Food System Transformations 036767422X, 9780367674229

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Figures
Tables
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Grassroots initiatives in food system transformation: The role of food movements in the second ‘Great Transformation’
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Sustainability and transformations
1.3 Alternative food networks
1.4 Steps towards a second ‘Great Transformation’
1.5 The transformative potential of grassroots food initiatives
1.6 Structure of the book
1.7 Conclusions: food system transformation requires social movements, more localized economies, collaborative networks
Note
References
Part I Transformative food movements
2 Women, agroecology and “real food” in Brazil: From national movement to local practice
2.2 Feminist agroecology as a political subject
2.2.1 Social rights and land reform, from the military coup to re-democratization
2.2.2 Family farming and gender in the neoliberal agenda
2.2.3 A new era of public policy within the persistent dual agricultural model
2.3 Feminist agroecology in practice in Barra do Turvo
2.3.1 The constituent conflicts of Vale do Ribeira and the place of feminist agroecology
2.3.2 Agroecological practices of women farmers in Barra do Turvo
2.4 Conclusion
Notes
References
3 Alternative food politics: The production of urban food spaces in Leipzig (Germany) and Nantes (France)
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The urban production of space
3.3 Urban agriculture in the cities of Nantes and Leipzig
3.3.1 Leipzig: growing food in a shrinking city
3.3.2 Nantes: hybridizing urban spaces through gardening initiatives
3.4 Repolitizing the modern constitution
Notes
References
4 Co-designing cities: Urban gardening projects and the conflict between self-determination and...
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Three case studies
4.3 Co-designing and transforming cities
4.4 Different rationalities and time horizons
4.5 Achieving the power to act
4.6 Lack of recognition
4.8 Intermediary bodies
Notes
References
Part II Transformative food economies
5 Food cooperatives as diverse re-embedding forces: A multiple case study in Belgium
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Disembeddedness and re-embeddedness
5.3 Food cooperatives as diverse re-embedding forces
5.4 Cases
5.5 Methodology
5.6 Results
5.6.1 Food’equity
5.6.1.1 Member economic participation
5.6.1.2 Concern for community
5.6.2 Green&good
5.6.2.1 Member economic participation
5.6.2.2 Concern for community
5.6.3 CitizenMarket
5.6.3.1 Member economic participation
5.6.3.2 Concern for community
5.7 Re-embedding potentials of food cooperatives
5.7.1 From investment-fuelled action to community-fuelled action
5.7.2 From purely commercial relationships to cooperative partnerships
5.8 Conclusion
References
6 Innovating locally for global transformation: Intermediating fluid, agroecological solutions – examples...
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Reframing innovation: from technology to knowledge about techniques
6.4 Cases of innovations in local agroecological systems
6.5 The future of innovating in food systems transitions
6.6 Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
7 Cost effects of local food enterprises: Supply chains, transaction costs and social diffusion
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Institutional arrangements beyond the market
7.2.1 Supply chain architecture
7.2.2 Developing a typology of transformative enterprises
7.2.3 Main business traits
7.2.3.1 Convivial technology
7.2.3.2 Greater intensity of work and employment of versatile workers
7.2.3.3 Prevention of external effects/provision of ecosystem services
7.2.3.4 Collaborative action
7.2.3.5 Participation and co-determination
7.2.4 Resulting cost structures
7.3 The trilemma of operational stabilization
7.3.1 The upper-limit problem
7.3.2 The lower-limit problem
7.3.3 Survivable development corridor
7.4 Strategies for the dissemination of transformative enterprises and initiatives
7.4.1 The compatible diffusion process: small is beautiful and stable
7.4.2 Regionally based transformative food systems
7.4.3 Effects on the macroeconomic basis
7.5 Conclusion
Notes
Part III Transformative local networks
8 Transformative communities in Germany: Working towards a sustainable food supply through creative doing and collaboration
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Theoretical framework and empirical design
8.3 Transformative communities in local food enterprises
8.4 Sustainable practices, creative doing and social cohesion
8.5 Limitations and possibilities of transformative communities
8.6 Conclusion
Notes
References
9 Context-specific notions and practices of ‘solidarity’ in food procurement networks in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA)
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Solidarity economy networks in Massachusetts
9.3 Solidarity economy networks in Italy
9.4 Discussion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
10 Transformative governance and food practices for sustainability in and by ecovillages: A German case study
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Sustainable ways of living
10.3 Practice theory and methodology
10.4 Ecovillages
10.4.1 Ecovillages are sustainability experiments
10.4.2 Ecovillages as local examples for sustainable food practices
10.4.3 Ecovillage governance: local citizen-based initiatives
10.4.4 Ecovillage learnings and practices are disseminated
10.5 The case of Sieben Linden ecovillage
10.5.1 Governance and organizational structures of Sieben Linden
10.5.2 Transformative food practices in Sieben Linden
10.6 Discussion: how sustainable are the food practices in ecovillages?
References
11 An anthropological reflection on urban gardening through the lens of citizenship
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Planting the seeds of food citizenship
11.3 Citizenship and urbanity
11.4 Citizenship through gardening
11.5 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Note
References
Index

Citation preview

Food System Transformations

This book examines the role of local food movements, enterprises and networks in the transformation of the currently unsustainable global food system. It explores a series of innovations designed to re-​integrate sustainable modes of food production and encourage food sovereignty. It provides detailed insights into a specialised network of social actors collaborating in novel ways and creating new economic arrangements across different geographical locales. In working to devise ‘local solutions to global problems’, the initiatives explored in the book represent a ‘second-​generation’ food social movement which is less preoccupied with distinctive local qualities than with building socially just food systems aimed at delivering healthy nutrition worldwide. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in sites across Europe, the USA and Brazil, the book provides a rich collection of case studies that offer a fresh perspective on the role of grassroots action in the transition to more sustainable food production systems. Addressing a substantive gap in the literature that falls between global analyses of the contemporary food system and highly localised case studies, the book will appeal to those teaching food studies and those conducting research on civic food initiatives or on environmental social movements more generally. Cordula Kropp is a sociologist and an expert for sustainability research, science technology studies, social innovation, technology and risk assessments. She is professor of sociology of environment and technology at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and director of the Research Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies (ZIRIUS). Irene Antoni-​Komar is a cultural scientist and a research associate at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. She works on sustainable food economy and transdisciplinary research and is co-​editor of Transformative Unternehmen und die Wende in der Ernährungswirtschaft (2019). Colin Sage is an independent scholar who works on the interconnections of food systems, environment and prospects for greater civic engagement around food. He is the author of Environment and Food (2012) and co-​editor of Food Transgressions (2014) and Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Transitions to Sustainability (2017).

Critical Food Studies

Series editors: Michael K. Goodman, University of Reading, UK, and Colin Sage, Independent Scholar

The study of food has seldom been more pressing or prescient. From the intensifying globalisation of food, a worldwide food crisis and the continuing inequalities of its production and consumption, to food’s exploding media presence and its growing re-​connections to places and people through ‘alternative food movements’, this series promotes critical explorations of contemporary food cultures and politics. Building on previous but disparate scholarship, its overall aims are to develop innovative and theoretical lenses and empirical material in order to contribute to –​but also begin to more fully delineate –​the confines and confluences of an agenda of critical food research and writing. Of particular concern are original theoretical and empirical treatments of the materialisations of food politics, meanings and representations, the shifting political economies and ecologies of food production and consumption and the growing transgressions between alternative and corporatist food networks. Shifting Food Facts Dietary Discourse in a Post-​Truth Culture Alissa Overend Agrifood System Transitions in Brazil New Food Orders Paulo André Niederle and Valdemar João Wesz Junior Food System Transformations Social Movements, Local Economies, Collaborative Networks Edited by Cordula Kropp, Irene Antoni-​Komar and Colin Sage For more information about this series, please visit:  www.routledge.com/​ Critical-​Food-​Studies/​book-​series/​CFS

Food System Transformations Social Movements, Local Economies, Collaborative Networks Edited by Cordula Kropp Irene Antoni-​Komar and Colin Sage

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, Cordula Kropp, Irene Antoni-​Komar and Colin Sage; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Cordula Kropp, Irene Antoni-​Komar and Colin Sage 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-​67422-​9  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​13130-​4  (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of figures  List of tables  List of contributors  Preface  Acknowledgements  1 Grassroots initiatives in food system transformation:  the role of food movements in the second ‘Great Transformation’ 

vii viii ix xiii xv

1

C OL I N S AG E , C O R D U LA K RO PP, A N D I R EN E ANT ONI-​KOMAR

PART I

Transformative food movements 

21

2 Women, agroecology and “real food” in Brazil: from national movement to local practice 

23

I SAB E L L E H I LLEN K A MP

3 Alternative food politics: the production of urban food spaces in Leipzig (Germany) and Nantes (France) 

42

C ORD U L A K RO PP A N D C LA R A  DA  RO S

4 Co-​designing cities: urban gardening projects and the conflict between self-​determination and administrative restrictions in German cities  AN D RE A BAI E R A N D C H R I STA  MÜ LLER

69

vi Contents PART II

Transformative food economies 

81

5 Food cooperatives as diverse re-​embedding forces: a multiple case study in Belgium 

83

J U L I E N VASTENA EK ELS A N D JÉRÔ ME PELE NC

6 Innovating locally for global transformation: intermediating fluid, agroecological solutions –​examples from France, the USA, Benin and South America 

100

AL L I SON M A R I E LO C O N TO

7 Cost effects of local food enterprises: supply chains, transaction costs and social diffusion 

119

N I KO PAE C H, C A R STEN SPER LI N G, A N D M ARIUS  ROMME L

PART III

Transformative local networks 

139

8 Transformative communities in Germany: working towards a sustainable food supply through creative doing and collaboration 

141

I RE N E AN TO N I - K ​ O MA R A N D C H R I STI N E LENZ

9 Context-​specific notions and practices of ‘solidarity’ in food procurement networks in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA) 

157

C RI ST I NA GR A SSEN I

10 Transformative governance and food practices for sustainability in and by ecovillages: a German case study  175 I RI S   K U N Z E

11 An anthropological reflection on urban gardening through the lens of citizenship 

198

ROB I N   SMI TH

Index 

211

Figures

7 .1  Supply chain architecture and social interaction  7.2  Forms of economic proximity /​interaction between producers and consumers  7.3  Transformative supply types  7.4  The trilemma of transformative size management  7.5  Survivable development corridor of transformative enterprises  7.6  Activities of transformative enterprises designed to deal with production costs and traditional transaction costs and the effects on the new cost factor “type-​2 transaction costs”  7.7  Diffusion process, adopter groups and company sizes  7.8  Potential scenarios of the diffusion effect of transformative enterprises and practices 

121 122 123 129 131 132 133 135

Tables

8.1  Qualitative results on creative doing in transformative communities  8.2  Quantitative results on creative doing in transformative communities 

147 147

Contributors

Irene Antoni-​Komar (Dr. phil.) is a cultural scientist and research associate at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law), Germany, with interests in sustainable food economy and transdisciplinary research. She was the coordinator of the research project nascent, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2015-2019). Andrea Baier is a sociologist and senior researcher at the research foundation Anstiftung in Munich, Germany. She has undertaken research in Indonesia and Germany. Her current research interests include subsistence theory, gender studies and sustainability studies. Clara Da Ros is a master’s graduate of a French–​German study programme at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and Sciences Po Bordeaux, France, where she studied political and social sciences. Since 2020, she has been a PhD student in urban sociology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Cristina Grasseni is professor of cultural anthropology at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. She works on economic, political and visual anthropology, especially in the areas of sustainability research, alternative food networks and socio-​technical enskilment. Isabelle Hillenkamp is a socio-​economist and expert in solidarity economy, agroecology and gender in Brazil and Bolivia. Since 2014, she has been working as a researcher at the Research Institute for Development and Centre for Social Sciences Studies on the African, American and Asian Worlds (IRD-​CESSMA) in Paris, France. Cordula Kropp is a sociologist and expert in sustainability research, science technology studies, social innovation, technology and risk assessment. She is professor of sociology of environment and technology at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and director of the Research Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies (ZIRIUS).

x Contributors Iris Kunze holds a PhD in geography and sociology and is an expert on ecovillages and other social movements, social innovation and sustainable ways of living. Iris has researched and taught at the university of Münster, the Center for Global Change and Sustainability at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, and is project manager at the Austrian Institute for Sustainable Development. Christine Lenz (Dr. rer. pol.) is an economist with a focus on ecological economics and sustainability. She was a research assistant at the University of Kassel and the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany, and now works as a project manager in the field of renewable energy, especially biomass, at Energie 2000, the energy agency in the district of Kassel, Germany. Allison Marie Loconto is a sociologist and expert in sustainability standards, science technology studies, institutional innovations and the governance of transitions to sustainable food systems. Since 2020 she has been the deputy director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Science, Innovation and Society (LISIS), France, and is a senior researcher at the French National Institute for Research on Agriculture, Food and the Environment. Christa Müller is a sociologist and committed to research on postmaterial lifestyles and on sustainable concepts of prosperity. She is director of the research foundation Anstiftung in Munich, Germany. Niko Paech is an economist at the University of Siegen, Germany. He teaches and researches in the master’s program Plural Economics. His focus is on post-​ growth economics, sustainability research, microeconomics, social diffusion, supply chain management and transformation research. Jérôme Pelenc has a master’s degree in ecological economics and a PhD in geography. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor at the University of Toulouse 2 Jean-​Jaurès, UMR LISST-​Dynamiques Rurales, France. Marius Rommel is an economist researching on the resilience, food sovereignty and sustainability effects of small-​scale and participatory business models such as community-​supported agriculture. He is currently working at the Institute for Plural Economics of the University of Siegen, Germany. Colin Sage is an independent research scholar who works on the interconnections of food systems, environment and on the prospects for greater civic engagement around food. He was the founding chair of the Cork Food Policy Council, Ireland. He is the author of Environment and Food (2012) and co-​editor of Food Transgressions:  Making Sense of Contemporary Food Politics (2014) and Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Transitions to Sustainability (2017). He is now based in Portugal.

Contributors  xi Robin Smith is an anthropologist of post-​socialist Europe. She is particularly interested in agricultural finance and rural life in southeastern Europe, and questions around economic resiliency and justice. Carsten Sperling is an environmental engineer with many years of experience in transformation research. He works on the topics of civic engagement, participation models and solidarity-​based agriculture. Julien Vastenaekels is an ecological economist with a focus on transitions to alternative economies. He has been a PhD researcher and teaching assistant in environmental studies at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) since 2015.

Preface

As we write, the coronavirus pandemic continues to shake many of our everyday routines. Reports from the livestock-​ processing industries in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States impact public confidence in the food system once again as thousands of employees have become infected with the virus as a consequence of poor working conditions and hygiene standards. If last week, the media was dominated by accounts of the barbarity of livestock rearing and slaughter, before that it was preoccupied with the shortage of seasonal harvest workers in European farming, without whose underpaid efforts agri-​food production cannot survive. In the weeks of the coronavirus lockdown, there was gratitude to the many saleswomen in the food trade for maintaining supply even though they were not well protected. That it is predominantly women who are employed in food retail and who, at the same time, are responsible for the home schooling of their children made it clear, yet again, how unequal is the allocation of risk and remuneration across the entire food system. Yet during these months of pandemic and the associated crisis facing the conventional agri-​food system, the demand for regionally and ecologically produced food has grown steadily from week to week. Food cooperatives, community-​supported and solidarity-​based agriculture have experienced an unprecedented rush for products and membership. Indeed, in many regions demand to join schemes far exceeded their capacity to accept new members. As during previous episodes of food safety anxiety, people were turning away in horror from the mainstream food industry and seeking healthier and more sustainable alternatives. The key question now, and one which we hope this book will contribute to answering, is whether these recent developments will lead to the transformation of the conventional food system and give rise to a sustainable food economy. Our book was written before the coronavirus crisis and we cannot predict whether the potentially transformative shocks of the pandemic on food supply will stabilise and endure. What the book can show, however, is how diverse the paths for a different food system are and what conditions are needed for change. It reveals that another economy is possible and that it has

xiv Preface been baptised in many places. Investigating some of its initiatives reveals the positive effects they have on those involved. For new relationships are being established, not simply between producers and eaters within sub-​national regions, but also through the forging of new international networks. Above all, there is growing recognition of the need for a fundamentally different relationship with the more-​than-​human world, the maintenance of which requires careful attention to the many aspects of our shared connectivity. The development of a more sustainable future is about more than an ecological form of food production:  rather, transformative forms of organisation must be tested, novel alliances forged and new techniques either invented or recovered from the past. The creation and maintenance of this alternative form of producing and provisioning societies with decent food must, despite the many difficulties that it will face, be done in competition with a powerful existing order that appropriates ideas and new sources of meaning without diverting from its drive for accumulation. It is our great wish that this book and its contributions will sensitise readers to the possibilities for food system transformation and encourage them to support the cautious paths to a different future by connecting with the multitude of local initiatives that continue to emerge and inspire us. Irene Antoni-​Komar, Cordula Kropp and Colin Sage

Acknowledgements

The origins of this book date back to a collaborative research project conducted by the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, the University of Stuttgart and the non-​profit foundation Anstiftung in Munich, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Berlin (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) as part of its funding programme Sustainable Economy (Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften, funding no.  01UT1428). We are very grateful to the BMBF for its willingness to support transdisciplinary projects for sustainable development and to Andreas Schmidt from the project management agency DLR (German Aerospace Center, Bonn) for his support. Thanks to this funding initiative we were able to conduct collaborative research with 38 entrepreneurs, educational institutions, civil society networks and initiatives for a sustainable food economy in Germany. The practice partners and those engaged in knowledge transfer reported in several workshops, numerous interviews and other contexts on their daily efforts in building a sustainable food system and inspired our transdisciplinary research with their experiences, visions and questions. Special thanks are due to Irene Antoni-​Komar, who for over four years has managed to coordinate and sustain this lively group of practitioners and scientists. Furthermore, we are especially indebted to Reinhard Pfriem, who contributed more than 40 years of research experience for a sustainable economy in this last research project led by himself. As part of the project a very successful international conference was organised at the University of Stuttgart in July 2017 by Cordula Kropp. This conference, with some distinguished participants, allowed us to compare the results from Germany with those from other countries and to distil some comprehensive lessons. The conference and the editing of book were greatly supported by Sabine Mertz and four (then) master students: Clara Da Ros, Susanne Haar, Alisa Uhrig and Ann-​Kathrin Wortmeier. While the book has its origins in this international conference, the chapters assembled here reflect a process of deliberate selection and substantial reworking and the incorporation of extended conversations and dialogue during and subsequent to the conference. Several of the chapters were separately commissioned by the editors to enrich and complement the original case

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xvi Acknowledgements studies. Colin Sage paved the way into the Routledge Critical Food Studies series, which he co-​edits with Mike Goodman. Our thanks go to the international peer reviewers, to Mike Goodman and Faye Leerink, commissioning editor at Routledge. Last but not least, we are immensely grateful to the contributors for their patience as well as their work and hope they are as happy to see this publication as are we.

1  Grassroots initiatives in food system transformation The role of food movements in the second ‘Great Transformation’ Colin Sage, Cordula Kropp, and Irene Antoni-​Komar

1.1  Introduction It has become increasingly apparent that the current global food order has led us into a rather perilous place. While its proponents proclaim that never have so many eaten so much so cheaply, those who count the hidden costs remind us of the consequences of this abundance. Today more than two billion people worldwide are considered obese and therefore at risk from three of the four leading causes of non-​communicable diseases (Swinburn et al. 2019). Meanwhile, the food supply chain creates 26% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (excluding non-​food agriculture) while contributing one-​third of global terrestrial acidification and almost four-​fifths of eutrophication (Poore and Nemecek 2018) and places huge demands on freshwater resources and the world’s stock of biological diversity. Little by little the lens of rigorous scientific analysis has begun to join up these multidimensional issues utilising transdisciplinary approaches that have revealed the deep interconnection of human health and wellbeing with planetary equilibrium. This has brought a new emphasis upon dietary practices linked to the structures of food supply and the need to move sharply away from production and consumption patterns that are prevalent in rich and upper-​middle-​income countries around the world. It is in this context that the notion of sustainability has come to play a hugely significant role in debates around the food system and has become a key term linking environmental performance  –​‘living within planetary boundaries’ (Steffen et al. 2015; Rockström et al. 2020) –​with human nutrition and other vital considerations (including rights-​based social justice). At its most basic level we might suggest that the application of sustainability to food production and supply is to secure diets with low environmental impacts, yet which deliver nutrition security and wellbeing for both present and future generations. Working towards the achievement of such a goal will require nothing less than a complete transformation of the existing global food system. This is a challenge given the enormous economic power and political influence wielded by those major corporations (‘Big Food’) which will wish to

2  Colin Sage et al. maintain ‘business as usual’, albeit by appropriating the language of sustainability (‘greenwashing’). However, we are witnessing the emergence of a loose coalition of diverse actors  –​including peasants, urban dwellers, scientists of many disciplines and people who eat and who are concerned about their food –​that is beginning to offer a new vision for food production, supply and consumption. This coalition no longer operates entirely as protest: it performs opposition to the status quo, demonstrating that alternatives are not only practically feasible, they also deliver a host of other co-​benefits, including ecological regeneration, community building and improved wellbeing. While this volume builds upon the significant body of work that has documented, critically evaluated and richly illustrated alternative food networks (AFN; Goodman et al. 2012; Matacena 2016; Maye 2013; Renting et al. 2012), we argue that a ‘second generation’ of new food initiatives now requires attention. In part due to the capacity of the mainstream food system to adapt to new challenges while extending its reach across the globe, it is clear that ‘first-​generation’ alternatives were able to effect only a limited transformation in agri-​food practices. Indeed, a remarkable process of corporate consolidation continues, such that the top 100 companies now account for 75% of all packaged food sales worldwide (Clapp and Scrinis 2017). This ascendancy of ‘Big Food’ has arguably helped stimulate a multiplicity of community initiatives that seek to wrest back some part of the food system from corporate control. Consequently, this volume offers insights into a range of practical, community-​ led initiatives that are aimed at transforming the non-​ environmentally sustainable, socially unjust and economically fragile food economy into resilient sustainable food systems. To this end, they start at very different social, political, technical and economic levels; may organise themselves as a movement, network or enterprise; and in all cases seek to weave a global, relational carpet of sustainable food practices that cannot be described in terms of a simple either/​or of modern economic understanding (Gibson-​Graham 2008). Further on we provide an insight into the individual chapters, but first we review some foundational concepts and thereby establish the key parameters of this volume.

1.2  Sustainability and transformations A common definition of a sustainable food system is one that ‘delivers food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for future generations are not compromised’ (FAO 2018). Such a definition draws attention to the three pillars model so frequently cited in relation to sustainable development since the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987) and where economic performance (meaning growth and profitability) usually remains at least as important as maintaining vital ecological services for planetary survival. Yet we contend that food is ill served by such narrow generic definitions and that to

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  3 speak of ‘sustainable food’ means going well beyond the way many might regard it through the lens, say, of Goal 2 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While ‘zero hunger’ is, indeed, a vital aspiration, the elimination of under-​nutrition stands alongside other goals where food must be regarded as inseparable. These include ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’ (goal #3); the elimination of poverty (goal #1); understanding the role of food in enhancing ‘Gender Equality’ (goal #5); to ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ (goal #12); and, of course, ‘Climate Action’ (goal #13) given the food system’s contribution noted in the opening paragraph. More immediately, with relevance to this volume, we also highlight food’s role in building ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’ (goal # 11)  and in contributing to ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions’ (goal # 16). If food is such an important thread running through the SDGs then it requires us to adopt a generously broad frame of analysis recognising that societies should seek to recover an appreciation of food’s multidimensional roles beyond that as a global commodity. The pursuit of productivism since mid 20th century has contributed to the world’s current ecological predicament, yet many diverse voices are heralding sustainability as providing a compass bearing for the way forward. But who will steer the course? This is the challenge for all societies as they navigate their way out of a succession of food crises, a global pandemic and years of austerity which brought such widespread insecurity and poverty to even the richest countries. Hence sustainability in relation to food can no longer be adequately framed by the three pillars model noted above, but must now be extended at the very least to embrace the broadest conception of human and planetary health and wellbeing, and the capacity to accommodate a new ethical frame of reference. Moreover, we refer to the emergence of a new philosophical approach that is not just about improved animal welfare standards but begins to re-​evaluate the relationship of humans with all other forms of life. This more-​than-​ human ontology has been most cogently outlined by Timothy Morton (2018, 2019) who has argued that our current predicament in the Anthropocene can be traced to the ‘severing’ that took place in the Neolithic with the development of agriculture. As one might guess, this more broadly conceived understanding of sustainability goes well beyond the ‘greening’ of production and consumption in an effort to achieve greater resource efficiencies but, rather, speaks to a more profound transformation of our relationship with the Earth. As the famous aphorism of Albert Einstein reminds us, if we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them then it is unlikely that planetary-​scale thinking will entirely resolve our global predicament. Rather, it will require a commitment to local-​level actions that demonstrate through everyday practices our willingness to change. Through many of the case studies represented in this volume we see such efforts as communities attempt to pilot their own path to a different food future; not one where business as usual prevails but, rather, a more democratic, participatory and engaged system where human and non-​human life is respected.

4  Colin Sage et al. If we deploy sustainability in this more expansive sense, then equally we should bring the same attention to the term ‘transformation’. This, also, is a word prone to careless deployment and so we use it here cautiously, deliberatively and in a rather interrogative sense as a way of signalling the potential power of this emerging new social order around food. We recognise that the word carries significant weight because of its associations with economic history, particularly its resonance with Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation ([1944] 1957)  that heralded the triumph of the market economy and its ideology. Polanyi described this great transformation as a long-​term decoupling of market activities from social relations and values through the progressive commodification of all social structures, i.e. through commercialisation that turns the production factors of labour, capital, land and knowledge into commodities. He highlighted the resulting disembedding of an emerging independent economy that effectively reduced national societies to ‘an appendage of the market’. This process is no better demonstrated than in the application of Fordist principles to the realm of food and agriculture, most especially the huge investments in chemical, mechanical and biological innovations and associated developments in infrastructure and marketing, that were to radically transform the production of this most basic and essential human requirement. Consequently, we concur with Allaire and Daviron (2019), who regard the post-​1945 era of agricultural productivism not only as forming part of a Polanyian transformation, but to constitute the first Great Transformation of the food system. The past 70 years have witnessed remarkable changes throughout the entire food system, beginning with farming practices, particularly the adoption of labour-​saving technology, in specialisation and in the scale of farm operations. These have been accompanied by extraordinary developments in plant-​and animal-​breeding programmes that arguably reached an apogee in the 1960s and 1970s with the Green Revolution, though have long been overtaken by more recent scientific ‘advances’ at the cellular level. However, beyond the farm-​gate radical changes have taken place in food-​processing and assembly line technologies designed to increase the volume of output in accordance with economic efficiency, thus giving rise to a deluge of cheap and convenient products. A  growing share of these are then purchased by the public from an increasingly concentrated sector of corporate retailers which have come to exercise enormous influence back up the food chain given practices of standardisation and their control of ‘point-​of-​sale’ data (Busch 2019). These developments representing the advance and consolidation of capitalism in agri-​food have created a global food economy estimated at US$ 8 trillion in 2015, representing 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and around one-​third of the global workforce (Clapp 2016). Yet the deleterious consequences of this system have been recognised for some time and have particularly impacted farm families as well as many food consumers. Going back to the 1950s the economic pressure on farmers to adopt new

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  5 technologies and scale up operations in the pursuit of efficiencies was labelled the ‘agricultural treadmill’. This metaphor is less about the ‘speeding up’ of production (though this has been a feature of animal rearing) than the squeeze on farmers facing rising input costs as a consequence of intensification while experiencing –​at best –​static prices for their commodities (Sage 2012). The agricultural treadmill has consequently seen a major reduction in the size of the farm population and in the number of agricultural enterprises as the global food economy has expanded under trade liberalisation measures, exposing and fatally undermining many producers to a flood of cheap food imports. The success in raising output volumes of undifferentiated commodity crops that could be shipped around the world and serve as inputs for the manufacture of processed foodstuffs represents a massification and deculturalisation of food and eating practices. The ubiquity of fast, convenient and ‘tasty’ refined products in many different societies under the combined forces of corporate promotion, advertising and low price witnessed the dominance of ‘Western-​style’ eating practices, particularly involving processed meat. Yet from the 1980s onward public health began to fall victim to the consequences of food massification with the emergence of a series of food safety scares. The appearance of listeria and salmonella in eggs, poultry and cooked meat was accompanied by growing concern around pesticide residues, most notably in the case of Alar in apples. Recent experience of the coronavirus pandemic has made it abundantly clear that the number of zoonoses has increased steadily as a consequence of the penetration of the remaining refuges of wild creatures. Through the 1990s the issue of genetic engineering became a touchstone of concern and since 2012 has intensified due to the far-​reaching possibilities of genome editing. Meanwhile E.  coli outbreaks and episodes of dioxin and other contaminants have arisen, on occasion threatening food safety. However, it was the emergence of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) in cattle (‘mad cow disease’) that arguably did most damage to the food industry in the wealthiest countries.

1.3  Alternative food networks The success of the first Great Transformation in agriculture is invariably measured by volumes of output, the value of exports and the continued expansion of global trade in commodities. Given this, it is fair to say that the contemporary food system has become entirely decoupled from parameters such as the numbers of people fed healthily and sustainably. In other words, it is apparent that human health and the wellbeing of the planet have not been an objective of the food system and that agriculture is not aligned with nutritionally optimal diets. The episodes of public health failures noted above serve to mark the inevitable consequence of a profit-​seeking system designed to cut costs at every turn. It is little surprise, therefore, that since the 1980s this era has become something of a turning point in public sensibility, one

6  Colin Sage et al. where localism, quality and territorial embeddedness emerged as key criteria amongst those able to spend more on their food. Arguably triggered by the twin but unrelated disasters of Chernobyl and BSE, a first generation of ‘re-​localising’ food can be observed, possibly best captured by the expressed desire of consumers to ‘know where their food comes from’. Frequenting farmers’ markets and other short-​supply chain outlets, buying regional specialty foods and other products that were territorially ‘embedded’ or ethically sourced (e.g. Fairtrade), these AFNs were heralded as representing a new emancipatory resistance to the corporate-​ dominated world of industrial food (Kirwan et al. 2013). Yet, while closely tied to issues of quality, transparency and trust (Maye and Kirwan 2010), attributes that were regarded as entirely absent from the mainstream food system, these terms quickly became appropriated by Big Food interests in order to reassure consumers and, ultimately, despite the promise of alterity, AFN offered little challenge to the prevailing logic of capitalism. Yet the unreflexive use of the term ‘local’, as Goodman et al. (2012) carefully interrogate, is not innocent and can quickly establish a set of normative standards that privilege certain analytical categories, exclude democratic and participatory agendas and disregard the politics of place. Moreover, the celebration of territorially embedded ‘quality’ food that secured premium prices while retaining value in the locality served to enhance the status of the market as a neutral venue of transaction. With economic drivers remaining hegemonic, albeit with a veneer of local ‘authenticity’ (a favoured term), it was unsurprising that many new entrants to this ‘alternative’ universe came from thoroughly conventional backgrounds. This helps to explain the ‘conventionalisation’ of organic farming (Carolan 2012) that saw growing numbers of mainstream producers seize the opportunity to go into organic conversion (often with the help of a relaxation of certification rules) and supply the volumes needed by corporate retailers. A  cynical view of AFN might then be that it revealed the desire of consumers to eat well but that the capability of the mainstream food system to adapt so as to maintain its hegemony effectively won out. Yet mounting environmental problems, the deeply intractable issue of social justice and other demands, including greater transparency of production methods, have kept the spotlight on the global food system. So while first-​ generation AFN had limited traction in leveraging a transformation of the prevailing food order it nevertheless served to create the conditions for a wider debate around food which became a legitimate focus of public interest. In the past decade or so, however, we have begun to witness a new civic spirit emerge with a different kind of narrative around localism, one that is being forged partly from a pragmatic municipal politics and a strong dose of post-​material environmentalism. For Schlosberg and Coles (2016) these new movements are moving beyond passive resistance and are creating and constructing alternative circulations of power and material nature in new collectivities. One of the features of these movements, that extend beyond the realm of food getting, is an

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  7 evident sense of collective self-​interest and of empathy with others –​human and non-​human  –​rather than individual altruism. Underpinning it lies a belief in a better world and an unwillingness to accept the claims of corporate actors to be working hard for our children’s future. The rejection of business as usual brings with it, however, a responsibility to create not only a positive vision but a sense of action, to find ways of harnessing identification with one’s community into ways of making a difference. Given the lower entry barriers to food production (over, say, community energy generation; Sage 2014) very diverse movements have emerged sharing similar goals that challenge power, creating alternative institutional arrangements and building food systems that embody sustainable material relationships between human communities and the natural world that supplies our needs (Schlosberg and Coles 2016). Consequently, initiatives are emerging around the world that develop and test agroecological, economically and socially fair production, processing and marketing options. One of their central features is co-​production as a bridge between production and consumption, e.g. in food cooperatives. Transparent relations and a reorganisation of economic relations captured by the term ‘prosuming’ are intended to create opportunities for a fair and sustainable food supply for present and future generations, to promote local and manageable economic cycles, to make possible well-​balanced and secure nutrition for all, to improve food sovereignty, to commit oneself against food waste and to limit the destruction of rainforests. The actors involved in this new food movement are breaking out of anonymous structures of food supply, taking care of themselves but within a developing sense of solidarity and collective unity. This may be expressed as self-​provisioning through urban gardening, the collective procurement of food products through buyer cooperatives, or engagement in community-​supported agriculture. Here the cooperation between consumers and producers, based on the joint funding of operating costs, is most apparent. Food is no longer simply a commodity exchanged for monetary value; rather the risks of production are spread between producers and eaters, exemplifying a shared responsibility and solidarity between those within a connected community. These aspirations and evolving practices demonstrate a significant step forward from the primarily local concerns of ‘first-​ generation’ AFN and so these new initiatives might justifiably be regarded as the emergence of a ‘second-​generation’ food movement.

1.4  Steps towards a second ‘Great Transformation’ Drawing on the work of Allaire and Daviron (2019), we noted above some of the characteristics of the first Great Transformation that so fundamentally altered the course of agricultural development and gave rise to a global food system. What is most intriguing in their work, however, is their reference to a second Great Transformation that must necessarily emerge to resolve the deep structural contradictions that confront the global agri-​food

8  Colin Sage et al. system. Working within a political economy tradition, albeit a highly heterodox one influenced by various French schools of social and economic thought, Allaire and Daviron are tentative and ambivalent about the shape and direction of this new epochal transformation but which they believe will be characterised by a growing concern with global health and ecological issues. To speak of transformation implies something more than a process of ecological modernisation where new technologies and practices are adopted to improve efficiency of resource use and mitigate the worst aspects of environmental damage. Rather, it must not fall into the trap of environmental governmentality (Fletcher and Cortes-​Vazquez 2020) but must involve system redesign and institutional restructuring to rectify the injustices that underpin current food inequalities and to restore damaged ecosystems. But above all, this second Great Transformation will feature a broad spectrum of actors, most especially grassroots movements, which will lead the way in developing a multiplicity of civic initiatives, many of which might fail but some of which will thrive and offer the prospect of a new social order where human flourishing replaces work-​dominated materialistic lifestyles characterised by ‘getting and spending’.1 As noted, Daviron and Allaire (2019) are somewhat reluctant to sketch out the concrete features of a second Great Transformation and, as social theorists seem more comfortable in discussing globalisation through the lens of food regimes, regulation and conventions approaches, and its possible pathways. Clearly, science and technology will continue to play a dominant role in shaping financial value in agri-​food and where the bio-​economy is likely to occupy a leading edge of global economic growth. While continuing to draw heavily on land and polyvalent biomass resources this sector will be the source of a variety of interchangeable feedstocks, including human food, animal feed, fibre, renewable energy, plastics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals (Wilkinson and Goodman 2019). Yet we suspect that these global-​scale processes of speculative investments in advanced technologies (including in genomics and microbiome research; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019) will create further polarisation and opposition. So, while the outputs of the bio-​economy will provide much of the energy and material baseload for societal metabolism, it will also likely be met by resistance and the articulation of alternative visions for meeting social needs. Opposition to such technologies will be rooted in deep-​seated ecological and social justice concerns that will renounce consumer-​driven technologies in favour of creating more sustainable and resilient communities capable of withstanding the challenges of the immediate future. Such demands will, we believe, become the hallmark of ‘second-​generation’ food movements. Even before the current coronavirus pandemic, resilience had increasingly found its way into policy narratives as a guiding concept for decentralised transformation scenarios (Holling 2001): ‘not necessarily as a substitute for, but as a supplement to the concept of sustainability’ (Raith et al. 2017, 11). Resilience refers to the ability of supply systems to deal with exogenous

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  9 disturbances and the capacity to adapt to changed framework conditions –​ creatively (Folke 2006; Voss 2010). Although resilience cannot replace the original focus of the concept of sustainability, it adds a vital dimension of stable and crisis-​resistant structures. For resilience science, transformations ‘usually result from a loss of resilience in the old regime and involve (re-​)establishing resilience in a new one’ (Milkoreit 2018, 457) which may be the only route to allow for human flourishing. Consequently, the search for greater resilience may be a primary driver of the second Great Transformation as small territorial units (the city-​region), capable of functioning and surviving within themselves (Hanke 2014), emerge as more autonomous areas largely providing for the needs of their citizens. New social movements, particularly those focused upon food, are likely to play a critical role in this process and the contributions in this volume show what this system redesign can begin to look like. Although food movements continue to have a niche character, they can now be observed as a global phenomenon. What is different to first-​generation AFN is that these new local initiatives are aware of their ubiquitous presence, refer and connect with each other and consider themselves to be part of a heterogeneous but widespread movement. Against this background, it is the task of social scientists to grasp the multidimensional nature of the initiatives and to examine their efforts in terms of the different contexts in which they operate, the networks they build and the difficulties they overcome. To this end, all cases presented in this volume were ethnographically researched with a focus on the relational practices of alternative doing, framing, organising and knowing (cf. Haxeltine et al. 2016; Kropp 2018). The book attempts to capture the significance of this movement in the face of the major challenges for humans and the more-​than-​human worlds, with authors exploring what kind of transformation is taking place in the new practices. A key question is how local food initiatives and economies may contribute to solving global food problems more than symbolically. Are they forerunners of new ways of thinking both politically and economically, representatives of a new type of post-​national movement in an era of global warming? Or are they to be regarded as modernised variants of earlier environmental movements? What role does the close relationship play with regard to local (urban) spaces?

1.5  The transformative potential of grassroots food initiatives In the manifold projects of grassroots food movements, local spaces are consciously and ‘collaboratively’ redesigned and redefined in order to directly enforce previously hidden concerns in the local space. Their practices take place where social reality translates into visible positions, and are about many things at the same time:  a green infrastructure, healthy food, regional production and consumption processes, meaningful employment opportunities, community with like-​minded people, the connection to nature and its forces, as well as the re-​appropriation of civic places in which to meet given the forces

10  Colin Sage et al. of privatisation and enclosure of public space. For activists, self-​sufficiency in urban gardens and agriculture is not associated with backwardness, exclusion and poverty, but with a post-​material quality of life, urban ecology, mutual sensitisation and the regaining of public space in times of neoliberal urban development policy. They pursue strategies of place-​based and collaborative re-​appropriation of spaces for the benefit of the public good. In doing so, food production has a powerful ‘awakening’ function, because it reveals people’s sense of alienation around the ways in which food is produced and, secondly, how access to natural resources and open spaces without consumption is also unequal and limited for different groups of inhabitants. Under the contemporary food system most farmers produce for the global market and only a few for regional demand. Meanwhile everyday life for the majority of urban dwellers is alienated from natural cycles and cities are shaped by the continued deepening of a competitive global capitalism with its attendant consequences for urban space. Taking this into consideration, what does it mean when places of common food production and exchange are created in the very heart of cities, even occupying high-​value locations? These interventions by civil society activists serve to irritate, even to disrupt, the process of spatial production, revealing the separation, the alienation, that exists between residents and powerful financial interests. Such actions open up new possibilities for alternative visions of an urban future, where inner cities, particularly, need not be characterised as ‘industrial wastelands’ but as new spaces of hope. Such actions as occupying and using land for food growing can be powerful: ‘these processes are transformative for those involved’ (Smith and Seyfang 2013, 827). They generate valuable and new forms of knowledge, empower citizens to articulate their basic aspirations and thereby also redefine citizenship. They open up networks for mutual support and cooperation at the local level and make citizens aware of the distortions in food markets across national borders. They initiate processes of collaborative learning and organising, which sometimes translate into cascades of initiatives (Kropp 2018). They train institutional entrepreneurs in their capacity as promoters of emancipatory projects. In the networks of various actors that grow in these processes, more cooperative and inclusive relations of trust and consensus making are developed beyond the internal logics of sectors. Such relations foster the values of solidarity and social fairness and trigger institutional flexibility inside the public and private organisations involved. Whereas isolated initiatives produce little change but restrict their action to the provision of services, the more comprehensive and networked landscapes of the global food movement promote the consolidation of new policies, linking provision systems more closely to the common interest. Accordingly, two central characteristics can be identified in the case studies presented in this book which play a central role in many of the projects. First, there is a strong politicisation of food, which is connected with the striving for fundamentally different natural conditions and thus also different social conditions.

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  11 The participants leave the self-​understanding of an industrial ‘food from nowhere’ regime (Schermer 2015) behind them and try out alternatives to solidarity-​ based and ecological co-​ production of food, markets, societies. They do not do so with political demands on elected representatives (alone), but through their proto-​political action in the public space, where they open up alternatives and question the status quo. Refusing to succumb to the destructive tendencies within industrial modernity, they cultivate creativity and responsibility reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of new beginnings. Secondly, they address the global–​local problem pragmatically. With their strong awareness of global interdependencies and the ominous role of Western extractionalism, they act less and less in favour of parochialism, but look for locally appropriate, place-​based solutions. This contextualisation results in strong differences between initiatives that can only be captured in an internationally comparative way through the gathering of case studies from different social worlds and the cases that are presented here reveal the significance of different actor constellations, discourses, markets and technical innovations. Yet many of the case studies are marked by considerable ambiguity as a consequence of their experimental nature. It is often difficult to develop new forms of organisation and relationship without falling into old routines of evaluation and hierarchisation. Many projects leave the initiators burnt out and exhausted and cannot be stabilised and, to date, none of them has reached a size that would threaten the established food industry. However, the heterogeneous effects of transformative initiatives and enterprises become visible in their respective contexts: they re-​construct social reality with unusual means and revitalise thinking around relationships, networks and exchanges. The contributors to this volume focus on the concrete challenges, the contexts and the political significance of the initiatives they recount. This scientific examination allows us to reflect on points of friction, to evaluate their significance in the larger context and to ask what opportunities exist for other new beginnings elsewhere. In such a way, ‘telling stories together with historically situated critters [that is humans, animals, plants and machines] is fraught with the risks and joys of composing a more livable cosmopolitics’ (Haraway 2016, 14).

1.6  Structure of the book The book is divided into three parts, highlighting first transformative food movements (I), then transformative food economies (II) and finally transformative local networks (III). In the first section, we examine local projects that can be seen as part of a social movement. Since the turn of the millennium, and increasingly since the global financial crisis, we have been observing a new wave of social movements in North and South, in urban and rural contexts, in civil society networks, organisations and neighbourhoods (della Porta 2015). While social

12  Colin Sage et al. movements in the past first politicised social issues and then focused on environmental, peace and emancipation issues as ‘new social movements’, today they focus on issues such as nutrition, housing, climate, financial markets, democracy and integration. By definition, their claim to social change as a whole, their character as a network, their collective identity and their protest actions are regarded as constitutive characteristics of the new social movement. These characteristics also describe the initiatives considered in the book which, with their strategies, narratives, alliances and practices, are primarily active in the field of food, but, on closer examination, strive to transform the relationship to nature and production and models of life and care that are judged to be unsustainable in society as a whole. We therefore regard it as part of the movement that has emerged in the field of food and ecology, and which, with commitment and creativity, is driving pilot projects forward in order to create new lifestyles, economies, spaces and communities. Beyond isolated protest actions and social milieus, these enterprises institutionally stabilise the movement and enable new syntheses of food production and supply, distribution and demand, economy and participation, self-​sufficiency and collective action. Isabelle Hillenkamp analyses the emergence of the agroecology movement and its feminist components in southeastern Brazil against the background of the traditional dual model, opposing a modernised, export-​oriented, male agriculture based on the intensive use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and a so-​called ‘family’ farming, responsible for food security in the hands of women. Based on fieldwork with a network of women farmers, Hillenkamp discusses how the network changes the understanding of economy, market and social cohesion, and translates into a politically, socially and economically embedded option for the economic emancipation of women. Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros focus on the use of urban spaces facing the challenges of structural change in order to create new socially and climate-​ friendly worlds. It becomes clear that local accents can vary greatly:  thus, in the city of Leipzig in Germany the movement is more strongly oriented towards ecological forms of economic activity, and in the comparable city of Nantes in France is more strongly oriented towards overcoming social inequality and exclusion. In both cases there is a close connection to the concrete urban experience and to an emancipative policy. Andrea Baier and Christa Müller highlight the complex interaction between the experimental generation of other food realities on the one hand and bureaucratic administrative routines on the other. They trace how traditional roles of the citizen as a governed subject are decentred and partially de-​hierarchised and how new demands of co-​design emerge. On the way towards becoming more sustainable cities, the movements are struggling with the different time and decision regimes on the administrative side. The second section of the volume is devoted to transformative food economies. For a long time, it seemed beyond question that food would only be produced in rural areas and then transported to the cities in ever longer, more

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  13 fragmented and more complex supply routes in order to be consumed there –​ alienated from the conditions in which it is produced and processed. This perception is also cemented by a food industry that, under the conditions of a highly concentrated retail trade with high levels of pressure from international competitors, has successfully promoted a profit-​optimising organisation of the value chain. It was only at a late stage that the interdependence and relativity of urban and rural food landscapes (foodscapes), producer and consumer practices, ecological and social relations, food culture, economics and politics came into the focus of the social sciences with the help of an approach known as ‘post-​ disciplinary”. From a critical perspective, this work is attentive to different economic forms that not only integrate social and ecological objectives into their business model, but also combine production practices with responsible and fair relationships and food sovereignty. This approach expands the view of the diversity of socio-​culturally and spatially significant relationships between production, trade and consumption, which has for too long been narrowed down to natural raw materials, their processing and trade, as ‘entangled journeys from farms to plates and beyond’ (Cook 2006, 658). Moreover, diverse (community) economies came into view from a feminist-​ inspired perspective, and the diversity of alternative economic and exchange processes beyond the dominant focus on capitalist market relations, wage labour and profit maximisation has been explored (Gibson-​Graham 2008; Kneafsey et al. 2008). Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc examine the capacities of diverse food cooperatives to challenge the dominant principles of conventional food systems by bringing together different actors like citizens, producers, entrepreneurs and distributors. In a qualitative study involving three food cooperatives of different kinds in Belgium, they explore in which ways they are helping to ‘re-​embed’ food economy in society. Allison Marie Loconto explores the role of intermediaries in assembling techno-​economic networks (TENs) that enable sustainable consumption and production, using examples from France, the USA, Benin and South America. By differentiating between (1) information-​rich, (2) diversified, (3) interactive and (4) socio-​cultural TENs, she illustrates what a focus on the organisational innovations and the knowledge of techniques can contribute to the expansion of markets for agroecology and to effectively kick-​start this transition process. Niko Paech, Carsten Sperling and Marius Rommel discuss the opportunities and challenges facing transformative enterprises in terms of cost effects and social diffusion based on supply chain analyses. They highlight the specific upper size limits of transformative enterprises, which make social stabilisation difficult if exceeded. The diffusion process compatible with this follows the principle of a decentralised and autonomous multiplication of the organisational model rather than the concept of traditional entrepreneurial growth. In the third and final section of the book we focus on transformative local networks. Here, we see how community building can play a prominent role

14  Colin Sage et al. in local food enterprises. The initiatives and enterprises studied form local networks of heterogeneous actors who can participate in a variety of community activities, such as harvesting campaigns, workshops or farm festivals. They work together in these transformative communities with the aim of breaking new ground in the globalised and anonymous food system. People voluntarily choose to participate in these post-​traditional neo-​communities (Davies 2012; Goulding et  al. 2002; Hitzler et al. 2008) because they are ‘culturally attractive, open and dynamic’ (Reckwitz 2017). In contrast to traditional ‘forced communities’, respect for the diversity of actors is crucial for a successful balance between individual freedom and solidarity. To distinguish oneself individually and to develop creativity in community, the ‘building’ of new social certainties in new constellations of social coexistence (Baier et al. 2011, 282) is put into practice in these situations. In this way, the desire for collaborative, creative action does not just bring together the most diverse actors. Encouraged by the enterprises, spaces and possibilities are created to leave traditional economic consumption and production and to explore solidarity with one another in prosuming practices. In summary, the transformative communities in local networks are voluntary cooperatives of heterogeneous actors (founders of enterprises, employees, customers, etc.), united by the ethical goal of changing the unsustainable global food system in local economies. They emerge within or next to local enterprises as networks that promote community building. They are socially cohesive and driven by the desire to meaningfully work together with the cooperation of very different actors. Irene Antoni-​Komar and Christine Lenz study how culturally, participation in transformative enterprises is based on new forms of collaborative, creative doing for social change, that is the common integrative goal and therefore the shared vision and identity. They highlight that the creation of meaning and the opportunities to participate are crucial for stabilising the networks, which focus more on self-​efficacy for common goals instead of self-​fulfilment. Cristina Grasseni describes context-​ specific notions and practices of ‘solidarity’ in food procurement networks based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA). In order to rethink the global food system and to try and propose putting local solutions into practice, there are different socio-​ cultural dimensions of solidarity identified. In Italy, the Solidarity Economy Network (SEN) establishes direct transactions between consumers and producers by networking with food producers; in the USA SEN focuses on short food chains as a way of increasing food sustainability, interpreting their activity as ‘co-​production’. Iris Kunze explores the everyday practices in a German ecovillage from an insider’s perspective in order to check whether and how more sustainable food practices are emerging. The case study examines the practices in terms of their contribution to less resource-​intensive, more sustainable local production and consumption and the interlinkage between governance and organisation with sustainable food practices. The chapter also aims to find answers

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  15 to the further potential of ecovillages for solving unsustainable food problems in Western societies. Robin Smith investigates from an anthropological perspective whether urban gardening inspires a new form of citizenship that generates new forms of collaborative social relations and opens up possibilities of a different belonging. In this way, urban gardening projects make it possible to get to know neighbourhoods, imaginary worlds and common citizenship projects from another point of view.

1.7  Conclusions: food system transformation requires social movements, more localized economies, collaborative networks In this chapter we have sought to make a case for a second Great Transformation in agri-​food given the multiple challenges faced by the existing food system across ecological, human health and ethical fields. We have not explained these challenges here given the rising volume of scientific evidence available in the public domain and which continues to drive home the truth of the statement that ‘business-​as-​usual is no longer an option’ (IAASTD 2009, 3). Yet the question remains how –​and by whom –​this transformation will be undertaken: whether Big Food remains hegemonic in guiding a transition through the technologies of the bio-​economy; or whether we will witness the more rhizomic spread of grassroots initiatives effectively performing this transformation that will birth a food system that works within planetary boundaries to deliver healthy food for all. Here, each of the subsequent chapters will show that social and environmental dimensions are delicately inter-​ twined and that the grassroots initiatives they describe demonstrate the need to re-​politicise food and to call into question existing forms of production and value creation. They also underline that, by embarking upon a new initiative in a certain place, there is a sense that even on a micro-​scale an effort is being made to counter the effects of destructive agriculture on a global scale. But it requires effort: new networks have to be established, opening new urban spaces for food cultivation, upskilling people and ultimately changing eating practices to adapt everyday meals to regional and seasonal production. New alliances of actors emerge –​not only between producers and consumers, but perhaps involving local authorities, the media and the creative sector. The emerging network may indeed sprawl across many different actors, requiring careful management to integrate newcomers and adapt to their interests and needs. The interdependencies resulting from this entanglement and their difficult integration show how ingrained is the industrial mode of production and supply where mind-​sets of consumerism are tied to an imperial way of life that is less easily abandoned. Indeed, it becomes clear how comprehensively the transformation of the food sector must be thought out in order to be effectively realized. While food in the industrial economy is detached from its cultural and material contexts, many products become symbolically re-​encoded in the

16  Colin Sage et al. context of family consumption. Will it be so straightforward, then, to replace the ubiquitous brands and products that have become so deeply ingrained in modern consumption practices, with local foodstuffs? As we noted earlier on in this chapter, and as all the contributions to the book demonstrate, we must learn to broaden our frame of reference and appreciate how experimental food initiatives may trigger developments beyond the immediate field of action. Such movements may not only open up new ways to experiment with sustainable food production but create new economic forms of exchange, new constellations of actors and new spaces of action (Hillenkamp; Kropp and Da Ros; Loconto; Vastenaekels and Pelenc). On an individual level they change food routines and knowledge; but at the collaborative level, they create opportunities oriented towards social justice and sustainability, working not only against the globalised food system but attempting to change the character of food in favour of socially re-​integrating production and consumption processes (Paech, Sperling and Rommel; Antoni-​ Komar and Lenz; Grasseni). This makes visible the heterogeneous phases of production, but also the concrete spaces, translation processes and decisions in the production chains around which the new networks are built. What we find in the cases examined is a willingness to engage with policy structures and institutions (Baier and Müller; Loconto), to envision new forms of organisation and community building (Hillenkamp; Antoni-​Komar and Lenz; Kunze), to explore the role of placemaking as well as of new technologies (Kropp and Da Ros; Loconto) and to bind solidarity into co-​production (Grasseni; Kunze). While attentive to the importance of ‘good food’ as the basis of a healthy diet, many of the initiatives are attuned to questions of social justice and to the emancipatory possibilities that a degree of control can bring to those who are otherwise largely disempowered by the mainstream food system. This is why we believe such a multiplicity of convergent, synchronous developments occurring around the food system deserves to be regarded as a potential Great Transformation. Moreover, that these are being led by a highly heterogeneous collection of grassroots initiatives, which we characterise here as a ‘second generation’ of food social movements, makes this especially novel and worthy of our attention. By considering various international examples, the book shows that, although these are individually geographically confined initiatives, often with only a few hundred participants, in aggregate they represent the tip of an international movement promoting an alternative food future. Collectively, though in different ways, these initiatives represent a shift from a mindless consumerism driven by individualised commodity fetishism, to the search for a cosmopolitan and responsible society of informed citizens. Arguably, then, it is less about the distinctiveness of local qualities –​the clarion call of first-​ generation AFN –​but more about re-​politicising the significance of the local as part of global change and the development of a reflexive world society (Beck 2016). The case studies make it conceivable that alternatives to the existing food order are possible and can be implemented in ways that benefit

Grassroots initiatives in food systems  17 diverse communities around the world, though less by reforming the regime (Geels 2010) than by circumventing it, inventively. Moreover, the existence of these alternative practices serves to remind the food industry of its shortcomings, which is therefore already making limited efforts to improve its own performance through incremental sustainability innovations. If it does nothing else, the global food movement serves as a moral compass to Big Food. But, of course, it is a great deal more than that, which is why this volume provides a rich tapestry of cases revealing how they are experimenting with local solutions for advancing claims for greater food sovereignty and sustainability. In each chapter that follows the authors demonstrate great empathy for the communities and individuals with whom they have conducted research. The cases are not good examples of a detached objective science but rather present engaged insights into the struggles of people working collaboratively to translate their aspirations into an everyday lived practice for a better world. The collective capacity to act is assumed instead of a collective powerlessness vis-​à-​vis established structures and systems. To them we offer the words of Margaret Mead: ‘Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have’.

Note 1   The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—​ Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! William Wordsworth, ‘The World Is Too Much With Us’ (1807)

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Part I

Transformative food movements

2  Women, agroecology and “real food” in Brazil From national movement to local practice1 Isabelle Hillenkamp

2.1  Introduction Over the last two decades, Brazil has become one of the largest agricultural exporters in the world, second only to the USA, and for the period 2015–​ 2024, Brazil is set to become the leading supplier of a number of agricultural commodities, including sugar, orange juice, coffee and soybeans. Between 2000 and 2013, Brazil’s agricultural and food exports jumped from US$ 14.3 billion to US$ 89.5 billion, becoming the main source of foreign exchange (OCDE and FAO 2015). Moreover, the area of farmland under cultivation is also growing:  from 57.5  million hectares in 2015, it is expected to cover 69.3 million hectares by 2024 (ibid.). This profile is the long-​term result of public policies, which since the 1960s have advocated agricultural modernization through specializing in certain products and the application of “technological packages” (comprising mechanization, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, genetically modified seeds, etc.). Since the 1990s, the Brazilian agro-​export sector has also benefited from an intense policy of trade liberalization, a process which was not disturbed by the Workers’ Party governments of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, in power from 2003 to 2016. Since May 2016, the takeover of Michel Temer has allowed the agribusiness lobby to restore Law 6299/​2002 to the agenda, which permits the sale of new agrochemical products and their use in new types of plantation. Far from being an isolated case, Brazil reflects the successive policies of international development, from the Green Revolution through Structural Adjustment to Neo-​ Developmentalism.2 Justified first by the need to increase agricultural productivity to feed a rapidly growing population, and then to increase exports to ensure balance of payments, these policies nevertheless raise substantive issues on a number of different levels. With regard to nutrition, the availability of food has been steadily increasing since the 1970s and the incidence of undernutrition has been declining since the 1990s. However, this problem is not yet resolved due to continuing unequal access to food (Lubello 2013). Moreover, a relative improvement in

24  Isabelle Hillenkamp the quantity of food available has been accompanied by a marked deterioration in quality, most apparent in the dietary replacement of food crops such as cereals, legumes and tubers with processed products containing high levels of sugar and fats (ibid.). Like most so-​called “emerging” countries, Brazil is experiencing a food and epidemiological transition marked by a sharp increase in the number of people who are overweight (54.2% of the population) or obese (20.1%), as well as diabetes (8.5% of the adult population, a figure that has almost doubled since 1980) and other correlated cardiovascular diseases (FAO and OPS 2017). At the socio-​economic level, policies of modernization and subsequent agricultural liberalization have aggravated inequalities in several respects, and the long-​established “dual agrarian structure” has become reinforced (Lubello 2013). This structure comprises a “managerial” agriculture (agribusiness), which is export-​oriented and based on hired labor, and while representing 16% of agricultural holdings, it occupies 76% of total agricultural land; and on the other side, family farming3 corresponds to 84% of agricultural establishments, yet covers just 24% of farmland. It is this latter sector that provides the bulk of the food crops for national consumption, with 83% of cassava and 70% of beans and swine (IGBE 2006). Far from coexisting peacefully, these two sectors clash in sometimes violent conflicts, which results in the further acquisition of farmland to the benefit of managerial agriculture. According to the 2017 Agrarian Census, 0.04% of farms with more than 10,000 hectares occupy almost 15% of total farmland, while 81.3% of establishments with up to 50 hectares hold less than 13% of farmland (IGBE 2018). A second socio-​economic cross-​cutting issue is that of gender inequality. A  long-​ recognized bias is that technical assistance and rural extension programmes have generally targeted male farmers, who are regarded as heads of the production units, including those of family farming. One of the consequences has been the strengthening of the sexual division of labor and knowledge at the family level and the maintenance of strong inequalities between men and women in access to markets and public policies. Such disparities arguably serve to reinforce an agricultural model that has generated profound environmental consequences, due not only to deforestation caused by the expansion of large agro-​export farms, but also to the depletion of soil fertility as well as pollution, which has been observed at a large number of family farms. Within the family farming sector, “agroecology” (agroecologia) has gradually emerged as a new political agenda, questioning the dominant relations of production and consumption and claiming, in the voice of its supporters, the importance of “real food”, free of “poison”, of the kind that “ensures identity and culture” and not limited to simply “filling the stomachs”. Rural women have affirmed their place in this agenda, because of the role they have retained in the production and preparation of food, but also and perhaps above all thanks to their political organization. A  so-​called “feminist agroecology” movement has been unfolding in several regions and at the

Women, agroecology and “real food”  25 national level, claiming the value of rural women’s work and knowledge, and seeking to negotiate gender roles, including within family farming and the agroecological movement (Siliprandi 2009; Jalil 2013; Nobre 2015). This chapter looks at the process by which “feminist agroecology” emerged as a political agenda in Brazil, opposing its own vision of the social relations of food production and consumption to the established agricultural order and claiming its share in public policies. I argue that this process relies inseparably on socio-​economic practices with a collective dimension and on a political process, but that these two dimensions have different logics and that therefore there are gaps between them. This contribution is based on qualitative research, carried out in partnership with the Brazilian feminist non-​governmental organization (NGO) Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), which supports a network of agroecological women farmers in the Vale do Ribeira region in southeastern Brazil.4 It focuses on the municipality of Barra do Turvo, where seven groups of this network (each comprising between 6 and 15 women) are established, and which is known for the presence of the Association of Agroforestry Farmers of Barra do Turvo and Adrianópolis (Associação dos Agricultores Agroflorestais de Barra do Turvo e Adrianópolis, Cooperafloresta). In addition to the collection of documentary evidence, the empirical material of this research includes observations of women farmers and their activities organized by the NGO; individual interviews; research workshops (in the form of focus groups); as well as interviews and observations drawn from engagement with the national feminist and agroecological movements. The first part of the chapter traces the constitution of feminist agroecology as a political subject in Brazil; the second part analyses the practices of the agroecological women farmers in Barra do Turvo.

2.2  Feminist agroecology as a political subject How, and in what way, has feminist agroecology emerged as a political subject in Brazil, projecting its own vision of the contribution of rural women to agricultural work and to ecologically and socially sustainable food production and consumption? A historical analysis is needed in order to better understand the contribution of new social practices as well as the conflicts that have arisen in their development. 2.2.1  Social rights and land reform, from the military coup to re-​democratization In 1964, a military coup put an end to the democratic experience inaugurated in Brazil in the 1950s and created a dictatorial regime that would last until 1985. In the countryside, the new regime stifled demands for land reform that had emerged within the Peasant Leagues. Given the new balance of power, the process of agricultural development was decided in favour of a modernization

26  Isabelle Hillenkamp approach without land reform, focusing on the application of capital-​intensive techniques in large estates. During the next two decades, agricultural modernization policies would be relentlessly pursued, leaving in their wake the “small producers”, considered as backward (Grisa and Schneider 2014). Moreover, the so-​called “popular and democratic” forces would focus on the demand for social and trade union rights, through the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG, created in 1963). Although at first accommodating towards the government, the trade union movement adopted an increasingly oppositional stance in the second half of the 1970s. A “new syndicalism” emerged, seeking to emancipate itself from the supervision of the government. On the outskirts of São Paulo, unions organized giant strikes in 1978 and 1979, from which the Workers’ Party and the Unique Workers’ Central (CUT) were born. In rural areas, CONTAG began to assert a new position, putting land reform back on the agenda at its 1979 Congress. The Catholic Church, which had been progressive in Brazil during these years, also took a stand against the dictatorship and, in 1975, established the Pastoral Commission of the Earth, an important organization that defended the “small producers” and denounced the damage caused by the policies of modernization (Petersen and Almeida 2004, quoted in Luzzi 2007). Driven by the prospect of a return to democracy, the 1980s saw the rise of the union movement and the emergence of new political subjects and organizations:  a key period, described by Brazilian sociologist Eder Sader (1989) as the moment when “new characters entered the stage”. Rural women, hitherto excluded from the unions that had been reserved for men, began to claim the status of rural workers, entitling them to social benefits (for retirement, maternity and access to health care). Relying in particular on the nascent feminist movement in Latin America, impelled by the first World Women’s Conference in Mexico in 1975, these women organized themselves locally into autonomous movements (the Women Farmers’ Movement of the State of Santa Catarina, in 1984; the Rural Women Workers’ Movement of the State of Pernambuco, in 1986; and the Rural Women Workers’ Movement of the North-​Eastern Region, in 1987; Siliprandi 2009; Jalil 2013). In addition to the unions, other rural women’s movements were born at this time, such as the Articulation of Cassava Coconut Women Breakers, which challenged the privatization of palm groves; and the Organization of Quilombola Women, descendants of black slaves, who participated in the struggle of the black rural people for the right to land. Major mixed rural movements (men and women) were also born, such as the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST, created in 1984), which focused on land reform, and initially refused any debate on gender, which it considered a threat to the primary objective of class struggle (Siliprandi 2009). In 1985, rural women workers finally achieved the right to unionization and, in 1988, the Constitution recognized the right to social protection for rural workers.

Women, agroecology and “real food”  27 Focused on social rights or land reform, rural movements did not participate in the first Brazilian Meetings of Alternative Agriculture organized in 1981 and 1983 by the Federation of Associations of Agricultural Engineers of Brazil (FAEAB) and the Federation of Students in Agronomy of Brazil (FEAB). These meetings, which were largely of a technical nature, started from the criticism of the environmental damage caused by the dominant agricultural model and proposed a set of “alternative” practices (Luzzi 2007). At the same time, a large Brazilian NGO known for its actions in favour of popular education, the Federation of Organs for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), initiated an “Alternative Technologies” project (PTA), which in 1989 gave rise to an independent network of NGOs (PTA network). In the same year, the Latin American Consortium for Agroecology and Development (CLADES) was created, adopting the concept of agroecology proposed by Miguel Altieri, a professor of Chilean origin working at the University of Berkeley, as a “scientific basis for alternative agriculture” (Altieri [1987] 1995). 2.2.2  Family farming and gender in the neoliberal agenda By the end of the 1980s, the proliferation of new ideas, new subjects and the rights acquired in the context of re-​democratization gradually become submerged by the crisis of external public debt and hyperinflation. During the 1990s, rural organizations and movements continued to pursue their demands, but within a new framework of public policies, based on neoliberal precepts, in particular trade liberalization, which was badly affecting family farmers (Grisa and Schneider 2014). At the same time, the deterioration in living standards of the urban working classes led to the creation of organizations campaigning for improved food security, such as the “National Campaign Against Hunger” and the National Council for Food Security (CONSEA), which were both created in 1993. This same year also witnessed the foundation of the international movement, La Via Campesina, which reinforced the agenda of land reform and food sovereignty and linked these to the matter of women’s organization (Siliprandi 2009). In 1994, rural trade unions, including the rural women workers’ movements (Jalil 2013), organized the first “Cries of the Earth Brazil” (Gritos da Terra Brasil), a unifying event during which various demands were presented to the government. In this context, rural women requested access to specific forms of credit and technical assistance (Siliprandi 2009). In 1995, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government recognized “family farming” as a category of public policy by creating the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF). However, while ratifying the family production unit, the programme prioritized the upper segment of this category and, through its flagship measure of rural credit, effectively consolidated farms “in transition” (towards the model of industrial agriculture) by incorporating them into agricultural commodity markets. Unsurprisingly, the main beneficiaries were

28  Isabelle Hillenkamp farmers in the richest regions of the country (south and south-​east) engaged in export crops such as corn and soybeans5 (Grisa and Schneider 2014). Despite these limitations, PRONAF marked a decisive step forward in the political recognition of those who until then were only “small producers”. Such progress was the result of rural mobilization, of rising awareness of the importance of this type of agriculture in rural studies at national and international level, but also of the recognition by President Cardoso’s government of the need to maintain social order faced, in particular, by an intensification of conflicts with the Landless Workers’ Movement, MST (Grisa and Schneider 2014). During this period, the government also intensified its policy of land reform (92,900 families settled in 1997; ibid.), while women asserted their place in the MST, creating the National Women’s Collective in 1996 (Siliprandi 2009). The political agenda drawn by the movement of rural women workers, alliances with mixed-​gender organizations and the increasing pressure from international donors to include gender in development projects led to a shift in the debate on family farming in subsequent years. Between 1996 and 1998, the SOF coordinated a national seminar entitled “Gender and Family Farming” and acted as a consultant to the PTA network in the south-​east region, resulting in the creation of a “gender working group” within this network. In these spaces, the assumption of “common interest” in the family production unit as voiced by the father or husband has been called into question; inequalities of power within the family and peasant organizations, the sexual division of labor and knowledge and the proposals of women farmers were discussed (Nobre 2015). On this basis, a political alliance emerged between NGOs, women farmers and activists of the rural women’s movement, which would come to play a key role in the creation of the National Alliance of Agroecology (ANA) in 2002. During this period, rural women workers joined together, meaning that, for the first time, a rally of 20,000 women from different parts of the country, labelled Marcha das Margaridas,6 took place in Brasilia in 2000. Coordinated by CONTAG, this rally represented a space for rural women to present specific proposals for public policies, quite different from the mixed meetings of the Gritos da Terra (Jalil 2013). In 2000, they established the mandatory practice that the title deeds of land reform settlements should be in the names of the couple and not just the “head of the family” –​a clause that had been recognized in the 1988 Constitution but which was hardly ever used in practice. Finally, at the end of the 1990s, several initiatives and networks were established to bring together the different segments of agroecology. The creation of the ANA in 2002, at the first National Meeting of Agroecology (ENA), marked a broad alliance between rural movements, including those of women, NGOs, technicians of public institutions, researchers and consumers (Siliprandi 2009). Far from the technical approach of the 1980s, agroecology was now conceived, particularly by rural movements, as a “counter-​hegemonic project to the dominant system”, placing social justice at

Women, agroecology and “real food”  29 the heart of the debate (Luzzi 2007). Considering that the dominant system is not only “capitalist” but also “patriarchal”, women activists organized as a cross-​cutting working group within the ANA, aimed at questioning all forms of gender inequalities, including within the Articulation (where it was hardly acknowledged) as well as in all its thematic working commissions. At that time too, the issues of food sovereignty and agroecology emerged in some feminist movements, notably the World March of Women (Masson and Conway 2017), whose International Secretary was hosted at the SOF during the period 2006–​2013. 2.2.3  A new era of public policy within the persistent dual agricultural model In 2003, the arrival to power of President Lula opened a window of political opportunity for all the social movements that participated in his political rise. Without abandoning their forms of mobilization (Gritos da Terra, Marcha das Margaridas, ENA, etc.), the rural movements and their allies (NGOs, technicians, academics) accessed new spaces of interlocution with the state for the co-​construction of public policies. However, the general policy framework remained that of the dual agricultural model, in which, in the name of governability, advances for family farmers and agroecology continued to be limited by the interests of big farmers and landowners (Sabourin 2014). Nevertheless, as a first step, several policies in favour of family farming were established. In 2003, the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) gave public administrations procurement powers so as to purchase products from the family farming sector to supply to social services and public institutions. Combined with the reactivation of CONSEA, the PAA marked the resumption of the progressive ideas of the early 1990s, which “claimed family farming as a means of promoting more equitable access to food and a more equitable agri-​food system” (Grisa and Schneider 2014, 138). This program mobilized significant amounts of federal funding (R$ 839 million or around US$ 220  million at its peak in 2012), helping to stabilize the incomes of family farmers and positively transforming society’s view of the quality of food produced by this sector (ibid.). In spite of certain limits, posed in particular by phyto-​sanitary standards shaped by large companies, associations and networks of women farmers benefited from this programme, generating income and enhancing the diversity of regional production (SOF 2016). In order to overcome the historical bias of technical assistance in favour of large farms, in 2003 a new technical assistance policy (ATER) was put in place recognizing the principles of combating rural poverty and reducing inequalities, including gender inequality. However, in 2006, according to data from the Agrarian Census, the policy benefited 22% of male-​headed family farming units and only 11% of female-​headed units (Nobre 2012). This indicated that the new ATER policy failed to break with the primary objective of agricultural modernization, aiming at the “consolidation” of the upper segment of

30  Isabelle Hillenkamp family farming in agricultural markets and indeed maintained the view that demands by rural women’s movements for technical assistance to support production for self-​consumption (including productive gardens) should be regarded as evidence of “backwardness” (ibid.). By 2010, rural women’s movements had secured the establishment of the Directorate for Rural Women’s Policies at the Ministry of Agricultural Development with its own team and budget.7 This was essential in enabling women to participate in shaping ATER and supporting a greater focus on agroecological methods. Through regional and national meetings organized under the auspices of ANA, public policy proposals for agroecology were developed, including the setting of quotas to ensure women are beneficiaries and technical officers in ATER policy. Despite strong opposition from NGOs promoting agroecology, such measures were eventually adopted, with the support of the Marcha das Margaridas. Finally, in 2012, President Dilma Rousseff approved the National Agroecology and Organic Production Plan (PLANAPO) with a gender directive and the promotion of “productive gardens” (quintais produtivos). While these new policies represented undeniable progress for rural women, they have remained limited and even “bureaucratic” in the eyes of some activists, who regarded them as “experimental” policies rather than universal ones. Overall, between 2004 and 2013, the ATER benefited 56,400 women, with a budget of R$ 32.3  million (about US$ 10  million). Aspects of implementation were regarded as inadequate both for the NGOs (forced to fulfil criteria more applicable to private companies), and for the women farmers (who faced considerable obstacles to acquire documents of aptitude for family farming policies). The relationship of some rural movements or NGOs with the government, including activists who held public management positions in the Direção de Políticas para Mulheres Rurais (Rural Women’s Policies Department: DPMR), was sometimes tense, requiring a subtle game of “pressure and solidarity”, as one activist put it. The alliance with rural movements maintaining an autonomous position and a strong social mobilization capacity, like the Marcha das Margaridas and the MST, has been important in maintaining this pressure. Nevertheless, central demands, such as land reform, have remained stalled (Sanchez and Turatti 2012), and policies have generally not been instituted so as to ensure their permanence in case of a change of government. With the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the takeover of Michel Temer in May 2016, seven ministries, including the Ministry of Agrarian Development, disappeared, and although some policies and the main spaces of “participation” of civil society have been formally maintained, they have in fact changed in nature. Many rural movements and NGOs stopped frequenting these spaces, and those that still do so argue that they are not heard by the current government. In the case of ATER, the policy is now being executed by public or private companies and no longer by NGOs. In the case of PAA, according to the data of the Ministry of Social Development, the allocated

Women, agroecology and “real food”  31 resources, which had already been decreasing from 2012 onwards, fell by 66% between 2016 and 2017 (from R$ 439 million to R$ 150 million). Faced with this adverse scenario, rural movements and NGOs of the ANA positioned themselves as part of the opposition to the government led by Michel Temer, denouncing his illegitimacy since the parliamentary coup which he, in their eyes, perpetrated against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. Overall, the long-​standing struggle of rural women, NGO staff, public managers, technicians and other supporters for recognition for family farming and agroecological approaches has contributed to the consolidation of a political subject opposed to “agribusiness” and “conservative modernization”, on the one hand, and to gender-​blind family agriculture and agroecology on the other. Over the last four decades, this subject has gone through a request for recognition of rural women workers as people who have rights in society; it has questioned gender relations in family farming, denouncing inequalities and intra-​family violence; it has called for differentiated productive and credit policies; it has endorsed the agenda of food security and sovereignty; and it has affirmed its commitment to agroecology as a political project, involving the constant search for socially and ecologically more sustainable production techniques and relationships, best captured by the ANA Women’s Group motto, “Without feminism, there is no agroecology” (“Sem feminismo, não há agroecologia”). To reconstitute the long trajectory of this subject makes it possible to grasp the evolution of the commitments, requests and subjectivities depending on the ideological and material conditions of each period. This approach also highlights the interactions with other actors in this field and the tensions and conflicts that exist, including within rural movements, NGOs, communities and families. These conflicts are constituent of feminist agroecology in Brazil. I hypothesize that the harshness of these conflicts explains the radical position of the activists, who describe themselves as “anti-​patriarchal and anti-​capitalist”:  such a position is indispensable for their survival as political subjects in such a field of conflicts. However, this does not mean that the socio-​economic practices of rural women involved in agroecology are equally radical. To grasp the different conditions that exist in the political and socio-​ economic spheres is necessary to clarify the reasons for this difference and to avoid hastily finding a deficit of practices.

2.3  Feminist agroecology in practice in Barra do Turvo 2.3.1  The constituent conflicts of Vale do Ribeira and the place of feminist agroecology Straddling the states of São Paulo and Paraná in south-​eastern Brazil, Vale do Ribeira is a mountainous region, home to the largest continuous area of Atlantic Forest in the country (1.7 million hectares). At the same time, it is crossed by a highway (BR 116) which connects it to the metropolises of São

32  Isabelle Hillenkamp Paulo and Curitiba. Inhabited by the Guarani Indians before colonization, the area was later populated by Portuguese settlers and their black slave laborers, before being the target, in the second half of the twentieth century, of major development projects (roads, dams, mining and monoculture) and of the creation of natural parks. In the 1980s and 1990s, the region received inflows of workers from poorer parts of the country, including the peripheries of the big cities, affected by the economic crisis, who joined the ranks of the “family farmers” and even of the “invaders”, stigmatized for living in natural protection areas or in latifundios.8 Depending on the economic situation, Vale do Ribeira receives or expels inhabitants. This expulsion of inhabitants concerns women in particular, who are affected by the lack of female paid work opportunities in the region. In total, Vale do Ribeira is home to 24 Guarani communities and 66 quilombola9 communities, 7,037 family farms, along with large farms (fazendas) and latifundios (IGBE 2006; CTI 2015; ISA 2016;). This history of the region has the effect of placing land and environmental conflicts and struggles for the recognition of so-​called traditional communities (quilombola and indigenous communities), entitling collective access to the land, at the forefront of the political scene, pushing other issues into the background. Gender inequalities, visible in the sexual division of labor,10 but also in domestic violence, sexual assault and prostitution along the BR 116 highway, are one of these issues. The municipality of Barra do Turvo, where this research focused, illustrates this issue. With just under 8,000 inhabitants, of which a majority are men,11 more than two-​thirds of Barra do Turvo’s surface area is made up of environmental conservation areas. It includes several quilombola communities, old or new “family farming” neighbourhoods, some of which are trying to be recognized as quilombos, as well as various fazendas and latifundios. These categories are distinguished from each other by their modes of cultivation and land occupation, creating clear differences in the landscape. For example, in the case of the quilombos, which have large areas of land crops integrated within the Atlantic Forest; while the family farming neighborhoods are characterized by small intensive farming of vegetable gardens and orchards given their limited access to land; and these are, in turn, quite different from the extensive farming or monoculture in the fazendas. All poor communities, whether family farming or quilombos, face the restrictions on settlement and use of natural resources imposed by the Mosaic of Conservation Units of Jacupiranga (in the following, “the Park”),12 dominated overall by a notion of preserving nature in a way that excludes any human presence. Despite a relaxation of the rules, following a long mobilization that led to its reorganization in 2008 (Bim 2012), residents still feel the controls of the Park to be a form of violence which prevents them from living “decently from their work” and blind to the work they carry out of maintaining the ecosystems. Local accounts report frequent and brutal controls in the 1990s and into 2008, through environmental police incursions into homes at night, seizures of work tools and imprisonment. Controls

Women, agroecology and “real food”  33 continue to this day, especially against farmers in protected areas who remain under threat of eviction. The fazendas, which expand their properties through the land market and through violence (firings and evictions, assassinations), represent another threat to family farming neighborhoods, which, unlike the quilombolas communities, do not have a demarcated territory. Finally, the family farming districts established on the lands of latifundios are exposed to dislocation. The creation of the Cooperafloresta in 1996 as a farmers’ association defending a so-​called “agroforestry” model, based on diversified cultures within the Atlantic Forest ecosystem, has changed the balance of power in the municipality. Initiated by an agronomist of the State Technical Assistance Organization of São Paulo (Coordenadoria de Assistência Técnica Integral, CATI), then supported by the local union of family farmers (Sintravale) and by some donors, including the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, the association has marked a local alliance between quilombola inhabitants and family farmers. According to several local accounts, quilombola women, who already practised a form of agriculture close to agroforestry, played a pioneering role in the creation of the association before giving way to men in positions of responsibility. In November 2017, 77 families in Barra do Turvo were members of the association, a decreasing number, partly due to the budget cuts in the PAA. The Cooperafloresta owns a factory where fruits, vegetables, grains, various banana derivatives and fruit pastes are processed and packaged before being sold as certified organic products, mainly at the agroecological fair in Curitiba and on the Internet. Locally, the Cooperafloresta has forged an awareness of the pride of being agroforestry farmers and of having a “decent job”. It has legitimized the presence of farmers on certain categories of land subject to non-​exclusive environmental preservation criteria (especially the Sustainable Development Reserves in the quilombos). It has created income and crop diversification, adding fruits and vegetables to a local diet previously based closely on rice and beans (Fonini and de Souza Lima 2013). However, being market-​oriented, the Cooperafloresta has not valued the great diversity of women’s cultures, often produced in small quantities, and has, according to critical voices, including men’s, neglected an in-​depth reflection on the mode of production in favour of commercial benefits and local power. Women are in the minority at all levels –​ among the members and the executive board of the association, within the administrative team and among the workers of the factory. Gender “is not an issue” in the Cooperafloresta, as summarized by one of our interlocutors, a female member of the association. The SOF arrived in Barra do Turvo in 2015, as an NGO executing the federal ATER policy for women, which it had itself helped to create within the ANA Women’s Group. Its initial team comprised five women, including four agronomists and an environmental management specialist, all activists in the feminist and agroecological movement. Technical assistance provided by the SOF was aimed as much at the women of the quilombola communities as of

34  Isabelle Hillenkamp the family farming neighborhoods. Its mode of execution of public policy was based on organizing women so as to enhance a diversified agroecological production, improving food through self-​consumption and creating monetary incomes through the sale of agricultural products. The goal of the SOF was to strengthen the economic and personal autonomy of women and to make them political subjects of feminist agroecology, taking part in the movement at local and national level. Thus, the SOF added a feminist dimension to the subject of agroecology that had been introduced in Barra do Turvo by the Cooperafloresta two decades earlier. It considered itself as a promoter of this political project, which did not exist in Barra do Turvo. At first, the fact that gender was perceived as a marginal issue in relation to the conflicts over the agricultural model, land tenure and the use of natural resources, greatly facilitated the local acceptance of the SOF (Hillenkamp and Nobre 2018). 2.3.2  Agroecological practices of women farmers in Barra do Turvo The process of organizing women farmers promoted by the SOF has relied on various types of pre-​existing relationships in the seven neighbourhoods of Barra do Turvo where the project has been implemented. In two quilombola communities with significant agroforestry production, women’s groups were formed on the basis of kinship relations and working groups of the Cooperafloresta. In one family farming neighbourhood with little production, a women’s group was born out of the community nursery –​a place where inhabitants (men and women) grow native plants for sale as part of the reforestation policy. In another neighbourhood, established on lands claimed by a latifundio owner and partly on environmental protection areas, a group of women was already well organized in the Children Pastoral Commission, an ecumenical, social organ promoted by the Catholic Church for monitoring the weight and vaccinations of children and pregnant women and improving nutrition. In the next place, with a similar profile, a women’s group was formed from an informal mixed local network mobilized against the Park. Finally, in two family farming neighbourhoods with little or no land, women used to meet to do handcrafts together. These meetings were promoted by a woman who lives in a privately owned agroforestry promotion centre with good availability of land. The group at neighbourhood level is the basic unit of the SOF’s model of self-​organization for women farmers. It is part of a more general feminist mode of action, which is based on the construction of female spaces where women can express their “concrete experiences and learnings ... on issues that daily limit autonomy over [their] time, work and production, or on [their] body, sexuality and other decisions about [their] life”, and where these experiences lived in isolation can turn into political issues (Marques et  al. 2018, 14; personal translation from Portuguese). The recognition of women’s role in food production is one of these issues. The groups are further seen as spaces where women mutually reinforce each other and become able

Women, agroecology and “real food”  35 to cope with the oppositions, whether deaf or violent, that their demand for recognition will cause –​on behalf of local leaders, husbands or other family members. SOF technicians intervene in the groups by linking technical assistance and political training, according to a method of “interconnection” between different issues. For example, the introduction of new crops is associated with a debate about the agroindustry-​induced diet, its effects on human health and the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Inspired by popular education, “technical assistance” is implemented here based on the collective construction of demands and proposals according to the women’s specific material conditions, political visions and personal and collective aspirations in each neighbourhood. These demands and proposals have referred to aspects as diverse as knowing how to cultivate different plants, to make natural fertilizers to maintain soil fertility, to treat wastewater, to increase sales, to gain access to land, to process food to avoid losses, to learn how to use the balance to weigh products for sale, to use the Internet to get in touch with customers, to issue tax notes, to convince men to help with certain tasks, to organize working with young children, to enable other women controlled by their husbands to participate, etc. The SOF responded to these emerging demands in an ad hoc manner. For this, the team has assumed different roles, going well beyond that of agronomists, and established alliances with local institutions (social services, officials of the municipality of Barra do Turvo, the rural workers’ union, the Cooperafloresta), leaders (including women quilombolas) and other organized movements (alternative technologies of communication and information, for example). As a result of these interconnections, and the concrete responses that have been made, the women farmers’ discourse has become considerably politicized. For example, at a national seminar on solidarity economy and feminism, the women farmers themselves have led workshops on autonomy, marketing, agroecology and the political context of Vale do Ribeira, in which they put their own experience into perspective in front of an audience of women farmers and feminist activists from other parts of the country. Two specific instruments have been used in the groups to encourage and promote a diversified agroecological production. The first one is an “Agroecological Notebook”, proposed by the ANA Women’s Group, consisting of a calendar for recording all agricultural production during one year according to its type of destination: self-​consumed (by the family), donated (usually to family members living in town), bartered (mostly in the neighbourhood) and sold. The agroecological notebooks have made visible the diversity of women’s cultures by valuing non-​monetary production, which is globally very underestimated, including by women themselves. The second instrument consists in a direct-​selling network between the women farmers and so-​called “responsible” consumption groups, mostly located in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo, which was set up in October 2017. These consumption groups, present in different regions of Brazil, are part of the

36  Isabelle Hillenkamp movement which from the 2000s onwards reaffirmed the principle that food security must be built on the basis of the union between the working class of the countryside and of the city, and aims at “transforming the act of consuming into a political and citizen act” (Calabró 2016, 6). Food here becomes the material basis for challenging the extremely uneven rural/​urban and class relationships. In Barra do Turvo, this network arose from the demand of two groups of quilombola women, with significant agricultural production, to create new marketing channels in the context of the decline of PAA and other public markets. Gradually, the network was joined by five of the six other women farmers’ groups in the municipality accompanied by the SOF. Based on a large amount of organizational work by the groups (women farmers and consumers), by the SOF team and by some volunteers, and thanks to a truck made available by the municipality, this network is selling some 200 different types of products every month, whether in-​ kind or processed, most of which are usually consumed only in the countryside. Between October 2017 and March 2018, the average monthly sales figure was R$ 182 per women farmer (corresponding to about half of the municipality’s average per capita income13). Beyond the neighbourhood level, the SOF promoted the formation of a network comprising all-​women groups participating in the ATER policy (initially 220 women in 12 municipalities, including 70 in Barra do Turvo). This network typically meets for workshops involving debates or training on politico-​economic issues (“Solidarity and Feminist Economy”, “Alternatives and the Organization of Women”, “The Territory: Threats and Challenges”, etc.) and organizes fairs where agroecological products are sold. Finally, the NGO promotes the participation of women farmers in the feminist movement (in particular through the World March of Women) and the agroecological movement (at local and national meetings). This has helped to expand the base of these movements through a process that relies on multiple upward and downward linkages between the local and the national level, and in which the public resources managed by the SOF played an important role. The introduction of the principles of feminist agroecology initiated by the SOF in the framework of the ATER policy, and continued since then through other projects, financed in particular by international development cooperation, has led to women, whether from quilombola communities or family farming neighbourhoods, being recognized as “agroecological farmers”, producers of “real food” and initiated some renegotiations of gender relations. These women express that they “woke up” or that they “broke through a wall”, “thanks to these women technicians who are different” because they are able to hear their demands and understand them. It is common for women farmers to present themselves as being “from the SOF” or that they wear the World March of Women’s T-​shirt. Women, as well as some men, today call themselves “feminists” in Barra do Turvo, whereas this term is usually perceived negatively among the working classes in general and in the countryside in

Women, agroecology and “real food”  37 particular. The Agroecological Notebooks revealed the extent of women’s agricultural work, causing surprises by showing that the monetary equivalent of the production consumed by the family is sometimes of the same order or even higher than male incomes, and enhancing self-​produced food. Selling to responsible consumption groups has been an unprecedented fact for many women, in particular in family farming neighbourhoods which had hardly ever sold anything outside, which has contributed greatly to enhancing the value of their work and the cultural value of their food production in their own eyes and in those of their husbands and neighbours. Beyond food production, women’s groups have assumed new responsibilities for local problems at community level (such as sanitation or land conflicts), have established new relationships with the authorities and have often faced increased opposition. At family level, most women have negotiated the right to be away from home, to attend workshops and meetings of the feminist or agroecological movement, from which they come back “happy” and “motivated” for having met new people and acquired new technical, and above all, political knowledge. Feminist agroecology as a political subject has undeniably emerged in practice in Barra do Turvo from the work of the SOF, giving new value to women’s work and to the production and consumption of food with nutritional and cultural value. The SOF has introduced a new subjectivity around the recognition of women as farmers and as workers, creators of market and non-​market value, and holders of rights. However, this subjectivity does not cancel other existing logics of action and justification, all the more so in the current political and economic context, where living conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Thus, agroecological practices are sometimes “sullied” by the use of pesticides or herbicides, which have the advantage of reducing the amount of work in the short term. The union between women for common goals, like their recognition as farmers, does not exclude, at other times, the expression of differences and the existence of unequal power relations, for example between those who own land and significant agricultural production and the others. Some women have felt that the entry of new farmers’ groups into the direct-​selling network has become internal competition, and one of them has set a precedent by leaving the network to dedicate herself to selling her products individually. Some families, especially young couples, prefer to work as day laborers on conventional farms to earn an income that gives them access to consumption goods, rather than “investing” in agroecology. The promotion of a healthy and diversified diet based on self-​consumption does not prevent women and men from occasionally purchasing industrially produced food that is a marker of social status. The women farmers ask for further assistance from the SOF because they say their own workload is already heavy or because they feel limited by their lack of formal education, at a time when the SOF, while being aware of this demand, is trying to avoid settling into a mentoring role and to make its own function evolve from technico-​political assistance towards establishing “a new political alliance for the right to ‘good food’ ”.

38  Isabelle Hillenkamp

2.4  Conclusion The case of feminist agroecology in Brazil illustrates the new form that food politics takes in the national political movement and in local experiences. This new form is characterized by expanding the issue of the quantity and distribution of food into a debate which articulates the quality, diversity and cultural significance of food regarding agricultural, land-​based and ecological issues and gender relations. The production and preparation of diversified and quality food are the starting point from which production techniques, social relations and the relationship with nature are called into question. The challenge of the dominant mode of production and the recognition of women’s work and knowledge in agriculture, food, caring for others and nature has developed through multiple forms of connection between mobilizations at local and national level. Since the time of the military dictatorship, these mobilizations and connections have been part of the modes of politicization, organization of civil society and relations to the state specific to each period. Starting from the recognition of women’s work and their social rights during the re-​democratization of the 1980s, the demands gradually widened in the 1990s and 2000s to take into account a social, and then environmental, criticism of the dominant mode of production, placing the food issue in a vast questioning of the system of the domination of nature and the relations of gender, class, race and ethnicity. Between 2003 and 2016 during the Workers’ Party government, rural social movements benefited from new public policies for family farming and agroecology in which the place of women was gradually recognized. The implementation of these policies was delegated to NGOs belonging to the National Alliance of Agroecology, which had campaigned for and then participated in the construction of these policies. This mechanism has enabled a new deployment of agroecology in a number of territories, as in the case of Barra do Turvo and the other municipalities of Vale do Ribeira where the SOF intervened. Based on the vision of agriculture, ecology and food built in the national feminist agroecology movement, the SOF aimed to value and transform the work of women farmers at the local level in the sense of agroecological production and a diversified and quality food supply, intended primarily for local and self-​consumption and then for sale. Through multiple interactions between SOF staff and women farmers, during site visits, trainings and meetings connecting technical and political issues, agriculture and food practices have been politicized and given a new meaning. This process has relied on local forms of women’s organizations that have been strengthened and transformed during the process, becoming spaces from which social transformation is negotiated and where women may resist the opposition that this transformation engenders. At the local level, the new form taken

Women, agroecology and “real food”  39 by food politics is characterized by its focus on day-​to-​day life, with women questioning power relations and the mode of production from their role in the production and preparation of food. However, the practices of women farmers are not a copy of the model of feminist agroecology discussed in meetings at national or even local level. There is a difference in nature between political and economic logics. Economic logic is more complex and sometimes ambivalent, because it is constantly subject to a requirement for efficiency, including in the short term, and because it reflects the multiple subjectivities that exist in society, including a market subjectivity that does not automatically disappear in contact with the feminist agroecological movement. Political logic, on the other hand, reflects here a radical anti-​capitalist and anti-​patriarchal ideology, born of the conflicts between feminist activists and the agribusiness lobby, on the one hand, and agroecological activists hostile to gender approach, on the other hand. Political logic, reaffirmed at training sessions and meetings at different levels, plays a vital role in inspiring and giving a meaning to economic practices. In turn, economic practices are the basis on which the political movement is built and legitimized. The possibility of a new kind of food politics, which embraces the questions of the mode of production, ecology and gender and other social relations, rests on this complex connection.

Notes 1 This text is based on countless exchanges with Miriam Nobre, Sheyla Saori and Gláucia Marques from the Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), whom I  thank warmly. The arguments presented here are, of course, my own responsibility. I  also thank Sébastien Carcelle for his comments on a first version of this text. 2 This term has been used in Latin America to designate a model of government attempting to restore the state’s leading role in economic development. 3 Where the size of the property, the income earned, its share in relation to other incomes and the use of non-​family labor do not exceed certain limits (depending on the administrative region), defined in Law No. 11.326 /​ 2006. 4 As part of the project ‘Feminist analysis of social and solidarity economy practices: views from Latin America and India’ (2016–​2017), funded by the Swiss National Network for International Studies. 5 Since 2001, these crops have accounted for more than 50% of the resources of PRONAF. 6 In memory of the union leader Margarida Alves, murdered in 1983. 7 Between 2003 and 2013, it executed a budget of about R$ 300  million (US$ 93 million; Hora and Butto 2014, 28). 8 Very large estates with very low agricultural productivity. 9 In Brazil, the term quilombola refers to people and communities recognized as descendants of black slaves. The recognition by the state implies different stages, not completed by all the quilombola communities of Vale do Ribeira referred to herein.

40  Isabelle Hillenkamp 10 On average in Brazil, the total number of hours of paid and unpaid work is 47.7 hours per week for men and 55.3 hours for women (IPEA 2011, 33). 11 52.4  % according to the Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil for 2010, [online] http://​atlasbrasil.org.br/​2013/​pt/​perfil_​m/​barra-​do-​turvo_​sp. 12 The Mosaic of Conservation Units of Jacupiranga (Mosaico of Unidades Conservação do Jacupiranga), consisting of a set of integral protection units and units of sustainable use of resources, resulted from the reorganization, in 2008, of the Jacupiranga State Park (Parque Estadual do Jacupiranga). The latter had been created in 1969. 13 R$ 390 according to the Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil for 2010 (op. cit.).

References Altieri, M. (1987) 1995. Agroecology: The science of sustainable agriculture. Boulder:  Westview Press. Bim, O. 2012. Mosáico do Jacupiranga  –​Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo:  Conservação, conflitos e soluções socioambientais. São Paulo: University of São Paulo. Calabró, G. 2016. Criando um grupo de consumo responsável: Um passo a passo para começar e estabelecer um GCR. Piracicaba: Instituto Terra Mater. CTI (Centro de Trabalho Indigenista). 2015. Atlas das Terras Guarani no sul e sudeste do Brasil 2015. São Paulo: Centro de Trabalho Indigenista. FAO (Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura), and OPS (Organización Panamericana de la Salud). 2017. América Latina y el Caribe 2016:  Panorama de la Seguridad alimentar y nutricional; Sistemas alimentarios sostenibles para poner fin al hambre y la malnutrición. Santiago de Chile:  FAO and OPS. Fonini, R., and J. E. de Souza Lima. 2013. Agrofloresta e alimentação: O alimento como mediador da relação sociedade-​ambiente. In Agrofloresta, ecologia e sociedade, ed. W. Steenbock, L. da Costa e Silva, R. Ozelame da Silva, A. S. Rodrigues, J. Perez-​ Cassarino, and R. Fonini, 197–​231. Curitiba: Kairós. Grisa, C., and S. Schneider. 2014. Três gerações de políticas públicas para a agricultura familiar e formas de interação entre sociedade e Estado no Brasil. Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural 52, no. 1: 125–​46. Hillenkamp, I., and M. Nobre. 2018. Agroecologia e feminismo no Vale do Ribeira:  Contribuição para o debate sobre reprodução social. Revista Temática 52: 167–​94. Hora, K., and A. Butto. 2014. Políticas públicas para mulheres rurais no contexto dos Territórios da Cidadania. In Mulheres rurais e autonomia: Formação e articulação para efetivar políticas públicas nos territórios da cidadania, ed. A. Butto, C. Dantas, K. Hora, M. Nobre, and N. Faria, 14–​45. Brasilia: Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário. IGBE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadística). 2006. Censo Agropecuário 2006: Agricultura familiar; Resultados por municípios. Brasilia: IGBE. IGBE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadística). 2018. Censo Agropecuário 2017:  Resultados preliminares. Brasilia: IGBE. IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada). 2011. Retrato das desigualdades de gênero e raça. Brasilia: IPEA.

Women, agroecology and “real food”  41 ISA (Instituto Sócio Ambiental). 2016. Terras de Quilombo e Unidades de Conservação:  Corredor Socioambiental do Vale do Ribeira. São Paulo: ISA. Jalil, L.  M. 2013. As Flores e os Frutos da luta:  O significado da organização e da participação política para as Mulheres Trabalhadoras Rurais. PhD diss., Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Lubello, P. 2013. L’évolution récente de l’agriculture brésilienne:  Entre enjeu alimentaire et globalisation. Mondes en développement 161, no. 1: 107–​28. Luzzi, N. 2007. O debate agroecológico no Brasil: Uma construção a partir de diferentes atores sociais. PhD diss., Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Marques, G., M. Nobre, R. Moreno et al. 2018. Práticas feministas de transformação da economia:  Autonomia das mulheres e agroecologia no Vale do Ribeira. São Paulo: Sempreviva organização feminista. Masson, D., and J. Conway. 2017. La Marche mondiale des femmes et la souveraineté alimentaire comme nouvel enjeu féministe. Nouvelles Questions Féministes 36, no. 1: 32–​47. Nobre, M. 2012. Censo Agropecuário 2006  –​Brasil:  Uma análise de gênero. In As mulheres nas estatísticas agropecuárias: Experiências em países do sul, ed. A. Butto, I. Dantas, and K. Hora, 41–​118. Brasilia: Ministerio de Desenvolvimento Agrário. Nobre, M. 2015. Economía solidaria, agroecología y feminismo:  Prácticas para la autonomía en la organización del trabajo y de la vida. In Une économie solidaire peut-​elle être féministe? Homo oeconomicus, mulher solidaria, ed. C. Verschuur, I. Guérin, and I. Hillenkamp, 273–​94. Paris: L’Harmattan. OCDE (Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico) and FAO (Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura). 2015. Perspectivas Agrícolas no Brasil: Desafios da agricultura brasileira 2015–​2024. Paris: OECD Publishing. Sabourin, É. 2014. L’agriculture brésilienne en débat: Évolutions récentes, controverses et politiques publiques. Problèmes d’Amérique latine 95, no. 4: 33–​55. Sader, E. 1989. Quando novos personagens entraram em cena: Experiências, falas e lutas dos trabalhadores da Grande São Paulo (1970–​80). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Sanchez, F. J. B., and M. C. M. Turatti. 2012. Agricoltura famigliare ed etnicità: Le trasformazioni delle lotte contadine in Brasile. Sociologia del Lavore 128: 135–​51. Siliprandi, E. 2009. Mulheres e Agroecologia: Aconstrução de novos sujeitos políticos na agricultura familiar. PhD diss., University of Brasilia. SOF (Sempreviva Organização Feminista). 2016. Mulheres do campo construindo autonomia: Experiências de comercialização. São Paulo: SOF.

3  Alternative food politics The production of urban food spaces in Leipzig (Germany) and Nantes (France) Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros

Are we talking about a political project? Yes and no. It certainly embodies a politics of space, but at the same time goes beyond politics inasmuch as it presupposes a critical analysis of all spatial politics as of all politics in general. By seeking to point the way towards a different space, towards the space of a different (social) life and of a different mode of production, this project straddles the breach between science and utopia, reality and ideality, conceived and lived. It aspires to surmount these oppositions by exploring the dialectical relationship between “possible” and “impossible”, and this both objectively and subjectively (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 60).

3.1  Introduction In many cities, new uses of space for the purpose of growing food have emerged in the first two decades of the new millennium. They can’t be classified into any traditional spatial category. Indeed, we will consider them in the sense of Lefebvre ([1974] 1991, 60) cited above as “politics of space”, which at the same time go beyond common understandings of spatial politics but “seek to point the way towards a different space, production and social life”. They surmount known categories by exploring dialectically the possible and the impossible. When green islands are created and food is produced, exchanged and distributed in collective urban gardening initiatives, community-​supported agriculture (CSA), self-​harvest gardens and farmers’ markets, we’re talking about something which is not a private garden, nor a public park or a space for commercial food production. Rather, the focus is on jointly developing local answers to challenges which arise from the increasingly global flow of goods, capital and people. This brings together an overriding wish to tear urban spatial production away from industrial perspectives, in a way which in one place looks like a cheerful meeting place for young middle-​class people, and in another place that of a biotechnological innovation for the urban production of space and in a third place that of a socio-​pedagogic measure in a district which is experiencing a shrinking population. Urban spaces are to become the stage for conditions to be spatialized for nature and producing food that are fit for the future, as well as becoming an area in which to experiment by

Alternative food politics  43 staging and testing out answers to contemporary environmental, climate and structural crises. Municipal areas are consciously and collaboratively reused and redefined in the various projects and temporary uses, in order to promote issues in the nearby area which had previously been hidden. Things are therefore done where social reality is translated into visible positions as an ensemble of invisible relations (cf. Bourdieu 1992, 138). It concerns a lot of things at the same time: green infrastructure, organic food, regional production and consumption processes, sensible employment opportunities, the sense of community with like-​minded people, the connection to nature and its power, also a critique of the existing food system and the economic and political guidelines which are expressed in it as well as the exploitative natural, working and gender relations (Müller 2011; Rossi 2017; Kropp 2018; Kropp and Müller 2018). Also, the participants react with their projects to forces in urban development which not only appear alien to them but which are opposed to their own interests. In place of the ongoing marketization of public space through consumer-​oriented and also neoliberal urban development policies over the last few decades, in which private exploitation has been combined with the expropriation of public spaces, they consciously pursue a strategy of re-appropriating public spaces and making them suitable for community-​ based purposes. Food production plays an essential function in this, because it firstly makes it clear how estranged we have become from our food and how it is produced, as well as the food sovereignty which has now essentially disappeared, and secondly it makes it noticeable how access to natural resources and open spaces without consumption is unequal and restricted for different groups of people. On the other hand, “civic food networks” (Renting et al. 2012, 292) bring green infrastructure, food and urban agriculture back to the cities as a substitute for nature, enter into alliances with major players in rural areas and enthusiastically cast off the old dichotomies of nature and society, city and country, production and consumption, green and gray. They repoliticize the agricultural, economic and development policy which is otherwise hard for consumers to grasp in their immediate urban environment  –​ bypassing the state and the market. They consciously encourage their fellow citizens to rediscover forms of collaborative local supply and ways of using spaces for communal purposes, in order to position it as a pioneering model as an alternative to the supposedly inevitable trajectory of development and modernization which appears to be coming to an end. The alternative food movement has been investigated a number of times in the last few years. It has been hailed as “food democracy:  … civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship” (Renting et al. 2012, 289) and “grassroots innovations for sustainability” (Smith and Seyfang 2013, 827) but also held up as an example of an elitist pursuit carried out by the privileged middle classes, whose uncritical conceptualization of localism is blind to social and ethnic inequality and even follows neoliberal trends (Rosol 2012; Goodman et  al. 2013; Exner and Schützenberger 2018). Germany

44  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros and France are also considered latecomers to the movement, though civil society plays a major role in both countries (cf. Stierand 2014; Lamine 2015). Likewise, questions of urban spatial coding, the arrangement of alternative production and consumption practices and of different natural and spatial relationships appear to be more relevant in France and in Germany compared to the approaches of local added value and “better” food production which are emphasized in the Anglosphere countries (Venn et  al. 2006; Goodman et al. 2013). In this context, we concentrate on strategies for the production of space that are particularly emphasized by activists in both countries, and specifically address their models and approaches in subversively changing the way in which space is used (Müller 2011), laying the groundwork for other representation and so opening up new ways to achieve “terrestrial” politics on earthly grounds (Latour 2018, 40ff.). Therefore, in the first part of this chapter we make observations on the political reconfiguration of urban food production, then describe the spatial strategies of the urban food movement by giving examples from Leipzig in Germany and Nantes in France, and based on this we examine how it has fundamentally questioned the previously dominant way of sharing space, time and responsibility.

3.2  The urban production of space On the contrary, there is nothing more innovative, nothing more present, subtle, technical, and artificial (in the positive sense of the word), nothing less rustic and rural, nothing more creative, nothing more contemporary than to negotiate landing on some ground (Latour 2018, 53).

In the social sciences, spaces have not been seen as neutral containers for some time, but as a heterogeneous ensemble of relationships of people, things and topologies, which are a consequence of social action and the production and reproduction of which are subject to dispute (Lefebvre [1974] 1991). They are, as Pierre Bourdieu (1992, 132)  has found many times, nothing neutral, but are the result of unequal opportunities to take action, positioning and power structures. In times of the Anthropocene, they point to terrestrial negotiations to explore possibilities of landing on a common ground, in the sense of Latour (2018), cited above. Through this, the players in the production of space who assert a legitimate view of the social world in the fight for symbolic interpretation in particular can prevail, and in so doing can establish boundaries and classifications of what Bourdieu refers to as “worldmaking” (1992, 151). In the modern world, this has manifested itself in the establishment of a hierarchy between the city and the country, society and nature, consumption and production (Cronon 1991), which awards a privileged position in all areas of activity to the urban decision-​making and distribution centers and the people who live and work in them over the rural production areas and their inhabitants. Spaces, however, are more than the replica of the social relationships which they mirror, reproduce and symbolize. Instead, they emerge much more as

Alternative food politics  45 socio-​material landscapes, therefore from the interdependent fields of the “physical –​nature, the Cosmos; secondly, the mental, including logical and formal abstractions; and, thirdly, the social” (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 11). For Lefebvre, the social production of space embedded in capitalist methods of production corresponds with the interplay between spatial practices (perceived space), representations of space (conceived space) and representational spaces (lived spaces; ibid., 35, 39). This spatial triad has an influence on society in its own right and outlines the way it is changing. The connection between city and country is therefore a historic relationship, in which industrialization and advances in technology have previously been the driving force. From the perspective of political economy of the market economy, a programmed everyday life has emerged with correspondingly adjusted urban ways of living, as has the spatial disintegration of the traditional city in favor of an industrial urbanism. Whereas cities in preindustrial times were supplied by their immediate hinterland and agricultural production could also be found within the city walls, during the course of industrialization, food production became banished further and further away to rural areas where land was less valuable. As a consequence, most farmers today produce for the global market and only few for local demand. What this has produced, following Lefebvre, is an urban environment outside the city and class struggles inscribed in space together with socio-​spatial relationships of center and periphery, of marginalization, regionalization, segregation and discrimination, to which Lefebvre points with his call for the “Right to the City” (Lefebvre 1996). Since Lefebvre, space in critical geography has therefore been considered as a medium of political struggle and thus a political issue as much as just a place: “There is a politics of space because space is political” (Lefebvre 1978, 345; cf. Harvey 2001). Although the inherent policy of using spaces for social production and the political dimension of urban and regional planning as well as the use of space have already been discussed for some time, the opportunities offered by regional planning as a political instrument however have been notoriously underutilized. In reality, regional planning procedures and land use plans provide the legitimacy for each respective prevailing use at any one time. Therefore, urban development, sites and spatial structures emerged and still do emerge predominantly as a consequence of individual ad-​hoc agreements between investors, property owners and actors in the political system, but rarely as the result of deliberate and forward-​looking political maneuvering. Lefebvre criticized the understanding of the tasks of regional planners and their concepts, such as the differentiation between urban, peri-​urban and peripheral areas, as a hierarchical management approach in the “capitalistic-​ affirmative” self-​perception. He saw the administrative systems to be in contradiction to the material spatial practice, which they could neither synthesize nor transcend. By contrast, overcoming these systems on the way towards an “urban society”, which is talked about a lot these days, is something he most likely expects to happen from the third dimension of the production of space,

46  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros the lived spaces of everyday living conditions and from artistic-​symbolic uses of space (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 42, 116; cf. Boudreau 2017). In analyzing the production of space, he therefore combined political ambitions that are taken up today by urban food networks. As quoted at the beginning, he wrote: By seeking to point the way towards a different space, towards the space of a different (social) life and of a different mode of production, this project … aspires to surmount these oppositions by exploring the dialectical relationship between “possible” and “impossible”, and this both objectively and subjectively. (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 60) Against this backdrop, what does it mean then when places for collective food production and distribution spring up in city centers, and often only on a temporary basis because of the expense? It’s about interventions, in which actors in civil society mix the process of the production of space and the separation between cities where things are consumed and land where things are produced, as well as between supply and demand. They question what is taken as fact in the food industry and regional development, and instead open up horizons to other possibilities of spacing and at the same time utopian experiential spaces and scope for maneuver. They are driven to do this by the search for opportunities to jointly develop alternative power sources, but also strategically and at the center of the modern conception of the world, namely in the inner cities and as a way of reusing disused industrial areas of urban centers. With urban gardens, food assemblies and urban agriculture, packaged urban lifestyles are rejected and differential counter-​spaces are created instead, which bridge the divides between producers and consumers, urban and rural, decision makers and the people who are affected by these decisions. With their tangible new interpretations of “Think globally, act locally!”, the participants aim to simultaneously change the social formations of how food and space are produced, the mental constructions in which both are experienced and the economic structures which are known not to be sustainable. Beveridge and Koch (2019) take such collective, organized and strategic practices and their objectives of achieving alternative social, spatial as well as food relations in the urban here and now as an opportunity to introduce the category of “urban everyday politics”. They ask whether these are becoming “a more visible form of political action, even if their effects remain ambivalent” (2019, 143) and while other forms of urban politics may still remain significant. The civic food networks can be understood as examples for Boudreau’s (2017) description of a “specifically urban way of acting politically” (2017, 13), including its decentered way of being political, which is not based on political institutions. It is neither bounded by a state-​logic of the political with a clear center of authority and defined boundaries between spheres of individual and collective actions, nor can it be delineated spatially because actions are always

Alternative food politics  47 related to other spatialities and assembled human and non-​human collectivities (Beveridge and Koch 2019, 145). Far from only staging political claims how to govern urban spaces or how to care for food, the spatial grounded practices of guerrilla gardening, food rescue, food sharing, urban gardening and CSA have the potential to transform the ways of assembling a city. Politics has always had references who are referred to in representational claims (Saward 2010), has “always been oriented toward objects, stakes, situations, material entities, bodies, landscapes, places”, writes Bruno Latour (2018, 52). In the modern constitution, however, politics hasn’t just deliberately blurred the permanent production of hybrids beyond evoking the boundaries which give them legitimacy (urban–​rural, nature–​culture, science–​politics), but it has located their spatial reference points on the poles between local (reactionary) and global (progressive). Ignoring the consequences, according to Latour, it overlooked that the terrestrial base is too small for an industrial scale worldwide, not exclusive and also not passive. Global warming, or the new climatic regime, however makes it clear how urgent it is to stay put and keep on working one’s plot of land, to be attached to it, to take care of a piece of the Earth, to form new alliances and to repoliticize “what it means to belong to a land” (Latour 2018, 54).

3.3  Urban agriculture in the cities of Nantes and Leipzig The spatial quality of Urban Agriculture is strongly related to the built environment as well as to the green infrastructure of the city. Moreover, it defines how people can use the space, how they are attached to it, and how they appropriate it. The way that Urban Agriculture is integrated into the city fabric has a direct impact on its accessibility (Lohrberg et al. 2016, 120).

For some years now, an increasing variety of initiatives, ventures and temporary actions have been springing up (Goodman et  al. 2013; Sage 2014; Matacena 2016). They question the industrialized food system not primarily through political demands but through transformative practices in establishing alternative forms of food production in urban spaces. Their protagonists make their mark by converting, reinterpreting places and spaces and putting them to other use –​and in so doing changing the urban environments. This recoding of space determines novel possibilities of urban appropriation and city accessibility, as the quote from Lohrberg (2016, 120) explains. Below, we will turn our attention to examples of civic food networks in two different cities of note, namely Leipzig in Germany and Nantes in France. Both cities have been strongly affected by deindustrialization, but both have long been highlighted as cities which haven’t lost out by modernization but which have pioneered other approaches to modernization and transformative urban development. In both cases, the production of food in urban spaces, the renewal of cooperative relationships between city and country and the participative design of green open spaces make a major contribution towards countering the conventional model of competing metropolises with no sense

48  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros of place to a sustainable vision of urban development on a “human scale” (Daalsgard 2012). 3.3.1  Leipzig: growing food in a shrinking city Leipzig is in the state of Saxony in east-​central Germany, where several rivers converge (the “Waterknot of Leipzig”). Historically, the city played a key role at the heart of the international fur trade, as well as being one of the first university towns in Germany. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) era it was an important industrial city as well as a host for businesses and trade fairs and –​because of the many buildings destroyed in the Second World War –​an object of socialist urban renewal projects. However, despite its overall high density and large urban area, its share of the population has decreased since the global financial crisis. At the end of the 1980s, Leipzig was where the Monday demonstrations against the GDR regime took place, which played a significant role in bringing down the Berlin Wall with their demands for freedom and democracy. The reunification of West and East Germany didn’t just bring the people of Leipzig new possibilities to travel and vote, but also a drastic restructuring of the economy, with high unemployment, the disappearance of the old way of life and enormous losses of jobs and population. The dramatic deindustrialization and subsequent mass emigration as a consequence of German reunification resulted in visible decay, and in more buildings becoming empty in addition to the areas which had remained as wasteland since the Second World War. At the beginning of the new millennium, 20% of the building stock in Leipzig was vacant. Today, with roughly 600,000 people Leipzig is not only growing, but it is a tolerant and open city which is well loved by young people in particular. It is known for its well-​ renowned university, as the center of the German “post-​growth” debate, and is often cited as an example for the developmental potential of the creative scene and an active civil society. The local area was shaped by open-​cast lignite mining in the 20th century, which resulted in a number of lakes being created, but also by the large agricultural cooperatives set up in the GDR era, many of which still exist today. As the “City of Empty Buildings”, at the turn of the millennium Leipzig was thought of as the textbook example of the “perforated city”, a concept which has been the subject of much controversy in the debate on how to plan for shrinking cities, and a term which is used to describe cities with a lot of vacant sites and empty spaces which needs to deal with unplanned changes (Rink and Siemund 2016). While the media predominantly focus on the losses and the problems caused by shrinking cities, and the political actors mostly don’t have the necessary vision to redesign the city, a number of authors also talk about the possible opportunities for urban quality of life through more green spaces, more space in general and good conditions for subcultural milieus (Haase et al. 2014). Today, Leipzig is considered one of the greenest cities in Germany, with beautiful parks and riversides, traditional

Alternative food politics  49 allotment communities, 35  percent of land within city limits (also through incorporations) used for agricultural purposes and urban forests. In urban planning, flexible and experimental use has been made of the spatial scope and innovative solutions for redesigning the city have been developed, partly with the participation of civil society. Leipzig is home to a particularly broad and active scene of alternative food networks, which also interact with one another in a lot of ways. As well as a transition town, “Right to the city” and regional money initiatives, there are several organizations based on CSA known beyond the region, plenty of community gardens, food co-​ops and urban beekeepers, also self-​harvest gardens, “urban planters” and “edible meadows”, as well as a city farm for the children of the city (cf. www.leipziggruen.de). For a more detailed investigation, we have chosen the well-​known community garden Annalinde, the vegetable cooperative Rote Beete as a CSA farm, the way the fruit-​finding map by mundraub is used in Leipzig and the transition town initiative “Leipzig im Wandel” (A Changing Leipzig). Apart from the vegetable cooperative Rote Beete, these networks were also research partners in the “nascent” project, and were investigated on the basis of interviews with founders and members, on-​site visits and in transdisciplinary workshops. The quotes derive in part from interviews with the founders and activists, in part also from the minutes of workshops with practice partners or from media analysis, and are not assigned to individual persons. The following quote can give an impression of the breadth of their spatial project: Yes, we’re a bit of everything, we do all sorts at the same time here, it’s not just a garden or a space or a community, we’re also a place for education, a kindergarten, a fruit garden and we also have some completely open spaces. The job here will never be finished, because all the little things we have to do, all the fruit boxes, events, green spaces, young plants and training opportunities combine together to form something completely new, which makes us happy and doesn’t fit the old perceptions of gardening or urban development at all. (Interviewee from Annalinde, 2016) The Annalinde community garden (Gemeinschaftsgarten Annalinde; annalinde-​ leipzig.de) was set up in 2011 on municipal land in the west of Leipzig as part of an “initiative for contemporary urban development”. It was founded by a social worker and a media specialist, who were joined by two engineers for gardening and landscaping. The term “community garden” is generally used to describe collectively run urban spaces which are mostly accessible to the public and are found on private or publicly owned abandoned sites (sometimes just temporarily). They emerge in response to the newly reawakened need for producing one’s own healthy food in cities, but also with the aim of encouraging neighborly exchange regarding everyday gardening knowledge as well as questions of urban development and maintaining community life.

50  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros The people who run Annalinde are not urban planners, but nevertheless want to help co-​design the urban space and stress the positive role that collectively managed vegetable gardens can play in participative urban development. In a pioneering work, after a season in mobile boxes, they created a visible site for urban and community-​based food production which was open to the public. Their community garden, with social vegetable nursery and connected edible mushroom cultivation area, is located on a 1,700-​square-​meter site which previously belonged to a brewery. An outside staircase leads up from the street to the aesthetically designed site, with over 100 raised beds, three greenhouses and 250 square meters under cultivation. With its spatial activities, including public dinners using mobile kitchens, collective harvesting and deliberate “installations” and subcultural productions in the public space, the communal gardeners want to challenge the banishment of agriculture and food from the urban space. The gardeners grow maize, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, kale, salad, carrots, onions and much more. The “human–​thing–​plant compositions” which result primarily get their transformative power not from the evidence of their supply capacity, because the plant density in the limited space is much too low, but from the spatialization of alternative models of economic activity and cohabitation and from the persuasiveness of (third) imaginary spaces, which become a visible reality and which make it possible to experience different perceptions of “being in the world” and of economic activity (Kropp and Müller 2018, 192). The community garden injects new life into the image of the (shrinking) city, and creates visual surprise effects, which the media are happy to pick up. Education in sustainable development is also available, as is vocational training for young people. With the choice of name and the economic strategies, the founders are reviving a tradition which became devalued as a result of industrialization and deindustrialization: Annalinde refers to the Lindenau district, whose previous conception of itself partly came from being a meeting place under the lime tree (Linden = lime trees). Today, after it no longer expects to outcompete other cities through increasing industrial efficiency according to either a socialist or capitalist model, it is focusing its attention once more on “primary production” and emphasizes its urban location in direct marketing and on the menus of its local gastronomic cooperation partner as “Annalinde Greens” (Kropp and Müller 2018, 193). For five months a year in peak season it runs a market stand at the weekly market, as well as in a different neighborhood. It has been so successful at selling its produce that there are no vegetables left over. The non-​profit organization also sells seedlings in the temporary pop-​up shop “Prince Charles” –​another normalization of the presence of agriculture in the city –​and makes spatial metabolic processes visible by having the garden activists go through the city on cargo bikes to pick up organic waste from two Leipzig organic supermarkets and adding it to the compost. They also bring vegetable containers or compost toilets to end users by bike, to make society’s relationship to nature, which in an industrialized society is “hidden”

Alternative food politics  51 or processed on an industrial scale, more visible and tangible through the use of slower means of transport which are open to the public. The Rote Beete vegetable cooperative (rotebeete.org) is an active CSA project in the northeast of Leipzig. Like other CSA initiatives, it creates opportunities for rural–​urban cooperation, meaning that a group of citizens and one or more, mostly organically run, garden and agriculture work together regulated by a contract. The consumers give a community-​supported purchase guarantee which is determined in advance for a share of the harvest, and in return receive an insight and influence into food production in their local environment. These networks operate on a solidarity basis: the producers receive the members’ monthly contribution, irrespective of the size of the harvest that could be produced, even if climatic events or pests lead to a harvest collapse and each CSA member receives only a smaller basket of produce, while otherwise the producers would have to bear the full costs of the crop failures themselves. The founders of the Rote Beete vegetable cooperative speak ironically in this respect about “making blooming landscapes a reality”, and address the presumptuous, but unkept, promise made by Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the time of reunification to generate wealth in the East as quick as possible with a Western market economy. By contrast, its CSA since 2012 has been all about making consistent organic vegetable production possible without economic pressure on earnings. The particular process and product quality are guaranteed through trust and transparency, not through official seals and checks. In the cooperative with market gardeners and community farms, the vegetables produced also don’t have a fixed price, but participating households pay a set amount in a bidding round at the start of the year to match their financial situation. The vegetables are supplied to them via several visible distribution centers across the city. This means that help is required in the high season and on special occasions to unload the goods, a process is digitally coordinated and creates regular opportunities for contact and exchange between producers and consumers. The roughly 350 members of Rote Beete, who have been organized into a cooperative since 2017, each also carry out a minimum level of either organizational or agricultural work, learn about the production conditions of their local area through planting and harvesting, and celebrate together. They know a lot about the regional and seasonal growing conditions, about European agricultural policy and its effects on the local area, about changes in land prices and quality, and about new and old types of vegetables and sustainable ways of processing and preparation. All participants are explicitly concerned with building an “alternative to the ruling capitalist system”, getting involved and joining forces with other post-​growth networks. Locally, important decisions are discussed in co-​op cafés, made using a multi-​stage consensus process and then implemented, with everything organized by the group itself. Contacts exist with a number of other networks and social/​ecological organizations from other regions that want to make sustainable social development a reality. The founders and the professional gardeners, some

52  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros of whom live together in a farmhouse, explicitly point out that it is not a “feel-​good project” for Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability, but is aimed at building a non-​capitalist form of food supply, which can also outlast any conceivable crisis. The talk is of “post-​collapse agriculture”. Potential interested parties are on a waiting list, including a number of families, who can only move up the list if somebody leaves the cooperative. With its cooperation between city and country, the company wants to provide the nearby area with a new food supply and open up opportunities for people of different backgrounds to get involved together on site. The stigma is taken out of being self-​sufficient in fruit and vegetables by “freeing it from its image as something only to be done in an emergency or the same as having an allotment”. For a lot of participants, becoming a co-​producer means being able to take existential issues into their own hands, and experiencing for themselves what it is like not to be dependent, but having power in their own right and being able to act in the public sphere. At Rote Beete, dedicated people experiment with practicable forms to develop organic and socially compatible systems of food production, and place a great emphasis on community. They take care to make connections and are conscious of being part of a natural and societal context. They explicitly reject the unreasonable perception of being “lone fighters”, as it was phrased in the government reconstruction and support programs of the post-​reunification era, likewise the precarious working conditions. The fair pay of, and cooperative partnership with, the professional gardeners is a high priority for the vegetable cooperative. The first two examples show, just like countless other projects from the urban food movement in Leipzig, that self-​sufficiency is no longer associated with backwardness, marginalization and poverty, but with post-​ material quality of life, urban ecology and learning from one another. It is not envisaged that the capital invested will accumulate, but that the added value intended is in the cooperation, keeping nature intact, high-​quality regional products and fair production and trade relations. In both the following examples, the entrepreneurial considerations regarding the appropriation and redefining of local spaces by civil society, and the deliberate politicization of sustainable development perspectives are placed further into the background. Mundraub (mundraub.org) is a community-​based platform, which posts maps online of fruit trees and bushes all over Germany which are freely accessible to the public, and connects them with stories. It was founded by two young people in 2009 when they became aware of the absurdity while on a canoe trip in Saxony-​Anhalt of taking fruit bought from a supermarket with them as supplies, imported from far away and wrapped up using lots of plastic, while all around them fruit on trees and bushes was disregarded and left to rot away. They began making a note of places to find unused fruit. Today, more than 60,000 people have added fruit trees via the platform, and made fruit in their area accessible to the public by using virtual maps and local information. As part-​physical, part-​virtual common land, mundraub organizes a very

Alternative food politics  53 special form of the “edible city”, in order to encourage communitization and the conscious use of local nature, and to revive knowledge of common land which has been forgotten. The organizers also comply with their ideal of creating a kind of “basic income” in fruit with fair conditions for everybody by drafting the “mundraub rules” for all participants, and also by looking for a contact person at the municipal administration for the shared use of public green spaces. The initiative describes what it does on its website with the sentence, “We raise awareness of edible landscapes, locally grown and seasonal fruit, and motivate people to make use of existing resources”, and also makes its own vision clear: Germany is an edible landscape accessible to everyone. Here people can fulfill their deep archaic need for sharing as well as direct and independent acquisition of food. Everyone is able to find plenty of fruits in the landscape and has sufficient knowledge about it, thus a feeling of “There is enough for everybody” can develop. This ideal of a self-​evident basic fruit income for everyone shall serve as inspiration to implement the idea of the commons into other fields of life as well. This can help mankind to recover. (mundraub.org/​press) In 2012, a non-​ profit organization emerged from this philosophy, which provides services beyond the digital “picking atlas” for preserving and maintaining local fruit trees and bushes by developing models for socially and ecologically enhancing the mitigation and compensation measures with companies and network operators in eastern Germany. Also, mundraub links up with companies in the traditional food industry, non-​governmental organizations (NGOs), educational institutions and players in regional politics in order to devise alternative forms of enhancing cultural landscapes and contributes towards preserving biodiversity through the “protecting by utilizing” principle. Additionally, harvest events are held in remote areas in order to make these areas and their richness better known to local people. With 3,495 sites entered in and around Leipzig, the network is heavily used in the area (by means of comparison: 750 sites have been recorded in Munich, 78 in Frankfurt, 10,500 in Berlin); in addition to this are five registered juice bottlers and a local group “Leipzig Mundräuber”, which organizes other food-​sharing actions, local cycle tours where participants can eat food which is available to the public and educational projects. In keeping with the slogan “The city is your garden”, people volunteer every month to show interested people in Leipzig known and unknown fruits, berries and herbs, “which grow in front of your own front door”, convey their philosophy of edible common land in the urban area, pass on recipes and tips and organize a “Long Day of Urban Nature” every year. In May 2018, this event took participants though the western part of Leipzig along river channels, cross-​ country though riparian forests and the Clara-​Zetkin park, accompanied by

54  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros a self-​built, mobile “mundraub kitchen”. The cooking station installed on a traditional GDR-​era trailer also makes it possible to process and sample the fruit gathered together on the tour through the “edible city”. The day ended with a herb dinner on a meadow by the well-​loved Sachsenbrücke bridge, and the tour was brought to a close on a high note with a freshly prepared snack and herb lemonade. Like mundraub, TransitionTown Leipzig (transitiontown-​ leipzig.de) is also part of a larger network, which more than 400 cities worldwide and 100 initiatives in Germany belong to. The transition town movement is based on an initiative set up by British environmental activist Rob Hopkins and students of the Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland. It is based around the concept of permaculture, which aims to create long-​ lasting functioning, sustainable and near-​natural cycles to obtain efficient and resilient natural conditions. The movement, operating as a civic society organization and following an organization concept formulated as a “handbook” (cf. Hopkins 2008), pushes municipalities to take measures towards a post-​fossil redesign of the city and to focus using local suppliers in order to form answers to the big challenges which have not been answered so far by politics and the economy. Based on Hopkins’ home town of Totnes, UK, communal projects are now being set up in a number of transition towns in industrialized Western countries, to prepare for a future when raw materials and fuels will be scarcer. This includes projects to reduce consumption and to use renewable energy sources as well as to strengthen regional and local economies. In Leipzig too, dedicated locals get involved in the active transformation of the city under the name “Leipzig im Wandel”, to encourage a more regional focus on food production, economy and energy supply, and to sever themselves from the unsustainable and unjust practices of a throwaway society shaped by abundance. For the activists, the aim is to “produce, process and consume as many products and services locally as possible, in order to make local demand independent of international corporations, oil and the financial markets” (interviewee from Leipziger Agenda 2). Instead, it wants to counteract the negative developments in the labor market and the deterioration in the quality of the environment. Alternative visions, a creative civil society, embedded techniques, music and knowledge should point the way towards a sustainable Leipzig. Alongside community gardens and communal harvest and cooking actions, its initiative “Leipzig im Wandel” organizes and supports educational projects to rediscover old techniques (reskilling), local economic cycles, solar panels on the roofs of private houses and the use of the local currency, the Lindentaler. All citizens should be encouraged to contribute towards a livable and sustainable Leipzig with less traffic noise, more togetherness, communal supply capabilities, codetermination and local quality of life. In 2016, a map was created at the time of the Degrowth Conference to show where all the alternatives can be found. It is to inscribe the diversity of the projects and their contribution to the city in sustainable change in the

Alternative food politics  55 conceptual spatial image (see www.transitiontown-​leipzig.de/​arbeitsgruppen/​ leipzig-​im-​wandel/​). The networks presented aim to meet the particular challenges faced by Leipzig in a way which is creative and collaborative. An overriding goal in this respect is the sustainable use of local resources in a way which is visible to fellow citizens and which invites them to take part. Another goal is to oppose the supposedly alternativeless urban development model of unsustainable competition between cities for population, investors and tourists in favor of sustainable alternatives for people, environment and climate. Like other local initiatives, it is oriented towards reintegrating the fragmented nutritional and social spaces into local cooperations. A reinterpretation of the idea of subsistence can be recognized in their own experimental form of do-​ it-​yourself. Unpaid niche activities are emerging from the fringes of society in people’s sheds and cellars into the public sphere, combined with contemporary symbols from creative sections of the population, and are creating new concepts of urbanity, which in the meantime are also being adopted in urban and regional planning policy. Here, the civil society is building a microcosm of the city in which they would want to live, and is connecting its own space with others who are following similar goals and approaches. An alternative social and ecological reality is being made practical and deliberately positioned in the urban area. The collection of resistant and hybrid spatial and nature policies entails further experiments, which are seen as political actions and criticisms of the status quo. This, however, happens as part of the prevailing power structures and under the conditions of an ever-​faster and more comprehensive collection of innovative activities and interpretations, in a consumer culture which is permanently dependent on new meaning. So that the creative structure of the community gardens and civil society networks can retain their political potential in this ambivalent context, in which even cities are governed by the imperative of always presenting the new, they need to stabilize the new approaches at all levels, in discourse, in practice, and in the material structures. In Nantes, on the other hand, the initiatives emerge in an urban policy context in which the vision of a sustainable city is the official guide. 3.3.2  Nantes: hybridizing urban spaces through gardening initiatives Nantes is in western France, south of Brittany and close to the Atlantic Ocean, and with roughly 300,000 inhabitants it is the sixth-​biggest city in France. Like Leipzig, the city is characterized by its position, where a number of rivers flow into the Loire. As a port city on the Loire estuary, for a long time it played a major role in the slave trade –​a past which meant the city became familiar with the practices of global and exploitative business models at an early stage. During the 19th century, Nantes was shaped by industries relating to the port, with large-​scale shipbuilding and expansive shipyards, as well as a strong agricultural and food industry with a well-​known biscuit factory (LU,

56  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros Lefèvre-​Utile). With the beginning of the industrial decline in the 1980s (the closure of the shipyard and the last ship launch in 1987), the city experienced an increase in poverty and exclusion. The result was a politicized population, fierce conflicts and several strikes, as well as disused spaces in the former industrial parts of the city, particularly on the Île de Nantes, an island in the middle of the modern-​day city. The change towards a service metropolis was triggered by major infrastructure measures, in particular the upgrading of a modern tramway and the high-​speed train TGV linking Nantes with Paris, as well as measures to improve public space. Today, Nantes is mostly known in France for its wealth of cultural offerings. Music festivals such as La Folle Journée, Les rendez-​vous de l’Erdre, the Royal de Luxe processions in the 1990s and 2000s, film festivals such as Le Festival des 3 Continents, the art project Les Machines de l’Île, artistic tours and countless other cultural activities throughout the year consolidate this reputation. In 2013, the city was crowned European Green Capital, and is even more committed to the political demands of a city on a sustainable transformation path, which also includes participatory approaches in urban development policy. Accordingly, the association France Urbaine describes Nantes as follows: “The Nantes basin is a jewel in the agro-​industrial environment of Western France. But it is also a territory of innovation and experimentation when it comes to sustainable food and urban agriculture” (France Urbaine 2018, 39). According to a study conducted by the consulting agency Utopies (cf. Utopies 2017, 6)  Nantes is among the top six cities in France for food autonomy, with a total of 6.4 percent of local products also being consumed locally. Nantes is also a city whose surroundings are used for a wide range of agricultural purposes, namely in the marshlands, which have a special tradition of vegetable cultivation. Alongside agricultural spaces, there are also natural landscapes, for example the Lac de Grand-​Lieu nature reserve. Urban nature and strategic investments in green spaces became core elements of political policy in the new millennium (cf. Ville de Nantes 2018). The current mayor even aims to create a “City in the garden”,1 and actively encourages residents to get involved in shaping the future of their city. Additionally, the Conseil de la nature en ville,2 an intermediary organization founded in 2016, provides various advisory and support services, both for elected officials as well as for the interested public. Nantes is faced with the challenge of developing from a contaminated former industrial city into a garden city, in order to become a “transition town” today (cf. Ville de Nantes 2018, 5)  and a sustainable city tomorrow. Examples for this strategic realignment include the transformation of the eco-​ neighborhood on the “Île de Nantes”, which began in the 2000s, the revitalization of the old shipyards and warehouses, as well as the conversion of the formerly derelict industrial area of the Miséry quarry into a botanical garden, which is also set to play host to a heron tree.3 This strategy of creating a green infrastructure from a political and administrative viewpoint is supplemented by civil society projects for community gardens, urban agriculture and edible

Alternative food politics  57 green spaces. The City actively supports this engagement, for example as part of a tender to set up 15 public spaces in 2018 (cf. Ville de Nantes 2018, 11). As we will see, civil society accepts these offers, and also suggested a number of projects for this tender, including many which relate to food. It can rely on existing civil society associations which have been dealing with issues such as urban nature, urban gardening, ecology and sustainable procurement of foodstuffs in Nantes for some time, but also on many new initiatives, which generally also have a focus on social issues. In an interview, one of the resulting initiatives considered it to be their “job to think about what’s really appropriate to produce in the city” (interview with the Initiative Nantes Villes Comestible). All the initiatives asked say that the wish to see gardens and food production return to the city plays a major role. The initiatives presented below are committed to this principle in different ways, and were investigated in spring 2018 as part of a master’s thesis by means of interviews and on-​ site visits in order to record the participants’ aims, practices and methods of perception in comparison with the German case studies (Da Ros 2018). The examples mentioned here are relatively new civil society initiatives, which are currently working on reclaiming urban and abandoned spaces through innovative gardening activities and pedagogic workshops. Therefore, for a more detailed summary we have chosen an urban farm which is currently being set up (La Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellevue), the neighborhood garden Prairie d’Amont, the initiative Bio-​T-​Full for urban agriculture and a networking platform in Nantes, the “Maison des Agricultures Urbaines”. Socially integrated, sustainable urban development is at the heart of all these initiatives, and they are all supported by the municipality. The quotes come from the interviews with founders and participants. The Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellevue project is an urban farm covering an area of 3,000 square meters, which as the neighborhood’s own food supply aims to put down roots in the area for the long term, although it is planned in mobile raised-​bed cultures and greenhouses. Urban farm is the generic term for initiatives for urban food production which work closely with their neighborhood to push for the use of gardens or fruit trees and fruit bushes as renewable resources for a post-​fossil urban society. The Petite Ferme Urbaine decided upon the model of part-​urban, part-​rural food production in order to generate synergies from linking different systems together, for example by promoting short distribution channels and a functioning urban ecosystem. Mushroom cultures, for example, are particularly well suited for recycling coffee grounds and for utilizing unused underground spaces, and enable harvest-​fresh produce to be consumed in a convenient time frame. The founder of this initiative has always combined his projects with ecological and social commitment. He began with vermicomposting, and in the past few years has provided a number of social housing projects in other districts with vermicomposters and communal gardens. From these experiences came the idea of creating an integrated local cycle for reevaluating waste based on organic waste, together with residents in the Bellevue district

58  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros in the west of Nantes. Work on setting up the farm itself only began in spring 2018. The idea was for it to be specifically incorporated within the neighborhood, which has a lot of public housing, in order to contribute towards promoting social cohesion in the area and to open up new perspectives for local residents to take part in transforming the food system and in accordance with their needs. The different parts of the farm were and are designed in cooperation with the neighborhood in the form of transportable raised beds and mobile structures, so that they could be adjusted to the ongoing changes as part of building projects and new concepts for the use of space. This versatility should ensure that it remains a long-​term presence in the neighborhood. The three greenhouses on the farm also include a community-​supported greenhouse, which is open for little neighborhood projects as well as educational projects. By doing this, the activists are responding to the wishes of the population to have green spaces available in the neighborhood which they can landscape with plants, flowers and fruit trees, despite being unable to keep raising the necessary funds and resources. The community-​ supported greenhouse enables participants to sow their own plants, grow seedlings and even sell any excess seeds to other community gardens in the city, which also helps them to support their other projects in the long term. The two other greenhouses are for the farm’s own production, one of which is intended for the aquaponics system while the other is already operated in the form of bioponics, i.e. it is also an aquaponics plant but without mineralized fertilizer, because the initiative already has its own natural fertilizer thanks to the vermicompost. There is also a henhouse with eight hens, which serves two different purposes. Firstly, it contributes towards converting part of the waste into eggs, and secondly it can be taken to nearby schools in a mobile birdhouse, where children are taught about food production up close. Mushrooms are also grown in containers, which are built and labeled in such a way that everybody can experience and recreate the cultivation technique. A packaging-​free shop is planned, in which locals can buy products in their own containers. They should also be encouraged to bring along their organic waste, for which they will be given vouchers for making purchases in store. All these components constitute the integrated design of a recycling project, which wants to establish an alternative urban production facility based on waste recovery as an essential element of everyday life in the neighborhood. Some of the components which make up the farm are already in operation; some of them are currently being put into place step by step. By planning and developing the farm together, participants and interested neighbors get the opportunity to meet one another and share experiences. In the interview they emphasize the exemplary character of their farm, as a long-​term example to be spread across the whole neighborhood and to other places, so that locals everywhere can re-​appropriate and reshape the city for themselves.

Alternative food politics  59 The first part, it is only a showcase to raise awareness. In the long run, we have a lot of green space here in the neighborhood. Social housing providers do no longer know what to do with them today ..., so these spaces, little by little, we aim to occupy them with an expansion of this farm. So, from the moment when we have demonstrated that it works on this small space during the first three years, we aim to extend it a little bit everywhere in the neighborhood. (Interviewee from La Petite Ferme Urbaine) The urban farm project aims to use gardening to strengthen cohesion in the area to encourage more peaceful living. At the same time, it’s about using resources sustainably and conveying basic skills for potential future community projects, and also about opening up perspectives for opportunities to employ locals. The garden at the foot of the residential building doesn’t just exist so residents can get to know each other when composting, for example, but it also creates space and a time for doing things together as families to make everyday life easier. Firstly, the participants say, it creates a “lived” space, meaning it makes the neighborhood into a suitable place for its residents in the sense of Lefebvre, in which their own practices and demands can emerge. Active participation is what co-​designs the sustainable city that administrators want –​but in keeping with the everyday reality of its inhabitants. In our interview, it was emphasized that “true” urban agriculture can only play a significant role in designing the city when it comes from below, from local residents, so that it can spread from there at city and policy-​making level: “[T]‌he real urban agriculture, if it wants to succeed, it has to start from below, and little by little it will go up again” (interviewee from La Petite Ferme Urbaine). The Prairie d’Amont (prairie-​ amont.fr) association is a neighborhood garden which became permanent following the summer events as part of the “Nantes European Green Capital 2013” celebrations. As a general rule, different residents join forces in community gardens in the urban area to get active, dig the soil, sow seeds, water crops and harvest them together, often with their families and children. They create green meeting spaces, which not infrequently need to be defended against the forces of municipal bureaucracy. Not so in Nantes. Here, a maize field was created during the summer of events in previously unused space between the buildings at the eastern end of the Île de Nantes. Afterwards, some of the neighbors who wanted to keep the basic principle and convert the maize field into a garden project got in touch with the city, where they were met with an open ear. Following on, a neighborhood garden was created a few months later, which since 2017 has also played host to beehives. Alongside the fun of gardening and the relationships with neighbors which develop as a result, those taking part in the project also contribute towards the development of the city. They explicitly want to be part of developing an urban vision, shape the city through doing something together and prepare for the challenges of the future. They want to make public spaces green, plant fruit trees in every neighborhood instead of ornamental trees and

60  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros create small spaces where people can develop an alternative relationship with nature. We imagine a city where, tomorrow, any citizen, if he or she feels like gardening, could create this kind of micro-​places, a bit everywhere. ... So, the garden creates this, this meeting space where, if there wasn’t that, we would never have talked to each other. (Interviewee from Prairie d’Amont) The dedicated volunteers consider their neighborhood garden to be a means rather than a purpose, despite growing vegetables, composting, beekeeping and the skills they have learned. Even when the will is there to deal with questions regarding food, bringing nature to the city and constructing and practicing a life in the sustainable city, the main priority is that they don’t do this alone. The garden is the place where these expectations can become reality, and what’s more, with like-​minded people from the neighborhood and the neighboring buildings. Meanwhile, the neighborhood garden in this initiative has therefore also become somewhere to meet other initiatives. Childcare, a collective composting station –​in future, a hut with a kitchen and a workshop are also set to be built. Not all members and visitors come primarily because of the gardening: some get involved for the beekeeping, others pick their children up and stay, and talk with their neighbors while doing composting duty. The garden itself is described as an active element, from which “places like no other” are created, local beauty spots are revealed and you are invited to experience things which cannot be planned. We are impressed by the wide range of people seen in this French neighborhood garden, which effortlessly seems to bring together different social classes and backgrounds. It changes the spatial experience and the urban practices, and with it the expectations of urban spaces. What were once “empty green spaces in the neighborhood” have become places where people can use their imagination and engage in gardening and composting-​related activities, or just ponder about alternative possibilities for using the public space in a transition town. The neighborhood garden makes possibilities for designing the urban space tangible for users and local residents in a way which is particularly logical. The purpose of the Bio-​T-​Full (bio-​t-​full.org) association is to develop a versatile urban form of agriculture, and contribute with educational projects to spread their ideas beyond their own project. The term “urban agriculture” is actually a generic term for very different types of food production in urban centers, which exist to supply their local areas with food. Whereas in the global south, farms in densely populated urban areas are definitely run in a “rural” fashion, in the industrial countries it’s a very urban form of agriculture, in non-​agricultural spaces and in a non-​agricultural fashion. Produce is mainly consumed locally, donated or sold via direct-​sales channels. This predominantly means that urban agriculture can supply individuals or households with a limited range of products at certain times of the year. However, urban

Alternative food politics  61 agriculture does not always reach those groups which are affected by a diet which is insufficient either in terms of quality or quantity. In Nantes, the garden initiatives also have their sights on sections of the population whose consumption habits differ from those of the middle classes. Alongside urban forms of garden design, Bio-​T-​Full also supports types of animal husbandry (poultry, rabbits, aquaculture and beekeeping) in urban areas and is not bound to certain social, economic or ecological purposes, such as self-​sufficiency, organic production or social exchange. Rather, the educational aspect is paramount, as is developing the capabilities of civil society. This is why there are a number of elements on their participatory site in the Solilab (joint workspace for social and social economy initiatives, at the western end of the Île de Nantes) which are dedicated to the possibilities offered by urban food production. Here, aquaponics facilities can be looked at, in which fish breeding in special containers (aquaculture) is linked with the cultivation of crops in a closed cycle, for example for tomatoes and herbs. The fish’s excrement is used as nutrients for the plants –​a reproduction of the natural nitrogen cycle. Bio-​T-​ Full aims to use the facility to make the meaning of ecosystems more tangible and show what a return of nature to the cities can look like and how it can be different from agriculture in rural areas. Participants also develop their own educational offerings and workshops for urban dwellers who want to reconnect with nature through using different elements. The initiative tries to make the various aspects of urban gardening accessible through smaller activities, in order to build up a general level of awareness for urban dwellers, which they don’t or didn’t get from school and which will enable them to have a sustainable relationship with nature while being in an urban area. Supporting garden projects within residential buildings or in the neighborhood also plays an important role in contributing towards green urban development. Those who were asked from Bio-​T-​Full stress that no urban gardening project can be successful without the lasting support, enthusiasm and dedication of local residents. They also explain this in relation to the city’s public tender, mentioned above, which explicitly aimed not at organizations, experts and planners, but at citizens. The initiative Bio-​T-​Full took part in this tender and supported a group of locals in their plan to transform the Espace Babonneau, a green corner in a residential street, into a communal and pleasure garden. In the draft, the neighborhood’s particular motivation and willingness to improve the community spirit in the otherwise anonymous district were combined with the professional experience of the initiative for urban agriculture as a proven project sponsor. The interviewee from Bio-​T-​Full puts it as follows: We really built and sharpened the project with the inhabitants, we could see what they were interested in, … and there is the will to create and to value the social bond within the whole neighborhood and the idea of agriculture, of the connexion with nature, of cultivating one’s plants … they liked it right away. (Interviewee from Bio-​T-​Full)

62  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros It was announced to the public in June 2018 that the project had been selected, and work began in September 2018. The success may also be down to the fact that the focus of the project closely matched the city administration’s own policy. At the same time, it is an example that inviting citizens to take part in urban agriculture projects in their local area will be enthusiastically received. Everywhere, programs aimed at designing people’s own living environment received an overwhelming response from people willing to get involved, which cannot be seen in many other areas. Inaugural meetings for urban agriculture projects are often attended by 50–​100 people, who want to play a part in developing green spaces in their city for growing food. In interviews with us, those asked emphasize that they want to take responsibility for designing sustainable urban spaces for themselves, implementing their own ideas and building a sense of social togetherness. Some say that it’s about giving the interests of local residents more of a say against the increasing commercialization of the public space. This is especially important where open spaces are scarce and not all citizens can afford to consume things when meeting people. Therefore, Bio-​T-​Full is also associated with the task of civil society initiatives of opening up urban communal spaces, in which alternative ways to deal with a post-​fossil future can be found by involving different interested parties. What all projects in Nantes have in common is that involving a variety of groups, including the socially disadvantaged, is part of the plan. The urban food movement should not be the preserve of the successful middle classes nor take place in closed communities, but it should happen in a way which brings the town together as a whole, which invites other interested parties to take part and which can be used for different purposes by young and old, rich and poor alike. As in Leipzig, the different initiatives see themselves as complementing one another and being part of a cohesive whole. Even if individual projects don’t engage in gardening-​related activities, they are committed to the job of creating places for urban agriculture and networks for the exchange and dissemination of associated ideas both in and beyond Nantes. Therefore, for example, several initiatives and associations from Nantes have joined forces in the Lab’AU 44 collective as “city architects” to promote the foundation of a Maison des Agricultures Urbaines (House of Urban Agriculture; ecosnantes.org/​la-​maison-​ de-​l-​agriculture-​urbaine.html), which is actively orientated towards democratizing urban agriculture into multiple different “socio-​natures” (Alkon 2013). Here, the different resources of the various actors come together in order to develop and test context-​related models of urban agriculture, including projects with the University of Nantes. An interviewee highlights the number of potential participants who need to be involved in conversation: Today urban agriculture –​well different types of agriculture –​is multifaceted and almost systemic and so … it also involves citizen groups, collectives, as entrepreneurs, territorial community, real-​estate promoters etc. So, there must also be a dialog between all of these actors.

Alternative food politics  63 The network wants to make the various activities and the differences between them visible, and to avoid confrontations and polarization within the urban food movement at all costs. This means it should be clear that the difference between the civil society initiatives is something to be welcomed, and its multi-​faceted nature contributes towards the variety of valuable and original contributions and perspectives, which can only promote the presentation and design of a sustainable city and an organic local food system thanks to this breadth. Therefore, urban agriculture must be referred to in the plural to recognize the variety of agricultural approaches in the city and the country, and to enable the initiatives which lead to urban food production together with a number of actors and perspectives into new realms. The civil society and municipal networks are working together in Nantes to devise a central theme to run through food and gardens, to make it possible to imagine the neighborhood and city of tomorrow and so contribute towards the necessary transition. Many interviewees say that citizens must have a right to participate in designing their city. The different types and functions of urban agriculture should also make sure that different sections of the population appropriate their own space on the right scale for them, and establish that they in fact are the main players in the social production of urban spaces. Demonstrative places like the urban farms, communal gardens and food assemblies experiment, spread innovative, cooperative and inclusive lifestyles and distance themselves from the socio-​ spatially fragmented “modern” city in order to stimulate the design of the city of the Anthropocene era. The hybridization strategy followed by the urban food movement, which consciously traverses city and country and city and food supply, is highlighted and illustrated in the Maison des Agricultures Urbaines. This means working to create a place which promotes experimenting with urban agriculture, and which constitutes a network-​like meeting point for all actors in the metropolis to exchange ideas, and plan and carry out projects which include as many different components as possible, both human and non-​human. Our interviewees talk about how urban agriculture is all about the variety of people who get involved  –​from city-​dwellers looking for somewhere to do some gardening and do things together, to entrepreneurs wanting to set up rooftop farms and organic farmers in the surrounding area. All these different types of urban agriculture must not be separated from one another, but also must not be lumped together. The Maison des Agriculture Urbaines wants to appreciate the spatial consistency between the different places and regard them as fluid. The dichotomy between nature and culture should be broken thanks to constant relations between production and consumption. In general, the statements made by the initiatives interviewed in Nantes indicate a vision of urban gardening, which does not necessarily (and also not for newer initiatives either) aspire to produce significant amounts of food within the city. Instead, they aim to build bridges and get across to people living in cities that they too can experience nature and food production

64  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros through small-​scale gardens in the immediate vicinity of where they live, and achieve a continuity between the city and nature. The garden involves inhabitants, plants, animals and people, and turns the hybridized city into something with a noticeable blend of ingredients. As in Leipzig, they also visualized this hybridization in the form of a map (Aubry 2017). Here, a utopian plan represents a number of initiatives and organizations from the field of urban agriculture in Nantes, some of which have already been mentioned. The spatial dynamics which come as a result of the initiatives and which lead to citizens reappropriating the lived space through the experience of gardening are illustrated in more detail. The map concentrates on visualizing the ambitions of restructuring urban spaces which the civil food networks want to realize and thus condenses the overall picture of the spatial impact of urban agricultural projects in Nantes.

3.4  Repolitizing the modern constitution Everyday life is thus streaked by contradictory tensions because it is here that the ordered and unordered, dominated and unruly sectors of life, abstract space and the possibility for differential space meet (Beveridge and Koch 2019, 150).

Comparing the two case studies increases awareness of the site-​ specific rationales which evolve from the complex situations regarding spatial structures, historical experiences, specific groups of protagonists and differing expectations of the future. In both cities, the civil food networks are reacting to the experiences of change and to the wish to adapt this change to meet their needs, while spatially articulating the “contradictory tensions”, quoted above (Beveridge and Koch 2019). With their projects, they intervene in the primarily economically driven reproduction of urban space and disrupt an urban normality structured by capitalist imperatives. In both cases, they are interested in building a network, and join forces with important players outside the urban food movement, for example with town planners, politicians and people working in the creative arts. And we still see important differences. In Leipzig, local policy after German reunification was aimed at developing the city as fast as possible towards the economic and social possibilities offered by capitalist Western cities. With their garden projects, committed civil society is countering this with a different vision of necessary transformation. Ecological issues and cooperatively reshaping food production into fair trading relationships which don’t endanger the natural resources became particularly important. In Nantes, local policy itself is becoming focused on a transition to sustainability, and places a special emphasis on public spaces. On the other hand, a dedicated civil society is putting social issues on the agenda with their garden projects, and is aiming for social cohesion and overcoming splintering urbanism. Unlike the criticisms of Alkon (2013, 667), in the Nantes cases the co-​production is not centered around middle-​class labor and consumer desires, but also incorporates the kinds of labor and everyday

Alternative food politics  65 food practices typically performed by low-​income people and people of color. In both cases, civil society interferes in the definition of what urban space is, who can interpret and design it, and whose needs in terms of using it should be taken into account. They don’t just represent the residents of the local area; they also aim at a sustainably design of urban socio-​nature taking into account distant, non-​human and future persons affected. We see the actions of urban food networks resulting in a strategy for developing civil society structures in cities that demonstrate the capacity to build resilience at the municipal level (cf. Smith and Seyfang 2013) in dealing with the challenges of the Anthropocene. Urban community gardens and CSAs are projects in which world references are created, made locally visible and corrected by rethinking, designing and networking local food production and the socio-​natural production of space. In Leipzig and Nantes they are interlinked and networked with many other organizations and movements which are concerned with a socio-​ecological redesign of life in cities. While at a global level the handling of the great challenges is often called for, but notoriously ends in always the same strategies of growth promotion, and companies globalize, but only deepen the division between winners and losers, truly innovative models of “cohabitation”, expectations and routines emerge on local grounds, intertwined with specific social, ecological and political conditions for action and with a view to global interactions. The more successful these projects are, the more they are confronted with the overall framework in which they operate. They find themselves in the area of tension between “right to the city” versus gentrification, subsistence versus green growth, and must determine their “alterity” in these tensions. On the planning side, the spaces of urban food provision and the associated relationships have only been discovered in recent years as a separate topic of spatial and planning sciences (Morgan 2015). However, at no time were cities ever passive “food consumers”, but rather they have always been places where culinary meanings are created, negotiated, changed and made a target for the producing “suppliers” (Cronon 1991). So far, however, this interaction has been characterized by mutual demarcation and instrumentalization. Civil food networks instead are looking for partnership and trust-​based relationships in the city, between city and country, and between the local and the global. According to Renting et al. (2012), the potential of this movement to change the dominant food-​from-​nowhere regime is particularly great when it assumes the character of a movement. In fact, our research shows that the participants of civic food networks share common visions, practices and strategies and their current spread can be seen as a local food movement with global aspirations. They formulate a vision of continuous change and overcoming “big food” as a symptom of a more fundamental crisis. They seem to cooperate so successfully with networks of different reach that a post-​industrial understanding of action and a collective capacity for change are gradually emerging. As we have seen, their spatial strategies include the reversal of the privatization of public spaces, the strict emphasis on environmental and social purposes and

66  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros values, the testing and staging of alternative forms of economy in which the invaluable and the unpaid are also recognized, and the visible, tangible transformation of neighborhoods. Beveridge and Koch (2019) suggest adding urban everyday politics to the conceptual repertoire of political action with regard to this type of alternative networks. Therefore, their interest is limited to those forms of political action which “confront contradictions and antagonism that are operative in urbanization. And they do so by articulating these conflicts through spatial interventions, through the realization of differential spaces, where the homogenizing forces of state and market (abstract space) are countered” (Beveridge and Koch 2019, 146). They are political because they are antagonistic towards the way current processes of urbanization unfold in the everyday and they cannot be reduced to minor acts of everyday life. Of course, it is ultimately difficult to draw a line that clearly delineates between practices as everyday acts and practices politicizing the urban everyday. (Beveridge and Koch 2019, 148) Indeed, the political character of the urban food networks is controversial, because they are organized on a very small scale, concerned with themselves, focused on a countercultural aesthetic and appear to be not broad-​based enough socially and too unsuccessful economically. By contrast, Marchart (2011, 972) is of the view that it does not matter “how big the collective, how effective the strategy, how intense the conflict, and how good (or bad) the organization” is (Marchart 2011, 972), so long as four minimal conditions of political action are fulfilled, namely collectivity (acting together), strategy (self-​conscious activity in contexts of constraints), conflictuality (confronting complicated obstacles and antagonisms) and organization (ibid.; cf. Beveridge and Koch 2019, 149) All the criteria named are met by the food networks investigated. They work together in a mutually supportive way to develop strategies for a social and ecological transformation in the local area which are in conflict with the dominant powers in the social space, and develop organized networks, associations and companies to achieve this. In the process, they follow the overarching goal of reintegrating a food industry and urban policy which has been affected by neoliberal interests into the social and ecological sphere of community-​supported relationships. As is also shown for Italian food networks, the “utilitarian-​private vision” is opposed to a “solidarity-​collective logic”, in order “to favor the development of more significant collective agency, civic engagement and political activism” based on a “shared sense of responsibility and a common idea of food citizenship” (Rossi 2017, 3). Alkon (2013, 671)  considers this “an important departure from an environmental movement focused largely on places in which humans do not live” to urban spaces where diverse people and collectivities “live, work and struggle” for our

Alternative food politics  67 common future. From this perspective, the reformulation of terrestrial food spaces in cities is not only the stage but also the object of political struggle.

Notes 1 Cf. Ville de Nantes 2018, www.nantes.fr/​home/​actualites/​a-​nantes-​et-​pas-​ailleurs/​ 2017/​top-​nantes-​vertes.html 2 Cf. www.nantes.fr/​conseil-​nature-​ville 3 One of the current projects of Machines de l’Île, which is “a completely new type of art project, which is the brainchild of François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice. The imaginary worlds of Jules Verne, the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci and the industrial past of the city of Nantes on the remarkable site of the former shipyard” (cf. www.lesmachines-​nantes.fr/​de).

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68  Cordula Kropp and Clara Da Ros Kropp, C., and C. Müller. 2018. Transformatives Wirtschaften in der urbanen Ernährungsbewegung:  Zwei Fallbeispiele aus Leipzig und München. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie 62, no. 3–​4: 187–​200. Lamine, C. 2015. Sustainability and resilience in agrifood systems: Reconnecting agriculture, food and the environment. Sociologia Ruralis 55: 41–​61. Latour, B. 2018. Down to earth:  Politics in the new climatic regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Lefebvre, H. (1974) 1991. The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. 1978. Reflections on the politics of space. In Radical geography: Alternative viewpoints on contemporary social issues, ed. R. Peet, 339–​52. London: Methuen. Lefebvre, H. 1996. Writing on cities. Oxford: Blackwell. Lohrberg, F., L. Lička, L. Scazzosi, and A. Timpe, eds. 2016. Urban agriculture Europe. Berlin: Jovis. Marchart, O. 2011. Democracy and minimal politics: The political difference and its consequences. South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 4: 965–​73. Matacena, R. 2016. Linking alternative food networks and urban food policy:  A step forward in the transition towards a sustainable and equitable food system? International Review of Social Research 6, no. 1: 49–​58. Morgan, K. 2015. Nourishing the city:  The rise of the urban food question in the Global North. Urban Studies 52, no. 8: 1379–​94. Müller, C., ed. 2011. Urban Gardening:  Über die Rückkehr der Gärten in die Stadt. Munich: oekom. Renting, H., M. Schermer, and A. Rossi. 2012. Building food democracy: Exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19, no. 3: 289–​307. Rink, D., and S. Siemund. 2016. Perforation als Leitbild für die schrumpfende Stadt? disP –​The Planning Review 52, no. 3: 50–​60. doi10.1080/​02513625.2016.1235879. Rosol, M. 2012. Community volunteering as neoliberal strategy? Green space production in Berlin. Antipode 44, no. 1: 239–​57. Rossi, A. 2017. Beyond food provisioning: The transformative potential of grassroots innovation around food. Agriculture 7, no. 6. doi:10.3390/​agriculture7010006. Sage, C. 2014. The transition movement and food sovereignty: From local resilience to global engagement in food system transformation. Journal of Consumer Culture 14, no. 2: 254–​75. Saward, M. 2010. The representative claim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, A., and G. Seyfang. 2013. Constructing grassroots innovations for sustainability. Global Environmental Change 23: 827–​9. Stierand, Ph. 2014. Speiseräume:  Die Ernährungswende beginnt in der Stadt. Munich: oekom. Utopies. 2017. Autonomie alimentaire des villes: Etat des lieux et enjeux pour la filière agro-​alimentaire française. Note de position 12. Venn, L., M. Kneafsey, L. Holloway, R. Cox, E. Dowler, and H. Tuomainen. 2006. Researching European ‘alternative’ food networks: Some methodological considerations. Area 38: 248–​58. Ville de Nantes. 2018. Complètement Nantes:  Nantes se réinvente avec vous (Supplément de Nantes Passion) (281).

4  Co-​designing  cities Urban gardening projects and the conflict between self-​determination and administrative restrictions in German cities1 Andrea Baier and Christa Müller

4.1  Introduction Fueled by diverse media environments, a growing number of politically active movements and individuals have entered the public arena in recent years through new forms of action:  they attract the attention of administrative bodies and politicians regarding food topics they consider worthy of discussion, and demand to be specifically involved in the decision-​making processes concerning urban place making, food provisioning and sustainable development. According to architecture critic and urban planner Dieter Hoffmann-​ Axthelm, this could be due to the withdrawal of individuals from the bond with the modern state (Hoffmann-​Axthelm 2016) and the “politicization of individuality” (ibid., 27). Hoffmann-​Axthelm takes the current phenomenon of “Wutbürger” (a popular neologism coined in Germany around 2010, meaning “angry citizens”) as the starting point for his discussions of democratic theory. However, the demands on state authorities also come from self-​empowered younger generations. Institutional politics has no choice but to face the growing complexities, however burdensome they may be. As Hoffmann-​ Axthelm puts it: It can only act within its own register: on the one hand, from within the contradiction of political adjustment to the mood of the majority and –​ its precise opposite –​rigid execution in conformity with administrative practice, and on the other, with a professional technique of approximate solutions that keep the social conflict of interests in balance. (ibid) This diagnosis provides a reference point for our reflections on the relationship between interventions by the new urban gardening movement and responses from local politics and authorities. Part of the “politicization of individuality” is, without doubt, the demands of a younger generation to help

70  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller shape the environment in which they live through their own involvement. In this regard, the new urban community gardens movement has shown itself to be a particular challenge to urban governance in recent years. This movement, today represented by around 650 projects in almost all larger and smaller cities in Germany,2 pursues goals that go far beyond gardening and food procurement. It turns districts green, creates open spaces for all, promotes inclusion, brings neighborhoods to life, provides consumption-​free areas, engages in environmental education, raises the issue of the relationship between urban and rural areas (or globalized industrial agriculture) and experiments with small-​scale innovations in its wastelands. Urban community gardens are some of the few places where city dwellers from a wide variety of social milieus can meet and, at least for a while, interact with each other and with urban nature. This is due to the specific design of these spaces, which enables interaction not just through people talking to each other but primarily through communal gardening and the process of collectively redeveloping derelict land (Müller 2011). Despite the evident advantages of this for the local social and environmental climate –​such as more options for experiencing nature in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods with little access to green urban spaces  –​collaboration with the municipal administrations, which usually own the land, is often complicated. For the purposes of this study, we carried out a series of qualitative interviews with activists involved in three different projects. Our aim was to discover the different reasons on both sides for getting active, and highlight some classic pitfalls in the collaboration process.3 We have been observing and supporting the new community gardens movement as part of our research at Anstiftung for many years now. This means that we have had continuous access to the field, allowing us to observe the processes over a longer period of time (Müller 2011; Baier et  al. 2013; Müller and Werner 2015; Baier and Müller 2017b).

4.2  Three case studies On the empirical basis outlined above, we selected three cases in Germany for closer study:4 1. The “Ab-​geht-​die-​Lucie” community garden began in 2013 in Lucie-​ Flechtmann-​Platz, a square in the Neustadt district in Bremen. Its origins lie in an initiative started by the residents of a shared apartment, and it is a typical example of how the new urban garden movement works. The people living in the shared apartment could see  –​from their kitchen window, as it were  –​a vacant gray space. This challenged their imagination and energy. They collected 300 signatures and submitted a “Bürgerantrag” (a form of citizens’ petition specific to certain areas of Germany) to the local council, asking for permission to grow, process and consume food locally and collectively. The petition won unanimous

Co-designing cities  71 approval from the council. A  workshop took place to develop ideas, which found great support from local residents for the idea of community gardening. The project began immediately. The city of Bremen itself describes the process of transformation as the “first grass-​roots democratic process in urban development”. Ten years earlier, the city had had the former parking lot converted into a public square, but as a result of the gray concrete slabs that had been laid there, people still avoided the area. 2. The NeuLand (“NewLand”) community garden in the Südstadt district of Cologne was founded in 2011 by a green smart mob on the site of a former brewery. The area of approximately 10,000 m² in size, owned by Bau-​und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW (a construction and real-​estate company belonging to the state of North Rhine-​Westphalia), has been run –​ on an interim basis  –​as a mobile urban community garden ever since. Various types of vegetables and regional herbs grow in rice sacks and mobile raised beds. The wasteland now falls under the planning authority of the city, which is planning to build a new garden here covering approximately 115 hectares over the next 20 years, to be known as Parkstadt Süd. The NeuLand association is involved in the community planning process with the aim of integrating certain elements of an “edible city” into the new district. 3. The Essbare Stadt Kassel e.V. (“Edible City Kassel”) initiative has actively campaigned since 2002 (and as an association since 2009) for fruit trees to be planted in public spaces with the aim of creating a productive urban landscape. With a lot of voluntary commitment and out of an enjoyment of gardening and networking, the activists establish and maintain community gardens, offer opportunities for participation in organic vegetable cultivation in the city, plant fruit trees, maintain old fruit tree stocks, arrange tree sponsorships, organize joint harvesting, juice and preserving activities, cook and dine together weekly and hold monthly meet-​ups and sometimes film evenings, workshops and lectures on the subject. It was the first so-​called “edible city” in Germany, and has inspired a growing number of similar projects in other cities. The experiences of the activists are all different, yet they also reveal similarities. Fundamentally, the activists perceive the cooperation from the authorities as ambivalent at best. They recognize that they are often met with sympathy and sometimes also receive non-​bureaucratic help from the city authorities, but overall, the general impression is that this only goes so far; in fact, only as long as it costs nothing. Sometimes employees in the park authorities are cooperative, sort things out without unnecessary red tape and let the activists know who would be the most appropriate or useful contact for them. City politicians also often express their support, provide symbolic support and welcome the political commitment on the part of the activists, as well as the benefits that the project may have for the city’s image. But they

72  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller do so without wanting to commit themselves to actually supporting it. The management level of the city administration often proves itself cumbersome and defensive.

4.3  Co-​designing and transforming cities The activists often have the impression that the authorities do not properly understand the scope and importance of their projects. For the people involved, this is more than “a bit of gardening”. They see themselves as taking on the job of the local authorities, and they demand to be involved in co-​ designing and transforming cities with a view to sustainability. They complain that the municipal authorities and politicians appreciate their involvement only as long as there are no other plans for using the land at the moment. Those responsible for city planning welcome the fact that environmental education is taking place there, but they disagree that the city could be redesigned on this basis, as they believe that the responsibility for this task lies solely with themselves. The fact that municipal authorities and politicians propose sites for urban gardening projects that are located on the outskirts of the city suggests to the activists that the former do not understand what the latter are trying to achieve. But most of all, the activists are bothered by their perceived lack of power –​the power to take action that they claim for themselves: “They want us to do their work for them but we are not allowed to make decisions about anything or be really involved  –​and when in doubt, they take decisions without consulting us and which go against our interests” (J. Levold, interview, D.  Hohengarten and J.  Levold, NeuLand community garden, Cologne, January 2017). “They do not see us as partners who actually do something.” This is the evaluation, but it is immediately qualified with the following: “Of course, there are some people in the municipal administration who do” (D. Hohengarten, interview, D.  Hohengarten and J.  Levold, NeuLand community garden, Cologne, January 2017). The activists, who have been operating in Cologne for the last six years, still complain that they are seen as supplicants rather than partners in a joint effort. The city authorities expect them to submit their concepts, but then they fail to respond to them. They are invited to attend meetings at the last minute and are expected to react immediately, but then the appointments are not kept. Politicians do not attend the round tables that the activists propose, or take up the committee posts designed for them, because the issues seem unimportant to them and food issues are still considered “ ‘foreign’ to the planning system” (Morgan 2015, 1380).

4.4  Different rationalities and time horizons When civil society activists and city planners meet, it is almost inevitable that differences, misunderstandings and conflicts will arise due to the different

Co-designing cities  73 logic, perspectives and self-​perceptions of each party. In particular, the two sides differ fundamentally in terms of their time dimension: while the projects wait impatiently for notifications, the start of construction work or simply feedback, there is a backlog of procedures within the administration that are then dealt with on the basis of urgency. Municipal administration is an example of the “rational-​legal type of authority” described by Max Weber, characterized by “the belief in the legality of established orders and the right of instruction” (Weber 1972, 124). Opposed to this is a growing number of young urban activists who are fighting for the power to shape their environment. Their actions are guided, not by the logic of planning or procedural systems, but by their insights into specific problems, things that they wish to change immediately, with their own hands. These are experimental interventions, sometimes involving “performance art”, predicated upon the idea of getting involved in urban planning and the joy of shaping and changing things. When they take action, the activists venture boldly into areas that lie under the authority of city planning and administration departments. They take over public spaces –​often neglected or derelict areas –​and create something new that benefits all who visit. They believe this gives them a kind of right to be recognized as partners in the design and shaping process. Consequently, they expect to be treated as equal partners by the city authorities. This expectation is rarely met, however, not least due to the generation gap: representatives of Generations Y and Z, called upon by their communities to get involved with shaping their environment, to be creative and not simply to accept things as they are, run headlong into administrative workers socialized in quite different contexts, for whom the idea of sharing creative power is still a long way off.

4.5  Achieving the power to act Hannah Arendt postulates that power arises out of speaking and acting in the “space of appearance” (Arendt’s own translation of the German Erscheinungsraum; 1972). Of course, Arendt was not talking about gardening, planting, repairing and upcycling. But one can still read subsistence-​oriented interventions in public space as an intervening action aimed at changing that space, and hence as a genuine expression of the political. Politics here is expressed through direct action, as it changes the space not only symbolically (Müller and Werner 2015). The moment that things other than shopping or driving a vehicle are enacted in the space, that space is transformed and a vision and imagination open up for other uses like local food production and interactions with earthly grounds –​uses that are both radically in the present and yet at the same time point toward a different future for the city. In her Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Judith Butler expands on Hannah Arendt’s concept of political action, adding the dimension of “bodies in space” (Butler 2015, 38). Butler argues that even the spaces in which bodies are physically based can be political (Butler 2015).

74  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller Urban community gardens, through their very presence in the public space, demand that one reflects on the meaning and purpose of the current use of inner-​city  land. Procedures that are not directly implemented and which involve long waiting times are no good to community gardeners with their “actionist” approach. The proverbially slow-​grinding wheels of administration work on a different timescale than the fast maneuvers typical of activists, with their open-​ended, performative and experimental forms of action. Bremen resident Eva Kirschenmann from the “Ab-​ geht-​ die-​ Lucie” community garden commented as follows after three detailed workshops on space design:  “The planning office made an effort, but in reality, the interesting questions were ignored  –​it was a Make a Wish event” (interview, E.  Kirschenmann, Ab geht die Lucie community garden, Bremen, January 2017). The result of the participation procedure in Bremen was a sketch, with no schedule or implementation plan. The important question of investigating the contamination of the site remained unanswered, nor was the question of the groundwater clarified. These problems, which are of central importance for every garden project, the procedure concluded, should be dealt with later. The last workshop took place in October 2015. Since then, the activists have heard nothing more officially. Eva Kirschenmann is sympathetic: “It’s not due to ill will on the part of the city –​they’re just not really aware that people outside their office have no idea of what’s going on” (ibid.) In the near future, things will start moving again. The city wants to tackle the question of removing the hard surface covering the ground and transfer the square into the hands of the association. The association would then become the tenant and operator of the site and would have to take over duties such as road safety, winter maintenance and management of the square. That is not exactly what the “Lucies” wanted:  they see themselves as citizens to whom the square belongs in any case. As they see it, they are already doing part of the city’s job by revitalizing the square –​and have been doing for some time –​so they do not understand why they should now take on full responsibility for it. Through their independent “greening” of the square, the activists want to change people’s understanding of what can be done in public places and what the role of food sovereignity and subsistence could be. They want to shape, rebuild and rearrange things, and in so doing define their relationship with the surrounding city. They demand real participation, which for them must involve a redistribution of creative power. They do not want to become site operators.

4.6  Lack of recognition The case of Bremen makes the different positions clear. It shows, among other things, how inexperienced all the parties concerned still are in dealing with

Co-designing cities  75 each other. From the perspective of the urban gardeners, in one instance the city wants to transfer too much responsibility to them, but in other instances it gives them too little freedom to act. The city authorities, operating according to the principles of rationality, are not in a position to simply recognize urban designers who, in their view, lack legitimacy. Often, they do not yet trust the “new kids on the block”, as can be seen from the temporary or short-​term usage contracts that they issue them. This forces the garden projects to repeatedly submit new applications, which takes a lot of time and effort, and to always keep their plantations mobile and temporary. When it comes to areas in so-​called “socially disadvantaged” parts of the city, by contrast, the cities themselves sometimes approach the garden activists  –​as in the case of the “Wesertor” garden project in Kassel. The garden is on a busy street, opposite a discount store with the obligatory parking lot in front of it. The people living in the area have low incomes and a number of problems, including issues with alcohol. The 2,000-​m2 area only had one playground: “No one wanted to go there. At best a couples of winos sometimes sat on the bench there” (interview, K. Winnemuth, Essbare Stadt Kassel e.V., Kassel, January 2017). This was the first time that the city itself had approached the Essbare Stadt Kassel association. The garden group took on the challenge of revitalizing a neglected, run-​down area and, in so doing, revitalizing the neighborhood and thus transforming a (theoretical) common good into a (real) common. There was great joy when, during the first gardening season, it was announced that the gardening group was also eligible for funds from the Soziale Stadt (“Social City”) initiative for further raised beds and a tool shed. That the money did not actually materialize at first was seen by the gardeners as symptomatic of the city’s dealings with civil initiatives. From their perspective, this is what happens: first they submit a concept, then they rework it as requested, then it is held by the authorities for weeks before anything happens. Finally, the city hires a building company to carry out the remodeling work. The gardeners believe that they could easily have done the necessary work themselves. They are also annoyed that there is money available to hire a building company, but none to pay for their education work in the area, for example. In conclusion, Kassel resident Karsten Winnemuth notes that he has developed “a healthy basic suspicion” (ibid.) after many years of experience with city planners and administrators. But he also recognizes that good relationships have developed with certain bodies and specific people –​ and that it is worth sticking at it. In any case, he says, they have now found a way to work with the Parks Authority in the “StadtFruchtgeNuss” project: “Our approach now is always to present our projects to the Ortsbeiräte [local councils]. They are always very enthusiastic and even make funding available  –​and then we coordinate with the Gartenamt [Parks Authority]” (ibid.).

76  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller This vignette shows that the activists’ experimental approach is not confined to land management, but that learning processes also occur when dealing with municipal governance, in this case, the interaction between local political and administrative bodies. The activists figure out that the municipality itself is not a monolithic bloc, but is divided into different departments and divisions, some of which act in opposite directions (a classic case is the conflict between business departments and environmental departments) or may compete with one another and in so doing block each other. Individual employees, as well as entire departments within the municipal administration, can, despite their goodwill, get caught in the crossfire and fail to realize their declared goals. It also happens that individuals within the administration understand the projects, their goals and convictions and want to follow their rationale, but their employment regulations do not permit them to do so. And still, urban food procurement falls outside the scope of existing competences.

4.7  Processes of negotiation The activists in Cologne also found that municipal decision-​making processes should be regarded as “polycentric events” that do not follow a single logical system. The community gardeners from the NeuLand project got involved in the citizen participation procedure for the design of a new area of the city, including a park near the River Rhine, after being explicitly invited to do so. They went along with the procedural rules, which explicitly provided for experimental uses and participation procedures for generating new ideas. “We thought that new, modern types of parks could be developed, and that on the edges of the parks there could be productive green areas –​participatory green areas –​especially next to residential areas” (J. Levold, interview, D. Hohengarten and J. Levold, NeuLand community garden, Cologne, January 2017). However, it turned out that traditional industrial “greening” concepts were ultimately given preference over post-​industrial uses of urban green areas. “This is a stark rejection of all the ideas we have contributed over the last two years” (ibid.). When it then also turned out that the area for which they had already submitted an intermediate-​use concept had been given on the quiet to a private parking operator –​ignoring the agreed procedure and contrary to the environmental and social criteria defined by the city itself –​they felt that they had been ignored due to the perceived asymmetrical power relationship. Trust-​ based cooperation here appears to have been jeopardized. There is, it would seem, a fear that the initiatives will establish themselves and then refuse to release the land again. But the NeuLand project has stressed its willingness to move on from the beginning: mobility is part of its identity. It is true that the activists want to anchor urban gardening in the new city quarter. But, to their mind, they are not pursuing this in their own private interests, but in the interests of the entire city.

Co-designing cities  77 The municipal administrators and the activists often have different opinions regarding the overriding importance of the projects and their importance for the common good. Community gardeners are often accused of having personal interests in the city’s land. Public space must be accessible to all, it is pointed out –​and this is one of the reasons that urban gardening is still often viewed with suspicion. However, many of the garden projects are in places that were previously inaccessible to the public or which were not previously perceived as public spaces. In addition, they are open to everyone and deal with topics of general interest, such as food sovereignty, sustainability and the resilience of the city. Thus, the city planner Ella von der Haide concludes that urban gardens do not promote the privatization of public space, but rather counteract it on the grounds mentioned above (von der Haide 2014, 9–​10). In the “invasive” practices of activists, however, a lack of simultaneity does exist. This is uncomfortable for all parties involved, but can ultimately trigger development processes. Urban gardens not only collide with the process of privatization, they collide with traditional administration and the working areas of the various sectoral planning in which community gardens or joint food production do not play a role. They clearly represent a new type of collective.

4.8  Intermediary bodies Meanwhile, a growing number of cities have recognized the positive effects of the projects. To ensure productive cooperation between city planners and projects, new cultures of communication must be developed. Inclusive planning procedures, such as those developed by the “PlanBude” in Hamburg, are still a rarity (Ziemer 2016). The relationship between civil society and state actors not only suffers from problems of communication and fundamental (and sometimes aesthetic) differences regarding the design of public spaces. We also find a fundamentally different understanding of the urban economy. The subsistence-​oriented urban gardeners, who want to create commerce-​free common spaces, come face to face with public administrations that are instructed by politicians to sell off public goods and land to the highest-​bidding private investor in tender processes (Harvey 2013). The independent urban designers cannot compete as they do not have any money. What they can contribute is their ability to transform spaces into productive and sustainable places and develop (and execute) ideas that respond to pressing current and future issues. From the point of view of the activists, what is needed is a new public procurement policy for urban areas and buildings, and for tenders that go to the highest bidder to be replaced by tenders that go to the best concept. Such a paradigm shift would be based on a recognition of non-​monetary value production, which could become the central prerequisite of a successful relationship between civil society and the city administration/​politics.

78  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller However, there is as yet a lack of both the necessary political will and the institutions that could provide the necessary “translation services” between administrators and activists. The citizens’ participation agencies and food councils that are currently being set up everywhere would be a good place to start the process of reassessment. Anstiftung has also been endeavoring for many years to act as a “translator” between administrators and activists, playing the role of intermediary with an open mind.5 The research we carry out provides a framework for the new urban activities, and tries to understand them from the perspective of social theory. We support, connect and advise the projects, and document practical knowledge and experience with cooperation between administrators and projects. We then feed this back into the project landscape, for example, through workshops and practical recommendations on topics such as how to successfully communicate with authorities, contract and approval procedures, insurance, handling research queries, infrastructure and the functioning of municipal governance structures. For instance, in our “hacking politics” webinar, participants are required to “deconstruct” the system of administration, reassemble it, interact with it and observe its reactions so that they can better understand it. Thereby, a re-​ordering of local place making and global concerns is inevitable. “Intermediarity” at different levels –​and here we come back to our initial point  –​could become an important instrument of democratization processes at the local level. In the past, self-​empowered activists (e.g. the new urban gardeners) lacked a suitable institutional counterpart in Germany. But that is no longer entirely the case. The German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR 2016) recently published a guideline for self-​made cities in close collaboration with relevant activists. This officially sanctioned “Primer on Open Space” quotes a line loosely based on the German version of the title song from the Pippi Longstocking TV series:  “We’ll make the city the way we like it!” The very existence of such a primer leads us to a number of conclusions. On the one hand, it confirms the need of state authorities to legitimize themselves by opening themselves up to the needs of the new food movements. At the same time, it shows that modern forms of collaboration already exist. In Berlin, for example, regular workshops are held by the Senate Department for Urban Development on urban gardening, on the initiative of the projects. Similarly, Stuttgart has set up a coordination center for urban gardening, located in the Office for Planning and Urban Renewal, and Essen and Munich have appointed official contacts in their Parks Departments. Even if the collaboration in many cases is not yet fully satisfactory from the viewpoint of the activists, quite understandably, things have clearly started moving. The stereotypes of government officials systematically blocking initiatives on the one hand, and activists anarchically intervening on the other, are beginning to fade away. This could lead to a new productive space

Co-designing cities  79 emerging and, with the inclusion of further stakeholders, the planning of urban public services in the interest of the common good being addressed.

Notes 1 A first version of this chapter was published as Baier and Müller (2017a). 2 “Die Urbanen Gemeinschaftsgärten im Überblick.” Anstiftung. Accessed December 7, 2018. 3 In this chapter, we are concerned explicitly with the subjective perceptions of the new urban activists. For this reason, we did not ask the local administrators for their reaction to the activists’ statements about them, but rather reconstructed the positions of the administrators from the narratives of the activists, so to speak. 4 We carried out a series of qualitative interviews in January 2017:  with Eva Kirschenmann (interview, E. Kirschenmann, Ab geht die Lucie community garden, Bremen, January 2017); with Dorothea Hohengarten and Judith Levold (interview, D.  Hohengarten and J.  Levold, NeuLand community garden, Cologne, January 2017); and with Karsten Winnemuth (interview, K.  Winnemuth, Essbare Stadt Kassel e.V., Kassel, January 2017). 5 “Praxiswissen Urbane Gärten.” Anstiftung. Accessed April 25, 2017. http://​ anstiftung.de/​urbane-​gaerten/​praxisseiten-​urbane-​gaerten

References Arendt, H. 1972. Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben. Munich: Piper. Baier, A., and C. Müller. 2017a. Co-​designing cities:  Urban gardening projects and the conflict between self-​determination and administrative restrictions. In New stakeholders of urban change: A question of culture and attitude? ed. H. M. Berger, and G. Ziemer, 47–​59. Vol. 4 of Perspectives in Metropolitan Research. Berlin: Jovis. Baier, A., and C. Müller. 2017b. Vom Haus der Eigenarbeit zur Stadt der Commonisten: Zum Forschungsverständnis der Anstiftung. In Soziale Innovationen für nachhaltigen Konsum, Innovation und Gesellschaft, ed. M. Jaeger-​ Erben, J. Rückert-​John, and M. Schäfer, 243–​62. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Baier, A., C. Müller, and K. Werner. 2013. Stadt der Commonisten: Neue urbane Räume des Do it yourself. Bielefeld: transcript. BBSR (Bundesinstitut für Bau-​, Stadt-​und Raumforschung). 2016. Freiraumfibel:  Wissenswertes über die selbstgemachte Stadt! Bonn: BBSR. Butler, J. 2015. Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. 2013. Rebellische Städte:  Vom Recht auf Stadt zur urbanen Revolution. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Hoffmann-​Axthelm, D. 2016. Lokaldemokratie und europäisches Haus: Roadmap für eine geöffnete Republik. Bielefeld: transcript. Morgan, K. 2015. Nourishing the city:  The rise of the urban food question in the Global North. Urban Studies 52, no. 8: 1379–​94. Müller, C., ed. 2011. Urban Gardening:  Über die Rückkehr der Gärten in die Stadt. Munich: oekom. Müller, C., and K. Werner. 2015. Neuer Urbanismus: Die New School grüner politischer Utopie. INDES. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft 2015, no. 2: 31–​45.

80  Andrea Baier and Christa Müller von der Haide, E. 2014. Die neuen Gartenstädte: Urbane Gärten, Gemeinschaftsgärten und Urban Gardening in Stadt-​und Freiraumplanung. Munich: Anstiftung & ertomis. Weber, M. 1972. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft:  Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie. Tübingen: Mohr. Ziemer, G. 2016. Stadt gemeinsam entwickeln:  Neue Formen der Zusammenarbeit am Beispiel der Hamburger PlanBude. In Die Welt reparieren:  Open Source und Selbermachen als postkapitalistische Praxis, ed. A. Baier, T. Hansing, C. Müller, and K. Werner, 312–​18. Bielefeld: transcript.

Part II

Transformative food economies

5  Food cooperatives as diverse re-​embedding  forces A multiple case study in Belgium Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc

5.1  Introduction In response to the social and environmental consequences of the industrial food system (Blay-​Palmer 2008; Foster et al. 2006; Kjærnes and Torjusen 2012; Konefal et al. 2005; Oosterveer and Sonnenfeld 2012), bottom-​up initiatives, which question the structural relationships between producers and consumers and agro-​food practices, have flourished on the ground and gained interest as objects of study (Goodman et al. 2012; Hinrichs 2014; O’Hara and Stagl 2001). In particular, food cooperatives have brought together citizens, producers, entrepreneurs, distributors and other actors to build alternative, sustainable, local food systems along the entire food supply chain (Berge et al. 2016; Spaargaren et  al. 2012; Starr 2010). Through their “promise of difference” they have positioned themselves as alternatives to “conventional” capitalist food systems (Le Velly 2017). Such local initiatives are sometimes presented as autonomous spaces of resistance against the use of food-​to-​market principles, such as the pursuit of profit and subservience to the forces of supply and demand (Kloppenburg et al. 1996; Le Velly 2017). In this chapter we explore the capacities of such organisations to challenge the dominant principles of the economic system, and—​at their particular level—​to redefine this system according to their values and goals. To achieve this purpose, we focus on identifying and characterising this type of economic activism on the ground in three diverse cooperatives, i.e. food cooperatives led by consumers, producers and investors, which are active in the food distribution sector. The wider theoretical context of this chapter is based on the work of Polanyi ([1944] 2001). Polanyi argues that a “Double Movement”, i.e. a dialectical process of marketisation—​ “disembeddedness”—​ and the reactions that push against this marketisation, shape modern economies, as society attempts to “re-​embed” the economy and subordinate it to other societal structures. Starting from the assumption that our unsustainable dominant agro-​food systems results from a “disembedded” economy (O’Hara and Stagl 2001), the question tackled in this chapter can be formulated as follows: “To what extent do food cooperatives help ‘re-​embed’ the economy in society?”

84  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc What distinguishes cooperatives from conventional food systems is a set of cooperative values and principles, as defined by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). These principles are implemented across different dimensions via different means and to different degrees. Such alternative food systems are hybrid objects that develop a multitude of practices through the rules they set up: some of them can be considered as “alternative” and others as “conventional” (Le Velly 2017). In this chapter we explore the hypothesis that food cooperatives re-​embed the economy differently because they apply the cooperative principles to their own practices in different ways. In particular, we examine how two of these principles—​member economic participation and concern for community—​are implemented in the economic practices of three food cooperatives in Belgium. Alongside the concept of embeddedness, we use these two principles as lenses through which we examine to what extent the three cooperatives reproduce or challenge the logic of the market. In other words, to what extent do their practices pave the way for an alternative economy or contribute to the perpetuation of this economy (De Leener and Totté 2017)? This chapter is organised as follows. First, we define the concept of embeddedness by differentiating its two meanings in Polanyi’s thinking. Then, starting from cooperative principles, we provide two criteria of analysis to apply this concept at the level of food cooperatives—​related to distribution of profit and their relationships with suppliers. The three cases and the methodology are explained in sections 5.4 and 5.5. Section 5.6 examines both criteria for each case, showing that cooperative principles are implemented in a diversified way. In section 5.7, we offer new research hypotheses by discussing ideal types of practices developed by food cooperatives and their potential to help re-​embed the economy. Finally, we conclude by highlighting some avenues for future research.

5.2  Disembeddedness and re-​embeddedness Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness is ambiguous and has—​at the very least—​ a dual meaning (Gazier and Mendell 2009 ; Gemici 2008; Le Velly 2008; Machado 2010; Montgomery 1998; Sonnino 2007; Vančura 2011). Basically, it may refer (1) to how economic phenomena are shaped by social structures and networks, or (2)  to the level of market forces in society (Gazier and Mendell 2009; Gemici 2008; Le Velly 2008). Scholars frequently employ the first meaning of embeddedness as the basis for a conceptual tool which theorises local food systems (e.g. Hinrichs 2000; Larder et al. 2014; Seyfang 2006; Winter 2003). This use of embeddedness implies that any economic action is embedded in social networks and structures. For example, some studies show how alternative food networks help “re-​establish relationships of trust and accountability between food producers and consumers” (Sonnino 2013,  2). From this perspective, “disembeddedness” makes no sense, as it would mean that an economy can

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  85 exist without social structures. Indeed, both a very liberal market and a highly regulated market are “embedded” (Le Velly 2008). However, for the purposes of this chapter we will use the second meaning of embeddedness. In The Great Transformation ([1944] 2001), Polanyi argues that capitalist societies have been shaped by a “Double Movement” consisting of two parallel dynamics: disembeddedness and embeddedness of the economy in society. On the one hand, society is increasingly organised along the principles of a self-​regulating market economy, which translates into a decline in social control over economic actions. On the other hand, in response to these deregulatory forces and the disruption of traditional social structures, Polanyi sees a spontaneous countermovement of society that seeks to (re)integrate economic processes into social structures (Block 2008). If we consider the second meaning of “embeddedness”, an economy is “embedded” when the market forces in society are weak (Le Velly 2008). For Polanyi, in pre-​capitalist societies, activities were not oriented towards the search for profit, even when markets existed, but were guided by non-​economic factors such as social, cultural and political requirements. From the 19th century onwards, the relationship between society and the economy changed. Social relations were being organised on the basis of economic motivations, such as the pursuit of profit and the fear of hunger, that is, they were “directed by market prices and nothing but market prices” (Polanyi [1944] 2001, 45). Even though producing and selling commodities are necessarily driven by a variety of aims, the profit aim is overriding in a disembedded, market economy. Prices are determined “purely” by the no-​holds-​barred confrontation between supply and demand. Producers face competitive pressure, which keeps prices low. In Polanyi’s view, proponents of a market economy think that “[c]‌ompetition is always beneficial, following a linear increase, always required in higher quantities, to perfection. The more competition, the better” (Groyer 2015, 227). Finally, a market economy is characterised by the breadth of its scope: nearly all goods and services are exchangeable on markets. For Polanyi, land, labour and money, in particular, are commodified in a market economy (Brechin and Fenner 2017; Cunningham 2005). Polanyi considers that an economy disembedded from society is an ideal that can never be truly achieved because of the countermovements that are necessarily created in response. A true “market economy” never exists, only a “movement” that gradually establishes the institutions required for such an economy. This “movement” simultaneously contends with a response from society which is oriented in the opposite direction. Whereas in The Great Transformation Polanyi views fascism as a dangerous countermovement, the response from society can be illustrated with other examples. One of them is that, against the hegemony of capitalist enterprises, alternative forms of enterprise whose property rights are not detained by profit-​ seeking investors—​such as cooperatives—​emerge (Laville 2008). The three cooperatives we analyse in this chapter constitute relevant examples of this last type of countermovement.

86  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc The second meaning of embeddedness invites us to pragmatically study the levels of market forces—​as well as countermovements—​in society (Le Velly 2008). Inspired by Bohannan and Dalton (1965), Le Velly identifies three criteria for assessing the degree of embeddedness of a specific economy:  “to what extent (1) are prices the result of a free confrontation between supply and demand, (2) does material survival go through market participation, and (3)  are economic decisions guided by the remuneration induced by market prices?” (Le Velly 2008). Embeddedness here is a macro-​concept. In this chapter we will endeavour to examine it at a micro-​level by assessing to what extent small-​scale initiatives help re-​embed the economy. For this purpose, in the following section we will define criteria that apply to food cooperatives in order to analyse our three cases.

5.3  Food cooperatives as diverse re-​embedding forces The ICA (n.d.) defines a cooperative as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-​controlled enterprise”. Unlike purely capitalistic enterprises, which are profit-​driven, cooperatives are in principle driven by social values. In this sense, cooperatives may potentially contribute to the re-​embeddedness of the economy. The ICA define a set of core values:  “self-​help, self-​responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity”, which are embodied in seven core cooperative principles. In this chapter we explore how three Belgian food cooperatives contribute to move the economy towards re-​ embeddedness by encompassing these principles in their own values and practices. After a careful examination of the collected data, we chose to concentrate on two of the seven cooperative principles:  “member economic participation” and “concern for community”. The first principle refers to equitable ownership and democratic control by members. It also prescribes that profit distribution should be limited and surpluses should be allocated by members to certain specific purposes decided democratically. The second one implies that cooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members. The relation between the former principle and embeddedness is quite straightforward: the manner in which it is absorbed into the rules of the cooperative influences the potential profit-​maximising behaviours of shareholders. The meaning of the “concern for community” principle is less obvious. This principle—​the most recent inclusion by the ICA, in 1995—​mainly reflects the importance of core social values such as “caring for others”, “social responsibility”, “solidarity”, “equity” and “equality” in the spirit and practices of the cooperative (MacPherson 2012). One way to examine the relations between the practices of a food cooperative and the “concern for community” principle is to examine the nature of the interactions between the consumers and

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  87 producers—​or, more generally, suppliers—​in the context of the cooperative. We saw above that, in a disembedded economy, such economic interactions are marked by strong competition between producers in order to sell their products to consumers—​the antithesis of the social values mentioned above. Therefore, these two principles appear very relevant in the analysis of the “re-​ embedding potential” of our three cooperatives. From these principles we derive two criteria to compare how food cooperatives contribute to the embeddedness of the economy in society. We do this by asking the following questions in relation to: (1) member economic participation:  to what extent can a cooperative prevent profit-​maximising behaviours by its members? and (2) concern for community: to what extent can a cooperative prevent competition among suppliers?

5.4  Cases Our three case studies of food distribution cooperatives in Belgium are led by different types of stakeholders: (1) Food’equity was started by producers and includes consumers in its governing bodies; (2)  Green&good is driven by entrepreneurs; and (3)  CitizenMarket is a consumer-​based participatory cooperative. The names of the three cooperatives have been changed for this paper. Food’equity started life as a food cooperative in 2011 with the purpose of creating “an alternative to the dominant economic model, to regain our right to food sovereignty and to ensure a healthy and nutritious food for all, … for the good of the human and the natural and social environment” (as stated on their website). It sells products from 34 local producers and food-​processing enterprises that, along with more than 600 consumers, own the cooperative. Their project has strong social and environmental commitments. The food produced complies with higher environmental standards than mainstream organic food. It adheres to a set of ecological and agronomic principles decided by producers and formalised in a charter accepted by all members of the cooperative. Food’equity aims to offer these products at fair prices for producers, food-​processing companies and consumers, thereby promoting the maintenance and development of existing organic farms and the creation of new ones. Furthermore, the cooperative provides an opportunity for low-​ skilled unemployed workers to re-​enter the labour market. Green&good is developing a network of food stores in urban areas in order to promote “the development of a sustainable, organic and local agriculture for the benefit of the maximum number of people” (taken from their website). The cooperative was founded in 2013 by two entrepreneurs and three families of investors. At the beginning, “the idea was to make an organic store with a trendy and modern image, to break the image of austere organic shops reserved for activists” (co-​founder A, interview, 5 October 2016). In 3 years, six stores have opened in Belgium. The cooperative is growing rapidly with the help of the capital brought in mainly by investors and also by

88  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc standard members. The investors and managers insist that they want to act fast to increase the number of shops and generate a sufficient demand that will make an impact on the production side, thereby attaining their transformative objectives as soon as possible. Based on the observation that there is not enough non-​industrial organic production to meet demand, they aim to contribute to the development of sustainable food production chains in Belgium. CitizenMarket started in 2015 with the aim of creating a participatory and cooperative supermarket run by its customers. Their inspiration was Park Slope Food, a New  York cooperative supermarket which has been in existence since 1973. The cooperative aims to create an alternative to large-​ scale food retailing by establishing a one-​stop shop that corresponds to the social and environmental aspirations of its members. In December 2017, the cooperative had a 500-​m2 commercial surface, five employees and more than 1,500 members, and these last numbers are continually rising. The role of each member of the cooperative is threefold: (1) by acquiring a stake in the cooperative, the member becomes a co-​owner of the supermarket; (2)  each regular member is also a volunteer and must work 2 hours 45 minutes every four weeks in the supermarket; and (3) most members are also customers—​ they must be members to shop.

5.5  Methodology For Food’equity, four semi-​ structured interviews were undertaken with the founder of the cooperative, two producers and one consumer between December 2016 and May 2017. The total duration of the interviews was 3 hours 30 minutes. In addition, 3 hours of non-​participant observation was carried out at a general meeting in March 2017. Attendance at the meeting provided an opportunity to hold conversations with members. Finally, the website of the coop and newsletters were consulted. For Green&good, the data collection method was eight personal, semi-​ structured interviews with the founders (two), and an investor and employees (five) between October 2016 and June 2017. We also examined the website and the newsletters distributed by the coop. Furthermore, in August 2017 we interviewed a project officer for a group of pork producers with whom they collaborate. The total duration of the interviews was 8 hours. For CitizenMarket we collected data mostly through participant observation. Between March 2017 and December 2017, one of us participated in ten work shifts, each lasting 2 hours 45 minutes. Participation allowed us to observe the functioning of the coop and conduct informal conversations with members and employees showing varying degrees of commitment, through which we collected the same kind of information as for the two above cooperatives. We also observed the general meetings that took place in March, June, October and December 2017. Finally, we collected data available on the coop website, and in newsletters and documents sent out to members.

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  89 The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each interview transcript and set of field notes was scrutinized and codified as part of a qualitative analysis. We then applied the analytical approach which was developed from the concept of embeddedness and cooperative principles.

5.6  Results In this section, we examine each case against the two criteria discussed in section 5.3. 5.6.1  Food’equity 5.6.1.1  Member economic participation To become members, producers need to buy shares worth 500 euros and consumers need to buy shares worth 100 euros. To avoid any economic power imbalance, it is not possible to acquire shares worth more than 5,000 euros. Only a low level of investment was needed to start the project. Food’equity acquired their main building by relying heavily on public subsidies and financial contribution from consumers—​but, according to the founder, the project could have existed even without this building—​and the first employees were hired with the surplus generated by the cooperative. The founder of the project is quite critical of cooperatives that put large investments into play: They say “we want to finance the transition”. First of all, for me the transition mustn’t be financed! So it’s not about transition, it’s about capitalism pure and simple. If we want to finance another model, we’ll do it a different way, with people’s energy, so we’ll look for citizens who want to finance stuff, it’s the community that finances stuff, and that’ll enable us to develop tools which belong to the citizens and which are handed over to the community. (Founder, interview, 22 December 2016) This consumer participation in the capital is appreciated by producers: Financially they help us, because the cooperative doesn’t really make profits as such, but with the capital contribution from all the members, we make very good money. All our invoices to the cooperative are paid within the week. It’s kind of a donation from the consumer members. (Producer, interview, 12 May 2017) Holding shares in the cooperative does not bring financial gain: surplus distribution is not provided for in the statutes of the cooperative. The only financial reward for consumer members is a 5% discount on purchases. This type of benefit is explicitly stipulated by the ICA in the “member economic participation” principle: “Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following

90  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc purposes: developing their co-​operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-​operative” (ICA, n.d., our emphasis). Finally, there may of course be an economic aspect which explains why producers join the cooperative, as they benefit from this consumer solidarity. But, as above, it cannot be equated with capitalist profit-​maximising behaviours, since the potential additional revenues are not related to producer participation in the capital. Furthermore, prices are fixed in order to allow producers to earn a decent income, but no more; there is no profit maximisation. 5.6.1.2  Concern for community By participating and supporting the cooperative, consumers and producers are involved in a common project, which includes offering a fair remuneration to the cooperative’s local, organic producers. Producers collectively decide the prices of the products sold to avoid competition between farmers. These prices are necessarily accepted by consumers; there is no negotiation or pressure to lower the prices. The price is not calculated according to what consumers are willing to pay for the product, but according to the cost incurred by the producers, so that covering the cost allows them to earn a decent income: The price we set is the price that the producer needs to be able to make a living. So the price is levelled off and compared to other prices, and then we decide the profit margin in relation to the cooperative’s operating costs: payroll, etc. … We set the prices together. So for vegetables, for example, there is a type of solidarity because we refuse any speculation from a producer at the expense of another. The carrots are everyone’s carrots, from Food’equity, and everyone is together. In this way we don’t exclude a producer if he or she has a blemished product. We want to avoid customers saying “I don’t want to buy those carrots any more. I want to buy Roger’s carrots from now on”. The solidarity is there. (Founder, interview, 22 December 2016) The cooperation between consumers and producers fosters solidarity, mutual transparency and an absence of competition between producers. We can illustrate this by producers who sell and buy products to each other at a fair price in order to be able to sell a wide variety of products to consumers who come and buy at the farm and/​ or to their other distributors. Producers are then in a position to develop alternative production potential: For the products where my colleagues are better than me, I prefer to buy them through the cooperative than produce them myself. We’re more efficient when we don’t have to do everything ourselves. We can refocus on what

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  91 suits us best. … We’ve developed an interactive website where everyone is invited to indicate their stocks. We can see what’s available from other producers. It’s used by the cooperative for their supply but also to enable them to order goods from other partner producers. (Producer, interview, 12 May 2017) 5.6.2  Green&good 5.6.2.1  Member economic participation There is no rule limiting surplus distribution by Green&good. One of the founders explained that they do not want to set hard limits, because “if one year we want to distribute 10% because it’s been an exceptional year, we want to be able to do that” (co-​founder A, interview, 5 October 2016). One of the main investors explained that “the goal is not to be inconsiderate; it is simply that we’ll try to make a reasonable profit.  The ‘reasonable’ is around 6%” (interview, 1 June 2017). In 2017, the economic participation of members was very unequal, as three main investors owned the majority of the shares. The remainder were mostly held by the managers, a few producers, the employees (who are offered shares after working 1 year at Green&good) and finally, a few hundred sympathisers/​ consumers. In the long term, the main investors endeavour to dilute their ownership by progressively selling shares to other stakeholders, in particular, to suppliers and franchised shops. Their plan is to progressively relinquish control of the cooperative and hand it over to the community: they use a mechanism that strongly encourages producers to buy shares at the end of the first year of the commercial relationship for an amount equivalent to a small fraction (approximately 1%) of the joint annual turnover. Investors do not claim to be profit-​oriented, but they hope that their capital will grow, hence allowing them to make some gains when the commercial relationship comes to an end: We shouldn’t be naïve. It’s the investors who are into the project, even if they don’t expect a return—​and I’m one of the investors. As a founder I put a lot of money into it at the beginning. The goal is not to make money … but let’s not be naïve; the goal is to be able to leave with a bigger amount of capital. But this is really a different stance, in the sense that we do not define budgets based on the profitability of capital; we never decided on a rate of return that would guide investment decisions or that kind of stuff. On the one hand, what we believe is that the project is potentially successful and that in the end, if it works it will be able to produce a return on investment. On the other hand, …, if we want stakeholders to take ownership of all or part of the business in the future, these stakeholders will have to be able to bear the costs. (Co-​founder B, interview, 2 June 2017)

92  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc According to the other co-​founder, it is also ethics, environmental concerns and social considerations that drive investors: They [investors] want to show their children. They want to be proud of this investment; they want to show that they did not expect anything in exchange, but that they participated in the launch of this project. And [other investors], they are very… very… they are kind of “anti-​growth”. … They are some of the most militant here. … And so, their motivation is not the return on investment, because the cooperative business model is not favourable to a return on investment. (Co-​founder A, interview, 5 October 2016) To summarise, through its rules the cooperative does not prevent inherently individual profit-​seeking behaviours, though the desire for some profit is one motive—​among others—​of investors. The investments made by those who hold most of the shares seem driven both by social values—​the need to invest in a project they support and can be proud of—​and the hope that their capital will grow in the long term. 5.6.2.2  Concern for community Green&good simultaneously relies on two broad types of relationships with their suppliers: (1) relationships with suppliers based on short-​term commercial transactions; and (2) in-​depth partnerships with groups of producers. In the first category, the buyer—​Green&good—​regularly orders certain quantities of certain products from the seller—​a supplier. They usually don’t negotiate with producers to lower their prices when these are small-​scale local producers, although it may happen, and they may do it more often with other suppliers such as wholesalers: We don’t negotiate prices, or at least not too much. It depends a bit on the products. I know that for apple juice we asked if it would be possible to lower the price a little because otherwise the juice would be much more expensive than the one we stock from a wholesaler: this juice doesn’t come from Belgium. It would reinforce the idea that Belgian products are expensive. So I know they’ve had a chat to see if it would be possible to reduce the price a little. But otherwise, generally speaking we accept the price given by the producer for what we buy directly in Belgium. (An employee, interview, 19 December 2016) This illustrates that, at least for some of their products, the cooperative operates in such a way that they use their buyer power and take advantage of a competitive environment between suppliers to lower prices. We also observed that Green&good has a second major category of operation via which they support the development of cooperative/​organic food

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  93 supply chains in Wallonia—​bread, pork, beef, chicken, vegetables, etc. One of their first projects was a partnership with a group of local, small-​scale, organic pork producers. This group of 19 producers receives support from an organic farmers’ union and the region’s public authorities to jointly organise the sector and make it flourish. They focus on techniques, putting their combined efforts and skills into shared commercialisation strategies, thus enabling them to “amalgamate the supply of pork in such a way that they can negotiate a better price and gain access to interesting markets” (producers’ group project officer, interview, 17 August 2017). The group set common prices for their products using a tool which helps them estimate the real costs of production. Green&good then established a partnership with these producers to co-​brand and distribute some of their products, which allowed the project to develop. The project officer for the producers’ group explained that they had built a relationship based on mutual trust and that Green&good had not negotiated a lower price: “From the moment they understood the price, they accepted it”. There is also a mutual transparency regarding the profits made:  “it is rare, a store that shares its business plan and is ready to put everyone’s surplus margin on the packaging” (producers’ group project officer, interview, 17 August 2017). 5.6.3  CitizenMarket 5.6.3.1  Member economic participation CitizenMarket invite people to buy at least four shares to the value of 25 euros if they want to become members (although one share is sufficient) and shop or work in the supermarket. It is also possible to buy support shares (from 250 euros), and legal entities may buy shares (from 150 euros) which do not entitle the holder to shop or work. In any case, there is a limit to participation in the capital of the cooperative: the investment ceiling is 5,000 euros to ensure that there is no economic power imbalance between members—​ even if each member has an equal vote at the annual general meeting. The investment earns nothing:  according to its statutes, the cooperative cannot pay dividends to members. The surplus generated by the supermarket is necessarily reinvested to develop the coop and services for members and help social projects which are chosen democratically. A  side effect of not having enough member capital is that CitizenMarket had to borrow more than one million euros from the banking sector and the former owner of the building in order to continue its development. The cooperative is thus obliged to generate enough surplus—​collective profits—​to repay their loans over two decades. Even if the cooperative increases in value, it is not possible to earn money when reselling shares: when a member leaves the cooperative, only the nominal value of each share is repaid. The cooperative is the only entity authorised to buy the shares of any outgoing members and issue new shares. Therefore,

94  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc we can say that strong safeguards have been put in place to deter personal enrichment and profit-​seeking behaviours. 5.6.3.2  Concern for community As stated by a co-​founder in a general meeting, CitizenMarket’s intention is to avoid any competition between producers and pay them a fair price. However, “the objective is to get a fair price for you, the consumer, as well” (observation, 18 June 2017). Although the cooperative does not negotiate prices with suppliers, they select products whose prices remain between “typical wholesalers’ prices” and “typical small market gardeners’ prices”. The coop may, for example, buy carrots from a specific supplier, but not tomatoes, because they are more expensive than those from other suppliers. This replaceability of suppliers—​linked with the cooperative through short-​term commercial transactions—​might foster a competitive environment, though this is not one of CitizenMarket’s goals. Furthermore, the cooperative is currently a small concern in the sector and has a relatively modest impact. This potentially competitive environment may also be amplified by the balance that has to be found between affordability and high levels of environmental and social standards for the products, which are all objectives put forward by the cooperative. For example, a member responsible for sourcing products discussed the case of a type of salt that was in line with the environmental values of CitizenMarket. It was produced in a traditional and environmentally friendly way, but it was “way too expensive” so they replaced it with a “semi-​industrial (or semi-​traditional, it depends on your point of view)” product which was more affordable (member, interview, 24 April 2017). Initially, the objective was to source most products from short supply chains. However, short supply chains cannot meet the increasing demand from the cooperative, whose fast growth has direct consequences on the volumes purchased and the need to generate a sufficient cash flow to cover operating costs and repay loans, as there are no major investors. Therefore, this objective has had to be reduced, and the cooperative also sources products from more mainstream supply chains. In such a setting it is increasingly difficult to ensure that producers do not face competitive pressures. The cooperative seems fully conscious of these contradictions and wants to engage in reflection about them, as shown by a document sent in November 2017 to members in preparation for a general meeting: Experience has already shown that some CitizenMarket objectives can be contradictory when it comes to selecting products (e.g. social diversity versus sustainability). CitizenMarket employees discover the business of distribution and its problems (in terms of volume of purchase, transport, traceability, etc.), as well as the difficulties in distinguishing our cooperative from the dominant industrial system. Now that the supermarket is open to testing and many new products fill the shelves, the challenge is to allow

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  95 members of the cooperative to become aware of this reality and participate in this reflection. Furthermore, the cooperative is developing partnerships with some small local producers and producer cooperatives. An example is a project with an experimental urban farm, where volunteers from CitizenMarket may help, in exchange for more affordable prices for the cooperative. In the future, it could be possible to decide crop plans with producers in order to ensure a sustainable and predictable supply and demand.

5.7  Re-​embedding potentials of food cooperatives As a modest attempt to take the discussion to a higher degree of abstraction and provide hypotheses for future research, in this section we discuss ideal types of practices developed by cooperatives. Using the two criteria developed in section 5.3—​individual profit seeking and competitive environment for producers—​we classify cooperative practices and how they contribute—​or not—​to the re-​embeddedness of the economy. We categorise these ideal types of practices along two dimensions: (1) from investment-​fuelled action to community-​fuelled action; and (2) from purely commercial relationships to cooperative partnerships. 5.7.1  From investment-​fuelled action to community-​fuelled action Investment-​fuelled food cooperatives are capital-​intensive cooperatives whose development relies on the financial contribution of investors. The pursuit of profit remains one motive among others—​such as environmental and social outcomes—​but in these cooperatives, any surplus can be distributed without limits to shareholders, contrary to what is prescribed by the cooperative principles. These cooperatives develop and their value grows, which allows members to make surplus distribution and capital gains when reselling shares. In community-​fuelled food cooperatives, pecuniary motives to invest in the cooperative are excluded, as the rules of the cooperative prohibit surplus distribution and making a capital gain when reselling shares. The cooperative develops through the human energy of its members and the capital is brought in equitably by members of the community. The operational structure is sufficiently light to avoid a need for significant investments. By preventing profit-​seeking behaviours, community-​fuelled cooperatives stand against an economy in which the search for individual gain is prominent. Therefore, they do more to re-​embed the economy than investment-​ fuelled cooperatives. Food’equity and CitizenMarket are both rather community-​fuelled, whereas Green&good is rather investment-​fuelled. However it is not a static feature; if Green&good’s ownership is progressively transferred to stakeholders and diluted as planned, it may possibly become a community-​fuelled cooperative.

96  Julien Vastenaekels and Jérôme Pelenc Surplus distribution is underresearched in the context of cooperatives and the social economy (Hudon and Périlleux 2014). Further study is needed to better understand, for example, the implications of surplus distribution for the development, governance and impact of these cooperatives. 5.7.2  From purely commercial relationships to cooperative partnerships In cooperatives where purely commercial relationships with suppliers take place, consumers and suppliers are mainly bound by simple commercial transactions. Of course, these operations do not exclusively follow economic considerations:  the goods sold are selected according to a range of social, environmental and economic criteria which uphold a whole set of values, meanings and purposes (Larder et  al. 2014). However, producers and consumers do not have any common, long-​term project; they interact with each other mostly as buyers and sellers. In this case each supplier is easily replaceable, which potentially leads to a competitive environment and possibly lower prices. In contrast, a cooperative partnership implies the cooperation between consumers and producers, linked by common projects. By “cooperating” we mean acting together in the long run towards a common goal (Dubreuil 2010). Agents who are mutually aware of the common objectives do not cooperate purely out of self-​ interest. They expect in-​ depth mutual knowledge and understanding (De Leener and Totté 2017). In this context, prices are not set on the basis of a no-​holds-​barred confrontation between demand and supply involving many anonymous buyers and sellers: there is a political dimension. Producers decide “fair” prices for their products together and discuss them transparently with consumers and distributors. Such a relationship is likely to prevent competitive pressure and foster solidarity between agents. It means that developing cooperative partnerships helps to re-​embed the economy, in contrast to getting supplies through short-​ term commercial relationships with suppliers. Cooperation between producers and consumers is at the heart of Food’equity’s project and constitutes the basis for the relationships between their consumers and suppliers. But it is not always as clear-​cut; a cooperative can develop both types of relationship at the same time. Green&good has both cooperative partnerships and purely commercial relationships. It is similar for CitizenMarket, which intends to work more with producers as part of cooperative initiatives in the future.

5.8  Conclusion Questioning whether and to what extent alternatives, such as food cooperatives, remodel fundamental relations in the economic system at their particular level is crucial:  “failing that, whatever their originality, their magnitude or their generosity, they are in danger of being captured by the very same system they

Food cooperatives as re-embedding forces  97 claim to leave behind and becoming accomplices—​without their knowledge—​ to what they denounce or reject” (De Leener and Totté 2017,  220). This chapter has strived to improve our understanding of the extent to which food cooperatives challenge these fundamental relations and help transform the food system with their values and ethics. In particular, we attempted to use Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness at a micro-​level and examined how three food (distribution) cooperatives in Belgium contribute to re-​embedding the economy in society. We explored the hypothesis that cooperatives re-​embed the economy heterogeneously by differentiating the way they apply cooperative principles to their own practices. Since the latitude to implement cooperative principles is very wide, these principles are not inherently sufficient to ensure that any particular cooperative helps re-​embed the economy. Furthermore, many difficulties can arise on the ground. There may be misalignments between intentions and practices, and contradictions between the objectives of these food cooperatives. For example, the objective of paying a “fair price” and offering affordable products to ensure “social diversity” within a cooperative is sometimes contradictory, and may encourage competitive pressure on producers. Also, local, sustainable, cooperative supply chains are not necessarily developed enough to enable food distribution cooperatives to dispense with their dependence on more mainstream food systems. A whole system needs to be reconstructed. These initiative-​taking cooperatives are at times conscious of their own paradoxes and the need to tackle them: they are constantly evolving, reflecting, changing their practices and developing new ones. Consolidating the thinking on an alternative economy, and establishing this economy in a context where market and capitalist logic is solidly anchored at all levels, is an arduous task. Besides, it remains quite unclear to date how such sparse micro-​alternatives may constitute a sufficient transformative force and change the higher-​level, fundamental relations in the food system and the economy. In this respect, encouraging diverse actors to cooperate with each other along entire sustainable food supply chains in the pursuit of ambitious environmental and social goals, and hence shed the yoke of economic imperatives, is a promising avenue of development. An enhanced knowledge of the systemic barriers they face would allow a better understanding of how alternatives may be expanded. Further research is also needed to better understand, critically examine and discuss the economic practices and the type of future desired by these alternatives, as single entities, but equally importantly, as a collective movement (Diamantopoulos 2012; Draperi 2012; Sumner and Wever 2015). It may help them make tangible progress and build a re-​ embedded, sustainable and more desirable economy, brick by brick.

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6  Innovating locally for global transformation Intermediating fluid, agroecological solutions –​examples from France, the USA, Benin and South America Allison Marie Loconto

6.1  Introduction One of the societal grand challenges that countries around the world face today is the need to move towards more sustainable agri-​food systems in order to be able to meet the food, feed, fibre and energy needs of a growing population, in a world of finite resources (FAO 2011; Conway 2012). The ‘feeding 9 billion by 2050’ discourse (Fouilleux et  al. 2017) dominates international conversation where the terms of debate are shaped around how and what to intensify sustainably (cf. Elzen et al. 2011; Levin et al. 2012; Garnett et al. 2013). On the one hand, research institutes and biotechnology companies are repositioning themselves to provide wide-​scale access to technologies based on advanced biological and genetic knowledge in order to sustainably intensify monoculture farming systems under the conditions of climate change (The Montpellier Panel 2013; FAO 2016). On the other hand, there is increasing research that argues for ecological intensification and diversification of production systems (Badgley and Perfecto 2007; FAO 2007 ; IPES-​Food 2016; UN 2017). These studies, based on ecological and farmer-​led research, demonstrate not only that agroecology can feed the world, but that there is a present need to reduce pesticide use in order to protect both human and ecosystem health. Currently, innovations in sustainable agriculture are often occurring where these two regimes of knowledge and technique meet, yet there remain concerns about the responsibility1 of these responses with respect to other societal grand challenges such as food security (Garnett et al. 2013). For the above reasons, sustainable agri-​food systems provide an emerging political space for incremental and institutional innovations (Grin et  al. 2010; Busch 2013)  and as such, offer intriguing empirical terrain for understanding how knowledge, inscribed in specific technologies (particularly standards and business models), emerges, circulates, standardizes and stabilizes into innovative configurations.

Innovating locally for global change  101 The socio-​ technical transitions literature has focused on sustainability (e.g., Grin et al. 2010; Markard et al. 2012) and the epistemic controversies of agronomic knowledge (Sumberg and Thompson 2012) that provide directionality to actors’ efforts to transition from one type of socio-​technical system to another. According to Geels (2004), a socio-​technical system is a better way of thinking about how innovations in material, cognitive and organizational techniques (another way to think about technology) takes place. This is because it considers each technology to be embedded in socio-​cultural, political, scientific, technological and economic (user and market) regimes. These regimes can be thought of as the rules and institutions that govern action in any particular sector. According to Geels (2010), transitions take place when novelties leave their niche environments and disrupt the regimes that govern their use. However, this is not a streamlined process. The literature that explores transitions to sustainability tells us that systems are faced with oppositional pressures from path dependencies and socio-​technical lock-​ins; innovations must de-​link from existing pathways so as to re-​direct them or create new ones (Geels et  al. 2016) and their regulation must likewise accommodate multi-​ layered hybridity (van Zwanenberg et  al. 2013). While early studies traced historical transitions, recent advances focus on the ‘anchoring’ of technologies, networks and institutions (Elzen et  al. 2011)  where linking novelties with existing structures and institutions is precarious. These advances offer a means to look more deeply at what are often referred to as local processes, but that are functioning at a meso-​scale of engagement between niches and regimes. Specifically, there is an important role for new forms of markets in these innovation processes that intermediate between actors, technologies and geographic spaces (Callon 1992; Loconto and Barbier 2014). In this chapter, I explore innovative markets that have been developed by different actors around the world to effectively kick-​start the sustainability transition process within specific geographic locales. I focus on the innovative modes of organizing, which are what bring different types of actors together to share old knowledge and create new knowledge that can resolve existing socio-​economic and environmental problems and offer new pathways towards sustainability. The focus of this book is on global problems and the local solutions that are offered as the means to begin addressing them. This chapter contributes to the discussion as the local solutions explored here offer ideas on where to begin addressing some of the problems in the global food system, specifically in terms of public policy support and partnerships among societal actors. The core thesis of this chapter is that, by exploring how different types of actors begin to rewrite how they are supposed to engage with each other, often with the help of intermediary actors whose role is to facilitate the fluidity of interaction, novel forms of organizing emerge. These new forms of organization govern the local transformations in food systems, yet they are nonetheless based on globally circulating knowledge about what can and should be sustainable in a food system. Based on empirical data collected

102  Allison Marie Loconto between 2013 and 2018 in 21 countries across five continents,2 this chapter argues that the innovations needed for food system transformation must begin with local engagement. This local engagement, however, cannot and should not be disentangled from the concerns of global food systems as the circulation of knowledge is fundamental to actors’ ability to innovate locally.

6.2  Reframing innovation: from technology to knowledge about techniques There is an assumed linear path for innovation that begins with invention (usually associated with an individual, heroic male inventor), follows through technology and product development and design and ends with commercialization. Following this logic, individual scientists and companies invent, with state investment through research and development funding (patent registration). The private sector commercializes and develops products. The public sector distributes the benefits to all people (to prevent poverty), extension diffuses the new technologies and, more broadly, the state manages environmental and social impacts of technology and innovation. Here, civil society is a watchdog that calls out bad technologies or bad practices while the majority of the people are consumers, producers, employees and voters (but not innovators). However, there is significant evidence of innovation as multi-​ actor networked paths, rather than linear paths. Based on studies in new and emerging technologies as well as information technology and appropriate technologies, a number of scholars have differently named these phenomena where innovation has become a collective endeavour, with inventors and users collaborating and sharing ideas and information. These have been referred to alternatively as user innovation (von Hippel 1976); co-​inventor networks (Breschi and Malerba 2005); open innovation (Chesbrough 2003); open source (Raymond 2001); participatory design (Schuler and Namioka 1993); community innovation (van Oost et  al. 2009); upstream engagement (Macnaghten et  al. 2005); mid-​stream modulation (Fisher et  al. 2006); constructive technology assessment (Rip et al. 1995); cooperative research (Kleinknecht and Reijnen 1992); democratizing innovation (von Hippel 2005; Felt et al. 2007); responsible innovation (Guston 2006); responsible research and innovation (Stilgoe et al. 2013; von Schomberg 2013); social innovation (Stirling 2008); and grassroots innovation (Smith and Seyfang 2013). Thus, if the process of innovation is not linear, can it also embrace novel uses of old technologies? One of the most useful innovations has been the ‘power tiller’3 that can be seen in just about every country around the world. What is important about this technology, though, is that it is not used in the same way everywhere, it is a fluid technology (de Laet and Mol 2000). While it was created to enable a single (male) farmer to mechanically till his small fields and thus replace the hoe or the use of animal traction, the use that farmers around the world have found for it often is not restricted only to tilling. The small motor attached

Innovating locally for global change  103 to two wheels creates the perfect small-​scale engine for hauling a range of humans and objects, thus, expanding its use from the field to the market as it provides farmers the ability to expand their activities from farming into transporting –​thus creating more income streams in rural areas. Moreover, the power tiller meets its users in myriad ways. Because it is not an expensive machine, it can be purchased outright, but it was also introduced through leasing schemes whereby the machine can be rented for a few hours or days at a time. Farmers can also share a machine and either sell or exchange their tilling services. Thus, what was originally thought of as a simple technology turned into knowledge about a range of techniques that famers apply to their use of the machine. This example is indicative of how we need to shift our thinking from technology as a material/​technical fix towards a way of knowing a range of practices –​which implies that we can change them. More significantly, however, the innovation literature reminds us that invention is not ordinarily the action of only one individual, but the result of a collective process, ‘a journey’ (Van de Ven 1999). ‘An innovation occurs when new ideas, new technical devices or new forms of organisation meet their users’ (Joly 2011). Therefore, ‘innovation is not simply a technology (or a technical object), it must be the reorganization of institutions, organizations, value chains, businesses to enable actors to innovate on their own terms’ (Felt et al. 2007). This means that innovation is not simply a new technology, but a new way of doing things. This same line of reasoning applies to the notion of the market as only the commercialization phase of an innovation process. Instead, we must reconsider the dynamic linkages between innovations and markets. Markets do not serve only to commercialize new products, rather, they are: ‘the collective devices that allow compromises to be reached, not only on the nature of goods to produce and distribute but also on the value to be given to them’ (Callon and Muniesa 2005). The diverse economies literature (Gibson-​Graham 2008) focuses on the possibilities for performing new economic worlds by organizing enterprise, labour, property, transactions and finance in alternative ways. Alternative agri-​food networks (Goodman et al. 2012; Gritzas and Kavoulakos 2016) are used as examples of how there are alternatives that are constantly emerging, capable of valuing food according to social relations that capture shared understandings (of a community) about the nature, norms, purposes and boundaries of the circulation of that value (Gibson-​Graham et al. 2013). In my previously published study (Loconto et  al. 2016) of 15 cases of innovations in linking sustainable producers with markets from around the world we found that the reorganization of rules and the re-​allocation of responsibilities between actors of a particular local initiative provide space for innovation through markets. We call these institutional innovations (Hargrave and Van De Ven 2006), which we define as new situations of interaction according to revised rules, not necessarily new knowledge (or technologies; Loconto et  al. 2016). Here, I  follow interactionist approaches in sociology (cf. Carr 1945; Znaniecki 1963; Latour 2005) that focus analytical attention

104  Allison Marie Loconto on the dynamic relations between actors and the meanings that emerge from these interactions in order to understand innovation as a revaluing of the social relations between production and consumption.

6.3  Innovating for transitioning to an agroecological future The recent IPES Food (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems) report (2016) clearly outlined the current challenge that we are facing as we try to transition towards an agroecological future. On the one hand, micro-​scale farms that produce purely for subsistence cannot meet the growing needs for healthy and diverse diets around the world; while on the other hand, the large-​ scale, input-​ intensive, monoculture production systems are not sustainable given the negative environmental, social and economic impacts on the planet. The challenges of climate change are too great for these two systems to remain opposed to each other –​both need to move towards diversified agroecological systems. Agroecological food systems can improve productivity both in small-​scale and large-​scale systems by allowing the agricultural practices to better respond to natural cycles. They can improve livelihoods durably and provide food to local, regional and international markets that meet consumers’ preferences for healthy, tasty and culturally appropriate food (Loconto et al. 2018). Embarking down these transition pathways is a daunting task. There are multiple social, economic, technological and other variables from which to shape locally appropriate strategies that might overcome the challenges of both reducing reliance on high-​input models of agriculture and on moving out of purely subsistence models. Gliessman (2015) has proposed four levels of transitions to agroecology that begin with adjustments to conventional agricultural production and end in total system reconfiguration, particularly in terms of how products are marketed and exchanged.4 Yet each farm and community of farmers begins from a different starting point and along their paths towards sustainability they encounter challenges from all corners of the socio-​technical regimes within which they are embedded. For example, elsewhere (Vicovaro et  al. 2016), I  have discussed some of the challenges encountered by actors innovating in transitions to sustainable food systems. These can be summarised as the following six groups of challenges: 1. Gaining access to sustainable inputs (e.g. seeds, fertilizers, bio-​pesticides and labour) is often a challenge for a variety of reasons: (1) farmers do not have the scale necessary to produce enough sustainable inputs on-​ farm; (2)  farmers are not yet fully integrated to be able to close all of their nutrient cycles on their farms; or (3) because farmers have very little purchasing power to source off-​farm sustainable inputs (such as seeds, productive materials and tools, and labour) due to the cost of the latter. 2. Satisfying consumer demand in terms of quantity and availability all year long, because yields decrease in the transition to agroecological

Innovating locally for global change  105

3.

4.

5.

6.

production systems and products are not available all year round as many farmers rely on seasonal rains. This is often a challenge for small farmers who do not have enough production to meet the quantities their consumers demand or alternatively large farmers who are not yet diversified enough to meet the variety of consumer food needs. Logistics are also extremely important for creating the new connections between producers and consumers, but the state of current infrastructure poses numerous obstacles for producers. Providing quality guarantees to consumers. Determining what qualities consumers want is not easy and being able to provide the information that consumers need to choose the quality that they are seeking is a challenge. The lack of trust between consumers and producers is found across the board and it takes time to build the trust needed to create long-​term trading relationships. Sometimes public authorities can help by sponsoring education, labelling and certification schemes, but in some countries the public authorities are also not trusted to provide the guarantee. Finding the right balance between costs and prices. How to account for the real costs of sustainable production and how to negotiate prices with different types of buyers and consumers? This is the age-​old problem of market making and adding sustainability criteria to all aspects of the food system makes this balance even more difficult to find. True cost accounting, or even more simply, farmer knowledge of the real costs of production, is an attempt to rebalance price calculations. However, consumers are also used to cheap food, which makes it difficult to renegotiate the price of food. Strengthening the capacity of farmers both in terms of sustainable farming practices and in terms of market knowledge because improving the ability to negotiate value is fundamental. A large part of this is figuring out how to ensure dissemination of the basic agroecological principles and confer consistency of practices. In addition, knowledge and access to information is the very first step for improving farmers’ power in market relations, but this is often not enough. Market advantage usually is also a result of strategic timing in the use of knowledge, which requires both experience and often protected spaces of exchange (e.g. with a dedicated group of consumers or government-​subsidised markets). How to make these systems sustainable and attractive to the next generation? We are all faced with the phenomenon of youth exit from agriculture. A  number of groups have seriously been thinking about how innovative systems might be better able to attract youth to agriculture. These initiatives try to counter the modernization movement that focused on reducing the ‘burden’ of agriculture by reducing the need for knowledge and collective innovation in communities (through investment in technological solutions that reduced the need for labour). Returning to the hand hoe is not a sustainable labour solution to the global problem of

106  Allison Marie Loconto rural exodus, but there is a need to create rural spaces that offer opportunities for youth to live well and prosper. As the above six challenges illustrate, the issues that actors are encountering on their individual pathways to sustainability are symptoms of problems of inequity and power imbalances of the global food system. Rural exodus often comes from the lack of infrastructure in rural areas that better link the rural and urban populations. This same lack of infrastructure makes food transport difficult and causes food losses and quality issues that make customers mistrust local food system actors and opt for imported or industrially produced food. The global domination of input industries means that alternatives are not only difficult to find in poorly connected communities, but that they are also not even explored in local research institutes (cf. Vanloqueren and Baret 2009). While these are indeed major challenges, they can also provide opportunities for innovation as resolving problems in pragmatic ways often opens food systems up to the entry of new actors and recourse to new types of knowledge. The solutions that are proposed are often alternatives to mainstream activities. The following section illustrates some instances of how food system actors are innovating within their local situations with fluid organizational technologies –​rather than purely technological fixes.

6.4  Cases of innovations in local agroecological systems During the participatory research that informs this chapter, we became aware that some groups of diverse actors (from public, private and civic sectors) around the world are overcoming these challenges by introducing new ideas, new technologies and different ways of working together. Elsewhere, I explain how these activities are aptly described as institutional or organizational innovations (Loconto et  al. 2016) since they are novel ways of organizing and governing interaction that are formalized through long-​term processes of collaboration. These types of experiences have been important in highlighting where innovations are emerging within agroecological systems. While agroecological farmers mostly source their inputs from their own production systems, through individual or community farmer-​ to-​ farmer exchanges or in agro-​dealers, we also found examples of innovation in input markets (Loconto et  al. 2018). This means that farmers are increasingly returning to methods of fertilization, seed stock and pest management that rely upon greater farmer knowledge of natural cycles and can be developed without reliance on agrochemicals that are often more expensive and less effective against pests that have developed resistance. For example, Agri Load is a small tech start-​up company comprising two young founders/​employees who are competent in information and communication and drone technology in western France. Their business model is to provide pest management services directly to farmers. Using small drones, they can deliver natural predator eggs exactly where they are needed in farmers’ fields. For example, some of

Innovating locally for global change  107 their clients are maize farmers who have some fields of their farm infested by corn borers. Using the drones that the two young engineers adapted to their needs, they can deliver 2,800 eggs of natural predators deposited throughout the infected fields. Once hatched, the predators live for 3 days and will eat the larvae of the corn borer. The farmers pay Agri Load for this service, which costs 55 €/​ha of treatment. According to one farmer interviewed by the local press, it is the ‘same price as a powdered agrochemical product, but without the waste of time’.5 In this case, the use of integrated pest management has opened up the possibility for small, youth-​initiated enterprises to be formed in rural areas. In San Francisco, Recology is 100 per cent owned by its employees and by creating compost from urban waste it has helped San Francisco to divert 77 per cent of its trash from landfills. In addition, Jepson Prairie Organics, a subsidiary of Recology, makes four compost blends for more than 200 vineyards in Northern California which buy the blends and use them to feed the soil. Here we see the creation of not one, but a number of social enterprises being formed in a regional agroecological territory.6 We can explain the innovation system that has since developed to be the result of actors who developed fluid technologies of interaction that could solve their problems and meet their sustainability concerns. Since its founding in 1985, the Songhai Centre in Benin Republic has been investing in a rural transformation strategy, which they call ‘green rural cities’ (Agossou et al. 2016). It is a well-​established regional training, production, processing, research and development centre for sustainable agriculture that takes a holistic approach to linking producers and consumers in local and national-​level markets for ‘organic’ labelled products. The Songhai integrated production model (crop, livestock, aquaculture and biogas production) provides a practical rural transformation strategy by incorporating three key sectors (production, processing and services) of the economy into a network of five regional training, production, processing and service centres across the country (Kétou, Kinwédji, Savalou, Parakou and Zagnanado). Each regional centre acts as a hub for a network of ex-​trainees who are selling their production to Songhai’s processing centres. No link functions without a relationship to one or more of the other links and the satellites are governed through a centralized, hierarchical chain of command that permits horizontal linkages between network members. There is a central procurement and marketing service that organizes the procurement of raw materials for processing and the sales of processed products from the Porto Novo hub. However, each satellite is also responsible for local sales of their fresh produce and artisanal processed goods: 54 per cent of the value of finished products was internal to the network and 46 per cent constituted product sales with a value of US$ 7,040,540, of which the off-​farm sales of finished products accounted for US$ 2,579,830 in 2014 (Agossou et al. 2016). The Songhai centre trades only in organic products and enforces its own internal standards for organic agriculture via its training programme and through its internal quality control system

108  Allison Marie Loconto for the traceability of its products. Over its lifetime, the Songhai Centre has benefited about 152,000 people across Benin and has created a network of over 200 partners around the world, through which it maintains strong international and multidimensional relationships that contribute to the investment in this model. The innovations in connecting smallholders to markets and re-​localizing markets for agroecological products are strategies aimed at diversifying the types of exchanges, the quantity of market channels (an average of 8.3 per initiative) and ensuring fair prices for both producers and consumers (Loconto et al. 2018). A French national randomized survey conducted in 2013 found that 42 per cent of respondents purchased a product in a ‘circuit court’ (short food supply chain) during the preceding month, with a food basket worth 25 €/​week.7 This is a trend that is emerging around the world with specific local variations. In the Grabels8 market (Food Assemblies), a research–​ municipality–​producer–​consumer-​led initiative developed a colour-​coded labelling system (Ici.C.Local)9 to identify labels for the different distances the products travelled and they reduced competition between producers by ensuring the diversity of products for sale (Chiffoleau and Loconto 2016). Another French initiative La Ruche  qui dit Oui!10 is using the internet to link-​up local producers and consumers in a way commonly known as food assemblies. The model works as follows: the supplier produces and transports food to a locality temporarily ‘let’ to them (café, cultural or community centre) for the 2-​hour-​long ‘assembly’. The supplier travels only if a minimum chosen amount is ordered. The Ruche-​Manager (the person who organizes the local pick-​up point) finds diverse suppliers, communicates to potential local customers, manages assemblies (weekly), organizes events and manages the Ruche mini-​ website. The Ruche-​ Mama (the central management for the website of the whole initiative) manages payments and overall website design, assists and selects Ruche implementation, offers tech support and communicates socially and institutionally. Finally, the customer orders online and collects produce on the day of assembly. The Ruche model can now be found across Western and Southern Europe. These two examples demonstrate how actors are changing the rules of distribution which, combined with information technology (labels and the internet), are enabling consumers to become more engaged with producers. In this final set of examples, we can trace strong linkages between innovative organizational rearrangements that are revitalizing traditional knowledge and techniques related to farming and cooking. In Colombia, Familia de la Tierra (FdlT) in Bogotá is linking gourmet cuisine and tradition in a collaboration between the National University, Psychiatric Hospital, producers, the Culinary School and 17 gourmet restaurants to rehabilitate ‘lost’ native varieties (beans, yacón; Nieto 2016). With more than ten years of experience, the FdlT network is a private Colombian initiative of agroecological production and processing that takes a holistic approach to strengthening agroecological production systems through marketing management and promoting local and

Innovating locally for global change  109 ecological products such as tomatoes, maize, beans, pumpkins and potatoes. The network integrates 20 social organizations of agroecological producers from across Colombia and includes about 100 peasant and indigenous families in different regions and territories. The initiative began with the idea of taking on and confronting the political, socio-​economic and environmental challenge that producers face in the transition from conventional agriculture practices to ecological ones. The FdlT model places importance on the value of work in the production and conservation of native seeds; the production of organic fertilizers (research and testing of new organic inputs); agroecological food production; processing into speciality products; marketing; and, more recently, research projects (participation in projects with universities and national and international institutions). The business philosophy focuses on making the work of family farming visible and generating awareness in producers, consumers and other intermediaries about agroecological practices. FdlT promotes the idea that integrating agroecological products into daily marketing and consumption practices will not only generate good health but will also encourage alternative consumption practices that are in line with the environmental and social dimensions of the food system (coherence between what consumers want and what they do, solidarity with small farmers, etc.). The decentralized organization of the FdlT network redefines the concept of a food chain formed by separate links where traders gain the greatest margins. Instead, the economic system must be reorganized into a cyclic and integrative system whereby all actors benefit from exchanges with others and where farmers can be engaged in a range of activities in the food system (Loconto et al. 2018). In Trinidad and Tobago, the Brasso Seco Tourism Action Committee (TAC) engages in continuous investment, new ideas, new products, new events in order to value old traditions, thus bringing the market into their community (Waithe 2016). The Brasso Seco community first developed their TAC with government support in 1997 by organizing an annual festival of indigenous cuisine that is still celebrated today. Over the years, the Brasso Seco Paria TAC increased their activities through the creation of eco-​tourism. More recently, they began a process of rehabilitating an abandoned coffee and cocoa plantation and started an agrotourism initiative. Subsequently, an agrotourism facility was set up to provide lodging in the community for tourists, enabling direct interaction between members of the community and tourists, who brought a market into the community by participating in local traditional events like the food festival and the traditional ‘cocoa dance’ that is an ‘old’ technology (human feet) used to grind the cocoa beans, and purchasing local food products. Innovation in the Brasso Seco community is driven largely by three factors: (1) the need for the villagers to earn money; (2) a communal desire to preserve the rural agro-​heritage; and (3) the will to increase local productivity through youth participation and entrepreneurship. To date, the majority of income earned by the Brasso Seco TAC is derived from agroforestry and agritourism and the community activities ensure there

110  Allison Marie Loconto are employment opportunities in the community. The community-​focused business model developed by Brasso Seco TAC shares benefits fairly and enables all villagers to exchange products. Finally, in Bolivia, there has been a multi-​level public policy approach to promote the use of participatory guarantee systems (PGS) to ensure sustainable agricultural practices, registration of these PGS with the Food Safety Authority and the acceptance of the PGS certificate for inclusion in school feeding programmes (SFP) that source traditional products directly from local farm families that practise traditional camelidos/​quinoa production systems (Chambilla Silva and López 2016). In Tarija province, the system works as follows. The SFP is framed in the Complementary School Feeding Programme (ACE [Alimentación Complementaria Escolar]) and its management is the responsibility of the municipality and its local and regional governments. This means that each municipality defines its ACE according to available resources, food availability, nutritional requirements, geographic location and other factors. This is the case in Yunchará municipality where 100 per cent of schools have access to ACE. It provides breakfast and lunch for 38 schools and had more than 1,380 final beneficiaries in 2015. The local government has prioritized school feeding and the reduction of malnutrition  –​malnutrition in the municipality over the last few years has been reduced by 15 per cent. The government has started to use local procurement with products derived principally from local small producers and processors in support of efforts to promote quality, freshness and accessibility. The principal local products in Yunchará are api (traditional Bolivian drink from the central valley based on ecological purple maize); tojorí (traditional altiplano drink made from maize); amaranth and broad bean cakes; and a chocolate and milk drink made from broad beans (Nutrihaba; Yunchará is the only Bolivian municipality that processes broad beans into these kinds of product). Other products are quinoa, flour, charque (dry llama meat), honey, oil, sugar and rice. The government has managed to improve children’s food not only with dried and processed food but also with fresh fruit and vegetables. In 2015, 80 per cent of schools were supported by ecological gardens that supply them with vegetables. Inputs were also given to about 30 families with children at school for the production of chickens and eggs, and for family gardens. Families in Yunchará are also helped to use and consume products: they are given menus and have technical assistance in nutritional aspects that help them to cook food better and use fruit and vegetables that are acceptable to students (Loconto et al. 2018). As these examples demonstrate, innovation through new market channels and networks is an effective way to develop and strengthen agroecological systems. Such innovation is often about identifying leverage points within the wider agro-​food system and configuring appropriate interventions (socio-​ technical, economic, ecological and cultural) in order to ensure its sustainability. In order to enable local actors to make changes in their systems from their different vantage points we need to support a more holistic vision of

Innovating locally for global change  111 the agro-​food system. A  circular economy is not only the idea of a local, closed or protected system (cf. Gregson et al. 2015), but it is the facilitation of interactions that enable the knowledge, goods and services to circulate within networks of actors and markets so that all resources are used to the most sustainable extent possible.

6.5  The future of innovating in food systems transitions So how then can we innovate in food systems transitions? Beginning in 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the French Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment have been convening a group of innovators –​or innovation intermediaries –​from across more than 20 countries. During the initial study, the analysis highlighted the catalytic role of innovation intermediaries, who are people or organizations that take up a new role within the system, stimulate learning processes and change the rules and routines of themselves and other partners (Loconto et al. 2016). These actors created the innovative linkages between production and consumption that were mentioned in the above cases and were highly influential in stimulating and maintaining system changes over time. The lesson learned through this process was that while these actors are innovating in their own local contexts, in order to scale up their efforts so that others can join them on the pathway toward more sustainable food systems, they needed to have opportunities to learn from other innovation intermediaries working in very different contexts (and in different countries) and with different means to support their work. Sharing knowledge about the organizational aspects that have proved challenging in navigating system change was determined to be particularly important. While most work must be done in each specific context, the 2016 FAO study on institutional innovations found that there is a very important role for policy makers in facilitating the emergence of these types of innovations. What is needed is a paradigm shift where numerous elements of agri-​food systems are realigned along innovative pathways towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Specifically, the following six ‘Rs’ of policy support that can (re)value agroecology across many different contexts and levels are good starting points for catalysing agroecological transitions. 1. Recognize existing agroecological markets by facilitating the registration of agroecological farmers with trade and food safety authorities according to appropriate standards 2. Revise input subsidy schemes to include agroecological and biological inputs (or remove subsidies altogether) and provide financial incentives for creating small-​scale agro-​enterprises. 3. Reform research and extension programmes in order to include agroecology and enable more flexible collaboration and experimentation with producers and private and civic actors.

112  Allison Marie Loconto 4. Reinvest in agriculture through public procurement from agroecological producers by adapting the procurement protocols to the local realities of agroecological production (e.g. informal trading relations). 5. Recreate public spaces for agroecology by providing public facilities that can be used to host farmers’ markets, fairs and festivals for agroecology. 6. Research, via participatory methods, the innovative markets for agroecology and sustainable agriculture in order to better understand how they contribute to sustainable agriculture and food systems.

6.6  Conclusions Based on the recent research presented in this chapter, it is clear that markets for agroecology exist. We find them nested in territories where they take diverse forms and promote diversification of production and consumption. They are innovative and focus on closing the gaps between the concepts of rural and urban populations and between producers and consumers that have been built through modernization processes. These innovations are based on trust and direct relationships between producers and consumers. They experiment with different ideas and there is a snowball effect to these experiences where new outlets and new stakeholders are brought into the networks. While consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the benefits of agroecology, there is a need for more information for both producers and consumers on what agroecology is, why indigenous seeds are important and the benefits of agroecology for both producers and consumers. Therefore, these innovative models include knowledge sharing and education among producers, consumers and intermediaries. There are nonetheless challenges, particularly related to food safety regulations, which are very difficult to meet because they are not suited to the reality of agroecological farmers, social innovation or innovative markets. Around the world we are beginning to collect data that demonstrates actors’ capacities to reach Gliessman’s (2015) fourth level of transition. This means that we have documented closer relationships between producers and consumers across a range of activities in agri-​food systems. We also see that there are spill-​over effects into the development of sustainable lifestyles for urban people, but we are not yet at the fifth level –​which would be the desired paradigm shift. The experiences documented in this chapter demonstrated that these innovations can play a key role in local-​level changes that can contribute to global food system transformation and these initiatives need to be integrated into the networks that are also advocating for policy change and conservation of native seeds and landraces. Getting consumers to support this work is what is exciting about these innovations; the movement of people out of the passive role of simply consuming food towards an active role in changing how and why producers and consumers interact provides new opportunities for employment, lifestyle change, leisure and knowledge that have the possibility to defy capitalist logics (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999). However,

Innovating locally for global change  113 it is important that agroecology does not become co-​opted by market logics and actors that often work to distance producers from consumers, with the effect of eroding trust in the quality of goods that are exchanged (Fouilleux and Loconto 2017). Thus, care should be taken in engagement with different stakeholders and, as scientists, we need to better understand the business models that are the most adapted to the principles of agroecology. Without this element, the fifth level of transition will remain elusive. The Dutch philosopher of science, Anne Marie Mol, once wrote: In travelling to “unpredictable” places, an object that isn’t too rigorously bounded, that doesn’t impose itself but tries to serve, that is adaptable, flexible and responsive –​in short, a fluid object –​may well prove to be stronger than one which is firm. (de Laet and Mol 2000) Seeking fluid, rather than solid, technologies to help us transition to agroecological food systems should be a priority for all of us. We should be actively thinking about the types of technologies and innovations that are best suited to agroecological food systems and that we should work towards ensuring that these are the ones that we promote because they will be the ones that enable us to transition to an agroecological future.

Acknowledgements The data used for the preparation of this article received funding from the United Nations FAO and the European Union through the “Improved Global Governance for Hunger Reduction Programme” and through its Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 321427 for the project entitled “Responsible Research and Innovation in a Distributed Anticipatory Governance Frame. A Constructive Socio-​normative Approach” (Res-​AGorA). The research was carried out by the French INRAE, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Society (IFRIS) and FAO.

Notes 1 Responsibility must be understood both in terms of taking responsibility and being held accountable for actions. Responsibility can also be thought of as responsiveness, which refers to collective responsibility (how individuals become responsive to each other) and ethical choices in practice. 2 Research was conducted by the author and with partners in the following countries:  Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United States. We use case examples from only five of these countries for this chapter. The full case studies can be found in the following publications: Loconto et al. (2016); Loconto et al. (2018; FAO/​INRAE (2020).

114  Allison Marie Loconto 3 A power tiller –​also known as a rotary tiller, a rototiller, an ‘iron buffalo’, a cultivator or rotavator –​is essentially a set of discs that turn to cut the soil. They are attached to a small engine (typically a 4-​stroke engine with 10–​20 horse power) that runs on gasoline, a handle bar and wheels. There are also a range of attachments that can be added to the engine, which enables the use of the engine for a variety of tasks. 4 The levels are:  “Level 1:  Increase the efficiency of industrial and conventional practices in order to reduce the use and consumption of costly, scarce, or environmentally damaging inputs. Level 2:  Substitute alternative practices for industrial/​conventional inputs and practices. Level 3. Redesign the agroecosystem so that it functions on the basis of a new set of ecological processes. Level 4. Re-​establish a more direct connection between those who grow our food and those who consume it. Level 5. On the foundation created by the sustainable farm-​scale agroecosystems achieved at Level 3, and the new relationships of sustainability of Level 4, build a new global food system, based on equity, participation, democracy, and justice, that is not only sustainable but helps restore and protects earth’s life support systems upon which we all depend”. (Gliessman 2015 187–​188) 5 Alix Demaison, “Un drone pour protéger ses parcelles agricoles”, Ouest France, accessed July 8, 2020. www.ouest-​france.fr/​bretagne/​morbihan/​un-​drone-​pour-​ proteger-​ses-​parcelles-​agricoles-​4357375 6 “Welcome to Recology”, Recology Waste Zero, accessed July 8, 2020. www. recology.com 7 “Circuits courts : qu’en pensent les français ?”, Great, accessed July 8, 2020. www. gret.org/​2014/​06/​circuits-​courts-​quen-​pensent-​les-​francais/​ 8 A small town within the Montpellier metropole in Southern France. 9 Translation: Here is Local, accessed July 8, 2020. http://​iciclocal.fr/​ 10 Translation: The Bee-​hive that says Yes, also known as Food Assemblies, accessed July 8, 2020. www.laruchequiditoui.fr

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7  Cost effects of local food enterprises Supply chains, transaction costs and social diffusion Niko Paech, Carsten Sperling, and Marius Rommel

7.1  Introduction The current food industry is not sustainable. The way food supply is organized in industrialized countries is based on the consistent overuse of limited resources. This focus on continuous increases in efficiency (since industrialization) ignores the unavoidable external effects of this mode of production. Producers are subject to competition that destroys smallholder structures according to the motto “grow or vanish”. Contrary to this trend, transformative enterprises and initiatives such as tenants’ gardens, community-​supported agriculture (CSA), food cooperatives and regional brands are developing beyond market economy constraints. These enterprises and initiatives aim to establish sustainable, regional and sovereign supply systems through participatory and ecological practices. However, this approach goes hand in hand with a relatively low degree of division of labor and specialization, resulting in a limited potential to exploit economies of scale. This may gradually be compensated for, first by including so-​called “prosumers”, who reduce production costs by providing their own services, and second by increasing consumers’ willingness to pay for the enhanced product quality and sustainable production methods. Conversely, the coordination of voluntary work and participatory organizational structures is accompanied by additional cost categories. In the transdisciplinary collaboration with 27 practical and 11 transfer partners, an “organizational size trilemma” was identified as the central challenge of these transformative enterprises: on the one hand, they must achieve a minimum economically viable size to operate efficiently. On the other hand, social stability requires that a maximum company size is not exceeded to limit the personal effort involved in coordinating relatively non-​hierarchical processes. Striking a balance between these size limits should prevent the transformative character of the enterprise from being lost. This marks the third goal of the trilemma. The central results of this study are: (1) the elaboration of general management principles for supply chain architectures that diverge fundamentally from traditional enterprises; and (2)  the classification of different business

120  Niko Paech et al. models. Particular attention is paid to those factors that contribute to the long-​term economic stabilization of these new enterprises and initiatives. In view of changes taking place within the food industry, recommendations for action have been developed for both the stabilization and diffusion of transformative enterprises. In the light of the size trilemma discussed above, the diffusion of transformative enterprises does not take place through the vertical growth of existing enterprises, but through the horizontal spread of newly emerging units.

7.2  Institutional arrangements beyond the market In our research we examined practical partners operating at different stages of the food supply chain (primary production/​cultivation, processing, trade and distribution and complementary service sectors). In the following, we discuss some general findings. 7.2.1  Supply chain architecture The supply chain architectures of the transformative enterprises investigated exhibit a variety of interactions. In contrast to companies in the conventional food industry, which are mostly characterized by global supply chains, largely anonymous market relations and competition, transformative enterprises rely on short and, wherever possible, regional supply chains. Aspects such as local and regional relationships, trust and transparency become important. The integration of volunteers in the field of service provision as well as the participatory elements of decision making and design are regarded as high priority. These supply chains are, therefore, referred to as interactive supply chains. Figure 7.1 shows how the structure and design of supply chains have changed over recent decades as well as the potential for shaping the value creation process depending on the level of social interaction. The first stage of supply chain management (SCM) history already deviates from the traditional “factory model” to the extent that companies assume they are part of a network of successive stages in the supply chain, although the areas of procurement, production and distribution still exist as separated functional units. The second form of SCM is based on the tendency to shape supply chains in a spirit of partnership in conjunction with a long-​ term perspective. The third stage of development is based on an enhanced understanding of the overall process, which not only includes the production as such, but also the development and consumption of a product. Traditional forms of collaboration are supplemented by principles of solidarity, which, in the context of the nascent project, include active consumer participation, mutual support at individual process levels and joint decision making. An unrestricted flow of information is indispensable in this context (Müller 2005). An even more intensive form of integrating all stages of the supply chain into an economic community is characterized by interactions that go beyond pure

Cost effects of local food enterprises  121

Figure 7.1 Supply chain architecture and social interaction (own illustration based on Bechtel and Jayaram 1997).

process design and optimization (fourth stage). The interests of producers and buyers are reconciled and costs, risks and returns are shared. In addition, buyers are more closely involved in all operational stages: they are comprehensively informed, have a partial influence on business decisions, contribute financially and participate in production, storage and distribution. Therefore, consumers become “prosumers” (Toffler 1980). This organizational practice embeds economic processes into local and regional relationships. Instead of, or at least in addition to, traditional price negotiations, economic practices take account of the respective economic situation of the partners and their needs. In the best-​case scenario, the transaction takes place at a transparent level in mutual agreement according to the principle: “you get what you need: I give what I can”. Very often, the differences in efficiency between partners are not exploited in favor of individual advantages, but are orientated towards benefiting the overall process. Frequently abandoning the principle of a reciprocal exchange, which otherwise constitutes a market economy, can be attributed to the effect of a long-​ term congruence of interests resulting from the close integration of all those involved in value creation. The focus is not only on the short-​term increase of economic gains, but also on the long-​term stabilization of an appropriate overall situation. The plurality of economic activities and procedures is accepted and no one-​sided “optimization pressure” is exerted (in the traditional economy often combined with the principle of “grow or vanish”). The nascent project has discovered such criteria as fairness, a needs-​based orientation, long-​term security and partnership support (especially in crisis situations). These may be applied selectively or even established throughout several stages of the supply chain.

122  Niko Paech et al. 7.2.2  Developing a typology of transformative enterprises Although the enterprises and initiatives examined are very heterogeneous, there are common features that distinguish their approach towards traditional marketing strategies. They can be characterized on the basis of their respective degree of market orientation and directness of interaction between producers and consumers. A typology of such enterprises and initiatives can be constructed with reference to four categories (Figure 7.2), three of which correspond to the definition of transformative management used in the nascent project: 1. Subsistence:  self-​production (self-​sufficiency), e.g., community gardens, tenants’ gardens 2. Prosuming:  community-​organized production through financing and/​or collaboration between the members, e.g. CSA. 3. Solidarity commitment: sale of regional products with solidarity pricing to members and/​or customers, e.g. cooperatives of consumers and producers, food co-​ops, providers of organic food boxes and regional brands. In contrast, the category of “sustainable consumption” can be described as the modification, but not abandonment, of traditional marketing strategies. Our surveys suggest that sustainable consumption can become a preliminary stage of transformative economic activity if it is already based on extended consumer–​producer interactions, i.e. in the transitional area of solidarity. Within the framework of the nascent project, a total of 16 supply types were distinguished and typologically categorized. In this chapter, we examine

Figure 7.2 Forms of economic proximity /​interaction between producers and consumers (own illustration).

Cost effects of local food enterprises  123 some supply types that are particularly relevant in an international context. These are listed in Figure 7.3 and below. Regional brands label food products that are produced according to strict criteria of regional production and processing. The licensors of the regional brands examined by the nascent project are registered associations which usually work closely with wholesalers. The structure of these associations allows the extensive participation of civil society to guarantee quality based on the greatest possible transparency. In one of the cases we studied, a wholesale company emerged from the initiative group of the regional brand to become a considerable economic actor in its own right. The declared aim of the regional brands is to act as a strong business partner for the retail trade by enforcing fair prices for regional producers. The products serve as “ambassadors” between the producers and the consumers, to whom a direct contact can only be established through informational, educational and lobbying efforts relating to the regional brand due to the market-​oriented selling structure. Cooperatives of consumers and producers unite producers and consumers within one organization. This institutional merger creates direct relationships and proximity and is intended to ensure fair food prices. The market interaction of supply and demand is substituted by a principle of need and solidarity. The members contribute to the basic financing of the cooperative through contributions and deposits. Some cooperatives sell products

Figure 7.3 Transformative supply types (own illustration).

124  Niko Paech et al. to members only or use a dual pricing system that differentiates between members and non-​members in their shops. Members are often expected to provide practical assistance, although some cooperatives have abandoned this principle. In the course of their economic development, one nascent practice partner was forced to privatize the sales shops as well as having to convert further core areas of the operative business into a regular company. Overall, this transformative enterprise has now adopted three organizational forms, operating variously as a regular company, a cooperative (where important content areas such as product planning and the further development of the company’s own brand are located) and a non-​profit association (primarily responsible for educational work and ecologically sustainable projects). A provider of organic food boxes distributes agricultural products to consumers in the form of a regular delivery service. This can be organized by the farm or by an independently operating trading company and can contain both the company’s own (regional) and purchased products. Consumers can choose different types of subscriptions and decide on the contents of the food box. The suppliers examined within the framework of the nascent project are retail enterprises that have established close contact with regional producers. They distribute their products, supplemented by wholesale goods, directly to consumers. A reliable customer relationship is established on the basis of personal contacts and appreciation for the service, which helps to secure sales and prices. The term food co-​op refers to a consumer group organized for the common purchase of organic food, often in the legal form of a registered association, but which can also take the form of an informal initiative. The goods are often purchased from wholesalers. Depending on their size and structure, some food co-​ops purchase directly from producers and processors in the region and beyond, placing particular emphasis on sustainability and fair trade. In the food co-​ops that we reviewed, all work, including ordering, goods acceptance, distribution and invoicing, is done on a voluntary basis. CSA is defined as a group of private households that bear the costs of a farm in return for a share of the harvest. Members receive seasonal products from the farm and, if necessary, additional products from associated enterprises based on goods exchange (bartering) and direct purchase. The pre-​financing of operating costs through solidarity contributions facilitates the emergence of a new development perspective for small-​scale organic agricultural units. At the same time, opportunities for participation are opened, both in terms of work practice and organizational tasks. The difference from the other transformative supply types is that no products are sold, but the entire agricultural production is jointly sustained (economic community). Some CSA organizations are combined with grassroots democratic control of the entire enterprise whilst others limit member participation and focus on practical labor contributions. The legal forms adopted by such organizations range from registered associations and cooperatives to dual structures in which the agricultural enterprise has a traditional legal form and the members’ group

Cost effects of local food enterprises  125 (consumers) is organized separately either as a registered association or as an informal initiative. Tenants’ gardens are areas that can be leased by individuals for a season. The tenants are responsible for cultivation and harvesting. The relationship between lessee and lessor is clearly defined. The lessor (usually an agricultural enterprise) is responsible for soil preparation and initial planting and also provides the infrastructure, e.g. irrigation, fencing, etc. They also provide the tenants with all necessary information, equipment, seeds and young plants. The tenants are responsible for everything else. Community building in tenants’ gardens varies greatly according to individual needs. In addition to local providers of tenants’ gardens, some enterprises have established themselves throughout Germany and are developing nationwide labels for tenants’ gardens and manage the relationships between tenants and landlords on a franchise basis. In community gardens, the focus is on the joint gardening and management of an urban agricultural area. In contrast to tenants’ gardens, all functions are organized by the gardeners themselves. Operational and gardening tasks are decided upon in a participatory manner. Community gardens are primarily to be understood as social learning spaces and differ in terms of their agricultural productivity. The legal form is usually a registered association. 7.2.3  Main business traits By overcoming traditional market strategies, transformative business characteristics become relevant in different forms and can be classified by the following characteristics: 7.2.3.1  Convivial technology In contrast to the agricultural industry, transformative enterprises tend to be less technology-​intensive. In the spirit of “convivial” technologies,1 machines are mainly used to support human activities rather than to replace them. This approach is typical of the CSA enterprises as well as the community and tenants’ gardens. The technology used is usually designed to cultivate small areas. Robust devices are often used, e.g. tractors that can be repaired with one’s own means and can serve a wide range of purposes. Transformative retailers make use of convivial technology (e.g. the delivery of vegetables with electrically assisted load bicycles), albeit to a lesser extent. In addition, our empirical results show that most of them collaborate with agricultural enterprises that do not place any particular emphasis on mechanization. 7.2.3.2  Greater intensity of work and employment of versatile workers A lower capital intensity goes hand in hand with increased manual labor. Small-​ scale farming, e.g. vegetable production with labor-​ intensive crop

126  Niko Paech et al. cultivation, as practiced in CSA, leads to a higher demand for a versatile, i.e. less-​specialized, workforce, which implies lower labor productivity. However, this increases flexibility and resilience and reduces dependencies on technology and capital. The reduced capital requirement substantially reduces the entry barrier for the establishment and development of new enterprises. This may weaken the pressure to maximize profits or, ideally, completely eradicate it. In addition, volunteers and prosumers are given the opportunity to assist and participate. On the other hand, a smaller farm size corresponds to higher average costs because economies of scale cannot be exploited. In combination with alternative agricultural farming practices, such as organic farming, permaculture or agroforestry, intensified manpower can also enable higher productivity per unit area whilst simultaneously reducing the use of raw materials and increasing resource efficiency. Furthermore, artisanal practices, such as preservation, are reduced throughout by reducing waste and increasing food efficiency. This harmonizes with the ecological objectives of transformative enterprises. 7.2.3.3  Prevention of external effects/​provision of ecosystem services The transformative enterprises observed in the course of this study tend to pay attention to seasonality in their supply, to reduce energy-​intensive refinement steps, to preserve older plant varieties and livestock breeds, to value high quality and health, to avoid packaging materials and to ensure maximum recycling of the production and consumer goods used. To varying degrees, their production methods are oriented towards an ecological cycle that is as closed as possible, thus conserving resources. Whilst the externalization of environmental damage is a decisive “production factor” of industrialized agriculture, transformative enterprises try to overcome the lack of responsibility through local and regional management and cooperative action. Instead of generating external effects, ecosystem services are provided, which serve the community for the common weal. 7.2.3.4  Collaborative action With certain exceptions, our empirical observations revealed the existence of collaborative patterns throughout the supply chain, the intention being to replace competition in favor of long-​term stable partnerships and the immediate satisfaction of the needs of all participants, which becomes the basis for structural responsibility. This process requires recursive negotiation and an understanding of individual needs and, therefore, an active contribution from all participants (Acksel et al. 2015, 140–​141). A couple of the initiatives reported that some of the participants appreciate their strategy to such an extent that they decide to support them by investing in them even when the expected returns are low to non-​existent. This is based on shared motives of investors and producers. The main success factors

Cost effects of local food enterprises  127 cited by the surveyed participants include facilitating a sense of community, the involvement in networks and the shared value base of the respective initiative. This helps many transformative enterprises to raise capital without providing significant returns, as some investors do not claim risk premiums. A prerequisite for this community effect and low return expectations are supply chains that reduce the distance between producers and consumers who could be investors at the same time. The spatial proximity enhances trust and empathy. A return on interest or equity is substituted by the benefit of belonging to a community of solidarity or supporting local structures. If consumers are at the same time investors in the production organizations, trust can arise as a result of the associated transparency. The need for risk compensation is significantly reduced to the extent that consumers would harm themselves by demanding higher returns, which would inevitably result in price increases. Whilst a more favorable alternative provider could be chosen in the market, which, for example, succeeds in externalizing costs more efficiently, remaining loyal to a single provider resolves this dilemma. An essential factor for building reciprocal trust in transformative enterprises is the organizational involvement of consumers as co-​producers or prosumers. 7.2.3.5  Participation and co-​determination Participation and co-​determination are indispensable stabilizing elements of transformative enterprises and, in many cases, promote customer loyalty and thus economic security. Consumer inclusion was found to be characteristic of all the transformative enterprises studied: it creates trust, reduces anonymity and strengthens sustainable relationships to establish transformative economic methods as alternatives beyond the conventional market logic. Distinctive participatory structures, even direct co-​determination, can be found particularly in community gardens, CSA, food co-​ops and consumer–​ producer cooperatives. Some of the participation options such as tenants’ gardens tend to cover practical activities. Selective participation rights (e.g. definition and monitoring of a regional brand’s product criteria) can be applied to soften or overcome hierarchical structures. 7.2.4  Resulting cost structures Our research has shown that transformative enterprises and initiatives • • • •

create new forms of social interaction face challenges caused by special cost structures are confronted with special requirements in terms of the social stability of their organizational forms are not growth-​oriented

128  Niko Paech et al. • require new strategies to disseminate their respective organizational  forms. If they are able to meet the related challenges, transformative enterprises can deliver services whose social and environmental quality would be unlikely, or even impossible, under market conditions. Nevertheless, these enterprises face competition from other suppliers oriented towards conventional business aims, which presents certain challenges in particular due to lower labor productivity compared with traditional standards. This results from the involvement of prosumers and a lower degree of specialization and technology. To analyze these challenges, three relevant cost categories must be distinguished: 1. Production costs, such as manufacturing, distribution, marketing 2. Transaction costs type 1:  these include collecting information, contract negotiation, coordination and communication of business processes 3. Transaction costs type 2, which are associated with the stabilization of participatory processes in non-​hierarchical organizations. The latter are caused by different activities: •​ •​ •​ •

•​

Coordination and instruction of voluntary participants/​actors Allocation of responsibilities and competences Managing complex decision-​making processes (including different roles, opinions and perspectives) Solving conflicts caused by lack of transparency and contrary (but hidden) motivations and opinions: (1) intrinsic, content-​related; (2) community-​ oriented, (high) expectation of social recognition; (3) expecting personal benefits Solving personal conflicts between persons who are highly (emotionally) attached to the organization.

The challenge lies in balancing the advantages of voluntary participation with the organizational difficulties involved in handling their integration. Our empirical findings confirm earlier studies (Erlinghagen 2000), which suggest that the inclusion of volunteer work resulting from self-​ administration results in cost savings, social closeness and trust, but that it also increases a certain category of transaction costs (type 2). Therefore, transformative enterprises reduce traditional external transaction costs (type 1) and production costs as a result of consumer participation, practical and financial support and the avoidance of market-​based transactions. On the other hand, new transaction costs (type 2) arise. These costs place upper limits on organizational size in terms of the number of participants interacting in a gradual non-​hierarchical system. Otherwise it may become

Cost effects of local food enterprises  129 too costly or even impossible to stabilize the organization with regard to social conflicts, a lack of formal incentives for being productive and coordination efforts.

7.3  The trilemma of operational stabilization A central finding of our study is that transformative enterprises operate within a three-​way nexus of economic stability, social stability and transformative character. An adequately sized management team is needed to balance this trilemma (Figure 7.4). Some supply types ignore this trilemma by professionalizing and/​or hierarchizing themselves (at the expense of transformative characteristics) from the outset or in the development process. Others stick to their participation orientation ideals, which can mean not growing beyond a certain production capacity, thus risking their economic viability due to excessive average costs. Preserving the transformative character and economic stability of the organization raises the problem of upper and lower organizational limits, which mark a consistent development corridor. 7.3.1  The upper-​limit problem The prosumers who participate in the enterprises surveyed have to meet high requirements with regard to reliability, skills and time resources (general meetings, agreements, voluntary work, democratic decision-​ making processes, etc.), which may result in personal and social overload. In particular, implementing participatory or democratic elements (as is the case, for example, in community gardens, food co-​ops, CSA and consumer–​producer cooperatives) can create immense coordination and management challenges. Organizational growth (due to increasing demand, supply chain complexity, etc.) increases the effort required to avoid social conflicts and time-​consuming

Figure 7.4 The trilemma of transformative size management (own illustration).

130  Niko Paech et al. decision processes more than in conventional enterprises, thus lowering productivity. Particularly as a result of voluntary participation, transformative enterprises face control problems that can no longer be handled within a gradually non-​hierarchical organizational design once an upper limit of the number of persons involved has been reached. This upper limit depends on the structure of social interactions involved in decision-​making processes. The high standards of participation correspond to special institutional arrangements. Their functionality requires informal relationships within the value creation process to be designed with a view to reliability and freedom from conflict. In conventional enterprises this problem does not arise since social stabilization is determined by formal contracts, monetary incentive mechanisms and organizational hierarchies. Many CSAs and food co-​ops are trying to consolidate their administrative and coordination activities on a permanent, voluntary basis. It cannot be ruled out that, after a first phase of high motivation, the participants may be overburdened and may experience conflict situations. This means that operational disruptions are inevitable, as conflict situations, unclear responsibilities, flagging motivation or a lack of reliability are extremely time consuming and require extra personnel for moderation and clarification purposes. But even beyond any social exacerbations caused by overwork, stress and demotivation, the fulfillment of democratic demands alone, especially non-​hierarchical decision-​making processes, means that time-​consuming coordination efforts have to be made, which have a negative impact on the actual added value. The only alternative to an upper limit to handle these challenges would be a stronger formalization through monetary incentive structures and contractual ties which would mean imitating the very structures that transformative initiatives aim to overcome. Indeed, some of the cooperatives and regional brands analyzed during the study are more formalized and have, therefore, restricted the participation structures. This increases their growth potential, but entails the risk of increasingly adopting conventional organizational principles. 7.3.2  The lower-​limit problem Transformative enterprises are also confronted with the difficulty of covering their costs. Assuming that economies of scale are relevant to some degree in conjunction with a specific product price or a level of willingness to pay, a certain minimum production capacity is required to cover costs. This minimum capacity is correlated with a minimum number of members needed to run and organize the transformative enterprise. To mitigate the pressure of being big enough to survive, some transformative enterprises try to reduce costs by including consumers in parts of their production process (prosuming). Whilst this does alleviate the growth imperative, a minimum production capacity needed to survive can never be completely avoided.

Cost effects of local food enterprises  131 The situation may escalate if the number of members or prosumers corresponding with this minimum capacity exceeds the organizational size of the company that is consistent with social stability. This would be the case, for example, if more resources are needed to coordinate voluntary activities or to moderate participatory decision-​making processes than can be financed by revenues. Even if the effort required to deal with these challenges is based on voluntary activities, self-​exploitation or insolvency could be the consequence. 7.3.3  Survivable development corridor Many transformative enterprises are faced with the dilemma of having to be large enough to cover their costs but not too large since otherwise social dynamics could not be managed due to the lack of formal contracts (Figure 7.5). The survival of transformative enterprises requires developing the organization within the upper and lower boundaries, which raises two central questions: 1. Lower-​limit management: minimum farm size to be economical What sort of measures can influence the cost structure to reduce the minimum survivable size? To what extent can prosumers contribute to cost reductions? How can consumers be motivated to pay more to cover non-​ competitive average costs? 2. Upper-​limit management: maximum company size to achieve social stability How can transformative enterprises lower costs and the effort required for coordination and decision-​making processes within a more or less non-​hierarchical set-​up?

Figure 7.5 Survivable development corridor of transformative enterprises (own illustration).

132  Niko Paech et al.

Figure 7.6 Activities of transformative enterprises designed to deal with production costs and traditional transaction costs and the effects on the new cost factor “type-​2 transaction costs” (own illustration). Note: SC, supply chain.

Due to their organizational (degree of market orientation) and functional (supply chain focus) heterogeneity, each supply type corresponds to a specific development corridor, which has to be determined individually. Figure  7.6 shows various measures that can be taken to cope with the size dilemma, especially to reduce production and transaction costs. The third column lists examples of how these measures affect type-​2 transaction  costs.

Cost effects of local food enterprises  133

7.4  Strategies for the dissemination of transformative enterprises and initiatives Based on the measures described above, a transformation of the entire food sector would require a horizontal dissemination of transformative suppliers. Building on this, synergies between different supply types within a regional economic network can be applied. Furthermore, an established regional agricultural structure could be spread geographically. 7.4.1  The compatible diffusion process: small is beautiful and stable Multiplying transformative suppliers requires balancing stable sizes for each specific type. Traditionally, diffusion processes are based on a normal distribution of adopters (Figure  7.7). The start of a diffusion process is carried by a small number of innovators and early adopters. Their opinions, shared experiences and innovation assessments are essential for the adoption by the next cohort of adopters, who in turn influence more risk-​averse and less change-​affine adopters. According to Wüstenhagen et al. (2001), this trend is transferable to the behavior of companies. They assume that an innovation that is successfully introduced by smaller or new pioneers (“Davids”, marked

Figure 7.7 Diffusion process, adopter groups and company sizes (own illustration based on Rogers 2003).

134  Niko Paech et al. light gray) will be followed by a phase of acquisition by larger companies (“Goliaths”, marked dark gray), which will integrate the innovation into their operations (for example, organic products and private labels in conventional supermarkets). Large companies within the food industry have very often included sustainable innovations in their programs. This diffusion process, which is based on the vertical growth of individual companies (first graph), contrasts with transformative forms of change since it preserves large and hierarchical supply structures. These attempts to transform the food sector by commercializing sustainable products within a conventional supply chain architecture have failed. Alternatively, a horizontal multiplication of transformative suppliers, which takes account of the trilemma described above, could form a decentralized structure rather than a scheme involving the vertical growth of conventional companies. Horizontal multiplication is based on creating replicas of functioning transformative economic units where additional demand arises (second graph). This can either be decentralized and autonomous in the sense of an open-​source concept or centralized or hierarchical in the sense of a branch system. CSA is expanding, for example, by founding new CSA enterprises or converting existing small-​scale farms to the CSA concept. However, the individual organizational unit only grows up to its socially and economically viable upper limit. The production growth of the individual farms is based on the specific agricultural land conditions in conjunction with consumer interests. As soon as the production capacity ceiling is reached, new consumer enquiries are placed on a waiting list. Instead of investing in new land and hiring more staff, to increase output, the community usually supports other CSA projects under development. Community gardens, food co-​ops and consumer–​producer cooperatives also diffuse horizontally according to this model. Providers of tenants’ gardens exemplify the centrally organized duplication of small units based on a nationwide marketing strategy and coordination according to the franchise concept. In this case, participatory decision-​ making processes are restricted. A combination of decentralized and autonomous dissemination may be carried out by a central institution that supports small units through advisory, information and networking services. 7.4.2  Regionally based transformative food systems A transformative food system can be defined as a region consisting of complementary and collaborating transformative suppliers. This increases the resilience of participating companies as well as consumers and the regional economy as a whole. First, insofar as consumers become prosumers, they regain nutritional competence and food sovereignty based on the ability for self-​sufficiency and preparing their own food. This can be supplemented by adapting demand to the prevailing seasonal and regional conditions. This mode of supply avoids complex transport and logistics infrastructures and,

Cost effects of local food enterprises  135 therefore, dependence on fossil fuels. Short distances between production and consumption enhance resilience. Such food systems can be supported by providers of consulting and network services. The CSA Network,2 for example, offers largely free management consultancy, arranges support for special challenges and facilitates contacts to stable pioneers as inspiration. Food policy councils (Mendes 2011) are suitable coordinators, networkers, lobbyists and initiators who facilitate dialogue and offer a platform through which transformative enterprises become better known and attract new members or demanders. Similar projects, such as Regionalwert (Hiß 2014), act as a promoter for regional and ecological businesses, mediating between investors and ethically oriented investors. The more diverse the complementary supply types in a region, the greater the number of people with different preferences and abilities, who can be motivated to participate. If a regional transformative food system is successfully established and stabilized, it can be transferred to other regions as a blueprint. 7.4.3  Effects on the macroeconomic basis Potential effects on the food sector as a whole can be summarized by five scenarios (Figure 7.8). • •

Scenario 1: because of their (self-​)limitation and limited geographical spread, transformative enterprises have only a minor diffusion effect and remain long-​term niche organizations. Scenario 2: transformative enterprises are spreading rapidly and to a numerically relevant extent in addition to the already-​established food

Figure 7.8 Potential scenarios of the diffusion effect of transformative enterprises and practices (own illustration).

136  Niko Paech et al.

•

•

•

system. They do not bring about structural change but increase the range and quantity of production. Scenario 3: transformative enterprises are spreading rapidly and to a numerically relevant extent displacing traditional food production. The substitution of the industrial agricultural economy by transformative forms implies a structural change of the supply system. Scenario 4: transformative enterprises are spreading rapidly and to a numerically relevant extent, displacing traditional food industry practices. In addition, transformative economic practices, combined with a higher appreciation of food, help to ensure that fewer surpluses are produced and disposed, so that the overall output shrinks. Scenario 5:  the diffusion of transformative enterprises causes the established food system to raise the ecological quality standard.

It seems possible that some of these idealized scenarios may occur as a sequence. From an ecological perspective, the most desirable scenario would be a reduction in total material turnover and a parallel displacement of the industrial coined food sector.

7.5  Conclusion Transformative enterprises and regional food systems are more than a basis for more sustainability and resilience. They form the antithesis to an agro-​ industrial structure which, due to its complexity, can no longer be controlled democratically. This aspect is regularly manifested in various food scandals. The media, politicians and the public are responding by demanding stronger controls, new consumer protection institutions and laws. However, these demands are not sufficient because they are not cause-​adequate, but legitimize a supply system in which organized irresponsibility is inevitable. Breaking the production of goods down into many isolated processes to increase business efficiency creates a chain of specialized and independent organizations. The resulting spatial and functional differentiation results in the distribution of responsibility for the entire process among so many organizations that it is erased. Each decision maker, who only deals with a partial aspect within complex process chains, pursues his or her own rational objectives based on their isolated task areas. Since the consequences of the entire process, in particular for the ecosphere and consumers, remain invisible to the actors involved, “moral indifference” is created (Bauman 2002, 32). Within the economic orientation of their individual organization, the actors involved ultimately “only do their duty”. This immunization against ethical and other non-​economic rationales also applies to consumers. Consumers generally demand goods they have not produced themselves. Consumption and production thus form separate spheres. Between the emergence of a need and the production it triggers, there

Cost effects of local food enterprises  137 are many unmanageable isolated actions chained together over considerable distances. Delegating executive tasks and decisions over many stages results in “mediatization”, i.e. a mediation of actions (Lachs 1981). These are basically carried out by a third party who “stands between me and the consequences of my actions, so that these remain hidden from me” (Bauman 2002, 38). Therefore, the essential principle of modern functionally differentiated societies creates pathological conditions under which microeconomic decisions are almost perfectly shielded from feedback and thus moral inhibitions. Attempting to control supply systems that have become too complex, particularly when the physical and psychological distances between consumption and production have grown, is as promising as searching for a needle in a haystack. This has long been the case in the food sector. Only more direct relationships between the consumption and production sides, as practiced in transformative enterprises, e.g. those surveyed by the nascent project and discussed in this chapter, create social conditions under which responsible economic action becomes probable. Those who are confronted with the feedback of their own actions, which emanate from a visible and tangible counterpart, follow an inner moral seismograph instead of economic incentives to act sustainably. “Responsibility, the basic element of moral behavior, arises from the proximity of the other. Closeness means responsibility and responsibility is closeness” (Bauman 2002, 198).

Notes 1 According to Illich (1973), conviviality characterizes a technology whose use is easily accessible because it is not complex and is based, as far as possible, on collaboration. 2 Accessable via: www.solidarische-​landwirtschaft.org/​index.php?id=92

References Acksel, B., J. Euler, L. Gauditz et  al. 2015. Commoning:  Zur Konstruktion einer konvivialen Gesellschaft. In Konvivialismus: Eine Debatte, ed. F. Adloff, and V. M. Heins, 133–​45. Bielefeld: transcript. Bauman, Z. 2002. Dialektik der Ordnung: Die Moderne und der Holocaust. Hamburg:  Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Bechtel, C., and J. Jayaram. 1997. Supply chain management: A strategic perspective. International Journal of Logistics Management 8, no. 1: 15–​34. Erlinghagen, M. 2000. Sozioökonomie des Ehrenamtes: Theorie der nicht-​entlohnten, haushaltsextern organisierten Produktion. No. 2000–​14, Graue Reihe des Instituts Arbeit und Technik, Institut Arbeit und Technik (IAT), Westfälische Hochschule, University of Applied Sciences. https://​EconPapers.repec.org/​RePEc:zbw:iatgra: 200014. Hiß, C. 2014. Regionalwert AG:  Mit Bürgeraktien die regionale Ökonomie stärken; Ein Handbuch mit praktischen Hinweisen zu Gründung, Beteiligung und Umsetzung. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

138  Niko Paech et al. Illich, I. 1973. Tools for conviviality. New York: Marion Boyars. Lachs, J. 1981. Responsibility and the individual in modern society. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press. Mendes, W. 2011. Food policy councils. Montreal: Institut national de santé publique Québec. Müller, M. 2005. Informationstransfer im Supply Chain Management:  Analyse aus Sicht der Neuen Institutionenökonomie. Vol. 341 of Neue Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (nbf). Wiesbaden:  Deutscher Universitätsverlag. http://​ dx.doi.org/​ 10.1007/​978-​3-​322-​82065-​5. Rogers, E. M. (1962) 2003. Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press. Toffler, A. 1980. Die dritte Welle: Zukunftschance: Perspektiven für die Gesellschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Goldmann. Wüstenhagen, R., A. Villiger, and A. Meyer. 2001. Bio-​Lebensmittel jenseits der Öko-​ Nische. In Nachhaltiger Konsum: Forschung und Praxis im Dialog, ed. U. Schrader, and U. Hansen, 177–​88. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.

Part III

Transformative local networks

8  Transformative communities in Germany Working towards a sustainable food supply through creative doing and collaboration Irene Antoni-​Komar and Christine Lenz

8.1  Introduction With the new millennium, the ecological movement in the food sector has been gaining strength and developing alternative concepts to the growth-​driven consumer society. Alternatives to global “Big Food” (Clapp and Scrinis 2016; Williams and Nestle 2016; Heinrich-​Böll-​Stiftung et  al. 2017) are emerging that operate locally, ecologically, in a way which is socially aware, on a small scale and based on solidarity. Global industrial processes of value creation based on the division of labor and sole dependence on non-​local supply chains are gradually being dismantled, reflecting the advance of growth-​ critical approaches (Paech 2012). The activation of people’s own resources, along with the production of local goods as a means of circumventing long-​distance and complex value chains, are important elements in the process of reconfiguring the food supply system. Local food initiatives and enterprises1 that operate in a community-​oriented, collaborative and grassroots-​based democratic manner (Renting et al. 2012) are key contributors in this. They stand for a “self-​determined life and dignity for all” (Burkhart et al. 2017, 109). Rather than focusing on consuming goods and services and constantly seeking more and more material opportunities for self-​fulfillment (Benson 2000; Bauman 2007), such efforts are aimed at jointly developing practices of provision and mutual care that change conventional patterns of consumption and, therefore, coexistence (Jackson 2009, 187ff.). Also referred to as the grassroots movement (Seyfang and Smith 2007; Rossi 2017), urban gardening projects, community-​ supported agriculture, food co-​ ops and producer–​ consumer networks establish links between producers and consumers (Carlson and Bitsch 2018), promote “prosumerism”2 (Blättel-​Mink et al. 2017) and create learning spaces to support processes of self and group empowerment. Focusing as it does on the community orientation of these enterprises, this chapter addresses the following questions:  what emancipatory, creative potential do local food enterprises develop in their role as transformative

142  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz communities that are working towards achieving a sustainable food supply? How can they change the dominant food system through community-​based economic activity? In the following, we begin by outlining the theoretical framework and the method of investigation (section 8.2) before then clarifying the concept and significance of transformative communities in local food enterprises (section 8.3). Finally, we present the results of the empirical study (section 8.4) and discuss the possibilities and limitations of transformative communities with regard to socio-​ecological change (section 8.5).

8.2  Theoretical framework and empirical design To analyze the significance of community in local food enterprises we opted to use the Strategy-​as-​Practice (SAP) approach (Vaara and Whittington 2012, 289ff.; Golsorkhi et al. 2016). SAP connects the theory of strategic management with social practice theory. Strategic management concentrates on the planning, development and implementation of a company’s objectives. The focus here is mostly on strategy development at upper control levels with the aim of positioning oneself on the market. By supplementing sociological aspects in SAP, it is also possible to analyze other levels of a company as relevant units of action for strategy development, which is also relevant for us because the enterprises we examine are those that have flat hierarchies and do not make decisions exclusively at management level. Since strategies in SAP are not only taken as normative decisions, but also include actions that actually take place, entrepreneurial action can be considered much more comprehensively. This broader approach enables us to analyze other types of organizations than traditional businesses using a variety of qualitative methods. Instead of regarding strategies exclusively as top-​down management decisions based on corporate visions and clear deliberate strategies for realizing them, we also look at “emergent strategies” that are often a result of social practices within the enterprise. In doing so, we substitute the narrow and individualistic approach of traditional business studies for a holistic one that considers the embeddedness of actors and enterprises within society as well as the variety of actors and their multiple interactions. According to Vaara and Whittington, practices are “accepted ways of doing things, embodied and materially mediated, that are shared between actors and routinized over time” (Vaara and Whittington 2012, 287). Theories developed in cultural sociology enrich the economic approach because they underline the importance of social practices and their reorganization with regard to the contemporary relevance of community approaches to social and political life (Bauman 2007; Delanty [2009] 2010 ; Reckwitz 2017). Thus, SAP provides insights into the world of practitioners and enriches our knowledge of embedded activities in broader societal or macro-​institutional contexts.

Transformative communities in Germany  143 As part of the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research project nascent, this paper focuses on the social practices of community orientation (Pfriem et  al. 2015) in local food enterprises and highlights their possibilities and limitations with regard to social-​ecological transformation. Taking a transdisciplinary approach (Hirsch Hadorn et  al. 2008; Fam et  al. 2017), we focus specifically on micro-​episodes of strategizing. This is especially important for us due to our particular interest in transformative communities which are part of enterprises or are closely connected to them. These community-​enhancing enterprises are very different from classical enterprises/​ business models in terms of organization, one example being their use of more participatory structures in decision-​making processes. Empirical data was collected using semi-​structured interviews, participant observation, action research and workshops conducted in collaboration with 27 practitioners from local food enterprises and initiatives. The enterprises surveyed are located in five German regions (Oldenburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, the Ruhr district  –​each with its surrounding area). What they have in common is their focus on comprehensively sustainable production and distribution of food, although they use very different business models for this purpose. While some are closer to the conventional structures of the food industry, such as regional brands, others, such as farms in community-​ supported agriculture, concentrate more on alternative supply concepts. Other examples of the enterprises we studied are less interested in distributing food than in sharing knowledge and experience. Examples of this are urban gardening projects or self-​harvesting fields. The interviews were subject to computer-​aided qualitative text analysis (Kuckartz 2014), while quantitative data was gathered from surveys of the members and customers of the enterprises. In our contribution, we draw on selected contributions from the interviews to demonstrate the relevance of community orientation. In order to protect the anonymity of our interview partners, the quotes are coded.

8.3  Transformative communities in local food enterprises The qualitative results highlight the prominent role of community orientation in the reorganization of the food supply in local food enterprises (Pfriem et al. 2015). In the following sections, we use extracts from interviews to illustrate and support the findings. The quotations of the practitioners are in italics to identify them clearly. The enterprises investigated confirm the great importance of community for its members. They can participate in joint activities, such as harvesting, workshops or farm festivals, in a variety of ways: “This is also reflected in surveys, and we hear it when we talk to people, that for many it is actually the community aspect, being with other people, that is the key thing” (G3-​5,  80). In these newly developing transformative communities, a wide range of actors work together over a given period of time with the aim of forging new

144  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz paths in the globalized, anonymized food system. The fact that many people are actually looking for community benefits the food initiatives. Zygmunt Bauman (2001) identifies a turn to community in liquid modernity, reading it as an attempt to mitigate the uncertainties of the “unlimited risk society” (Beck [1968] 1992) in times of growing global complexity. Gerard Delanty agrees: The increasing individualism of modern society has been accompanied by an enduring nostalgia for the idea of community as a source of security and belonging in an increasingly insecure world. ... Community has a contemporary resonance in the current social and political situation, which appears to have produced a worldwide search for roots, identity and aspirations for belonging. (Delanty [2009] 2010, x) Today’s consumer society is characterized by an ambiguity regarding the individual–​collective nexus: on the one hand, people strive for individual self-​ realization and autonomy and engage readily in competition (Bröckling 2015; Siedentop 2015), while this very set of behaviors simultaneously reinforces a desire for social proximity, empathy and cooperation (Sennett 2013). New forms of economic proximity and interaction are emerging, not least in the form of economic activity based on solidarity as an alternative to the competitive economy and its material maximization of utility. Economic activity can, “as it originally did, serve people and their well-​being rather than having an orientation towards profit as the overriding purpose to which people must submit” (Möller [1998] 1999, 19; own translation). The necessary prerequisite for this is the actors’ fundamental commitment to “socially competent and cooperative practices based on solidarity” (ibid.; own translation). Transformative communities are new communities (Goulding et al. 2002; Hitzler et  al. 2008; Gertenbach et  al. 2010; Davies 2012) formed by people coming together voluntarily to pursue certain aims. In contrast to traditional communities such as families, village communities or religious communities, whose membership is given by virtue of traditional and social ties and which are progressively losing their cohesive power these days, voluntary post-​ traditional “neo-​communities” must first be institutionalized. People decide to participate in them because they are culturally attractive (Reckwitz 2017, 399), and similar to communities of practice, in which heterogeneous actors are dedicated to a common goal: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (E. and B. Wenger-​Trayner 2015, 1) It is also about a new form of self-​realization and self-​efficacy, expressed in the desire to engage creatively in heterogeneous modes of cooperation. This

Transformative communities in Germany  145 is particularly evident among the founders and employees of local food enterprises, who expect to get more from their professional activities than just income: We [founders] didn’t know each other at the beginning but immediately realized that we were both in very similar phases of life, where we wanted to somehow reconcile our private, personal values with a professional commitment. ... We never dithered for long, but just moved things along quite energetically  –​we made decisions quickly and unbureaucratically and in fact set up the cooperative before we had even packed and delivered the first vegetable box, because it was clear from the beginning where we wanted to go. (G2-​4,  26) Reckwitz (2017) describes this fundamental change as follows: The highly qualified citizens of late modernity expect more from their work than just a means of earning a living. Creative work thus becomes a cultural practice in the sense of the strong concept of culture3 –​be it that it gives the workers hermeneutic-​narrative meaning (a meaningful and interesting occupation), be it that it promises an aesthetically sensuous experience (the experience of creative flow), be it that it enables qualities of playfulness to be developed or that it is ascribed intrinsic ethical value (“being able to change something”) or through the act of creating something new, which is expressed in it. (Reckwitz 2017, 187–​188; own translation) However, the pursuit of creative and meaningful activity is not limited to gainful employment. The members and customers of local food enterprises who volunteer their free time to engage in or to initiate joint activities also illustrate the relevance of purposeful action. I think we meet very open-​minded, interested people here who want to try things out and want to get to know each other on the one hand, and who are willing to take a sustainability-​conscious approach, but who also want to pass this approach on. ... and that’s why it’s a very, very nice mode of cooperation. (G1-​4,  99) As indicated here, the desire to engage in shared creative activity brings together highly diverse actors. More than this, however, local food enterprises facilitate the creation of spaces and possibilities for discarding the traditional economic roles of consumption and production, spaces where the adoption of “prosumerism” enables people to try out and practice solidarity with one another.

146  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz To sum up, transformative communities are voluntary alliances of heterogeneous actors (founders of enterprises, employees, customers, etc.) who embrace the goal of working together in solidarity to change the food system on a local level. These communities arise within or as adjuncts to local food enterprises and are driven by the desire for creative and meaningful activity.

8.4  Sustainable practices, creative doing and social cohesion In the following, we will take a closer look at creative doing and the associated reconfiguration of social practices in order to clarify the transformative potential of the emerging communities and to characterize them more precisely. Recent research on social innovation (Haxeltine et al. 2013; Rückert-​John 2013) emphasizes the importance of creative doing and experimental testing for the necessary transformation of existing practices in alternative projects. In order to break through well-​established routines (Shove and Spurling 2012), it is necessary to “recombine or reconfigure social practices with the aim of solving problems or needs better than is possible on the basis of established practices” (Howaldt and Schwarz 2010, 54; own translation). The relevance of heterogeneous forms of collaboration in creative doing, mentioned in the previous section as an important characteristic of transformative communities, is underscored by statements made by practitioners in the first workshop of the nascent project (in 2015)  about the basis for their motivation. The overall high approval values for the items contained in the quantitative member survey in 2017 also underlines this significance. The quantitative member survey carried out by subproject 2 (University of Stuttgart) was conducted from 9 to 13 February 2017 using an online questionnaire. A total of 212 members from the 27 partner enterprises responded. The focus was on questions concerning motivations and goals of participating in the respective enterprise, but also on questions concerning the assessment of the transformation contribution and the effects of membership on other spheres. According to Reckwitz (2017, 187–​ 188), creative doing implies the following three factors of hermeneutic-​narrative meaning: (1) meaningful and interesting activity; (2)  aesthetically sensuous experience as one of creative flow; and (3)  the intrinsic ethical value of being able to change something. These three factors form the basis of the following evaluation. Tables  8.1 and 8.2 present the qualitative and quantitative data on collaboration in creative doing. We then compare this data with each other. The specific characteristics of self-​ efficacy, meaningfulness and sensual doing described by the practitioners, combined with participation, form the hermeneutic-​narrative meaning of creative doing. The experience of community and social proximity reflects the second factor of aesthetically sensuous experience. Central for many participants is the experience of creative change

Transformative communities in Germany  147 Table 8.1 Qualitative results on creative doing in transformative communities Creative doing in collaboration with heterogeneous actors (qualitative data, n = 25) Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Hermeneutic-​narrative meaning (meaningful and interesting activity) Self-​efficacy; meaningfulness and sensual doing Participation (participatory agriculture, participatory vegetable growing)

Aesthetically sensuous experience (experience of creative flow) Self-​empowerment; being proactive; fun and enjoyment Experiencing community and social proximity

Ethical value (being able to change something) Experience of creative change and creative power Sense of political and social effectiveness and accountability

Table 8.2 Quantitative results on creative doing in transformative communities Creative doing in collaboration with heterogeneous actors (quantitative data, n = 212) Hermeneutic-​narrative meaning (meaningful and interesting activity) Appreciation (2.85)a

Aesthetically sensuous experience (experience of creative flow) Experience community (3.62)

Acquire new skills (3.69) Expand knowledge (4.17)

Become involved in a “hands-​on” way (3.95) Try new things (4.13)

Mean 3.57

Mean 3.9

Ethical value (being able to change something) Participation in and organization of the initiative (4.25) Change something socially (4.39) Make a positive impact (4.64) Mean 4.43

Note: a Five-​point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

and creative power, the feeling of political and social effectiveness and responsibility, which is called ethical value (Table 8.1). The results of the quantitative survey (Table 8.2) are quite similar to the qualitative ones. The members of the enterprises like to acquire new skills and knowledge in order to increase the appreciation of food, as well as to contribute to the enterprises and the experiences of communities. The item “ethical value” achieves the highest approval rate, with an average of 4.43. This indicates that the objective of social change is the most important with regard to creative doing, suggesting that it is appropriate to characterize such communities as transformative communities.

148  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz Another challenge that arises in the context of transformative communities is that of cohesion and the challenges of collaboration in heterogeneous groups. According to theories of post-​traditional communities, the cohesion between heterogeneous actors is continuously established and negotiated through the interplay of different criteria (following Lindgren and Packendorff 2006; Hitzler et al. 2008; Gertenbach et al. 2010). Transformative communities form their cohesion within the framework of the following five criteria: 1. Vision: a shared commitment to contributing to solving social problems 2. Difference: a differentiation between “us” and “not us” and visibility in the public sphere /​politicization 3. Identity: a sense of belonging, of being actively involved 4. Value creation: intersubjective appreciation and establishing of meaning 5. Participation: shared interaction. The combination of these five criteria constitutes transformative communities. They form a cohesive framework and stabilize the community. However, they are also susceptible to disruption from the community’s heterogeneous members, whose cooperative involvement is voluntary. As a result, the criteria may not just stabilize a community but may be responsible for it breaking apart. The balance between maintaining boundaries and practicing belonging therefore needs to be continuously renegotiated. If one of these criteria is disturbed, the cohesion –​and very existence –​of the community is threatened. The key to cohesion in transformative communities is, first, the shared vision of contributing to solving social problems at a local level and getting involved in doing so. This finding is consistent with the results from the previous section: Basically, it’s the issue of how we shape the environment and the planet. ... People are becoming more and more aware of what that actually means. Is this really just about producing food to feed ourselves, or is it rather about how we live on this planet and what we give back into the cycle? ... It’s here that I sense a great transformative power, that some people are becoming more clearly aware of what the part is that we give and don’t just take. (G2-​2, 130-​130) The enterprises considered in the study have a powerful vision; they are pursuing the goal of economic activity based on solidarity (Douthwaite 1996; Möller [1998] 1999; Miller 2005; Voß 2015), and they are seeking local solutions to global problems by focusing on proximity, cooperation, trust, openness, transparency and recognition of needs. They are striving to work differently and cooperatively, not just within their enterprises and with their customers but also with other actors, as the following explanation clarifies:

Transformative communities in Germany  149 It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the enterprise or with our suppliers or with our customers ... what is important for us is to do everything a bit differently to the way things are usually run. And it also shows that this actually works. If you’re reasonably honest and open with each other. ... Our farmers tell us a price at which they can give us the goods and of course we discuss it together. ... But in the end, we have a rule that we give the farmers more money than they would get from the organic food wholesalers. ... And we also pass this on to our customers at a good price. ... It’s not much different in operational terms either. ... And within the framework of what we can do, we try to make it possible. And you don’t always have to look at every penny or every minute or every little thing. That’s important to me. It actually works quite well. (G2-​1(2),  66) The actors not only share a vision; they feel connected to each other by virtue of it. This also makes the initiatives and enterprises transformative communities:  in a comprehensive sense they stand for a jointly organized, sustainable food supply, and possess the potential to displace unsustainable forms of food production and distribution. Second, the community defines a difference to the non-​sustainable, growth-​ driven, environmentally destructive food system with its global value chains, and works in the public sphere. What we really wanted to say from the beginning was: “Okay, we want to make an impact”. Not only as far as restructuring or agricultural cooperation is concerned, but also as far as civil society is concerned, to work politically in some way, and then, via the charitable association, also refugee work, etc. It’s kind of become a whole different bunch of things, what we do. (G2-​4,  65) Third, the sense of belonging and participation creates identity. Transformative communities are about more than just economic issues. Mutual care and a sense of belonging play an important role, as the following quotation shows: “Well, I actually do have the feeling that there is something where people support each other somehow or if there’s any problem or anything. So there’s a kind of caring for each other” (G2-​6, 63). Another practitioner addresses the importance of the sense of community: Well, the surveys also reflect this … and it’s what we gather from talking to people, that for many actually the community with the people is so crucial. You know, doing stuff together and also sharing knowledge with one another. That’s what we experience at our harvest camps or on the harvest tours. There are always some who are there, some who know a little more than the others and they share their knowledge or whatever with the others as a matter of course, and all that, well yes, also it does make you feel pretty happy. So this happens

150  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz pretty much all the time /​we also call ourselves a lucky charm, because it’s just fun with the people and that’s what the community actually is. (G3-​5,  80) An important criterion of cohesion, fourth, is value creation, not in a narrow economic interpretation as added value but in the sense of intersubjective appreciation and giving meaning to certain activities. Meaningfulness is manifested, for example, in an experience of self-​efficacy, of effecting something positive in transformative learning processes. I feel really good here, just connecting via various aspects of my life with issues that have always interested me in the context of my own life, and doing because there are a variety of aspects of my life which connect to issues in my life I have always been interested in. Living sustainably, how can I contribute to that, where can I support developments so that … and then getting together with people who share the same interests. Outside I had the feeling of being alone with my ideas and values. Here, I feel like I’ve found a kind of home. (G2-​3,  271) And for many people, this sense of community is ... so much in the foreground and that makes the whole thing so unique, because you can go out there with the whole family and pick your own fruit. You work/​experience yourself as self-​effective, you’re not somehow dependent, you can determine yourself what you eat. (G3-​5,  238) Finally, regarding the fifth criterion, personal participation in shared interactions such as joint harvesting campaigns, workshops, farm festivals and excursions offers a variety of opportunities for meeting other people and exchanging ideas and knowledge. Creating learning spaces oriented toward empowering people makes participation possible. To be able to share ideas and views with other people. Simply to give a space where you can think and talk about food and try out new things. (G1-​1,  500) I have the feeling that the people I mentioned basically support it, that they get along quite well with each other, that they share their visions and ideas well, but that it is also always necessary to have this space, to look at what is actually going on, what do you want to have, what are you working on right now, what really moves you right now. Whenever that doesn’t happen enough, then you notice that things start to rumble. Then you have to fight for the setting and the space for it, for encounters, for exchanges. (G2-​2,  28)

Transformative communities in Germany  151 The qualitative results confirm the significance of vision, difference, identity, value and participation for the cohesion of transformative communities. They also underline the novelty of an economy of proximity in local food enterprises. Interaction and social practices focus on belonging, involvement and responsibility for sustainable local food supply. In the previous section, we stated that collaboration involving heterogeneous actors is a prerequisite for this. The three factors of creative doing presented above (hermeneutic-​narrative meaning, aesthetic sensuousness and ethical value) are part of the criteria of cohesion. In addition to the fundamental significance of a vision or its ethical value, it is the criteria of value creation and participation that are found in the creative doing of heterogeneous collaboration, manifested as hermeneutic-​narrative meaning and aesthetic sensuousness. Thus, transformative communities are characterized above all by criteria and factors that strengthen and support heterogeneity. An explicit difference to “not us” and active identity building is more likely to be found in homogeneous initiatives that are actively driven by strong leaders. This supports the observation that in transformative communities with flat hierarchies it is more likely to find a variety of powerful emergent strategies (strategies based on activities of all members) rather than deliberative ones (strategies from leaders). Engagement in creative social practices appears to enhance people’s confidence and provide them with opportunities to make a contribution toward achieving sustainability. This is how one practitioner involved describes it: And maybe that would also be an option, if you said that everything that happens, happens on the farm. That’s where people encounter one another, where the energy and enthusiasm and the inspiration is, where it actually takes place –​through doing, which is also much more direct. ... And maybe then also start to talk together about it. Or whatever. No, actually it’s just doing stuff together that automatically creates community. (G2-​6, 170–​172)

8.5  Limitations and possibilities of transformative communities With their strong vision of the economic activity based on solidarity and social proximity, local food enterprises open up a wide range of opportunities for a shared commitment to a more sustainable food system. Given the five criteria, it indicates that these + are fragile entities. They request community members to participate in personal and group negotiation processes. If these criteria are successfully balanced, they will also strengthen the hermeneutic-​ narrative meaning, the aesthetically sensuous experience and the ethical value in the creative doing of heterogeneous actors. The community members come together voluntarily, and their cooperation and assistance in the enterprises are also based on voluntariness. As a result,

152  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz their involvement cannot be made obligatory, which makes it difficult to plan activities, and this does lead to uncertainties in work planning within the enterprises. The openness of transformative enterprises and transformative communities (“Anyone can participate”) also collides with the need to establish an identity-​building core, something that distinguishes them from other kinds of enterprises. In the course of the struggle for recognition, there is the danger of social closure. It is evident in the formation of homogeneous groups. The enterprises and initiatives we surveyed are characterized by an above-​average level of education among their members. Although the managers of the enterprises try to open them up and make them attractive, this has hardly been possible so far. In the communities, therefore, those people who are already interested in sustainable practices are particularly active. This does not lead to the dissemination of sustainable practices, but to “fragmentation”:  community members have very few encounters or exchanges with others (Plessner 1999). This problem also occurs within the community itself, when some members are more active than others: the more passive members may feel excluded while the active members may feel overwhelmed by the many tasks to be accomplished (Gläser 2007). New members may find it difficult to gain access to the community and the external impact may be low. Our empirical findings show that local food enterprises are trying to change organizational structures by introducing flat hierarchies and methods of democratic decision making, which on the one hand support participation but on the other hand are often lengthy and frustrating as well. “Prosuming” is practiced and community building promoted. At the same time, the changed organizational structures make social learning necessary: conscious and democratic coexistence must first develop in the communities. Here, local food enterprises face special challenges with regard to business development, which are critical even for “conventional” enterprises without participatory structures (Mintzberg 1980; Greiner 1998). In the potentially conflictual space in which committed individuals  –​entrepreneurs and active, predominantly voluntary members –​interact, there is a risk of exhaustion and frustration. A lack of clarity regarding responsibilities exacerbates the conflict. The result is a complex and at times exhausting coordination effort involving constant negotiation both within and outside the community and enterprise. The risk of destabilization or even failure is ever present. In addition, the concentration of power in the dominant food system promotes the maintenance of the status quo. Therefore, the diffusion of local food enterprises is encountering lock-​ins: path dependencies such as cost efficiency, competition and profit orientation as well as the pursuit of growth represent obstacles to diffusion. Consumption habits and everyday routines also represent barriers. Despite all this, local food enterprises and their transformative communities have a lot to offer. They act primarily as enablers for sustainable practices of care, welfare and the generation of meaning in creative doing –​benefits

Transformative communities in Germany  153 that are difficult to assess in monetary terms. Beyond the realm of complete material dependency, new connections are developing between producers and consumers. All are jointly involved in the process of mutual care, forming fair relationships based on solidarity. The issue of care relates both to those involved in the economic process and to nature –​the fair shaping of economic activity, the conservation of resources, the protection of plants and animals and the preservation of biodiversity. Creative doing gives meaning by encouraging people’s initiative and providing space for new experiences. The practices being tested on a small scale within local food enterprises also form the basis for cooperative economic activity on a larger scale. Based on their strong vision of a transformative community, they do not focus on competition, self-​interest or profit, but rather seek to establish solidarity-​ based cooperative structures that focus on horizontal growth and dissemination in the sense of both the open-​source concept and the new paradigm of scaling (Uvin et al. 2000; Bradach 2003, 2010; McPhedran Waitzer and Paul 2011). These scaling processes are to be achieved through collaboration with other actors (Liesen et al. 2013).

8.6  Conclusion Local food enterprises are transformative communities with broad creative and emancipatory potential, which they bring to bear using a variety of strategies. In this chapter, we have focused on emergent strategies of creative doing in meaningful and interesting activity, as well as on the experience of creative flow. Heterogeneous actors collaborate with a strong desire for change through positive impacts to achieve a sustainable food supply. Regarding the cohesion of transformative communities, we identified the five criteria of vision, difference, identity, value creation and participation. Due to their reconfiguration of social practices, such communities function as agents of change (Kristof 2017) and constitute important role models for a different way of doing business and a different way of working creatively together. They relate to the political dimension of food production and consumption practices by making visible experiences of alternatives of sustainable food supply. Finally, the words of a practitioner sum up their transformative potential: “Those who will be there at the end of the day in 2020 ... already ... represent a quite powerful community ..., which really supports the whole thing” (G2-​4, 40).

Notes 1 We use the term enterprise exclusively in its broader sense, namely, in relation to people who are “doing” something together to change the food system. The same applies to urban gardening projects that do not pursue economic goals as community-​supported agriculture, in which members jointly finance and participate in agricultural production.

154  Irene Antoni-Komar and Christine Lenz 2 Prosumers are persons who are both consumers and producers of the product they use. 3 Reckwitz rejects an essentialist concept of culture and advocates the realization of culture in social practices.

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9  Context-​specific notions and practices of ‘solidarity’ in food procurement networks in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA) Cristina Grasseni

9.1  Introduction This chapter describes context-​specific notions and practices of solidarity in food procurement networks based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA) –​two roughly comparable sites by size, population and affluence. The concept and practice of ‘solidarity’ are used as a point of conceptual and moral reference in both field sites, among alternative food procurement networks which rethink the global food system and try to propose local solutions in practice. In Italy, solidarity economy networks establish direct consumer–​ producer transactions by networking with food producers. In the USA, solidarity economy networks practice different types of alternatives, even though they go under the same name as the Italian solidarity purchase groups. While the latter focus on short food chains as a way of increasing food sustainability, interpreting their activity as ‘co-​production’, their American counterparts focus especially on the societal issue of food justice, for example denouncing the lack of access to affordable, fresh and healthy food for a large part of the US population. By showing how ‘solidarity’ means different local solutions, I highlight the sociocultural dimensions of these different experiments in food procurement. Both types of alternative procurement aim at solving global problems locally by transforming food systems –​as the title of this book proposes. However, they do it in radically diverse local and national contexts, from different perceptions of what is problematic about the global food system, and with different convictions about how local action can make a difference. While there exists a vast literature on solidarity economies, few studies are grounded in first-​hand prolonged observation of actual practices and contexts. Different definitions have been given to ‘new’ economies:  some are advocated by activists (Alperovitz 2012); some scholars stress the power of social networks to create a critical mass for ‘sharing economies’ (Schor 2010); others see ‘civil’ economies arising from the efforts of responsible corporate capital (Bruni and Zamagni 2007). More radical activist-​ scholars promote grassroots ‘human’ and ‘community’ economies (Hart et al.

158  Cristina Grasseni 2010; Gibson-​ Graham 2013), including developing economies of ‘affect’ (Roelvink 2010). Both case studies are built on personal involvement in alternative procurement networks in Lombardy (2009–​2011) and Massachusetts (2012–​2014), which I was able to conduct by way of living consecutively in both places. My methodological approach is based on ethnography in these two sites, followed by a comparative analysis of the fundamental conceptualization and practice of solidarity in two networks of food procurement that both call themselves ‘solidarity economy networks’. During fieldwork, I had in-​depth and ongoing conversations with about 50 solidarity economy activists on each site, of which I formally interviewed and audio-​recorded 16 in Massachusetts and 12 in Lombardy. The interviews are on average 1-​hour-​long conversations on alternative provisioning, cooperative development and alternative quality certification schemes. Just as I  was a member of solidarity purchase groups in Italy, in Massachusetts I  joined several community-​ supported agriculture (CSA) schemes and regularly visited sites and events, as well as shopping through a locally sourced, pedal-​delivered, cooperatively owned CSA scheme based in Western Massachusetts. Both in Italy and in the USA, I attended several closed-​door meetings as well as public events. For example, I took part in the state-​wide meet-​up of the Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance (SAGE) in Worcester, MA, in November 2013, which gathered about 200 activists, where I  presented my research on solidarity economies in Italy. A  roughly equal number attended the solidarity purchase groups annual meeting in Parma in June 2014. I gathered about 5 hours of ethnographic footage, visiting cooperatively run CSA schemes, home-​brewing sites and cooperative dairy sites in Massachusetts and Lombardy. This multi-​sited ethnography was not exhausted by simply conducting research at two locations, as the relevant methodological literature specifies (Marcus 1995), nor was it aimed at directly comparing specific traits in isomorphic models. The rationale of my research was to propose a conceptual comparison based on in-​depth ethnographic understanding of a growing but diverse phenomenon in Europe and the USA: so-​called solidarity economies, in particular grassroots networks that wish to organize direct forms of provisioning. The idea was to bring the different Italian and American contexts into relief, investigating the diversity of problems, language and actions used in different sites by a movement that, despite defining itself transnationally, sometimes drawing on a common set of literature (see for instance Holt-​ Giménez 2012; Lang 2012), and expressing national and regional representatives in a global network (RIPESS, Réseau intercontinental de promotion de l’économie sociale solidaire), eventually developed very specific and locally grounded practices and strategies. Italy and the USA both host networks that make explicit reference and call themselves after the ‘social and solidarity economies’ inspired by Latin American models (Laville et al. 2006; Amin 2009; Kawano et al. 2010). The

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  159 US Solidarity Economy Network and the Italian Tavolo RES (translatable as “working group for a network of solidarity economy”) are both represented in RIPESS, the “intercontinental network for social and solidarity economy”. Tavolo RES showcases a broad array of initiatives, from the establishment of solidarity purchase groups in the 1990s, to local experimentations with participative guarantee systems (Tavolo RES 2013). In the USA, a CSA movement has developed business models for smallholders and targets local communities to establish short food chains (Lyson 2004; Friedland 2008; Stevenson et al. 2009). Naturally, these networks are embedded in localized histories and the expertise of different societal actors: in Italy these are predominantly critical consumers, scholars and activists; in the USA they are highly skilled and entrepreneurially oriented farmers. In what follows, I dedicate one section to each site, then I propose a comparative analysis of the two. In particular I make use of the epistemological notion of “comparing by context” (Messina 2001), namely proceeding from the specific characteristics of each context to describe and contrast the actual meaning given to “solidarity economy” and the practices of food provisioning advocated by each network. The result is an analysis of the relevance of such meaning and practices to the respective regional, societal and economic context.

9.2  Solidarity economy networks in Massachusetts I lived in Boston for three years, from the summer of 2011 to the summer of 2014. Coming from several years of acquaintance with alternative food networks in Italy I  familiarized myself with relevant equivalents in Massachusetts: firstly several types of CSAs, then two more radical networks of activists –​namely the Solidarity Economy Network of the United States (USSEN), and SAGE in Worcester, Massachusetts. In the “local food movement” in and around Boston (Loh and Flagg 2018) “sustainable” food systems were being variously defined and interpreted:  from bulk-​buying collectives (which may be mainly motivated by price) to food cooperatives (which may invest particularly on quality, for example organic food), to urban community gardens (oriented to both social inclusion and environmental impact) to CSA (mainly veggie box delivery or pick-​up agreements, to support local farmers). Within this broad canvas, producer–​consumer short food chains on the one hand and activist networks on the other were developing different practices of alternative provisioning. While CSAs were fine-​tuning an already successful but rather orthodox business model for small-​scale farmers, targeting a niche of affluent and discerning urbanites, USSEN and SAGE had a more critical approach, including campaigning against “green-​washing” and seeking funding for local projects to develop landscape gardening, community gardens, but also house-​weatherization. Their goal was not only to produce and distribute sustainable food and environmental services for the community, but also to create jobs for the

160  Cristina Grasseni local youth and the unemployed in the small disenfranchised towns of Central and Western Massachusetts. In these radical networks, local scholars and activists were exploring novel ways of creating wealth –​both relational and economic –​through various forms of associations, including workers’ cooperatives. I will return later to the very specific meaning of “coops” in this context. In 2012 I attended the first Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance Conference in Worcester, MA. Conversations with these often young solidarity economy entrepreneurs exposed a layer of American society that is skeptical of the global food system, and is intent on changing their role in it through subversive economic practice. On the other hand, CSA schemes were not challenging the economic predominance of large industrial farming in the USA. In fact as was pointed out to me by a cooperative of female farmers in Western MA, in Massachusetts: there’s a lot of family farms too. It gets passed down from generation to generation so there’s a lot of multigenerational farms. And there’s a lot of –​like –​somebody has a house with a little back field, then one of the big farms in the area will lease that plot and then they have plots a couple acres here and there. “Stone soup” [a local farm] they have like four acres here but they lease land on the river from a historical society of some sort so they have another like seven acres but everybody is driving around to all their little places … Like there’s times when “oh I need to go pick up blueberries…” when they’re picking the blueberries and you’re just waiting for them to literally being picked but it’s not where you had put up the farm … It’s like “oh up this road! Just pull over…” So you’ll see people picking and.., “that’s our blueberry” … Like it’s very random.1 I recorded this conversation during a packing session I  participated in together with four young women who had just set up their own farming cooperative, in the fall of 2013. They looked at cooperatives as important socio-​economic models for workers’ solidarity,2 in a country, the USA, where only 7% of employees are registered members of a trade union. In New England, however, successful consumer cooperatives and large producer cooperatives that have developed economies of scale, such as Cabot Dairy, focus on increasing their consumers’ buying power (against the interests of farmers) or defending their market control against Wal-​Mart giants. Only in very occasional cases does the cooperative model seem capable of incubating worker-​owned food producer cooperatives, while so-​called multi-​stakeholder coops often register both producers and consumers as members, but not their own employee workers.3 Janelle Cornwell’s work on the workers’ coops of the Pioneer Valley in Central Massachusetts, previous to my research, describes how no more than seven workers’ cooperatives, each of the size of four to ten workers, united in

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  161 the Valley Alliance of Workers Cooperatives (VAWC) in the late 1990s and began recruiting new cooperatives (Cornwell 2012). She comments on how workers’ governance creates novel spaces for democracy and resistance at the shop-​floor level. My own interviews with representatives of Valley Green Feast, one of the founding cooperatives of VAWC, register their enthusiasm and passion, as well as the sense of novelty and liberty experienced by the four young women involved in this rare worker-​owned CSA cooperative.4 While still not making enough return to pay themselves a full-​time (farming wage) salary, they noted how the flexibility of working as peers allowed one of them to go on (unpaid) maternity leave but not lose her employment –​a very real scenario for working-​class women who often have to choose between having a baby and keeping their job, in a country where paid parental leave is not a worker’s right and is offered only by enlightened employers (and often only as a benefit to tenured workers). The struggle to generate a part-​time salary for four, and being able in principle to accommodate for maternity leave, reminds us of how bleak the current employment scenario is for American farmworkers. Their own food insecurity is common, even in places blessed with year-​round crops and further “enhanced” by intensive agriculture, as in California (Minkoff-​ Zern 2014). This is true of both low-​paid seasonal (often migrant) workforce and farm-​owners catering for elite urban markets (Paxson 2013), for example in the farmers’ markets and CSA schemes of the Boston region. During a webinar for beginning farmers interested in setting up a CSA, the moderator explained: I grew up on a small family farm in South-​Western Pennsylvania and have a technology background, but also have a farming background, helped run a CSA, for about 10 years now. … I think one of the really interesting points in CSA is, there’s just more competition for a CSA dollar, and you just have more options than ever to get high quality food. Even our local grocery store … so we’re in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, our just regular local grocery stores have great produce now. And there’s delivery services, and there’s co-​ops, there’s so many options for people to get really high quality food, so there’s more competition for that eating dollar..,5 The US solidarity economy network was embracing the model of cooperatives in order to rethink the role of workers in American society: This Prezi is really meant to show the solidarity economy as a system, so if we look at all these different sections of the economy, it’s meant to show that there are practices that we would consider aligned with the solidarity economy and all other sectors of the economy –​whether of finance, production, distribution and exchange, or consumption. So looking at production there are so many examples: there is a syndicate, there is a co-​op, what we call permaculture, DIY [do it yourself], cleaning,

162  Cristina Grasseni there are so many different things –​maybe not perfectly but to a certain extent aligned with the principle of solidarity economy.6 American solidarity economy activists nurtured admiration for the Italian cooperatives of the Emilia-​Romagna region (see Hancock 2007; Luviene et al. 2010), and liaised with representatives of Mondragon’s originally Basque and now international network of cooperatives. Without delving into the history of cooperative development, which differs greatly country by country (see for example Borzaga and Defourny 2004), the workers’-​owned model of cooperative entrepreneurship was taken as a winning model that could solve the issues of workers’ dispossession under corporate capital regime. The degree of understanding of the complexity and diversity of the cooperative movement worldwide was limited, though. For example, when I had an in-​depth interview with the founder of a workers’ cooperative that produced and distributed food according to a CSA model, I  tried to explain how “cooperatives” in Italy can mean anything, from the largest supermarket chain of the country to workers’ owned cooperatives, to entrepreneurial cooperatives employing staff for a salary (thus not workers’-​owned). My impression was that the only models known in the circle of the solidarity economy and in the circle of the workers’-​owned cooperatives in MA were: Yes I  mean I  know Emilia Romagna and Mondragon, and why we’re doing what we’re doing out here. We’re following you know in their footsteps. They want development and education. Like my dream. [What you say] makes me think of difference between food coops and workers’ coops, like exactly it’s like, it’s kind of, there it is, there it’s better … but it’s still missing important parts of the movement.7 There were some discrepancies as to whether “cooperatives” meant “solidarity economy” at all: while the USSEN representative quoted above would list cooperatives as part of a multifaceted “movement” of solidarity economy, not all cooperative workers would see themselves as such: interesting because I know that’s a thing, and that it’s so closely related to what I am doing, but I would never say like “I am part of the solidarity economy”. I  don’t know why  –​well I  do know what it all comes back to: education and exposure … And I know that it’s so like close but I just I guess there’s not much here to say that I would define what I am doing as part of that.8 Other groups were acting in the name of SAGE, and clearly understood cooperative work as part of a new circular economy:  solidarity-​and sustainability-​driven. This is the explanation of how this link works, in the words of the organizer of a “Coop power energy retrofit workshop” held on June 30 2013 in Worcester:

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  163 Co-​op Academy is normally a ten-​week program, three hours, each week, of really intense information on everything you would need to know to start up or continue running a co-​op. Co-​op Power is a renewable energy efficiency company that is owned by its members. … the mission is to provide renewable energy that’s affordable and accessible to people across all race and socioeconomic income levels, and it also is creating a just and sustainable energy future. And we’re looking to empower people to develop locally owned energy resources, and also to develop businesses that help us conserve energy. So we’ve got a number of energy efficient buildings that we’ve developed, we’re helping to develop one here in Worcester, and we’ve got one in Boston, two in Hayfield, and we also work with community action programs to help lower income folks get their homes upgraded as well. And the key to our growth and our success is to organize locally, and get local people to participate as members and owners in these assets. So that’s the local organizing council.9 These activities do take the global food system into consideration and aim to act at local level, not through focusing on the food chain only, but rather, by intercepting a circular economy that includes the food cycle (such as oil waste from restaurants) while addressing issues such as unemployment and high energy costs for heating cheap and often badly maintained social housing. Another connected issue is the soil pollution from lead paint –​again, a cheap maintenance solution that was only recently outlawed. Lead-​based paint deteriorates over time and lead scales pollute both indoor and outdoor living environments, making for example urban gardening and backyard vegetable patches a highly hazardous practice for one’s health: So Worcester’s projects are … 13 years ago there was a non-​profit that started around environmental justice issues, specifically lead pollution in soil in Worcester. And several years after, people started meeting around the project Toxic Soil Busters. It was born as a cooperative youth/​adult venture to deal with this problem in a way that was empowering instead of you know ... To solve problems. And then Youth In Charge was a version, was a spin-​off of Toxic Soil Busters that had a geographic implication. It was focussing on a specific low income predominantly Latino neighbourhood of Worcester and a housing development.10 In many dilapidated post-​ industrial towns of Central and Eastern Massachusetts, cultivating food in low-​income neighbourhoods means facing the issue of lead pollution in the urban soil, due to widespread use of lead-​ based paint to cover cheap, wooden houses with long-​standing impermeable protection. Thus the issues of cheap housing, of weatherization and of toxic soils are intrinsically enmeshed. Setting up a small cooperative that addresses all these issues at once means trying to solve a global problem at local level, by redefining it not as a food problem but as a problem of social justice.

164  Cristina Grasseni Some of the activists in these networks were scholars affiliated with the Community Economy Collective inspired by the works of J.  K. Gibson-​ Graham (2013). Potlucks were a recurrent moment of our monthly meetings, and through this symbolic but also very practical form of food exchange, we would initiate relaxed but committed forms of conversations about novel forms of relational and economic wealth, inspired by a reading or each other’s work. It was a noticeable part of my ethnographic experience that some of these diverse (and often very small) groups sometimes connected and engaged with each other, despite substantial differences in approach. For example, I liaised with the Boston Faith and Justice Network thanks to a newsletter received from my then current CSA provider, Farmer D. As a Young Adult Presbyterian, A. was then engaging in an “economic discipleship” path that included rethinking the role of the global economy in his everyday consumption practice –​particularly focusing on food: And I’ve focussed on energy and environment, and at the very end I took some classes on food, and I  just thought that that just tied everything together. And it does, because everybody eats food and it affects the environment, it affects our energy, because all these problems are one, and close to being solved if we re-​do how we do the food system. All four of us volunteers here are doing issues on food justice. The program through the church kind of made some rules... We had to eat all of our meals together and we had to do a local food diet the first five months, and now the second half we’re on food stamp benefits, because we qualify for that. So yeah, it’s just kind of ... The National Volunteer Program is structured around the school year, so it goes from September until August, which isn’t really the most easy thing for local food. They tried to change that but they couldn’t really, so, um ... But we got a lot of stuff in September and October, and even November there was stuff at Farmers’ Market, so we canned and froze a lot, and we’ve still got some in the freezer we’re still eating on in March. I had done it once in a farm internship, but our site coordinator M. did one day of canning with us in September. Our very first week we made some jam and canned peaches and canned tomatoes. Just kind of like, we spent all day, we went to the “pick your own apple farm”, got the apples and some second rate peaches, so they were a little cheaper cause they had bad spots on them. And so we just took them all back to the Church in Somerville, which is where that kitchen is actually. That group you’re talking about that picks all the fruit trees has used that kitchen for canning and stuff. Yeah, the League of Urban Canners, that’s what they call themselves. Yeah, that’s what she told us about them, canning more stuff ... So we just kind of learned.. There was, one of our neighbours in Watertown had a deep freezer that she’s letting us use, based there, to hold all our fruit and stuff. And she showed us how to can and donated a canning kit. Or she showed us how to freeze things. So we

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  165 just kind of learn really quickly. You know, we get home from work about five, and then start cooking and have dinner ready by seven. We got a lot better at it in December.. And we were doing everything, like rolling out our own paste, from scratch. We’re going to do some stuff with planting seeds and I’m trying to see if Farmer D. can help us get a little garden plot started at the church, so we might have just kids playing in the dirt, planting seeds.11 Consistent with American interdisciplinary literature on “food justice” (Gottlieb and Anupama 2010; Alkon and Agyeman 2011), A.’s faith-​based commitment to consuming local food helped him hone in on how “everything is connected” in the food system: not only seasonality and quality of food, but access to healthy, affordable and fresh food is in fact a topic of social concern and of political contestation in the USA. The League of Urban Canners mentioned in his interview rescued backyard fruit from ripening trees in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, by contacting the owners and offering free pruning services in exchange for access.12 In addition the organizers developed “harvest toolkits” sharing and setting up bike trailers as “complete urban harvesting kits”. The associated tasks included mending and re-​using bike-​trailers as a radical way to keep urban harvesting sustainable (namely not requiring the use of a car). The urban forager I  interviewed in Boston worked with a colleague and activist-​scholar engaged in the Community Economy Collective,13 to start food-​provisioning initiatives as “community-​ based cooperatives” (Cornwell and Graham 2009). The (food) activists I  talked to appropriated the concept of “solidarity” based on their diversely positioned awareness of the interplay of multiple issues and social actors at stake, including social and environmental justice. USSEN, for instance, was committed to spearheading initiatives for “green-​ and-​just” jobs creation. During my stay in Massachusetts, the US solidarity economy network inaugurated the Wellspring Collaborative, a community-​ driven initiative to create jobs in Springfield, an impoverished town in Western Massachusetts, in collaboration with local “anchor institutions” such as hospitals (Bay State Health), colleges (Springfield Technology Community College) and local entrepreneurs. The inauguration took place in an upholstery workshop, including a celebratory speech of how this was established by skilled Italian emigrants who set up a joint business in 1939 –​now turned into a design development centre with a social mission. SAGE, on the other hand, based in Worcester in Central Massachusetts, clustered a number of small-​scale initiatives, including the Toxic Soil Busters mentioned above, a youth empowerment project funded through the Regional Environmental Council (REC) to reduce youth unemployment, drug use and petty criminality. Since 2010, SAGE convenes a yearly conference to find “solidarity-​ and-​ green” solutions to such issues, including anti-​ foreclosure action, anti-​racist community activism and the establishment of worker-​ owned cooperatives in accessible professions:  from bicycle repair sheds to

166  Cristina Grasseni urban community gardens.14 I will now contrast and compare these initiatives with those of solidarity economy networks in Italy, which I will first briefly introduce.

9.3  Solidarity economy networks in Italy In Italy, so-​called “solidarity purchase groups” establish direct consumer–​ producer food networks with local farmers. Participants in these alternative food networks call themselves GASista, from GAS, an acronym for the Italian Gruppi di acquisto solidale (solidarity purchase groups). I  have published extensively on GAS (Grasseni 2013, 2014a, 2014c, 2017, 2018) and I refer to this scholarship for details, limiting myself here to remarks that can help a comparative and analytical reading of the American case study. As the name says, solidarity purchase groups are groups of people who purchase food based on solidarity principles, establishing a direct transaction with producers, knowing that especially for smallholders one of the most important hurdles is access to the market. Specific cases may include solidarity with orange growers who cultivate lands expropriated from criminal organizations. Mafias thrive on agribusiness, notably through the exploitation of undocumented migrant labour, as I will detail below, and especially via the monopoly of the distribution of fruits and vegetables, such as citrus. Enabling a direct connection from judicious producers to consumers is thus an act of solidarity, based on principle rather than price/​quality calculus. Notably, direct transactions may include long-​distance food chains. In the case of orange growers, about 1,300 kilometres separate consumers in Northern Italy from the Sicilian “mafia-​free” cooperatives they choose to buy from: in the cases I observed, orange growers actually drove their lorry from Sicily to Lombardy for a group delivery. This is also something more than a direct transaction, described by activists as a form of “co-​production”. While gasistas do not aim to produce food themselves, they want to enable producers to deliver the food they want (for example, organic, or mafia-​free). The primary objective of solidarity economy activists in Italy is not to create new jobs where capital has failed society, as is the case among the American solidarity economy activists of Central and Eastern Massachusetts. On the contrary, they wish to bypass capital-​driven markets (of goods, services and jobs) by setting up localized, direct transactions “in solidarity” with farmers. For example, one of the debated issues in recent years is how citrus fruit trade is infiltrated by mafia-​led distribution chains, and how orange picking (but also tomato harvesting) is largely done by very poorly paid undocumented migrant labourers. These often get recruited through local networks of mafia-​organized “caporali” (literally “caporal”, to indicate a boss who organizes accommodation, maintenance and pay on a day-​to-​day basis to field workers). These “bosses” are often petty criminals who practically detain their employees under threat of reporting them to the police or even actively organize human trafficking across borders (and especially at

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  167 sea) to feed the request for non-​unionized workers in rural seasonal jobs (Ben-​ Yehoyada 2011, 2012; Perrotta 2014). In response to this civil rights emergency, solidarity purchase groups buy-​cott (i.e. buy preferentially) “mafia-​free” oranges, namely directly from smallholders and growers’ cooperatives who pledge their non-​committal to the unsustainably low prices of large distribution channels. It is these low prices that motivate agricultural entrepreneurs to pay their seasonal workers less and less, and mafia-​driven organizations exploit this conjuncture with violence. In other words, here as well as in the USA, the concerted exploitation of rural (migrant) labour and the unsustainability of food systems are two intrinsically connected aspects: only by exploiting labour can a “race to the bottom” in prices be implemented. In response to this, in Sicily the self-​ organization of citizen-​consumers began as a grassroots form of local consumers’ support for anti-​racket campaigns, in the wake of violent migrant labourers’ riots in the countryside of Southern Italy in 2010 (Perrotta 2014). This developed into a nation-​wide media celebration of direct producer–​ consumer agreements to by-​pass the mafias’ system of caporalato.15 Usually GAS groups include 20–​40 families. Each member contributes to the group’s decisions to buy one or more items of daily groceries for all the other members (and their families). The meetings are crucial to deliberate together how to choose, whom to contact, with which principles and criteria (organic food? certified organic? ecological detergents? recycled items? and so on). Part of the exercise is the active scouting of producers through personal contacts, on the internet or by word of mouth. “Proximity” producers –​as they are called –​are usually favoured because of the conviction that cutting “food miles” is important, but also in relation to the anti-​globalization movement (from which GAS derive: see Grasseni 2013). Re-​localizing food also goes hand in hand with preference for seasonal products but also with an Italian cultural preference for “local” and “typical” products (see Grasseni 2014, 2014b, 2017). Thus “proximity” might not mean just cutting miles, but a like-​minded attitude to nature, the economy and labour. This requires actually getting to know one’s territory, getting an idea of which kinds of food are produced, when and by whom, but also connecting further, using for example social media to educate oneselves about the global food system. GAS membership thus entails getting to know the politics of food but also building networks in a very concrete way, taking responsibility for participating in the food chain and paying upfront, collecting orders on behalf of others, organizing collection points, alerting absent-​minded members. Free riders don’t last long. These groups are diverse in their dietary choices but relentless in their deliberations about how to consistently pursue (each) their consensual interpretation of what “solidarity” means. For example, GAS groups are not necessarily all vegetarian. But they may well go to some lengths to “adopt” cows that will be transparently fed (preferably on organic fodder). Animals should be humanely slaughtered (for example, a dairy cow at the end of her

168  Cristina Grasseni production), butchered possibly in an artisanal environment and their meat distributed in the group in a consequent way:  not everyone will get steak! People will eat liver, tongue, boiling and roasting cuts, and families will team up to acquire and freeze up to half a cow together. Deliberation, discussion and the exchange of information are key to this form of self-​organization. For example, if members of a GAS group actually know various olive oil producers, what would be the criterion they want to prioritize, in their choice of committing to a producer? Is it taste? price? Is it the fact that it is organic or not? that it is close by or not? that it is a small producer rather than a big one? that it is a cooperative rather than a private enterprise? Each group finds their own criteria, by meeting and deliberating and coming to a solution that works for them, on their own grounds. The movement as a whole knows no hierarchy and no mandatory prescription of how to interpret the basic chart of GAS to answer these questions (see Graziano and Forno 2012; Forno and Graziano 2014; Forno et  al. 2015). There is no protocol to follow beyond a manifesto on solidarity economy and an active website, retegas.org, which updates anyone about best practices, conferences, annual meetings, etc. As a result anyone can set up a GAS, and many more groups existed nationwide than the about 1,000 groups which had registered on this list by the year 2000, as capillary research in the regions of Lombardy and Lazio established (Fonte 2013; Forno et al. 2013).

9.4  Discussion A comparative research agenda studying emerging forms of collaborative networks in Europe and the USA has established that the “solidarity economy” is a relevant area of redefinition of the economic and political significance of food procurement (Forno et al. 2015; Grasseni et al. 2015). Comprehending the motivation and conceptual framework of the two movements required ethnographic fieldwork, becoming a member of the relevant networks and learning about concrete campaigns, objective hurdles and actual concerns through participant observation and lived experience. We have seen how different movements that call themselves “solidarity economy networks” on the two sides of the Atlantic actually interpret and practice “solidarity” in different ways, adopting diverse models of economic practice with sometimes divergent socio-​economic targets. In this concluding discussion I contrast the Italian and American examples of solidarity economy networks and explain how they look differently at the international model of cooperativism, develop distinct skills and generate diverse socio-​economic dynamics. In my American case study, I reported the development of small workers’ cooperatives as a locally perceived solution for building economically, socially and environmentally sustainable food systems, for example to create green jobs for marginalized youth in Massachusetts’ post-​industrial wastelands (see also Rose 2014). Conversely, in Italy the solidarity purchase groups set themselves clearly aside from the cooperative model. On the one hand they do not

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  169 exclude a priori the possibility of setting up workers’-​owned or producers’ cooperatives (for instance, to take care of the logistics of organics delivery, similarly to what Valley Green Feast, mentioned above, did). On the other hand, provisioning activists see themselves as working to re-​appropriate economic agency as an alternative to big cooperatives, which grassroots activists accuse of a monopolizing attitude because, similarly to other market actors, they ruthlessly pursue economies of scales to ensure their market share. In Italy, the cooperative sector is thriving, for instance in the public procurement of food for school canteens, or of services and assistance to the elderly or the mentally ill. The allegation is that, despite their legal status as cooperatives, businesses may employ low-​qualified and forcibly flexible employees –​often on a part-​time or “zero-​hours” basis, sometimes in exchange for costly membership fees –​hardly an exercise in solidarity. Another significant point of divergence between American and Italian solidarity economy networks regards their fund-​raising capacities (and consequent grant dependency). While it is expected of American solidarity economy initiatives that they are backed up by grants, aimed at creating jobs, and managed at least part-​time by professional coordinators, Italian solidarity economy activists are mostly volunteers who work in their spare time. In my experience they are often suspicious of social economy businesses that might benefit from a “solidarity” label. Finally, in Massachusetts solidarity economy activists are concerned with alleviating chronic unemployment and underemployment through locally devised solutions that are at once “green” and participative. This is a fundamental point of divergence in both the discourse and practice of solidarity economy across the Atlantic. It is a divergence in focus that emerges directly from the diversity of the socio-​economic contexts, particularly the widely differing degrees of protection of labourers and the differently perceived issue of poverty conditions in the two countries. In the USA, “solidarity economy networks” practise different types of alternatives than “solidarity economy networks” in Italy, because they interpret “solidarity” differently and target their actions to radically different socio-​economic contexts. The former focus especially on social deprivation and food justice. Their alternative food procurement activities may range from eating locally as part of “economic discipleship” (including dumpster diving and communal housing) to setting up workers’ cooperatives. Some “cooperative” initiatives are then not formalized, but rather designate informal and often ephemeral informal associations, facilitated by the use of social media such as Facebook pages. In all cases observed, collective forms of food procurement included a substantial amount of reflection over one’s purpose and goals, with some commentators interpreting community gardens and urban foraging as “subversive and interstitial food spaces” (Galt et al. 2014; McLain et  al. 2014). Consistently with these radical roots, access to resources in a broader sense than food (including energy) as well as economic and environmental justice issues are more in focus among American solidarity economy circles than the Italian ones.

170  Cristina Grasseni The Massachusetts networks look at the workers’-​ owned cooperative model, including the Italian cooperatives in Emilia Romagna, and they take Mondragon to be an internationally successful model. Conversely, the Italian solidarity economy activists are highly critical of this model, because they see how the cooperative model once grown to scale can behave exactly like any multinational corporate actor and be co-​opted in neoliberal dynamics –​collaborating in the withdrawal of welfare services in exchange for externalization to contract work. While the American movement looks especially at Italy and Spain for successful models of workers’-​owned cooperatives, the Italian movement distinguishes solidarity economy (largely consumer-​driven) from the “social” or cooperative economy (which is equated to one of the orthodox actors in the global economy and the global food system). While Italian solidarity purchase groups focus on “co-​production” as a form of producer–​consumer collaboration, US solidarity economy activists prefer to set up worker-​owned cooperatives, for example in urban agriculture and food distribution, but also building and repair work and the weatherization of low-​budget houses. In general, however, the word “cooperative” is also used in everyday language to mean any collective endeavour that requires collaboration, including co-​housing, buying clubs, etc. Both types of network require engagement and significant investment of time and resources from their members, but different sets of skills are developed within each country: while the Italian activists develop mostly consumer-​driven, volunteer-​run collective provisioning schemes, the American activists become project developers for social and economic enterprises in the green and cooperative sector, often depending on grants and start-​up funds. To conclude, practices, language and shared international literature define solidarity economy as an emergent and transnational movement, but this is nevertheless appropriated locally in very distinct ways. This is significant considering the existence of international networks which specifically aim at uniting and exchanging best practices among solidarity economy networks across the globe. Both USSEN and the GAS movement are in fact represented in RIPESS (the “Intercontinental network for the promotion of social solidarity economy”) and URGENCI (the “International network for community supported agriculture”). In both cases, though, activists address food sovereignty (and not only food safety) for their local communities (a topic discussed, for example, at the GAS national assembly in 2011 in a working group I participated in), as well as issues of systematic marginalization (for example, in Eastern and Central Massachusetts, but also in Boston, where lack of access to fresh food despite the many farmers’ markets and CSAs is due to lack of public transportation and too high prices). But the perceived relevance of food systems in the two societies puts more emphasis on unequal access to decent food in the American case and more on “co-​production” as a form of cooperation and support for smallholders in the Italian case. In neither case is provisioning activism simply a mechanical reaction to inequality (in the USA) or austerity (in Italy). The American activists I  encountered

Food procurement in Italy and the USA  171 are thus more radical than the Italian ones in their understanding of social inequalities and are prepared to take action well beyond the food systems per se to address issues of “food justice” and “food access”.

Acknowledgements This chapter presents the results of a one-​year project in Massachusetts funded by the Wenner-​ Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (post-​Ph.D. grant 8643 2013/​2014): Seeds of Trust. A Comparative Analysis of Solidarity Economy Networks in Lombardy (Italy) and Massachusetts (USA) and a two-​ year visiting scholarship (2012/​ 2014) at Harvard Anthropology Department. Further insights derive from my current project Food Citizens? The project Food Citizens? Collective Food Procurement in European Cities:  Solidarity and Diversity, Skills and Scale has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 724151).

Notes 1 Audiorecorded working session (packing community-​ supported agriculture delivery boxes) with members of a farming cooperative, Valley Green Feast, on 31 January 2014 in Hadley, MA. 2 See for example the documentary film on the history of consumers’ food cooperatives in the United States: http://​foodforchange.coop/​category/​film/​sinterviews/​. 3 From conversations with local, national and international representatives of UFCWU, United Food and Commercial Workers Union. 4 www.valleygreenfeast.com 5 Online webinar, 6 March 2014. 6 Emily Kawano, second conference of the Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance, Worcester, MA, November 2013. Commenting on a presentation available online at: https://​ussen.org/​portfolio/​economics-​for-​the-​rest-​of-​us/​ 7 Interview with founding member of a farming workers’ cooperative, 16 November 2013. 8 Interview with founding member of a farming workers’ cooperative, 16 November 2013. 9 Source: audiorecording of public presentation, “Co-​op Power Open House. Deep Energy Retrofit Demo”. Sunday, 23 March 2014 at Stone Soup, Worcester, MA. 10 Interview with leaders of SAGE, invited to speak to my Boston University gastronomy masters’ students on 7 October 2013. 11 Audiorecorded interview, 15 March 2014, with a Young Adult Presbyterian disciple. 12 http://​leagueofurbancanners.org/​; www.facebook.com/​LeagueOfUrbanCanners; https://​sites.google.com/​site/​cambervillebiketrailershare/​ 13 www.communityeconomies.org 14 SAGE keeps an online open-​access archive of all conferences:  www.worcesters agealliance.org/​

172  Cristina Grasseni 15 The Orange Landings of 2012 are documented in Federico DeMusso’s documentary “The other side of the orange” http://​vimeo.com/​federicodemusso.

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10  Transformative governance and food practices for sustainability in and by ecovillages A German case study Iris Kunze

10.1  Introduction To answer the question of how global problems in the area of food can be solved at a local level, ecovillages are relevant case studies to look at because they are citizen-​organized initiatives experimenting with sustainable ways of living. In this chapter, ecovillages are examined as new food initiatives which are committed to delivering local solutions for macro-​scale problems and issues. Macro-​scale problems of food production include, at an ecological level, the unsustainable agricultural practices which cause exploitation and pollution of natural resources (degradation of soils, biodiversity, pesticide pollution, genetic modification, stress on fresh water supplies) and threats to wildlife and animal welfare. Socially, there is a lack of farmers’ rights, injustice in terms of access to and prices for food, high energy use for meat production, food waste, degradation of food quality and contamination of food. Western European societies, as wealthy nations and also countries which import and export food with a high labour division and a complex system of food production and consumption, have a special responsibility to make their food systems more sustainable. This implies changing their resource-​intensive lifestyles, using less energy, implementing more local food production and consumption, adapting agriculture to work more harmoniously with nature as well as reducing food waste, pesticides and packaging materials like plastic. Against this background, the chapter examines the contribution of ecovillages to a sustainable transformation of the food system and their innovative potential as examples or models. It aims to find answers about the contribution and further potential of ecovillages for solving unsustainability issues in the area of food in Western societies. Therefore, food practices in ecovillages will be explored and checked according to their sustainability practices by asking the following questions: 1. Have ecovillages created more sustainable food practices at the local level compared to the average surrounding systems?

176  Iris Kunze 2. If yes, what are their main ways of creating and maintaining this food system? What kind of transformation takes place? 3. How are these food systems spread and disseminated in, by and beyond ecovillages? 4. Have ecovillages created promising innovations which can be transferred to other contexts? To answer these questions, this chapter firstly discusses potential sustainability approaches for transforming food systems. This leads to practice theory as a theoretical framework. Thereafter, the ecovillage movement is introduced and discussed, with its approach, potential for sustainability, food practices, governance and their dissemination of practices. For the purposes of illustration and to find more concrete evidence for the potential of ecovillages, the details of food practices in the ecovillage of Sieben Linden will then be explored. The practices of this case study will be examined on their contribution to less resource-​intensive, more sustainable local production and consumption and the interlinkage between governance and organization with sustainable food practices. Based on these empirical observations, it is discussed whether ecovillages can solve global food problems at a local level and whether they are forerunners of new ways of doing politics and economies, if their local systems can contribute towards societal change and if they can rescue existing unsustainable food practices. Is there a promising potential for disseminating their novel practices? Which of their inventions have the potential to successfully be used in other contexts? Methodologically, the article is based on more than 15 years of empirical research into ecovillages (Kunze 2006, 2009, 2012, 2018, 2019; Kunze and Avelino 2015), and in particular two recently completed research projects –​ firstly, “transformative social innovation theory” (Haxeltine et al. 2017) with the ecovillage movement as one of 20 case studies (Kunze and Avelino 2015) and secondly, Governing Community-​ based Social Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation –​COSIMA (Haas et al. 2017; Hausknost et  al. 2018; Schäfer et  al. 2018), which mapped sustainability practices in low-​carbon municipalities and ecovillages  –​amongst them Sieben Linden (Kunze 2016).

10.2  Sustainable ways of living To solve global problems regarding food in Western countries at the local level, the highly resource-​intensive lifestyle is increasingly being addressed (WBGU 2011). During the last few decades, public authorities and organizations on different levels have raised awareness of this issue to households and individuals with appeals to change towards more sustainable lifestyles. However –​in spite of a high level of knowledge and awareness regarding climate change and other environmental problems  –​no significant changes in the current

Sustainability of ecovillages  177 trends of resource-​intensive consumption patterns can be observed (Leitschuh et al. 2013) in the most important fields like housing, nutrition and mobility (Schäfer et al. 2018). Research from the last decades has often shed light on this “attitude–​behaviour gap”. It shows that the link between environmental awareness and pro-​environmental attitudes, on the one hand, and environmental behaviour, on the other, is generally weak (e.g. Middlemiss 2009). Moreover, in nearly all cases environmental behaviour shows a very inconsistent pattern, even among people with a strong pro-​environmental orientation (Brand 2010). A main challenge in this respect is that everyday actions are comprised of routines and habits that are rarely reflected upon, and even if they are, there are limited possibilities for most citizens to make a significant change towards a sustainable impact. A reason for this –​especially in the area of food –​is the dependency on an economic trade system for food supply and infrastructure and the limited influence that consumers have. The routines are embedded in social and material contexts and relatively stable functioning networks of everyday practices –​across social milieus and lifestyles –​that are part of the consumer’s everyday behaviour (e.g. Shove 2004). Citizens living in a city or village, working and consuming within the built infrastructure, have hardly any possibilities to change these often unsustainable structures. Therefore, promising approaches for a transformative change should address infrastructure and lifestyle at the same time, which is what is meant when talking about “changing the ways of living”. Concerning the current state of knowledge on implementing sustainable ways of living, academics and politicians have called for more attention to be given to the power of civil society, grassroots innovations and social movements (e.g. Smith et al. 2016). Active players in civil society have founded a growing number of self-​organized eco-​communities in recent years with multidimensional aims of a sustainable lifestyle, for improving well-​being and living a more ecological life.

10.3  Practice theory and methodology To capture innovative approaches for a change towards more sustainable ways of living  –​combining an infrastructural as well as a behavioural change  –​ an adequate and respective multidimensional theoretical and methodological approach is needed. Practice theory provides a framework for researching how action patterns and infrastructures are performed and change in relation to each other. Social practice theory encourages a shift towards understanding people as agents in debates on low-​carbon living, and as “carriers of practices” (Shove 2004), who perform regular practices (such as eating and heating). Rather than focusing on individual behaviour, the units of analysis are socially shared practices sustained by their regular performance rather than by norms or rational choices. Consumption patterns are therefore not necessarily a

178  Iris Kunze reflection of individual preferences but perceived to be the result of engaging in practices. Cycles of performing practices rely on the co-​evolution of the elements that make up a practice. These elements must come together and be aligned to reproduce practices and keep them alive. Practices also exist beyond their performance, as they are socially grounded in shared states of emotions, understandings, a network of things, infrastructures, norms and embodied know-​how (Schatzki 1996; Warde 2005). In the research project COSIMA, we studied the practices of three eco-​ communities in the fields of food, housing, energy and mobility (Haas et al. 2017; Schäfer et al. 2018). Using the practice theory approach, we interpreted how practices have developed and stabilized based on the ecovillage infrastructure in everyday life over the years. There are three phases of establishing new practices. The “development phase” consists of “problematization” and “experimentation” (Seyfang and Smith 2007). In the “stabilization phase”, new practices get established, which is crucial for a new practice to become a social innovation. Typically, social innovations are first stabilized in a niche. If they prove to be useful and are increasingly adapted, a phase of spreading and dissemination of these practices can happen –​the “mainstreaming phase” –​ either by “entrenchment”, describing the intrinsically motivated consequence of individuals applying and using these practices, or through “expansion”, as broadening a practice to larger groups in society. Numerous eco-​ communities have been approached with in-​ depth interviews and ethnographic methods of participant observation in weeklong visits through e.g. volunteer work, taking part in assemblies, community events and private households over the last 15  years (Kunze 2006, 2009, 2012, 2016). This method was conducted to be able to monitor the everyday practices in comparison to the official descriptions. Further, ecovillages as one of 20 globally networking social innovation initiatives have been investigated in the research project TRANSIT for their transformative social innovation which is conceptualized as a change in social relations, involving new ways of doing, organizing, framing and/​or knowing, and to challenge, alter and/​or replace dominant institutions in the context. “We approach social innovation as a process and as a qualitative property of ideas, objects, activities and/​or (groups of) people” (Haxeltine et al. 2016). Furthermore, the author moved to the Sieben Linden ecovillage in 2016 and was elected to the board of the SiGe cooperative in January 2018. Therefore, the research data into Sieben Linden is enriched by personal involvement in cooperative governance, organization and the daily community life and food practices.

10.4  Ecovillages Ecovillages are a kind of intentional community which is described as: a group of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared

Sustainability of ecovillages  179 core values. The people may live together on a piece of rural land, in a suburban home or in an urban neighborhood, and they may share a single residence or live in a cluster of dwellings.1 Intentional communities are not a modern phenomenon. They have existed throughout history in all different cultures (Metcalf and Christian 2003). They started networking in the 1940s in North America and called themselves intentional communities.2 Scientific perspectives describe a specific socio-​political dimension, in that they (1)  are founded consciously on the basis of an alternative vision for society; (2) search and explore new ways of living together with other people and with nature; (3) develop group-​building qualities through common aims, communal living and a derived lifestyle; and (4) while “natural” communities (like families) tend to subordinate to society, intentional communities strive to intervene and create society (Brown 2002; Dierschke et al. 2006; Grundmann et al. 2006; Meijering 2006; Kunze 2009; Lockyer 2009;). Ecovillages are founded by people who deliberately come together with an ecological, communal and often also a socio-​political or spiritual intention. The description that ecovillages themselves most often use is: “a human-​scale, full-​featured settlement, in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world, in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future” (Gilman 1991). Ecovillages can be found all over the world. When they discovered that they are a global movement, the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) was founded in 1995 in the Findhorn ecovillage in the UK. GEN “has been a driving force in spreading the ecovillage movement across the globe” (Bagadzinski 2002, 16), as it not only supports and facilitates ecovillages, but also organizes educational and demonstration programmes, and represents ecovillages and spreads what they have learnt at international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and several non-​ governmental organizations.3 GEN describes ecovillages as urban or rural communities of people who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-​impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, growing their own food, alternative energy, community-​building practices, social economy and much more. Rather than having to “buy in” or “compete for” existing resources, they develop and create their own (new) ones, while strengthening immaterial values like enjoying nature, community and cultural creative life. 10.4.1  Ecovillages are sustainability experiments Ecovillages strive for sustainable ways of living, and have designed their concept and structures to create more ecological, social and economic sustainability. How far this actually works is difficult to judge, but some data, facts

180  Iris Kunze and examples and their basic concept can provide an approximate evaluation on sustainable living in ecovillages. There is some rather broad and differing data on energy use and the ecological footprints of ecovillages (Daly 2017). Some studies have proved that ecovillages in Germany and the UK have 66% lower resource consumption (Dawson 2006), even when compared with ecologically oriented families (Simon and Herring 2003). At the same time, these ecovillages are improving the conditions of livability in terms of security, choice of lifestyle, combining work–​life balance and private life etc. (Simon and Herring 2003). This is done by finding new ways of sharing, collective ownership and supportive structures in daily community life (Simon and Herring 2003; Dawson 2006). Members of these initiatives said they had to learn to work on their social skills in order to improve community management to be able to share common goods (Andreas et  al. 2012; Kunze and Avelino 2015; Kunze 2019). “I always say it’s not difficult to build an ecovillage physically, but the group, that is the major challenge” (interview ecovillage Bergen/​NL in Pel et al. 2017). “We have the same conflicts as people have anywhere –​but we can deal with them in a different way” (interview Tempelhof in Kunze and Avelino 2015). An often-​ forgotten innovative potential for changing society towards more sustainability is only revealed when looking beyond the hard facts of energy use and the ecological footprint of ecovillages: their potential as social community-​building experiments and models for sustainable living (Kunze 2009, 2012, 2018; Andreas et al. 2012; Kunze and Avelino 2015). They experiment with communal forms of living and alternative technologies in almost all areas of life: energy use, architecture, agriculture, spatial planning, forest management, water management, education, health care, political organization, economics, communication tools, conflict resolution or community management. 10.4.2  Ecovillages as local examples for sustainable food practices In general, ecovillages strive to provide better options for consuming organic food for their members. On the consumer side, this includes collectively ordering food, which allows lower prices in large amounts, with less packaging. Collectively developed values around sustainable living and a derived common agreement allow some kind of organic and often vegetarian diet which is proven to save energy and animal welfare in comparison to eating meat. Community food systems and cooking together save time and energy and prevent food waste. Based on this community infrastructure, the incentives to consume organic and self-​grown food are high, while buying supermarket products requires more cost and effort. Ecovillages mostly strive for a certain percentage of self-​sufficiency and growing one’s own food. The majority of ecovillages own land which is used for living and also for growing food, agriculture and forestry. A legal and charitable framework for land property and real estate with social and ecological

Sustainability of ecovillages  181 aims covers the sustainable construction of land use and settlement. In every community observed, the terrain, including land for agricultural use, was definitely socially and ecologically improved in comparison to its former state (Kunze 2009; Kunze and Avelino 2015). Many ecovillages had to settle on abandoned or unused land due to affordability. They transformed sand dunes into gardens and tourist sites (Findhorn), military ruins into seminar centres (ZEGG), Nazi working camps into permacultural4 vibrating settlements (Lebensgarten Steyerberg), a monocultural part of forest into a permacultural garden village (Ökodorf Sieben Linden). The following two examples are proof of an increase in ecological land restoration. In Auroville, India, in 1968, early settlers from all over the world experienced what needed to be done on their newly bought pieces of wasteland. They learnt how to build climate-​appropriate huts with natural raw materials from the Indian villagers, and developed a kind of architecture adapted to the climate with compressed earth brigs. Because the land had been turned into a desert over years of deforestation and the wells had been running dry, the settlers started to plant trees. In a widespread process over the space of 50 years, four million trees were planted to rebuild the former indigenous tropical dry evergreen forest. The biodiversity came back, as well as the drinking water system of the area.5 Tamera is an ecovillage in a dry, rural area in Portugal. Their self-​ sufficiency work is focused on creating a “water retention landscape”, making agriculture possible and for a 100% autonomous water supply, and more generally for “healing the land”. Visitors from all over the world come to learn from Tamera’s man-​made lakes and their greening impact on the landscape. Although Tamera is not entirely self-​sufficient in its food supply, it does gain a significant proportion (40%) of its food from its own gardens, where vegetables, fruits and herbs are hand-​picked by residents and guests (Joubert and Dregger 2015, 64ff.; Kunze and Avelino 2015). Concerning socio-​economic sustainability, ecovillage projects are bringing new businesses like organic farms, food stores or workshops for ecological building technologies, as well as young people, and sometimes new jobs and cultural facilities to formerly abandoned and dying areas (Kunze 2009, 124–​ 129). Ecovillages also create new economic practices around household and kitchen reproductive work. Traditional gender working roles and the market logic of paying less for reproductive (food) work are reversed, e.g. in the eco-​commune of Niederkaufungen with its fully shared economy6 for its 70 members. This system has worked since 1989 (Kunze 2006, 2009): a professional kitchen team and the childcare crew have the same social standing as the architects. Members are not paid for their work, but independently take the money they need from the collective economy. The members benefit from the system and have kept it ever since, because it provides safety for people to start up businesses and gives the community and its members the power to define the value of work and therefore the salaries inside their “small societal model” instead of being dependent on a market system which pays less for

182  Iris Kunze kitchen and agricultural work. Furthermore, some ecovillages use complementary regional currencies, like Damanhur (Italy) or Findhorn (UK; Kunze and Avelino 2015; Kunze 2019). 10.4.3  Ecovillage governance: local citizen-​based initiatives In the COSIMA research project, we found that practices in ecovillages primarily aim at reducing housing-​related carbon emissions, followed by practices in the area of nutrition and mobility. In comparison, the case studies of low-​carbon municipalities seem to concentrate their efforts on housing and mobility measures, while little attention is paid to reducing carbon-​intensive food practices (Haas et  al. 2017), obviously because food practices are strongly connected to values, individual preferences which the municipalities have no access to. On the individual level, if individual citizens in municipalities want to change their nutritional habits towards more sustainability, they have limited possibilities in terms of infrastructural changes. Ecovillages, by contrast, are social entities which have a special potential to change food habits and infrastructures at once. With the help of community building, they collectively agree on rules to implement sustainable infrastructure, agriculture and food practices. Moreover, our results highlight that the vertical depth, i.e. the depth and degree of carbon impact of a certain practice, is heavily dependent on the respective prevailing governance structure, i.e. representative democracy (in municipalities) versus inclusive-​democratic community structures (in ecovillages; Haas et al. 2017). Therefore, the citizen-​based structures of decision making in ecovillages are taken into account, because they affect food production and support self-​sufficiency structures for local food production. Ecovillages are private citizens’ initiatives with the aim of winning back control over community resources. How is this to be done and which challenges have to be considered? In contrast to societal structures, communities are based on personal relationships (Grundmann et  al. 2006). A community consists of certain individuals who create the whole in a constant process. If members leave and new ones join, the community changes. Since members enter ecovillages on a voluntary basis and are committed to common goals, efforts are primarily based on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation (Dumitru et al. 2016). This intrinsic motivation is confirmed as the result of daily work, which is tangible and visible in one’s direct surrounding. The organizational forms created by the initiatives studied have organically developed from a small group of people when growing step by step (Kunze and Avelino 2015). How is this democratic space expressed in terms of social and political structures? As the owner of the land and building properties, ecovillages “protect” the semi-​public, communal spaces by an officially legal organizational framework of a foundation, an association or cooperative, with membership-​ based and ecological values, and therefore are an example of re-​inventing

Sustainability of ecovillages  183 common goods (Ostrom 1990). The collective ownership framework is a major pillar of citizen-​ empowered decision making. The governance of examined communities (Kunze 2009, 2012; Kunze and Avelino 2015) consists of democratic bodies (most often a charitable unit or cooperative) to rule the ownership –​mainly the real estate –​which all residents are members of. In return, the new practice of inclusive decision making, and even its flexibility and experimental character, is stabilized by non-​profit, democratic, collective ownership structures which are grounded by sustainability values. Most ecovillages aim at an organizational form which is able to ensure values of equality and empowerment by linking power and being affected by decisions as well as following social and ecological responsibility. This includes constructive decision-​ making processes, where the (concerned) members feel acknowledged rather than overworked, and where sophisticated, appropriate expert results can be achieved in thematic working groups. A key principle in the process is to focus on opportunities to create rather than to criticize or block the activities of other members (Kunze 2009, 108ff.). Capacity building in personal growth, community building, tools for emotionally integrated communication and conflict resolution are seen as fundamental supports to stabilize these governance and sustainability practices on a deeper cultural level (Wagner 2012). Furthermore, establishing a trustful and community-​ based organization, fostering the intrinsic motivation of members to take on responsibility and realizing an economy of solidarity are pillars of inclusive decision making (Kunze 2009, 2012). In terms of combining community with organization and institutional frameworks, these initiatives create hybrids of informal and formal structures. The majority of the ecovillages do not have a fixed set of rules or unchangeable organizational structures (Kunze 2009, 141ff.). Therefore, a sensible and appropriate mixture of formal and also legally covered structures is applied, as well as free, voluntary agreements and contracts arising from communication forums based upon transparency and inclusion (Kunze 2009, 2012). In Findhorn ecovillage, one of the primary principles is “people first” and “communication is more important than commanding and following rules” (Kunze 2009, 140–​141). The principle is based on creating new structures and habits and exchanging practice based directly on members’ actions and needs. Therefore, it is a space where new and innovative practices can emerge. Their capability to cope with changeable situations of the societal and natural environments is high. Several intentional communities were examined as social systems with a good level of changeability, security, flexibility and existence (Simon and Herring 2003). Ecovillages have been founded consciously by members on a critical attitude towards society and constitute a high degree of self-​reflection (Kunze 2018). The members create new organizational forms that serve to shield themselves from the dominant culture of monetary and purpose-​driven organizations (Kunze and Avelino 2015). The space for experimentation is safeguarded by experience-​based rules for entry, a responsive and flexible structure, i.e. a

184  Iris Kunze human-​scale, transparent community that can communicate directly amongst members and with democratic decision making. A  flexible system of management, often including rotating positions, is also in tune with the ability to react to societal dynamics such as economic crises (Kunze 2009, 132ff.). However, living in an ecovillage also includes disempowering aspects. First, the legal frameworks of the respective governments often have limiting effects on the micro local eco-​innovations in ecovillages because they refer to macro-​systems. For instance, laws restrict the use of compost toilets or ground water (re-​)use (Pel et al. 2017). Also, land use, eco-​low-​tech like straw bale building required long permission processes.7 Growing one’s own eco-​ food is costly compared to market prices and the economies of scale in large companies (Kunze 2019). Furthermore, legal frameworks were not designed to support multidimensional, citizen-​ruled local initiatives. The legal forms of the cooperative and association are often used, which however lack some privileges compared to legal forms for specific sectors of business and private domains like company, marriage or church. Due to loopholes in the laws which do not consider such new, sustainable practices and citizen self-​organization, ecovillage projects are often dependent on the discretionary decisions of local political and administrative persons, which may be good or bad luck. Secondly, there is an internal disempowering aspect to living in such a project which requires of lot of personal commitment and raises different conflicting interests and power issues. Empowerment is work. One needs to be informed to decide and co-​design the village; some expertise, social skills and empathy is needed. Because being educated in such skills in individualized societies is rare, ecovillages provide fields of practical education in social skills, where members are socialized to deal with conflicts and learn, for example, non-​violent communication. Nevertheless, a “just community” is an ideal. Hidden and unconscious hierarchies are subtly affecting the power differences in all the ecovillages we have studied. To sum up, organizational structures which rule agreements on values are observed as a key for establishing and stabilizing practices around sustainable food. They ensure voluntary membership, collective agreement on rules and a constant adaptation by collectively co-​creating sustainable ways of living with respective practices which combine individual lifestyles and communal infrastructure. 10.4.4  Ecovillage learnings and practices are disseminated On the one hand, ecovillages are low in number and still occupy a niche position in society (Haxeltine et al. 2016; Kunze 2018). The implementation of their practices is low in quantitative numbers, but deep in quality and internalization by individuals (Schäfer et al. 2018). On the other hand, studies show that “demand” for “intentional community living” is increasing. Sources (Eurotopia 1998–​2009) reveal that there is a high fluctuation, and altogether a quick growth of those projects. Many of the current successful ecovillages

Sustainability of ecovillages  185 receive more requests to join than they can handle. As a result, there are continuously new attempts made at creating communities. But 90% of the new attempts do not manage to manifest a project, the main challenges being to find affordable land and planning permission, and inner, unresolved conflicts (Christian 2003). As such, the successful 10% are not just experiments for the small percentage of people who actually live within the community. Individual ecovillages spread what they have learnt through education centres like the European ecovillages of Findhorn (UK), Tamera (Portugal), Sieben Linden, ZEGG (Germany) or Damanhur (Italy), each of which hosts several thousand visitors a year (Kunze and Avelino 2015). Some large, well-​established ecovillages even have their own national networks and centres in numerous countries (like Auroville). Guests are taught in experienced communication methods, they work in the household or garden while living sustainable practices and getting a feeling for being integrated into an “advanced” community. This dissemination happens on an individual level, is difficult to measure and cannot be directly seen as dissemination or mainstreaming. Nevertheless, their image as irrelevant little “utopias” in the mainstream media and politics is slowly changing, and a decent number of media reports, film documentations and radio broadcasts have been observed across a wider range of media8 (Grundmann et al. 2006; Kunze 2009, 167ff.). On the level of the GEN with its regional and national subdivisions, experiences of ecovillages are spread first through political lobbying work at UN or EU level (see more in Kunze and Avelino 2015). Some developing countries seem to be pioneering in terms of retrofitting traditional villages, especially in Senegal where the government established a ministry for ecovillages, collaborating with GEN. Second, GEN has developed an education programme to teach about the experiences and successful results from years of experimentation in dozens of ecovillages around the globe (EDE 2012), which is further developed in a co-​creative development process.9 The programme not only aspires to teach how to found and run an ecovillage, but aims to translate experiences and knowledge into broader sections of society.

10.5  The case of Sieben Linden ecovillage Sieben Linden ecovillage in rural eastern Germany has been chosen as a case study for deeper investigation for two reasons. First, Sieben Linden is one the most thorough and successful ecovillages in Europe, combining organic food, a high quality of life and a high degree of self-​sufficiency. In its 20 years of existence and continuous growth, practices have been established and stabilized. With 140 residents, it is large enough to have developed independent governance, organization and land ownership as well as its own food systems and practices. Second, the author has conducted intensive research into this ecovillage since 2001, as it was chosen as a case for innovative ways of sustainable living, especially concerning governance and self-​sufficiency

186  Iris Kunze (Kunze 2006, 2009, 2012). The author has lived in Sieben Linden since 2016, and therefore can draw on deeper insights and personal experience on what it is to live in this kind of ecovillage, with its everyday practices, decision making and communal life. In the following, Sieben Linden is presented with its sustainable way of living in concept and realization and its governance. Then, the food practices are mapped and discussed with practice theory. The ecovillage of Sieben Linden is a residential organized community which today has 140 residents. It has become famous for its sustainable way of living and ecological straw bale house-​building technology. Sieben Linden started as a private initiative by a group of people who responded to a newspaper announcement about founding an eco-​community in the late 1980s. They spent time together to practise eco-​living and developed a common ground. The members of the group –​about 20 at that time –​partly fluctuated over the years due to differing ideals on self-​sufficiency or personal conflicts and changing life targets. In 1993, the common ground of the ecovillage was worked out by trying to realize as many ecological, ethical and social values as possible. After several years of planning and conceptualizing the common ground and values for a social and ecological village, and after living for some years in a project centre, the site of “Sieben Linden” in rural eastern Germany was found and bought in 1997. The community planned a completely new ecovillage from scratch. No paved roads, no street lights, car-​free, eco-​houses built with regional materials in the self-​developed straw–​bale–​clay house-​ building style, only composting toilets, a garden for growing food by the cooperative, private gardeners and a community food system. Sieben Linden also runs a seminar centre for teaching its experiences and other, like-​minded seminars. It is located in one of the most remote rural areas in Germany, which is experiencing depopulation and demographic change, but it has the highest birth rate of any village in the state of Sachsen-​Anhalt. Elderly people and families feel drawn to move to this community in particular to benefit from the communal and ecological way of life. Sieben Linden has cut its ecological footprint down to one-​third of the average footprint in Germany (Simon and Herring 2003), and in a more recent study to about 50% (Bocco et al. 2018). Negative effects are mainly attributed to the increasing number of internet orders. Especially in the area of goods and food, Sieben Linden has a significantly lower ecological footprint than the German average (Bocco et al 2018). 10.5.1  Governance and organizational structures of Sieben Linden The ideal of cooperative ownership as a basis for organizational and governance structures has been implemented from the beginning. A system of four legal organizations runs the village, in which the adult long-​term residents are members (about 80 at the moment). The SiGe cooperative owns the land, including the forest, garden, meadows and the village infrastructure. The WoGe cooperative supports the residents in building eco-​houses and owns

Sustainability of ecovillages  187 most of the residential houses in Sieben Linden. The “Freundeskreis” association runs the seminar centre, plus it has external friends as members. And finally, the “Naturwaren” association organizes the food orders and supply for private households and the community kitchen, including the seminar house kitchen, and also runs the organic product store (Kunze 2019). All community members are co-​owners of these organizations within the different areas of Sieben Linden. In the early days, the decisions were discussed and made in the general assembly. When growing over the years, the questions became more differentiated and were delegated to thematic subgroups. Today, decision making in Sieben Linden is a combination of including all residents in a participatory manner, and at the same time covering the requirements of the legal organizations. Nine councils, of which some are coherent with the legal structures of the four organizations, decide on thematic issues, while larger or controversial decisions are decided by the general assembly. Communication is facilitated to ensure equal participation. Ideally decisions are made by consensus, but over the last few years majority voting has been introduced. Moreover, social assemblies and community retreats have been cultivated to work on larger issues and conflicts which had blocked decision making and might have caused suffering for community bonding. They were longing for a way to better understand each other and how they could create a space that supports emotional encounters and conflict resolution in a deeper way for the entire community. “ZEGG Forum”, a group communication method to support community life, was introduced in Sieben Linden;10 it was invented for this purpose in the community of ZEGG. A space for mutual understanding is created through self-​expression in order to invite conflict resolution. 10.5.2  Transformative food practices in Sieben Linden Food practices in Sieben Linden have been mapped, structured and evaluated in terms of their potential for transforming food practices (Kunze 2015; Schäfer et  al. 2018) by using a framework for exploring what it means to intervene in daily practice and “open up new ‘sites’ for policy interventions” (Spurling and McMeekin 2015, 78). The guiding questions were: what kind of food practices are established in Sieben Linden, what is their contribution to less resource-​intensive, more ecological, sustainable, transparent and local production as well as consumption, and what is the interlinkage between governance and organization with sustainable food practices? Sieben Linden has intentionally improved the sustainability and ecology of food practices, firstly by changing the elements to make them less resource-​ intensive (“re-​crafting” practices, according to Spurling and McMeekin 2015, 84; Shove et al. 2012). They introduced common rules and agreements for sustainable living and consumption according to agreed values and lived practices. These are a vegetarian diet, vegan and local products (at least in the community kitchen), running a garden cooperative to produce organic food for residents with an original striving for self-​sufficiency, which is achieved up to 70%. It

188  Iris Kunze includes paying more for their own vegetables and garden employees than the market rate. Organic, regional and seasonal products are chosen for the food which needs to be imported. Food waste is avoided by cooking with what needs to be used. An ethical agreement on animal husbandry is valid for the entire ecovillage (see below). A  composting system returns nutrients to the gardens. Secondly, the community infrastructure established enables collaboration and connection between producers and consumers in the framework of collective decisions and organization. Furthermore, it is framed as a cooperative, with shared ownership of (agricultural) land, community kitchen and paid cooks for the community and the seminar centre as well as private kitchens in the residential houses with common goods. The semi-​private kitchen and community canteen have to meet laws regarding hygiene, but can more flexibly work with leftovers and home-​grown products beyond official EU norms. Another re-​crafted practice is building skills for community members and guests, e.g. growing regional vegetables and fruits, (collective) self-​harvesting actions, cooking with regional and seasonal vegetables, preserving techniques for fruits and vegetables, raw food and other philosophies of healthy food. Sieben Linden’s land use practices have greatly increased the level of biodiversity compared to the state before and compared to many similar villages. Concerning the food production area, the 5 hectares of organic garden are planted with small plots with a great variety of fruit and vegetables, hedges, wild areas (around the well and the wild pond) and areas of dry meadows are only used extensively, if at all. This is also valid for the private gardens and areas inside the village. Protected species  –​plants, insects and birds  –​have come to this land. New approaches like agroforestry have been trialled. Second, in Sieben Linden the following food practices are “substituted” by more sustainable practices by changing the competition between practices for time, space and resources (Spurling et al. 2015, 11). These practices are changing habits and the infrastructure. Sieben Linden started building infrastructure from scratch when the village was built. The members who have moved in  –​and new people do constantly join  –​substitute the majority of their practices from their previous life when they move into this new living area with its infrastructure and households with the same practices. In general, communal and social living substitutes a number of leisure activities which involve high energy consumption like television and mobility. The infrastructure around food which has already been introduced includes hired employees for community food services and allows collective ordering of affordable high-​quality, organic food in large packages, which saves on (plastic) garbage. The organic vegetarian food is supplied for a standard fee within an elaborate financial system of solidarity, including three vegan or vegetarian buffets served per day in the Sieben Linden canteen by employed cooks and by the members on a rotating basis as a community service. The community canteen is used by 80–​90% of residents of the ecovillage, and therefore reduces the amount of individual cooking being done. Furthermore, the fee includes

Sustainability of ecovillages  189 a range of basic food and household products brought in from the outside, which is available 24/​7 in the “residents’ pantry” free of charge. This standard fee is adjusted to take absence and individual circumstances into account. Children are paid for by all. Individual exceptions in special cases are possible. Furthermore, the association runs a shop with “luxury” organic products like sweets, alcohol, cheese, meat, super foods or cosmetics, which members can buy for a member’s price. The infrastructure “shapes” individual habits and prompts members to adopt a number of more sustainable practices. The everyday life of residents is synchronized by the three mealtimes, which can also be times and spaces for community and socializing in the communal eating spaces. A communal kitchen and utilities are available in the community centre. Going shopping is not necessary –​one can choose (with half a day’s notice to the community canteen in advance) between eating at the community buffet or taking food from the “residents’ pantry” and cooking in a residential house kitchen. The food innovations also entail a change of practice for the cooks working in Sieben Linden. Cooks can only use vegetarian and vegan items for the community buffet, they have to use the ingredients which are provided from the garden and the organic food deliveries also need to be used. Cooking for a large group also means cooking for everyone’s tastes (including individual food allergies) and working together with community members doing their kitchen services. The most complex change of practices, because of its cross-​ sectoral character, has its greatest potential in “holistic” projects like ecovillages. “Changing how practices interlock” shows the effects and interferences of practices between different areas, for instance, how changing the practice of food shopping has effects on and implications for other practices such as driving. Interlocking practices often means changing the level, scale and character of the “need” or “demand”, such as the need for mobility (Spurling and McMeekin 2015, 88). Ecovillages provide multidimensional options for linking sustainability practices between different areas and actors compared to private households or public organizations. As a citizen-​organized community and organization, Sieben Linden was designed as a sustainable village from scratch. The food supply and infrastructure (full-​ featured village) cause less inorganic consumption, less energy, less traffic and less packaging. Housework is a community service and therefore framed more effectively. A combination of sustainable and communal living (e.g. community meals) simplifies everyday management regarding eating, saves money and fosters social contacts. Communal, social and cultural “self-​ sufficiency” reduces mobility, television use and other resource-​ intensive recreational activities. “Self-​sufficiency” with health, massage therapists, a homeopath, sport offerings, music lessons for adults and children reduces the need for mobility. Sieben Linden –​which has existed for 20 years now –​is still an experiment with unsolved challenges. The community approaches these issues with the methods described in section 10.5.1. With the framework of a community,

190  Iris Kunze there is still a high degree of individuality. This creates challenges of how to meet different needs for nutrition, food habits, allergies, eating times, household management, hygienic requirements, how to integrate children into the community centre and canteen, different opinions on food sustainability, animal keeping, the economic challenges of subsidizing a system of home-​grown food, gardening and agriculture with ecological and sustainable intentions. The controversy on animal husbandry and its solution in Sieben Linden11 is introduced to highlight the interlocking between organizational and communal structures with local community food practices. It represents an example of dealing with controversial opinions and values which could be transformed into an agreement through negotiations, governance and compromise. Animal husbandry and consuming animal products had been a topic of controversy right from the foundation phase of Sieben Linden onwards. After 10 years of discussion, the community came to a consensus, and ratified a solution in 2005 which is in operation now in 2020. Since they organized and owned the land together, the community was compelled to come to a decision on this topic sooner or later before members started to act. Concerning animal keeping, all members agreed that the common methods in Germany were not acceptable for the ecovillage. The decision on how to keep animals, and the question of if and what kind of animal products could be consumed while following ecological and ethical intentions, had been controversially discussed for years. Members based their values on knowledge around animal keeping, vegan nutrition and organic farming, seeing animal welfare as a central aspect of an ecovillage. However, it was never formulated as an explicit aim. Over the years, more vegans joined the ecovillage. In their value system, they could not accept “imprisoning” animals or even slaughtering any living being at all. There were two main opinions or value systems: on the one hand, the idea of a species-​appropriate, ecological animal husbandry should be realized primarily based on self-​sufficiency for taking responsibility for the animals which one consumes. On the other hand, the strictly vegan members have always been against animal keeping and slaughtering in general, which means no husbandry at all and vegan food. These two different “parties”, values and people have clashed several times over the years since the foundation of Sieben Linden while trying to find a consensus in mediated discussions. No animals were brought to Sieben Linden during this controversial process, and even pets were not welcome. Finally, in October 2005 after 2  years of intensive discussions, the community came to a common decision about animal keeping which solved the conflicts. The resolution on “how to live together with animals in the ecovillage of Sieben Linden” has applied since then and encompasses different dimensions. The central point is the following guideline of how to deal with animal keeping: “Sieben Linden only allows animals on its territory if they can live a good life till their natural death”. This has been a tremendous step,

Sustainability of ecovillages  191 because no animal that has ever lived in the ecovillage can be slaughtered, not even at a later stage in a different place (Kunze in Pel et al. 2017). Basically, the agreement could emerge when both parties were ready for a compromise, because they considered the community with the people from the other party as more important than insisting on their ideals. The vegan-​oriented people accepted that the ecovillage of Sieben Linden is not a vegan project: animal products are served in the community kitchen and they have to fund those with their contribution to the shared food economy. The eco-​ vegetarian people accepted that, in practice, the decision makes agriculture with almost any kind of animals impossible. The members who wanted to produce their own animal products pretty much stopped doing it, because it cannot work with almost any kind of animals, e.g. producing eggs and dairy products only works in a realistic way with slaughtering male and older cows, goats, sheep or chickens. (Interview in Pel et al. 2017) “We agree on this for respecting those amongst us who believe killing animals in any way is unethical.”12 Furthermore, also considering their global responsibility in the resolution, they emphasized that they were aware they were part of a world where animals are killed because many members of the ecovillage buy e.g. dairy products. On the other hand, for reasons of individual freedom it is still allowed to consume animal products, with the aim of buying from regional producers to maximize a sense of awareness and responsibility. Today, Sieben Linden keeps some horses for forest work and bees for organic honey production. Organic dairy and other animal products are “imported”. The intention was actually to consume regional products, but it has not yet been possible to find a farmer nearby who could supply the amounts necessary. More than 10 years after the resolution, members still feel exhausted when thinking back to the conflict. The long-​term members are not ready to restart this debate when newcomers ask for animal keeping (Kunze in Pel et  al. 2017). Members learned how important it is to agree on basic values, intentions and a way of living before committing to shared property. It is about daily and private life. A community can only work based on realism and not too much idealism. In Sieben Linden, many practices emerged which were re-​ crafted, substituted and interlocked to improve sustainability from an ecological, and at the same time a social and economic, perspective. Also Schack (2017), from a perspective of sustainability in household management, came to the conclusion that the communal infrastructure of Sieben Linden is more sustainable than the German average and has an enormous inherent potential to improve sustainability and resource-​efficiency. Moreover, the ecovillage disseminates its practices by guests and education, hosting about 5,000 guest nights per year at its seminar centre, where experiences and knowledge are shared.

192  Iris Kunze

10.6  Discussion: how sustainable are the food practices in ecovillages? Ecovillages were discussed as experiments for sustainable ways of living, including local ecological food systems. In terms of their ecological footprint, they proved to be successful models for reducing energy consumption whilst maintaining a high quality of life (Simon and Herring 2003; Kunze 2009, 2012; Bocco et al. 2018). A citizen-​based empowering governance and organizational structure based on collective ownership is seen as an enabling precondition for the sustainable food systems in ecovillages. In the final discussion, I want to raise the question firstly about the quality of the sustainability of their food practices, and secondly, about how viable it would be to transfer the model to a broader societal context. It is difficult to assess the sustainability practices of ecovillages in general because of the great variety of projects. The question and future research rather should focus on the dynamics, interlinkages and potential of governance, communal living and food practices for sustainability practices. Often, ecovillages start with promising approaches to create more communal, sustainable and local life, plus probably in most cases with some sort of organic diet for the community kitchen in protective and experimental local communities. Positive sustainability effects, especially in terms of food practices, could be confirmed for three reasons in particular. First, ecovillages create new living environments where practices interlock in a more sustainable way. Through a “full-​featured” village and cultural activities, mobility is reduced and consumption patterns change towards more sustainable routines. Second, Sieben Linden shows how a much less resource-​intensive lifestyle is possible by agreeing on common values. Ethical agreements on lifestyle arise from intrinsically motivated change and putting this into practices, routines and infrastructures, mainly for sustainable diets (e.g. vegan) and by accepting higher costs for organic food. Third, common goods and collective systems for households and food production highly increase efficiency and save on resources and infrastructure. For a smooth community organization, suitable frameworks and sophisticated new governance practices are needed, showing that inclusive decision making actually works, which guarantees individuality and flexibility. In sum, ecovillages have invented infrastructures of sustainable food practices because they are striving to re-​arrange and build their own, more sustainable practices. By founding an ecovillage in a new place, new practices are collectively created and develop over time. People who move to such an ecovillage also move into a new network of practices for living, eating, socializing and most areas of their life. They can be seen as highly relevant case studies for examining innovations for more sustainable food practices towards sustainable ways of living. In the broader perspective of local economy, ecovillages are replacing formal, exploitive consumption and production patterns, partly by self-​ sufficiency and partly by practising local and ecological economy, connecting

Sustainability of ecovillages  193 producers and consumers (Kunze 2019). Between ecovillages and through the GEN, an informal network of solidarity could be established. Ecovillages are heterotopias, where people can break the dominant logic of the “Homo economicus”, support each other and practise gift and shared economy. This practice is manifested in the legal structures of cooperatives and foundations. While the earlier “alternative” food movement was strongly associated with issues of quality, embeddedness, transparency and trust but offered little challenge to the prevailing logic of capitalism, ecovillages create a holistic framework, including community, collective ownership and especially the union of producers and consumers, of owners and users, in order to prevent a capitalistic exploitation or the values being co-​opted for the benefit of a minority. As self-​organized communities, they avoid the trap of communism gone astray by guaranteeing voluntary membership, the principles of co-​creation and human-​ scale community and continuous adaptation to individual needs. Ecovillages, as a younger form of intentional communities, have the approach to build “small-​scale societies” or “social-​ecological transformation experiments” (Kunze 2009, 2012) based on voluntary engagement and values of community and nature connection creating many small-​scale innovations, also in the area of non-​profit, collective ownership models for community living. This is how they react locally to dominant unsustainable institutions (Haxeltine et al. 2017, 21), by following a key strategy of providing “alternative” arrangements. Therefore, it would be too simple to assess the sustainability achievements based on their energy emissions or whether the ecovillage concept can be mainstreamed. But they are living examples that low-​impact living plus a high quality of life are possible. Ecovillages are a niche phenomenon. Building an ecovillage involves social challenges (Kunze 2018) and requires certain skills. What they have learnt is predominantly disseminated through individual experience, education and cultural change. They act as change makers and have a lot to offer. It became apparent that the challenges and obstacles are often greater, since the know-​ how and the political and economic support are mostly lacking. Now it is up to politics, business and education to support these innovations. To be more precise, this could imply better meeting their needs for a suitable legal framework (like the possibility of collective ownership, exemptions from building regulations and trade law, etc.) and tailored financial support. Municipalities could become more open and invite and support eco-​community projects with access to land and housing properties (Haas et al. 2017; Hausknost et al. 2018). In terms of cultural education, policy could use “community” as a new recruitment strategy to increase the performance of low-​impact living.

Notes 1 As formulated by the “Fellowship Intentional Communities”. http://​wiki.ic.org/​ wiki/​Intentional_​Communities. Accessed April 15, 2009, 2 On the “Fellowship Intentional Communities”, see www.ic.org

194  Iris Kunze 3 Since 1991, the development and foundation of the “Global Ecovillage Network” were primarily supported by “Gaia Trust”, which is the main (financial) initiator for networking and promoting ecovillages. www.gaia.org 4 “Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches how to build natural homes, grow your own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more.” www.permaculture.org/​nm/​index.php/​site/​classroom/​ 5 Thomas and Thomas (2013) and www.auroville.org/​environment/​harvest/​harvest_​ water_​dynamics.htm. Accessed April 29, 2009. 6 In this fully shared economy, none of the members has an individual bank account or owns property any more. The time of integration and the case of leaving the ecovillage are negotiated individually. 7 Pel et al. (2017): www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/​sii/​ctp/​successful-​completion-​of-​ first-​two-​straw-​bale-​houses 8 There is no overall documentation, but an example is the rapidly growing popularity of the ecovillage Schloss Tempelhof in southern Germany; see press report: www.schloss-​tempelhof.de/​service/​presse/​ 9 The programme is developed further in a Wiki (http://​ecovillage.wikia.com/​wiki/​ Gaia_​Education) and exists also as an online programme at a Spanish university (www.gaiaeducation.org/​). 10 Researched as a critical turning point in the history of Sieben Linden in Kunze in Pel et  al. (2017) and online:  www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/​sii/​ctp/​ social-​forum-​group-​building-​method-​was-​introduced 11 Analysed as a critical turning point in the history of Sieben Linden in:  Kunze in Pel et al. (2017), online: www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/​sii/​ctp/​agreement-​ process-​on-​animal-​keeping 12 Sieben Linden 2005: Animal husbandry. Siebenlinden: Internal Paper.

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Sustainability of ecovillages  195 Dawson, J. 2006. Ecovillages: New frontiers for sustainability. Vol. 12 of Schumacher Briefings. Cambridge: Green Books. Dierschke, T., S. Drucks, and I. Kunze. 2006. Intentionale Gemeinschaften: Begriffe, Felder, Zugänge. In Soziale Gemeinschaften:  Experimentierfelder für kollektive Lebensformen, ed. M. Grundmann, T. Dierschke, S. Drucks, and I. Kunze, 101–​18. Münster: LIT Verlag. Dumitru, A., I. Lema-​Blanco, R. García-​Mira, I. Kunze, T. Strasser, and R. Kemp. 2016. Social learning for transformative social innovation. TRANSIT deliverable 2.3. TRANSIT:EU SSH.2003.3.2-​1 Grant Agreement no. 613169. EDE (The Ecovillage Design Education). 2012. Ecovillage Design Education:  A four-​week comprehensive course in the fundamentals of sustainability design; Curriculum conceived and designed by the GEESE –​Global Ecovillage Educators for a Sustainable World. Version 5. www.gaiaeducation.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​ 2017/​02/​EDE-​Curriculum-​English.pdf (accessed July 4, 2020). Gilman, R. 1991. The eco-​village challenge. In Context 29: 10. Grundmann, M., T. Dierschke, S. Drucks, and I. Kunze, eds. 2006. Soziale Gemeinscha ften: Experimentierfelder für kollektive Lebensformen. Münster: LIT Verlag. Haas, W., D. Hausknost, S. Hielscher et al. 2017. Governing community-​based social innovation for climate change mitigation and adaption. Vienna:  Austrian Climate and Research Program. Hausknost, D., W. Haas, S. Hielscher et al. [I. Kunze] 2018. Investigating patterns of local climate governance: How low-​carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene in social practices. Environmental Policy and Governance 28, no. 6: 371–​82. Haxeltine A., M. S. Jørgensen, B. Pel et  al. 2016. On the agency and dynamics of transformative social innovation. TRANSIT working paper #7, TRANSIT:  EU SSH.2013.3.2-​1 grant agreement no. 613169. Haxeltine, A., B. Pel, J. Wittmayer, A. Dumitru, R. Kemp, and F. Avelino. 2017. Building a middle-​range theory of transformative social innovation:  Theoretical pitfalls and methodological responses. European Public and Social Innovation Review 2, no. 1: 59–​77. Joubert, K., and L. Dregger, eds. 2015. Ecovillages:  1001 ways to heal the planet. Devon, UK: Triarchy Press. Kunze, I. 2006. Sozialökologische Gemeinschaften als Experimentierfelder für zukunftsfähige Lebensweisen: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Praktiken. In Soziale Gem einschaften: Experimentierfelder für kollektive Lebensformen, ed. M. Grundmann, T. Dierschke, S. Drucks, and I. Kunze, 171–​88. Münster: LIT Verlag. Kunze, I. 2009. Soziale Innovationen für zukunftsfähige Lebensweisen: Gemeinschaften und Ökodörfer als experimentierende Lernfelder für sozial-​ ökologische Nachhaltigkeit. Münster: Ecotransfer-​Verlag. Kunze, I. 2012. Social innovations for communal and ecological living: Lessons from sustainability research and observations in intentional communities. Communal Societies 32, no. 1: 50–​67. Kunze, I. 2016. Fallstudienbericht COSIMA: Entwicklung der Klimaschutzinitiativen Ökodorf Sieben Linden. Research Project COSIMA (Governing community-​based social innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation), funded by Klima und Energiefond, Austria. https://​oin.at/​_​publikationen/​PublikationenNEU/​ Forschungsberichte/​Fallstudienbericht_​7Linden.pdf (accessed July 16, 2020).

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11  An anthropological reflection on urban gardening through the lens of citizenship Robin Smith

11.1  Introduction On an early summer walk around my new home Leiden, a university town in the Netherlands, I came upon a lush, green courtyard surrounded by homes. Gracefully bordered by a gravel walkway, off to one side of it was a large square of freshly turned soil with a hanging wooden sign with white handwriting reading ‘Gekroonde Liefdetuin’, or Crowned Love Garden. This modest herb garden stood there empty of people as I  lingered to photograph it and the nearby stone garden fountain framed by blossoming roses. I began to wonder how this garden might be a political act. Reflecting on the transient student nature of this not quite urban, but then not quite not urban, university town, I considered whether gardening in this space might cultivate feelings of belonging, groundedness, or even a localized sort of citizenship for those tending it. Was it a community experiment that I stumbled upon in this particular space–​time that would soon wilt away from neglect or flourish from communal love, or was it part of a continuation of an illustrious past about which I would remain completely oblivious? Was it a contested space, or a transformed one, a spot previously home to garbage bins or a playground? In pondering the literature on food citizenship, justice, and sovereignty, I began to question whether such spaces were inherently political, or whether makers of these gardens in semi-​public areas must dig into those grass roots with political intent to make them so, as they turn the cultured soil over on itself to disrupt what is currently growing to make room for something novel, a new configuration of plants, ideas, and political values. As an American anthropologist living in Europe for approaching two decades, I reflected also on my position as a non-​citizen of this country, and what binds me to it more abstractly, such as shared social values and ancestry. Carrying my residence permit in my wallet and thinking about how I might make this place home, I realized how anthropologists are in the fortunate position of conceptualizing citizenship either literally, as a category of membership defined by the state to issue passports and determine residency, or more abstractly as a way of being, performative, enacting, or related to identity or belonging. We may also interpret citizenship as a relational category, a way

A reflection on urban gardening  199 of organizing groups within society, making insiders and outsiders defined in different ways, or even creating inequalities between these groups, amongst other things. However, citizenship is consistently a political category in these vastly varied conceptualizations, a relational category to the state, and the surrounding discourse often includes a discussion or problematization of rights that are being denied or contested, and how these rights connect to citizenship by defining or challenging it. In conceptualizing meanings of food citizenship, one may frame an individual action like consumption or a collective action like urban gardening either in opposition to governance policies around food, or in opposition to the market structures limiting different configurations of economic transactions to emerge. Tacking between political and economic fields, developing a theory of food citizenship grounded in action necessitates approaching the study of consumption practices as a total social fact, in the tradition of Durkheim (1938). In this chapter, I  investigate potential ways of approaching the concept of food citizenship from an anthropological vantage point. I reflect specifically upon the diverse roles of community gardens that social scientists have unearthed in their efforts to unpack the value and meaning of gardens to urban citizens, linking these findings to anthropological research on urban citizenship to posit a roadmap towards a more concrete conceptualization of food citizenship. In so doing, I  raise a series of questions that remain unanswered, but that are posed to inspire new conceptual understandings of these locally specific communal spaces. In suggesting that food citizenship may thus have multiple local meanings, I realize this may complicate efforts to theorize its definition in ways that would map on to efforts to bring the issue of food citizenship to policy contexts. Still, unpacking the nexus of theories on citizenship and social science research on urban gardens offers a roadmap, albeit a bumpy one, to understanding the values and beliefs underlying the consumer food choices that ultimately drive the vertical integration of the food sector, such that we may make more targeted interventions to modify the existing food system.

11.2  Planting the seeds of food citizenship The concept of food citizenship was developed in the North American context in the 1990s by Thomas Lyson, the idea being that consumers become ‘active food citizens’ by engaging in the food system consciously—​ this includes them becoming occasional producers in ways that promote a democratic food system, in the sense that high-​quality farm products become more available to otherwise marginal socioeconomic groups (Renting et al. 2012, citing Lyson 2005). Stephen Gliessman conceptualizes food citizens as those mindfully understanding their food-​shopping decisions as having broader political and economic implications (2006, 339). Such studies as those below posit the existence of food citizenship as an almost generalized social environment where there is a broad consensus on the value of such high-​quality food

200  Robin Smith products being available to everyone, but sometimes also as being an identity around which people define themselves and their community. Community gardens in urban settings are promoted as ways to democratize access to high-​quality food for those living in economic precarity (Armstrong 2000; Mares 2014; Saldivar-​Tanaka and Krasny 2004). Particularly in the United States, access to healthy food in food deserts like Detroit, framed in discourses around food justice, are embedded in diverse urban governance ideologies, placing food squarely in the political field of city planning (Jung and Newman 2014). Engaging in the food system by becoming producers, to whatever a marginal degree, is considered part of a process of cultivating citizenship (Poulsen 2017, 135). They are also often cast as contributing to neoliberal governance values—​in the sense of urban self-​provisioning being a way of further entrenching capitalist logics (Hébert and Mincyte 2014, 209). Although they may promote self-​reliance for everyday needs, some researchers are approaching them theoretically as ‘forms of political agency that contest, transform and re-​signify “the urban”’, re-​casting them yet again as potentially not emblematic of neoliberalism (Ceteromà and Tornaghi 2015, 1123). Given the diversity of contexts and peoples engaging in urban gardening around the world, it seems plausible that both interpretations may be valid, and that it is place-​dependent. Indeed, in some contexts it may not be political at all, as Veen et al. have found that, in some Dutch urban gardening groups, where participants ‘perceive engagement in the gardening practice as a hobby, not as an economic activity’, they may not even manage to incorporate the food they grow into their daily consumption habits (2014, 296). However, some researchers, such as Ghose and Pettygrove in their study in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suggest that the same community garden can simultaneously ‘contest and reinforce local neoliberal policies’, as a local government may try restricting gardens while simultaneously recognizing their value in non-​profit community development and property tax revenue (Ghose and Pettygrove 2014, 1092, 1109). Indeed, cities do not just have regulatory roles for local food systems that make political power important to understanding them (Matacena 2016, 54), but they have city planning for land usage. As such, gardens are spaces where participants may be said to enact citizenship through their transformation of the space according to their own interests, ‘claim rights to space, engage in leadership and decision-​making activities, contest material deprivation, and articulate collective identities’ (Ghose and Pettygrove 2014, 1098). Similarly, Crossan et  al. suggest that, in Glasgow, Scotland, community gardens rather ‘promote an equality-​of-​participation and community making’, employing the term ‘DIY [do-​it-​yourself] citizenship’ and contrasting this with the idea that neoliberalist constructions of citizenship supposedly favor individuated citizens that are independent agents not beholden to any sense of social responsibility (Crossan et al. 2016, 937). That said, were neoliberalism promoting atomized citizen subjects, then communal urban gardening seems to be contrary to this ideology, as it is ostensibly promoting

A reflection on urban gardening  201 social responsibility and community (self-​)reliance. Proponents of framing urban gardening and other alternative food procurement paradigms within discussions of citizenship regard civic agriculture as an avenue for changing the characteristics of the actors in the food system, drawing us away from producer-​and-​consumer, but also seeing this as a way to, at least partially, extract food from capitalist market relations (e.g. DeLind 2002). To Crossan et  al. in Glasgow, urban gardening inspires a form of ‘citizenship that is generative of collaborative social relations’, in that it entails learning about one’s community members through interaction with them that exposes one to ‘different ideas, cultures, social classes, etc.’, and that in so doing, this facilitates crafting identity and ‘their understanding of what citizenship entails’, and thus participating in urban gardening constitutes political participation (Crossan et al. 2016, 941, 943). This analysis suggests that an exposure to social difference leads to a remaking of personal or collective identity, and ultimately a reworking of one’s definition of citizenship, but it is hard to imagine that this is universally so, even if it can be proven in the context of urban gardening initiatives in Glasgow. What is it about gardening with others that would inspire new definitions of citizenship to emerge? Here, gardening is cast as political, as it threatens to add chaos to the orderliness of urban planning (Ceteromà and Tornaghi 2015, 1125). In some cases urban gardening is more overtly political in intent, as for example in Palestine, where Anne Meneley has shown that guerrilla gardening is a form of political resistance because it is a tactic for survival in politically oppressive conditions (2014, 77). Such an example also highlights how urban gardens may be at once communal spaces and in some ways private, as they are governed and used by defined groups. Lauren Baker has conceptualized urban gardens in Toronto, Canada as sites where notions of food citizenship can be explored, in that ‘democratic practices are being cultivated in community gardens’ and by those in the movement advocating food security (Baker 2004, 305). In this case, participants in urban gardens become politicized by being introduced to social movements and non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on food security issues, are more generally challenging urban planning conventions, and as they are gardening on land that is of value to building developers, they also occasionally become embroiled in local politics in defending their rights to garden (ibid., 305–​306). Additionally, food security organizations promote urban gardening in the city in an effort to encourage so-​called ‘democratic’ food procurement practices in their efforts to cultivate ‘food citizens’, or people who consciously consume and are connected to their food (ibid., 308–​309). In referencing Laura DeLind, Baker explains that participating in urban gardens also changes people’s values around food in ways that theoretically will increase societal support for reforming the food system in the future (ibid., 309, citing DeLind 2002, 223). Such analyses posit urban gardens as conduits to other politically engaged activities, but the question remains whether urban gardening inspires a

202  Robin Smith remaking of one’s individual and collective identity. Social scientists and environmental and food activists Chiara Certomà and Chiara Tornaghi also suggest stepping away from the above debate, instead encouraging investigating ‘what ideas about the city and belonging these practices embody’, and what impact urban gardens may have on the people engaging in them in the fields of local politics, relations of care, and even their hypothetical ‘emancipatory’ potential (Certomà and Tomaghi 2015, 1123). What is it that makes gardening in open, communal spaces particularly anarchic or otherwise transgressive in the urban setting? The term concrete jungle has long been used to refer to the wildness of a seemingly static human-​ dense space of fixed, concrete gray buildings that characterize urbanity and around which humans scurry like ants, devoid of green, living beings. House plants and windowsill herbs are not transgressive, but drawing on Mary Douglas’ (1966) monograph Purity and Danger, Ralph Bulmer’s (1967) analysis of why a cassowary is not a bird reminds us that certain attributes of a living system belong to it and it alone. The casting of urban food projects as alternative, innovative, or transgressive spaces suggests that the status quo belief is that the urban ecosystem is not a space for edible gardens, and that by placing a garden there a group is subverting the natural order of things. Is food not to be borne within concrete environs? In the following section, I interrogate recent anthropological conceptualizations of urban citizenship as it may pertain to urban gardening, suggesting ways to frame the practice in novel ways to parse out its meaning in modern life.

11.3  Citizenship and urbanity Anthropologists have studied the issue of urban citizenship in recent years to unpack how urban dwellers create a sense of belonging in transient spaces and articulate their status to the governance regimes in their midst. Kinga Pozniak (2015) conceptualizes the urban built environment as expressing the ideology of society and as a sort of ‘spatial governmentality’, and in this vein one may interpret urban gardens as an attempt to engage in reshaping or provoking city governments. Citizenship is an associational identity, James Holston has explained, and can be one of multiple identities an individual adopts—​but the state, he points out, holds more power over the definition of citizenship than any other associational category we generally use that relies upon memberships, statuses, or groups (2008, 20). In citing T. H. Marshall, Holston explains the concept of citizenship as broken down into political, civil, and socioeconomic categories that allow for the expansion of citizenship from the legal and ‘narrowly political’ realm to instead delineate how citizenship may act as a mediator between state and society, and beyond this to help ‘to distinguish the practices as well as the institutions and bureaucracies through which citizenship becomes substantive’ (Holston 2008, 24, citing Marshall 1977, 101). In problematizing a concept like food citizenship, the

A reflection on urban gardening  203 question then becomes: through which institutions does citizenship become substantive? Guerrilla gardening in urban environments may be a political act, but how does it become an act of citizenship? What is the difference between the two? Is there one? Wherein lies the agency of the individual in this determination? The term food citizenship incorporates the state into its very structure, as citizenship is wholly a state-​based concept. What is the difference between this and politicizing urban gardens? As mentioned above, James (2013) argued that new conceptualizations of citizenship may be based on historically rooted ones, and Holston extends this to point out that this is a limiting factor in the potentiality to develop ‘counter formulations’, as the ‘insurgent and the entrenched remain conjoined in dangerous and corrosive entanglements’ (2008, 4). In problematizing the notion of food citizenship as an insurgent counterformulation of citizenship, it might be wise for future researchers to investigate in what ways this notion is rooted in other localized definitions of citizenship, and question how these competing citizenships interact in not just dangerous or corrosive ways, but also potentially constructive, dynamic ways. Following such a line of inquiry, this ultimately raises the issue of how food citizenship might engage with other notions of belonging. For example, one well-​known Italian concept of localized belonging that comes to mind is campanilismo, that is, self-​identifying as belonging to one’s campanile, or the bell tower of one’s village (or town). It is interesting that, simultaneously, Italy is also home to multitudes of terroir and geographically protected or culturally specific agricultural and food products, including Denominazione di Origine Protetta (PDO), similarly rooted in local definitions. The idea of rooting oneself through local monuments and terroir brings to mind place making in more urban contexts. The legal institutions defining food territories were initially formed through negotiations between producers, and secondarily between society and the state, but by codifying them in law they become enforceable legal concepts by state and international governance institutions (Demossier 2011; Guy 2003; Leitch 2003). This is so even if they are molded and reproduced in more abstract ways through everyday practice on farms, in wine cellars, or in kitchens at an individual level. I suggest that, in a Bourdieusian sense, individuals may be said to practice institutional norms. That is, one may embody terroir or PDOs in accepted ways that reproduce a defined set of quality criteria for a given product—​and that, in so perfecting, this allows one to claim belonging to a specific overlap of geographical and social space. Food citizenship dances within and between these more established foodie concepts, and in so doing these pre-​existing concepts may assist us in grounding food citizenship more squarely in the field of political life, helping us to theorize the idea of citizenship in relation to food and food production. Urban gardens may be conceptualized as living monuments that root townspeople in ways that terroir roots those in rural areas, drawing on similar feelings of digging into the earth to plant one’s belonging to a specific territory. In

204  Robin Smith this sense, urban gardens exemplify the terroir of modernity. In eating and trading the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor, urban dwellers signify their position in an otherwise anonymous, undifferentiated concrete jungle of urbanity, allowing them to perform their belonging to a unique urban terroir. In reflecting on such varied anthropological literatures, I  see an opportunity for us to dwell on urban gardens as enacting a form of agency on their urban surroundings, living or not. A common issue in defining citizenship in a more traditional way is through the bestowment of land ownership rights. Land ownership, often for farming but not always, is a central issue across the world. Its contestation can become a battle ground for the recognition of citizenship or legal statuses that would grant such basic and central things as voting rights. In the modern urban context, Holston found in Brazil that rights to the city are articulated by the urban poor asserting that the city is their political community, drawing on issues specific to living in the city such as rights to housing, property, and social services such as day care, through organizing at the residential community level to state such claims (2008, 336). Meanwhile, Catherine Wanner conceptualizes the built environment of the city as able to ‘inspire bodily sensations’, in that the built environment influences city dwellers such that it has agency over the people who circulate within it (2016, 200). Taking these seemingly disparate ideas together, one might posit that creating urban gardens, planting in the midst of the built environment—​indeed, sometimes disrupting an urban, concrete jungle’s character—​may frame community claims for the land on which urban gardens are cultivated, and these processes may ultimately influence the bodies of urban inhabitants. That is to say, to extend Wanner’s idea, gardens in urban spaces may be interpreted as having agency over the people in their midst. The intertwined nature of property and citizenship suggests that community gardens on urban land root claims to citizenship and articulate those claims outward on to the people circulating in their urban midst. Urban gardens may have unintended consequences on proximate humans in anarchic and unexpected ways. In appropriating urban land to create new gardens, their makers may be (inadvertently) cultivating new subversive modes of influencing fellow citizens, quietly planting the seeds of change as the rest of us obliviously scurry by. In the closing section, I unpack how urban gardens may more explicitly constitute a citizenship project, suggesting ways of framing future research through contrast with the recent historical meanings of urban gardening in various socioeconomic contexts. This will shed light on how food citizenship might be productively framed as a contemporary ideology in the context of global food insecurity and the politicization of food systems. In laying out the myriad ways urban food is conceptualized by local actors, I also begin to peel back an understanding of possible synergies between local beliefs and national food projects that will hopefully inspire future studies on the subject.

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11.4  Citizenship through gardening New forms of citizenship, Deborah James has argued, are most often formed on the basis of previously accepted ways of defining groups that in fact act as templates, additionally pointing out that definitions of citizenship are ‘aspirational, providing visions of what a future social order might look like, and of how political belonging and participation within that order ought to be structured’ (James 2013, 27). Applied to the concept of food citizenship, I must wonder aloud whether it would ever be the primary mode of an individual or group’s self-​identity like property rights is in so many places across the globe, or whether it will always be a secondary or tertiary category of belonging. Is it too much to ask for a citizenry to primarily define itself around its relationship to food, or as food crises rise in this era of global economic precarity, is food going to increasingly become central to everyday conscious living and politics? If a food citizenship is to emerge, on what historical template is this based, and what social order do its adherents envision? To Nicolas Jaoul, citizenship is ‘a deeply ideological, contested, ambivalent terrain’ with political and emancipatory potentialities for groups seeking to define and claim it in new ways (2016, 4). Could urban gardening ever be cast as emancipatory in the sense of freeing one from dependence on the agri-​food industrial complex? Urban gardens have historically been situated in an ambivalent political terrain of their own. Most generally, urban gardens have been important as protective against collapses of urban food supplies (Barthel et  al. 2015, 1). During World War II, allotment gardens were promoted as part of a home-​ based, everyday strategy of American patriotism (Mares 2014, 33). In eastern Europe during the socialist era, they were relied upon as a coping mechanism against food shortages (Smith and Jehlička 2007, 403). Then, allotment gardens were occasionally sites of subversiveness. For example, in late socialist Poland, Anne Bellows described that nationalist resistance to Soviet domination could be found in domestic acts against activities that were widely considered ‘absurdly forbidden’, like a family growing what was characterized as ‘subversive potatoes’—​those varieties that were not approved by the state to grow—​in that families made efforts to conceal the fact that they were growing such potatoes by going out early in the morning to cut their distinctive red flowers (Bellows 2004, 259–​260). Today in Poland, allotment gardeners are the largest users and managers of land in the country, where contemporary city land use policies for such gardens are said to ‘reflect a history of social stability that spans the political and economic transformations’ from the nineteenth century to the present (ibid., 247–​248). In contrast, in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, local government promotes urban gardening in less green districts in order to widen access to healthier food at lower prices for low-​income residents (Cretella and Buenger 2016, 8). Such a diversity of impetuses for engaging in urban gardening begs the question: how might a concept of food citizenship be universalized as a movement or ideology?

206  Robin Smith Is participation in an urban garden necessarily a political statement? Jaoul has drawn on Jürgen Habermas ([1962] 1993, vi–​vii) to understand the interrelationship between popular culture and popular politics, in that popular culture is said to enjoy great autonomy in creating counterprojects against the so-​described ‘hierarchical world of power’ dominating popular politics, challenging the status quo and acting as a mode to collectively assert power in relation to popular politics (2016, 4). Certainly, urban gardening projects inspired by a desire to disengage from the status quo as a sort of counterproject against the vertically integrated nature of the food system might be cast as such, but would this not make such gardens anarchic political spaces then? Unruly spaces where food regulatory regimes do not apply, where other rules rule, and where other values blossom? For example, Irena Knezevic shows how, even in Canada, participation in informal food activities exposes the shortcomings of food safety regulations, in that participation embodies the participants’ ‘interpretations of food and health governance … as well as ideological and material forms of resistance’ (2016, 410, 421). That is to say, even though urban gardening removes the question Where does my food come from?, such unregulated, anarchic food spaces may be new sites of risk, as they are sites of innovation and not subject to government scrutiny like other food producers. At the same time, this might be a purposeful act, as some people may find the regulation, pasteurization, and degermification of foods to be emblematic of the ills of the modern food system (Brice 2014; Leitch 2000; Paxson 2008). Trust is central to these systems in facilitating the cooperation and coherency that ultimately make them stable (Thorsøe and Kjeldsen 2015, 165). Further contributing to their anarchic nature is the simple observation that they take place outside the formal food production system—​and outside the formal economy for that matter—​insofar as not being subjected to its regulatory regimes of food safety production inspections and taxes. Even though participants must generally engage in the formal economy to create such spaces by buying supplies and seeds, not to mention supplementing their own daily diets with bought foodstuffs, they are creating new economic spaces outside the formal one that raise questions about the state’s capacity and ethical imperative to reach into communities to regulate their economic activities (see Makovicky and Smith 2020). Thus, how alternative are these spaces, and at what scale do we expect them to have an actual impact on the dominant food system? How long can or should they be autonomous? When should they become regulated, and when they are, how? Are alternative spaces especially citizenship spaces, and if so, why? Might we better conceptualize urban gardens as symbolic statements, as living, communal monuments speaking a quiet political truth? Is the whimsical Crowned Love Garden of herbs a silent political garden, a reaction to the tiny, standardized plastic containers of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme that its cultivators tire of buying at the supermarket? Must the participants in an urban garden conceptualize their own practice as political for it to be so, or may they be passive actors in a larger project of transforming cities? What are the implications for

A reflection on urban gardening  207 our understanding of human agency then, and might not the actors in these larger projects be guilty of coopting an unwitting herb garden in their political efforts? Additionally, what constitutes food in value-​laden and ambiguous terms like ‘good’, ‘healthy’, or ‘clean’ is specific not only to nations, but to communities and individuals (Caldwell 2007). Although nations may codify definitions in food safety regulations, individual interpretations may diverge, and may inspire engaging in urban gardening to enact such divergent food cosmologies. For example, in Russia, Melissa Caldwell has found that ‘ecologically clean’ foods are believed to be those that are grown by a relative or friend, gathered and processed in the course of group activities, and then circulated through personal networks, preferably as gifts. Not only does the personalized nature of these foods make them trustworthy, but it also endows them with attributes of taste, quality, and cleanliness that are believed to be lacking in foods produced by anonymous, impersonal capitalist means. (Caldwell 2007, 54) Indeed, in post-​socialist Europe, urban gardens may provide for household consumption, in part through sharing, bartering, and trading within their communities in informal ways (e.g., Bellows 2004, 250), maintaining or creating new informal economic networks that exist at the margins of, and sometimes undergird, the formal markets. Curiously, researchers have found that, in post-​ socialist Europe, self-​ provisioning through participating in activities such as urban gardening may even be perceived as ways of ‘consuming normality’, in the sense of adopting a healthy, western-​style diet, where those who are not reliant upon urban gardening for essential self-​provisioning may instead regard it as engaging in ‘voluntary simplicity’ in ‘a novel political dimension’ of action (Smith and Jehlička 2007, 399–​401, 404). This suggests that, at least in some post-​socialist contexts, urban gardening has transcended its role as a coping mechanism making up for unsteady markets to enter into the field of beliefs about how one lives well and healthfully, and of considering food as representative of a particular ideology or politics. This brings a new dimension to our understanding of food citizenship as both a concept and ideology, as it may be something adopted in new social environments and imbued with new meanings.

11.5  Conclusion One may have noticed that a diversity of open-​ended questions sprinkled like seeds on bare earth go unanswered at this chapter’s end. The intention here is to allow those seeds to germinate in the minds of our community of food researchers—​or more precisely, researchers who investigate human relationships to food. The environmental drivers of global climate change

208  Robin Smith contributing to increasing food insecurity make social relationships to food—​ and food production—​some of the most salient issues of our day. Unpacking the meaning of food for individuals and communities takes us an important step closer to understanding the food choices that ultimately drive, for better or worse, the structure of global food procurement systems. In meaning we find the drivers of individual and collective decision making. With such knowledge we may design more lasting alternative food procurement systems that rival present ones, alternatives that may be scaled up to viable systems whilst maintaining the social values foundational to them. The first step, however, is to clarify whether it is even possible to define a sort of citizenship that is grounded in working the earth beneath our feet. As the above reflections on anthropology, urban life, and gardens suggest, to my mind the answer arcs towards yes. The concept of citizenship as constituted through lived experience and action—​here, through turning the earth as one gardens, in solitary or in the company of one’s community—​grounds people to urban landscapes as farming does in rural ones.1 Reflecting on this, I see how, when incorporated into daily life, urban gardening may transform the ways of being, even the habitus, of individuals and communities that seek to cultivate their roots to a particular place, both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, as described above, gardens may influence the transformation of individuals both passively and actively in other ways. Such insights as are offered here only set the groundwork for future research on the varied meanings of food citizenship in contemporary society. What is clear is that humans seek meaning in everyday practices. They pursue novel ways of building community—​such as community garden initiatives—​drawing on pre-​existing structures but signifying them in new ways that synergize with contemporary political and economic realities. That such projects simultaneously disrupt the dominant agri-​food industrial complex allows for the rays of opportunity to seep through the cracks to let food system changes emerge and root in locally meaningful ways.

Acknowledgments This chapter was written as part of the project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale, which received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 724151).

Note 1 I wish to thank the participants of the Food citizens? project stakeholder meetings for germinating this insight through our productive conversations about food citizenship—​ and the potential for anthropological fieldwork to help us understand it better.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures, bold numbers indicate tables, on the corresponding pages. “Ab-​geht-​die-​Lucie” community garden, Bremen 70, 74–​75 agri-​food systems, sustainable 100 Agri Load 106–​107 agricultural treadmill 5 agroecology: access to sustainable inputs 104; Agroecology Notebooks 35, 37; attractiveness for next generation 105–​106; Barra do Turvo, Brazil, feminist agroecology in 31–​37; Brasso Seco Tourism Action Committee (TAC), Trinidad and Tobago 109–​110; Brazil, emergence of in 24; capacity of farmers, strengthening 105; cases of innovation in local systems 106–​111; compost creation from urban waste 107; costs/​prices balance 105; demand, satisfying as challenge 104–​105; direct-​ selling network 35–​36, 37; Familia de la Tierra (FdiT), Bogotá 108–​109; feminist 25–​37; food assemblies 108; future of, challenges of transition to 104–​106; infrastructure in rural areas, lack of 106; innovation, future for in food system transitions 111–​112; innovation markets, existence of 112; intermediaries in innovation 111; levels of transition 104–​105, 112, 114n4; National Alliance of Agroecology (ANA), Brazil 28–​29; participatory guarantee systems (PGS), Bolivia 110; policy makers, role of in innovation 111–​112; political subject, feminist agroecology as 25–​31; qualitative research in Brazil 25; quality guarantees, provision of

105; short food supply chain 108; Songhai Centre, Benin Republic 107–​108; traditional knowledge and techniques 108–​110; women’s groups in Brazil, formation and practices of 34–​37 Alkon, A.H. 66–​67 Allaire, G. 4, 7 alternatives to global food system: ‘first-​generation’ food movement 6; as global phenomenon 9; impact beyond food production 16; networking by 9; performance of 2; ‘second-​ generation’ food movement 6–​7; size of organizations 119; typology of transformative enterprises 122, 122–​125, 123; see also agroecology; Brazil; co-​designing of cities with local authorities; community gardens; community in local food enterprises; cost effects of local food enterprises; ecovillages; feminist agroecology; food cooperatives; innovation; solidarity in food procurement networks; urban food spaces and production; urban gardening, citizenship and animal husbandry in ecovillages 190–​191 Annalinde community garden, Leipzig 49–​51 Arendt, H. 73 attitude-​behaviour gap  177 Auroville, India 180 Baker, L. 201 Barra do Turvo, Brazil, feminist agroecology in 31–​37

212 Index Bauman, Z. 144 Bellows, A, 205 Beveridge, R. 46, 64, 66 Bio-​T-​Full association, Nantes 60–​62 bioeconomy 8 Boston, Massachusetts, US, solidarity in food procurement networks 159–​166 Boudreau, J.-​A.  46 Bourdieu, P. 44 Brasso Seco Tourism Action Committee (TAC), Trinidad and Tobago 109–​110 Brazil: as agricultural exporter 23; agroecology 24; Agroecology Notebooks 35, 37; Barra do Turvo, feminist agroecology in 31–​37; Catholic Church 26; Cooperafloresta 33; Directorate for Rural Women’s Policies 30; dual agrarian structure 24, 29–​31; family farming 24–​25, 27–​29; Federation of Organs for Social And Educational Assistance (FASE) 27; feminist agroecology 24–​37; Food Acquisition Program (PAA) 29; gender and family farming 27–​29; gender inequality 24; land reform 25–​27, 28; Marcha das Margaidas 28; Meetings of Alternative Agriculture 27; modernization policies 23, 24, 25–​26; Mosaic of Conservation Units of Jacupiranga (the Park) 32–​33; National Alliance of Agroecology (ANA) 28–​29; National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF) 27–​28; neoliberal agenda, family farming and gender and 27–​29; Pastoral Commission of the Earth 26; political subject, feminist agroecology as 25–​31; public policies re. agriculture 23; qualitative research in 25; quantity/​quality of food 23–​24; rights to the city 204; rural women’s movements 26, 28, 29, 30, 31; Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF) 25, 28, 33–​37; sexual division of labour at family level 24; social rights 25–​27; technical assistance policy (ATER) 29–​30; trade liberalization of agro-​export sector 23; trade union movement 26; women’s groups, formation and practices of 34–​37 Bremen, Germany -​ “Ab-​geht-​die-​Lucie” community garden 70, 74–​75

Bulmer, R. 202 business traits of local food enterprises 125–​127 Butler, J. 73–​74 Caldwell, M. 207 Catholic Church, Brazil 26 Certomà, C. 202 cities see co-​designing of cities with local authorities; urban food spaces and production; urban gardening, citizenship and CitizenMarket case study 88, 93–​95 citizenship, urban gardening and: agency, urban gardens as enacting 204; anthropological viewpoint on 199; Canada 206; citizenship through gardening 205–​207; democratizing access to food 200; different definitions of “good” food 207; food safety 206; future research 203, 208; Glasgow, Scotland 200–​201; identity and 202; interpretations of citizenship 198–​199; Italian campanilismo 203; land ownership 204; Leiden, garden in 198; neoliberalism as contested and reinforced by 200; origin of food citizenship concept 199–​200; other notions of belonging and 203–​204; Poland 205; political terrain 205–​207; post-​socialism 207; Rotterdam 205; Toronto, Canada 201; trangressiveness of 202 co-​designing of cities with local authorities: “Ab-​geht-​die-​Lucie” community garden, Bremen 70, 74–​75; attitude of authorities to activists 72; authorities’ cooperation as ambivalent 71–​72; benefits of urban community gardens 70; case studies 70–​71; demands on local authorities 69–​70; differing rationalities 72–​73, 77; Essbare Staft Kassel e.V. (Edible City Kassel) initiative 71, 75–​76; generation gap 73; importance of projects, differing opinions on 77; intermediary bodies 78; learning processes 76; negotiation processes 76–​77; Neuland (NewLand) community garden, Cologne 71, 76–​77; public/​private access to gardens 77; recognition, lack of 74–​76; site, responsibility for 74; slow bureaucracy 74; spaces, changing

Index  213 the use of 73–​74; Stuttgart 78; time horizons 73 co-​production as bridge between production and consumption 7 cohesion in local food enterprises 148–​151 Coles, R. 6–​7 collaboration, challenges of 148–​151 Cologne, Germany -​Neuland (NewLand) community garden 71, 76–​77 community gardens 125; see also community in local food enterprises; urban food spaces and production; urban gardening, citizenship and community in local food enterprises: cohesion as challenge 148–​151; collaboration, challenges of 148–​151; creative doing 144–​145, 146–​147, 151; data collection 143; difference between “us” and “not-​us” 149; diffusion of local food enterprises 152; economic activity based on solidarity 144; flat hierarchies, problems with 152; identity, shared 149–​150; limitations and possibilities 151–​153; meaningfulness 150; micro-​episodes of strategizing 143; prominent role of community 143–​144; shared interactions 151; social closure 152; Strategy-​as-​Practice (SAP) approach 142–​143; theoretical framework 142–​143; value creation 150; vision, shared 148–​149 community-​supported agriculture (CSA) 124–​125, 134 compost creation from urban waste 107 consulting services 135 consumers, cooperation with producers 7 contextualisation of local movements 11 convivial technology 125 Cooperafloresta, Brazil 33 Cornwall, J. 160–​161 coronavirus pandemic 5 cost effects of local food enterprises: business traits 125–​127; co-​ determination 127; collaborative action 126–​127; community gardens 125; community-​supported agriculture (CSA) 124–​125, 134; conflict situations 130; convivial technology 125; cooperatives of consumers and producers 123–​124; cost

structures 127–​129; dissemination of transformative enterprises 133, 133–​136, 135; ecosystem services, provision of 126; external effects, prevention of 126; food sector as a whole, effect on 135, 135–​136; intensity of work 125–​126; lower-​ limit problem 130–​131; minimum production capacity 130–​131; “organizational size trilemma” 119; participation 127, 130; providers of organic food boxes 124; regional brands 123; regionally-​based transformative food systems 134–​135; supply chain architecture 120–​121, 121; survivable development corridor 131, 131–​132, 132; tenants’ gardens 125, 134; trilemma of organizational stabilization 129, 129–​132, 131, 132; typology of transformative enterprises 122, 122–​125, 123; upper-​limit problem 129–​130; versatile workers, employment of 125–​126; volunteer work 128, 129–​130 creative doing 144–​145, 146–​147, 151 Crossan, J. 200, 201 CSA Network 135 Daviron, B. 4, 7 de Laet, M. 113 deculturalisation of food and eating practices 5 Delanty, G. 144 diffusion process 133, 133–​134, 152 disembeddedness 83, 84–​86 dissemination of transformative enterprises and initiatives 133, 133–​136, 135, 152, 191 Douglas, M. 202 economy, embedded/​disembedded  84–​86 ecovillages: animal husbandry 190–​191; Auroville, India 180; broader society, transfer of model to 193; change to sustainable lifestyles 176–​177; community food systems 180; decision-​making 187; defined 178–​179; disempowering aspects 184; dissemination of skills and experience 184–​185, 191; Findhorn 183; Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) 179, 185; governance 182–​184, 186–​187; intentional communities

214 Index 179; land use and settlement 180; liveability, improving conditions of 180; local citizen-​based initiatives 182–​184; as local examples for sustainable food practices 180–​182; local solutions for macro-​scale problems 175; methodology for research 176; organizational structure 182–​184, 186–​187; practice theory 177–​178; relevance of 175; resource consumption 180; Sieben Linden, Germany 185–​191; social skills 184; socio-​economic sustainability 181–​182; as sustainability experiments 179–​180; sustainability of food practices 192–​193; Tamera, Portugal 180; transformative food practices in Sieben Linden 187–​191 Einstein, A. 3 embeddedness of economy in society, food cooperatives and 83, 84–​86 Essbare Staft Kassel e.V. (Edible City Kassel) initiative 71, 75–​76 ethnographic research into networks of food movements 9 everyday politics, urban 46–​47 Familia de la Tierra (FdiT), Bogotá 108–​109 Federation of Organs for Social And Educational Assistance (FASE), Brazil 27 feminist agroecology: Agroecology Notebooks 35, 37; Barra do Turvo, Brazil 31–​37; direct-​selling network 35–​36, 37; gender and family farming, Brazil 27–​29; National Alliance of Agroecology (ANA), Brazil 28–​29; as political subject in Brazil 25–​31; qualitative research in Brazil 25; women’s groups in Brazil, formation and practices of 34–​37 ‘first-​generation’ food movement 6; limited effect of 2 food assemblies 108 food citizenship, urban gardening and: agency, urban gardens as enacting 204; anthropological viewpoint on 199; Canada 206; citizenship through gardening 205–​207; democratizing access to food 200; different definitions of “good” food 207; food safety 206; future research 203, 208;

Glasgow, Scotland 200–​201; identity and 202; interpretations of citizenship 198–​199; Italian campanilismo 203; land ownership 204; Leiden, garden in 198; neoliberalism as contested and reinforced by 200; origin of food citizenship concept 199–​200; other notions of belonging and 203–​204; Poland 205; political terrain 205–​207; post-​socialism 207; Rotterdam 205; Toronto, Canada 201; trangressiveness of 202 food cooperatives: as alternatives to capitalist food systems 83; capital contribution from members 89; case studies 87–​88, 89–​95; CitizenMarket 88, 93–​95; from commercial to cooperative relationships 96; concern for community 84, 86–​87, 90–​91, 92–​93, 94–​95; consumer participation in the capital 89; consumers/​producers cooperation 90–​91, 92–​93; cost effects of local food enterprises 123–​124; defined 86; as diverse re-​embedding forces 86–​87; Food’equity 87, 88, 89–​91; Green&good 87–​88, 91–​93; initial investment 89; from investment-​ fuelled to community-​fuelled action 95–​96; member economic participation 84, 86, 89–​90, 91–​92, 93–​94; methodology for research 88–​89; price decision-​making 90, 92, 94; re-​embedding of economy in society 83, 84–​86; re-​embedding potentials of 95–​97; share ownership 91, 93–​94; surplus distribution 91; theoretical context 83; United States 160; values and principles 84, 86–​87 food policy councils 135 food safety: scares 5; urban gardening, citizenship and 206 Food’equity case study 87, 88, 89–​91 France -​Nantes: Bio-​T-​Full association 60–​62; Maison des Agricultures Urbaines 62–​63; Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellvue 57–​59; Prairie d’Amont association 59–​60; urban food spaces and production 55–​65 GASista, Italy 166 Geels, F.W.3 101 gender: and family farming, Brazil 27–​29; inequality in Brazil 24

Index  215 genetic engineering 5 Germany: Annalinde community garden 49–​51; Leipzig, urban food spaces and production in 48–​55; Leipzig im Wandel 54–​55; Mundraub 52–​54; Rote Beete vegetable cooperative 51–​52; sustainable use of local resources 55; Transition Town 54; urban food spaces and production in 48–​55, 64; see also co-​designing of cities with local authorities Ghose, R. 200 Gliessman, S.R. 104, 199 Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) 179, 185 global food system: adaptation to first generation of localised food 6; agricultural treadmill 5; changes in last 70 years 4; corporate consolidation in 2; deleterious consequences of 4–​5; hidden costs of 1; human health not objective for 5; moral indifference 136–​137; performance of opposition to 2; responsibility, distribution of 136; see also alternatives to global food system Goodman, D. 6 governance, urban see co-​designing of cities with local authorities Grabels market 108 grassroots food initiatives, transformative potential of 9–​11 great transformation 4 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi) 4, 85 Green&good case study 87–​88, 91–​93 Habermas, J. 206 Hoffman-​Axthelm,  D.  69 Holston, J. 202, 203, 204 horizontal multiplication of transformative suppliers 134 indigenous knowledge and techniques 108–​110 infrastructure in rural areas, lack of 106 innovation: agroecological future, challenges of transition to 104–​106; Brasso Seco Tourism Action Committee (TAC), Trinidad and Tobago 109–​110; cases of in local systems 106–​111; as collective process 103; compost creation from

urban waste 107; dynamic linkages with markets 103; Familia de la Tierra (FdiT), Bogotá 108–​109; food assemblies 108; future for in food system transitions 111–​112; innovation markets, existence of 112; in input markets 106–​107; institutional 103, 111; intermediaries in 111; levels of transition 104–​105, 112, 114n4; linear path for 102; as multi-​actor networked path 102; as new way of doing things 103; as non-​linear 102; participatory guarantee systems (PGS), Bolivia 110; pest management services 106–​107; policy makers, role of 111–​112; power tiller, example of 102–​103; short food supply chain 108; socio-​technical systems 101; Songhai Centre, Benin Republic 107–​108; from technology to knowledge about techniques 102–​104; traditional knowledge and techniques 108–​110 institutional innovation 103, 106, 111 intentional communities 179; see also ecovillages intermediaries in innovation 111 Italy: campanilismo 203; comparison of Italy and US 168–​171; decisions on food choices 167–​168; GASista 166; long-​distance food chains 166; migrant labour in 166–​167; solidarity in food procurement networks 157, 162, 166–​168 James, D. 203, 205 Jaoul, N. 205, 206 Jepson Prairie Organics 107 Knezevic, I. 206 Koch, P. 46, 64, 66 Kropp, C. xv, 9, 10, 16, 43, 50 La Ruche qui dit Oui! 108 land ownership 204 Latin American Consortium for Agroecology and Development (CLADES) 27 Latour, B. 44, 47 Le Velly, R. 84, 85, 86 lead pollution of soil 163 League of Urban Canners (US) 165 Lefebvre, H. 42, 46

216 Index Leipzig, Germany: Annalinde community garden 49–​51; Leipzig im Wandel 54–​55; Mundraub 52–​54; Rote Beete vegetable cooperative 51–​52; sustainable use of local resources 55; Transition Town 54; urban food spaces and production in 48–​55, 64 local authorities see co-​designing of cities with local authorities local food movements: contextualisation of 11; first generation re-​localising of food 6; impact beyond food production 16; see also co-​designing of cities with local authorities; community gardens; community in local food enterprises; cost effects of local food enterprises; ecovillages; food cooperatives; solidarity in food procurement networks; urban food spaces and production; urban gardening, citizenship and Loconto, A.M. 103–​104 Lohrberg, F. 47 Lyson, T. 199 Maison des Agricultures Urbaines, Nantes 62–​63 Marchart, O. 66 market economy 85 Marshall, T.H. 202 Massachusetts, US, solidarity in food procurement networks 159–​166 massification of food and eating practices 5 Mead, Margaret 17 migrant labour in Italy 166–​167 Mol, A. M. 113 moral indifference 136–​137 more-​than-​human ontology  3 Morton, T. 3 Mosaic of Conservation Units of Jacupiranga (the Park), Brazil 32–​33 Mundraub, Leipzig 52–​54 municipal authorities see co-​designing of cities with local authorities Nantes, France: Bio-​T-​Full association 60–​62; Maison des Agricultures Urbaines 62–​63; Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellvue 57–​59; Prairie d’Amont association 59–​60; urban food spaces and production 55–​65

National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), Brazil 26 National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF), Brazil 27–​28 negotiation processes in co-​designing of cities 76–​77 network services 135 networks of food movements 9 Neuland (NewLand) community garden, Cologne 71, 76–​77 organic food boxes, providers of 124 organizational innovation 103, 106, 111 “organizational size trilemma” 119 participatory guarantee systems (PGS), Bolivia 110 Pastoral Commission of the Earth, Brazil 26 pest management services, innovation in 106–​107 Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellvue, Nantes 57–​59 Pettygrove, M. 200 Poland, food citizenship, urban gardening and 205 Polanyi, K. 4, 83, 84, 85 politicisation of food 11–​12 Pozniak, K. 202 practice theory 177–​178 Prairie d’Amont association, Nantes 59–​60 producers, cooperation with consumers 7 re-​embedding of economy in society, food cooperatives and 83, 84–​86 re-​localising of food, first generation 6 Reckwitz, A. 145 Recology 107 regional brands 123 regional planning 45 regionally-​based transformative food systems 134–​135 Renting, H. 65 resilience 8–​9 responsibility 136–​137 Rote Beete vegetable cooperative, Leipzig 51–​52 Rotterdam, food citizenship, urban gardening and 205 Ruche model 108

Index  217 Sader, E. 26 Sage, C. 5, 7, 47 Schack, P.S. 191 Schlosberg, D. 6–​7 ‘second-​generation’ food movement 2, 6–​7 second Great Transformation 7–​9 Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), Brazil 25, 28, 33–​37 shared vision 148–​149 Sieben Linden ecovillage, Germany 185–​191 size of organizations 119 social practice theory 177–​178 socio-​technical systems  101 Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance (SAGE) 158, 165 Solidarity Economy Network (SEN) (US) 159–​160 solidarity in food procurement networks: comparison of Italy and US 168–​171; cooperatives 160–​163; decisions on food choices 167–​168; fund-​raising capabilities 169; interpretation of “solidarity” 169–​170; Italy 157, 162, 166–​168; lead pollution of soil 163; literature on solidarity economics 157–​158; methodology for research 158; migrant labour in Italy 166–​167; networking between groups 164–​165; rationale for research 158; Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance (SAGE) 158, 165; Solidarity Economy Network (US) 159; Tavolo RES (Italy) 159; United States 157, 159–​166; use of solidarity term 157; Valley Alliance of Workers Cooperatives (VAWC) (US) 160–​161; Wellspring Collective 165 Songhai Centre, Benin Republic 107–​108 space, urban production of 44–​47 Strategy-​as-​Practice (SAP) approach 142–​143 supply chains: architecture 120–​121, 121; collaborative action 126–​127; dissemination of transformative enterprises 133, 133–​136, 135; external effects, prevention of 126; horizontal multiplication of transformative suppliers 134; regionally-​based transformative food systems 134–​135; short 108; trilemma of organizational

stabilization 129–​132, 131, 132; typology of transformative enterprises 122, 122–​125, 123 sustainability: access to sustainable inputs 104; agri-​food systems 100; change to sustainable lifestyles 176–​177; food production and supply and 1–​2; food systems 2–​3; more-​ than-​human ontology 3; sustainable development goals 3; transformations and 2–​5; transitions to 101; use of local resources in urban food spaces 55; see also ecovillages Tamera, Portugal 180 Tavolo RES (Italy) 159 technology, convivial 125 tenants’ gardens 125, 134 three pillars model 2 Tornaghi, C. 202 trade union movement in Brazil 26 traditional knowledge and techniques 108–​110 transformations: great transformation 4; Great Transformation, The (Polanyi) 4; potential of grassroots food initiatives 9–​11; second Great Transformation 7–​9; sustainability and 2–​5; use of term 4 Transition Town, Leipzig 54 typology of transformative enterprises 122, 122–​125, 123 United States: comparison of Italy and US 168–​171; food cooperatives 160; lead pollution of soil 163; League of Urban Canners 165; Solidarity and Green Economy Alliance (SAGE) 158, 159–​160, 165; Solidarity Economy Network (SEN) 159–​160; solidarity in food procurement networks 157, 159–​166; Wellspring Collective 165 urban everyday politics 46–​47, 66 urban food spaces and production: Annalinde community garden, Leipzig 49–​51; Bio-​T-​Full association, Nantes 60–​62; civil society structure, developing 65; difficulties in categorising 42–​43; as having character of a movement 65–​66; issues concerned with and surrounding 43; Leipzig, Germany 48–​55, 64; Leipzig im Wandel 54–​55;

218 Index Maison des Agricultures Urbaines, Nantes 62–​63; Mundraub, Leipzig 52–​54; Nantes, France 55–​65; Petite Ferme Urbaine de Bellvue 57–​59; Prairie d’Amont association, Nantes 59–​60; repolitization of modern constitution 64–​66; Rote Beete vegetable cooperative, Leipzig 51–​52; site-​specific rationales 64–​65; space, urban production of 44–​47; sustainable use of local resources 55; Transition Town, Leipzig 54; urban everyday politics 46–​47, 66; see also co-​designing of cities with local authorities urban gardening, citizenship and: agency, urban gardens as enacting 204; anthropological viewpoint on 199; Canada 206; citizenship through gardening 205–​207; democratizing access to food 200; different definitions of “good” food 207; food safety 206; future research 203, 208; Glasgow, Scotland 200–​201; identity

and 202; interpretations of citizenship 198–​199; Italian campanilismo 203; land ownership 204; Leiden, garden in 198; neoliberalism as contested and reinforced by 200; origin of food citizenship concept 199–​200; other notions of belonging and 203–​204; Poland 205; political terrain 205–​207; post-​socialism 207; Rotterdam 205; Toronto, Canada 201; trangressiveness of 202 Vaara, E. 142 Valley Alliance of Workers Cooperatives (VAWC) (US) 160–​161 Veen, E. 200 vision, shared 148–​149 Wanner, C. 204 Weber, M. 73 Wellspring Collective 165 Wenger-​Trayner, E. and B. 144 Whittington, R. 142