Edwards 2011, 123). Rather than assume that all growth is good, and that initiatives need to be privately owned and branded, CSAs such as Katuma are working with the City Council and the Open Food Network to extend the application of pre-existing software to share in the digital commons. Such networked, distributed and shared technologies may also be ‘quiet’ (Daněk and Jehlička, Chapter 3, this volume) existing in spaces in-between conventional commercial transactions. Examples of hidden, distributed yet connected SSEs account for around 7 percent of GDP in Barcelona alone (Fernàndez and Miró 2016).

Does technology support ‘appropriate’ cooperation? Technology is used in an effective way to scale up and scale out political socioenvironmental alternatives, if done appropriately. As shown in Figure 10.1, the 56 cooperatives in Barcelona using digital technologies are part of a network of 157 producers and 13 intermediaries who, altogether, distribute fresh and processed produce to 1489 units of consumption in Barcelona alone (Espelt et al. 2019). Cooperation across CSAs can strengthen the SSE movement given that some platforms go beyond local communities to participate in global networks. For example, Katuma utilises open platform software from the Open Food Network (OFN) that supports the development of new ethical supply chains that ‘bring together producers to create a virtual farmers’ market, building a resilient local food economy’ (OFN 2020). Since its inception in 2012 in Australia, OFN has developed bases in 11 countries (United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Canada, United States, Belgium, Denmark, South Africa, New Zealand and Brazil), establishing international opportunities for cooperation. Such international extensions introduce a new variation to ‘local’ and ‘alternative’ produce while retaining their SSE ethics. Indeed, this is how Do It Yourself projects or Transition Towns Network initiatives work: by providing global tools and knowledge to reinforce local resilience, while questioning how technology can support the sustainability of CSAs. Such technological adaptability combined with good will for a greater goal is demonstrated by OFN sharing their platform with competitor The Food Assembly which, in 2018, closed due to being economically unfeasible. OFN’s motivation was not to lose advances in agroecology (OFN UK 2018). This research shows that technology is appropriate for CSAs in a variety of ways yet, importantly, with caveats. Returning to Jarvis (2019, 262), technology for degrowth needs to embrace human relations rather than market relations, endorsing conviviality; deepen democracy through refective participation and consensus; protect ecosystems by supporting social and environmental ethics; and realise more equitable wealth distribution by sharing risk. Assessing both

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types and applications of technology are paramount when applied to degrowth initiatives, in this case open source platforms, and ongoing and refexive monitoring to match specifc needs, values and goals, respectively. Appropriate technology can support CSAs in logistics, communication and cooperation to build the degrowth movement in appropriate ways. ICT proves to be a critical asset in the development of short food supply chains and the SSE, where Pam-A-Pam notes that both knowledge licences and open source software uphold SSE values. Scholz (2016) and Fuster Morell et al. (2017) argue that possibilities to develop cooperative formulas are being unveiled that may further support technologies to scale up and scale out political alternatives.

Conclusion This chapter explores how new technologies are impacting on old practices of reciprocal exchange built on trust and relationships, and assisting in controlling where food comes from. Data were used from two complementary yet separate studies – one investigating the relationship between emerging technologies and SSE, and the other exploring the ICT impacts on food sharing activities in cities – to explore the role of technology for degrowth on CSAs in Catalonia, and Barcelona more specifcally. The data were analysed with regards to CSAs as a degrowth food practice particularly with respect to the identity, values, goals and politics embedded within CSAs. Drawing on complementary quantitative and qualitative datasets, the research revealed that more than 80 percent of CSAs in Barcelona use fve predominant types of digital platforms that are feasible, viable and support SSE criteria of proximity, fair trade and cooperation. The technology deemed most appropriate for supporting and promoting degrowth values in CSAs are digital platforms, where platform cooperativism supports collaborative online sharing and prevents vertical power relations. Monitoring and refecting on how these technologies function, we conclude that selective technology can be critically applied to foster the future of the food for degrowth movement.

References Ajuntament de Barcelona (2020) Economia Social i Solidària. [Site.] Accessed 21 March 2020 – https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/economia-social-solidaria/. Alexander S and Yacoumis P (2018) ‘Degrowth, energy descent, and “low-tech” living: Potential pathways for increased resilience in times of crisis’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1840–48. Bauwens M (2014) Open Cooperativism for the P2P Age. P2P Foundation. Accessed 3 February 2020 – https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/open-cooperativism-for-the-p2p-age /2014/06/16. Blanco I, Nello O, Brugué J and Jiménez E (2015) Disadvantaged neighborhoods facing the crisis: Urban segregation, social innovation and civic capacity. Unpublished thesis, Autonomous University of Barcelona.

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Bos E and Owen L (2016) ‘Virtual reconnection: The online spaces of alternative food networks in England’, Journal of Rural Studies 45: 1–14. Castells M (2000) The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Vol. 1, 2nd ed). Oxford: Blackwell. Counihan C (forthcoming) ‘Food activism and sensuous human activity in Cagliari, Italy’ in Edwards F, Gerritsen R and Wesser G (eds) Food, Senses and the City. Abingdon: Routledge. Dalmau M and Miró I (2010) Les Cooperatives Obreres de Sants. Barcelona: La Ciutat Invisible Edicions. Davies A (2019) Urban Food Sharing: Rules, Tools and Networks. Bristol: Policy Press. Edwards F (2011) ‘Small, slow and shared: Emerging social innovations in urban Australian foodscapes’, Australian Humanities Review, November: 115–134. Edwards F (2015) Gleaned, grown and gifted: The signifcance of social food economies in productive cities. Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Espelt R, Peña-López I, Losantos P, Rodríguez E, Martín T and Pons F (2015) ‘Mapping agro-food consumption groups in the city of Barcelona’, in Places of Possibility? Rural Societies in a Neoliberal World. Proceedings of the XXVI European Society for Rural Sociology Congress, Aberdeen, Scotland. Espelt R, Peña-López I and Vega N (2017) ‘Plataformas digitales: grupos y cooperativas de consumo versus La Colmena que dice sí, el caso de Barcelona’, Redes.com 15: 145–74. Espelt R (2018) Cooperatives de consum agroecològic de plataforma. El paper de les Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació en el consum cooperatiu de productes agroecològics. PhD thesis, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Open University of Catalonia) – https://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/664225#page=1. Espelt R, Peña-López I and Rodríguez E (2018) ‘Alternative economy or technopolitics? Activism in food consumers’ cooperatives’, CIRIEC-España, Revista de Economía Pública, Social y Cooperativa 93: 293–318. Espelt R, Peña-López I, Miralbell O, Martín T and Vega N (2019) ‘Impact of information and communication technologies in agroecological cooperativism in Catalonia’, Agricultural Economics 65: 59–66. Fernàndez A and Miró I (2016) Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona. Barcelona: La Ciutat Invisible. Fuster M (2016) ‘Cooperativismo de plataforma: remover la economía colaborativa para un futuro sostenible’, Nexe, Quaderns d’Autogestió i Economia Cooperativa 39. Barcelona: Federació de Cooperatives de Treball de Catalunya. Fuster M, Carballa Smichowski B, Smorto G, Espelt., Imperatore P, Rebordosa M, Rocas M, Rodríguez N, Senabre E and Ciurcina M (2017) Multidisciplinary Framework on Commons Collaborative Economy. DECODE (DEcentralised Citizens centralised Owned Data Ecosystem) project – https://www.decodeproject.eu/. García Janet, J (2002) Objectiu: mercat social. Revista Nexe 9. https://nexe.coop Goodman D, DuPuis M and Goodman M (2011) Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics. Abingdon: Routledge. Huerta A and Ponce E (2010) The Groups and Cooperatives of Ecological Consumption in Catalonia. Barcelona: Federació de Cooperatives de Consumidors i Usuaris de Catalunya. Illich I (1975) ‘Clinical damage, medical monopoly, the expropriation of health: Three dimensions of iatrogenic tort’, Journal of Medical Ethics 1: 78–80.

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Jarosz L (2008) ‘The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in metropolitan areas’, Journal of Rural Studies 24: 231–44. Jarvis H (2019) ‘Sharing, togetherness and intentional degrowth’, Progress in Human Geography 43(2): 256–75. Kallis G, Kostakis V, Lange S, Muraca B, Paulson S and Schmelzer M (2018) ‘Research on degrowth’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 291–316. Kerschner C, Wächter P, Nierling L and Ehlers M H (2018) ‘Degrowth and technology: Towards feasible, viable, appropriate and convivial imaginaries’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1619–36. Martín-Mayor A, Homs P and Flores-Pons G (2017) The Change of Scale: A Lever for the Sustainability of Agro-ecological Cooperativism? Barcelona: Roca and Galès Foundation. Miralbell O (2012) Social Networking Websites and Knowledge Sharing. Analysis of the Adoption and Use of the Members of the Professional Virtual Tourism Communities. Barcelona: UOC-IN3. OFN (2020) Food Unincorporated. Open Food Network. Accessed 4 January 2020 – https://www.openfoodnetwork.org/. OFN UK (2018) Open Invitation to All Food Assemblies! Open Food Network. Accessed 4 January 2020  –  https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/blog/open-invitation-to-allfood-assemblies/. RIPESS (2020) ‘What is the social solidarity economy’, RIPESS  –  Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social Solidarity Economy. Assessed 20 March 2020 – www.ripess.org/what-is-sse/what-is-social-solidarity-economy/?lang=en. Scholz T (2016) Platform Cooperativism. Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Schumacher E (1973) Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Sydney, NSW: Vintage. Sekulova F, Kallis G, Rodríguez-Labajos B and Schneider F (2013) ‘Degrowth: From theory to practice’, Journal of Cleaner Production 38: 1–6. Vetter A (2018) ‘The matrix of convivial technology  –  Assessing technologies for degrowth’, Journal of Cleaner Production 197 (Part 2): 1778–86. Wellman B (1997) ‘An electronic group is virtually a social network’ in Kiesler S (ed) Culture of the Internet. Mahwah (NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 179–205. WPR (2020) Barcelona Population 2020, 02–17. World Population Review. Accessed 31 March 2020 – worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/barcelona-population/. XES and SETEM (2015) Questionnaire for Evaluating the Criteria of the Social and Solidarity Economy Pam a Pam. Barcelona: XES and SETEM.

11 Institutionalising degrowth Exploring multilevel food governance Ferne Edwards, Sérgio Pedro and Sara Rocha

A global resurgence is underway calling for new principles, approaches and practices to provide a fair, safe and healthy food system for all. There is growing awareness that neither ‘business-as-usual’ nor ‘one-size-fts-all’ approaches are able to address inherent issues within the industrial food system. Instead, distributed, networked initiatives that reduce consumption, identify power inequalities, and promote values of social and environmental justice must be acknowledged and integrated within the food system (UNCTAD 2013; Wahl 2017). Urban food initiatives play an important role for degrowth transformation. Food-based activities have the ability to bring people – many who may be isolated, disadvantaged or marginalised – together, to take back control over food choice and supply (Donald and Blay-Palmer 2006). Actions for degrowth often begin at the grassroots level, grounded in everyday, just and sustainable alternatives. However, limited resources often result in actions having bounded geographical reach and lifespan (Sandover 2020). So too do formal efforts exist to address food insecurity and sustainability, as demonstrated by government and NGOs, among others, who set certifcation and labelling standards, support collaborative arrangements for policy, establish supply chain management interventions and raise concerns about codes of conduct (Vallejo and Hauselmann 2004). While top-down initiatives have benefts, providing political legitimacy, endurance through institutionalisation and policy legislation, they often lack the reach and transversality to fully understand, infuence and impact degrowth at the local level (Gaventa 2004). Multi-level governance (MLG) offers strategies to sustain degrowth efforts by re-distributing power and by uniting local stakeholders at the regional, national and international levels. This chapter explores MLG approaches to degrowth focusing on two urban food system projects. The Regional Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (ESAN-CPLP) and its campaign AlimentAção! promote sustainable local food initiatives in Portuguese municipalities through short food supply chains. The other project is EdiCitNet, an international network that uses ‘Living Labs’ as one of many strategies in which to support the uptake of inclusive, sustainable food practices in cities. ESAN-CPLP, a more mature organisation with similar goals, provides a complementary approach to EdiCitNet through which to

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analyse MLG approaches. Recognising that both initiatives are charting new territory, this chapter interrogates shared strategies of cross-sector platforms, equitable representation and the role of local government towards developing holistic food governance for degrowth.

The need for a food MLG approach The concept of MLG originated in the early 1990s and has since grown into an abundant and diverse feld. Daniell and Kay (2017, 6) defne MLG as: systems of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several territorial tiers, where authority is not only dispersed vertically between levels of administration but also horizontally across different sectors of interest and spheres of infuence, including non-government stakeholders, markets and civil society. Through stakeholder participation from the grassroots to global levels, MLG is one approach that can enable the infuence of alternatives for food degrowth at all levels, and their replicability and scalability to other governance levels. MLG requires disruptive breaks from traditional governance approaches to enable the distribution of power in knowledge creation and decision-making processes; to question assumptions of civil society as homogeneous and, thus, allow for diverse understandings and practices to emerge; and to re-conceptualise concepts of public and private spaces to allow new understandings of place and ownership to evolve (Domínguez Rubio and Fogué 2013). New knowledge and decision-making strategies must be employed to bring forward the voices of the often overlooked, excluded and marginalised within national, regional and global forums. MLG contributes to food for degrowth by supporting broader stakeholder engagement, integration and legitimation of policies and planning towards fostering resilient, just and sustainable food systems. MLG can draw on the many innovative, existant examples to contribute to more holistic policy and planning for societal well-being. As an institutional tool, MLG can support people to regain control over their food procurement by granting spaces of self-governance while enabling participation in decision-making at multiple scales. MLG can foster food sovereignty – a key strategy of degrowth – by recognising citizens as local as experts, to return ‘[t]he right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to defne their own food and agriculture systems’ (NISC 2007). Food sovereignty’s ethics of ecological production, egalitarianism and democratic control are shared within degrowth principles of reducing dependence on carbon-based food production and imports, promoting an egalitarian redistribution of wealth within and between countries (OECD 2008) and a qualitatively different idea of development, namely ‘postdevelopment’, made possible through strengthening democracy (Gudynas 2013).

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Principles of subsidiarity must be granted to enable food sovereignty, returning power to the local level where ‘decisions are to be taken as closely as possible to, and with the involvement of, the citizens affected by them’ (Wahl 2017). Subsidiarity allows for ‘locally grounded transformative innovation and widespread citizen participation … to co-create the transition to regenerative cultures in ways that foster health, diversity and local adaptation’ (ibid.). By adapting Ostrom’s (1990) principles of the commons to food systems, Pedro (2020) argues that the food system becomes a forum for decision-making between all participants, where local decision-making in ‘nested tiers’ is given preference in processes of co-governance, only scaling to broader levels if necessary. Cities are becoming key spaces for food system change, where diverse stakeholders meet across sectors and scales. Due to the impact of climate change on food systems, food policies are seeking a return to local production with less consumption, taking into account material, climatic and cultural contexts. Concepts of foodsheds, terroir and ‘city region food systems’ are being applied in policies with the aim of reducing food miles, packaging, waste, energy and carbon footprints. Many initiatives welcome a shift to a holistic degrowth economy that recognises diets linked to cultural values where collective identities, beliefs and traditions can be embraced. Direct, local relationships between producers and consumers can enhance social bonds, create jobs and develop a web of social and economic relations that is both good for eating and thinking (Kloppenburg et al. 1996). Examples of new institutional ‘spaces of deliberation’ that allow civil society, private stakeholders and the local state to meet include food policy councils, food hubs, food boards and food partnerships (Blay-Palmer et al. 2013; Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2019). Multi-stakeholder, urban food assemblages also exist that include ‘food policy assemblages’ (McFarlane 2009) representing ‘national and translocal food policy organisations’ (Sandover 2020); ‘food policy networks’ that link people and organisations acting on mutual concerns; and ‘local food policy groups’ that ‘are (horizontally) connecting to share knowledge and resources, or interacting (vertically) with other scales of food governance’ (Santos and Moragues-Faus 2019). So too are many scholar-activists promoting a ‘politics of possibility’ by challenging hegemonic logic (Gibson-Graham 2006) to recognise creative, locally embedded movements as forms of ‘alternative economic activism’ (Sandover 2020). This chapter explores how two international networks bring such stakeholders together to support the degrowth movement.

Research design Findings for this chapter draw on participatory action research methods applied by academics who bridge policy and praxis by conducting analysis of international food networks. Edwards led the governance work package for EdiCitNet, working across the consortium and all ten participating cities in the frst 18 months of the project. Here, she draws on key reports and experiences to refect on the network’s transition from concept to practice. Pedro and Rocha have been coordinators of

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the Civil Society Network for Food and Nutritional Security of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (REDSAN-CPLP) and of ReAlimentar: the Portuguese Network for Food Sovereignty and Food Nutrition Security since AlimentAção! began. Pedro participated in the construction of the campaign, in key moments of ESAN-CPLP’s agenda (2017–2019), and in conversations with members of the regional food council CONSAN-CPLP. The next section provides background on the two projects.

ESAN-CPLP and AlimentAção! ESAN-CPLP adopts a multi-level approach to implement the Food Security and Nutrition Strategy across nine Portuguese-speaking member countries, representing 250 million people across four continents, with populations within member countries varying greatly in development and income distribution (CPLP 2011). Prior to 2011, many member states had implemented national food and nutrition security policies with a top-down approach, resulting in inadequate policies to address structural causes of hunger and poverty (CPLP 2011). Recognising that hunger and poverty were not being eradicated, members instigated an institutional reorganisation to support the realisation of the human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition (Immink 2014). Inspired by the national food council of Brazil and the Committee on World Food Security, in 2011 the ESAN-CPLP was enacted as a political commitment to replicate a food MLG model in line with the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition in both national and local contexts of CPLP member states (Figure 11.1). ESAN-CPLP is a common reference point for CPLP’s member states to implement food and nutrition legislation at the national and local levels. Inspired by such developments and degrowth principles, AlimentAção!, which translates as ‘FoodAction!’, is a food relocalisation campaign created in 2017 to support Portugal’s political commitments as a signatory state of the regional strategy.

EdiCitNet EdiCitNet is a fve-year, European Commission funded project to establish an international ‘Edible Cities Network’. Established in 2018, the project seeks to support the uptake of ‘Edible City Solutions’, that is, community-based urban food initiatives across food systems with a focus on the circular economy and social inclusion. Edible City Solutions examples include a variety of urban agriculture initiatives, such as community and allotment gardens, beekeeping, indoor farming and food surplus redistribution programmes. EdiCitNet’s goals are to explore the wealth and diversity of existing Edible City Solutions, to build and share a common knowledge base, and to adapt, plan and implement them within specifc urban contexts. The EdiCitNet project involves a network of 12 cities in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. They include four ‘Front Runner Cities’ (Andernach, Rotterdam, Oslo and Havana) and eight ‘Follower Cities’ (Letchworth, San Feliu

Figure 11.1 The governance structure of ESAN-CPLP and its integration at the global level. Source: Pedro (2020).

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de Llobregat, Sempeter, Carthage, Lome, Montevideo, Berlin and Suzhou). Each site is characterised by different levels and types of Edible City Solutions. Front Runner Cities participate in Living Labs to provide a robust evidence base for effcacy and effectiveness of Edible City Solutions, while Follower Cities facilitate context-specifc transition pathways to integrate them within city masterplans. EdiCitNet enacts a MLG approach by working initially with municipalities, who form locally representative city teams to promote socially inclusive Edible City Solutions. Other multi-sector strategies include bringing stakeholders beyond the immediate city teams together to co-create Edible City Solutions experiences and possibilities in Living Lab workshops. MLG is evident in EdiCitNet seeking to integrate Edible City Solutions strategies into local policy, by promoting knowledge sharing across the cities within the project and by expanding the network to other cities. Through these actions, EdiCitNet endorses degrowth principles by promoting the circular use of urban resources and by proclaiming support to urban participatory processes. Shared strategies by both projects, towards developing holistic food governance for degrowth, are discussed next.

The creation of cross-sectorial platforms Both ESAN-CPLP and EdiCitNet have established new institutions to unite stakeholders across sectors towards food for degrowth, namely: ESAN-CPLP food councils and EdiCitNet city teams. Both networks sought to overcome fragmented and partial food policies experienced when food policy planning was delegated to a single department or ministry by establishing new institutions that recognise holistic food systems that consist of diverse, relational parts within a specifc context. ESAN-CPLP plans to establish food councils at regional, national and municipal levels in all member countries. Food councils are institutions that propose food system solutions at the territorial level while mobilising knowledge and participation from many stakeholders. Food councils emerged in North America in the 1980s to overcome silos in governmental departments and sectors in order to integrate greater food democracy and multidisciplinarity into local policies (BlayPalmer et al. 2013). Food councils function to serve as forums to discuss food; to encourage coordination between food system sectors; to issue recommendations that infuence and monitor public policy; and to uphold and respond to local needs within larger initiatives (Harper et al. 2009). A key task for ESAN-CPLP is to coordinate the implementation of local food policies decided at the regional level (top-down governance) and to integrate successful local experiences and stakeholders within regional food policy decision-making processes (bottom-up governance). The defnition of the regional strategy takes place through the regional food council; CONSAN-CPLP offers a space for roundtable debates to coordinate food security and nutrition policies between the CPLP’s stakeholders, such as regional guidelines for family farming (2017) (Figure 11.2).

Figure 11.2 Timeline of Food Councils prior to creation of CONSANP

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Following the ESAN-CPLP’s commitment to create food councils at the national and local levels outlined in Figure 11.1, the Portuguese National Food Council was established in 2019 to bring stakeholders together twice each year to discuss both the future of the national food system and how to improve national implementation of the rules and guidelines of the CPLP community. On the local level, several municipalities in Portugal are taking the lead in establishing local food councils. Many started as case studies in the AlimentAção! campaign and wished to extend their involvement. They were initially selected due to their successful local food and nutrition practices. Alternatively, EdiCitNet has developed ‘city teams’  –  representative bodies across government, community, business and academic sectors  –  to foster the uptake of urban agriculture projects by and for urban residents (Edwards et al. 2018). A key task for city teams is to involve socially marginalised communities and spaces within initiatives initially led by municipal councils. Like many other food policy assemblages, city teams seek to create an open, transdisciplinary, participatory and place-based community of practice, understood as ‘groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (Wenger et al. 2002). Still, in the project’s early phases, city teams seek to resemble small, closely-working, committed groups of 10–20 stakeholders who can respond to the needs and interests of their local community and share responsibilities and skills to achieve the goals of local Edible City Solutions. City teams support EdiCitNet objectives by creating a space for diverse individuals, decision-makers and organisations to meet, exchange and experiment with ideas to co-construct visions and strategies towards achieving edible futures (Edwards et al. 2019a).

Equitable representation for food governance Horizontal and participatory governance approaches strive to create equitable representation within local food decisions (Renting et al. 2012). Differential power relations between stakeholders are to be made transparent to obviate unequal representation and capacity of infuence between stakeholders. For example, the policy infuence of the private sector versus civil society is modifed by a system of quotas of participation. Both ESAN-CPLP and EdiCitNet strive to implement participatory approaches across stakeholders (Figure 11.3). Inspired by Portugal’s commitments made under ESAN-CPLP, AlimentAção! seeks to stimulate national debate around local food policies through public forums, focus groups and debate co-organised with municipalities, civil society, academic, government, the private sector and international organisations. Such events present national and international experiences of multistakeholder food governance in procurement, production and consumption, with an emphasis on collective and family-run short food supply chains. Topics for debate include how short food supply chains can contribute to promoting sustainable and healthy diets, relocalisation and degrowth by diminishing carbon footprints.

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Council departments and public instuons (2-4 reps)

Academia/ educaon (1-2 reps)

Media/ press (1-2 reps)

EdiCitNet

ECS related enterprises (2-3 reps)

CONSAN-CPLP

Governments (9 reps, 1 rep per member country)

Community groups or NGOs/ECS related networks (3-5 reps) Cizens/ acon groups (no legal form) (2-4 reps)

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Municipalies (2 reps)

Parliamentarians (2 reps)

Civil society (8 reps) Academia/ educaon (2 reps) Private sector (2 reps)

Legal advice (1-2 reps)

Figure 11.3 Representation of stakeholders in EdiCitNet city teams and CONSAN-CPLP

These events identify legal obstacles and policy opportunities to implement national and municipal food governance strategies to further the goals of the regional organisation. By making short food supply chains visible, AlimentAção! seeks to inspire policy makers and stakeholders to adopt policies supportive of sustainable, local food systems in line with degrowth goals. Decision-making for AlimentAção!’s campaign activities are coordinated by a range of top-level stakeholders with activities chosen according to their relevance to the regional agenda and the national legislative context. Given ESAN-CPLP’s priority for short food supply chains, emphasis is placed on institutional and legal training events that are aimed at national deputies and mayors, and being open to the public, encourage refection within municipal and civil society sectors. By choosing to hold inclusive events, AlimentAção! presents a learning experience by bringing to the table stakeholders who have weight in decision-making for food chains who are not regularly available or predisposed to engage in multistakeholder debates. These events allow for a ‘cutting through’ of traditional channels of communication where citizens, academia and private sectors can directly engage with government offcials to raise and expect answers on issues of concern.

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EdiCitNet also runs a variety of online and face-to-face events where collaboration underlies their approach. In EdiCitNet ‘co-creation’ is employed in urban city labs, a series of events that represent a ‘variety of local experimental projects of a participatory nature’ (Steen and van Bueren 2017, 22). Co-creation seeks to provide participants with equal stakes in the project by providing strategies to help diverse stakeholders collaboratively brainstorm, experiment and refect on possible applications towards achieving specifc shared goals.

Local government: a crucial node for MLG Cities are increasingly recognised as spaces of deliberation where municipalities can foster transitions to more sustainable and just food systems through holistic, place-based strategies (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). Mayors are becoming recognised as knowledge exchange leaders who are working in solidarity to boost mutual concerns to demand attention from higher government levels for social change, as demonstrated by both the Municipalist and Fearless Cities movements (Russell 2019). Previously often dismissed and underresourced, local governments are well placed to translate concerns from local stakeholders into food system planning. This recognition has fostered the development of the city networks, C40 and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, and is subscribed to in the New Urban Agenda. Local governments are key partners for AlimentAção! and EdiCitNet. Only with their support can local contexts be understood, can the capacity of citizens be harnessed to produce grounded and targeted new knowledge, and can transition pathways be identifed to integrate into policy to ensure longevity. Through the collection of case studies that exemplify a possible degrowth vision, the AlimentAção! campaign promotes exchange of knowledge and contributes to the awareness and capacity of municipalities, who later developed their own food governance initiatives.

Discussion: from principle to practice While MLG principles are sound in theory, their application is not straightforward as shown in our discussion of fve aspects and challenges as follows. Initial integration and operation of stakeholder communities A key issue encountered by ESAN-CPLP when establishing food councils was the diffculty of bridging and integrating, or going beyond, policy silos when some sectors were not open to debate. The enabling factor for ESAN-CPLP to overcome this barrier was its legal recognition as a regional strategy, which legitimised its activities. Hence, ESAN-CPLP instigated a top-level policy action to which all stakeholders could agree to. Another key obstacle was the need to carve out the new role and attributions of food councils, a barrier also for EdiCitNet, where emerging city teams can be

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unsure of their exact purpose and (cap)ability to act with municipal departments and other stakeholders. A dependency on council may occur if city team members do not feel they ‘own’ the Edible City Solutions and, if combined with loss of council support, can lead to project shortfalls (Edwards et al. 2019b). Indicators to pre-emptively identify risk factors that could lead to collapse, such as lack of representative community uptake, need to be implemented early, along with other supportive strategies to maintain commitment beyond the frst wave of enthusiasm. Representation must be premised on citizen’s interests and needs rather than implemented from above or prescribed in advance. High dependence on volunteers in food justice and degrowth initiatives heightens the need to make Edible City Solutions relevant, desired and realistic. The need for time Time is crucial for networks to establish processes of institutional autonomy, trust, common understanding and consensus. All food councils require substantial time to gather data and to reach consensus among stakeholders. For EdiCitNet’s city teams, iterative, cyclical processes are required to establish and build relationships and trust between stakeholders to work together on shared project aims (Edwards et al. 2019a). As city team goals change, so too will the composition of the city team, where MLG welcomes a fexible, adaptive community-building approach. Being realistic about the time necessary to implement change is important for preventing disillusionment and loss of stakeholder motivation and participation. Food system planning can take decades from identifying a problem, to defning goals and drafting a policy, to implementing a refexive, monitoring and evaluation process across sectors and levels. Examples of the time taken for well-known food policy achievements include 15 years for Rosario’s successful urban agroecology programme in Argentina and 27 years for Belo Horizonte’s acclaimed food security program in Brazil (Cabannes and Marocchino 2018). Factors disabling and enabling stakeholder power To enable equitable representation, institutions need to ensure that stakeholders are made welcome to participate in knowledge co-production and decisionmaking processes, and that all stakeholders’ values, interests and experiences are given equal weight in all phases. Choosing which stakeholders participate often relates to specifc goals, context and available resources. The starting point of collaborative work also infuences its success. Cabannes and Marocchino (2018) recognise the benefts of an iterative approach where stakeholders are brought in ‘to gradually connect the different dots (hunger, poverty, food waste, health, etc.) in a coherent, comprehensive and systemic way’ (2018, 31). Stakeholders’ ability to participate should be considered, recognising how time, budget and personal backgrounds, among familial and economic factors, can affect participation. ESAN-CPLP remedies the risk of disparity in stakeholder participation and

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power by employing the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition’s ‘PANTHER’ principles: participation, accountability, non-discrimination, transparency, human dignity, empowerment and rule of law (Immink 2014). Municipal and market barriers to application The case studies found that degrowth goals for subsidiarity do not always translate easily into municipal processes. Council’s dual roles of instigator, mediator and activist requires reallocating power along the food chain, where public offcers may be hindered by the need to balance the voices of the wider community from issues beyond food for degrowth, such as liberal arguments of intervention with transferral of state responsibility to market forces (Williamson 2004). There may also be incongruences between the degree and type of change desired by grassroots and municipal bodies, where degrowth advocates often desire radical transformative rather than transitional approaches ‘to go beyond pursuing or simply protesting against business-as-usual to actively constituting new meanings and practices’ (Asara et al. 2015, 379). Rather than fnd ways to prevent or assuage confict, we ask, can MLG instead transform traditional perspectives to help stakeholders ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway 2016) to accept confictual views and values as part of societal change? Autonomy in law Many argue that through institutionalisation, degrowth initiatives such as food councils and city teams can endure beyond short-term, unpredictable electoral cycles – a high risk for newly formed EdiCitNet city teams (Edwards et al. 2019b). By having legal autonomy, MLG food institutions can become independent from other governing bodies, where, for example, the Brazilian national food council has its own statute and budget. The stability and replicability of outcomes gained from co-capacitation and co-creation in AlimentAção! is partly made possible due to its legal framework (ESAN-CPLP). This additional level of integrated multilevel policy creates a common regional agenda to support long-term food system transition in CPLP member countries. This chapter demonstrates that for cities to integrate food for degrowth initiatives within law, a range of values, resources and approaches must frst be deliberated across stakeholders to develop desirable, realistic and resilient approaches. The experiences of the Regional Strategy and EdiCitNet demonstrate that this is but the start of a long journey. Key questions for further research include: What strategies can be employed in MLG to give value to urban agriculture and nutrition to reach, attract and maintain the commitment of diverse stakeholders? What fexible, adaptable and time-resilient strategies can be built into MLG to enable citizens to proactively engage? Who are ‘relevant’ stakeholders, and when should they participate to support food for degrowth transitions?

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Conclusion Many food system policies remain multifaceted but fragmented leading to a profusion of partial policies with limited perspective or reach. To achieve a comprehensive degrowth food system, new governance approaches are required to unite and sustain dispersed and diverse food for degrowth initiatives. MLG offers one such approach. While we recognise that much MLG literature is guilty of being abstract and weakly grounded in local action, this chapter demonstrates that MLG can be applied to enable holistic, inclusive and integrated food systems in line with a degrowth vision. Both networks seek to transcend knowledge silos and institutional boundaries while articulating local, national and global levels in policy making, enabling work across cultures. Together they employ MLG strategies involving new cross-sectorial institutions, equitable representation and include councils as leaders to legitimise essential elements for integrating – and thus sustaining – food for degrowth initiatives into policy. While the two cases studied here are young, their initial forays into this territory highlight emerging tensions and raise new questions for future practice and research where more detailed case studies are required to explain the nuanced development of democratic, inclusive and sustainable degrowth solutions.

References Asara V, Otero I, Demaria F and Corbera E (2015) ‘Socially sustainable degrowth as a social–ecological transformation: Repoliticizing sustainability’, Sustainability Science 10 (3): 375–84. Blay-Palmer A, Landman K, Knezevic I and Hayhurst R (2013) ‘Constructing resilient, transformative communities through sustainable “food hubs”’, Local Environment 18 (5): 521–28. Cabannes Y and Marocchino C (2018) ‘Introduction: Food challenges faced by an urbanising world’ in Cabannes Y and Marocchino C (eds) Integrating Food into Urban Planning. London: UCL Press and Rome: FAO. CPLP (2011) Estratégia de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional ESAN-CPLP. Enquadramento. Accessed 8 June 2020  –  https://www.cplp.org/Admin/Public/Download.aspx?fle=Fi les%2FFiler%2Fcplp%2FEstrategia%2FI-_Enquadramento_fnal.pdf. Daniell K A and Kay A (eds) (2017) Multi-level Governance: Conceptual Challenges and Case Studies from Australia. Canberra, ACT: ANU Press and ANZSOG. Domínguez Rubio F and Fogué U (2013) ‘Technifying public space and publicizing infrastructures: Exploring new urban political ecologies through the square of General Vara Del Rel’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(3): 1035–52. Donald B and Blay-Palmer A (2006) ‘The urban creative-food economy: Producing food for the urban elite or social inclusion opportunity?’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 38 (10): 1901–20. Edwards F, Pachova N, Reddy S, Wachtel T, Säumel I and Kosack L (2018) Deliverable D1.1: EdiCitNet Governance Approach and Guidelines Report, Edible Cities Network  –  Integrating Edible City Solutions for social, resilient and sustainably productive Cities, Grant Agreement 776665, RMIT Europe, Barcelona, December.

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Edwards F, Pachova N, Kosack L, Kroeger I, Säumel I, Wachtel T and Reddy S (2019a) Deliverable D1.2 – Local Working Groups Established, Edible Cities Network – Integrating Edible City Solutions for social, resilient and sustainably productive Cities, Grant Agreement 776665, RMIT Europe, Barcelona, 31 March 2019. Edwards F, Pachova N, Reddy S, Wachtel T and Säumel I (2019b) Milestone 1: First Offcial Meetings of EdiCitNet City Teams, Edible Cities Network – Integrating Edible City Solutions for social, resilient and sustainably productive Cities, Grant Agreement: 776665, RMIT Europe, Barcelona, March. Gaventa J (2004) ‘Towards participatory local governance: Assessing the transformative possibilities’ in Hickey S and Mohan G (eds) Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation. London: Zed Books: 25–41. Gibson-Graham J K (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gudynas E (2013) ‘Transitions to post-extractivism’ in M Lang and D Mokrani (eds) Beyond Development: Alternatives from Latin America. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute – https://www.tni.org/en/publication/beyond-development. Haraway D (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harper A, Shattuck A, Holt-Giménez E, Alkon A and Lambrick F (2009) Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned. Development Report No. 21, Institute for Food and Development Policy: 1–63. Immink M (2014) Integrating the Right to Adequate Food in National Food and Nutrition Security Policies and Programmes. Practical Approaches to Policy and Programme Analysis. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Kloppenburg J, Hendrickson J and Stevenson G W (1996) ‘Coming into the foodshed’, Agriculture and Human Values 13: 33–42. McFarlane C (2009) ‘Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements’, Geoforum 40, 561–67. Moragues-Faus A and Morgan K (2015) ‘Reframing the foodscape: The emergent world of urban food policy’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 47: 1558–73. Moragues-Faus A and Sonnino R (2019) ‘Re-assembling sustainable food cities: An exploration of translocal governance and its multiple agencies’, Urban Studies 56: 778–94. Nyéléni International Steering Committee (NISC) (2007) Nyéléni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty, Sélingué, Mali February 23–27. Accessed 8 June 2020 – https://nyeleni.org/ DOWNLOADS/Nyelni_EN.pdf. OECD (2008) The Paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the Accra agenda for action. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Accessed 8 June 2020 – https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.pdf. Ostrom E (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pedro S (2020) ‘Food governance: Multistakeholder and multilevel food councils’ in Leal W (ed.) Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Vol 2. Zero Hunger. New York: Springer: 1–9. Renting H, Schermer M and Rossi A (2012) ‘Building food democracy: Exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship’, International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19 (3): 289–307. Russell B (2019) ‘Beyond the local trap: New municipalism and the rise of the fearless cities’, Antipode 51 (3): 989–1010.

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Sandover R (2020) ‘Participatory food cities: Scholar activism and the co-production of food knowledge’, Sustainability 12, 3548. doi:10.3390/su12093548. Santos R and Moragues-Faus A (2019) ‘Towards a trans-local food governance: Exploring the transformative capacity of food policy assemblages in the US and UK’, Geoforum 98: 75–87. Steen K and van Bueren E (2017) The defning characteristics of urban living labs’, Technology Innovation Management Review 1(1): 19–25. UNCTAD (2013) ‘Wake up before it is too late’, Trade and Environment Review, UNCTAD/DITC/TED, United Nations Publications. Vallejo N and Hauselmann P (2004) Governance and Multistakeholder Processes. Winnipeg, MB: International Institute for Sustainable Development. Accessed 8 June 2020 – https ://www.iisd.org/pdf/2004/sci_governance.pdf. Wahl D C (2017) ‘Redesigning agriculture for food sovereignty and subsidiarity’, Medium. Accessed 8 June 2020 – https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/redesigning-agriculturefor-food-sovereignty-and-subsidiarity-ebf7e5f03662. Wenger E, Dermott R and Snyder W M (2002) Cultivating Communities of Practice. Brighton: Harvard Business Review Press. Williamson J (2004) ‘The strange history of the Washington consensus’, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 27 (2): 195–206.

Part 4

Narratives: Degrowth contexts and futures

12 Recycling old ideals? A utopian reading of ‘circular’ food imaginaries Deborah Lambert

Degrowth and the circular economy have both emerged recently as scientifc felds but share a common lineage in the feld of ecological economics, in particular in the work of the bio-economist Georgescu-Roegen (Bonaiuti 2015; Korhonen et al. 2018). While the circular economy feld has inherited concerns about ‘the biophysical dimensions of the growth-degrowth debate’, concerns for ‘the social, political and cultural dimension of the issue’ inspired the degrowth movement (Gomiero 2018, 1826). This chapter puts the two felds into a conversation with one another through the notion of utopia. I use the concept of utopia to critically interrogate certain popular mainstream and bottom-up imaginaries of circular urban food systems, specifcally how they envision a future beyond growth. I take a cue from Ruth Levitas, who presents economic growth as a ‘utopian trope’ (2013) whereas degrowth theorists Kallis and March (2015) suggest looking at degrowth as a subversive utopia. This chapter starts by pinpointing the place of food in classic utopian fctions and proposes an analytical framework for discussion. Subsequently, I show that the dominant circular economy narrative in consultancy circles adopts some key utopian features but lacks the one crucial subversive function: to act as a radical critique of the established order – in the way that degrowth does. Much of the expanding circular economy narrative works to convey a set of ‘utopian’ imaginaries as some form of reassuring technology-driven future, but does not require a major overhaul of the growth-oriented contemporary order. The last section draws on feldwork conducted in Brussels (Belgium) to assess whether emergent bottom-up circular food practices embrace more radical utopian characteristics. I conclude that only by adopting a more subversive radical function could a circular economy imaginary even begin to challenge the dominant growth paradigm.

Food and degrowth in key utopian works Thomas More coined the term ‘utopia’ from the Greek eutopia which means ‘good place’ and outopia which means ‘nowhere’. Published in 1516, Utopia portrays a blissful island. With a set of discursive conventions, this work was the frst of its kind and started a specifc literary genre even though there were precedents such as Plato’s Republic, writings on the Cockaigne and, later, certain travel literature.

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While utopia is a literary genre, utopian ideals have been materialised and the notion of utopia extended to embrace practical manifestations as in ‘concrete utopias’ (Latouche 2009, 31–66) such as Kraftwerk1, a community housing cooperative in Zurich developed partly on an urban anti-capitalist utopia ‘bolo’bolo’ envisaged by Hans Widmer (2018). Utopia is an imaginative exercise offering alternative views of the world. Like imaginaries, utopia encompasses a reassuring vision of the future. Imaginaries or ideologies (Jessop 2012) simplify and provide a singular interpretation of the world (Jessop 2010). This simplifed narrative is used to make sense of a world too complex to be understood. Through processes of variation, selection and retention certain meanings are solidifed (ibid.). In turn, these meanings become self-evident and ‘inform and shape state projects and hegemonic visions’ (Jessop 2010, 24). Contesting social forces try to create new imaginaries to impact and disrupt hegemonic imaginaries. Following Cornelius Castoriadis, the notion of imaginary emerged in degrowth literature, for instance to study new imaginaries in periods of crisis (Varvarousis 2019). Instead, in this chapter I refer to Paul Ricoeur (1986) who proposes a complementary relation between ideology and utopia. For him, a social imaginary is created by the tension between an ideology’s integrative function and a utopia’s subvertive function ‘as both confrmation and contestation of the present situation’ (ibid., 3). In this approach, there is no hegemonic ideological imaginary on one side (growth) and contesting utopian one on the other (degrowth). Rather, social imaginaries are made of a combination of both. Food, due to its primordial function, is an entry point into utopia par excellence. Emblematic of prevalent modes of production, distribution and consumption, food exhibits a myriad of characteristics from a community’s organisation to its rural–urban relations (Sargent 2015). I examine food in three utopian works in relation to degrowth debates: Thomas More’s Utopia (frst published in Latin in 1516) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), which was written as a response to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888).

Food in News from Nowhere and Utopia Often seen as a precursor of degrowth thinking (Latouche 2016), William Morris imagines a network of small, self-sustaining and self-governing communes, akin to the ‘localized self-suffcient communities’ of degrowth proponents (Kallis and March 2015). The territory is completely deurbanised; England has become a garden. Urban dwellers and farmers have become one and the same. The vision of Morris (2004, 282) refects an ideal of sobriety: ‘there was no excess either of quantity or of gourmandise; everything was simple’. The use of the land is mixed with forest and pastures ‘not so wasteful as forcing-grounds for fruit out of season’ and not covered with ‘factories for making things that nobody wants’ (ibid., 228). In Utopia, a two-year compulsory country service enables every inhabitant to learn about agriculture. They grow vine plants, fruit and vegetables and compete for the best garden (More 2018), pointing to the presence of nature in the city

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and accessibility of green areas for all (Słodczyk 2016). A communal food distribution system ensures enough food to meet all needs (Eden 2006, 192). While the notion of abundance is important, inhabitants are temperate and reasonable by education. Utopia is a closed space economy ‘perpetuating a happy stationary state’ (Harvey 2000, 160); producing just enough allows inhabitants to cultivate their minds. Similarly, in News from Nowhere overconsumption is addressed by stopping unnecessary production. While specifc contents of utopias have been described as ‘historically variable’ (Levitas 2013, 4), Jean Servier (1967) has shown some continuities. First, agriculture is central and agricultural work valued, mirroring degrowth calls for ‘a rural, low-input, self-suffcient society’ (Gomiero 2018, 1825). Second, foodrelated activities such as gardening, harvesting and cooking are collective and rewarding, as are degrowth calls for reducing working hours and introducing work sharing and communal activities (Sekulova 2014). Third, food tends to be simple and frugal, equally important for degrowth, as in ‘frugal abundance’ (Latouche 2009, cited in Demaria et al. 2019) and ‘frugal society’ (Gomiero 2018).

Food in Looking Backward In Looking Backward, Bellamy (2007) barely mentions farmers and farming. Cooking is outsourced. Dinners are centralised in public establishments, but meals are not shared. Bellamy anticipates a ‘convenience-food complex’ with ‘labour-saving gadgetry, home delivery, and public restaurants’ (Belasco 2006, 109). New technological inventions simplify people’s life, including housekeeping. The narrator compares the state warehouse to: a gigantic mill, into the hopper of which goods are being constantly poured by the train-load and ship-load, to issue at the other end in packages of pounds and ounces, yards and inches, pints and gallons, corresponding to the infnitely complex personal needs of half a million people. (Bellamy 2007, 106) Bellamy’s fction illustrates a technocratic and industrial vision emblematic of an urban utopia enhanced by and modelled on new tools of communication and transport. These ‘techno-utopias’ started to proliferate in the nineteenth century when ‘belief in technology as the key to social and economic advancement became central in industrialising societies’ visions of progress’ (Yar 2014, 11). Production and distribution have been nationalised and rationalised with a ‘centralised socialist management’ (Hall 1996, 91). In the same vein, More’s blueprint in Utopia presents very strict organisation. Everything is calculated and planned. Social life is strictly and spatially ordered. In contrast, News from Nowhere, emblematic of nineteenth-century social utopias, envisions an economy of reciprocity, mutual aid and suffciency, a society of ‘pure communism’ (Morris 2004, 288). There is no state or institutions. The parliament building has been turned into a ‘storage place for manure’ and a market

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‘where they set out cabbages and turnips and such things, along with beer and the rougher kind of wine’ (ibid., 142, 146).

The utopian imaginary While differing in social and political organisation, the three works are egalitarian utopias. Private property is understood as the source of social issues such as poverty, social class division and crime. They imagine, instead, a society based on social harmony, stability and cooperation. They foresee that common good can eradicate social barriers (Servier 1967, 175), refecting expanding debates on commoning (Schneider et al. 2010; D’Alisa et al. 2015). In short, the ‘disruptive social forces of money, private property, wage labour, exploitation, internal commodity exchange, capital accumulation and market process’ are eradicated (Harvey 2000, 160). These three utopian fctions illustrate what makes utopia a reconstruction of society. First, utopian imaginaries come from the agony of society, revealing its failures (Servier 1967). Second, utopian discourse seizes and neutralises a fundamental contradiction with the utopian fgure arising through a differentiation exercise (Marin 1973, 326–29). Third, utopia is a reassuring vision and exclusive organisation of the future (Servier 1967, 23, 258). Fourth, utopia is a work of imagination (Harvey 2000; Ricoeur 1986; Servier 1967), ‘an imaginary reconstruction of society’ as Ruth Levitas puts it (2013). This imaginative capacity frees us from the constraints that normally incapacitate us (Levitas 1990) in conditions of confict. Fifth, utopia is a critique of prevailing ideology. While plural in form, content and intention, a utopian unity is found through its criticising function (Ricoeur 1986). Utopia confronts an established order acting as a negative of the contemporary social-historical society. Utopia criticises the dominant ideology and questions power (Marin 1973; Ricoeur 1986). Moreover, utopias reconstruct society (Marin 1973; Levitas 2013). These fve features or functions – exposing, differentiating, reassuring, imagining and criticising – make utopia. The next section uses these fve dimensions to analyse ways in which different functions of utopia are conveyed in mainstream circular economy narratives.

A circular imaginary: between utopia and ideology According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), a circular economy carries a ‘promise of prosperity’ (EMF 2017, 7) where ‘food production improves rather than degrades the environment’ (EMF 2019b, 18). Global corporations and consultancy frms anticipate that a circular economy is revolutionary, ‘capable of providing enough for all forever’ (Lacy and Rutqvist 2015, ix). While the paradigm of a circular economy is explored using various defnitions and understandings (Kirchheer et al. 2017; Korhonen et al. 2018), EMF’s voice in the circular economy debate has been highly infuential due to multiple partnerships with corporate actors, international institutions and universities (Valenzuela and Böhm 2017).

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Since its creation in 2010, EMF has become a key infuencer in discussions on the circular economy, notably at the level of the European Union (Ntsonde and Aggeri 2019; Giampetro 2019). Defnitions and frameworks of circular economy by EMF have been widely applied in academia, such as in Merli et al. (2018) and Elia et al. (2017). The broad adoption and familiarity of EMF’s discourses prompted me to use their research and communication materials for sketching a ‘mainstream circular economy narrative’ in this discussion. First, I screened 20 reports published by the foundation, then eliminated irrelevant country and sector-specifc reports to leave seven, published between 2012 and 2019. They cover various topics from digital development to business and investment opportunities. While only one specifcally addresses urban food systems, other reports include food or agriculture as case studies or vignettes. In addition, I screened communication material such as resources for schools and colleges, and videos featuring Ellen MacArthur. First, the circular economy narrative exposes the failure of the current food system. According to recent EMF publications, current linear agro-food systems are troubled, wasteful, polluting and deeply harmful to natural systems and to people’s health. EMF uses adjectives of alarm such as ‘depreciation’, ‘degradation’, ‘contamination’, ‘toxic’ and ‘catastrophic’. The linear model ‘is no longer ft’, is ‘ripe for disruption’ (EMF 2019a) and has reached a change ‘turning point’ (EMF 2012, 14). Second, the circular economy narrative seizes impending scarcity as a fundamental contradiction: ‘humanity now consumes more than the productivity of Earth’s ecosystems can provide sustainably’ (EMF 2012, 17). From this contradiction, a differentiation central to the EMF discourse arises: ‘the concept of the circular economy is grounded in the study of non-linear systems’ (EMF n.d.). The narrative is built ‘by contrasting the linear to the circular setup’ (EMF 2012, 30) and the circular economy is conceptualised as a ‘shift from a degrading model to one that rebuilds’ (EMF 2019a, 26). Third, circular economy discourses provide a confdent vision of the future. In these ‘potent and reassuring discourses of a sustainable future’ writes Hobson (2016, 90), the circular city is modelled after natural ecosystems and, hence, will be regenerative and resilient. As a result, the city will become a better place to live: food will be better, healthier and cheaper. More importantly, a circular economy promises to ‘strengthen rural/urban links by bringing farmers and consumers closer, as consumers buy, order, or maybe even harvest fresh food at local farms’ (EMF 2015a, 74). Consequently, urban dwellers will feel reconnected with the food system, improving the social fabric. Fourth, the circular economy works on the imagination. ‘What if packaging was so nontoxic it could dissolve in water and we could ultimately drink it?’ asked Ellen MacArthur in a TED conference (2015). At her foundation summit she iterated that ‘painting that picture is vital’ (MacArthur 2018). Circular economy promotors have to convey a representation of the circular economy to describe how it will look. In a report written with the World Economic Forum, EMF (2016, 52) asks readers to:

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Deborah Lambert Imagine a world in which agricultural producers … will meet the increasing global demand for food without having to transform more ecosystems to farmland. Imagine local farmers being able to reduce pesticide, fertiliser and water use to regenerate their land, while at the same time producing more fresh produce. Imagine the world’s oceans rebuilding their richness of fsh and other living creatures.

In parallel, emphasis is placed on imagining an all-powerful science where technological development enables an accelerated transition to a better model. The circular economy is ‘the technical dream of the perfect circle achieved via perfect recovery’ (Gregson et al. 2015, 235). The digital revolution is a core element of the dominant circular economy narrative: algorithms, connected sensors, ubiquitous sensing, space technology, intelligent assets, drones, blockchains, nanoscale devices and digital solutions enable the transition. Some visions echo Bellamy’s techno-utopia: ‘Imagine a world where your intelligent refrigerator detects you are running low on eggs and automatically orders them from Amazon with expedited drone shipping’ (EMF 2016, 66). According to Jean Servier, urban utopias and sciences are closely related because both illusions derive from human desires. In our technical societies utopian desires hide in scientifc promises of a better world (Servier 1967, 365–72). In contrast, degrowth advocates for appropriate and convivial technology, so technology can be taken up by people to ft their needs and preserve their autonomy (Gomiero 2018). Lastly, I and degrowth advocates challenge the position of the mainstream circular economy narrative, which appears to be installed within the dominant growth paradigm (Schmelzer 2016) where ‘economic growth is good, imperative, essentially limitless, and the principal remedy for a litany of social problems’ (Dale 2012). Instead of proposing an alternative to growth discourses, the circular economy offers to ‘redefne growth, focusing on positive society-wide benefts’ (EMF 2019a, 22). In its various reports, the EMF contemplates a new kind of growth that is supposedly smarter and sustainable. In line with ecological modernisation discourses (Hobson and Lynch 2016), the circular economy presents the ecological revolution as a lever of growth. EMF (2015b, 4) considers the circular economy a solution to supersede the linear system’s limits to growth, even speculating on ‘exponential growth’. All actors from the food sector are expected to beneft: ‘from producers and brands to processors and retailers, businesses across the food value chain can tap into high-growth sectors’ thus ‘driving new revenue streams’ (EMF 2019a, 10–12). As such ‘the circular model of growth’ (George et al. 2015) appears to reconfgure and perpetuate, rather than contest, the present growth paradigm. Following Ricoeur (1986), this analysis shows tensions in the circularity imaginary between integration and subversion, confrmation and contestation. In reconstructing society, the circular economy narrative starts by denouncing failures of a linear system. The utopian form of circularity neutralises the opposition between the fnitude of resources and expansion of the economy, proposing

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a third term of resolution through ‘the opportunity to decouple economic growth from virgin resource inputs’ (EMF 2015b, 16). Thanks to the ‘myth of decoupling’ (Fletcher and Rammelt 2017), the circular city offers a reassuring vision of a future where both sustainability and growth can be attained due to technological innovation. The circular city restates the utopian ideal as an urban–rural synthesis through collaboration and increased connections, for instance by rewarding farmers and responding to farmers’ needs. Regenerative agriculture improves their lives. The cycle is closed with ‘by-products from food eaten in cities into organic fertilisers for peri-urban farmers to use’ (EMF 2019a, 25). On one hand, the city and its hinterland are reconnected. On the other hand, with urban agriculture, the city becomes a food supplier increasing self-suffciency. Gardens are integrated within the urban landscape and inhabitants reconnect to food systems. Yet, they are mostly seen as consumers with needs to be satisfed; they adopt healthier diets and reduce food waste thanks to food designers and marketers. Following the argument of Armand Mattelart (2000, 321) that techno-utopias have dramatically supported elites in power since the 1960s, the circular economy represents a convergence between discourses led by powerful actors and a focus on technological progress to address environmental and economic challenges alike (Allwood 2014). As such, the circular economy imaginary is radically opposed to central tenets of degrowth thinking. Degrowth is a ‘sustained critic or resistance’ to growth, directly and radically responding to the ideology of growth by calling for a ‘decolonisation of the imaginary dismantling the ideological primacy of growth-based development’ in ‘an attempt to deconstruct and undo in the West a Western imaginary’ (Demaria et al. 2019, based on Latouche 2009, 432, 441). As such, degrowth plays a subversive function vis-à-vis the growth ideology within the dominant capitalist imaginary. In the next section, I use these same fve dimensions of utopia to critically analyse the visions and motivations of contemporary urban food practices in order to detect whether bottom-up intiatives adopt more radical imaginaries.

Circular imaginaries in Brussels Following Ruth Levitas’s invitation to explore utopian aspects even ‘where there is no fgurative representation of an alternative world’ (2013, 5), I studied three food projects in the city of Brussels (Belgium). Too Good to Go (TGTG) is a digital application that connects retailers and consumers to recover unsold food. First created in Denmark in 2016 and launched in Belgium in 2018, TGTG operated in 12 European countries in 2019. Building Integrated Greenhouse (BiGH) is an urban aquaponic farm installed on the rooftop of a historical slaughterhouse in Brussels. The cooperative supermarket Beescoop opened in 2016, inspired by the famous Park Slope (New York) founded in 1973. Although Beescoop does not self-defne as circular, it is a Brussels Capital Region fagship project. I conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with people involved in foodrelated practices, one day of feldwork with an employee of one company and

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participated, as a member, in several meetings and general assemblies of another project. I am grateful that Alexandre Orban of the City of Making project invited me to participate when the founder of BiGH Steven Beckers was interviewed. I attended various meetings and presentations organised by regional institutions and conducted fve interviews with food experts and regional institutions. All quotes not otherwise attributed in the following sections derive from these anonymous interviews (translated by me). Too Good to Go Too Good to Go (TGTG) exposes the huge volume of food waste and its impact: ‘one of the worst scourges for carbon footprint[s]’. The contradiction is the wastage of perfectly edible food when some people struggle to access enough nutritious food. As one interviewed employee explained, ‘completely safe, fresh food is thrown away while it could be perfectly edible’. For early investor and CEO of the company Mette Lykke (2017): ‘not only is this social impact wise, a really, really good cause … it’s also a concept where there is a great business model and it’s a win-win model for everyone’. However, the differentiation exercise in Brussels was not singular: TGTG sees itself as additional yet working alongside pre-existing foodbanks. In Brussels, there is a long-standing network of social organisations and local authorities distributing food packages embedded in networks of social restaurants and solidarity groceries. TGTG is very cautious not to compete with food banks and it is premature to evaluate its impact on these gift economy and redistribution systems. While conducting feld work with TGTG, I observed a new profle being established for an organic supermarket that was donating its surplus to a group of students. In the salesman’s words ‘I’ve kind of stolen the thing, but it will push students to download the [TGTG] app’. Importantly, statistics gathered by TGTG in Brussels show that people using the app are ‘not the most deprived’ – ‘it’s not the student we imagine’ but ‘people who really want to fght against food waste’ concentrated in ‘trendy neighborhoods’. For some experts, TGTG is merely a voucher app. Shops and restaurants use it to promote their products and recruit new customers. TGTG’s vision refects the greater ambition of reducing food waste on a global scale. They want ‘to become the authority for all matters concerning food waste’ and ‘reduce food waste within each link of the supply chain’. TGTG conveys a reassuring message where it has had concrete impacts on legislation and, ultimately, on food waste, thanks to ‘incredible support from some politics, food industry as well as mass distribution’. In their imaginaries employees become waste-warriors, consumers become wastesavers and food waste becomes magic boxes. Yet, one interviewee acknowledged that ‘there are things that we can never avoid, there will always be food waste’. However, TGTG does not unsettle a business model dependent on overproduction of food. Within the growth paradigm, TGTG ingrains growth by focusing solely on expansion: ‘we want to spend more to do as much as possible, well, to save as much food as possible’ and ‘to hire more people, to grow and develop’. The parent

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company in Denmark relies on regular capital raising to pay for all the organisational costs whereas the country activity only covers the app’s operational costs. Building Integrated Greenhouse BiGH exposes an urban food system reliant on ‘importing anything and everything’. Its founder referred to consulting in China: There is no way to distribute fresh food in city centers, where farmers in their apartments twiddle their thumbs and where all lands around are polluted, I felt we needed a solution. The contradiction at play is the remoteness between places of production and consumption. BiGH’s relocalised production is fresh food in contrast to commercial fsh, which takes several days to be marketed. BiGH differentiates itself as unique: ‘a world frst, combining aquaponic, on a rooftop, synergies with buildings, water drilling, fridges heat recovery, in addition to the size’. BiGH highlights its effciency: ‘all the farm here functioned with less than 20m3 (of water) per day, you have to know that this is several hundreds times less than the equivalent (in mainstream fsh production)’. In BiGH’s vision of the future, a network of urban farms increases urban food production, decreases food prices and enables the regeneration of neighbourhoods to ‘bring back life, bring back work, bring back local production, bring back culture’. The founder explained that: It’s nice to participate in a project that is an urban transformation, for me as an architect it’s one of the main objectives. Cultivating fshes and tomatoes is fun but it has to be in synergy with the building itself and with the neighbourhood. Like TGTG, BiGH mainly conforms with the existing economic model: ‘if we can’t do business with ecology then I don’t see how we’ll be doing large scale ecology’. It was set up ‘with the help of fnancers to develop urban aquaponic farms on a large scale and, if possible, at the international level, one day’. To export their model, BiGH needs to prove proftability so ‘the idea today is to grow at once and bring a large group into the company’. The founder explains that they would need at least three farms to pay all employees. Yet, besides a team of specialists, BiGH relies strongly on subsidised jobs for picking and packaging tasks. It has two social partners, an adapted work organisation and a professional reintegration organisation. BiGH considers its relations with social organisations as core activities. However, its export model seems at odds with this setup. Beescoop Beescoop denounces the lack of access to good and cheap food and the urban social division in Brussels. It differentiates itself in terms of governance and

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ownership. The supermarket is owned by its co-operators who manage day-today activities and meet in general assemblies to discuss strategic aspects every three months. In its vision of a reassuring future, Beescoop explores new ways of governance. One of its members said that the ‘general assembly is the place where people can take power’. Beescoop succeeds to ‘network, make movements and be in solidarity with other small initiatives’. The supermarket ‘is a means rather than an end’ to enable a broader societal change. In its imaginative exercise the project is ‘opening up food’s economic frontier’ but, even if they did not want ‘to recreate a frontier between rich and poor and between co-operators and non-cooperators’, they are ‘not yet there’. In its subversive potential, Beescoop’s model stands on ideals of mutual aid and reciprocity. It questions wage labour and competition as an aspect of being autocritical: ‘What is Bees? What is its societal role?’ It attempts ‘to move towards self-governance’ and ‘allow co-operators re-appropriation’ but proftability and solvency are important. On opening the shop on Sundays, one of the founders explains, ‘Bees needs to be opened because we are an alternative, because we are young, and we still need cash to show that alternatives do exist’. These three projects focus on different issues. Each exposes a specifc systemic confict: food waste, ineffciency and remoteness of production, and inequality of access to food. From each confict and its related contradiction arises a specifc utopian image: a proft-oriented new technology frm, a perfectly closed-loop urban farm and a self-managed co-owned supermarket. Each presents a different reassuring future: a win-win version offering food, sense-making and proft, a network of farms regenerating neighbourhoods and a co-constructed model of governance. However, their vision – their ‘imaginary reconstruction’ (Levitas 2013) – is quite different: expanding as much as possible, exporting a model farm internationally and a solidarity movement breaking down social and spatial divisions. Looking into their subversive potential reveals further differences. BiGH and TGTG play out an integrative function for the growth ideology. Only Beescoop restates some of the utopian ideals by challenging imaginaries of ownership, competition and wage labour as ideals for its future.

Concluding remarks What has this reading of the circular economy from a utopian perspective shown? The utopia of circularity works to some extent as ‘an imaginary reconstruction of the society’ (Levitas 2013) and contains distinctive utopian images, such as the closed-loop economy and the self-suffcient city. However, despite adopting some utopian characteristics, the circular economy is not subversive. It does not criticise the dominant ideology nor question power. As such, represented here by the omnipresent EMF, the circular narrative may be better understood as a new economic imaginary, a stabilising narrative supporting market-based solutions (Keblowski et al. 2020). It is tempting to see the circular economy imaginary, following Jessop (2010), as a ‘post-neo-liberal economic imaginary’ within

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a ‘Green New Deal’ (24). Yet, Arnsperger and Bourg (2016) warn of the risk that industrial and fnancial capitalism render harmless the ecological critique embodied within a circular economy imaginary. In their view, societies need to reduce activities, consuming and producing less, to reach a steady-state economy and what they call an ‘authentically circular economy’: the closest to degrowth the more truly circular. Degrowth has been presented as an alternative to circular economy (Prendeville and Sherry 2014) but, following Arnsperger and Bourg (2016), circular economy could be interpreted, instead, as a transition towards a degrowth model (Ghisellini et al. 2016). Circular economy and degrowth could complement each other (Pin and Hutao 2007; Charonis 2012; Schröder et al. 2019). For example, degrowth could beneft from the circular economy approach, which includes input-output analysis and other quantitative methods (Weis and Cattaneo 2017). The Brussels cases engage with local practices of circular economy and illustrate the tensions within the circular economy imaginary between integration and subversion. On one hand, these urban experiments are, in different degrees, captured by the hegemonic growth ideology. On the other hand, they allow more utopian imaginaries to materialise. The three organisations studied have different imaginaries of social transformation and, in turn, different practices (Schmid 2018). TGTG and BiGH position themselves within a capitalist order to further their circularity objective aligned with a green growth imaginary. In contrast, Beescoop more strongly challenges market-oriented practices and the dominant economic order by materialising utopian and even degrowth imaginaries through alternative ownership, voluntary work and participatory governance. As such, Beescoop constructs a counter-narrative broadening the utopian dimension of the current economic and social imaginary. Finally, this comparison suggests that urban circular projects use a degrowth imaginary when they explore utopian attributes of solidarity, community and reciprocity. Growth has been presented as a totalising ideology. Only when aligned with a degrowth imaginary might the circular economy act as its utopian counterpart by offering alternative views of the world.

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13 Degrowth, decolonisation and food sovereignty in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi Ioana Radu, Émilie Parent, Gabriel Snowboy, Bertie Wapachee and Geneviève Beaulieu It is no longer radical to conclude that, in recent decades, politics focused on pursuit of economic growth has contributed to global ecological destruction and increased social injustice. Since ‘Limits to Growth’ scenarios were put forward in the 1970s, increases in carbon emissions  –  and resource use  –  threaten to tip global warming to a temperature rise of at least 2°C, and humanity’s ecological footprint has continued to expand beyond planetary boundaries. Indeed, increasing gross domestic product (GDP) is accompanied by a steady increase in inequality, declining wellbeing and reduced life satisfaction (De Neve and Powdthavee 2016). Faced with ecological, societal and political crises emerging from the growth paradigm, a global movement for degrowth has been developing over the past 20 years (Roman-Alcalá 2017). A frst degrowth international conference was held in Paris in 2008. A decade later, degrowth scholars and activists are imagining ways in which we can transition towards a world without growth (Kallis et al. 2018). Yet, degrowth has been seen as ‘a marginal left-wing European position’ making few attempts to bridge the realities and ontologies of Indigenous Peoples or those of the Global South (Escobar 2015; Weiss and Cattaneo 2017, 227; Chiengkul 2018). In this chapter ‘Aboriginal’ refers to Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples as defned by Article 35 of the Canadian Constitution, and ‘Indigenous’ refers to Aboriginal peoples internationally. After discussing degrowth and Indigenous perspectives, this chapter analyses a participatory and community-driven research collaboration – between the Centre for Social Agricultural Innovation at College of Victoriaville (Québec) and the Chisasibi Business Service Centre (CBSC)  –  to promote food security in Chisasibi (Québec). This food security initiative has sparked a much broader community mobilisation around food sovereignty in the past two years. This on-the-ground process in the Cree Nation of Chisasibi shows how communities can re-take control over their food resources and build a local food system through local agriculture and gardening initiatives. We analyse the links between the degrowth movement and decolonisation and how both local agriculture and traditional food can contribute to achieving food sovereignty in Indigenous contexts.

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Degrowth and Indigenous perspectives While degrowth has been concerned with recentering the commons, degrowth discourses are only recently considering how to practically enact this transition on the ground (D’Alisa et al. 2014; Weiss and Cattaneo 2017). Indeed, an article in Ecological Economics 165 exploring convergent aspects of the environmental justice movement and degrowth theory argues that they both ‘share a common quest for profound socio-ecological transformations towards justice and sustainability’ (Akbulut et al. 2019, 7). Nonetheless, Akbulut et al. (2019, 5) acknowledge the specifc limitations of each, with degrowth largely concerned with theory and the environmental justice movement focused on on-the-ground action. While an alliance between these movements is seen as ‘organic’ and inevitable, the call for an overreaching universal theory of degrowth remains a major issue. Moreover, Escobar (2015) notes that postdevelopment frameworks conceptualised in the Global South and by Indigenous social movements share much in common with degrowth discourses, both calling for a decolonial transition, albeit using different vocabularies. A transition based on socio-ecological justice must necessarily centre on relocalisation: place-based, local autonomy emerging from local ontologies and ways of being. However, Perkins (2019, 186) underlines that ‘the degrowth movement … can seem somewhat conficted and unclear about its equity implications’, including questions around property regimes, wealth redistribution and forms of unpaid work, especially those by women. In line with decolonial thinkers, Perkins calls for the enactment of participatory commons governance, a key feature of Indigenous autonomy, as a way to decentre degrowth, which seems more based on economic logic as an all-encompassing prescriptive stance. In this view, a ‘situated decolonial degrowth’ and the eventual transition theorised by degrowth scholars must submit to the Global South’s pluriverse, thus moving away from the sameness invoked by environmental and cultural determinism (Nirmal and Rocheleau 2019). So too a romanticised ideal of ‘essential living’ (Kothari 2016) needs to be substituted with interdependent networks of care and reciprocity across multiple scales, geographies, knowledges and practices (Nirmal and Rocheleau 2019, 472). Situating food security within this decolonial transition, as Grey and Patel (2015) observe, conjures a constellation of layered discourses of sovereignty and self-determination that trace the continuous impacts of colonialism on land tenure, social organisation and marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge. Sustained struggles for decolonisation point towards achieving locally defned levels of material autonomy, and independence from imposed state managerial surveillance, which respect Indigenous life-worlds. Emerging from collective struggles to enact alternatives to neoliberal agricultural development, food sovereignty – as frst conceptualised by Via Campesina  –  proposes societal transformation by building new and localised food systems. In a Canadian Indigenous context, food sovereignty seeks to address different challenges than those of Canadian farmers or urban food advocacy groups, the most urgent being food security (Desmarais and Wittman 2014).

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Food security and food sovereignty Embedded in the degrowth agenda, food security means that people can obtain safe, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food in a context of human dignity (Bergeron et al. 2016; Roman-Alcalá 2017). Food insecurity in the Canadian north is linked to scarcity and lack of quality and, thus, diet-related disease and to systemic injustice that has marginalised and eroded Indigenous land tenure, knowledge, social organisation and governance systems that had framed food systems in the north (Chan et al. 2019; Rudolph and McLachlan 2013). Undeniably the biggest challenges for achieving self-determination are land management laws and regulations imposed through the Indian Act. The Crown holds the reserve land title and, thus, First Nations hold rights ‘to exclusive use and occupation, inalienability and the communal nature of the interest’ (OECD 2020, 144). While a detailed discussion on land tenure and its impact on Aboriginal autonomy is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is important to underline that it constitutes a major challenge to self-determination as approval for any type of land transaction rests with the Minister or Governor in Council. (For analysis on the impact of land tenure on First Nations’ self-determination, see Alcantara 2007; Flig and Robinson 2019; Stephenson 2010.) Conversations about food security necessarily lead to refections on food sovereignty, since access to, and quality of, food is intricately linked to ecosystem health, local ecological knowledge and practices, access to ancestral territories and participation in such decision-making. As Grey and Patel (2015, 433) point out, ‘Indigenous food sovereignty is about much more than agricultural practice’ and ‘the familiar bundle of rights that attach to production and consumption’. Food sovereignty is embedded into locally specifc cultural ecologies, including food-generating practices; environmental maintenance; gendered harvesting and ecological knowledge; care practices; and trading and sharing networks (Desmarais and Wittman 2014; Rudolph and McLachlan 2013). The British Columbia Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty and the Indigenous Circle within Food Secure Canada have both advanced foundational tenets of food sovereignty based on Indigenous ontologies. These include food as sacred (underlining the relational links between people and land, and their responsibility towards maintaining and nourishing these relationships); participation at all societal levels (individual, family, community and nation); self-determination (freely make decisions that impact the food system and respond to local priorities); and legislation and policy reform in various sectors such as forestry, health and fsheries (Desmarais and Wittman 2014, 1166).

Historical context of the Chisasibi foodscapes The Cree of Eeyou Istchee in eastern James Bay (Québec) practised hunting, fshing and gathering well into the nineteenth century and, to a lesser extent, still do today. However, the turn of the twentieth century marked a diffcult time in Eeyou Istchee, due to the low availability of important game and fur-bearing

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species that, combined with excessive hunting spurred by the fur trade, created serious food insecurity among Cree families, with recorded periods of extreme famine. This period of scarcity precipitated federal intervention leading to the formalisation of the Cree land tenure system and imposition of beaver quotas on trappers for the subsequent 50 years (Morantz 2002; Tanner 1979). In the 1960s, engineers went up to the James Bay territory to evaluate the hydroelectric potential of the region and, more specifcally, the La Grande, Nottaway, Broadback, Rupert and Eastmain rivers. Former Québec Premier Robert Bourassa initially announced the damming of the La Grande River, in 1971, without an environmental impact assessment and without consulting with the local population who would be directly affected by the ensuing ecological change (Diamond 1990). In response, in 1971, Chiefs of the then eight Québec Cree bands met to discuss the Hydro-Québec’s hydroelectricity mega-project. Together with the Nunavik Inuit, the Cree obtained a court injunction to stop the project in 1973, but it was quickly overturned and construction resumed. Nonetheless, the court battle and the negative publicity it generated led the government to negotiate Canada’s frst contemporary land claim, the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement (JBNQA), signed in 1975. Subsequently, fears about rising water levels and erosion of Fort George Island led to the Chisasibi Agreement, signed in 1978, which oversaw the displacement of families living in Fort George to the mainland, some nine kilometres up the river, to the current location of the Cree Nation of Chisasibi. Despite these agreements and the benefts that came with them, the way of life of the Cree of Eeyou Istchee has been profoundly affected by many socio-cultural and political changes. Hydroelectric projects as well as mining and forestry have had a signifcant impact on the ecosystem and, thus, on traditional foods and land-based practices (Torrie et al. 2005). Pollution (especially by mercury), landscape fragmentation and, more recently, climate change impacts, have reduced the availability of certain species, their geographical distribution, and migrating patterns, thus limiting access to game meat and bush food and leading to dietary changes and impacting overall wellbeing (Bergeron et al. 2015). These impacts are further exacerbated by sedentarisation to reserves and increasing costs associated with land-based activities, which have resulted in a growing dependence on store-bought foods and reduced the importance of traditional foods (Kuhnlein et al. 2008).

The northern bio-food research project In this context, since 2015, a Victoriaville College team has been collaborating with the Cree Nation of Chisasibi towards a better understanding of the food system within the community and strengthening food security. The specifc objectives of the project were to, frst, describe the current food system in Chisasibi; second, document agricultural activities practised on Fort George Island in the twentieth century; and, third, identify and implement innovative solutions that strengthen local capacity for food security and healthy eating. In the longer term,

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the project aims to allow the community to reclaim its territory in respect of ancestral traditions, land-use management and their food sovereignty vision. A participatory approach was used to maximise the community’s active engagement in the project and to document their cultural realities related to food. The research objectives and methodology were co-designed and carried out based on the community’s priorities and needs. We used photo-voice methodology and social media as a way of facilitating coanalysis and co-interpretation of the data by the study’s 11 participants. The participants raised six key themes: food access, food prices, the community’s role in food production, health, traditional food and gendered division of labour. A video documentary was produced on traditional food and the food transition experienced by the community with ten elders interviewed about the evolution of their diet. The main fndings of this research follow. Traditional food and participatory commons governance Two food systems are at play in Chisasibi and Eeyou Istchee: the local traditional food system including hunting, fshing, gathering, food preparation and consumption, and the commercial food system understood by the participants as a form of dependency on the market and the global economy (CBHSSJB 2017). Hunting and trapping are still a way of life – at least one-third of the population is involved part-time in these activities (Torrie et al. 2005). Traditional food is still a strong identity and cultural marker for the Cree refected through their land-based harvesting activities, food sharing, festivals and ceremonies, as well as daily food preparation (Delorimier 1993). However, consumption of traditional food is declining, partly due to changing standards in food sharing practices, the adoption of sedentary lifestyles, the prevalence of market foods and the shift to a wage economy. For the participants, traditional food is considered to be healthier than storebought food, although some recognise the possibility that it is contaminated due to hydroelectric projects in the region. Feasting remains of vital importance. It meets a need to eat traditional food in a community setting, especially for community members who have little time to spend on the land or do not have access to hunting grounds. The importance of the feast shows that food sharing is a foundational social value in Chisasibi. For example, the frst goose killed by a hunter in the spring will be shared with the whole family, even if everyone receives only a small bite (Belinsky 1998). In addition, younger community members provide game meat to parents too old to hunt. Traditional food includes berries and other medicinal plants growing in Eeyou Istchee, a practice by-and-large undertaken by women. Moreover, in talking about the importance of traditional food, participants inevitably raise questions about cultural continuity and self-determination. With the imposition of land management regulations of the Indian Act, the Income Security Programme, a measure created under the JBNQA, ensures that hunting, fshing and trapping remain viable and guarantee ‘a measure of economic security

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consistent with conditions prevailing from time to time’ (Section 30.2.8, JBNQA 1998). The majority of elders interviewed are members of the Cree Trappers Association (CTA), which aims to preserve Cree harvesting and land-based lifestyle, while protecting and promoting land tenure rights and access to ancestral territories in line with Cree self-determination priorities (CHTISB 2010). In talking about changes in their diet and increasing costs of commercial foods, participants linked the scarcity of bush food to increased resource extraction in the region. As Velma House, interviewed in 2017 by Émilie Parent in Chisasibi, stated: I prefer wild meat, but I do not know these days, because of the destruction of the rivers and the land, and all the clear cuts … we need to introduce more about traditional foods, especially how to prepare it, how to care for it, and how to respect it. Velma points to the central tenet of the Cree socio-ecological relationships or iiyiyiu pimaatisiiwin (loosely translated as the Cree way of life) based on care, respect and reciprocity with the land and other-than-human beings (both animate and inanimate entities), including a land tenure regime that recognises shared decision-making at multiple levels – family, community and nation (CTA 2009; Feit 2005; Radu et al. 2014). Indeed, the Eeyou (Cree) Hunting Law or Eeyou Indoh-hoh Weeshou-Wehwun, refers to the principle of conservation or naacatawaayatacano, which vests responsibility for ‘good and respectful management’ of traditional territories for future generations and for the beneft of the family, hunting group and the whole community (CTA 2009, 9). As another participant, interviewed in 2017 by Émilie Parent in Chisasibi, underlined: I am fortunate to be able to have access to wild meat. We need to also be conscious of having this tradition pass down to a younger generation, because it is a very important life style that is almost a privilege now to have that kind of hunters. Thus, the measures contained within the JBNQA protect and promote Cree land tenure and make provisions for perpetuating a culturally specifc understanding of shared governance decision-making relating to lands and resources in Eeyou Istchee. The Fort George farms: Northern agriculture in Eeyou Istchee During the project’s design phase, there was a lot of discussion regarding the gardens and farms established on Fort George Island by the missions, and people reminisced about growing and consuming potatoes. It became evident that the community had an interest in better understanding how the farms and produce grown on the island contributed to a shift in diets, and whether reviving cultivation of vegetables on Fort George was a viable solution for food security in

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Chisasibi. The interviews with the elders revealed a rich tapestry of memories of working on the farms and changes in the local diet. While traditional foods are seen as culturally relevant and a healthier option, participants recognise that vegetables and fruits must be part of a balanced diet, as many people suffer from diabetes. Of the 11 participants, most tried or were able to make changes in their diet, but such change engendered signifcant fnancial burdens. For example, the Montreal Diet Dispensary calculated that, in 2013, the price of a Nutritious Food Basket (NFB) for a family in Eeyou Istchee was $418.41. The National NFB is a measuring tool to monitor the cost and affordability of healthy eating. It describes the quantity and purchase units of some 60 food items based on the latest dietary guide and consumption data released by the federal government (Duquette et al. 2013). The weekly cost of the NFB is higher in Eeyou Istchee than in any other studied region of Québec (Duquette et al. 2013). A Québec family on an average income would spend 21 percent of their income on the NFB while a Cree family on an average income would spend 44 percent of their income and a low-income Cree family, about 80 percent of their income. All participants deplored the high cost of food in Chisasibi and identifed local production as a viable and desirable solution to food insecurity. While very little research has been done on the various northern agricultural initiatives in Eeyou Istchee, the Oblate mission kept detailed information on harvests, crops and climatic conditions between the late 1920s and 1960s (Brochu 1969). From these records we learn that potatoes were the main crop in the region, with three acres in Fort George producing a median harvest of approximately 225 bushels (7980 litres). Elders remember working on the farms with the Oblate brothers, usually helping at harvest time. Several Cree also cultivated private plots on the island. Johnny Chewanis, interviewed in 2017 by Émilie Parent in Chisasibi, likened the intensive farm labour with that of being on the land: I used to work in a farm, when I was 18–19 years old. For many years I worked in different farms. I liked to work in a farm … Like all the work you do out there in the bush it’s the same thing at the farm: you have to work a lot. Same thing with hunting: you have to work a lot and a lot. For many, one solution to surmounting the accessibility barrier and supplementing the nutritional intake lies in traditional food and resource sharing within the community. In fact, for several years now, members of the community have had a Facebook page where it is possible to sell home-prepared meals. This innovation allows families to secure extra income, access good quality food and avoid spending signifcant sums at the local restaurant. Delving into the history of Fort George farms also helped the community feel more confdent about pursuing northern agriculture, especially since our research focused on the lived experiences of Chisasibi elders who worked there and engaged in discussions about how a potential agricultural project can be culturally meaningful for the community.

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Towards food sovereignty in Chisasibi The northern bio-food research project was a natural evolution of other food security initiatives in Chisasibi. The frst such initiative was a series of workshops on healthy eating and initiation to gardening, with the three day-care centres in Chisasibi, and included preparation of garden beds and indoor seeding. In 2016, we hired and trained a greenhouse and food security coordinator, Mr Gabriel Snowboy, who undertook most of the research and development of a community greenhouse. The construction of the greenhouse was completed in spring 2017 and production and distribution of plants began that summer. The project is a joint initiative between the CBSC and the James Bay Eeyou School, where students learn about gardening and prepare the seedlings indoor to be planted in the spring, while in summer we hold gardening and food production workshops (Figure 13.1). Today, we hire students under the Student Summer Employment Programme to operate the greenhouse. Under Mr. Snowboy’s leadership we also developed elders food security workshops that involved teaching how to plant seeds, transplanting, fertilising, harvesting, winter preparations, and composting while applying Cree traditional knowledge and techniques. The success of these projects and increasing community engagement in conversations about food security and sovereignty led to the creation of the Nihtaauchin Chisasibi Centre for Sustainability (NCCS)  –  nihtaauchin meaning ‘it grows’ in Cree (Figure 13.2). Nihtaauchin is a non-for-proft organisation dedicated to strengthening autonomy and building a framework that will guide research, education and action for sustainability while combining innovation with Eeyou (Cree) knowledge and expertise in ways that respect and beneft the

Figure 13.1 NCCS team receives provincial government visit in 2018. (Community greenhouse in foreground, with James Bay Eeyou School experimental plots.) Photographer: Ioana Radu.

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Figure 13.2 Gabriel Snowboy leading a community workshop on food production at the greenhouse (2018). Photographer: Gabriel Snowboy.

Cree Nation of Chisasibi. We continue working with the elders in designing greenhouses using traditional Cree structures to be used at family camps in the bush. We have undertaken a composting project by gathering organic food scraps from local produce retailers. Finally, the stories of the Fort George farms inspired us to establish an experimental plot for potatoes, in 2018, in order to determine a baseline yield with minimum crop management. Our frst harvest of 86 potatoes and a couple of green onions was not very impressive but generated much discussion at the fall 2018 Harvest Festival (the frst of its kind in Chisasibi). This led to the expansion of the potato plots during the 2019 summer. At the time of writing, mid-2020, we are conducting a feasibility study for a commercial-size greenhouse with a dedicated teaching and training space, as well as options for net-zero energy consumption. Our participative research study reveals that healthy eating in Chisasibi is more diffcult than in other regions in Québec. Food availability, prices and quality make it hard to maintain a healthy diet. These observations concur with a national study on First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment (FNFNES), the frst of its kind in Canada (Chan et al. 2019). The remoteness and climatic conditions, however, cannot entirely explain the food insecurity experienced by the community. Such an analysis ignores the structural problems associated with food in Canada. Food sovereignty is key to addressing injustice and abuse of power in the food chain. The concept of food sovereignty recognises political barriers to local autonomy in decisions infuencing food systems and our initiatives are slowly building

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towards achieving our vision of self-determination. Taken together, the conversations about food with the participants point to a distinctly Cree vision of food sovereignty, one in which bush food is essential to wellbeing, not only for sustenance but also as a spiritual need and strong marker of identity. As participants emphasised many times, elders do not feel at their peak when they do not eat traditional food, which is considered a foundational element of good health and wellness. Indeed, the FNFNES found that the current diet of many First Nation adults is nutritionally inadequate and recommended measures to ‘improve access to the traditional food system’ (Chan et al. 2019, 149). However, the availability of traditional food is not constant. Many people may still go on the land to hunt and fsh, but others have to wait to receive meat from those around them. Sharing is very important not only for food security but also to strengthen social relations and cultural continuity.

Conclusion: Indigenous foodways, culture and degrowth Our research project aimed to enable the community to reclaim food independence in respect of Cree cultural and ecological realities. The path to food sovereignty in Chisasibi, as elsewhere, is closely linked to transitions imagined by the degrowth movement. Nonetheless, in an Aboriginal context marked by colonial legacy and contemporary inequalities, degrowth theories based primarily on economic logic do not resonate with community members. Access to, and autonomy of, decision-making with regards to land is the primary concern in Chisasibi. In fact, the Cree have always worked hard to manage scarcity throughout history and continue to make diffcult choices between maintaining local ecosystems that sustain cultural ecologies and participating in resource extraction activities for economic gain. According to Indigenous ontologies, the sacred dimension of food foregrounds the relational link between people and land. In Eeyou Istchee this is understood in terms of relational responsibilities among humans and between humans and the natural world. The frst teachings a Cree receives are to respect the land and what you get from the land. Knowing where your food comes from, who prepared it and who cooked it provides a map of relationships that has social, cultural and spiritual meaning. This ontology parallels basic characteristics of degrowth theory focused on creating processes of commoning, devoting time and work to caring for others, and elements of direct democracy, where self-determination and autonomy respond to culturally derived placebased ways of being. Northern agriculture in Indigenous contexts is often sceptically received in academic and policy circles because it is not often seen as a ‘traditional’ practice. In Canada, the state has historically limited and sabotaged the success of Aboriginal agriculture, and the federal food subsidy programme Nutrition North has not curbed but, rather, increased food insecurity in Aboriginal communities (Carter 1990; St-Germain et al. 2019). For Chisasibi, history shows that northern agriculture is viable and desirable as one of a range of solutions to food insecurity that the community envisions.

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In summary, provisions under the JBNQA and the worldview encapsulated by the Cree hunting law comprise the basic tenets of Indigenous food sovereignty: sacredness of relationships with land and other-than-human entities; shared decision-making at various societal levels; and self-determination. In Chisasibi, these are practically enacted through a diversity of initiatives that aim to increase the quality of life of community members and an equitable distribution of the benefts of a potential transition towards a self-suffcient and sustainable food system. This calls to the fore a situated decolonial degrowth, placing emphasis on one approach among many that can contribute to the decolonial transition needed to live relationally within the world.

References Akbulut B, Demaria F, Gerberc J F and Martínez-Alier J (2019) ‘Who promotes sustainability? Five theses on the relationships between the degrowth and the environmental justice movements’, Ecological Economics 165: 19. Alcantara C (2007) ‘Reduce transaction costs? Yes. Strengthen property rights? Maybe: The First Nations Land Management Act and economic development on Canadian Indian reserves’, Public Choice 132(3/4): 421–32. Belinsky D L (1998) Nutritional and sociocultural signifcance of Branta canadensis (Canada goose) for the eastern James Bay Cree of Wemindji, Quebec. Master’s Thesis, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University, Montreal. Bergeron O, Richer F, Bruneau S and Laberge V (2015) L'alimentation des Premières Nations et des Inuits au Québec: document de référence. Montreal, QC: Institut National de Santé Publique. Brochu M (1969) ‘Dossiers socio-économiques sur le Nouveau-Québec’, Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française 22: 429–40. Carter S (1990) Lost Harvests, Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press. CBHSSJB (2017) Framework for Action to Improve Access to Nutritious Food and List of Suggested Actions. Chisasibi: Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay. Chan L, Receveur O, Batal M, Sadik T, Schwartz H and Tikhonov C (2019) FNFNES Final Report for Eight Assembly of First Nations Regions: Draft Comprehensive Technical Report. Assembly of First Nations, University of Ottawa, Université de Montréal, Montreal. Chiengkul P (2018) ‘The degrowth movement: Alternative economic practices and relevance to developing countries’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 43: 81–95. CHTISB (2010) Funds and Programs for Cree Hunters and Trappers. Québec (Qc): Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Security Board. Accessed 2 June 2020 – https://www.cht isb.ca/images/osrcpc/publications/funds-programs.pdf. CTA (2009) Eeyou Indoh-hoh Weeshou-Wehwun: Traditional Eeyou Hunting Law. Eastmain (Qc): Cree Trappers Association. Accessed 9 April 2020 –https://www.cerp.gouv.qc. ca/fleadmin/Fichiers_clients/Documents_deposes_a_la_Commission/P-640.pdf. D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) (2014) Degrowth: A. Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Diamond B (1990) ‘Village of the Damned. The James Bay Agreement leaves a trail of broken promises’, Arctic Circle, November/December: 24–34.

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De Neve J E and Powdthavee N (2016) ‘Income inequality makes whole countries less happy’, Harvard Business Review. Accessed 2 June 2020  –  https://hbr.org/2016/01/i ncome-inequality-makes-whole-countries-less-happy. Delorimier T (1993) Traditional Food of the James Bay Cree of Quebec. Montreal, QC: Centre for Indigenous Peoples, Nutrition and Environment. Desmarais A A and Wittman H (2014) ‘Farmers, foodies and First Nations: Getting to food sovereignty in Canada’, Journal of Peasant Studies 41: 1153–73. Duquette M P, Scatliff C and Desrosiers-Choquette J (2013) Access to a Nutritious Food Basket in Eeyou Istchee. Montreal, QC: Montreal Diet Dispensary. Escobar A (2015) ‘Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: A preliminary conversation’, Sustainability Science 10(3): 451–62. Feit H A (2005) ‘Re-cognizing co-management as co-governance: Visions and histories of conservation at James Bay’, Anthropologica 47(2): 267–88. Flig R A and Robinson D T (2019) ‘Reviewing First Nation land management regimes in Canada and exploring their relationship to community well-being’, Land Use Policy 90: Article 104245. Grey S and Patel R (2015) ‘Food sovereignty as decolonization: Some contributions from Indigenous movements to food system and development politics’, Agriculture and Human Values 32(3): 431–44. JBNQA (1998) Secretariat aux Affaires Autochtones. [James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement and Complementary Agreements.] Les Publications du Québec, SainteFoy. Accessed 2 June 2020 – http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/inac-ainc/james_ba y-e/jbnq_e.pdf. Kallis G, Kostakis V, Lange S, Muraca B, Paulson S and Schmelzer M (2018) ‘Research on Degrowth’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 291–316. Kothari A (2016) Ashish Kothari: Radical Alternatives to Unsustainability and Inequality. Nemnövekedés – Degrowth YouTube. Accessed 2 June 2020 – https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=AbYUkwROmhU. Kuhnlein H V, Receveur O, Soueida R and Berti P R (2008) ‘Unique patterns of dietary adequacy in three cultures of Canadian Arctic indigenous peoples’, Public Health Nutrition 11: 349–60. Morantz T (2002) The White Man's Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Nirmal P and Rocheleau D (2019) ‘Decolonizing degrowth in the post-development convergence: Questions, experiences, and proposals from two Indigenous territories’, Nature and Space 2(3): 465–492. OECD (2020) Linking Indigenous Communities with Regional Development in Canada, OECD Rural Policy Reviews. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Perkins P E (2019) ‘Climate justice, commons, and degrowth’, Ecological Economics 165: 183–90. Radu I, House L and Pashagumskum E (2014) ‘Land, life, and knowledge in Chisasibi: Intergenerational healing in the bush’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3(3): 86–105. Roman-Alcalá A (2017) ‘Looking to food sovereignty movements for post-growth theory’, Ephemera 17: 119–45. Rudolph K R and McLachlan S M (2013) ‘Seeking Indigenous food sovereignty: Origins of and responses to the food crisis in northern Manitoba, Canada’, Local Environment 18(9): 1079–98.

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14 Food waste or surplus? Reading between the lines of discourse and action Constanza Hepp

Oddly shaped vegetables. Eggs past their sell-by date. Carrot peels. Does food waste refer to edible or inedible parts? Is it only spoiled, or aesthetically unpleasant or, alternatively, unsold food? Food surplus and discarded food exist in a continuum between value and waste framed within a capitalist productivist food waste discourse (Midgley 2018). By evoking counter-narratives, I argue that new visions of social justice and respect for ecological limits can be revealed (Bowman 2020, 493). As prominent degrowth theorist Kallis (2018, viii) remarks, ‘all it takes for a good life is sharing and enjoying the excess of what we produce’. Therefore, how we deal with food surplus may provide an important entry to exploring new ways of socially organising around attaining ‘a good life’. This investigation focuses on ideologies embedded within food waste discourses by applying the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how language can either promote or hinder sustainable uptake. Exploring two examples of food waste discourse  –  the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Rude Food, a non-for proft, volunteer initiative from Malmö, Sweden  –  I demonstrate how FAO reports convey a capitalist growth ideology while, in contrast, Rude Food reorients food ‘waste’ towards degrowth values of solidarity, care, conviviality, sharing and the commons (D’Alisa et al. 2015).

Defning food ‘waste’ Food ‘waste’ is interpreted in different ways to different ends. In this chapter, waste is understood as relative and as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1966, 36), inferring normative assumptions are made when categorising what is or is not waste. I argue that ‘matter out of place’ is about power (Liboiron 2019), resulting in a focus on the ideological backdrop of defnitions. We start by unravelling institutional defnitions. The FAO (2015a, 2) defnes food waste as ‘the discarding or alternative (non-food) use of food that was ft for human consumption – by choice or after the food has been left to spoil or expire as a result of negligence’. Alternatively, FUSIONS, a European Union (EU) funded project to estimate European food waste levels, states that food waste is ‘fractions of food and inedible parts of food removed from the food supply

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chain to be recovered or disposed’ (Stenmark et al. 2016, 7). Another relevant defnition is provided by Gustavsson et al. (2011, v) who estimate that ‘roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally’ and use a different terminology, referring to food losses as ‘the decrease in edible food mass throughout the part of the supply chain that specifcally leads to edible food for human consumption’ but ‘food losses occurring at the end of the supply chain (retail and fnal consumption) are rather called food waste’ (ibid., 2, italics in original). What do these diverse defnitions tell us? All three are open to interpretation: for example, what is edible or inedible? First, they are not comparable, highlighting a recurring problem in the study of food waste (Stenmark et al. 2016). This incongruence shows how food waste is discursively created in social practice, not in relation to an objective material existence. While issues of quantitative methodology are relevant, the interest here is how defnitions of food waste may indicate culprits and sites for action at different moments along the food supply chain. Further, FAO’s defnition is normative by pointing to any nonhuman use of materials whose use value was directed to human beneft. The fnal defnition by Gustavsson et al. (2011) importantly opens up the body of terms used to pinpoint the phenomenon by distinguishing food loss from food waste to acknowledge that waste occurs only in the selling and eating of food, a step that indicates responsibility. Nevertheless, none of the above defnitions address the phenomenon holistically, whereby a better defnition would require less ambiguity to describe material whose use value might still be intact but is banished from foodways. Much has been written on the reassessment of food waste not as waste – not as rotten or inedible – but as surplus. Barnard (2016) in his study of the freegan movement coins surplus as an ‘ex-commodity’ to describe the repurposing of edible food surplus as a form of transformative collective action that enacts anti-capitalist values. Blake (2019) ontologically explores food surplus describing how edible material must be unproftable before moved to a charitable surplus redistribution network. Giles (2020) shows how wasting edible food on a worldwide scale erodes the assumption that capitalist free markets are spotless conduits of effciency, instead creating ‘shadow economies’ that obscure excess from public view. It is inadequate to understand discarded food as ‘waste’. I prefer food surplus, as a ‘holding category or gap’ (Midgley 2018, 181) that retains the possibility of use to be revalued. However, I use food ‘waste’ and ‘surplus’ interchangeably and propose that food waste is understood as surplus food excluded from human foodways for reasons unrelated to use value (Hepp 2016). This defnition takes into account the Marxist distinction between use value and exchange value, where use value refers to the usefulness or purpose of a thing for a person, while exchange value takes only an object’s economic value into account (González de Molina and Toledo 2014). Thus, the use value of food is its nutritional value, while exchange value refers to its price. In industrial societies and capitalist economies, use values are displaced and ‘food is treated as a disposable commodity, disconnected from the social and environmental impact of its production’ (Stuart 2009, xvi).

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Most signifcantly for this chapter, a degrowth approach offers a pathway out of capitalist commodifcation through social practices based on values of solidarity, care, wellbeing and conviviality, and through alternative economic practices that endorse sharing and reclaiming the commons. Such values and practices are found in activists’ engagements with food waste who, through discourse, actively ‘unmake’ capitalist confgurations (Feola 2019).

Critical discourse analysis To interrogate the politics of food waste discourse, I apply CDA using Fairclough’s (1992) framework that involves three dimensions of language: the text as text; how the text is produced, distributed and consumed; and how text is applied in wider social practice (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 61). These three dimensions are descriptive, interpretative and explanatory. The frst dimension points to linguistic features and grammar, the second to discourse. In the third dimension, the text becomes a discursive event that ‘relates to different levels of organization: the situation, the institutional context, the wider group or social context’ where questions of power and ideology arise (Titscher et al. 2000, 151). In this case, focus will be placed on FAO’s institutional discursive authority. CDA advocates Althusser’s (2001) concept of interpellation, where ideology aids in creating a subject. For capitalist-driven food waste discourse, ‘consumers’ are ideological subjects of a consumer culture, where an eater equals a consumer, limiting consumer’s agency to ‘consumer activism’, which upholds the misleading assumption that a consumer has ‘power’ to drive the market (Princen 2010, 148). In this chapter, I consider capitalism as an ideology, following Fairclough, where ideologies are ‘constructions of meaning that contribute to the production, reproduction and transformation of relations of domination’ (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 75). In this context, ‘capitalist discourse’ must be considered in economic and ideological terms. Capitalism is a historically specifc, socio-economic system with distinct characteristics based on creating commodities with a primary systemic motivation to obtain profts (Andreucci and McDonough 2015, 59). Degrowth advocates see proft-seeking capitalism as guided by ‘the ideology of economic growth’ (Demaria et al. 2019, 432), where social and ecological limits are disregarded for market goals. As a commodity, food is no longer appreciated for its use value but only for exchange driven by the ideological imperative to produce proft and growth. What matters is to sell the food regardless of what happens to it. Alternatively, a postgrowth (degrowth) perspective embraces practices such as alternative food networks that are ‘oriented to the production of use values, not exchange value’ (Kallis 2018, 134). Alternative food practices interrogate food supply chains and systems to consider how human lives are interconnected with, and interdependent upon, natural and social environments. The following section applies a CDA approach to analyse how two institutional documents frame food waste to demonstrate how signifcant contemporary framings limit understandings of food waste.

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Analysing discourse in FAO documents The Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (FAO 2015a), produced in association with the FAO’s Save Food Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, and its Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change (FAO 2015b, 8) are pedagogical documents that frame food waste as an environmental concern. The illustrations on the front covers of both offer initial insights, with a mouldy orange, situating waste as rotten, unhealthy and inedible and a graphic emphasising the severity of the issue, respectively. Moving onto text, both documents imbue an ambivalent mood that is at the same time conciliatory  –  emphasising partnerships  –  with actions that should be taken by third parties. In terms of transitivity – examining use of verbs, how actions are to be performed and who performs them (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002) – different aspects arise for the causes of food waste in medium-, high- and low-income countries. For example, for wealthier regions, the text hedges using phrases such as ‘causes … relate mainly’ or ‘may contribute’ (2015a, 2 italics not in original), while the verbs ascribe a causal, unquestioned connection when referring to in low-income countries. Further divergent treatment of high- and low-income countries is disclosed when looking into nominalisation, ‘whereby a noun stands for the process’ (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 83). When referring to high-income regions, the sentence structure in the FAO documents places emphasis on effect rather than agent. Meanwhile, for lowincome countries, the culprit is more directly identifed. For example, ‘in high income regions, volumes of wasted food are higher in the processing, distribution and consumption stage, whereas in low-income countries, food losses occur in the production and post-harvesting phases’ (FAO 2015b, 1). Here, the frst clause places importance on the effect and the second one indicates a direct site where ‘losses occur’. Moreover, when referring to food safety and quality, the FAO document (2015a) states that ‘standards can be applied in ways that remove food that is still safe’ (2015a, 2), where quality standards take the conditional form ascribing less responsibility. This cluster of meaning conveys capitalist discourse by displacing the cause of waste (capitalist processes) onto the location: in this case, low-income countries that have not yet achieved full capitalist development. Alternatively, diverse culprits in high-income countries are alluded to by using conditional references to market-oriented priorities. Although the mood is ambivalent, the institutional voice in both FAO documents presents the content as objective facts using wording such as ‘there is no doubt’ (2015a, 2), thus brushing under the carpet the ideological backdrop. Furthermore, this institutional voice is enhanced within its pedagogic genre. The documents not only defne what food waste is, they also indicate where it is occurring and point to a normative course of action. A discourse that embeds capitalist commodifcation in the text is particularly visible when mentioning solutions and strategies. For example, the FAO document (2015a, 4) claims that solutions and strategies focus on ‘effciency’ improvements above other courses of action.

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How text is produced and consumed Here, I analyse discursive and social practice with regards to how texts are produced, interpreted and used. In the FAO Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (2015a, 6), actors are described as ‘people and companies, including consumers’ and international organisations, while in the second document, Food Wastage Footprint (2015b), the audience is less easily identifable but can be inferred to be policy makers due to the purpose of the document. Both texts introduce capitalist discourse repeatedly, referring to food as a ‘commodity’ or ‘commodity groups’; eaters as ‘consumers’ and ‘consumption patterns’ as the social interactions involved in the eating and sharing of food. Also, in Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, identifed actors are those who ‘will adopt food loss and waste reduction measures only if they are proftable or at least costeffective’ and who will ‘support cost-effective and environmentally friendly reuse’ (2015a, 4). By placing the ‘cost-effective’ marker frst, emphasis is placed on economic proft above all else. Actions to reduce food waste and loss are stated to ‘require investments by the private sector’, explicitly placing public action – both the agency of institutions and civil society  –  as of lessor importance, arguing that ‘public organizations cannot themselves directly reduce food loss and waste, but they are indispensable’ (FAO 2015a, 6). This discourse confrms the FAO’s upholding of capitalist ideology: the private sector has all the capacity for action while the public is a mere backdrop. This predisposition to capitalist strategy is supported in Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change (2015b, 1) where food waste is described as a ‘missed opportunity for the economy’ and where greenhouse gas emissions are measured in monetary terms: ‘the 2012 market value of food products lost or wasted was UDS 936 billion’. Lastly, in regards to social practice  –  the third dimension of analysis  –  the importance lies in the site of production and exhibition of the documents: the Save Food Initiative was ‘launched by FAO and Messe Düsseldorf at the Interpack 2011 trade fair for the packing and processing industry’ (2015a, 5) and the other document was produced under the FAO’s Food Wastage Footprint project. Therefore, based on where the discourses were located and manifested, it is safe to say the documents exhibit an institutional profle, therefore securing a position of authority and giving legitimacy to the capitalist-growth discourse. Codes and themes The next level of analysis is the identifcation of codes. This stage of analysis is referred to as ‘interdiscursivity’ to recognise that discourse is always composed of a variety of discourses that are subject to power relations or hegemonic struggles (Fairclough 1992, 185). Since CDA allows for fexible applications, in this case the codes were derived from the object of analysis using the framework described by Punch (2014, 197–201) where coding is the process of labelling the data mainly at two levels: descriptive and inferential. Firstly, the text under analysis is labelled according to its content. Secondly, a higher level of inference is built

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where units are constructed by interpreting and connecting the labels in the frst level (ibid.). The third and last level for identifying the codes is the memoing stage that consists of interpreting beyond the descriptive and fnding patterns. For the analysis (Hepp 2016), six codes were identifed in all texts using the labels commodifcation, community, action, aesthetics, normative and cyclical. These codes were then divided into key words (Table 14.1). Here again, different levels of blame were assigned to low- and high-income countries. For example, in Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (2015a, 2), the community code ascribes causality of waste in low-income countries to socio-cultural conditions where they are ‘often underlying causes of food loss’. Also, there is corresponding lack of use of the commodifcation code, insinuating a lack of capitalist development as source of cause. For medium- and high-income countries, the commodifcation code is used to suggest that ‘human consumption’ and ‘consumer level’ actions are the culprits. Therefore again, it would be the eaters – interpellated as consumers in a capitalistic order – who fail to consume food properly. With regards to environmental impacts, for the Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (2015a) they are coded as negative, as are the effects on economic growth and food insecurity, placing the integrity of the planet, the maintenance of the growth imperative and human subsistence all on the same level of importance. The objects of food insecurity are identifed as ‘[w]omen farmers and young children in many developing countries’ (2015a, 3); the culprits impacting economic growth are, again, the consumers. Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (2015a, 4) is action-coded focusing on the creation of partnerships between international organisations and the food supply chain. Identifed actors are ‘herders, farmers and fshers to global companies’ excluding the social aspect, such as eaters. This contradiction in discourse is further revealed where the action-coded strategy contains keywords for the commodifcation code (ibid., 5) – but, most importantly, maintains exclusion of a social dimension. When the authors later include the social dimension referring to ‘collaboration and coordination’, it is offered within a broader institutional frame that seeks to establish a global partnership. Here, a contradictory Table 14.1 Codes and keywords used in the second part of the analysis, following Hepp (2016) Codes

Keywords

Commodifcation

Commercial, value, price, consumption, buy, system, industry, consumer, invest, productivity, effciency Society, social, collective, together, cultural, collaboration Act, activist, change, do/cannot do, solution, promote, awareness, strategy, intervention Nice, ugly, size, shape, status, standard, quality Good, bad, positive, negative, need, should, best/worst Flow, where it comes from and where it goes, invisible, away

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logic becomes apparent – the document’s initial defnitions that frame food waste and loss state the situational dependence of food waste but frames the strategy in a homogenising manner through a fattening where ‘everybody knows what is happening worldwide’ (2015a, 5). The Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change (FAO 2015b) document is harder to deconstruct using the same codes since it is oriented towards a scientifc-positivist, truth-claiming, data-centred discourse. Even a quick overview will testify to the emphasis of this text on hard data and quantitative assessments. Nevertheless, from the frst paragraph it incorporates markers from the commodifcation code. As in the Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (FAO 2015a) there is mention of causality but, in contrast, there are no social markers in this theme that could point to the role of the community. The sentences are nominalised with agentless verbs. In the frst section, the FAO (2015b, 1) states that ‘the lack of infrastructure and lack of knowledge … favour food spoilage’ in low-income countries while ‘aesthetic preferences and arbitrary sell-by dates are factors that contribute to food waste’ in high-income countries. Again, low-income countries are framed as lacking, which points to a contradictory relationship between the problem and the sites for action. A better example of this is stated in Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change: ‘per capita food wastage footprint on climate in high income countries is more than double that of low income countries’ (FAO 2015b, 3). Therefore, low-income countries are seen as lesser culprits so, by that account, they should be regarded as doing something right. Nevertheless, a table with an authoritative scientifc modality refers to ‘feasible food loss reduction ratios’ where a higher percentage of food loss reduction is adjudged to developing countries, so the lesser culprit is the site where more action is commanded (FAO 2015b, 4). Throughout Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change, the text incorporates many markers of the commodity code; it refers to food as commodity groups and ‘the consumption phase’ as the act of eating (FAO 2015b, 3). But the commodifcation markers appear combined with normative or action codes, in the following sentence in a signifcant way: ‘efforts to reduce GHG related to food wastage should focus on major climate hotspots commodities’ (ibid., 2). Since it talks about where the efforts should focus, it is coded as normative and at the same time it refers to food as commodities, so it is a normative claim with a capitalist orientation. An example of the commodifcation and action markers together is ‘investment in reducing post-harvest losses represent an important climate mitigation strategy’ (ibid., 4), whereby placing money in a certain site implies action. Deconstructing the FAO documents in such a way shows how they institutionally frame food waste within the realm of the rotten: material devoid of exchange value and also, by way of decay, as lost use value. At the same time, all courses of action are constrained by market-logic. With this in mind we can move on to the analysis of the activist discourse.

Applying discourse within wider social practice: Rude Food To demonstrate how social practices can be a source of cultural change, I now shift attention to the interpretation of discourses in a focus group with volunteers

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from Rude Food, a not-for-proft initiative to reduce food waste in Malmö, Sweden (Hepp 2016). A focus group methodology was applied to consider the construction of meaning within a social context (Bryman 2012, 503). My interest was to identify and understand discourses on how food waste activists perceive and make sense of food waste within the dynamics of their group. Eight active Rude Food volunteers participated in the focus group that was held in April 2016. The meeting was recorded and transcribed in order to identify key words to analyse key themes and patterns. Viewing both institutional discourse and activist discourse – one as text, the other as dialogue – allowed for intertextual analysis, which is defned as whether a discourse simply reproduces pre-existing discourse or instead incorporates change by mixing it within other discourses (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 7). Intertextuality can help understand how degrowth values are embedded within activist food waste discourse through their interpretation of hegemonic institutional discourse. The Rude Food conversation starts by discussing activists’ motivation, where normative markers and keywords referring to community prevail. The volunteers describe food waste as ‘a really bad thing’ citing community markers of health and sharing, while keywords for commodifcation are mentioned in negative phrasing such as ‘I don’t want to buy things’. Participants describe their understanding of food waste as ‘the opposite of food waste’ marking differences between actual food waste meaning food that is spoiled versus ‘the food that is wasted that doesn’t have to be wasted’, acknowledging a liminal ‘third space’ (Hetherington 2004) where food is not yet spoiled to retain future possible use. The activists also mention food waste within an action-coded, normative category, as something capable of ‘blurring dichotomies’ and as ‘something that needs to change’. Participants expressed relevant semantic difference between naming food ‘waste’, ‘surplus’ or ‘loss’ recognising – with the use of normative keywords – that those terms have different connotation. One participant referred to the aforementioned image on the front page of Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (FAO 2015a) to say, ‘food waste for a lot of people creates this very negative image of mouldy oranges and that’s maybe not it [food waste]’. This reveals a new articulation where food waste is not necessarily rotten as it might retain use value. The image of a mouldy orange entails a negative meaning but for FAO, it represents an icon to suggest food waste is not edible while, for Rude Food volunteers, this is not what food waste looks like, shifting its meaning in discursive practice. Images employed by Rude Food members to depict food waste differ in this regard; they appreciate the use value of foodstuffs that are still ‘good’ or edible, or that can be creatively modifed and commonly enjoyed such as ‘old banana ice cream’. Participants agreed that, since ‘food waste’ has a negative connotation, it is important to keep using it provocatively to serve Rude Food’s purpose to educate, raise awareness and capture attention. This provocation hints of linguistic reappropriation (Galinsky et al. 2003) where, by reclaiming the term as their own, activists destabilise its often-negative connotation to negotiate new meaning. When asked about the causes of food waste, keywords from the commodifcation code referred to included ‘a very commercial lifestyle’, alluding to the market

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logic under which supermarkets operate and use aesthetic markers to refer to food as a status symbol. ‘Mindset’ was identifed as a new term that related to actioncoded words: ‘that mind-set has to change in order for the supermarket to change in order for things to change’. The invisibility of waste became another recurring theme from the conversation, with reference to cycles with normative terms where ‘people don’t understand where our food comes from anymore’. During the discussion with Rude Food participants, a different order of discourse was negotiated where food waste is appreciated for its use value and action is normatively described. The community marker was present in the conversation about impacts, while environmental impacts were only tangentially mentioned. Social consequences were agreed to be most negative: ‘we are not growing it, we are not trading it, we are not cooking together’. Activists see food waste not as the rotten orange on the cover of the FAO document but instead as both an opportunity and a duty to be picked up and considered for its value: to be eaten and shared.

Discussion: reading between the lines Analysing activist and institutional discourses on food waste is purposeful for degrowth due to the need to make the leap from a disempowering capitalist discourse, where agency is bounded within commodifcation with agents constrained as consumers, negating possible agency beyond consumerism. From an environmental and social justice perspective, the use value of food should always be placed above exchange, a fact highlighted by the activist discourse but obscured by the institutional one. This analysis demonstrates that there is an intertextuality within discourses shared by Rude Food volunteers and the FAO documents. They share one fundamental aspect: both refer to eaters as consumers and in this they share an understanding of point of departure for action. In both discourses, buying and eating are considered to be the same, and action begins with the individual ‘with their mindset to just change and see things differently’, as expressed by Rude Food members. The difference between them lies in the strategy and agency of subjects. For Rude Food, reducing food waste is made possible through negotiating new meanings to revalue discarded produce, where a solution can emerge from: ‘coming together and working with it, deliberating, not only though language but also through action’. On the other hand, the FAO strategy is focused on effciency (FAO 2015a), which does not lead to an ultimate reduction in resource consumption. On the contrary, greater effciency actually increases the scale of the economy as foretold by the Jevons Paradox (Bowman 2020) where an increase in effciency, rather than reducing consumption, actually increases it. In this way, institutional strategies are detrimental to food waste goals because they are embedded within the capitalist discourse from which the problem originated: they continue to classify surplus as ‘out of place’ and focus on its incapacity to provide exchange value regardless of whether it could still retain use value. Diversely, the activist discourse can be read as an effort in ‘unmaking’ the capitalist discourse. The term is put forward by Feola (2019) who goes beyond the

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notion of decolonisation of the imaginary – which has an important role in the degrowth vision – towards a more applicable concept. The notion of ‘unmaking’ helps us to understand the activist discourse as part of a process of deconstruction towards liberation from modern discursive capitalist confgurations. The activist food waste discourse can be seen as an already existing mechanism for change which may allow for ‘the incorporation of new environmental values and social imperatives into existing dominant confgurations’ (Feola 2019, 992). In a utopian degrowth future, there is no food surplus displaced by having lost exchange value, because a use value would be imagined within a new holistic system that puts the wellbeing of people above commodities and proft, and recognises that even a mouldy orange makes great compost. Surplus would not be wasted but instead appreciated as a seasonal surplus ritually spent following the principle of dépense, where excess is a meaningful, non-productive expenditure (Romano 2015, 87). I argue that solutions can be found in shifting discourse, as demonstrated by new articulations by food waste activists who are ‘unmaking’ capitalist confgurations within institutional discourses guided by degrowth principles.

Conclusion This chapter asked: How does food become waste through discourse? CDA provided an important tool in which to reveal and analyse the power and consequences of written and spoken word. The analysis revealed that defnitions embedded within discourses matter: food waste is more accurately defned as surplus, while language used in the FAO documents frames food surplus differently for high- or low-income countries. So too are FAO discourses embedded in capitalist assumptions, prioritising processes of commodifcation and the agency of private institutions. As a result, discourses have an ability to impact differential placement of agency and blame. However, through interdiscursivity, actors also have the ability to reinterpret and redefne discourses differently. This chapter demonstrates that food becomes waste through discourse and social practice, rather than through materiality alone. I argued that food waste is a site for discursive transformation and social change, where solutions can be found by shifting orders of discourse and in social practices that challenge systemic structures. While the FAO documents point to systemic improvements, the Rude Food discourse is negotiating new meanings that appreciate the use value of food above its exchange value. From there, it is possible to envision a path towards food for degrowth futures lined with practices of conviviality, sharing, nurturing the body and enriching social relationships away from a marketcentred sphere.

References Althusser L (2001) Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.

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Andreucci D and McDonough T (2015) ‘Capitalism’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge: 59–62. Barnard A V (2016) Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Blake M (2019) ‘The multiple ontologies of surplus food’. EuropeNow. Accessed November 2019 – https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/05/06/the-multiple-ontologies-of-surp lus-food/. Bowman M (2020) ‘Challenging hegemonic conceptions of food waste: Critical refections from a food waste activist’ in Reynolds C, Soma T, Spring C and Lazell J (eds) Routledge Handbook of Food Waste. London: Routledge: 493–506. Bryman A (2012) Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) (2015) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Demaria F, Kallis G and Bakker K (2019) ‘Geographies of degrowth: Nowtopias, resurgences and the decolonization of imaginaries and places’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 2(3): 431–450. Douglas M (1966) Purity and Danger. London: Ark. Fairclough N (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity. FAO (2015a) Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Accessed November 2019 – http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4068e.pdf. FAO (2015b) Food Wastage Footprint and Climate Change. Accessed November 2019 – http://www.fao.org/3/a-bb144e.pdf. Feola G (2019) ‘Degrowth and the unmaking of capitalism. Beyond “decolonization of the imaginary”, ACME 18: 977–97. Galinsky A, Hugenberg K, Groom C and Bodenhausen G (2003) ‘The reappropriation of stigmatizing labels: Implications for social identity’, Identity Issues in Groups in Research on Managing Groups and Teams 5: 221–56. Giles D B (2020) ‘After market: Capital, surplus and the social afterlives of food waste’ in Reynolds C, Soma T, Spring C and Lazell J (eds) Routledge Handbook of Food Waste. London: Routledge: 23–36. González de Molina M and Toledo V M (2014) The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change. New York: Springer. Gustavsson J, Cederberg C, Sonesson U, van Otterdijk R and Meybeck A (2011) Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent, Causes and Prevention. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Accessed November 2019 – http://http://www.fa o.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e.pdf. Hepp M C (2016) The Food Waste Paradox from a Critical Discursive Perspective. LUP Student Papers. Accessed March 2020 – https://lup.lub.lu.se/studentpapers/search/pu blication/8873321. Hetherington K (2004) ‘Secondhandedness: Consumption, disposal, and absent presence’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22(1): 157–73. Jørgensen M W and Phillips L (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: SAGE. Kallis G (2018) Degrowth. Newcastle: Agenda Publishing. Liboiron M (2019) ‘Waste is not matter out of place’. Discard Studies. Accessed March 2020 – https://discardstudies.com/2019/09/09/waste-is-not-matter-out-of-place/. Midgley J L (2018) ‘Anticipatory practice and the making of surplus food’, Geoforum 99: 181–89.

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Princen T (2010) ‘Consumer sovereignty, heroic sacrifce: Two insidious concepts in an endlessly expansionist economy’ in Maniates M and Meyer J M (eds) The Environmental Politics of Sacrifce. Cambridge: MIT Press: 145–64. Punch K (ed.) (2014) Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. 3rd ed. London: SAGE. Romano O (2015) ‘Dépense’ in D’Alisa G, Demaria F and Kallis G (eds) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge: 86–9. Stenmark Å, Jensen C, Quested T and Moates G (2016) Estimates of European Food Waste Levels. Stockholm: FUSIONS EU Project. Accessed November 2019 – https://http:// eu-fusions.org/phocadownload/Publications/Estimates%20of%20European%20food% 20waste%20levels.pdf. Stuart T (2009) Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. London: Penguin Books. Titscher S, Meyer M, Wodak R and Vetter E (2000) Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE.

15 A degrowth scenario Can permaculture feed Melbourne? Terry Leahy

The degrowth approach is to contract production and consumption while achieving both ecological sustainability and meeting everyone’s basic needs, i.e. ‘social justice and well-being’ (Schneider 2018, 14; Kallis et al. 2015, 24). So, what kind of degrowth strategies would be necessary to achieve both urban food sustainability and natural biodiversity? This chapter critically reviews recent degrowth and sustainability works focusing on Melbourne as a hypothetical city for applying familiar degrowth permaculture and relocalisation strategies. The shared objective of many of those works is to reduce Melbournians’ use of natural resources to, for instance, a maximum of one planet footprints (Grant et al. 2014) as proposed in the ‘radical urban imaginary’ of degrowth proponents Alexander and Gleeson (2019). However, that is not the only degrowth option on the drawing board. A schism has opened between proponents of degrowth, some of whom suggest that cities offer viable, even optimum, settlement patterns while others insist that decentralisation is an imperative for degrowth scenarios. In short, this chapter weaves through these arguments to show the complex diffculties of realising degrowth imaginaries as holistic and planned urban agendas in a concrete location. First, I summarise this citifcation–decentralisation debate. Second, I outline the current mainstream environmentalist discussion of a sustainable way forward for food provisioning in Melbourne. Third, I compare this mainstream sustainability assessment with points made in radical degrowth works by permaculture theorists and simpler way proponent Ted Trainer. Fourth, I draw on my own work in rural Africa to inform this thought experiment on degrowing Melbourne’s food-print. Through this I make a detailed assessment of the options for Melbourne in a future scenario with drastically reduced energy use. I conclude that global capital cities such as Melbourne do not have the degrowth capacity to be sustainable and collectively suffcient in food.

Quantitative and qualitative challenges In the context of a degrowth approach, how much contraction is necessary is a key question. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2018) report recommends reducing emissions from fossil fuels to zero by 2050, which

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means changes both in agricultural practices and the ways we distribute and store food that contribute to carbon emissions. Global footprint analyses suggest that at the end of the 2010s, global citizens on average were using 1.64 times Earth’s biocapacity (Global Footprint Network 2019) while those in Melbourne (and Victoria more generally) have been estimated as using three times that of the global average (Wiedmann et al. 2008, 4). More alarmingly, Melbournian’s per capita ‘foodprint’ has been estimated by Sheridan et al. (2016: 14) as three times that in Global North cities in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK). Grant et al. (2014) found that food was the biggest contributor to Melbournians’ footprints at 23 percent or 1.51gha of the 6.64gha total footprint estimated for 2011. This seemed to be due to food waste, energy spent in food transport, storage (such as refrigeration) and preparation, and overconsumption of dairy and meat products (ibid., 31). Degrowth looks at contraction in relation to resource use and environmental impact. Yet such contractions do not have to mean a diminished quality of life. On the contrary, a less hurried existence, with secure provision for material needs, less obligatory work and more time for leisure and community connection promises a great improvement. As importantly, a sustainable economy would enable greater connection to nonhuman nature and relieve the existential anxiety that plagues many at present.

Degrowth and settlement design: urbanists versus decentralisers Debate about different models for settlement design is frequently a feature of degrowth writings. A Housing for Degrowth collection edited by Nelson and Schneider (2018), includes chapters that advocate a restructuring of current urban landscapes to achieve sustainability, while other chapters argue for decentralisation or a mixed model. The most trenchant of all the urbanists in this collection is Jin Xue (2018), who writes one chapter as sole author and another with Harpa Steffansdottir (Steffánsdóttir and Xue 2018). The model for degrowth is a compact and densely populated city, with suburbs gradually emptied out and replaced by farmland. Suburbanites are moved to infll apartment housing. Food is grown outside cities and transported in. They argue against ruralisation on a number of grounds. Politically, cities allow more choice. Ruralised self-suffciency would imply single family homes with energy embodied in construction. Ruralisation, it is claimed, would mean more motorised transport as supplies for a rural lifestyle come from cities. New rural homes would take up land now used for agriculture or wildlife (see also Vantsinjan 2018; Krahmer 2018). Another contributor, Hans Widmer (2018), favours a division of city precincts into neighbourhoods that access food through links to farms up to 50 km outside the city centre. The contrary decentralising vision is promoted in the ‘simpler way’ vision of Ted Trainer (2018) and by Pernilla Hagbert (2018) who advocates decentralisation to small rural communities. François Schneider and Anitra Nelson (2018) suggest compact towns on the European model, with agricultural production

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in walking distance from the town centre. At least 80 percent of consumption would come from the locality (Schneider and Nelson 2018, 223). More complex technologies would be located at ‘nodes’, which would specialise in such production. Schneider and Nelson reply to urbanist critiques of decentralisation, as follows. Decentralisation does not have to imply single family homes on large blocks but rather compact apartment clusters, sharing walls. The prejudicial political implications of decentralisation found in Vantsinjan are overstated and unsubstantiated. Small towns can be open and globally connected. Overuse of motorised transport is unlikely given that most production is for local use and there is no daily necessity to commute elsewhere. I might add that none of the degrowth urbanists takes the issue of agricultural transport seriously. For example, not one considers the ecological and social costs of recycling human manure to a rural hinterland. Transport of food from a rural hinterland to a city is hard to envisage without use of fossil fuels (details below). Widmer is the only urbanist who even considers transport technologies, suggesting the use of biogas. He is most likely thinking of gas produced with a feedstock of municipal waste, powering small trucks to transport food from the periphery of a city (IRENA 2018, 37–8). Certainly, it is diffcult to imagine sustaining large cities on the Melbourne model, transporting food and compost back and forth from a rural hinterland. Xue’s argument that new rural housing would take up land previously used for agriculture and wildlife forgets that in the cities, a rural exodus could free current housing land for these same purposes. As we shall see, in the Australian context, populations could move to the country to source food needs with a vast reduction in land now used for agricultural purposes. Decentralisation, with small towns surrounded by managed forests, implies an intimate connection between people and wildlife that cannot be achieved within a city. Concerns about the energy requirements for single-family housing assume that construction will use iron, cement and fred bricks but a sustainable scenario is more likely to use locally produced thatch, tiles, timber, mudbricks and bamboo. Concerns about energy requirements of detached single-family homes are irrelevant if passive solar design and sustainable local woodlots provide heating and cooling. Consequently, it may appear that the choice between single homes and dense city apartment blocks is more cultural than ecological.

Current problems with agriculture Current agricultural systems use energy and raw materials well beyond the capacity of natural systems to absorb wastes and renew resources. The food industry runs on fossil fuels, contributing to global warming and depending on a shrinking resource. Farm machinery is powered by fossil fuels. Fertilisers and pesticides derive from fossil fuels. Phosphate, essential for plants, is mined using fossil fuel energy. Food transport uses fossil fuels. Cold storage and packaging likewise (Pfeiffer 2006). International studies suggest that the food sector contributes 30 percent of total energy consumption (Sheridan et al. 2016, 27). The impacts

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on sustainability and biodiversity are other problems. Increased meat consumption means deforestation whether for new pasture or for felds to grow stock feed. Pesticides and herbicides are toxic for some species not directly targeted, collateral damage affecting people, wildlife, soil biota and bees required to pollinate crops. Overfertilisation acidifes soils. Nutrients from synthetic fertilisers are washed into rivers and oceans, fertilising algal blooms that rob the water of oxygen, killing aquatic life. Ploughing loosens soils, causing erosion. Irrigation leads to salinity and depletes aquifers. Accessible stocks of phosphate are running out (Roberts 2009; Pretty 2002).

The urbanites’ Melbourne food bowl and Foodprint research For urbanites, a key question is how to eliminate impacts while maintaining a nutritious diet. Most food is produced outside cities in rural areas that may be regional, national or international. Transport, storage and packaging are key sources of environmental impacts. Recent research into food futures for Melbourne is a good starting point for this discussion. The Foodprint report Melbourne’s Food Future presents a scenario to reduce food miles and fossil fuel emissions in the context of Melbourne’s growth from 4.5 mn people to 7.5 mn by 2050 (Carey et al. 2016; Sheridan et al. 2016). They note that currently 16.3 mn ha – a land area equivalent to 72 percent of the state of Victoria – is required to provide Melbourne’s food needs (Sheridan et al. 2016, 5). The per capita land foodprint is 3.8 ha (not to be confused with the ‘gha’ measure mentioned above). However, 90 percent of the land used is for production of lamb and beef on open range pastures (ibid., 15). Melbourne’s ‘food bowl’ is an annular ring extending to 100 km from the city centre, currently supplying Melbourne with about half its needs in vegetables (ibid., 23). Regulations could protect this agricultural land from suburban development, constraining Melbourne’s new population within the current urban footprint through urban infll and multistorey apartments: If urban density were increased so that 80% of residential units became multiple dwelling units (townhouses and apartments) and the footprint of new buildings was reduced by 30% … urban sprawl could be reduced by about 50% by 2050 and 180,000 hectares of land in Melbourne’s food bowl could be saved. (Ibid., 29) The food bowl currently provides Melbourne with 41 percent of its food needs. With their strategy, the authors expect the food bowl to provide 24 percent of the food needs of 7.5 mn in 2050, i.e. mainly fruit and vegetables, with some poultry and dairy (Carey et al. 2016, 40). They suggest that the food bowl is ideally placed to both use recycled water from sewage treatment plants and replace some synthetic fertilisers with organic wastes (including urban sewerage). Cereals and large livestock meat will come from greater distances within Australia.

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Some aspects of this report are paradoxical. A central aim is to reduce use of fossil fuels in food transport, water supply and fertilisers yet the report recommends a food strategy that sources 76 percent of Melbourne’s foods from beyond the 100km radius of the food bowl. The authors support IPCC recommendations to phase out fossil fuels so they must be assuming (a) that the transport of food from within this large food bowl to value-adding producers and retailers must be achieved without use of fossil fuels and (b) that sourcing food outside this radius is achievable without fossil fuels, i.e. presupposing that renewables replace a very large part of the energy now sourced from fossil fuels. Even if we assume this is feasible – more on this below – renewable energy sources are not without environmental impacts and risks, such as: bird kills, shortages of rare earth minerals, mining impacts, land clearing and related loss of biodiversity for dams and solar farms. In the implied context of renewable energy abundance, it is diffcult to see why uprooting suburban householders to achieve urban density and saving the food bowl are considered dire necessities. With renewable abundance, mobility in a low-density Melbourne might be achieved with private electric vehicles and food could be transported from all parts of Australia with electric trucks powered by batteries, wind farms, solar and hydro. There is a similar paradox in their approach to fertilisers. They acknowledge the dependence of current fertilisers on fossil fuels and the coming crisis in phosphate supply. Sheridan et al. (2016, 27) remark cryptically that the global food system will ‘need to look to alternative sources’ for these inputs. Yet human and animal manure and recycling phosphate from plants are the only feasible replacements for mined phosphate rock. They acknowledge that use of manure is only achievable when producing food locally, i.e. it is irrelevant or wasted if 76 percent of Melbourne’s food is sourced from other parts of Australia. Waterless composting toilets could provide nitrogen and phosphorus to fertilise agriculture but such arrangements depend on urbanites residing close to places where food is grown. An analogous issue arises with their treatment of water supplies. As the authors report, the food bowl is ideally situated to gain water from the current urban sewerage treatment model. Yet this is irrelevant for the 76 percent of food sourced from elsewhere. In fact, the water-based sewerage treatment system wastes water and energy in any conceivable settlement pattern. A local agricultural system could depend upon water supplies directly engineered to provide for food growing, i.e. local dams, contour bunds and reticulation from buildings.

The permaculture alternative The permaculture movement parallels certain degrowth thinking. In practice, ‘permaculture’ refers to sustainable agriculture and settlement design based around ethics of environmental care and social justice. Permaculture views on sustainable agriculture and settlement design are quite distinctive compared to much agricultural science (Mollison and Holmgren 1978; Mollison 1988; Holmgren 2002a). Compared to the Melbourne Foodprint, the permaculture movement envisages

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a drastic decline in energy provision. Permaculture cofounder, David Holmgren (2002a; 2002b) talks of a ‘long descent’ in energy supply as nonrenewable fossil fuels reach peak production of accessible sources and global warming demands leaving remaining reserves in the ground. Permaculture does not expect hightech renewables to replace fossil fuels; solar panels embody too much energy, so timber is likely to be the most productive energy source, similar to feudal society (Holmgren 2002a; 2002b). Mollison and Holmgren (1978) criticise centralised energy provision for its political implications, preferring autonomy so people can ‘assert control over their lifestyle and future’ (Mollison 1988, 94). Permaculture writings address current environmentalists who want to live more sustainably either in the city or by moving to the country. Permaculture offers pragmatic advice within current structures of the market economy yet a more utopian thread presumes a revolutionary change, an ambivalence leading in distinctive directions. In the more pragmatic vision, Australia is blessed with large suburban blocks. In a context of economic downturn and rising energy costs, the suburbs could be turned over to local agriculture, in backyards, street edges, parks and other open spaces (Mollison 1988; Holmgren 2002b; Holmgren 2018). David Holmgren’s RetroSuburbia (2018, 36) narrates scenarios of ‘Aussie Street’, fve houses on 1000 m2 blocks. By 2020, residents rarely use cars and spend much time producing for local consumption. An appendix envisages most fruit and vegetables and some small livestock production in suburbs with a peripheral food bowl of community-supported farms. A small quantity of large livestock meat and most cereals are supplied from a more distant hinterland (ibid., 544). Wood or charcoal comes from rural forests (ibid., 109). These writings fy in the face of the Melbourne Foodprint conclusions. Urban high-density is not the answer to environmental problems with current agriculture. On the contrary, viable cities will depend on food provisioning from suburban backyards, street edges, parks and football felds. This vision informs a more theoretical presentation in Degrowth in the Suburbs by Alexander and Gleeson (2019). Noting the slow turnover of urban rebuilding they argue that ‘the primary goal is not to rebuild our cities but instead learn how to re-inhabit a built environment that already exists’ (ibid., 13). Moreover, ‘a range of household, neighbourhood, and community strategies … could be undertaken to begin building a new suburbia within the shell of the old (ibid., 27). They envisage almost all unused suburban land being turned over to food production (ibid., 159). Nevertheless, as in Holmgren’s analysis, they acknowledge that some food production would have to come from outside the city. Farmers’ markets would join ‘local producers’ to urban consumers, and some urbanites would leave the city for rural towns, easing pressure on food provision in the cities (ibid., 160, 169). Utopian permaculture argues for local production for local consumption. Human manure and food waste are recycled as compost to local felds. Timber is grown locally for building and energy supplies. There is no packaging or storage because local people supply direct to householders. All transport of food and

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compost is on foot or by bicycle. Water and energy supply is localised. Minimal trade links rural hamlets and self-suffcient farms: Future settlements can be planned to be largely self-suffcient and productive, and existing settlements modifed towards this end. (Mollison and Holmgren 1978, 90) In Future Scenarios, Holmgren (2009) refers to this vision as ‘earth stewardship’. In The Designers’ Manual (1988), Bill Mollison creates this vision in advice to new age settlers opting out of a doomed industrialism, arguing that cities are unsustainable and socially toxic, foreseeing a mosaic of small self-suffcient communities.

Ted Trainer: the simpler way model Australian sociologist Ted Trainer has been critiquing capitalist growth economies since the 1980s. His conclusions about energy are slightly different from permaculture writers. Energy descent does not imply the end of complex technology and information systems such as solar panels and computers but, like permaculture writers, he argues that renewables cannot supply the amount of energy services we consume today. He uses current data to defend long-held arguments: ‘a 100% renewable system to meet Australian energy demand would involve costs that would probably constitute an unacceptably large fraction of GDP’ (Trainer 2017, 539). The cost would be close to 50 percent of GDP, while present energy costs are closer to 5 percent of GDP. There is insuffcient space to detail Trainer’s calculations but suffce it to say that many other writers, such as Diesendorf (2014), conclude that it is economically quite feasible for rich countries to replace current energy services with renewables. Yet Trainer’s views have particular implications for agriculture and urban form and his basic reasoning for departing from more optimistic scenarios can be summarised, as follows. Optimistic scenarios based on renewables rely on yet-to-beproven storage for periods when sun and wind are down, and biofuels have little promise (Trainer 2007; 2017). Electricity contributes only 20 percent of current energy demand, with the remainder mainly supplied as liquid fuels and gas, for transport and heating. Replacing the latter with electricity implies an at least fourfold increase (2017, 539). The extra economic impact of core countries supplying electric alternatives to peripheral countries would mean that renewable technology inputs would rapidly become scarce, for example lithium and rare earth minerals (Smith 2016). Trainer concludes that the global average energy from renewables could only supply 10 percent of what is now available on average per capita from fossil fuels in rich countries. To adapt to such energy constraints, Trainer constructs a ‘simpler way’ alternative. Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society (2007) gives a clear account. The basic economic unit is a small rural town of 1000 people and 250 households. The town is interpenetrated with agriculture, with plots

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for vegetables and orchards within easy walking distance to consumers. Kitchen waste is composted, sewage is treated locally and nutrients recycled. Legume trees provide fodder, fuel wood and nitrogen fxing. Dams are aquaculture ponds. Poultry is fed from local food products, their manure used in compost. There is no need for cold storage or packaging. Fields for carbohydrate crops are also in walking distance. Fuel wood and timber come from within the settlement and from forests that lie between these small towns. Intensively farmed and residential land occupies 73 ha of a total 400 ha, the remaining 327 ha are natural woodlands. These small towns are 2 km apart. Larger towns are 10 km apart. Every 100 km a small urban centre handles concentrated industrial production. These centres are provided with food from the surplus generated by a periphery of ruralised suburbs on the model of small towns described above. Commuting for two days of work per week, residents travel by bicycle or biodiesel buses. Where they are absolutely necessary, trains run on renewable energy. Trainer sees ruralisation of today’s suburbs as a stage of transition to full decentralisation.

Günther’s ruralisation: solving the phosphate problem Folke Günther, a Swedish researcher, arrives at similar conclusions to Trainer in a consideration of phosphates. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient taken up by plants that many farmers provide as fertilisers sourced from mines of phosphate rock, transported internationally. As harvested plants travel from the rural hinterland to cities, they take phosphorus with them, which has to be replaced on farm lands. Excreted in sewage, phosphorus accumulates as pollution. It migrates through ground water or is piped to ocean outfalls, causing eutrophication. Phosphate rock resources are fnite and rapidly becoming exhausted (Günther 2001). A fnal problem is the energy used to truck food into cities. Günther (2004, 20) maintains that we can solve these problems by ruralisation: villages of 200 people could be located on 40-ha mixed farms providing for all food needs. Animal manure and human sewage would be recycled using composting toilets. The phosphorus cycle would, thereby, be completed locally without using mined phosphate (ibid., 19). Cities would be gradually emptied out and new housing located on farms along transport routes (ibid., 23). If ruralisation seems socially isolating, in fact there would be 17,000 people within a 3 km radius of your home.

Melbourne: how much land is required for food The key question is whether urban centres could provide all food needs from the suburbs. If so, cities with low-density suburbs might be viable without fossil fuel energy, even on the low energy budget estimated by Trainer, Holmgren and certain other peak oil writers. Clearly, such a strategy could not work for highdensity cities like Hong Kong. But, perhaps, cities like Melbourne could source

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all food from their suburbs, with gardens, road verges, small roads and open spaces pressed into service? In assessing this possibility, I draw on research into rural food security in South and South East Africa where subsistence farmers use low-cost, low-input agriculture. Successful interventions use a permaculture approach: avoiding synthetic inputs; creating a complementary mix of animal and plant species; with legume trees for fertility, fodder and mulch; woodlots for cooking fuel and contour bunds to trap water. This research indicates how much land is required for self-suffcient subsistence food production. A paradigm case is the Chikukwa permaculture project in Zimbabwe, which has been in progress for more than 20 years. Leahy (2019) and Leahy and Leahy (2013) provide the foundation data for the following. Household requirements We set the ideal Melbourne household size at fve people per suburban block (Holmgren 2018, 51), which is around double the current average Australian household size. Holmgren suggests 108 m2 per person for fruit and vegetables (540 m2 per household), but does not include land for the house, green manure, animal feed or compost materials (ibid., 235). Drawing lessons from Africa, the land required for the house, vegetables and small livestock would be 0.083 ha or 833 m2, with a similar size for an orchard, in total 1666 m2. This allows for legume trees for mulch (including for the composting toilet), for an orchard that may not produce optimally, for leafy fodder for small livestock, for compost bins, a composting toilet, water tanks, wood storage and a work shed. In Malawi, the agriculture department calculates requirements for maize as a staple as 300 kg per person annually (Leahy 2019). Assume three adults eating 300 kg each and two children eating 150 kg each, totalling 1.2 tonnes maize. A typical African yield is one tonne per hectare annually. Crop scientists using organic methods can boost this to four tonnes but, if two is likely as an average, 1.2 tonnes maize would require 0.6 ha (6000 m2) land. Feed for 20 poultry would require another 1000 m2 (Green Harvest n.d.). See Table 15.1. Bigger yields per hectare can be achieved using wheat, as in Table 15.2. At the Cloughjordan Ecovillage in Ireland, a small plot of organic wheat was trialled indicating a yield

Table 15.1 Land required to feed Melbourne household (5) with maize as the staple crop

Maize for household Maize for 20 poultry House, vegetables, poultry run Orchard Total

Yield/ha.

Tonnes per year required

Area required

2 tonnes 2 tonnes N/A N/A

1.2 tonnes 0.2 tonnes N/A N/A

0.6 ha 0.1 ha 0.083 ha 0.083 ha 0.866 ha

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Table 15.2 Land required to feed a Melbourne household (5) with wheat as the staple crop

Wheat for household Wheat for 20 poultry House, vegetables, poultry run Orchard Total

Yield/ha.

Tonnes per year required

Area required

3 tonnes 3 tonnes N/A N/A

1.2 tonnes 0.2 tonnes N/A N/A

0.4 ha 0.07 ha 0.083 ha 0.083 ha 0.636 ha

of three tonnes per hectare annually (Darrell 2018). Thus, 1.2 tonnes of wheat require 4000 m2, making 4700 m2 with poultry. Drawing on such data, areas required for a fve-person household include cropping felds in the vicinity of 4700–7000 m2 and 1666 m2 (as above) for a residential house, small livestock, vegetables and fruit with a total of approximately 6366 m2 for household and food production. This is based on the calculations for wheat, the more economic crop in terms of land requirements. This 0.64 ha for a household of fve differs from the Melbourne foodprint fgure of 3.8 ha per capita (Sheridan et al. 2016, 15) or 19 ha for a household of fve people because a smaller amount of animal protein is sourced from integrated small livestock rather than from open range large livestock. In contrast to Melbournians’ current use of 72 percent of Victorian land for food supplies (ibid., 5), in the scenario presented here only 2.4 percent of land in Victoria would be needed to make a sustainable agriculture possible and provide all food needs for the current Melbourne population. So, perhaps it is possible to source all Melbourne’s food needs from within the city and its suburbs? Transforming Melbourne Scale maps of typical blocks in Melbourne’s suburbs allow one to estimate areas taken by houses, suburban yards, road edges, local roads and green spaces accessible across a 5 km spread. For Epping, an outer suburb, house blocks were typically 500 m2, with 370 m2 of yard space in the latter 2010s. Assuming that small suburban roads will be dug up and footpaths and verges used, this extra land is 183 m2 per house. The share of each house in current green reserve land is 57 m2. So, in total 740 m2. For Reservoir, house blocks are 775 m2 with 557 m2 of yard space. For each household, 190 m2 in verges and roads and 63 m2 in green space. A total of 1028 m2. Camberwell is more middle class: house blocks are 880 m2, with 485 m2 gardens; 239 m2 from roads and verges; and 105 m2 of green space total 1224 m2. See Table 15.3. So, if we were to retain the current urban form of Melbourne, suburbs could supply 40–70 percent of the land required for housing, orchards, vegetables, compost, mulch, water tanks and small livestock. But we would need considerably more land to cover basic cereals and remaining food needs (roughly fve times

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Table 15.3 Space for food provisioning in a small sample of Melbournian suburbs House blocks Yard space included Roads and on the block verges Epping Reservoir Camberwell

500 m2 775 m2 880 m2

(370 m2) (557 m2) (485 m2)

183 m2 190 m2 239 m2

Open space

Total

57 m2 63 m2 105 m2

740 m2 1028 m2 1224 m2

what is now available). So, suburban agriculture might solve some problems of nutrient recycling and food miles. But it could not be the sole solution. To retain Melbourne’s current urban form, we would have to bring basic carbohydrates and some fruit and vegetables from the country. To solve Günther’s problem with phosphates, we would take at least half of the human and animal manure from the city to these country locations, probably as compost, to use in cropping felds. In the light of Trainer’s research, it is unlikely that we would be able to do this using renewable energy. The energy required to transport food and compost would be considerable. It would make more sense to produce all food in walking distance of settlements, as in Trainer’s and Günther’s alternatives. So, even low-density cities like Melbourne are not self-sustaining in the long term. This conclusion is even more inescapable in the case of the dense inner-city core of apartment buildings, whose residents could never be fed from the excess of suburban agriculture.

Factoring in fuel wood These conclusions are strengthened if, as permaculture writing and the peak oil literature indicates, we take into account the possibility that a society running without fossil fuels might even use some wood as a fuel for domestic heating and cooking. Trainer and Holmgren demonstrate that renewables are unlikely to deliver an amount of energy remotely close to current fossil fuel use. Accordingly, it would be unlikely that we could replace cooking and heating powered by fossil fuels with electricity supplied by renewables. We would need all electricity for essential industrial purposes, lighting and necessary transport. Holmgren devotes a chapter to the use of wood for cooking and heating in Retrosuburbia (2018), arguing that environmentalist objections to combustion stoves are overstated. Toxic emissions are the effect of misuse, not an inevitable by-product, of combustion stoves. Holmgren promotes sustainable use of native forests in ways that enhance conservation values, which begs the question of implications if wood fuel is required for cooking and heating. Currently, direct household energy use accounts for 20 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (Australian Government 2019). Cooking only accounts for 5 percent of Australian domestic energy (DEWHA 2008, 40), typically using electric stoves (with 75 percent of electricity sourced from coal) or with gas.

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Space heating uses 38 percent of total residential energy consumption (ibid), most using gas central heating. Victoria, with a mild temperate climate and just over one quarter of the nation’s population, accounts for 59 percent of Australia’s total consumption for space heating (ibid., 42). How much wood and woodland would be required to cook using wood? Sustainable yields of frewood from Australian woodlots are estimated as between 800kg per hectare (Freudenberger et al 2004) and 1.5 tonnes per hectare (ANZECC 2001), so 1.2 tonnes per hectare is used here. Holmgren reports use of wood for cooking with a combustion stove for his household in rural Victoria as 5 tonnes per annum (Holmgren 1995, 42), requiring 4.16 ha woodland. Holmgren’s passive solar-designed house in rural Victoria requires two tonnes per annum of frewood for space heating (ibid.). Clearly, the stove used for cooking also provides heating; a CSIRO report suggests that Victorian households using wood for heating consume 2.69 tonnes of wood per annum (Driscoll et al. 2000, 8). Thus, around 1.66 ha woodland is required to produce two tonnes of wood. In other words, the total area of woodland required to provide for cooking and heating sustainably could be 5.82 ha. In relation to the analysis above, we would need to add this amount of land to the agricultural land required. In other words, a fve-member household selfprovisioning with food and using wood for cooking and heating would require 6.46 ha (5.82 plus 0.64). Melbourne’s current urban form cannot provide for this; we would have to transport wood from distant forests, using renewable energy, which, as explained, is unlikely. The footprint for food and wood and residential settlements, would be 24 percent of Victorian land, compared to 72 percent of Victorian land currently required just for food (Sheridan et al. 2016, 5). Thus, decentralisation of urbanites to rural areas would allow a major part of the state’s land to operate as wildlife and indigenous fora reserves.

Conclusions This chapter concentrated on Melbourne, a large capital city by Australian standards. Australian foodprints can be three times that of other cities of the Global North, especially given the comparatively high consumption of meat and dairy products sourced from open range holdings. This chapter has demonstrated that, even without these excesses in food and resource consumption, it would be diffcult to sustainably provide food to a city such as Melbourne without the use of fossil fuels. Some small cities may be sustainable so long as all transport of organic wastes and food from nearby hinterlands could be managed with animal traction or cargo bicycles. However, a future defned by energy scarcity suggests that most people will live in small rural towns or on communal farms. Foodprint research shows that currently Melbourne gains 40 percent of its food from within a 100 km radius. Yet transport requirements of current food bowl arrangements, which include distribution to a wholesaler, to retail and to households is unlikely to be sustainable without fossil fuels. Provision of 60 percent of food from even further

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distances is clearly unsustainable. With a population of 7.5 million, the food bowl could only provide 24 percent of Melbourne’s food needs. Therefore, the alternative of feeding Melbourne from the suburbs seems attractive, yet the agricultural land that could be released for this strategy is insuffcient. Most food needs would still have to be met from outside the suburban core. An impossibility in a low energy future. Accordingly, the vision of self-suffcient rural communities found in some permaculture writing is a sensible option. Decentralisation with compact rural towns is another. These are diffcult conclusions to promote. Few people understand the constraints of an energy future without fossil fuels. Many regard ruralisation as a perverse choice with unwanted consequences: insularity, conformity and ethnocentrism, not to mention boredom. But it is a mistake to view these cultural constraints through the lens of a feudal imaginary. I envisage a lightly settled rural landscape connected via roads, bicycles and train services. Electronic communication links communities to a global exchange of information and cultural artefacts. Chains of production for high-tech goods bring communities together to collaborate. Festivals enable cultural exchange. With a low-production, lowconsumption economy, there is plenty of time for cultural pursuits and social connection.

References Alexander S and Gleeson B (2019) Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary. Singapore: Springer Nature. ANZECC (2001) A National Approach to Firewood Collection and Use in Australia. Canberra, ACT: Australian and New Zealand Environmental Conservation Council. Australian Government (2019) Australian Guide to Environmentally Sustainable Homes. Australian Government. Accessed 11 March 2020 – https://www.yourhome.gov.au/. Carey R, Larsen K, Sheridan J and Candy S (2016) Melbourne’s Food Future: Planning a Resilient City Foodbowl. Melbourne: Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, University of Melbourne. Darrell B (2018) Growing Wheat for the First Time. Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Ireland: RED Gardens, YouTube. Accessed 11 March 2020 –https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=fkO3EhG7v3c. DEWHA (2008) Energy Use in the Australian Residential Sector: 1986–2020. Canberra, ACT: Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts, Commonwealth of Australia. Diesendorf M (2014) Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change. Abingdon: Routledge. Driscoll D, Milkovitz G and Freudenberger D (2000) Impact and Use of Firewood in Australia. Canberra, ACT: Commonwealth Scientifc and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Sustainable Ecosystem. Freudenberger D, Cawsey M E, Stol J and West P W (2004) Sustainable Firewood Supply in the Murray-Darling Basin. Canberra, ACT: Commonwealth Scientifc and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Global Footprint Network (2019) 2018 National Footprint Accounts Guidebook. Accessed 11 March 2020 – https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/2018-national-foo tprint-accounts-guidebook/.

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Grant T, Cruypenninck H and Safa E (2014) One Planet Living: Reducing Victoria’s Ecological Footprint by 25%. Melbourne, VIC: Environment Victoria. Green Harvest (n.d.) ‘Feeding your chooks’, Poultry supplies. Accessed 11 March 2020 – https://greenharvest.com.au/PoultrySupplies/Information/ChickenFood.html. Günther F (2001) ‘Making Western agriculture more sustainable’ in Douthwaite R and Jopling J (eds) Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability Review 1. Cambridge: UIT: 130–46. Günther F (2004) ‘Ruralisation: A way to alleviate vulnerability problems’ in Ortega E and Ulgiati S (eds), Proceedings of IV Biennial International Workshop: Advances in Energy Studies, Unicamp, Campinas (SP), Brazil. June 16–19: 37–64. Hagbert P (2018) ‘Rethinking home as a node for transition’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 57–67. Holmgren D (1995) Sustainable Living at ‘Meliodora’: Hepburn Permaculture Gardens. Hepburn: Holmgren Design Services. Holmgren D (2002a) Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Hepburn, VIC: Holmgren Design Services. Holmgren D (2002b) David Holmgren’s Collected Writings: 1978–2000. Hepburn, VIC: Holmgren Design Services. Holmgren D (2009) Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change. River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Holmgren D (2018) RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future. Hepburn Springs: Melliodora Publishing. IPCC (2018) Summary for policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C approved by governments. Newsroom Post at The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change site, 8 October — https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-po licymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governme nts/ IRENA (2018) Biogas for Road Vehicles: Technology Brief. Abu Dhabi: International Renewable Energy Agency. Kallis G, Demaria F and D’Alisa G (2015) ‘Degrowth’ in Wright J D (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier: 24–30. Krahmer T (2018) ‘Geography matters: Ideas for a degrowth spatial planning paradigm’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge: 217–22. Leahy G and Leahy T (2013) The Chikukwa Project. Accessed 17 March 2020 – http:// www.thechikukwaproject.com. Leahy T (2019) Food Security for Rural Africa: Feeding the Farmers First. Abingdon: Routledge. Mollison B (1988) Permaculture: A Designers' Manual. Tyalgum: Tagari Publications. Mollison B and Holmgren D (1978) Permaculture 1: A Perennial Agricultural System for Human Settlements. Uxbridge, UK: Corgi. Mollison B (1988) Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual. Tyalgum (Tasmania): Tagari Publications. Nelson A and Schneider F (2018) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge. Pfeiffer D (2006) Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Pretty J (2002) Agri-Culture: Re-Connecting People, Land and Nature. London: Earthscan.

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Roberts A (2009) The End of Food: The Coming Crisis in the World Food Industry. London: Bloomsbury. Schneider F (2018) ‘Housing for degrowth narratives’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 14–30. Schneider F and Nelson A (2018) ‘Open localism – On Xue and Vantsinjan III’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 223–30. Sheridan J, Carey R and Candy S (2016) Melbourne’s Foodprint: What Does it Take to Feed a City? Melbourne, VIC: Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, The University of Melbourne. Smith R (2016) Green Capitalism: The God that Failed. London: College Publications. Steffánsdóttir H and Xue J (2018) ‘The quality of small dwellings in a neighbourhood context’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 171–82. Trainer T (2007) Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society. Dordrecht: Springer. Trainer T (2017) ‘Can renewables meet total Australian energy demand: A “disaggregated” approach’, Energy Policy 109: 539–44. Trainer T (2018) ‘The simpler way: housing, living and settlements’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 120–30. Vantsinjan A (2018) ‘Urbanisation as the death of politics: Sketches of degrowth municipalism’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 196–209. Widmer H with Schneider F (2018) ‘Neighbourhoods as the basic model of the global commons’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 156–70. Wiedmann T, Wood R, Barrett J, Lenzen M and Clay R (2008) The Ecological Footprint of Consumption in Victoria. Stockholm Environment Institute at University of York (UK) and Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis at University of Sydney. Report for Victorian Environmental Protection Agency (Melbourne, Australia). Accessed 17 March 2020 – library.bsl.org.au/jspui/bitstream/1/1152/1/ECOLOGICAL_FOOTP RINT_of_Consumption_in_Victoria.pdf. Xue J (2018) ‘Housing for degrowth’ in Nelson A and Schneider F (eds) Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities. Abingdon: Routledge: 171–82.

16 Future research directions Food for degrowth Ferne Edwards and Anitra Nelson

This collection has brought together a range of food for degrowth studies that provide theoretical and practical approaches to push forward degrowth futures. Chapters identify research methods and topics that beg to be explored further. Uniting research on sustainable food practices with degrowth literature presents new angles for refection, crossdisciplinary insights for analysis and threads of curiosity to follow. Food for degrowth can be understood in many ways, from celebratory gatherings to reducing energy and material expenditure in the food chain, from creating circular waste systems and minimising embodied water and phosphate consumption in production to criticising the political structures that obscure and obstruct sustainable change from happening. In this chapter, we synthesise some key approaches, suggest research questions to establish and propel food for degrowth as an area of study and identify research gaps, acknowledging links and relationships to other sectors and movements in order to explore future degrowth directions to reset the food system.

Frugal abundance The chapters in this collection framed by the degrowth term ‘frugal abundance’ speak to food production and procurement in various ways from ‘growing your own’, foraging and nonmonetary exchange in Australia, to food self-provisioning (FSP) in households and dacha cooperatives in Eastern Europe, and the revalorisation of traditional crops in Kenya in urban kitchens. These chapters deep dive into cases that illustrate progress towards degrowth transformations at the household level. Reconnecting households to food provisioning Daněk and Jehlička (Chapter 3) describe how metabolic rifts with ecological, social and individual dimensions have alienated people from their food system. Pungas (Chapter 5) and Brückner (Chapter 4) analyse the implications of this rift with regards to gender and nature. All chapters recognise that, in order to realise socially just and sustainable food degrowth practices, relationships need to be reestablished between people, food and its natural sources.

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Each chapter explores different ways to reconnect to ethical and sustainable food provisioning through a distinct focus or concern. Chapter 2 asks ‘what does degrowth look like up close and personal?’ as Jones and Ulman explore how they have integrated degrowth into their daily choices as a family, with food as central in their divestment from the industrial economy. Daněk and Jehlička defne FSP as ‘quiet’, highlighting the positive role of unconscious activism by growing one’s own, a theme paralleled in sustainability studies by mundane or inconspicuous consumption (Shove 2004; Hitchings 2007). ‘Quiet’ practices are persistent, resilient and, as Daněk and Jehlička point out ‘large-scale, socially inclusive and longstanding’. Here, we see the personal satisfaction of self-provisioning, frugal abundance as an amplifcation of self-reliance and generosity in sharing. Multidimensional caring Both Pungas and Brückner approach degrowth through the lens of care, seeking ‘to put care and reproduction at the centre of societal analysis and attention’ (Pungas). Economic proft is displaced by care – care for others, care for nature, care for one’s self, reciprocal ‘caring about’, ‘care-giving’ and ‘care-receiving’. As such, Pungas explores the many co-benefts of care-based consumption, distribution and production of FSP in Estonian dachas. The concept of care has blossomed in labour and urban studies – especially due to work of authors such as Joan Tronto (1993, 2013) and Tronto and Fisher (1990) and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) – with authors such as Williams (2017) advocating for a geographical and symbolic scaling up of ‘care-full justice in the city’, that is akin to ‘the ethical city’ (Barrett et al. 2016), ‘the just city’ (Fainstein 2014) and ‘the convivial city’ (Parham 2015). Food practices for degrowth not only beneft from but also offer major contributions to such perspectives, analysing material dimensions of more ‘nature-full’ living along with social wellbeing. For Brückner, care is demonstrated by women revaluing traditional consumption of African indigenous leafy vegetables (AIVs) in Kenya. Considered weeds in colonial and neocolonial growth-oriented agricultural practices, highly nutritious AIVs are revalued as superfoods and drought-tolerant, climate-resilient crops. Rather than focus only on productivity, emblematic of industrial agriculture, degrowth values the co-benefts of crop, insect, people and place diversity, acknowledging often-ignored sociocultural values, and often-unaccounted-for embodied energy, water, phosphate and labour inequities. Care for nature in situated localised contexts has potential to become a rich feld of study for degrowth scholars. ‘Caring for’ others through food has been documented widely in the social sciences but, arguably, degrowth provides a uniquely holistic analysis, balancing material and quantitative assessments with qualitative approaches in accounts that could be taken up more widely by practitioners and crossdisciplinary scholars. Future research directions include interrogating how alternative food production and distribution potentially occupy practitioners’ minds, bodies and ideals, breaking down and out of traditional dualisms between city and country, worker

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and manager to show how coexistence with nature, and novel relationships, connections and shared needs might contribute to new understandings of human being, philosophies and society. Sharing Shared characteristics across these degrowth cases based on social relationships include joy, sharing and trust. Jones and Ulman remind us of the joys of selfprovisioning beyond simply enjoying growing food but of reskilling, learning and appreciating how prolifc one’s local environment can be in terms of offering an abundant diet. Pungas fnds that FSP plays a fundamental role for community cohesion: ‘In contrast to urban housing where many inhabitants do not know their neighbours, in the dacha cooperatives close ties with neighbours are essential’. A sense of purpose trumps the time-consuming and tedious effort of preparing AIVs, as relayed in Brückner’s study by a 70-year-old Kenyan woman: ‘If you do something with your heart, it makes it easy and you also enjoy [doing it]’. Sharing of home-grown produce, knowledge and space is key. Daněk and Jehlička fnd that, in their study in the Czech Republic, ‘64 percent of FSP households shared at least a small portion of their produce’ and growing food had ‘a strong capacity to nurture social ties’. Moreover, ‘this type of sharing is mostly a pleasurable, voluntary and obligation-free practice’ rather than sharing based simply on need or with the expectation of gifts in return. Gardens are shared in Central Europe while, in Kenya, kitchens become ‘an intimate space for learning and experimenting and, on the other hand, community and solidarity’. Brückner explains how sharing cooking minimises cooking time and energy used, giving a focus not only for communal conviviality between householders but also between city and hinterland, enhancing rural and urban connections. Trust often surpassed economic concerns, as in the purchase of AIVs, where trust in preserving food quality dominated: ‘it was important to know how the food was cultivated, who worked the soil and who provided care for and raised the vegetables’. Transdisciplinarity Degrowth activities remind us of the relationship between food and nature, from caring for nature to taking care of ourselves as part of nature. Nature is an ecosystem essential for more-than-human, multispecies wellbeing. There is a strong future for degrowth studies to engage social scientists, ecologists and biologists in collaborations to displace the human focus of much food studies research, to encompass degrowth with a multispecies ethic, climate change impacts and creating a holistic degrowth society. A range of disciplines connect with food for degrowth studies to culminate transdisciplinary research of what societal transitions entail, with contributions from the ‘hard’ sciences of ecology, climate, soil and entomology, to ‘soft’ science approaches of geography, sociology and the more-than-human.

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Degrowth practices are often perceived to lack credibility in comparison with ‘highly productive’ capitalism. As Daněk and Jehlička point out, degrowth activities are too frequently described as being exclusive ‘small-scale and nicheoriented’, typically attracting ‘young middle class, students or activist groups’, economically insecure, relying on voluntary commitment or temporary funding by private donors or public institutions. Yet both their study, and the previous chapter by Jones and Ulman, show that FSP can be productive. In Daněk’s and Jehlička’s Czech Republic case study, ‘One third of all vegetables and fruits, and slightly more than one quarter of potatoes and eggs, that were consumed in foodgrowing households had been produced in their gardens’. Moreover, when gifts and sharing were included, the proportion was ‘two-ffths of consumption’. Such food relocalisation reduced carbon emissions, use of chemical fertilisers, social pressure on ecosystems, retained water in cities, enhancing biodiversity and green space, and limiting food waste. Many of the chapters demonstrate resilience through economic diversity, sustainable production complementing foraging and alternative exchange, such as sharing. Daněk and Jehlička cite Sen’s (1984) concepts of endowments and entitlements to acknowledge that sharing of FSP ‘creates greater diversity of entitlements available to a person, household or community, and this greater diversity of entitlements makes them less vulnerable to market failures and, consequently, they are more food secure and resilient’ (Jehlička et al. 2018). Jones and Ulman go further to assert a ‘need to increase growth in informal, subsistence, non-monetary economies with food as an essential part of this change’. This nonmonetary strategy of degrowth transitions is ripe for exploration (Exner et al. 2020). Persistent issues for the productive side of food for degrowth in the contemporary context include the time and commitment necessary to overcome dominant barriers to reconnect to other people and place. Access to land and other essential resources can be prohibitive for many. For people who do not have adequate access to land, time, ability, networks or income, creative strategies are needed. Indeed, this book provides an array of examples of how people collectively work together to overcome such hurdles. Chapter 7 (Cristiano et al.) describes how establishing networks enabled CSA Veneto to operate on land borrowed from a third party. This is where degrowth and food sovereignty movements share aims and activities. As such, these micro-level studies reveal the tensions between economic, environmental and social practices and the necessity for transdisciplinary methods of interrogating food for degrowth themes and practices. From autoethnography, participatory action research techniques, and appreciative inquiry to more scientifc data collection, this feld of research is ripe for the discovery of new insights.

Degrowth collectives Chapters on frugal abundance (or ‘happy sobriety’) in collective endeavours emphasise how food provides opportunities for (re)connections, where degrowth

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and food studies unite in recognising the signifcance of the social fabric, the importance of food sharing activities in creating (and sometimes breaking) social bonds, trust and relationships that are built up over time all creating places to come together, places of conviviality. The focus on conviviality and commensality is demonstrated at international degrowth conferences and events and raised elsewhere in degrowth literature. Cohousing, with a common kitchen and dining room is supported by the degrowth movement. In his degrowth thesis, Parrique (2019, 288) writes: During my student years, I was once organising a weekly brunch in a local restaurant. Uncertain about the number of people who would show up, the other chefs and I would always produce a little bit more than what we thought was necessary. This meant that after everybody had eaten, we were left with excess food. Now, from a productivist perspective, it would make sense to make an economically rational use of this surplus, perhaps sell it the day after. Alternatively, one could also split the food among the workers in proportion of how much they participated in the cooking. Instead, we decided to dépense the surplus into a celebratory feast, whose logic was non-economic in substance: a pleasant meal that is an end in itself without preoccupation of costs and benefts. Community supported agriculture (CSA) The chapters in Part 2 exemplify diversity within food for degrowth approaches, where CSA and CSA-like models provide diverse nuances for exploration. In CSAs, consumers meet farmers in various schemes growing and redistributing ethical and ecological produce. As such, Homs et al. (Chapter 8) refer to the subject of their research as ‘agroecological cooperatives’, defned as consumers’ food cooperatives and small organic food producers. Cristiano et al. (Chapter 7) refer to CSA Veneto as communal, self-managed agricultural production and food acquisition. Strenchock (Chapter 6) explains the organic market gardens he studies as a ‘hybrid’ CSA. In Part 3, Edwards and Espelt (Chapter 10) analyse a case of a CSA upholding degrowth principles and practices by reducing resource consumption through direct exchange, endorsing equitable labour conditions and challenging assumptions embedded within capitalist consumption. Socially innovative within political economy movements, such as the social and solidarity economy, CSAs evolved from the teiki system in Japan in the early 1970s, later adapted in various ways in Europe. But, as Homs et al. point out, areas such as Catalonia had agrarian and consumption cooperatives early in the nineteenth century enduring up to the various current agroecological cooperatives. CSAs differ in approach to relationships between producers and consumers, and their respective roles and activities, ranging from Italian-based ethical purchasing groups to cooperatives such as consumption groups, consumer cooperatives and different types of consumer associations. These, in turn, use a range

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of participatory, self-managing practices, such as assemblies, working groups and agro-technical committees. Strenchock provides an experiential CSA producer perspective with a Hungarian case that has developed a hybrid ‘box system’ with choices for customers in a food cooperative in Budapest. His chapter illustrates how market gardens with such relationships enhance social relations and environmentally sound farming practices but, at the same time, raise signifcant challenges. Further research into the mounting examples of cooperative and intentionally sustainable farming practices needs to focus on such economic challenges, raising again the question of monetary and market-based frameworks for such ambitious degrowth projects. In contrast to the economic focus of Strenchock, Cristiano et al. focus on their political experiences of CSA Veneto, a farm delivering to urban, suburban and perirural locations averaging 15 kilometres away. Most signifcantly, they introduce the themes of autonomy and food sovereignty, both essential to attain food security. The political slant of this chapter incorporates the open relocalisation principle so characteristic of degrowth activities and raises the challenges of adopting, adapting and creating appropriate and successful techniques and philosophical approaches to both working and cogoverning together. Such political dimensions offer rich soil for establishing further degrowth studies. Homs et al. take the food consumer perspective of CSAs in Catalonia, where most consumer groups average up to 30 members, mainly family, friends and neighbours. They provide an important critical perspective to explore the limits and challenges of such cases given that members often withdraw. Most importantly, they entwine concepts and questions of gender and care into their research data to reveal the sources of member loss and burn out. In short, Part 2 raises themes of cogovernance and self-management, persistent material challenges and uneven successes of collective degrowth activities. Cristiano et al. and Homs et al. examine processes of self-governance essential where CSAs with scarce legal constitution, external control and supervision rely on internal strategies to resolve issues. Cristiano et al. describe how CSA Veneto is expressly ‘leaderless’, the group functioning via assemblies and other participatory decision-making practices. Similarly, Catalan consumer purchase groups organise via committees or working groups but assemblies are key decision-making spaces. CSAs are likened to commons and commoning, a recurring theme of food relations elsewhere in this volume, offering a key topic for future food for degrowth studies. As recognised by Homs et al., CSAs remain a ‘work-in-progress’ with rifts between expectations and the capacity to fulfl them, and clear tensions from applying nonmarket values and principles within a dominant market society. To inform and enhance degrowth food practices, more research should be devoted to such political and economic concerns along with expanding foci on invisible and unpaid care in degrowth activities, the uncertain place of the family household and gendered expectations of self and others. Homs et al. cite different approaches, which connect with other contributors’ searches for appropriate ways to determine criteria to monitor and assess the success of degrowth agricultural

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projects, whether that be Strenchock’s ‘business savviness’ and ‘the right marketing strategy’ or for Cristiano et al. who look ‘beyond the level of food autonomy gained’ to the politically mobilising effect of the CSA. These diverse examples ‘open up’ topics for further context-based research, emphasising future inquiry on gender and the reality of negotiated economic survival. Many authors throughout the book describe tensions in maintaining degrowth values within a capitalist world. Strenchock encounters this stress through the marketisation of alternative food in Hungary, where market gardeners need to compromise for monetary reasons. In contrast, Cristiano et al. favour nonmonetary directions emphasising the importance of autonomy of decision-making which necessarily conficts with market-based calculation. More cases need to be completed and compared to enable surveys and generalisations from such studies. Open meta-data interrogations and contestations of context-specifc strategies will support and solidify themes and debate in future food for degrowth discourse.

Degrowth networks Making visible the abundance of food for degrowth alternatives is a frst step towards change. The next is bringing diverse initiatives together to support reciprocal exchange and solidarity within a social movement. Degrowth networks are essential to transform the dominant imaginary towards more sustainable and just outcomes while competing with stronger agents in a market favouring economies of scale. To balance ethics with economic survival, Szakál and Balázs (Chapter 9) explore the hybridisation and staging of alternative food practices in Budapest. Alternatively, Edwards and Espelt (Chapter 10) examine the role of technology for advancing the uptake and replication of CSAs in Catalonia while Edwards et al. (Chapter 11) explore how multilevel governance can help sustain degrowth initiatives by endorsing participation across stakeholders, sectors and scales. In short, Part 3 explores economic, social, environmental and political aspects of food for degrowth with respect to networking. Recognising that Budapest’s local food system is highly fragmented, Szakál and Balázs held workshops with producers, consumers and agencies within the food sector to identify leverage points to concentrate shared efforts on information-sharing and educational strategies. Such practical research methods deserve attention in terms of content, form and outcomes. Their chapter revolves around the question: How can degrowth action researchers operate most usefully in practice and as scholars? At the level of networks, researchers face a complex range of interactions and factors competing for attention. Edwards and Espelt explore the role of technology in communicating and replicating degrowth principles and practice: Are digital technologies viable and feasible for degrowth-oriented CSAs? How do they support (or not) goals of fair, ethical, convivial, appropriate and political consumption? They investigate the uptake of digital platforms for CSAs drawing on research mapping cooperatives across Catalonia and ethnographic detail of a cooperative in Barcelona. They fnd that more than 80 percent of CSAs in Barcelona use digital platforms that support both

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degrowth and social and solidarity economy criteria of proximity, fair trade and cooperation. To examine how digital platforms endorse degrowth goals, Edwards and Espelt apply insights from an analysis of technology for degrowth with respect to feasibility, viability, conviviality and appropriateness by Kerschner et al. (2018). Edwards and Espelt conclude that a critical and selective approach and monitoring of technology use is necessary to uphold degrowth values. The research methods and insights of Chapters 9 and 10 have much to offer food studies more broadly. Indeed, the signifcance of participatory action research using online technology is shown in a recent instance of adaptations necessitated by, and in response to, Covid-19 shocks to local and international food trade through participatory workshops across the Pacifc supported by a research team from the Australian University of Technology Sydney (Davila 2020). In this case, technology was vital for communication and appropriate support. While actions for degrowth often occur at the grassroots, grounded in everyday action, limited resources and bounded geographical reach and lifespan can minimise their impact and infuence. Edwards et al. explore multilevel governance as a strategy to broaden and redistribute power and unite the voices of local actors with regional, national and international stakeholders to sustain degrowth efforts. Drawing on two multilevel food governance projects, they identify three shared approaches for review: the creation of new institutions, methods of convergence and the role of local government for advancing social change. Key points shared by these chapters include the need for place-based knowledge creation with a variety of stakeholders who have some authority and autonomy in creating and upholding those decisions. Szakál and Balázs explore holistic degrowth approaches with regards to the post-socialist Central Eastern European region, while Edwards et al. interrogate two new institutions and spaces for deliberation (food councils and city teams) responding to local conditions, knowledge and desires. Most signifcantly, participatory processes are used by all researchers to bring multisector and multiscalar stakeholders together in an open, safe and experimental space to discuss their ideas for change. In short, co-creation and consensus are key processes to provide both structure and principles to ensure that equal weighting is given to all participants’ voices, while techniques are employed to break down thinking in silos in order to achieve practical outcomes. Szakál and Balázs describe this process in detail with a range of degrowth initiatives identifed through stakeholder mapping complemented by interviews with a range of stakeholders who developed and codeveloped shared ideas in workshops. Edwards et al. apply similar processes of co-design, co-creation and co-production to project goals, decisions and outcomes, while inviting diverse stakeholders to attend Urban Living Labs in ‘Front Runner Cities’ to explore existing and potential application of ‘Edible City Solutions’. Edwards and Espelt discuss consensus as a favourite technique for consumer collectives that takes time but allows participants to refne their approaches, to ask diffcult questions and to put theory into practice. Similarly, both Szakál and Balázs, and Edwards et al., raise the need to integrate degrowth principles and practices into planning and policy. Exploring

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spaces and methods of convergence as embedded in local contexts is necessary for various actors to identify, communicate and commit to shared values at different levels, enabling new partnerships, compacts, alliances and networks. Methods for upscaling degrowth solutions need to be carefully explored to prevent solutions from being coopted by capitalist agendas. The size of CSAs, for example, support good governance and active participation by all members (Homes et al.). CSAs strive to stay small, ‘self-budding’ into new groups to occupy different locations. This replication offers governance possibilities because ‘veteran projects accompany new collectives in their frst steps’ (Edwards and Espelt). Moreover, Edwards and Espelt fnd that technology supports CSA networks in two ways: to communicate shared values and to support logistical uptake for membership. Their application in Catalonia for internal use within a single group, to shared use across a number of groups, shows open source platforms replicated from local to international applications. Research into strategies for upscaling degrowth through levels and networks remains scant, and technology is only one means among many. Applying strategies related to consensus, size, governance, participation in networks, and values ensures that degrowth principles remain upheld. Recognising and developing on the wealth of experience and research opportunities existing within abundant and innovative degrowth food initiatives will help sustain the movement in multiscalar and holistic ways to beneft degrowth activities overall.

Narratives: contexts and futures Part 4 explores the power of the narrative and perspectives with respect to degrowth. Four narratives of global signifcance and application are examined: utopian imaginaries with respect to the circular economy (Lambert, Chapter 12); indigenous narratives with respect to decolonialisation (Radu et al., Chapter 13); interpretations of food waste/surplus (Chapter 14 by Hepp) and Chapter 15, discourses of citifcation versus densifcation with Leahy using the case of Melbourne (Australia) to explore various scenarios for self-provisioning of food. Throughout the volume, framing highlighted the importance of certain values over others, many displaced by capitalism, as demonstrated by Brückner (Chapter 4) in a bid to recentre ‘care not only in a social context and elaborate on how humans care for one another but also to locate how people care in an ecological context, as care for the natural environment’. Narratives and frames are well known for their ability to reprioritise, question and reconsider the status quo (Lejano et al. 2013). The ability to step back, recognise and consider the power of the frame is crucial for degrowth; Robbins (2004, xvi) reminds one to ask, what ‘is the struggle hidden behind the quiet vista?’ The circular economy is no exception. Lambert analyses consultancy texts to reveal a seemingly depoliticised technocentric ‘utopian’ world within the imaginary of the circular economy mediating environmental ills while advocating for continued growth. Lambert also analyses the practical circular imaginaries of three food projects in Brussels to fnd in one ‘waste-warriors’; in another an imaginary of cities full

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of local production, falling food prices and neighbourhood regeneration; while the third emphasises networks, governance and solidarity. The application of both circular economy and degrowth lenses on these practical projects shows the frst clinging to a business model focused on expansion; the second seeking investors ‘to develop urban aquaponic farms on a large scale and, if possible, at the international level’, their export model driving a need to be proftable. The third, however, takes a different approach based on mutual support, reciprocity and cooperation that challenge constructs of ownership, competition and wage labour as ideals for its future. It is here that Lambert fnds space for degrowth. Lambert’s chapter shows how far a discourse on degrowth and appropriate imaginaries and practices might stretch as the degrowth movement courses its way within like, yet distinct, theoretical and practical forces. Growth narratives What is degrowth struggling against? The chapter on food waste by Hepp reveals much about the state of growth imaginaries and the context of a degrowth imaginary. Hepp explores concepts of economic value applying critical discourse analysis to defnitions of ‘waste versus surplus’ revealing that Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports continue to promote a capitalist ideology of development. Instead, Rude Food activists seek to reorient assumptions embedded within the defnition of food waste towards degrowth ecological and social values. The power of discourse analysed in this chapter shows how narrative can either empower or blame targeted groups, in turn, impacting outcomes towards working together to attain a degrowth society. Hepp’s chapter reminds us of the need to learn and appreciate diverse political possibilities in reading the world around us. Degrowth and literature on alternative food networks can work together to deconstruct and repoliticise food movements to question their alterity (Harris 2009) and true potential for change. Rather than simply reframe waste as surplus with a ‘free’ value for all, a critical degrowth approach recognises the systemic, relational issues inherent within issues of waste, want and need. ‘Waste’ food can also take on new meanings in various contexts as explored in this volume by Brückner, with African women reconsidering indigenous leafy vegetables (often identifed as ‘weeds’) as valuable dietary additions. Such rediscoveries of food types, including insects (as proposed by the FAO, see van Huis et al. 2013) and technologically advanced burgers (such as the ‘Impossible Burger’ by ImpossibleTM) must all be read with a discerning tone to unpick the power relations within their ingredients. Reenchanting our connections with food and the people, places and nonhumans that all contribute to sustaining us is central to expanding food for degrowth literature. Neocolonialism Degrowth seeks to recognise and give voice to the marginalised, the ignored, the hidden and the silenced – be that in terms of gender (in both Homs et al. and

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in Brückner), race, developing nations, or the socially disadvantaged. Degrowth highlights calls in food justice literature (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Alkon and Norgaard 2009; Gottlieb and Joshi 2013; Levkoe 2006) for ‘open relocalisation’; a joint approach of localising economies for greater local independence supporting autonomy of decisioning-making locally. In contrast to reactionary protectionism, open relocalisation is all-inclusive, based on solidarity and diverse human and ecological communities. The right to autonomy over one’s history is played out in the study by Radu et al. of the Cree Nation of Chisasibi with regards to diet, food security and cultural heritage. They offer, on the one hand, a sobering account of how power was taken away by colonial, neocolonial and corporate interests and, on the other hand, promising processes to reassemble cultural identities through food. Such neocolonial frames identify conficts between powerholders, knowledge sources, consequences, and future directions and identities. The themes ft well with degrowth advocacy on decolonising growth imaginaries, neocolonial imaginaries. Competing degrowth narratives: citifcation and decentralisation Leahy brings the conversation back to the city to ask practical questions around the feasibility of degrowth in an urban environment. He explores the divide in degrowth discourses between those who believe that cities ‘offer viable, even optimum, settlement patterns’, and those who consider that ‘decentralisation is an imperative for degrowth scenarios’ through a critical thought experiment focusing on the Australian state capital city of Melbourne. Leahy’s critical analysis indicates the need for more empirical food for degrowth studies to explore the limits of degrowth potential in cities in different human and biophysical geographical contexts. Such a research emphasis is crucial to reveal the most useful degrowth strategies.

In summary Food for degrowth raises questions of politics, ethics and governance, and of links to wider movements. Many contributors to this volume introduce values, themes and strategies that complement, contrast or collide with similar movements and practices to degrowth. Such movements include food waste, frugal living and simplicity, downshifting, ethical consumption, the social and solidarity economy, alternative food networks, permaculture and agroecology. Only superfcially explored by contributors to this volume, this varied intersectionality raises interesting questions as to how degrowth practices are defned and will develop in the future, as explored in the recently published Degrowth in Movement(s) collection (Burkhart et al. 2020). So too does ‘food for degrowth’ bring together the old with the new, reviving traditional knowledge in new frames to present new opportunities. For example, by living quieter lives, we might take the time to rediscover alternative cures and medicine, withdrawing our dependence on corporate pharmaceutical

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companies to revive understandings of natural foods as medicines. Could such a downshift – forced on many by the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic – stir interest in new types of economies based on revaluing nature, exchanges involving gifting, bartering and mentoring rather than profteering? Food for degrowth represents an emerging, expansive transdisciplinary feld the main strength and challenge of which centres on applying critical approaches to transdisciplinary societal transitions. Not only do we need to feed our bodies, but also our minds, hearts and souls. Combining food with degrowth practices, concepts and theories, points us in a direction of achieving a healthy, safe, just and sustainable diet for us all. A variety of methodologies from a range of disciplines can contribute to food for degrowth research, altogether convincingly triangulating lived experiences, data types and perspectives of food for degrowth to strengthen uptake. Data types range from text and image analysis, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, participant observation, autoethnography, surveys, food logs, mapping, consultations with experts, co-creation workshops, historical archives and application drawing from comparative data analysis. This analysis included complementary qualitative and quantitative approaches along the food chain contributing to a holistic discussion of degrowth possibilities with ‘deep dives’ to explore certain territories of enquiry in more detail. Much research was based in the feld over long periods of time, where researchers established relationships with the respondents to produce an understanding of the holistic factors contributing to research outcomes. Daněk and Jehlička conducted extensive quantitative research through a nation-wide survey. Other authors such as Cristiano et al. and Homs et al. blended practice with theory, applying participatory action research to present practical fndings. Others highlighted the importance of alternative data in this feld, such as experiential knowledge, where, for example, through participation in ‘digging, hoeing, weeding and sowing to support local food experiments’ Stenchock accumulated ‘insights often overlooked in academic texts that chronicle rural livelihoods’. So too are the principles of degrowth embodied within its collaborative research practice with coauthors such as Cristiano et al., Radu et al. and Homs et al. who cooperated in research design, data collection and writing up their fndings. Many developed self-refexivity to recognise potential bias in certain personal framings of research on their own practice. Hence, this book expands degrowth in many new directions while contributing to both academic and practical outcomes, expanding disciplinary applications and providing grounded, ‘thick description’ supporting activist and practitioner goals. This volume has opened up a convergence between degrowth and food sustainability studies, between theory and practice, for now and into the future. Part 1 on frugal abundance explored ways to reconnect to degrowth food sources, from autoethnography as a family, to ‘quiet’ expressions, through to the lens of care. Degrowth’s abundance emerged from recognising values of joy, sharing and trust, where evidence proves that degrowth can also be materially productive. Part 2 on degrowth collectives explored the diversity within food for degrowth approaches,

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with CSAs as its example, raising themes that again apply to food for degrowth initiatives along the food chain, namely gender, autonomy, defning ‘success’ within the movement and exploring the tensions of maintaining degrowth values within a capitalist world. Degrowth networks, the focus of Part 3 explored the strategies, tools and motivations that assist the often-disparate movement to work together to transition from a periphery to mainstream practice. Part 4 on narratives, contexts and futures added another layer of critical analysis, stepping back to question embedded assumptions and supporting strategic thinking on overcoming barriers. Questions raised throughout the volume that warrant further research and elaboration include: • • • • • • • •

How might food for degrowth initiatives be best defned? How can food for degrowth be made more visible, temporally and spatially, and accessible for all? What boundaries and processes can be established to protect and promote food for degrowth initiatives within a capitalist world but transforming to a postgrowth future? How can qualitative impacts of food for degrowth initiatives be measured and conveyed? How are gender, care and technology accounted for in food for degrowth initiatives? What are common strategies to ensure the economic survival of food for degrowth practices? How do food for degrowth initiatives and principles inform the big picture, such as climate change? How can the feld of food for degrowth studies be developed into a transdisciplinary science?

The chapters in this collection demonstrate that productive food for degrowth alternatives exist, offering attractive alternatives for people in various parts of the world. At the same time, they face various challenges. By conducting more case studies and increasing the range of methods employed, further research will serve to impact beyond scholarly boundaries and support degrowth transformation in daily realities.

References Alkon A H and Agyeman J (eds) (2011) Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Alkon A H and Norgaard K M (2009) ‘Breaking the food chains: An investigation of food justice activism’, Sociological Inquiry 79(3), August: 289–305. Barrett B, Horne R and Fien J (2016) ‘The ethical city: A rationale for an urgent new urban agenda’, Sustainability 8: 1197. Burkhart C, Schmelzer M and Treu N (eds) (2020) Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation. Winchester/Washington: Zero Books.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables, those in italic denote fgures. Abukutsa-Onyango, M 46 activism 5, 10, 95, 105, 108–9; consumer 188; degrowth 6; economic 143; food 116; unconscious 214 African indigenous leafy vegetable (AIV) 8, 45–7, 49–55, 214–5 Agarwal, B 5 agriculture 9, 33, 51, 56, 70, 78, 160–1, 163, 199, 200, 202–4; Aboriginal 182; alternative 9, 84; capitalist 41; chemical-free 79; commercial 63; conventional 63, 65; department 206; ecological 79; industrial 59, 79, 85, 214; local 13, 173, 203; low-cost, low-imput 206; manual micro- 80; northern 178–9, 182; organic 4, 78–9, 120; periurban 60; regenerative 165; suburban 208; -supporting community 92, 97, 117; sustainable 77, 84, 202, 207; systems 142; traditional 116; urban 51, 144, 148, 152, 165; see also community-supported agrifood: model 10, 92; sector 1, 90; studies 47–8; system 45, 53, 56, 60, 62, 65, 69–70 agroecological 105; benefts 51; collectives 10, 106; components 95; consumption 106, 130; cooperatives 9, 100, 217; cooperativism 100–2, 104, 106, 109; discourse 105; food 102; movement 10, 79, 100–1, 109–10, 130; networks 105, 109–10; production 106, 108; products 104, 107; projects 101, 108; provisioning systems 101–2, 108–9; regeneration 10, 93, 96; supply 105; values 105 agrochemicals: synthetic 90 agroecology 4, 78, 88, 124, 132, 133, 137, 151, 223

agroenterprises 62–3; global 69 agrofood: distributor 103; domain 116; practices 115; systems 163 agroforestry 118 agroindustry 108: capitalist 110; integration 109 agrosystem 90 agrotechnical: committees 92, 94, 217; working group 93 Ajuntament de Barcelona 131 Akbulut B 174 Alber J 63 Alcantara C 175 Alexander S 128–9, 134, 198, 203 AlimentAção! 12, 141, 144, 148–50, 152 Alkon A H 223 Allen P 62 Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) 45 Allwood J M 165 Alquézar R 108 alternative distribution networks 135 alternative food communities 9 alternative food networks (AFN) 3–6, 53, 63, 129, 137, 188, 222–3 Althusser L 188 Andreucci D 188 Anguelovski I 117–8 aquaponics 4, 165, 167, 222 Armstrong D 69 Arnsperger C 169 Asara V 152 Association of Conscious Consumers 116 Associazione per la Decrescita 93 Australian and New Zealand Environmental Conservation Council (ANZECC) 209 Australian Government 208

228

Index

autoethnography 7, 88, 91, 216, 224 autonomy 2–3, 5–6, 13, 94, 106, 118, 136, 152, 164, 180, 182, 203, 218–20, 223, 225; Aboriginal 175; food 10, 90–1, 95–6, 98, 219; indigenous 174; institutional 151; legal 152; local 174, 181; material 174 Badal M 101 Balázs B 78, 116–7, 123 Bales K 62 Barnard A V 187 Barrett B 214 basic needs 2, 26, 49, 198 Battersby J 68 Bauhardt C 48 Bauwens M 129 Beescoop 165, 167–9 Being There 30 Belasco W J 161 Beling A E 124 Belinsky D L 177 Belk R 39 Bellamy E 160–1, 164 belonging 23, 30, 50, 119; cultures of place 21; economies 21; Here 30 Bende C 117 Bendisch, F S 47 Bennholdt-Thomsen V 63 Bergeron O 175–6 Beus C E 62 Biesecker A 60, 69 biodiversity 42, 46, 55, 83, 134, 201; conservation 47, 53; ecological 97; enhancing 216; loss of 56, 62, 202; management 82; natural 198; recuperation of 108 biointensive gardening 80 Biolghini D 92 biological need 91 biosphere 27 Biotechnology Innovation Organisation (BIO) 62 Bioversity International and EIARD 46 Blake M 187 Blanco I 129 Blay-Palmer A 5, 141, 143, 146 blight 81 blockchains 164 Boatcă M 63–4 Bonaiuti M 159 Bos E 135 Bourdieu P 109 Bowman M 186, 194

Brochu M 179 Brown C 92 Brückner M 53, 214–5, 223 Brundtland G H 70; Brundtland Report 49, 70 Brunori G 92 Brussels (Belgium) 13, 159, 165–7, 169, 221; Capital Region fagship project 165 Bryman A 193 Buchanan G 36 Buchowski M 63–64 Budapest (Hungary) 9, 77, 83, 116–21, 218–9; Food City Lab 11, 118, 119, 120, 124; market 83; urban food system 115, 125 Building Integrated Greenhouse BiGH 165–9 Burkhart C 4, 6, 223 Bushfre Mitigation Group 23 Cabannes Y 151 Cairns K 54 Calori A 96 capitalism 11, 60, 62, 188, 221; competitive 28; contemporary 13; dominance of 36; fnancial 169; green 136; highly productive 216; industrial 169; market 33, 131; neoliberal 43; non10; post- 10; proft-seeking 188; spread of 130 Carayannis E 118 carbon emissions 173, 199, 216 care: activities 48; and sustainability 47, 49, 55; and wellbeing 5; child- 104–6; concepts of 64, 214; cooperative 136; declarations of 69; discourses 7–8, 59; economy 48; environmental 202; ethics of 53; feminine perspective on 48; for nature 65, 214; giver 59, 62, 66; -giving 59, 61–2, 66–70, 214; manifestations of 59, 69; medical 97; notions of 59, 62, 64; rational act of 8, 59; -receiving 59, 62, 66, 214; responsibilities 102; self64, 68–9; social 84; social relations of 2; socioecological 47, 55–6; themes of 2; understanding of 48; values of 56, 69; work 10, 48–9, 59, 69, 100, 105–6, 108 ‘care’ful relationships 45, 50 Carey R 201 Carter S 182 Castells M 129 Castoriadis C 2, 90, 160 Catalonia (Spain) 3, 9, 11, 100–1, 109, 128–31, 133, 133, 136, 138, 217–9, 221; see also agroecological

Index Centre for Social Agricultural Innovation (College of Victoriaville, Quebec) 173 Cernansky R 46 Chan L 175, 181–2 Chapman G E 48 Charonis G-K 169 Chemnitz C 62 Chepkoech W 46 Chiengkul P 173 Chisasibi 13, 173, 176–83; Agreement 176; Business Service Centre (CBSC) 173, 180; foodscapes 175; food sovereignty in 180, 182; see also Cree Nation Christian D L 95 circular economy (CE) 144, 159, 162–165, 168–9, 221–2; approach 169; imaginary 165, 168–9; movement 12; narrative 13, 159, 162–4 citifcation–decentralisation debate 198 Civil Society Network for Food and Nutritional Security of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (REDSAN-CPLP) 144 Clapp J 33 Cleaver H 2 climate 20, 192, 215; change 28, 62, 143, 176, 215, 225; change rally 7; crises 21; hotspots 192; local 13; mitigation strategy 192; refugees 26; -resilient crops 214; scientists 20; temperate 209 co-design 11, 177, 220 Coleman E 80 collaboration 6, 9, 85, 89, 92, 150, 165, 173, 191, 191, 215 collectives 6, 100–1, 103, 130, 136, 221; consumer 104, 220; degrowth 6, 9, 216, 224; garden 65; grassroots 4; see also agroecological Committee on World Food Security 144 commodifcation 33–4, 188–189, 191–5 commodities 108, 188, 192, 195; agricultural 33; export 45; food 78 commoning 2–3, 118, 162, 182, 218 Commonwealth Scientifc and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) 209 communal cooking 8, 50 community: actions 95; activities 134; allies 30; -based institutions 25; -based networks 92; -based organisations 5; -based relocalisation 97; bases, 87; -building 63, 82, 85, 98, 117, 151; business 148; cohesion 66, 215; creation 108; -driven research collaboration

229

173; economies 10, 22, 28, 97, 115; engagement 117, 180; environment 96; Environment Park 5; farming 83; fshing 49; food distribution 9; food exchange 128; food initiatives 9, 144; forestry practice 27; gardens 4, 7, 23, 25, 27, 50, 59, 63, 69, 91, 117–8, 121; group 23, 30; holistic 10; housing cooperative 160; learning 120; -led social transformation 91; marker 193–4; mobilisation 173; networks 96; of practice 148; organisations 132, 160; -oriented 9; priorities 177; -producer partnership model 116; production 4; scientifc 115; sense of 96, 133; shared farm 116; space 122, 124; suffciency 19; -supported agriculture (CSA) 4–5, 7, 9–11, 33, 53, 83, 87, 88, 91–7, 116–7, 121–3, 128–33, 133, 134–8, 216–9, 221, 225; -supported farms 203; -supported subscription systems 9; transition 25; urban 50; wider 50, 54, 152 CONSAN-CPLP 144, 146, 149 conviviality 2–3, 5, 11, 43, 55, 129, 135–7, 186, 188, 195, 215, 217, 220 cooperatives 11, 87, 102–104, 106, 108, 130–2, 135–7, 217; consumer 100, 105, 134, 217; consumption 101, 130, 217; dacha 60, 64, 66, 213, 215; food 9–10, 100–7, 115, 217; garden 60; legal 101; mapping of 128, 219; not-for-proft food 7; periurban 60; product-consumer 97; prosumer 10; see also agroecological coping-with-scarcity 34 Corbin J 64 Council for Food Security and Nutrition of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries 12 Council of Oslo 4 Counihan C 5, 101, 135 cow-share 5 Cox J 5 CPLP 144, 146, 148, 152 Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay (CBHSSJB) 177 Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Security Board (CHTISB) 178 Cree Nation of Chisasibi 3, 13, 173, 176, 181, 223 Cree Trappers Association (CTA) 178 Cristiano S 90, 97, 134, 216–9, 224 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 13, 186, 188, 190, 195, 222 cross-sector platforms 142

230

Index

Cruz A 106 Czech Republic 3, 34–5, 38, 39, 42, 215 D’Alisa G 48, 162, 174, 186 dachas 60, 69–70, 214; see also cooperatives Dale G 164 Dalmau M 101, 130 Daniell K A 142 Darrell B 207 Davies A 128, 132 Davila F 220 De Hoop E 59, 63, 67 De Neve J E 173 decolonial transition 174, 183 decolonisation 2–3, 6–7, 10, 12–3, 54–5, 90, 97–8, 165, 173–4, 195 deconstructing 2, 10, 97–8, 192 Delorimier T 177 Demaria F 48, 161, 165, 188 Dengler C 47, 60–61, 61 Dengler D 48, 60 Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts (DEWHA) 208 Desmarais A A 174–5 DeVault M L 67 Dezsény Z 79, 116 Diamond B 176 Diesendorf M 204 digital: platforms 11, 128–9, 132, 133, 134–6, 138, 219–0; solutions164; technologies 11, 128–9, 132, 134, 137, 219 Dirks N B 63 Domazet M 34 Dombi J 115 Domínguez Rubio F 142 Donald B 141 Douglas M 186 Dowler E 53 Driscoll D 209 Duquette M P 179 eating 50, 56, 143, 187, 190, 192, 194, 206; ethics 118, 121; healthy 11, 118, 176, 179–81; sustainable 118; together 1 ecofeminist 2 ecosystem 2, 8, 42–3, 48, 119, 128, 137, 163–4, 176, 215–6; diverse 45; enhancement 80; fragmented 117; health 175; innovation 123, 124; levels 96; living 50; local 115, 182; natural 163; planetary 38 Eden T 161

Edible City Solutions 12, 114, 146, 148, 151, 220 EdiCitNet (Edible Cities Network) 12, 141, 143–4, 146, 148, 149, 150–2 Edwards F 3–5, 47, 132, 134, 137, 143, 148, 151–2 Eeyou Istchee (northern Quebec, Canada) 13, 175–9, 182 Ehlers K 66 Elaboration Group 94, 96 Elia V 163 Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) 162–5, 168 Environmental Social Science Research Group 120 equality 80, 88, 115, 168, 173 Erdei G 123 Escobar A 47, 173–4 Espelt R 100–1, 130–2, 134, 137 Estonia 34, 60, 64, 69–70, 214 ethical: consumption 5, 11, 128, 134, 219, 223; degrowth 9, 130; diets 5; eating 11, 118, 121; food initiatives 115; food provisioning 121, 214; principles 95, 117; priorities 134; producers 4, 217; projects 94; -purchasing group 92, 217; resource use 4; stance 105; supply 131, 137; trading 134 European Commission (EC) 78, 144 European Union (EU) 78–9, 163, 186 Exner A 216 exploitation 2, 92, 95, 97, 108–9, 162 Fainstein S 214 Fair Food (Melbourne) 5 fair trade 33, 131–2, 134, 138, 220 Fairclough N 13, 188, 190 farmers 5, 50–1, 53–4, 64, 77–8, 81, 86, 92–3, 96, 106, 108, 117, 121, 123, 128, 135, 160–1, 163, 165, 167, 174, 191, 203, 205, 217; ecological 9; environmentally aware 9; local 164; markets 122, 137; professional 35, 60; small 79, 108, 122–3, 124; small-scale 121–2; subsistence 62, 206; urban 165; women 50–1, 191 Federici S 104–5 Feit H A 178 feminist 49; critiques 49; decolonial degrowth 47; eco- 2; economies 110; economists 48, 60; ethics of care 53; perspective 48; scholars 48 Feola G 188, 194–5 Fernandez A 137

Index First Nations 173, 175; Food, Nutrition and Environment (study) (FNFNES) 181 fshing 19, 49, 175, 177 Fit4Food2030 project 115, 118 Fletcher R 165 Flig R A 175 Folbre N 48 Fonteneau B 91 food: as commons 11, 125; banks 166; box distribution networks 9; consumption 7, 48, 85, 88, 134; cooperatives 7, 9–10, 87, 100–7, 115, 217; hubs 5, 143; preparation 177; -rescue 6, 13; resilience 118; self-provision(ing) (FSP) 6, 8–9, 14, 34–5, 59, 89, 115, 117, 213; sovereignty 1, 3, 5, 10, 12, 45, 69, 90, 100–2, 109, 115–6, 124, 142–3, 173–5, 177, 180–3, 216, 218; supply chains 9, 26, 81, 85, 94, 124, 131, 138, 141, 148–9, 188; waste 5–6, 10, 13, 42, 92, 121–4, 135, 151, 165–6, 168, 186–90, 192–5, 203, 216, 221–3; see also United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) foraging 5, 19, 22, 213, 216 Fort George 13, 176, 178–9, 181 Fortier J M 80 Foster J B 68 freegans 5 Freudenberger D 209 Frost N 4 frugal abundance 2–3, 6–7, 9, 161, 213–4, 216, 224 frugalism 21 frugality 6 FUSIONS 186 Fuster M 129 Galinsky A 193 García Janet, J 131 gardening 8, 13, 41–2, 50, 66, 68, 85, 161, 180; activities 77; benefts of 68; biointensive 80; community 7; families 77; home 22, 35, 37; initiatives 13, 173; market 77, 79–81; organic 82; urban 33, 63, 121, 124; vertical 118 Garner John V 2 Garnett T 62 gathering 175, 177, 181, 213; fruit 5 Gaventa J 141 genetically modifed organism (GMO) 9, 65, 90 geoengineering 66

231

George D 164 Ghisellini P 169 Gibson-Graham J K 10, 36, 97, 143 gift(ing) 5, 22, 25–6, 30, 35–36, 38–9, 215–6, 224; economy 7, 166; fow-of- 7; valuable 25, 67 Giles D B 187 glean 5, 19, 29 global: agri-food system 62, 65, 69; agroenterprises 69; concern 5; corporations 162; demand for food 164; dimensions 47; ecological destruction 173; economy 177; environmental sustainability 1; exchange of information 210; fnancial crisis 100; food crisis 33, 43; food market 55; food system 37–8, 42, 115, 202; footprint analyses 199; Footprint Network 199; forums 142; greenhouse gas emissions 62; mainstream supermarkets 97; marketplace 20; monetary degrowth 20; monetary economy 19; movement 131, 173; networks 137; North 8, 36, 47–8, 53, 199, 209; partnership 191; resurgence 141; sales revenue 100; South 7–8, 47–8, 50, 55–6, 173–4; system of food production 33, 38; transition from subsistence farming 63; trend of urbanisation 2, 14; warming 173, 200, 203; waste 187 Goathand Cooperative 23 Gomiero T 77, 124, 159, 161, 164 Gonda N 78 González de Molina M 187 Gottlieb R 223 Gottschlich D 59, 61 Grant T 198–9 Grasseni C 53, 101 Graziano P R 92 Green Harvest 206 Gregson N 164 Grey S 174–5 gross domestic product (GDP) 137, 173, 204 growthism 2, 12–3 Gudynas E 142 Günther F 205, 208 Gustavsson J 187 Hagbert P 199 Hall P 161 Haraway D 152 Harcourt W 49 Harper A 146 Harris E 222

232

Index

Harvey D 161–2 Hayes S 23 hedonism 21, 26–7 Hepburn Relocalisation Network 23 Hepp M C 187, 191, 191, 193 Hetherington K 193 Hitchings R 214 hive-share 5 Hobson K 163–4 holistic 2, 94, 134, 150, 153, 187, 224; analysis 214; appreciations of food 14; community building 10; degrowth 143, 215, 220, 224; food governance 142, 146; food systems 146; goals of autonomy 5; policy 142; solutions 122, 124; system 195; transformation 90; understanding 4; urban agendas 198 Holloway J 2 Holloway L 53 Holmgren D 21, 202–6, 208–9 Holtzmann J 48 Homs P 101, 133, 217–8, 222, 224 HORTINLEA 46 Huerta A 130 Huertos in the Sky 4 Hungary 3, 35, 77–9, 82–4, 115–6, 121–3, 219; see also Budapest hunting 19, 22, 175–9, mushroom 5 hybrid models 9 hydroelectric 176–7 hyper-technocivil 19, 23, 25 IHME 122 Illich I 3, 129 imaginaries 13, 160, 166, 169, 222; bottom-up 13, 159; circular food 165, 221; degrowth 169, 198; growth 222–3; hegemonic 160; neocolonial 223; of ownership 168; productivist 2; radical 165; social 160; utopian 159, 162, 169, 221 Immink M 144, 152 Income Security Programme 177 Indigenous 6, 173; autonomy 174; communities 13, 36; contexts 173–4, 182; crops 53, 55; fora 209; foods 5, 55–6, 175, 182–3; knowledge 45, 174; land tenure 175; life-worlds 174; movements 45; narratives 221; ontologies 175, 182; Peoples 173; perspectives 173–4; social movements 174; sovereignty 28; speakers 20; varieties 46; vegetables 46, 53–4; village 13; see also autonomy

industrial food system 4, 20, 26, 62, 116, 141 information and communication technologies (ICT) 129, 131–2, 138 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 198, 202 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) 200 Inuit 173, 176 James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement (JBNQA) 176–8, 183 Jamison M S 69 Jarosz L 53, 134 Jarvis H 128, 137 Jehlička P 35, 37, 41, 63, 216 Jessop B 160, 168 Jochimsen M A 59–61 Jones P 26, 214–6 Jørgensen M W 188–9, 193 Kallis G 124, 128, 159–60, 173, 186, 188, 198 Kamwendo G 49 Kawarazuka N 49 KÉK 117 Kerschner C 11, 129, 220 Kirchherr J 162 kitchen gardens 8, 50–1 Kloppenburg J 143 Kondoh K 91 Korhonen J 159, 162 Kornai J 69 Kothari A 174 Krahmer T 199 Krishna S 49 Kuhnlein H V 176 Kuus M 63 Lacy P 162 Lamb G 91 Latouche S 11, 90, 115, 124, 160–1, 165 Leahy G 206 Leahy T 206 Lejano R 221 Levitas R 159, 161–2, 165, 168 Levkoe C Z 223 Liboiron M 186 Liegey V 2–3, 6 Limits to Growth 20–1, 164, 173 López D 101 Lorenzo A R 102 Lykke M 166 MacArthur D E 163 Magdoff F 90

Index Magnaghi A 95 Mance E A 91 Mansilla E 110 Marin L 162 Marovelli B 5 Martín A 102, 110 Martín-Mayor A 131 Marxist 2, 187 Mattelart A 165 McClintock N 63, 66–8 McFarlane C 143 Meadows D H 20–1, 97 Melbourne (Victoria) 3–5, 14, 198–203,  205–6, 206–7, 207–10, 221, 223 Meredith S 79 Merli R 163 metabolic rift – ecological, social, and individual 33–4, 42, 213 micro-greens 4 Midgley J L 186–7 Mies M 60 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact 150 Miller D 48 Miralbell O 129 Mobbs M 21 Mollison B 21, 202–4 monoculture 45, 96 Moragues-Faus A 143, 150 Morantz T 176 More, T 159–61 Morel K 80 Morris J L 69 Morris W 160–1 multilevel food governance 220 multi-level governance (MLG) 141–2, 144, 146, 150–3 municipalities 141, 146, 148, 150 Nairobi (Kenya) 3, 8, 45–7, 50–4 nanoscale devices 164 Narotzky S 105, 108–9 National Agricultural and Rural Development Strategy 122 National Food Safety Offce 122 National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition (OGYEI) 121, 123 Nelson A 2, 3, 6, 97, 199–200 Nelson J A 48 neocolonialism 28, 222 neoliberalism 33, 43 neopeasant(ry) 7, 19, 22–3, 26–8, 30 Nihtaauchin Chisasibi Centre for Sustainability (NCCS) 180–1 Nirmal P 174

233

non-government organisation (NGO) 119, 141, 149 nonmonetary 7, 9–10, 21–3, 26, 28–9, 59, 213, 216, 219 Ntsonde J 163 Nutritious Food Basket (NFB) 179 Nyéléni International Steering Committee (NISC) 142 O’Hara S U 60 Oketch E 46 O'Neill D W 124 Open Food Network (OFN) 133, 137 Opiyo A M 45 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 121, 142, 175 Ostrom E 96, 143 Owczarzak J 64 Pam-A-Pam 131, 138 paradigm 162, 206; capitalist 12; degrowth 11, 125; economic 60; growth 159, 164, 166, 173 Parham S 214 Parrique T 217 Patel R 62 Payer C 63 Pedro S 143–4 Pérez Baró A 101 Pérez Orozco A 104 periurban 50, 59–60, 64, 79, 86; see also agriculture, cooperatives Perkins P E 60, 174 permaculture 3–4, 12, 23, 26, 202–204, 206, 208, 210, 223; alternative 202; approach 206; degrowth 14, 198; movement 121, 202; principles 19; social 23; theorists 198; transitions 28; Utopian 203 Pfeiffer D 200 Picchio A 48 Pin X 169 place-based 174; community of practice 148; knowledge 220; strategies 150 planetary limits 1 Plato 159 Polanyi K 66 pollution 62, 97, 176, 205 post-capitalism 10 post-growth 48, 56 Prendeville S 169 Pretty J 201 Princen T 188 productivity 43, 60, 163, 191, 214

234

Index

Puig de la Bellacasa M 214 Punch K 190 quiet care 69; degrowth 8, 33–43, 224; technology 137, 214, 221 Radu I 178, 221, 223 Ramankutty N 62 Raser-Rowland A 21 realities 125, 134, 173, 225; cultural 21, 177; ecological 182; farming 77; fnancial 84; market 83 reciprocity 6, 10, 30, 39, 53, 65, 70, 161, 168–9, 174, 178, 222 Regional Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (ESAN-CPLP) 141, 144, 145, 146, 148–52 relocalisation 2–3, 12, 14, 23, 86, 91, 97, 123, 134, 144, 148, 174, 198, 216, 218, 223 Rent-A Chook 5 Renting H 148 re-peasantisation 7 research methods 45, 213, 220; participatory 8, 143; practical 219; qualitative 8 Richardson-Ngwenya P 54 Ricoeur P 160, 162, 164 Ries N 67 Rigby K (2016) 21 Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition 144, 152 Rios M 95 RIPESS 11, 131 Robbins P 221 Roberts A 201 Roman-Alcalá A 173, 175 Romano O 195 romanticism 109 Rose R 63, 66 Rose, D B 20 Rosset P 90 rotten food 187, 189, 192–4 Rude Food 13, 186, 192–5, 222 Rudolph K R 175 rural Africa 14, 198 ruralisation 199, 205, 210 Russell B 150 Saave-Harnack A 48 Salzer I 115 Sandover R 141, 143 Santos R 143

Sargent L T 160 Schmelzer M 164 Schmelzkopf K 68 Schmid B 169 Schneider F 97, 162, 198–200 Scholz T 129, 138 Schröder P 169 Schumacher E F 3, 129 seed exchange network (SEN) 116, 118 seed swapping 115 Sekulova F 128, 161 self 59, 64, 214, 218; -appointed 28; -budding 221; -care 64, 68–9; -determination 11, 93, 97, 131, 174–5, 177–8, 182–3; -employed 10, 97; -evident 160; -expression 125; -fulflment 3, 51; -governance 142, 168, 218; -governing 10, 160; -grown 67; -healing 96; -interest 25, 38; -maintaining 27; -management 10, 52, 83, 91–2, 94, 96, 100–2, 105, 110, 130, 132, 134, 168, 217–8; -mediating 68; -motivation 108; -organised 10, 77, 87, 88, 93, 97, 134; perception of 68; -production 65; -provisioning 2, 4, 6–10, 13–4, 34, 36, 50–1, 59, 88, 91, 97, 115–7, 209, 213–5, 221; -realisation 68; -refexivity 224; -reliance 214; -restraint 42; -suffciency 38, 50, 115, 124, 160–1, 165, 168, 183, 199, 204, 206, 210; -sustaining 84, 160, 208; -worth 68 Sen A 36, 216 Servier J 161–2, 164 Shah S 49 Sheridan J 199–202, 207, 209 Shove E 214 Second International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity SICED 5 Słodczyk J 161 small organic food producers 10, 100, 217 Smith J 42, 63 Smith R 204 social and solidarity economy (SSE) 10–11, 91–2, 95, 131, 133, 217, 220, 223 socioenvironmental interaction 54 solidarity 3, 11, 30, 45, 47, 53, 84, 92, 105–106, 117, 120–1, 131, 150, 168–9, 186, 215, 219, 222–3; -based community building 85; basket 106; groceries 166; -motivated marketing 9; movement 168; network 95; values of 188

Index

235

Sonnino R 34 Sosna D 42 Sovová L 35, 37 space technology 164 Steen K 150 Steffánsdóttir H 199 Stenmark A 187 Stephenson M 175 stewardship 8, 59, 62, 65, 108, 204 St-Germain A-A F 182 Strenchock L 79 Stuart T 187 subsidiarity 3, 143, 152 sustainable development (SD) 49, 70 Syhre J-A 51 Szabó-Bódi B 122

urbanisation 2, 6 urban–rural synthesis 165 URGENCI 95 utopia 43, 159–62, 164–5, 169, 203, 221; anti-capitalist 160; characteristics 159, 168; concept of 13, 159; degrowth 195; discourses 12, 162; egalitarian 162; features 159; fctions 13, 159, 162; ideals 160, 165, 168; image 168; imaginaries 159, 162, 169, 221; literature 12; narratives 6; notion of 159–60; of circularity 168; permaculture 203; perspective 168; social 161; subversive 159; techno161, 164–5; trope 159; unity 162; urban 161, 164; works 159

Tanner A 176 Terra Nullius 28, 30 The Food Assembly 134, 137 The Lemon Tree Project 4 Tirado-von der Pahlen C 122 Todorova M 64 Too Good to Go (TGTG) 165–9 Torrie J E 176–7 Trainer T 198–9, 204–5, 208 transformation 2, 4–5, 11, 54, 90, 95, 116–23, 128, 131, 188; cultural 116; degrowth 10, 94, 98, 141, 213, 225; discursive 195; ecological 34; economic 7, 21; holistic 90; personal 49; political 7, 128; potential 119; radical 14; social 91, 109, 128, 169; societal 174; socioecological 48, 174; socioeconomic 93, 96; urban 167 Transition Towns Network 137 Tronto J C 8, 59, 61–2, 66, 214 Trubek A B 49 Tudatos Vásárló 116 Twiss J 69

Valenzuela F 162 Vallejo N 141 van Huis A 222 Vantsinjan A 199–200 Varvarousis A 160 Vávra J 38, 41 Veneto (Italy) 3, 9–10, 92–7, 216–8 Vercauteren D 102 vertical power relations 138 Vetter A 129 Visser O 66–7, 69 Vivero-Pol J L 3 Volk J 80 Volz P 91

ubiquitous sensing 164 United Nations (UN): Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 141; Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 13, 96, 186–90, 192–5, 222; Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (TFSSE) 91 United States (of America) (US) 117, 137, 199 urban food sustainability 198 urban food system 11–3, 115, 118, 125, 141, 159, 163, 167 urban living lab (ULL) hub 11, 220

Waerness K 59 Wahl D C 141, 143 Wane N N 48 Wanjira’s kitchen 46–7 waste 4–5, 29, 143, 186–7, 189, 195, 222; absorb 200; causality of 191; cause of 189; human 29; invisibility of 194; kitchen 205; local 29; minimisation 5; municipal 200; organic 201, 209; recycling 65; reduction 80, 122, 190; -savers 166; systems 213; -warriors 166, 221; water 202; zero 122; see also food Watts D C H 101 Weiss M 115, 173–4 Wellman B 129 Wells B L 53 Wember C 53 Wenger E 148 White-fella 28, 30 Wichterich C 49 Widmer H 160, 199–200

236

Index

Wiedmann T 199 Williams M 214 Williamson J 152 Wolfson J A 54 World Bank 63, 70 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) 49 World Economic Forum 163 World Economics Association (WEA) 163 World Health Organisation (WHO) 1

World Population Review (WPR) 133 XES and SETEM 131 Xue J 199–200 Yar M 161 Young E M 33 Zavisca J 68–9 Zsámboki Biokert 9, 82–4