The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements: Learning from Toronto and Brussels (Urban Agriculture) 3031058275, 9783031058271

Table of contents :
Foreword
A Plea for a Hybrid Governance Approach to Collective Action
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey
1.1 A Personal and Collective Journey
1.2 Empirical Research and Methods
1.3 Introducing Toronto’s and Brussels’ Food Movements
1.3.1 An Overview of the Toronto Food Movement
1.3.2 An Overview of the Brussels’ Food Movement
1.3.3 The Two Food Movements and the Covid-19 Outbreak
1.4 Positionality, Challenges and Limits of the Research
1.5 Organisation of the Book
References
Chapter 2: Characterising Urban Food Movements
2.1 Problems in Food Systems
2.1.1 Power and Democracy
2.1.2 Food Security and Health
2.1.3 Social and Racial Justice
2.1.4 Ecology and Climate
2.2 Mobilising Alternatives
2.2.1 Food Sovereignty
2.2.2 Food Democracy
2.2.3 Food Justice
2.3 The Rise of the Contemporary Urban Food Movement
2.4 Reconnecting Cities with Food Production: The Land Question
2.5 From Food Production to the Food System Challenge
2.6 Mobilising Organisations and Policy Networks for Urban Food System Change
2.6.1 Food Policy Councils (FPCs)
2.6.2 Urban-Regional Food Strategies
2.6.3 Trans-local Food Policy Networks
2.7 On the Relevance of Governance
References
Chapter 3: Hybrid Governance and Its Tensions in Urban Food Movements
3.1 Characterising Hybrid Governance
3.2 Defining Hybrid Governance in Urban Food Movements
3.3 Institutions and Organisations in Urban Food Movements
3.4 Elucidating Three Types of Governance Tensions
3.4.1 Resource Governance Tensions
3.4.2 Organisational Governance Tensions
3.4.3 Institutional Governance Tensions
3.5 Governance Tensions and the Urban Food Debate
3.5.1 The Politics of Land-Resource Access for Urban Agriculture
3.5.2 Dynamics of Growth in Urban Food Movements
3.5.3 Urban Food Governance and Planning
3.6 Outcomes of Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in Urban Food Movements
3.6.1 Towards a Commons Governance of Land-Resources
3.6.2 Building Reflexive and Resourceful Food Movement Organisations
3.6.3 Shaping Reflexive Multi-scalar Institutions for Urban Food Governance
3.7 Conclusions
References
Chapter 4: Tensions in the Governance of Land Resources in Toronto and Brussels
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Mobilisation for Access to Land: Stories of Toronto’s CEED Gardens and Brussels’ BBP Coalition
4.2.1 Empowering Communities Through Food: The Origins of the CEED Gardens Project
4.2.2 Coping with Land-Resource Governance Tensions in the CEED Gardens
4.2.3 Enhancing Small-Scale Agro-ecological Agriculture: The Genesis of the BBP Coalition
4.2.4 Dealing with Land-Resource Governance Tensions Through the BBP Coalition
4.3 Organisational and Institutional Responses to the Land-Resource Question in Toronto and Brussels
4.3.1 Organisational and Institutional Dynamics of Land Access in Toronto
4.3.1.1 The Role of Key Actors and Organisations
4.3.1.2 Nuanced Institutional Responses and Hybrid/Bottom-Linked Forms of Governance
4.3.2 Organisational and Institutional Responses to the (Hinter)Land Question in Brussels
4.3.2.1 Enabling Urban Agriculture and Access to Land Within and Beyond the BBP
4.3.2.2 Widening the Scope of Urban Agriculture in Brussels and Its Hinterland
4.4 Discussions and Conclusions
4.4.1 Valorising Strategic Leadership and Proactive Conflict Management and Cooperation
4.4.2 Fostering Socio-institutional Change
4.4.3 Connecting Spatial Institutional Scales
References
Chapter 5: Organisational Governance Tensions of Food Movement Initiatives in Toronto and Brussels
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Governance Tensions at the Genesis of Two Food Movement Organisations
5.2.1 Organisational Tensions at the Origins of FoodShare’s GFB
5.2.2 Organisational Tensions at the Birth of Brussels’ GASAP
5.3 The Two Food Movement Organisations in Their Intermediate Stages
5.3.1 Tensions During the Central Years (1998–2017) of FoodShare’s GFB
5.3.1.1 Managing the GFB in Its Intermediate Stage
5.3.1.2 Multiple Forms of Tension and Their Interlinkages in the FoodShare and GFB Organisations
5.3.2 Interaction Between Forms of Tension in the GASAP During Its Intermediate Stage (2012–2016)
5.3.2.1 Facing Material and Logistical Challenges
5.3.2.2 Collaborative Opportunities and Challenges
5.4 The Two Food Movement Organisations Today
5.4.1 New Sources of Tension and Reflexivity in GFB’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day)
5.4.1.1 FoodShare’s New Leadership and Revived (Self)-Reflexivity on Food Justice
5.4.1.2 The Impact of the Covid-19 Outbreak
5.4.2 Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in GASAP’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day)
5.4.2.1 The GASAP and the Covid-19 Pandemic
5.4.2.2 Current Governance Tensions in the GASAP
5.5 Discussions and Conclusions
5.5.1 Aligning to Core Values While Being Reflexive
5.5.2 Cultivating Bold and Pragmatic Leadership
5.5.3 Learning to Cope with Governance Tensions
References
Chapter 6: Institutional Governance Tensions of Food Movements in Toronto and Brussels
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Institutional Governance Tensions in the Early Days of the Two Food Movements
6.2.1 At the Genesis of Toronto’s Food Movement
6.2.2 At the Origins of Brussels’ Food Movement
6.3 Food Movements Coping with Institutional Governance Tensions During Their Intermediate Stages
6.3.1 An Enlarged Toronto: Threats and Opportunities of the Amalgamated City
6.3.2 From a Food Charter to a Food Strategy for Toronto
6.3.3 Pushing the Strategy to the “Next Level”: Amplifying a Food System Approach
6.3.4 The Prelude to Brussels’ Food Strategy
6.3.5 Transitioning Brussels’ Food System Through the GoodFood Strategy
6.3.6 The Set-Up of a Food Council for Brussels
6.4 Revived Sources of Tension in the Two Food Movements’ Recent Years
6.4.1 Coping with a New Reality of Crisis and Disruptions in Toronto
6.4.2 The End of the Toronto Food Policy Council?
6.4.3 A New Framing for the Toronto Food Strategy
6.4.4 Brussels’ GoodFood 2.0: A Food Strategy for the Future
6.4.5 “De-siloing” the BCR’s Institutional Action on Food
6.5 Discussions and Conclusions
6.5.1 Moving Towards a Food System Lens
6.5.2 Empowering Bottom-Linked and Reflexive Food Governing Institutions
6.5.3 Navigating Institutionalisation Challenges and Cultivating Strategic Leadership
6.5.4 Coping with and Learning from Disruptive Times
References
Chapter 7: Epilogue: Urban Food Movements and Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Cross-Cutting Contributions of the Book and Ways Forward
7.2.1 Conceptual and Methodological Aspects
7.2.2 Empirical Aspects
7.3 Reflecting on Land-Resource Governance Tensions
7.4 Values, Reflexivity, and Cooperative Praxis in Food Movement Organisations
7.5 Bottom-Linked Institutions and the Enablement of Food Democracy
7.6 (Rethinking) Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis
7.6.1 Towards Multi-dimensional Food Justice
7.6.2 Looking Ahead
References

Citation preview

Urban Agriculture

Alessandra Manganelli

The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements Learning from Toronto and Brussels

Urban Agriculture Series Editors Christine Aubry, INRA UMR SADAPT, AgroParisTech, Paris, France Éric Duchemin, Institut des Science de l’Environnement, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada Joe Nasr, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada Editorial Board Members Andy Adam-Bradford, Ctr. for Agroecology, Water & Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK Katrin Bohn, School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK Katherine Brown, Southside Community Land Trust, Providence, USA Yves Cabannes, Development Planning Unit, University College London, Lisboa, Portugal Marcia Caton Campbell, Badger Rock Center, Center for Resilient Cities, Madison, WI, USA Olufunke Cofie, PMB CT 112, International Water Management Institute, Cantonments, Accra, Ghana Nevin Cohen , Sch. of Pub. Health, Urban Food Pol. In, City University of New York, New York, USA Maria Caridad Cruz, Antonio Nuñez Jiménez Foundation, Havana, Cuba Jianming Cai , IGSNRR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Mary Njenga , ICRAF, World Agroforestry Centre, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Wendy Mendes, Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada Luc Mougeot, International Development Research Centr, Ottawa, ON, Canada Francesco Orsini , DISTAL, University of Bologna, BOLOGNA, Bologna, Italy Moussa Sy, Institut Africain de Gestion Urbaine, Dakar, Senegal Salwa Tohme Tawk , Faculty of Agriculture, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon René van Veenhuizen, Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture an, The Hague, The Netherlands Makoto Yokohari, Dept. of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

The Urban Agriculture Book Series at Springer is for researchers, professionals, policy-makers and practitioners working on agriculture in and near urban areas. Urban agriculture (UA) can serve as a multifunctional resource for resilient food systems and socio-culturally, economically and ecologically sustainable cities. For the Book Series Editors, the main objective of this series is to mobilize and enhance capacities to share UA experiences and research results, compare methodologies and tools, identify technological obstacles, and adapt solutions. By diffusing this knowledge, the aim is to contribute to building the capacity of policy-­ makers, professionals and practitioners in governments, international agencies, civil society, the private sector as well as academia, to effectively incorporate UA in their field of interests. It is also to constitute a global research community to debate the lessons from UA initiatives, to compare approaches, and to supply tools for aiding in the conception and evaluation of various strategies of UA development. The concerned scientific field of this series is large because UA combines agricultural issues with those related to city management and development. Thus this interdisciplinary Book Series brings together environmental sciences, agronomy, urban and regional planning, architecture, landscape design, economics, social sciences, soil sciences, public health and nutrition, recognizing UA’s contribution to meeting society’s basic needs, feeding people, structuring the cities while shaping their development. All these scientific fields are of interest for this Book Series. Books in this Series will analyze UA research and actions; program implementation, urban policies, technological innovations, social and economic development, management of resources (soil/land, water, wastes…) for or by urban agriculture, are all pertinent here. This Book Series includes a mix of edited, coauthored, and single-authored books. These books could be based on research programs, conference papers, or other collective efforts, as well as completed theses or entirely new manuscripts.

Alessandra Manganelli

The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements Learning from Toronto and Brussels

Alessandra Manganelli DFG Research Training Group “Urban future-making” HafenCity Universität Hamburg (HCU) Hamburg, Germany

ISSN 2197-1730     ISSN 2197-1749 (electronic) Urban Agriculture ISBN 978-3-031-05827-1    ISBN 978-3-031-05828-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my dear mother, father, and beloved family. To my hybrid governance companion Frank Moulaert. In memory of Wayne Roberts.

Foreword

 Plea for a Hybrid Governance Approach A to Collective Action The transition from a neoliberal carbon+ based economy to an ecologically and socially sustainable society is at the epicentre of today’s global challenges and scientific debates. Social scientists contribute to this debate by analysing and advocating strategies for socio-ecologically grounded human development; they can be broadly divided into two groups. The first, mainstreamed group includes those social scientists following the ‘real’ (hard) science, who reflect on the most appropriate modes of governance to make the necessary energy saving technologies come through and to influence people’s consumption norms, mainly through market stimuli. The second group, often considered as heterodox, includes social scientists who recognize the role of technologies in transition movements but embed them in the broader socio-ecological system; they stress that the social dynamics are at least as determinant in making the transition happen as the technological turn itself. They stress the role of bottom-up initiatives, commoning, and deep democracy practices such as building bottom-linked governance modes and their interscalar dynamics to transform the socio-political system. They understand and explain how transition novelties will not materialize along a smooth highway to zero emissions. The road is, rather, a rugged one marked by the complexity of social, economic, and political relationships and ambitions of actors occupying very uneven power positions. Alessandra Manganelli’s work on urban food movements belongs to the second group of social scientists looking at ‘transition’: those who consider the dynamics of the broader socio-ecological system(s) and the power relations to be challenged or built. Corporate business functions operate according to business plans; to make them converge with transition aspirations takes time and ‘truthful’ CSR. National governments are poisoned by neo-liberal utopia all centred around the credo ‘the market will solve it all’—accepting negative externalities while letting citizens pay for them. Hope lies with civil society organizations and their cooperation with local vii

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authorities, which are discovering, step by step, the social and economic effectiveness of bottom-linked governance: this is rooted in skilful and respectful cooperation between local actors, results in alliances networked at interconnected scales, and recalibrates the slacking democracy within national states and their international organizations. To understand the genesis of transition strategies and initiatives in their complexity, a wide range of social science theories as well as their synthesis are required. To analyse and advocate for such strategies and initiatives, a vision of governance is needed that matches such complexity. Starting from the complex world of food systems, Alessandra Manganelli has developed a hybrid governance concept for alternative food systems. Both in theory and (policy) practice, ‘governance’ is too often conceived and applied in systemic and normative terms, in a ‘cockpit view’ of how a system can and should be steered. This view of governance is significantly imprinted in neo-­ institutional economics or adaptive governance approaches to socio-ecological systems. It has at least two interrelated features that distance it from a socio-political and socio-institutional reality. The first one is the reduction of the relations between different actors and modes of governance to causal or prompting interactions, ignoring the dialectical nature of these relations. These relations are dialectical in the sense that they can be convergent or confluent, determined in a multi-causal way, with actors pursuing similar or complementary goals, co-producing strategies to achieve these goals by valorizing their specific assets and skills. They are also dialectical in the sense that the goals, strategies, organizational, and institutional logics of actors are often contradictory and conflictive. And there is the empirically proven knowledge that when (huge) differences in values and ambitions occur, uneven power positions will often determine which ambitions will predominate. When economically and politically powerful actors impose their ambitions, strategies, and modes of governance, they alienate those of actors oriented towards human development and social innovation; in the value systems and strategies arsenal of the latter, power exertion is of secondary order. Finally, and probably most of all, these relations are dialectical in the sense of empirical—with relations and strategies interpreted as constituents of the real socio-ecological world in which actors pursue their ambitions, manage or fail their self-realization, subsist or perish, unite in partnerships, or are divested of their institutional capacities. The second flaw of this cockpit view is how it addresses governance itself in accordance with its non-dialectical (view of the) world. In this view, governance is deprived of irrefutable power mechanisms, conflicts of interests and ambitions, mismatching values and skills. Such a view tolerates governance with a partnership of willing actors operating the control panel. Governance among different actors can be organized, because these actors are believed to team up their agendas; perfect their modes of communication; show transparency in their ambitions, strategies, and resources; and engage to remain accountable among them, with an open agenda for well-intended corrections of not badly meant negative externalities. In such a (view of the) world, a board of wise governors, for example, the magistrates in More’s Utopia, can steer the social interaction between actors, whose ambitions

Foreword

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have through communication and negotiation become sufficiently moulded to let them collectively benefit from such cockpit steering. In her analysis of alternative (urban) food networks (AFNs), Alessandra Manganelli takes a distance from such utopian views of governance and builds an analytical framework to study the tensions within the governance of AFNs. Her hybrid governance perspective starts from four almost generally accepted forms of governance: market regulation, hierarchy, network relations, and solidarity relations. But she articulates them within the complex system of uneven social, economic, ecological, and political relationships and ambitions of actors. Thus, the governance in AFNs can be conflictive, mediating, synergic, co-constructive, or destructive of new modes of governance and structures. It materializes in the organization of AFNs and in the institutions conditioning their development, with one of the major challenges for AFNs finding access to resources—especially land—to grow and produce food. Alessandra Manganelli studies these AFN governance dynamics in Brussels and Toronto through the lens of three governance tensions: resource, organizational, and institutional governance tensions. She documents these tensions, thus spelling out how the interaction of the four governance forms have promoted or blocked the development of an AFN. In doing so, she provides a unique piece of research showing how real-life governance studies should be made and illusions about governance utopia can be avoided. Planning&DevelopmentFrank Moulaert Faculty of Engineering KU Leuven, Belgium

Acknowledgements

Writing this book has been an inspiring, enriching, and challenging journey—one that began at the start of my doctoral research in 2014. Like in every authentic journey, or life adventure, the path is just as important as the destination; throughout it, I have encountered many fellow travellers that, in different ways, contributed to making the voyage unique. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the people, organisations, and institutions that have been important and dear to me throughout these years. My deep gratitude goes to the research groups and institutions that hosted me during my doctoral time, as well as to the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) that funded my doctoral research. I am indebted to the Planning and Development Research Unit (P&D) of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), which was the original intellectual home of this project. I cannot begin to express my thanks to my mentor Prof Em Frank Moulaert, who co-developed the hybrid governance concept with me. To his scientific rigor, intellectual capacities, and meticulous guidance and care go my deep admiration, gratitude, and respect. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to Prof Pieter Van den Broeck, head of the P&D, and to the other fellow researchers inspired by social innovation and territorial development studies. They have all been a key motivational drive for this project. I am also grateful to the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research of the Vrije Universitait Brussel (VUB), and particularly to my co-mentor Prof Bas van Heur, as well as to the other research fellows encountered at the Centre. I am indebted to the P&D and Cosmopolis for constituting dynamic, intellectually stimulating, and (at the same time) warm and welcoming research environments, from which I have learned a great deal. Special thanks to food system scholars, including Prof Olivier De Schutter, Prof Kevin Morgan, and Prof Cecilia Rocha, and other scholars, such as Prof Constanza Parra, Dr Annette Kuhk, and Dr Nele Aernouts, for their constructive inputs to the development of this project in its early and intermediate stages. In Canada, I owe my deepest gratitude to the Centre for Studies in Food Security of the Toronto Metropolitan University (ex-Ryerson University), and in particular to Prof Cecilia Rocha for hosting me at the Centre. The 4 months spent in Toronto represented an exceptional experience of stupendous encounters, personal xi

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enrichment, and professional growth. A special thanks to all members of the Centre as well as to the friends I encountered during my stay in Toronto. I am also very grateful to my current research group at the HafenCity Universität Hamburg. I thank Prof Monika Grubbauer and the whole research team for supporting this project and creating the conditions that made the writing of this book possible. This project would have never become concrete without the contribution of a wide range of food movement actors in Toronto and Brussels, who I met during the exciting exploratory journey into the two food movements. From the managers of Toronto’s and Brussels’ food strategies to organizations dealing with urban agriculture and access to land in Toronto and Brussels, to other engaged food movement initiatives (such as FoodShare in Toronto or the GASAP in Brussels) as well as many other food movement activists, intellectuals, and leaders. Mentioning all of them individually would be too much. Yet, I nurture a profound gratitude and admiration to all these people and organisations for their time in interviews and exchanges, as well as for their passionate socio-political engagement. They populate the pages of this book, and I hope that their voices will speak through this work. Among others, this book is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Roberts, Toronto food movement leader and intellectual who disappeared in January 2021, and who left a profound impact on me. I am deeply grateful for having met him. I am indebted to Springer’s editorial team for supporting this project and helping to implement this book. My deep gratitude goes in particular to Joe Nasr who encouraged me to embark on this book adventure. He has played the double role of Toronto food movement insider on the one hand and attentive reviewer of drafts on the other. My sincere thanks also go to the language editor Liana Simmons for her professional, impeccable work and her support. My gratitude goes to my brother Enrico, and the extended family and friends from Italy and Peru for their support and affection. My final deep thought and gratitude turn to my mother Luisetta and to my father Nello, who will both live inside me and protect me. I profoundly thank them for being there with their unconditional love, support, and endless affection.

Contents

1

 Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey ��������������������������    1 1.1 A Personal and Collective Journey ��������������������������������������������������    5 1.2 Empirical Research and Methods ����������������������������������������������������    6 1.3 Introducing Toronto’s and Brussels’ Food Movements��������������������    8 1.3.1 An Overview of the Toronto Food Movement����������������������    8 1.3.2 An Overview of the Brussels’ Food Movement�������������������   11 1.3.3 The Two Food Movements and the Covid-19 Outbreak������   13 1.4 Positionality, Challenges and Limits of the Research����������������������   15 1.5 Organisation of the Book������������������������������������������������������������������   17 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   18

2

 Characterising Urban Food Movements������������������������������������������������   23 2.1 Problems in Food Systems����������������������������������������������������������������   23 2.1.1 Power and Democracy����������������������������������������������������������   24 2.1.2 Food Security and Health������������������������������������������������������   25 2.1.3 Social and Racial Justice������������������������������������������������������   26 2.1.4 Ecology and Climate������������������������������������������������������������   27 2.2 Mobilising Alternatives��������������������������������������������������������������������   28 2.2.1 Food Sovereignty������������������������������������������������������������������   28 2.2.2 Food Democracy ������������������������������������������������������������������   30 2.2.3 Food Justice��������������������������������������������������������������������������   31 2.3 The Rise of the Contemporary Urban Food Movement�������������������   33 2.4 Reconnecting Cities with Food Production: The Land Question ����   35 2.5 From Food Production to the Food System Challenge ��������������������   39 2.6 Mobilising Organisations and Policy Networks for Urban Food System Change��������������������������������������������������������   42 2.6.1 Food Policy Councils (FPCs)������������������������������������������������   43 2.6.2 Urban-Regional Food Strategies������������������������������������������   45 2.6.3 Trans-local Food Policy Networks����������������������������������������   47 2.7 On the Relevance of Governance������������������������������������������������������   49 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   50 xiii

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Hybrid Governance and Its Tensions in Urban Food Movements����������������������������������������������������������������������   57 3.1 Characterising Hybrid Governance��������������������������������������������������   58 3.2 Defining Hybrid Governance in Urban Food Movements����������������   61 3.3 Institutions and Organisations in Urban Food Movements��������������   63 3.4 Elucidating Three Types of Governance Tensions����������������������������   64 3.4.1 Resource Governance Tensions��������������������������������������������   65 3.4.2 Organisational Governance Tensions������������������������������������   67 3.4.3 Institutional Governance Tensions����������������������������������������   68 3.5 Governance Tensions and the Urban Food Debate ��������������������������   69 3.5.1 The Politics of Land-Resource Access for Urban Agriculture������������������������������������������������������������   69 3.5.2 Dynamics of Growth in Urban Food Movements����������������   71 3.5.3 Urban Food Governance and Planning ��������������������������������   73 3.6 Outcomes of Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in Urban Food Movements���������������������������������������������������������������   75 3.6.1 Towards a Commons Governance of Land-Resources ��������   77 3.6.2 Building Reflexive and Resourceful Food Movement Organisations������������������������������������������������������   78 3.6.3 Shaping Reflexive Multi-scalar Institutions for Urban Food Governance ������������������������������������������������   78 3.7 Conclusions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   80

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Tensions in the Governance of Land Resources in Toronto and Brussels ��������������������������������������������������������������������������   85 4.1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   86 4.2 Mobilisation for Access to Land: Stories of Toronto’s CEED Gardens and Brussels’ BBP Coalition����������������������������������   88 4.2.1 Empowering Communities Through Food: The Origins of the CEED Gardens Project ��������������������������   88 4.2.2 Coping with Land-Resource Governance Tensions in the CEED Gardens������������������������������������������������������������   90 4.2.3 Enhancing Small-Scale Agro-ecological Agriculture: The Genesis of the BBP Coalition ������������������   94 4.2.4 Dealing with Land-Resource Governance Tensions Through the BBP Coalition ����������������������������������   96 4.3 Organisational and Institutional Responses to the Land-­Resource Question in Toronto and Brussels������������������   99 4.3.1 Organisational and Institutional Dynamics of Land Access in Toronto����������������������������������������������������  100 4.3.2 Organisational and Institutional Responses to the (Hinter)Land Question in Brussels ����������������������������  107

Contents

xv

4.4 Discussions and Conclusions������������������������������������������������������������  112 4.4.1 Valorising Strategic Leadership and Proactive Conflict Management and Cooperation��������������������������������  114 4.4.2 Fostering Socio-institutional Change������������������������������������  115 4.4.3 Connecting Spatial Institutional Scales��������������������������������  116 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  117 5

Organisational Governance Tensions of Food Movement Initiatives in Toronto and Brussels ��������������������������������������������������������  119 5.1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  119 5.2 Governance Tensions at the Genesis of Two Food Movement Organisations��������������������������������������������  123 5.2.1 Organisational Tensions at the Origins of FoodShare’s GFB ������������������������������������������������������������  123 5.2.2 Organisational Tensions at the Birth of Brussels’ GASAP ������������������������������������������������������������  129 5.3 The Two Food Movement Organisations in Their Intermediate Stages ������������������������������������������������������������  131 5.3.1 Tensions During the Central Years (1998–2017) of FoodShare’s GFB ������������������������������������������������������������  131 5.3.2 Interaction Between Forms of Tension in the GASAP During Its Intermediate Stage (2012–2016)����������������������������������������������������������������  136 5.4 The Two Food Movement Organisations Today ������������������������������  139 5.4.1 New Sources of Tension and Reflexivity in GFB’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day) ������������  139 5.4.2 Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in GASAP’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day)����������������������������  144 5.5 Discussions and Conclusions������������������������������������������������������������  150 5.5.1 Aligning to Core Values While Being Reflexive������������������  151 5.5.2 Cultivating Bold and Pragmatic Leadership ������������������������  152 5.5.3 Learning to Cope with Governance Tensions ����������������������  153 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  154

6

Institutional Governance Tensions of Food Movements in Toronto and Brussels ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 6.1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 6.2 Institutional Governance Tensions in the Early Days of the Two Food Movements������������������������������������������������������������  159 6.2.1 At the Genesis of Toronto’s Food Movement ����������������������  160 6.2.2 At the Origins of Brussels’ Food Movement������������������������  163 6.3 Food Movements Coping with Institutional Governance Tensions During Their Intermediate Stages��������������������������������������  165 6.3.1 An Enlarged Toronto: Threats and Opportunities of the Amalgamated City������������������������������������������������������  166 6.3.2 From a Food Charter to a Food Strategy for Toronto ����������  168

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Contents

6.3.3 Pushing the Strategy to the “Next Level”: Amplifying a Food System Approach����������������������������������  171 6.3.4 The Prelude to Brussels’ Food Strategy��������������������������������  173 6.3.5 Transitioning Brussels’ Food System Through the GoodFood Strategy������������������������������������������  175 6.3.6 The Set-Up of a Food Council for Brussels��������������������������  178 6.4 Revived Sources of Tension in the Two Food Movements’ Recent Years��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  179 6.4.1 Coping with a New Reality of Crisis and Disruptions in Toronto ��������������������������������������������������  179 6.4.2 The End of the Toronto Food Policy Council? ��������������������  184 6.4.3 A New Framing for the Toronto Food Strategy��������������������  186 6.4.4 Brussels’ GoodFood 2.0: A Food Strategy for the Future������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 6.4.5 “De-siloing” the BCR’s Institutional Action on Food����������  188 6.5 Discussions and Conclusions������������������������������������������������������������  192 6.5.1 Moving Towards a Food System Lens����������������������������������  193 6.5.2 Empowering Bottom-Linked and Reflexive Food Governing Institutions ������������������������������������������������  194 6.5.3 Navigating Institutionalisation Challenges and Cultivating Strategic Leadership������������������������������������  195 6.5.4 Coping with and Learning from Disruptive Times ��������������  196 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  197 7

Epilogue: Urban Food Movements and Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis����������������������������������������������������������������������  201 7.1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  202 7.2 Cross-Cutting Contributions of the Book and Ways Forward����������  205 7.2.1 Conceptual and Methodological Aspects������������������������������  205 7.2.2 Empirical Aspects ����������������������������������������������������������������  206 7.3 Reflecting on Land-Resource Governance Tensions������������������������  210 7.4 Values, Reflexivity, and Cooperative Praxis in Food Movement Organisations����������������������������������������������������  213 7.5 Bottom-Linked Institutions and the Enablement of Food Democracy��������������������������������������������������������������������������  216 7.6 (Rethinking) Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis ��������������������  218 7.6.1 Towards Multi-dimensional Food Justice ����������������������������  220 7.6.2 Looking Ahead����������������������������������������������������������������������  221 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  224

Abbreviations

AFNs AMAP ASBL BCCF BBP BCR BE CAFS CSFS CRFS CEED CFCC CSA CABR DDH ERDF FAO FHAC FPCs PAA FTA GHFFA GFB GFMs GGH GHG GASAP GAS IDRC COISAN-BH

Alternative (Urban) Food Networks Association pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne Association Sans But Lucratif Black Creek Community Farm Boeren Bruxsel Paysans Brussels-Capital Region Bruxelles Environnement Canadian Association for Food Studies Centre for Studies in Food Security City-Region Food Systems Community Engagement and Entrepreneurial Development Community Food Centres Canada Community Supported Agriculture Confronting Anti-Black Racism Début des Haricots European Regional Development Funds Food and Agricultural Organisation Food and Hunger Action Committee Food Policy Councils Food Procurement Programme Free Trade Agreement Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance Good Food Box Good Food Markets Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenhouse Gas Groupe d’Achats Solidaires de l’Agriculture Paysanne Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale International Development Research Center Intersectoral Chamber of Food and Nutrition Security

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xviii

KULeuven ICLEI MAP MUFPP MECP COMUSAN PNAE NIE PRAS P&D INNOVIRIS RABAD FWO RUAF SDFA SCRLS SDG TAP TFPC TRCA TUG TYFPC TCE VLM VUB

Abbreviations

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Local Governments for Sustainability Network Massachusetts Avenue Project Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks Municipal Council of Food and Nutrition Security National School Meals Programme New Institutional Economics Plan Régional d’Affectation du Sol Planning and Development Research Unit Regional Agency for Research and Innovation Réseau des Acteurs Bruxellois pour une Alimentation Durable/ Netwerk Van Brusselse Actoren Voor Duurzame Voeding Research Foundation—Flanders Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security Social Development Finance and Administration Société Coopérative à Responsabilité Limitée et à Finalité Sociale Sustainable Development Goal Toronto Agriculture Program Toronto Food Policy Council Toronto Region Conservation Authority Toronto Urban Growers Toronto Youth Food Policy Council Transaction Cost Economics Vlaam​se Landmaatschappij Vrije Universiteit Brussel

List of Boxes

Box 2.1 Urban Agriculture in Rust Belt Cities: Short Notes From Detroit and Buffalo���������������������������������������������   37 Box 2.2 Belo Horizonte’s Commitment to the Food System������������������������   40 Box 4.1 The Story of Black Creek, a Community-Led Farm������������������������  103 Box 4.2 Farming on Federal Land. The Story of Fresh City Farms��������������  105 Box 4.3 The Brussels’ Farm “Chant Des Cailles” and Its Struggles for Land  ��������������������������������������������������������������  109 Box 5.1 A Snapshot of FoodShare’s Student Nutrition Programmes������������  121 Box 5.2 Building Communities Through Food: The Stop Community Food Centre��������������������������������������������������  124 Box 5.3 The Bees Coop: A Cooperative Supermarket in Brussels����������������  146 Box 6.1 Rooting Food Justice in the City: The Black Food Sovereignty Plan  ���������������������������������������������������� 182 Box 6.2 A New Municipal Food Council in Brussels������������������������������������  191

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Concept Map of Toronto showing area location and images of the sites of urban agriculture. (Source: Personal elaboration from Manganelli (2019); images: courtesy of TUG)����������������������������������������������������������������   91 Fig. 4.2 Concept Map of the BCR showing area location and images of the sites of urban agriculture. (Source: Personal elaboration from Manganelli and Moulaert 2019)��������������������������������������������������������������������������   97 Fig. 5.1 Good Food Box’s activities in the early and intermediate stages. (Images: Courtesy of © Laura Berman)�������������������������������  128 Fig. 5.2 Activities during the GASAP’s permanences (intermediate stage)��������������������������������������������������������������������������  137 Fig. 5.3 Activities during FoodShare’s (GFB, GFMs) latest stage. (Images: Courtesy of © BritneyTownsend)������������������  142 Fig. 5.4 Activities during the GASAP’s recent stage (visits to producers). (Images: Courtesy of © GASAP, Author)������  150 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Summary of the key stages of the Toronto trajectory�����������������������  159 Summary of the key stages in the BCR’s trajectory�������������������������  159

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Summary of governance tensions and their features������������������������   66 Table 7.1 Outline of the key cross-cutting contributions of the book��������������  205 Table 7.2 Synthesis of specific insights and pathways for research/practices������������������������������������������������������������������������  211

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Chapter 1

Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey

Abstract  Driven by a collective desire for food system transformation, urban food movements are part of a heterogeneous landscape of urban activism. This chapter highlights the urban level as an epicentre of food activism and food governance. A core focus is the dialectic between the transformative ambitions of urban food movements, and the day-to-day practices and pragmatic struggles these movements face in finding solutions and trying to implement and concretise their transformative aspirations. The overall content of the book is depicted in this chapter as a journey into the food movements of Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR). This chapter describes the methodology of the book, tailored to identify key tensions in the hybrid governance of urban food movements, and in particular resource-related, organisational, and institutional governance tensions. The key argument is that unravelling key tensions urban food initiatives face in their genesis and development is essential for envisioning pathways through which urban food movements can improve their practices and exercise a more strategic and meaningful impact in the collective journey towards food system change. Keywords  Food systems · Urban food movements · Hybrid governance tensions · Toronto · Brussels

It is an exciting time of innovation and solidarity as the food movement stretches its imagination across rural and urban areas, and from farm to fork (Holt-Giménez 2017, Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food and the Commons).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_1

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1  Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey

How can we enable more sustainable and healthy food systems1 that are respectful of the social and ecological wellbeing of our planet? This is the urgent question contemporary (urban) food movements around the world are asking today. Food movement practitioners and scholars recognise that the current dominant food system is malfunctioning; key interlinkages of the food system with human, animal, and ecological health are not working towards greater sustainability and justice (Marsden and Morley 2014). The profound crisis our planet is facing with the Covid-19 pandemic and with the climate emergency has further revealed the close connections between human and ecological health (IPES Food 2020; Tollefson 2020). The Covid-19 outbreak has caused havoc in food chains as a result of farmworkers’ travel restrictions, difficulties in guaranteeing the availability of stocks in supermarkets, and trade disruptions in the global supply chains—showing how food security should not be taken for granted. The socio-economic effects of Covid-19 have further revealed the numerous injustices laying behind food systems, among which the unfair and exploitative labour conditions of minority workers, vulnerable pillars of globalised food chains (Blay-Palmer et al. 2020). Overall, the effects of the pandemic crisis have sharpened inequalities among citizens, exacerbating food insecurity and poverty and ushering demands for greater food justice (Alkon et al. 2020). Being responsible for approximately one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, food systems exercise a major force on climate change and environmental degradation. In particular, depending on how they are organised and governed, food systems can be either regenerative (stimulating biodiversity), or, rather, harmful to ecological systems and fail to guarantee adequate food security (IPES Food 2016). While on the one hand industrialised farming systems are leading to resource depletion, favouring monoculture, agricultural intensification, commodification, and short-term productivity-oriented farming practices (Al-Kaisi and Lowery 2017; IPES Food 2016); in the meantime, food insecurity conditions persist. These conditions are visible in a reality of socio-economic and health inequities, where cheap processed food remains easily accessible and affordable at the expense of higher quality and nutritionally adequate food (Monteiro et al. 2012). In general, corporate control over the food chain exercised by big agro-food players poses food sovereignty and food democracy questions related to who has the right to decide the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed (Claeys 2015). While concerns regarding food systems encompass global and planetary challenges, the key focus of this book is the urban level as an epicentre of food activism  Taking from the FAO’s definition (2014), (www.fao.org/climate-smart-agriculture-sourcebook/ production-resources/module-b10-value-chains/chapter-b10-2/en/, accessed 20 Aug 2020) in general terms, food systems can be defined as a web of actors and activities involved in the production, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food. In this book, food systems are used as plural, recognising the existence of a plurality of food and farming systems in diverse territorial contexts (IPES Food 2016). Yet, what is defined as the mainstream or dominant food system is the one characterised by industrial modes of food production, heritage of Post-World War II, and the 1960s ‘Green Revolution’ fostering agricultural productivity to satisfy an increasing global food demand (De Schutter 2017). 1

1  Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey

3

and food governance (Morgan 2015). In general, a great deal of social mobilisation happens in urban areas. Especially over the last decades, experiences of collective action—accompanied by vast academic research on urban activism—reveal the urban level as a focal point of social mobilisation (Castells 1983; Miller and Nicholls 2013). The contemporary landscape of urban social movements is rather heterogeneous. Recent examples of urban insurgencies include anti-oppression and antisystemic movements such as the international Occupy movement and the Spanish Indignados movement following the economic and financial crisis of 2008–2010 (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017). Through protests in squares or the occupation of streets and public spaces, these movements express dissent towards established socio-economic and socio-political orders, calling for new modes of being in common (Karaliotas and Swyngedouw 2019). Other examples of urban activism focus on the improvement of material conditions in traditional domains of urban life, such as housing, land use rights, social and cultural services, employment, and so on (Moulaert et al. 2013). Recently, other types of urban transition movements have been proliferating in the face of contemporary socio-ecological urgencies. This is the case of movements engaging in urban climate activism, urban environmental and energy justice actions, and in other types of socio-environmental issues taking root in urban areas (Goh 2020). With different degrees of radicalism, these movements embody aspirations for socio-ecological change. As such, they enact alternative modes of organising and governing production and consumption practices, diversely interacting with various actors and institutions. Urban food movements are part of this heterogeneous landscape of urban activism and are driven by a collective desire for food system transformation. In practice, they take the shape of bottom-up led initiatives, such as urban agricultural projects, consumer-producers networks, various food security or sovereignty organisations, and so on. These movements also include more top-down driven urban initiatives that seek to tackle the food system, such as Food Policy Councils (FPCs), Urban-­ Regional Food Strategies, food procurement schemes, or Trans-local Food Policy Networks. While taking action in urban areas, urban food movements are also part of a wider global movement reacting against the shortfalls of mainstream food systems and sharing the collective ambition to make food systems more sustainable, healthy, and just (Holt Giménez 2011; Morgan 2015; see also Manganelli 2019). As a result, through more or less radical forms of collective organising, these movements embody transformative values, among which food security, food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice (De Schutter 2017; Holt Giménez and Shattuck 2011). While urban food movements are driven by long-term transformative aspirations of socio-ecological change, or in the words of Le Velly (2019) by a “promise of difference”, they are also triggered by the pragmatic desire to concretise this promise here and now. This book is about the dialectic between the transformative ambitions of urban food movements and the day-to-day practices and pragmatic struggles these movements face in finding solutions and trying to implement and concretise their transformative aspirations. As they originate and develop, urban food movements need to deal with concrete material-organisational challenges such as the need to access

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1  Urban Food Movements: At the Outset of a Journey

land and productive spaces for urban-peri-urban agriculture, build the necessary infrastructure to run alternative food projects, secure financial and operational resources, forge alliances and animate the daily functions of their networks, and pursue their objectives of socio-political change (Manganelli 2019). These challenges inevitably affect the everyday life of food initiatives in urban areas, conditioning their very existence, values, modes of scaling out or up, and affecting their capacity to exercise a significant change in local institutions and in the food system. Taking this into account, this book seeks to understand the ways in which urban food movements are coping with these challenges and what this implies for their life-course and development. The book argues that such an understanding is essential for envisioning pathways through which urban food movements can improve their practices and exercise a more strategic and meaningful impact in the collective journey towards food system change. To tackle the above, this book deals with the governance of urban food movements. It develops a novel conceptual framework on the hybrid governance of these movements that takes into account the dialectics between long-term transformative aspirations, collective engagement for food system change, and the day-to-day practices and modes of implementing alternative food systems. This framework summarises some of the key challenges experienced by urban food movements in their life-course and development in terms of critical governance tensions. Drawing from studies on social innovation, collective movements, and social and ecological theories on governance, these tensions are defined as resource, organisational, and institutional. Diving into real-life examples of urban food initiatives, this book shows how these tensions play a role in shaping the stories of urban food movements in diverse contexts. As such, this book investigates urban food movements in their various struggles to: (1) enhance access to land and material resources for urban-peri-urban food production (land-resource governance tensions); (2) develop resourceful and resilient organisations able to facilitate alternative food supply networks in urban-­ regional contexts (organisational governance tensions); (3) co-construct participative and empowering institutions for urban food governance (institutional governance tensions). The key questions asked in this work are: How do urban food movements experience and deal with these critical governance tensions? What strategies do they pursue to overcome or valorise these tensions? What can be learned from these tensions in terms of building a stronger food movement? The purpose here is also to give voice to food movement actors and initiatives— such as urban agriculture activists, leaders of food security organisations, urban food policy officials, food councils, and so on—in order to understand what type of lessons and reflexivity outcomes place-based urban food initiatives have developed as a result of specific socio-political challenges.

1.1  A Personal and Collective Journey

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1.1 A Personal and Collective Journey The idea for this book was born during my post-doctoral research at the HafenCity Universität of Hamburg. Yet, the basic concepts and material I used in composing this work come from my doctoral research at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) between 2014 and 2019. During that time, I also spent a few months in Toronto (February–June 2017), where I was hosted as a visiting scholar by Prof. Cecilia Rocha at the Centre for Studies in Food Security (CSFS) of the Toronto Metropolitan University,2 Faculty of Community Services. During the time spent in the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR), and even in earlier years, I investigated and participated in urban agriculture initiatives germinating across the Region. On the one hand, I was impressed with how in a few years these initiatives scaled out across the BCR, thanks to the increasing interest of residents and communities in ecology and food, as well as by means of intermediary urban agriculture networks such as the association Le Début des Haricots and other bottom-­up organisations active in Brussels. I noticed how a sensitivity towards urban agriculture and environmental issues was gradually percolating amongst Brussels’ citizens and neighbourhoods, and also reaching some administrative and policy officials. Yet, on the other hand, I also became aware of the temporariness and precariousness of these initiatives with respect to top-down decisions on land-use changes and real estate development dynamics. I soon realised that these initiatives are shaped by a wider hybridity of actors and relations affecting their very existence and modalities to scale out and develop. During my time in Toronto, I further deepened my comprehension of urban food movements and the key challenges they face. My conversations with food movement actors and organisations across a multi-layered landscape (among which pioneer initiatives active over many years) nurtured that understanding. Key protagonists of the Toronto food movement include globally renowned organisations and institutions such as FoodShare, The Stop community food centres, and the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC). Moreover, Toronto has a strong tradition of urban gardening and agriculture activism. The role of bottom-up organisations such as Toronto Urban Growers (TUG), but also the TFPC, the Toronto Food Strategy and their work on urban agriculture and regional food planning, are emblematic. Along with this, food justice oriented urban agriculture networks such as the Black Creek Community Farm (BCCF), the Afri-Can FoodBasket, and FoodShare itself are expressions of critical food sovereignty and justice values emerging from the movement. In Toronto, the CSFS represents a pioneer food movement institution itself, being deeply embedded in the city as well as in the wider Canadian food movement. As such, the Centre facilitated fertile encounters and exchanges with historic urban food movement scholars as well as practitioners.   The former  “Ryerson University”  has been recently  renamed into  Toronto Metropolitan University, to recognise the harmful legacy of Egerton Ryerson with respect to Indigenous people in Canada. 2

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Besides learning from food movement practices, my research has also capitalised from a fertile and rapidly evolving international debate on food. Urban food scholars have been reflecting, among other issues, on how food can become part of cities’ governance and planning (Mansfield and Mendes 2013; Mendes and Sonnino 2018; Pothukuchi and Kaufman 2000); how urban food policy initiatives can become more participative and representative of diverse actors of the food and institutional system (Coulson and Sonnino 2019; Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015); and how other institutional levels can play a more proactive role in an inter-scalar engagement on food system change (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019; Sonnino et al. 2019). Following this impetus, studies have been germinating on FPCs, local food strategies, Trans-local Food Policy Networks, and other types of initiatives attempting to give voice to the food movement and to institutionalise urban engagement on food. In short, at the time of delving into my research, there was already a huge ongoing international debate on the governance of urban food movements, from which I could take inspiration. My ambition was to systematise and connect different dots of this debate, investigating how key governance challenges could be analysed in a more integrated and systematic manner, and providing a more profound understanding of the implications of these challenges to the lives and missions of urban food movements. Finally, I wanted to understand what food movement practitioners as well as scholars could learn from the challenges, or tensions, they experienced.

1.2 Empirical Research and Methods The empirical scope of the research fundamentally aligns with the international orientation of the urban food debate. On the one hand, this book gives an overarching picture of governance tensions by referring to a variety of international experiences across Global North and Global South contexts (see Chaps. 2 and 3). On the other hand, it embarks in a more detailed analysis of the tensions by referring to and comparing urban food initiatives in Toronto and the BCR (see Chaps. 4, 5, and 6). With its long-term food movement history, Toronto is a particularly illustrative case in terms of urban food governance. This is due not only to its global interconnectedness and visibility within the international urban food movement, but also to the obstacles that the Toronto food movement still faces in building its legitimacy with respect to wider city structures and in exercising systemic and transformative action. Being less internationally renowned, the BCR’s food movement is equally interesting for the analysis of governance tensions. While food governing institutions have been proactively adopting a more systemic approach to food, there are still barriers to develop collaborative frameworks for improving land access, strengthening short food chains, and sustaining local initiatives. Thus, a lot can be learned by acknowledging these obstacles and developing fruitful comparisons across the two cases. A core part of the empirical research informing this book was carried out during my doctoral research. Yet, over the last 3  years, considerable developments have

1.2  Empirical Research and Methods

7

taken place in the food movements in the BCR and (most of all) in Toronto—developments that are in part linked to the Covid-19 outbreak. While these evolutions did not undermine the validity of the interpretative framework of hybrid governance tensions, they had to be taken into account in revising, enriching, and updating some of the empirical insights on urban food initiatives as well as policy developments of the two City-Regions. Thus, over the year 2021, I carried out 36 additional online interviews and conversations with key food movement informers in Toronto and in the BCR. These exchanges were important to update the empirical chapters of this book and to add more nuance to the theoretical apparatus. Overall, this book adopts an investigative methodology based on case-study comparison (McFarlane 2010; Robinson 2011). I entered my fieldwork investigation with initial assumptions about the three types of governance tensions, their nature and outcomes in the life-course of urban food movement initiatives. A key tool I adopted, in order to give voice to food movement actors and understand their challenges, was face-to-face interviews based on semi-structured questionnaires. I found the interview-making practice an enriching experience itself, as an active process of knowledge building rather than merely one of knowledge transfer (Gubrium et al. 2012). Interviews also constitute moments of exchange and reflexivity, in which actors take time to make sense of their own stories and their role in society. Between 2015 and 2018, I conducted approximately 80 interviews in Toronto and in the BCR. Using the lens of (land) resource governance tensions, I aimed to get a sense of what land is available for urban-peri-urban food production and to determine the major barriers and constraints of liberating more land for small-scale proximity agriculture in Toronto and the BCR. I firstly identified key actors, organisations, and (state) agencies mobilising for access to land. I then asked these actors what practical actions have been pursued over time to address land access and its scaling out. Furthermore, I sought to identify: the constraints these community of urban agriculture activists experience; the types of responses to address these constraints (e.g. adapting existing land use frameworks, shaping new devices to facilitate access to land); and the manner in which these responses enable or constrain the access to land. Finally, I gained insight on what forms of cooperative governance have been enacted to improve land-access. When investigating organisational governance tensions, my questions pointed to finding out the factors that triggered the genesis of the two food movement organisations in Toronto and the BCR. I sought to understand key challenges and tensions involved in managing the organisation as it scales out and grows, for instance mediating between more participatory and horizontal modes of governance and more top-down efficiency-based decision-making modes. I asked organisations what key resource needs they faced (in terms of funding, human capital, infrastructures…) as they scaled out and how they addressed these in seeking sustainability through time. I also inquired into how these food movement organisations related with other more or less institutionalised agencies (e.g. state departments, state institutions at different levels, donors, foundations, etc.) to negotiate support or advocate for changes in the food system. Having a sense of their organisational governance tensions, I

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sought to grasp what kind of adaptations or changes these tensions ushered in the governance of these initiatives. Finally, guided by the lens of institutional governance tensions, I analysed what drove the genesis of key initiatives (organisations, coalitions, food governing institutions) over the course of the two food movements’ histories. Specifically, I asked key food policy leaders how their key missions, values, and objectives were negotiated through time. I investigated how major changes in the environmental, social, and institutional system (e.g. crises, changes in governmental coalitions at multiple levels, favourable or unfavourable legislations, new enabling institutions, etc.) impacted the formation and development of food policies in the two City-Regions. I concluded by drawing out the governance strategies that have been put into place to cope with emerging tensions in the institutional trajectory and what key food movement actors have learned about their own (institutional) governance challenges. Having been already immersed in the BCR’s community of food practices, it was relatively easy to reconstruct the landscape of relevant food actors and initiatives for my interviews and fieldwork observations in Brussels. In Toronto, I relied heavily on the CSFS and its contacts with the Toronto food movement players. Thanks to these contacts, I was able to interview some of the historic as well as current food movement leaders at the head of food security organisations (such as FoodShare, the STOP, the coalition Community Food Centres Canada, etc.). This exploratory analysis through interviews was also complemented by an in-depth review of key documentation, including that of secondary literature, policy statements, mission statements of key food organisations, planning and policy documents and reports, as well as reports from key organisations of the food movements. I also adopted ethnographic research methods (Silva et al. 2015), particularly for the analysis of active urban agriculture and food networks active in both city-regions. The contacts I established and the trust I built with food movement actors in Toronto and the BCR were instrumental for updating fieldwork carried out in the year 2021.

1.3 Introducing Toronto’s and Brussels’ Food Movements To familiarise the reader with the case study areas of this book, background information on Toronto and the BCR is briefly presented in this section, as well as an overview of general characteristics of the two city-regions and their local food movements.

1.3.1 An Overview of the Toronto Food Movement Toronto is nowadays the most populous Metropolitan Area of Canada. The current administrative limits of the City of Toronto are the product of a reconfiguration of jurisdictional boundaries—the so called “amalgamated city”—which took place at

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the end of the 1990s with Bill 103 (City of Toronto Act 1997). This reconfiguration transformed Toronto from a small Municipality to a large institutional body, incorporating the outlying Municipalities and almost tripling its population size.3 As Chap. 6 of this book illustrates, the amalgamation process provoked changes in the political culture as well as the social and cultural geographies of Toronto, exercising a relevant impact on the Toronto food movement. The contemporary Toronto food movement finds its origins earlier on, in the 1980s. It was triggered by a diversity of actors, including nascent organisations as well as supportive policy officials and civil servants responding to food insecurity conditions affecting residents of Toronto (Loopstra and Tarasuk 2012). Organisations such as FoodShare, The Stop community food centres, and the TFPC were established at that time. Through the years, local food initiatives—including food security initiatives, but also other community food organisations and programmes—have scaled out across neighbourhoods in Toronto thanks to advocacy and programming carried out by the above as well as other organisations, but also through the autonomous self-­ organising of bottom-up initiatives. Urban food growing initiatives, for instance, have emerged in a variety of forms, from community oriented to more entrepreneurial and commercial types (Toronto Food Policy Council 2012). Organisations such as the Toronto Community Garden Network, and TUG foster sensitisation and support to citizens and gardeners, but also advocate for promoting urban agriculture initiatives in Toronto. Overall, in line with a wider food movement, a vibrant urban agriculture movement is active in Toronto. This movement calls for enhancing food production in Toronto and its region, and confronts challenges and contradictions in carving out and stabilising access to land and spaces for food production in a real-­ estate oriented city of the Global North (courtesy of urban agriculture advocates). In Toronto, addressing challenges to protect agricultural land goes beyond the remit of the municipality and its administrative borders. In particular, the Greater Toronto Region hosts one of the biggest food and farming areas in North America, namely the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) (Miller and Blay-Palmer 2018). Stretching up to the Niagara Region in a horseshoe shape, the GGH hosts a diversity of crops, from high value crops (including vegetable, tender fruits, and other perishable quality products) to grains, meat, and dairy products (courtesy of the Executive Director of the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance). Being a rapidly growing area in terms of population size, tensions occur between urbanisation trends and the protection of prime agriculture land (Miller and Blay-Palmer 2018). Thus, in 2012 the City of Toronto joined a federation of bordering cities and regions belonging to the Golden Horseshoe forming together with other actors the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance (GHFFA). The Alliance aims at devising strategies to protect land and enhance the food and farming cluster of the GGH.

 Nowadays Toronto counts around 2.7 million inhabitants (2,731,571). The figure reaches 6.4 million if considering the Grater Toronto Area (source: Canada population statistics). 3

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Besides urban food production, a variety of other community initiatives, projects, or programmes have been percolating in neighbourhoods of Toronto throughout the years—product of the advocacy and action of organisations, community agencies, and other networks, in tandem with state institutions and other actors. Among others, these initiatives range from emergency food programmes to alternative food distribution networks (such as food boxes, public food markets, and food coops) to school food programmes.4 Furthermore, an important step in the food movement history of Toronto is the launch of the Toronto Food Strategy by the Toronto Board of Health in 2008. The Toronto Food Strategy shows a clear attempt to tackle the complexity of the food system, from “grow it to throw it” (Toronto Public Health 2010, p. 1). Indeed, recognising the urgency of addressing a diverse range of food system problems—from hunger and malnutrition, to the gradual disappearance of farmland, to environmental pollution—Toronto food policy actors stressed the “need for coordinated and strategic approaches” to the food system (Toronto Public Health 2010, p. 1). Struggles to advocate for and implement food system change go beyond the city scale. Some of the key food organisations in Toronto (such as the TFPC, FoodShare, and Community Food Centres Canada) as well as other coalitions (such as Sustain Ontario and Food Secure Canada) (Duni 2018; Koç et al. 2008) are engaged in food security and food policy advocacy at the provincial and federal levels. The FoodShare organisation, for instance, has advocated for changes in the welfare policy regimes at the provincial and federal levels, to enable more structural long-term solutions to community food insecurity (courtesy of for the former FoodShare’s executive director). Advocacy for a national school food programme has been going on for years. Food Share and its former leader Debbie Field, along with the Canadian Coalition for Healthy School Food, are among the protagonists of this battle. In December 2021, this advocacy produced a historic achievement, as the Canadian Government officially declared its commitment “to develop a National School Food Policy and work towards a national school nutritious meal program”.5 The coalition Food Secure Canada—a pan-Canadian multi-actor alliance established in 2005 following a Conference held at the Toronto Metropolitan University— has been at the forefront of a struggle to lobby the Federal Government for developing a National Food Policy (Finnigan 2017). The first public consultations for the establishment of a National Food Policy took place in 2017 at the Toronto Metropolitan University; a Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council was created in the fall of 2021.6 The advocacy of provincial and federal level organisations such as Sustain Ontario and Food Secure Canada has its roots in Toronto. The CSFS has  Established in 2016 by the TFPC, the Food by Ward Project has mapped many of these initiatives across Toronto’s neighbourhoods: https://tfpc.to/food-by-ward, accessed 21 Nov 2020. 5  See for instance https://sustainontario.com/2022/01/13/school-food-included-mandate-letters-­­ for-first-time/, accessed 20 Jan 2022. 6  Among other entities, this multi-disciplinary body has the role of advising the implementation of the Food Policy’s priority axes and keeping communication with the National Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food (see for instance: https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/about-our-­ 4

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acted as a convenor and platform for the genesis and activities of these and other organisations.7 An articulated account of the multi-scalar political dynamics of food system change in Canada goes beyond the scope of this introduction and book. Yet, it is important to consider that the geography of the Toronto food movement should be situated between multiple scales and sites. This includes local efforts to scale out food system actions at the city, regional, and higher scales of food policy development and advocacy, and, not least, the engagement in an international movement of other city-regions and initiatives dealing with local food system policies (Blay-­Palmer et al. 2016).

1.3.2 An Overview of the Brussels’ Food Movement The BCR is a mid-size densely urbanised Region of about 1,220,000 inhabitants (IBSA—Institut Bruxellois de Statistique at d’Analyse 2020). According to recent statistics, the officially designated agricultural land (named in the Brussels’ official land use data as terres de culture) covers around 3.1% of the total land area of the BCR, and thus a minor part of the Regional territory (IBSA—Institut Bruxellois de Statistique at d’Analyse 2020). These agricultural zones are mostly situated in the South-West part of the BCR, in peripheral areas towards the borders with the neighbouring Province of the Flemish Brabant. In these areas, farmers mainly practice a conventional type of agriculture, based on grains and cereals, and are not oriented to short chain food production for the Region and its inhabitants (communication by the Cellule Agriculture of the Cabinet of Economy and Employment). As a result, the BCR imports most of its products from EU countries, with fruits and vegetables, grains, cereals, and meat having the greatest shares of imports (respectively 21%, 16%, and 11%).8 Furthermore, the food retail sector is dominated by a few Belgian and international supermarket chains (in particular the Delhaize Group, Carrefour Belgium, Colruyt Group) and discount supermarkets (such as the Aldi Group and Lidl) (Willems and Swinnen 2012). It was particularly around the mid-2000s that the food system became a concern in the eyes of civil society and policy actors of the BCR. In particular, around that time a new wave of urban agriculture and bottom-up food organisations popped up as pioneers of the contemporary food movement (Manganelli 2013). In the year 2018, the Region counted with 392 collective and family gardens with a total surface of approximately 79  ha across the 19 Municipalities of the BCR department/key-departmental-initiatives/food-policy/canadian-food-policy-advisory-council, accessed 20 Jan 2022). 7  In terms of research, the Centre is also at the origins of the Canadian Association for Food Studies, the CAFS, founded in 2005 (see for instance https://foodstudies.info/, accessed 20 Jan 2022). 8  This information is extracted from a study on food supply commissioned by the Regional administration of the environment called Bruxelles Environnement (BE). The study is available here: https://environnement.brussels/thematiques/alimentation/action-de-la-region/etudes, accessed 22 Nov 2021.

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(Bruxelles-­Environnement 2020). These gardens—some of which were set up further back in the history of Brussels (Zitouni et  al. 2018)—have settled in spaces characterised by diverse land ownership and land plot types (e.g. vacant lands, residual spaces in residential areas, at the margins of railways or other infrastructures, in parks or green areas, etc.), on the basis of the contextual opportunities of access to land (Manganelli 2013; Zitouni et al. 2018). Besides citizen gardens, professionally-oriented or multifunctional forms of urban agriculture have emerged, often through bottom-up practices re-using vacant or available land. The Community Supported Agriculture farm Chant des Cailles, located in the South of Brussels and the Urban Farm Neder-Over-Heembeek, in the North, are two examples, established respectively in 2010 and 2012. Several of these types of small-scale urban agriculture initiatives foster urban horticulture (in French “maraichage urbain”9), based on ecologically sensitive modes of food growing. Furthermore, over the last few years there has been a veritable explosion of urban agriculture initiatives and experiments in a variety of forms, fostering diverse or adapted modes of urban food production. According to policy documentation, while in 2015 there were 16 urban producers active in the BCR within a total surface of 5 hectares (including off-ground production), in 2020 this amounted to 40 producers occupying a surface of 20 hectares.10 Among the many examples11 of food growing initiatives is Little Foods that grows crickets using residual industrial waste and sells them to several markets within and outside the BCR. Another example is the cooperative Champignons de Bruxelles, which produces mushrooms using waste from the beer manufacturing process. Urban gardening and urban agriculture initiatives located within the Regional borders are not the only types of local food initiatives active in the BCR. In the last few years, several organisations with short chain distribution have scaled out into the Regional territory, demonstrating how Brussels constitutes a basin of demand for locally sourced food. Established in 2005, the GASAP initiative represents a pioneer network. In the last few years, however, several other short food chain organisations started to proliferate in the BCR. These types of short food chain initiatives, mainly in the form of social enterprises, often use an intermediary online platform, or other IT systems, to allow consumers to order food baskets from producers. Without going into an exhaustive list, examples of these initiatives are the so called La ruche qui dit oui started in 2011 in the BCR and other parts of Belgium,

 In this book, references to food practices, organisations, institutions concerning Brussels are sometimes translated in French, given that French is the most widely used language in the BCR, here included the food movement. Yet, where appropriate, the Dutch version is also provided, being Dutch the other official language of Belgium and Brussels. 10  This data is taken from the Regional Food Strategy’s evaluation document, available at: https:// goodfood.brussels/fr/content/evaluation-de-la-strategie-good-food-2016-2020, accessed 22 Nov 2021. 11  To have a sense of the variety of these initiatives a good source is the website portal of the Brussels’ GoodFood Strategy, where many such experiments are mapped and collected (https:// goodfood.brussels/fr, accessed 22 Nov 2020). 9

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but also active in France, UK, Spain, and Germany; the online platform e-farm, initiated in the BCR around 2009; the initiative L’heureux nouveau, established in 2010, where staff delivers at distribution points using bicycles, and more. Initiatives in the form of cooperative shops, social groceries, as well as a cooperative supermarket named Bees-coop, have also been established in the last couple of years. Following the momentum of a vivacious and fertile urban food movement as well as of an enhanced institutional interest in sustainable food, the BCR government adopted a regional Food Strategy in 2015, called the GoodFood Strategy (in French, Stratégie GoodFood, in Dutch, De Good Food-strategie). The Strategy has considerable systemic ambitions, among which enhancing short food supply chains and strengthening the relationships with the bordering regions of Flanders and Wallonia. As most of the examples of Urban-Regional Food Strategies demonstrate, the GoodFood Strategy also seeks to intervene in other aspects of the food system. For instance, to promote the circular economy and reduce food waste, the Strategy has supported projects of recovery and processing of unsold fresh food (Bruxelles-­ Environnement 2020). In addition, it has established partnership agreements with Belgian federations representing the food industry as well as actors of the retail sector. This line of action aims to persuade actors of the conventional food sector to align with GoodFood principles (ibid., 2020, p. 38). The GoodFood Strategy also includes actions on sustainable food procurement, with the purpose of improving sustainability criteria of the food served in collective canteens of schools, universities, and other institutions. Food strategy actors, in collaboration with other professional actors and organisations, attempt to sensitise young generations but also Brussels’ general public on the values of good food. Broadly speaking, the GoodFood Strategy has become a sort of flag or label for scaling out sustainable and healthy food principles across professional and private agents, but also to the regions’ inhabitants.

1.3.3 The Two Food Movements and the Covid-19 Outbreak As it began to spread in Western countries in early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic affected urban-regional food systems as well as global food chains, as much as it touched our lives as individuals, and as members of a local and global community. The pandemic has produced a combined public health, territorial, and socio-­ economic crisis, as a result of its impact on employment, economy, territorial development, and people’s socio-economic situation. Clearly, Toronto as well as the BCR’s food movements have not escaped the effects of the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic has had both practical and short-term impacts, as well as more structural and disruptive effects, which are likely to generate longer-term consequences in both food movements. One immediate effect has been the need to rapidly adapt activities of individuals and food movement organisations to health restrictions and distancing measures. In Brussels, short food chain networks such as the GASAP and others have been pushed to quickly rearrange their modalities of delivering and

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collecting food baskets in compliance with distancing measures. Furthermore, organisations such as the TFPC, or the Brussels Food Strategy’s advisory council, have had to suddenly turn to virtual and ICT-driven methods of communicating, assembling, and taking decisions. This is not a banal change for organisations that practice modalities of collective decision-making. In general, while many ongoing activities or projects had to slow down in the midst of the pandemic outbreak, other priorities, responses, and actions suddenly came to the fore on the agendas of food movement actors and organisations. In particular, a major source of concern regarding the long-term effects of the pandemic is the sharpened inequities of food systems and the revived conditions of poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity affecting both the context of the BCR as well as that of Toronto (Stahlbrand and Roberts 2020). In Brussels, where about 1/3 of the total population lives under the poverty line in terms of income, it is estimated that 30% of the population declared a loss in revenue as a result of the pandemic crisis (courtesy of the BCR’s observatory for health and social affairs). The food aid sector in Brussels has been lamenting the lack of organisational and financial capacity to cope with the worsened conditions of food insecurity (courtesy of Brussels’ food movement actors). Among other requests, representative organisations of the food aid sector have been asking the government to establish additional measures, such as food vouchers, to support vulnerable citizens in making their autonomous food choices. Similarly, Toronto has experienced a spike in food insecurity and a worsening of vulnerability conditions across disadvantaged citizens and residents, including ethnic and racialized minorities. This has led to increased pressure on food banks and emergency food distribution networks. Community food security organisations—including some of the key initiatives explored in this book—have attempted to respond to this emergency through, for instance, prepared meals, food boxes, and emergency food distribution networks, thus providing alternative food infrastructures and pivoting to emergency food delivery networks (Stahlbrand and Roberts 2020). In a complex picture where crisis and disruption intermingle with innovation and creativity, in both the BCR and in Toronto the pandemic has also given rise to new solidarity initiatives—creative and socially innovative responses from which the food movements can draw from and learn. As Brussels’ food policy actors underline, this crisis has invited families and households to rediscover practices of food growing and cooking from scratch. This in turn has contributed to a greater appreciation for the value of sustainable food production, and to a revived demand for short food chains (courtesy of GoodFood Strategy actors). These short reflections only give a hint of the tangible changes and challenges provoked by the pandemic phenomenon in Toronto’s and the BCR’s food movements. A detailed analysis of the impact of the pandemic with respect to the governance of urban food movements in the two contexts goes beyond the scope of this book. Yet, any major societal or territorial analysis in the midst or aftermath of this pandemic cannot ignore this phenomenon and its early effects. Thus, these introductory reflections will be taken up particular in the epilogue (Chap. 7), where a section is devoted to reconsidering the key governance tensions identified in the book in

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light of this public health crisis, which is also interconnected to major socio-­ ecological challenges of our era.

1.4 Positionality, Challenges and Limits of the Research Disentangling and reconstructing complex socio-political and socio-spatial dynamics of two food movements comes with several challenges. It involves developing a grounded interpretative framework that seeks to maintain this complexity, while necessarily being selective of relevant aspects and dimensions. In this research, it has involved a continuous back-and-forwards movement between theory building and practices on the ground. It has also involved comparing two diverse but equally complex food movements as well as urban-regional contexts. Toronto has a diverse urban population as well as multi-layered socio-administrative reality—heritage of the amalgamation phase. The BCR is also a very mixed, internationally oriented, and socio-culturally diverse Urban-Region, with a very peculiar socio-spatial structure. In particular, enclosed within two linguistically and institutionally divided regions—i.e. Flanders and Wallonia—Brussels has a very complicated and multi-­ layered administrative organisation. Diving into this diversity and complexity has been a delicate and challenging endeavour that has inevitably entailed a deep exploration and analysis, and has involved a continuous reflection about valuable lessons to extract from this comparison. The investigation of the food policy developments of Toronto and the BCR carried out in Chap. 6 is exemplary of this challenge. While the analysis is attentive in retracing the genesis and dynamics of the relevant city-regional food movement and policy processes, the empirical explanation of the trajectories does not account for the whole articulated picture of diverse actors playing a role, as well as multi-­ scalar processes and institutional dynamics occurring through time in the two City-­ Regions’ food movements. Furthermore, other aspects of the governance tensions also remain not fully investigated. Concerning resource governance tensions, for instance, this book does not go into a detailed analysis of types of funding sources (e.g. corporate, public, crowdfunding); it does not delve into possible value tensions concerning the relation of NGOs with donors, corporate funding, or competition for funding across actors and organisations, and so on. Analogously, the investigation of organisational tensions does not dive into all the possible tensions that urban food initiatives can experience within or across their organisations and networks. Yet, despite some dimensions being untapped, I believe that selectivity does not necessarily diminish the informative value as well as the originality of the interpretative angles from which real-life experiences and dynamics are reconstructed. The research I conducted for this book also touches on issues of subjectivity and positionality of both myself as a researcher and of food movement actors and initiatives (Ellis and Flaherty 1992; Moulaert and Van Dyck 2013). There is a vivid debate among food movement scholars concerning the positionality of a researcher

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as a “pure” scholar or, rather, as a scholar-activist (Reynolds et al. 2018; Tornaghi and Van Dyck 2015; Van Dyck et al. 2018). Indeed, when researching urban food justice, grass-roots food activism, or food system change, the boundaries between research and activism, or research and practices, are often very blurred. In many circumstances, scholars are also part of the local or international (urban) food movement, being themselves actively engaged in furthering and advancing the movement (Alkon and Guthman 2017). Thus, working across theory and practice, food scholars do not necessarily refrain from taking a value-led position. Taken to the extreme, however, this tendency can lead to opposite and seemingly radical directions. In other words, researchers risk swinging between being uncritical advocates and defenders of food movement practices or overly critical towards food movement practices that do not align with specific values. I believe that researchers need to maintain a positionality as reflexive observers. During my research, I saw myself holding two positions, a double movement of sorts. The first, a researcher passionately involved in these topics; the second, taking a critical distance to grasp the full picture of diverse and sometimes conflictive positions and perspectives across the food movement and its socio-institutional environment. This is even more essential in research that involves interacting with actors from different domains, such as grassroots initiatives, state actors from different administrative divisions and levels, other academics and intellectuals, or even the private sector. The second position is one of an insider, entering the worlds of the actors in the food movement to understand how they perceive their own role and interpret the socio-political context in which they are embedded from a rather subjective positionality and value-driven perspective. These two positions have thus involved a dual movement: towards a full immersion into the inside of value systems, ideologies, and practices, and then back out, in order to interpret and situate various positions and ideologies, including my own. Finally, the realities of place-based urban food movements are dynamic and rapidly changing. As mentioned earlier, significant developments have occurred in the last 3 years in the two food movements studied in this book. In Toronto, a series of unfortunate events derived from top-down governmental decisions as well as from the effects of the Covid-19 emergency have threatened the very existence of the Toronto Food Strategy and the TFPC (see Chap. 6). Also as a result of these events, some of the key leaders and professionals coordinating these and other organisations and policy initiatives have resigned from their mandates. Thus, among other changes, there has been a significant evolution in the professional leadership of the food movement. Furthermore, as outlined above, the Covid-19 outbreak has brought about further changes, disruptions, and crises—the effects of which are still ongoing. A practical challenge has been that of simply getting in touch with some of the key informants and representative actors of the two food movements through a series of online conversations, in order to get a sense of these evolutions and their meaning with respect to governance tensions.

1.5  Organisation of the Book

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1.5 Organisation of the Book The first two chapters that follow this introduction can be considered “framing” chapters. They respectively provide a broad overview of the state of the art of the contemporary urban food movement from an international perspective and introduce the concept of “hybrid governance” and its tensions. These chapters draw from literature and examples of urban food movement initiatives from Global North and Global South realities, giving the reader a wide perspective of examples and debates. Chapter 2 sets the scene, starting with an overview of the key food system problems that alternative food movements, and particularly urban food movements, seek to address. It then highlights key values and ideologies embraced by urban food movements as well as concrete struggles experienced to engender transformative change. These struggles range from the question of land accessibility for urban food production, to the challenge of addressing the (urban) food system as whole. The chapter then gives an overview of major organisational and institutional responses by urban food movements when mobilising for food system change, from grass-­ roots mobilisation on land, to FPCs, Urban-Regional Food Strategies, to Trans-­ scalar Food Policy Networks. In this way, Chap. 2 introduces the reader to some of the key dimensions of analysis that will be used in the following chapters when illustrating key governance tensions in urban food movements. Chapter 3 develops the conceptual framework of the book. Theoretically, this framework draws from traditions of research on social innovation and collective action, sociological-institutionalist and multi-scalar approaches to governance, political economy, and political ecology perspectives. It uses the conceptual lenses deriving from these traditions to revise and reinterpret key strands of the contemporary debate on the governance of urban food movements. The chapter conceptualises the governance reality of urban food movements as hybrid governance, framed by interrelated (land)resource, organisational, and institutional governance tensions. It explains conceptually what these tensions are, how they play a role in urban food movements, and their life-course. Additionally, the chapter provides a perspective on what these movements can learn by experiencing and trying to overcome these tensions in their life-course and development. In this respect, the concept of reflexivity, i.e. the capacity of urban food movements to self-reflect on their own governance also in light of experienced tensions, constitutes a further interpretative thread in the narrative of this book. Chapter 3 builds on the article by Manganelli et al. (2019), whereby the hybrid governance approach is conceptually developed. The three chapters that follow these “framing” chapters zoom in on the urban food movements of Toronto and the BCR, with the purpose of testing and showcasing how the three types of governance tensions are lived and experienced in real-life cases of urban food initiatives in two urban-regional settings. Thus, each of the chapters is empirical and comparative in nature. In particular, Chap. 4 examines land-resource governance tensions in two urban agriculture initiatives in Toronto and the BCR.  It revisits the processes through which land-resource access has become a governance problem in the two contexts,

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reconstructing and comparing how the two urban agriculture communities organise themselves and advocate for enhanced land-access. It draws comparative lessons on insights from the two movements on how to improve a “Commons” territorial governance for access to land.12 Chapter 5 examines organisational governance tensions, reconstructing the genesis and development of two food movement organisations respectively in Toronto and the BCR.  It compares how these two food organisations have perceived and responded to key management challenges, linked to the need to grow, scale out, secure resources, forge new alliances, and build resilient alternative food infrastructures. It develops some conclusions on what these and other food organisations can learn from experiencing and overcoming specific types of organisational governance tensions. Chapter 6 deals with institutional governance tensions. It reconstructs the trajectory of the genesis and development of urban food movements in Toronto and Brussels, starting from the stage in which key organisations and institutional structures began to form in the two food movements, up to the contemporary phase. Doing so, the chapter gives a broad overview of how key governing institutions formed, how they have been playing a role in legitimising a food movement and promoting sensitivity on the food system question across actors, administrative structures, and levels. Moreover, it focuses on key threats and tensions food movements have confronted along their trajectory, which have either lead to failures or to a reinvigoration in recasting food system values to diverse actors. After highlighting key contributions of this work, the concluding chapter (Chap. 7) provides a reflection on the key governance tensions and the hybrid governance framework in the contemporary moment of crisis and distress brought about by the pandemic and by wider socio-ecological emergencies.

References Al-Kaisi MM, Lowery B (eds) (2017) Soil health and intensification of agroecosystems. Academic, London Alkon A, Guthman J (eds) (2017) The new food activism: opposition, cooperation, and collective action. University of California Press, Berkeley Alkon AH, Bowen S, Kato Y, Young KA (2020) Unequally vulnerable: a food justice approach to racial disparities in COVID-19 cases. Agric Hum Values 37(3):535–536 Blay-Palmer A, Sonnino R, Custot J (2016) A food politics of the possible? Growing sustainable food systems through networks of knowledge. Agric Hum Values 33(1):27–43 Blay-Palmer A, Carey R, Valette E, Sanderson MR (2020) Post COVID 19 and food pathways to sustainable transformation. Agric Hum Values 37(3):517–519  The sections on BCR in these empirical chapters expand on analyses conducted in other publications: Chap. 4 expands the analysis of land-resource governance tensions from the article by Manganelli and Moulaert (2019); Chap. 5 develops and updates the analysis of organisational governance tensions from the article by Manganelli and Moulaert (2018); Chap. 6 develops and updates some empirical insights from the article by Manganelli (2020). 12

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Bruxelles-Environnement (2020) Les Premiers Résultats de la Stratégie Good Food. Immersion au Cœur des Actions Inspirantes Bruxelloises. https://goodfood.brussels/fr/content/evaluation-­de-­ la-­strategie-­good-­food-­2016-­2020. Accessed 25 Jan 2022 Castells M (1983) The city and the grassroots: a cross-cultural theory of urban social movements. University of California Press, Berkeley Claeys P (2015) Food sovereignty and the recognition of new rights for peasants at the UN: a critical overview of La Via Campesina’s rights claims over the last 20 years. Globalizations 12(4):452–465 Coulson H, Sonnino R (2019) Re-scaling the politics of food: place-based urban food governance in the UK. Geoforum 98:170–179 De Schutter O (2017) The political economy of food systems reform. Eur Rev Agric Econ 44(4):705–731 Dikeç M, Swyngedouw E (2017) Theorizing the politicizing city. Int J Urban Reg Res 41(1):1–18 Duni S (2018) Coalition building and maintenance: a case study of food secure Canada (2001–2012). Dissertation, X-Ryerson University, Toronto Ellis C, Flaherty MG (1992) An agenda for the interpretation of lived experience. In: Ellis C, Flaherty MG (eds) Investigating subjectivity: research on lived experience. Sage, pp 1–13 Finnigan P (2017) A food policy for Canada. Report of the standing committee on agriculture and agri-food, Canada Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. www.ourcommons.ca. Accessed 25 Jan 2022 Goh K (2020) Planning the green new deal: climate justice and the politics of sites and scales. J Am Plan Assoc 86(2):188–195 Gubrium JF, Holstein JA, Marvasti AB, McKinney KD (eds) (2012) The SAGE handbook of interview research: the complexity of the craft. Sage Holt Giménez E (2011) Food security, food justice or food sovereignty? Crises, food movements and regime change. In: Alkon AH, Agyeman J (eds) Cultivating food justice. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 309–330 Holt-Giménez (2017) Agrarian Questions and the Struggle for Land Justice in the United States. In: Williams JM, Holt-Giménez E (eds) (2017) Land justice: re-imagining land, food, and the commons. Food First Books, Oakland, pp 1–14 Holt Giménez E, Shattuck A (2011) Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation? J Peasant Stud 38(1):109–144 IBSA—Institut Bruxellois de Statistique at d’Analyse (2020) Occupation du Sol. https://ibsa. brussels/themes/amenagement-­du-­territoire-­et-­immobilier/occupation-­du-­sol. Accessed 23 May 2022 IPES Food (2016) From uniformity to diversity. A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological system. http://www.ipes-­food.org/_img/upload/files/ UniformityToDiversity_FULL.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2021 IPES Food (2020) COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems: symptoms, causes and potential solutions, Special report of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. https:// www.ipes-­food.org/pages/covid19. Accessed 22 Jan 2022 Karaliotas L, Swyngedouw E (2019) Exploring insurgent urban mobilizations: from urban social movements to urban political movements? In: Schwanen T, van Kempen R (eds) Handbook of urban geography. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham/Northampton, pp 369–382 Koç M, MacRae R, Desjardins E, Roberts W (2008) Getting civil about food: the interactions between civil society and the state to advance sustainable food systems in Canada. J Hunger Environ Nutr 3(2–3):122–144 Le Velly R (2019) Allowing for the projective dimension of agency in analysing alternative food networks. Sociol Rural 59(1):2–22 Loopstra R, Tarasuk V (2012) The relationship between food banks and household food insecurity among low-income Toronto families. Can Public Policy 38(4):497–514 Manganelli A (2013) Nurturing urban development. The impact of urban agriculture in the Brussels-Capital Region. Dissertation, Politecnico of Milan

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Manganelli A (2019) Unlocking socio-political dynamics of alternative food networks through a hybrid governance approach. Highlights from the Brussels-Capital Region and Toronto. Dissertation, KULeuven, VUB, Leuven, Brussels (Belgium) Manganelli A (2020) Realising local food policies: a comparison between Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region’s stories through the lenses of reflexivity and co-learning. J Environ Policy Plan 22(3):366–380 Manganelli A, Moulaert F (2018) Hybrid governance tensions fuelling self-reflexivity in alternative food networks: the case of the Brussels GASAP (solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture). Local Environ 23(8):830–845 Manganelli A, Moulaert F (2019) Scaling out access to land for urban agriculture. Governance hybridities in the Brussels-Capital Region. Land Use Policy 82:391–400 Manganelli A, Van den Broeck P, Moulaert F (2019) Socio-political dynamics of alternative food networks: a hybrid governance approach. Territ Politics Gov 8(3):299–318 Mansfield B, Mendes W (2013) Municipal food strategies and integrated approaches to urban agriculture: exploring three cases from the global north. Int Plan Stud 18(1):37–60 Marsden T, Morley A (2014) Sustainable food systems: building a new paradigm. Routledge, London/New York McFarlane C (2010) The comparative city: knowledge, learning, urbanism. Int J Urban Reg Res 34(4):725–742 Mendes W, Sonnino R (2018) Urban food governance in the global north. In: Marsden T (ed) Handbook of nature. SAGE, London, pp 543–560 Miller S, Blay-Palmer A (2018) Assessment and planning of the Toronto City region food system—synthesis report. https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CA1111EN/. Accessed 25 Jan 2022 Miller B, Nicholls W (2013) Social movements in urban society: the city as a space of politicization. Urban Geogr 34(4):452–473 Monteiro C, Cannon G, Levy RB, Claro R, Moubarac J-C, Martins AP et  al (2012) The food system. Ultra-processing: the big issue for nutrition, disease, health, well-being. World Nutr 3(12):527–569 Moragues-Faus A, Morgan K (2015) Reframing the foodscape: the emergent world of urban food policy. Environ Plan A Econ Space 47(7):1558–1573 Morgan K (2015) Nourishing the city: the rise of the urban food question in the Global North. Urban Stud 52(8):1379–1394 Moulaert F, Van Dyck B (2013) Framing social innovation research: a sociology of knowledge perspective. In: Moulaert F, MacCallum D, Mehmood A, Hamdouch A (eds) The international handbook on social innovation. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham/Northampton, pp 466–480 Moulaert F, MacCallum D, Mehmood A, Hamdouch A (eds) (2013) The international handbook on social innovation: collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary research. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham/Northampton Pothukuchi K, Kaufman JL (2000) The food system: a stranger to the planning field. J Am Plan Assoc 66(2):113–124 Reynolds K, Block D, Bradley K (2018) Food justice scholar-activism and activist-scholarship. Int J Crit Geogr ACME 17(4):988–998 Robinson J (2011) Cities in a world of cities: the comparative gesture. Int J Urban Reg Res 35(1):1–23 Santo R, Moragues-Faus A (2019) Towards a trans-local food governance: exploring the transformative capacity of food policy assemblages in the US and UK. Geoforum 98:75–87 Silva EA, Healey P, Harris N, Van den Broeck P (eds) (2015) The Routledge handbook of planning research methods. Routledge, London/New York Sonnino R, Tegoni CLS, De Cunto A (2019) The challenge of systemic food change: insights from cities. Cities 85:110–116

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Stahlbrand L, Roberts W (2020) Local food system responses to COVID-19: Toronto and its city region. https://www.fao.org/in-­action/food-­for-­cities-­programme/news/detail/en/c/1275076/. Accessed 22 Jan 2022 Tollefson J (2020) Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely. Nature 584(7820):175–176 Tornaghi C, Van Dyck B (2015) Informed gardening activism: steering the public food and land agenda. Local Environ 20(10):1247–1264 Toronto Food Policy Council (2012) GrowTo: an urban agriculture action plan for Toronto. https:// www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/pe/bgrd/backgroundfile-­51558.pdf. Accessed 25 Jan 2022 Toronto Public Health (2010) Food connections: toward a healthy and sustainable food system for Toronto: a consultation report (February 2010). http://torontourbangrowers.org/img/upload/ food_connections_report.pdf. Accessed 25 Jan 2022 Van Dyck B, Tornaghi C, Halder S, Van Der Haide E, Saunders E (2018) The making of a strategizing platform: from politicizing the food movement in urban contexts to political urban agroecology. In: Tornaghi C, Certomà C (eds) Urban gardening as politics. Routledge, New York/ London, pp 183–201 Willems K, Swinnen G (2012) Retailing in Belgium—a managerial perspective. Eur Retail Res 26(I):155–183 Williams JM, Holt-Giménez E (eds) (2017) Land justice: re-imagining land, food, and the commons. Food First Books, Oakland Zitouni B, Cahn L, Deligne C, Pons-Rotbardt N, Prignot N (2018) Terres des villes: enquêtes potagères aux premières saisons du 21e siècle. Éditions de l’éclat, Paris

Chapter 2

Characterising Urban Food Movements

Abstract  This chapter introduces the reader to the world of urban food movements. It starts by outlining the key problems in food systems that contemporary food movements aim to tackle; these problems involve power and democracy, food security and health, social-racial justice, ecology, and climate. It then highlights the proactive will to build alternative food systems informed by key principles, such as food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice. The chapter follows by describing the emergence of urban areas as epicentres of experimentation around alternative food systems, starting from grass-roots organising around land and urban food production to the challenge of addressing the food system as a whole. After elucidating key strategies used by food movements to foster food system change in urban areas, this chapter concludes by stressing the relevance of a hybrid and relational perspective on the governance of urban food movements and food system change. Keywords  Urban food movements · Food system change · Food policy councils · Urban-regional food strategies · Trans-local food policy networks

Food, like no other commodity, allows for a political reawakening as it touches our lives in so many ways (Welsh and McRae 1998, p. 241).

2.1 Problems in Food Systems Failures in food systems are undeniably the key triggers for the genesis and development of alternative food movements (and urban food movements therein), qualifying their claims, discourses, alternative principles, and modes of organising. In fact, there are several motives of criticism, opposition, and contestation advanced by alternative food movements towards mainstream food systems (Clendenning et al. 2016). These failures can broadly fit under the areas of “power and democracy”, “food security and health”, “social-racial justice”, and “ecology and climate”. Although each of these areas shed light on problems in food systems from different © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_2

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angles, they are tightly interrelated. For instance, claims for more ecologically sustainable food systems would fall short without addressing the vulnerabilities of the most disadvantaged social groups, and thus without considering issues of social justice. Yet, to give a contextual background on key demands made by food movements, it is useful to briefly illustrate each of these food system failure areas separately, given that they constitute anchor points to plea for food system transformation in different geographical realities.

2.1.1 Power and Democracy A first big driver of opposition and contestation relates to issues of power and control over the food chain. Indeed, interconnected processes of industrialisation, urbanisation, improvements in technology and transport, as well as globalisation, have fostered dominant food systems in which food chain operations are increasingly concentrated in the hands of few players (Steel 2013). Food system scholars have labelled this reality the advent of a “corporate food regime” (Friedmann 1993; Holt Giménez 2011), characterised among other things by agricultural liberalisation provoking a massive expansion of global agriculture and food trade and by the monopoly of powerful agri-food corporations1 (Holt Giménez 2011, p.  111). Concrete expressions of power concentration in mainstream food systems are the merging of operations and the capturing of larger shares of the market by a few agro-chemical and seed companies, such as Bayer and Monsanto, ChemChina and Syngenta, and Dow and Dupont (IPES Food 2017a). Emblematic is also the escalation of a few big super-market players, their dominance in the retail sector, and their capacity to set rules on quality and aesthetic control, labelling, branding, and pricing (Burch and Lawrence 2005; Lang 2005). Furthermore, industrialised and globally integrated modes of production have led to processes of land concentration and of privatisation of land ownership in the hands of fewer and bigger farm enterprises (McMichael 2015). As a result, while agricultural land is used in favour of big farming operations or profitable land development, small-scale farmers end up losing access to land and being increasingly vulnerable and unable to compete in global markets (De Schutter and Vanloqueren 2011). In recognising the uneven power relations in the way food systems are organised and governed, alternative food movements denounce the injustices stemming from the economic and political dominance of powerful actors (De Schutter 2017), and call for the rebuilding food systems that are more democratic in nature (Lang 1998;  There are academic discussions on whether the “corporate food regime” is a third standalone food regime, distinct from the previous second food regime (1950s–1970s), which was boosted by the “Green Revolution”, or rather, whether the former constitutes a phase of the latter. However, for many Marxist oriented researchers in food studies, the corporate food regime signals a “neoliberal” shift in capitalist food systems, marked by agriculture liberalisation, the establishment of agreements and institutional bodies such as the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and the World Trade Organisation, and the enhanced role of global agri-food corporations (Holt Giménez 2011). 1

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Renting et al. 2012). This means food systems in which all actors, including marginalised agents such as small-scale farmers, processors, distributors, as well as citizen-­ consumers, have voice and power to collectively decide how food is sourced, produced, distributed, and consumed.

2.1.2 Food Security and Health A second area of concern in food systems revolves around issues of food security, health, and nutrition. Taking a broad yet highly debated definition from the World Food Summit of 1996 (refined in 2001), food security is a condition in which “(…) all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 2002). According to estimations by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), over the last years the level of world food insecurity has consistently increased; in 2019, the number of people in the world who were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity was estimated at 750 million, corresponding to 9.7% of the world’s population (FAO et al. 2020). This number has certainly worsened as a result of the effects of the 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic. This means that nowadays food insecurity, malnutrition, and obesity still affect large sections of the world’s population, a reality that undermines the ability to meet the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending hunger and achieving food security and improved nutrition through sustainable agriculture by 2030. Agro-food scholars also observe how cycles of crisis and socio-economic instability to which food systems are subject further exacerbate food insecurity problems (Holt Giménez 2011). The global financial crisis of 2008–2009, for instance, provoked a spark in food prices followed by political protests all around the world and revived global concerns over food insecurity (Morgan and Sonnino 2010). The contemporary Covid-19 pandemic has also shown the vulnerability of our food systems towards ecological and health crises, causing a drastic upraise of emergency food networks across the world, and threatening the capacity of global food chains to guarantee food security for all (IPES Food 2020). These events demonstrate how hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition are global public health problems affecting Global South and Global North countries alike (Morgan and Sonnino 2010). The need to remedy food poverty, obesity, and inadequate nutrition has provided strong anchor points for a variety of food security oriented initiatives in the North American context, but also in UK, Western Europe, and elsewhere (Dowler and Lambie-Mumford 2015; Sonnino and Hanmer 2016). Food movement activists as well as scholars highlight how the capacity of modern industrialised food systems to produce more efficiently and in larger quantities has not resulted in the equal distribution and access to healthy and nutritionally adequate food for all (De Schutter 2017). Moreover, being drivers of urbanisation and increasing food demand, urban areas stand out as places in which disparities in access to healthy and affordable food are particularly poignant (Bedore 2010). In fact, one of many

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challenges identified is the presence of (urban) “food deserts”—areas with scarce and unequal availability and accessibility to fresh, healthy, and affordable food (Battersby and Crush 2014). urban food movements denounce a reality in which citizens and people are exposed to obesogenic “food environments”,2 where low quality and cheap ultra-processed food is often the easiest and most accessible choice (Raja et al. 2017). Overall, it has become evident how improving food security requires structural and systemic solutions, where mainstream food systems, state institutions, but also the reproduction of individual and collective consumption habits, hold shared responsibility and are called into question.

2.1.3 Social and Racial Justice A third emerging food system failure area raised by alternative food movement practitioners as well as scholars involves social justice aspects related to race and class disparities in food systems. This critique overlaps with food insecurity concerns and issues of power and control over the food system, but places a stronger emphasis on race and class as playing a key role in the organisation of food production, distribution, and consumption (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, p. 4). In particular, on how minorities and historically marginalised communities, such as communities of colour, Indigenous people, ethnic groups, and so on, bear the greatest consequences of (unjust) food systems (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Reynolds and Cohen 2016). Examples are Indigenous people being denied land access rights for food production or being displaced from their lands; the presence of discriminatory agricultural regulations not recognising the rights of Black and minority farmers (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, p.  51); or the reproduction of “racialized” food deserts, in which disadvantaged minorities such as communities of colour are particularly exposed to unhealthy food environments (Horst et  al. 2017). In this perspective, food systems are considered unjust as they are inscribed in deeper structures of discrimination or, even, as “institutionalised racism” (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Glennie and Alkon 2018). Concerns around race and class aspects have been particularly central in North American activism and scholarly debate surrounding alternative food movements. This is largely explained by the US history and tradition of civil rights movements, which are particularly sensitive to “historic and contemporary legacies of racism and structural inequality” (Passidomo 2013, p. 91). Indeed, publications from North American scholar-activists such as Food Justice by Gottlieb and Joshi (2010), Cultivating Food Justice by Alkon and Agyeman (2011), The New Food Activism by Alkon and Guthman (2017), or Beyond the Kale by Reynolds and Cohen (2016), have contributed to popularising concerns on race and class disparities in (urban)  “Food environments” has become a widely used term to indicate the physical, economic, political, and socio-cultural context that conditions people’s decisions on their mode of food preparation and consumption (High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, HLPE 2017).

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food systems. These and other works shed light on numerous food initiatives in which minorities, low-income groups, and people of colour engage in urban agriculture or other community food projects as levers for social and political emancipation (Reynolds and Cohen 2016). Although issues of social justice and minority rights in food systems have been more deeply rooted in a North American context, they are indisputably global matters. As further revealed by food chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, global food chains largely depend on a complex flow of undocumented migrants and seasonal workers as a global workforce (Agyeman and Giacalone 2020). Issues such as the rights of minority workers and seasonal migrants in food and agriculture, the food insecurity conditions experienced by new comers or refugees in cities, or more generally, the existence of socio-racial disparities in accessing adequate and nutritious food, are relevant matters for many other contexts of the Global North as well as the Global South.

2.1.4 Ecology and Climate A fourth major critical area of food systems relates to the environment, ecology, and climate. The impact of diverse food systems’ activities on ecology and environmental health, in terms of natural resource use, energy consumption, and related Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, is supported by sound scientific evidence (Vermeulen et al. 2012). Despite variations among regions and countries, it is estimated that food systems contribute to about one third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (IPES Food 2016; Thornton 2012). Although the largest share of emissions comes from food production activities (Vermeulen et al. 2012), the ecological impact of food systems also involves several steps of the food chain, including packaging, transport, storage, distribution, consumption practices, as well as food waste and disposal (Garnett 2011). To give an illustrative example, food waste and its disposal in landfills and incinerators is a relevant contributor to GHG emissions, most of all in the form of methane (FAO 2013). Considering that one third of food produced for human consumption goes to waste in the various passages of the food chain, the environmental impact of food losses is a significant indicator of a food system’s malfunction (FAO 2013). Thus, overall, alternative food movements denounce the environmental damages of food production practices in terms of agro-­ biodiversity loss, soil erosion, pollution, and resource depletion (De Schutter 2014). In particular, industrial farming practices based on mechanisation, mono-cropping as well as the heavy use of chemical inputs such as synthetic pesticides, fertilisers, or antibiotics for intensive livestock farming are seen as particularly threatening to ecological as well as human health (De Schutter and Vanloqueren 2011). Moreover, since climate change is one of the most urgent challenges of our era, the nexus between food systems and climate change is likely to be at the core of the

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upcoming international urban food governance agenda.3 In December 2020, for instance, over 250 players, including city leaders, other sub-national actors, and advocacy organisations from around the world, assembled virtually to sign the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration.4 Launched 1 year ahead of the COP26 in Glasgow, this declaration calls for amplifying the voice and recognising the critical role of local authorities (supported by higher state levels) in fighting the climate emergency by building more sustainable food systems. At the top of the agenda is ensuring food systems that are respectful of environmental as well as human health, in which anthropogenic activities steward or even enhance the sustainability of our planetary ecosystems. Just as in the other food system failures described above, ecology and climate cannot be understood as a standalone issue, but rather as deeply interlinked and intricately interrelated to the other areas of concern mentioned above. For instance, problems of food security and nutrition cannot be addressed without asking who controls the food chain, where the priorities of the state and food industry lie, and how food security can be implemented through modes of production that are more respectful of land, resources, and ecological health. Reactions against the unsustainability of food systems and injustices therein are the departure point for contemporary food movements’ practices and discourses across the world. The next section dives into these responses—more specifically, how food movements advocate for alternative food systems in terms of alternative values, ideologies, and organisational principles.

2.2 Mobilising Alternatives There are various ways in which alternative food movements claim individual and collective rights to more healthy, sustainable, and fair food systems. Without wanting to simplify the heterogeneity of values and ideologies that drive food movements, this section addresses three major principles that inform the development of alternative food initiatives in their attempts to contest or subvert mainstream and commodified food systems: food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice.

2.2.1 Food Sovereignty Food sovereignty emerged in the 1990s as a radical movement against the processes of liberalisation and the concentration of power that characterise corporate-led food systems (Patel 2009; Wittman et  al. 2010). It was the international peasant  In October 2021, Barcelona hosted the 7th Global Forum of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), a global network of cities engaged in urban food governance. The key theme of the gathering was “sustainable food and the climate emergency”. See for instance https://www. barcelona-­milanpact2021.com/, accessed 10 Feb 2022. 4  For an overview of the declaration, see the link https://www.glasgowdeclaration.org/about, accessed 18 Apr 2021. 3

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movement La Vía Campesina that launched the concept of food sovereignty during the World Food Summit in 1996. At its core, food sovereignty defends the rights and livelihood of small-scale producers, hampered by the development of liberalised and globalised agriculture and agri-food policies, and aims to restore people’s power over the food system (Anderson 2018). Indeed, as producers and local communities are deprived from access and control over land and means of production, they lack power and voice to decide how to organise the food system upon which their very livelihoods depend (Trauger 2017). One of the most widespread and cited interpretations of food sovereignty comes from the Nyéléni declaration of 2007, where more than 500 food sovereignty representatives across countries gathered to design a common agenda. The Nyéléni declaration explicitly defines food sovereignty as The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. (Food sovereignty) puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations (…) (Nyéléni 2007, pp. 673–674).

Despite the existence of different interpretations and applications of food sovereignty across social movements, organisations, and geographical contexts (Trauger 2017), what is important is that food sovereignty raises structural questions of power and democracy in food systems (De Schutter 2017). In fact, it fundamentally questions who controls the means of production such as land, water, seeds, etc., considering access to land and key resources, as well as the restoration of ecologically sustainable food systems as fundamental requirements for food sovereignty (Borras et al. 2015). Seeking for alternatives, food sovereignty movements advocate for food systems from the ground-up, whereby communities re-establish lost relationships with farmers and regain control on how food is grown, for what purposes, and for whom (Nyéléni 2007). Food sovereignty is therefore a political demand for de-commodifying food and re-discovering the social relations at the basis of food production, supply, and consumption. In sum, the concept of food sovereignty demands alternatives to capitalist-oriented modes of food production and supply, which are based on privatisation, power concentration, and top-down decision-­ making. Given its approach, food sovereignty has been properly defined as a radical and transformative ideology (Holt Giménez 2011), demanding radical reforms of the food system as well as of the broader structure of society (Magdoff et al. 2000, p. 188). This includes subverting mechanisms and ideologies that lay at the basis of modern notions of property rights, including privatisation and concentration of land and means of production. Since its origins in the mostly peasant movements of the Global South (Clendenning et  al. 2016), the principle of food sovereignty has spread globally, inspiring a wider range of food initiatives and organisations operating at different scales and in diverse geographical contexts. Transposed to urban environments, the concept of food sovereignty can help capture the demand of grass-roots actors for building community-oriented and people-centred food systems. This involves, for

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instance, enabling and protecting urban-rural networks based on short food supply chains that are able to guarantee a livelihood security for farmers. It also encompasses struggles for the rights of inhabitants to produce, access, and prepare sustainable and culturally appropriate food. Urban food sovereignty also embodies demands for supportive policy frameworks that enable citizens to grow food in urban areas and to build greater food self-reliance (Tornaghi 2017). Yet, inevitably, urban food sovereignty also brings the attention to the multi-scalarity of the food system(s) in which urban areas are embedded, thus for instance raising questions about the right of minority workers in the food chain, the monopoly of the meat industry, and the intensive modes of production characterising agro-food systems that supply food to urban inhabitants. Finally, the concept of food sovereignty also incarnates aspirations and requests to implement more democratic and citizens-­ centred ways of deciding about food systems. Here comes the connection to food democracy.

2.2.2 Food Democracy It can be argued that food sovereignty requires food democracy to be implemented. The notion of food democracy opposes the conception of food as a mere commodity and calls for a democratic re-awakening from the bottom-up (Hassanein 2003). Essential to food democracy is the active participation of people—citizens, civil society initiatives, organised groups, and all actors of the food system—in orienting food policies and taking decisions on the food system (Bornemann and Weiland 2019). Analogously to food sovereignty, food democracy contests privatisation and corporate control over the food system, lamenting the lack of transparency in and knowledge about the food chain, the dominance of supermarket forces, and the reduction of citizens to individualistic consumers (Welsh and MacRae 1998). Indeed, food democracy considers citizens and all actors of the food chain not as passive consumers but rather as active agents of food system transformation. It calls for rights and responsibilities of civil society to regain knowledge and control over the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Furthermore, it claims for the right of people to demand reforms from below and to take an active part in decisions on the direction of agro-food policies at different scales (Hassanein 2008). The concept of food democracy was introduced in the intellectual debate and then further popularised by authors such as Lang (1999) and Hassanein (2003, 2008). Lang refers to food democracy as the political pressure from below to democratize food systems. Resonating with food sovereignty concerns, the author describes food democracy as a reactionary force against the pressures of industrialisation and globalisation on food systems, expressing the need to eat “adequately, affordably, safely, humanly and in ways one considers civil and culturally appropriate” (Lang 1999, p.  218). Hassainen (2008) defines food democracy as “a contested terrain, representing a struggle between those economic and social forces seeking to control the system and those citizens seeking to create more sustainable and democratic

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food systems” (Hassanein 2008, p. 287). Linked to the concept of “food citizenship”, food democracy asks questions about the democratic nature of decision-­ making structures and institutions that govern the food system and stresses the role of civil society initiatives and bottom-up forces as political actors in the food system (Welsh and Mac Rae 1998). It calls for forms of enacted or radical democracy in which relations among civil society, states, and markets are re-negotiated and re-­ defined. In this sense, food democracy also resonates with the notion of food as a “Commons” (Vivero-Pol et al. 2018), in which civil society initiatives (in-between states and markets) emerge as the protagonists in forging new social relations, redefining rules, and determining policies and priorities around desired food systems. As a result, people and citizens can become political actors who put food democracy into practice by their very acts of gardening, farming, preparing, sharing, or eating food collectively (Bornemann and Weiland 2019; Davies et al. 2019). They can contribute to creating alternative food systems by taking part in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) network or food cooperative. Furthermore, people can claim their right to know about the nature of production systems, defend the rights of farmers or disadvantaged workers in the food chain, or oppose environmentally unsustainable modes of food production (Alkon and Guthman 2017). Engaged actors fighting for food democracy can also build organisations and coalitions asking for food system change at different scales, as part of a collective social and political project of food system transformation.

2.2.3 Food Justice Food justice is another lens through which alternative food movements seek transformative and systemic change in food systems. Food justice has similarities to food sovereignty in that it seeks to dismantle unjust power relations across scales of the food system and calls for the empowerment of the most marginal actors in the system (Cadieux and Slocum 2015). While food sovereignty is an ideology originating from peasant struggles in the Global South, the rise of food justice-inspired movements is located in North American urban contexts (Clendenning et  al. 2016). Among other factors for the surge of a food justice movement are: people’s exposure to the fast food industry, the obesity epidemic affecting North American citizen-­consumers, and the presence of food deserts in the most disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). With its emphasis on class, race, and socioeconomic disparities in food systems, the food justice movement is situated in historical anti-oppression and civil rights movements (Agyeman and McEntee 2014). An example of a food justice initiative is the Black Panthers Party’s Free Breakfast Program for Children. Born at the end of the 1960s in West Oakland and then expanding nationwide, this initiative aims to liberate Black American children from the slavery of hunger. As such, it can be considered as part of an expression of a wider emancipatory and anti-oppression ideology that aims to give the Black American community the power to determine its own destiny (Heynen 2009).

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The intellectual debate on food justice largely takes from the scholarly research tradition in environmental justice (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Agyeman and McEntee 2014). The environmental justice critique focuses on how, despite exerting a lower impact on the environment, disadvantaged communities (such as low-­ income groups, minorities, or people of colour) are often the most exposed to environmental burdens or injustices in accessing resources and environmental benefits (Agyeman and Evans 2004). Examples include the proximity of low-income neighbourhoods to toxic dumps, the exposure to chemical pesticides particularly affecting minority workers, or the difficulties of marginalised farmers to access and secure cultivable land (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, p. 204). Analogously, food justice advocates taking into account the processes as well as the distributional outcomes that leave certain people disempowered (Raja et al. 2017). In this sense, food insecurity cannot be understood or addressed in solely quantitative terms, as lack of access to sufficient quantities of food. On the contrary, tackled from a justice perspective, food insecurity should be addressed by looking at broader structures of disparity— based on economic disadvantage, income, ethnicity, race, sex, culture, and so on— that prevent certain groups from having control over access to means of production, resources, and adequate food (Moragues-Faus 2017). Thus, in a food justice framework, attention should be given to who is left behind in processes and outcomes of agri-food policies at different scales. Indeed, food justice movements ask for changes in dominant agri-food policies or state rules, with the purpose of remedying structural forms of inequity affecting the most marginalised groups (Alkon and Guthman 2017). In doing so, food justice raises systemic questions about race, class, and socio-economic disparities, analysing and critiquing power and control in the entire food chain. The scientific debate reports numerous examples of initiatives embracing a food justice framework, especially in the North American context. A renowned example is the Just Food organisation, active in New York City since 1995. This organisation can be defined as a CSA network connecting regional farmers with citizens in the different boroughs of New York. It defines itself as a pioneer in food justice seeking community-driven solutions to inequities in food systems.5 Another example is the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, operating the so-called “D-town” farm. This organisation addresses food insecurity in Detroit with a clear orientation towards enhancing social justice in the Black community (White 2011). For the Detroit urban food movement, cultivating land is a means to fight for political, social, and economic rights of the African American community, and to reverse unjust conditions particularly affecting people of colour and marginalised groups (Pothukuchi 2015). For example, the 7 acres D-Town Farm set up in a city owned park is not just a place dedicated to the growth of food, but also a place where community empowerment and food justice is cultivated. More in general, food justice values and claims often underpin the establishment and operation of various grass-­ roots initiatives such as urban farms, food hubs, Food Policy Councils (FPCs), other food coalitions, and so on.  See for instance https://www.justfood.org/faqs, accessed 11 Sep 2020.

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In a way, food justice reminds food democracy that disparities in food systems should not be overlooked by alternative food movements. Rather, these movements should be aware of the systems of inequity and power structures that prevent the most marginal actors (be they racialized groups, ethnically diverse neighbourhoods, migrants, refugees, or small-scale producers and processors) from being an active part of the organisation of food systems (Moragues-Faus 2017). Food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice are perspectives that inspire the practice of alternative food movements across geographical contexts, being often intermixed in discourses and practices of food initiatives across territories. Although these ideologies are not exhaustive of all the spectrum of value systems that motivate alternative (urban) food movements,6 they signify the transformative aspirations of alternative food initiatives. Indeed, these ideologies have in common an ambition to transform dominant power structures upon which mainstream food systems are organised and governed. Moving a step further into the world of urban food movements, the following section illustrates how urban contexts have emerged as epicentres of attempts to foster change in food systems, striving to implement greater food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice.

2.3 The Rise of the Contemporary Urban Food Movement The contemporary urban food movement in the Global North, which was followed by an increasing interest by agro-food scholars in its development and challenges, can be traced back to the post-World War II era of the 1960s and 1970s. This era was characterised by enhanced neoliberal trends towards economic deregulation and state restructuring, particularly visible in the North American context (Koç et  al. 2008). Key elements of this phase were the public policy changes encouraging greater austerity, the weakening of social welfare programmes, a diminishing role of the state in the economy, and an accelerated move towards economic globalisation (Fisher 2017; Koç et al. 2008). The early 1980s were also characterised by a dramatic socio-economic recession and financial downturn, severely hitting the North American society as well as the Western world in general (Fisher 2017; Winne 2008). In this context, many North American urban citizens began to experience worsened conditions of food insecurity, hunger, and poverty, fostered by rising unemployment and precarious social safety nets (Poppendieck 2014). During this time, food banks and charitable food distribution networks began to escalate, turning quickly from emergency food networks to institutionalised means of dealing with food insecurity (Riches 2018). At the same time, the 1960s marked the start of a period of new social and political mobilisation inspired by values of social democracy, civil and social rights, equality, liberation, and aspiring for a radical transformation of society (Goodman  Among other ideologies, we may mention those related to the enhancement of (community) food security, inspiring many food organisations (particularly in North American realities, but also in the Global South). Other principles are, for instance, the right to food as well as food as a Commons, which are related to food democracy and food sovereignty. 6

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et al. 2012). Part of this broader mobilisation was the revival of civil society engagement in environmentalism as well as food activism, claiming for more sustainable and equitable food systems (Koç et al. 2008; Winne 2008). This civil society activism was pushed by a mounting social awareness of the unsustainability of food production, distribution, and consumption practices characterising dominant globalised and liberalised food economies (Friedmann 1993; Koç et  al. 2008). Publications such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962), Food for People, Not for Profit by Michael Jacobson and Catherine Lerza (1975), or Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé (1975), are some of the intellectual expressions of this mobilisation. Over this time of enhanced food activism, new concepts of “Community Food Security” started to emerge, stressing the need to protect the rights of both disadvantaged urban consumers as well as marginalised producers using sustainable farming practices (Fisher 2017, p.  6). In simple terms, the basic idea of community food security implies that by relinking food production with consumption, it is possible to meet the dietary needs of food insecure citizens while developing re-localised food systems (Allen 1999). FoodShare Toronto, one of the major community food security organisations in North America, exemplifies this attempt to develop alternative approaches to dealing with food insecurity across urban communities through initiatives such as community kitchens, community gardens, universal food box programmes, and similar initiatives (see Chap. 5). More broadly, and exemplary of the nascence of the community food security concept, is the genesis of the “Community Food Security Coalition” established in North America in 1996. Being an organisation of organisations, this coalition involves about 300 members “from social and economic justice, anti-hunger, environmental, community development, sustainable agriculture, community gardening and other fields”.7 Among other things, this coalition has contributed to popularising and spreading ideas and initiatives such as CSAs, farmers’ markets, farm-to-cafeteria, FPCs, and other types of food movement initiatives that promote sustainable food systems and community self-reliance.8 It is within this broad context that a new role emerged for urban level actors involved in food system change. One key marker of the rise of cities mobilising for food system change is the establishment and development of FPCs. As detailed later in this chapter, FPCs can be defined as organisations, or multi-stakeholder platforms, encompassing a variety of actors from different sectors of the food system as well as different professional and organisational spheres (e.g. civil society, state, private sector). FPCs can be regarded as mechanisms for developing a politically engaged food citizenry (Campbell 2004; Welsh and MacRae 1998). They aim to enact forms of direct and participative democracy where alternative values and principles regarding the organisation of food systems—such as the ones expressed in the ideologies of food democracy and food justice—can have a voice and be represented in decision-making concerning the food system (Welsh and MacRae 1998).  Cited from http://foodsecurity.org/aboutcfsc/, accessed 14 Apr 2021.  See for instance http://foodsecurity.org/CFS_projects.pdf, accessed 14 Apr 2021.

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The history of the establishment and development of food councils overlaps significantly with the history of the contemporary urban food movement. The first food council was established in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1982, and was called the Knoxville-Knox County Food Policy Council. Successive FPCs include the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) in 1991, and the Hartford Food Policy Council in 1992. As illustrated by the historic food activist and representative of the Hartford food movement Mark Winnie (2008), pioneer food councils aimed to address conditions of food insecurity and inequality in food access characterising North American urban communities. In particular, the engagement of the Hartford FPC in food system action involves a radical critique of the industrialised food system and aims to build an alternative urban food system through integrated actions encompassing: community gardens, food coops, farmers’ markets, CSAs, farmland preservation, sensitisation, and educational programmes (Winnie 2008, p.  13). As such, the Hartford FPC’s plan contains some of the key areas of action qualifying contemporary urban food strategies. Nowadays, the urban food movement has reached an international or even a global scale, and it has been defined as one of the fastest growing social movements of our time (Morgan 2013). Indeed, an increasing number of local authorities have followed the example of pioneer global cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London, and others, undertaking an active role in building a better local food system. As illustrated later in this chapter, the development of international networks, platforms, and forums of cities engaged in local food policies is one of the recent trademarks of the contemporary urban food movement. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), one of the major global networks on urban food policies, currently encompasses more than 210 signatory cities from all over the world. These range from mega cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America (such as Johannesburg, Antananarivo, Beijing, Guangzhou, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Lima) to big cities of the Global North (London, Paris, New York, San Francisco) to small or middle-­ size urban areas (Ghent, Utrecht, Trento, or Florence). The importance of addressing urban food systems was also stressed during the UN Habitat III conference in 2016 establishing a “New Urban Agenda” for the next 20 years (IPES Food 2017b). As the world population is becoming more urban, cities are confronted with pressing questions about the preservation of land and agriculture, the strengthening of urban and rural linkages, and the planning of more sustainable food systems able to improve citizens’ food security.

2.4 Reconnecting Cities with Food Production: The Land Question Addressing food system issues starting from land comes almost natural, considering that land and other material resources for food production are at the heart of the food system. Indeed, the presence of fertile and healthy soil is essential to provide food,

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fibres, and the basic components of our nutrition (IPES Food 2016; Williams and Holt-Giménez 2017). In general, the organisation of land access and its use is one of the key pillars of the organisation of human settlements and societies. Deciding what uses of land best serve the needs of a given community should be under the collective responsibility of the community. The value of land can be judged from the perspective of financial returns and the generation of profit, or, rather, it can be regarded in terms of community development, ecological sustainability, and restoration (Tornaghi and Dehaene 2021). Reflecting on how to preserve land and enhance sustainable land use practices is of outmost importance if we consider that we live in an increasingly urbanised society, where more than a half of the global population lives in urban areas—a population which is estimated to increase to more than two thirds by 2050 (United Nations 2018). Furthermore, according to UN Habitat’s estimations, the land area occupied by cities expands at even higher rates than the population growth; furthermore, “it has been projected that by 2030, the urban population of developing countries will double, while the area covered by cites would triple” (UN-Habitat 2016, p.  22). Among other effects, an increasingly urbanised society means a greater impact of urban areas on productive land, resources, and fragile ecosystems. This can lead to loss and encroachment of agricultural land, causing scarcity of fertile soil, water, and other resources necessary to guarantee food production, consumption, and sustainable livelihoods. At the same time, an increasingly urban world population also implies that more land and resources are required and need to be sustainably preserved to feed a greater number and variety of people. As a result, one of the fundamental questions for the food movement concerns how to match urbanisation with the preservation and enhancement of cultivable land and the development of more sustainable forms of food production. Overall, a great deal of bottom-up mobilisation takes place around the issue of accessing land and productive spaces for urban food production and shorter supply chains (Certomà and Tornaghi 2015). Guerrilla gardening is a renowned example, where groups of citizens self-organise reinventing public spaces for alternative uses, such as edible planting, greening, or small-scale food production (Spijker and Parra 2018). More broadly, initiatives such as urban gardening, urban agriculture, CSA, regional producers-consumers networks, local markets and so on, seek to foster alternative uses of land for local food production, creating closer and more transparent relations between production and consumption in urban areas and their hinterlands. The scientific literature on urban agriculture and access to land documents the number of ways in which bottom-up initiatives have initiated forms of urban food production by means of informal or formal strategies of land access, such as temporary occupation, squatting, or interim use of development sites (Gorgolewski et al. 2011; Wekerle and Classens 2015). Other strategies include the establishment of Community Land Trusts and similar mechanisms that seek to re-affirm community control over land. Furthermore, as illustrated in Chaps. 3 and 4, accessing land and spaces for food production requires grass-roots movements to build relations and often go through conflictual interactions with diverse actors, from private agents such as land owners or real estate developers, to policy and planning structures

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conditioning access to land. The picture becomes even more complex or blurred considering that in many cases local administrators or policy officials are also actively part of the food growing movement itself, playing a double role as appointed professionals as well as active supporters of the movement. Box 2.1 below illustrates this complexity in the case of Detroit.

Box 2.1: Urban Agriculture in Rust Belt Cities: Short Notes From Detroit and Buffalo Although the revival of the contemporary urban food (growing) movement in Detroit dates back to the early 2000s—having had an earlier wave around the 1960s–1970s—towards the year 2013 some interesting dynamics around land access occurred. In that year, for instance, the City of Detroit adopted for the first time an urban agriculture zoning ordinance, declaring urban agriculture as a legitimate land use. A local planning official who was also an urban agriculture activist and part of the Detroit Black Food Security Network played a pivotal role in convincing the Detroit City Planning Commission to work on the ordinance (IPES Food 2017b, pp. 63–72; Paddeu 2017). Yet, the legalisation of urban agriculture has not meant that growing food in Detroit’s urban land is free from controversies. On the contrary, obtaining consensus and support from different city departments has been a major obstacle in the development of the ordinance. Furthermore, the implementation of gardening and agriculture sites has been hampered by opaque and burdensome procedures for making public land available and usable by citizens-gardeners. Indeed, in the view of mainstream administrative officials, urban agriculture is, at best, a stopgap activity waiting for future land developments (Colasanti et al. 2012). Furthermore, very controversial has been the promotion of large-­ scale entrepreneurial farming activities fostered by private players. Here the reference is, in particular, to the decision to sell 144 acres of city land to the entrepreneur John Hanz to build “the largest urban farm in the world” (see Paddeu 2017, for a good reconstruction of the process). Indeed, regarded as a form of urban “land-grabbing”, this type of privately led initiative was opposed by more grass-roots and community-based perspectives on urban food growing in Detroit. Some of the same dynamics occurred in other shrinking cities in the US, such as Buffalo. More or less in the same years as Detroit, city officials in Buffalo made progress in recognising urban agriculture’s importance through actions such as city resolutions, ordinances, and the revision of the zoning plan—the Green Code—legitimising urban agriculture as a permissible land use (Raja et al. 2014). Just as in Detroit, policy support for urban food growing in Buffalo is largely the product of very strong grass-roots activism and mobilisation (personal exchanges with Buffalo’s food movement’s activists), preceding state action. Exemplary are organisations such as Grassroots (continued)

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Box 2.1  (continued) Gardens, the Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP), as well as broader coalitions such as the Western New York Environmental Alliance. Similarly to the situation in Detroit, despite the considerable amount of publicly available land, and despite advancements in the recognition of urban agriculture in the official land-use plan, urban farming continues to be seen as a regressive or interim activity by some of the conservative city officials (Raja et al. 2014). In addition, controversies emerge about the fact that the proliferation of urban agriculture practices (can) give place to a white middle class influx, contributing to processes of urban gentrification and land privatisation in neighbourhoods (personal exchanges with Buffalo’s food movement activists). In short, these dynamics reveal that, even in urban areas characterised by potential land availability such as rustbelt cities, tensions occur within the hybridity of actors, values, land-use, and institutional dynamics, conditioning the place of urban agriculture in the city.

In general, the presence of progressive policy institutions and enabling and proactive state authorities are important requirements to enhance sustainable land access for food production (Mansfield and Mendes 2013). One example from the Global South is the case of Nairobi. In 2015, the Nairobi city council launched an Urban Agriculture Promotion and Regulation Act, supporting, after decades of opposition towards urban agriculture, urban food production for food security (IPES Food 2017b). Important for this change of mind-set was the pressure of civil society actors, organised into advocacy networks and lobby groups to ask for policy support for urban agriculture. These bottom-up groups were able to build strong and trustworthy relationships with civil servants from the national and the local level, who in turn became aware and sensitive to the cause of urban food production. As a result, these powerful advocacy and collaborative networks among civil society groups and civil servants were crucial in creating a supportive political environment with respect to urban food production (IPES Food 2017b, pp. 31–39). In the Global North, an example of a successful and long-lasting urban food growing initiative is the P-Patch programme in Seattle. Dating back to the early 1970s, this initiative was inspired by national back-to-the-land movements, claiming people’s reconnection with the environment and the sustainable use of land in the face of the development of industrialised agriculture, urbanisation, and energy demanding lifestyles (Winne 2008). In fact, the initiative started when in the early 1970s, part of a family owned plot of land was first leased and then sold to the City of Seattle to set up what became the earliest community garden in Seattle—the Picardo Farm P-Patch.9 Nowadays, the P-Patch programme is managed by the City  To know more about the history of the P-Patch, see for instance: https://www.historylink.org/ File/20662, accessed 8 Feb 2022.

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of Seattle’s Department of Neighbourhoods and involves more than 90 P-Patch community gardens and 3055 plots of land, encompassing around 3000 families.10 Overall, holding state agencies accountable and maintaining consensus and support towards urban food production is not an easy task for urban food initiatives. Shifting policy priorities may turn an enabling political environment into a disenabling one, or may privilege forms of land privatisation that do not serve the common good. Enabling urban agriculture for community empowerment, therefore, involves continuous dialogue, negotiations and, often, conflicts across actors and organisations in order to negotiate desired solutions around possible uses of land.

2.5 From Food Production to the Food System Challenge In order to properly characterise contemporary urban food movements and their challenges, it is necessary to consider urban food production as part of a wider food system perspective (Mendes 2008; Mendes and Sonnino 2018; Sonnino et  al. 2019). Considering the ensemble of the food system necessarily means abandoning a sectorial view of agriculture and food, and instead embracing a relational perspective on how the food system works. Dealing with the food system means coping with the web of actors, activities, relations, and scales that link food production with the processing, distribution, transport, consumption, and disposal of food. It also involves considering how food is intimately connected with other policy domains such as health, environment, urban-regional planning, social cohesion, and so on. Furthermore, a food system perspective entails going beyond the local scale, and considering the relations with actors operating at wider institutional and spatial scales, such as for instance regional or national actors responsible for agro-food policies, or players of the agrofood industry with a global scale of operation (Sonnino 2019). As comparative literature on urban food policies shows, cities’ engagement in urban food issues can have diverse “entry points” (IPES Food 2017b). Some cities, for instance, address urban food through prioritising policy areas of health, food insecurity, and nutrition. Exemplary of this is the case of Belo Horizonte, whose food policy was conceived with a clear commitment to develop a universal approach to food security and nutrition (Rocha and Lessa 2009). More generally, in contexts of the Global South, food security, local development, and job creation constitute pressing needs that contribute to the genesis of urban agriculture and food policy initiatives in many urban areas. Other cities may start from different priorities, such as environmental or climate concerns, as the case of Malmö shows. This Swedish city pays close attention to reducing GHG emissions, promoting organic food production and sourcing, along with other environmental and climate related objectives (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). However, as they develop, many urban food policies or strategies converge in their ambition to tackle the food system in an  On the history of the P-Patch programme see for instance https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/p-patch-community-gardening/about-the-p-patch-program/history, accessed 12 Sep 2020.

10

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integrated, comprehensive, and holistic way (IPES Food 2017b; Mansfield and Mendes 2013). As highlighted Box 2.2, Belo Horizonte constitutes a case in point. The Municipality of Quito provides another interesting example from South America. In this case, particularly relevant is the recent passage of an urban agriculture programme, AGRUPAR, into a more comprehensive agro-food policy (RUAF 2019, pp. 21–23). Set up in 2002 as a pilot programme by the Municipality of Quito and other international partners, AGRUPAR stands out for its participatory nature, bringing together urban and periurban growers, civil society organisations, governmental departments at various levels, research institutions, actors from the private sector, and so on (RUAF 2019; Thomas 2014). Among other things, the programme supports initiatives such as urban orchards, various forms of agro-ecological food production, as well as urban regional markets, with the objective of fostering food security, employment, and economic development for the urban and peri-urban poor.11 In its most recent stage, Quito’s Food Movement is turning towards a comprehensive approach to food. In particular,

Box 2.2: Belo Horizonte’s Commitment to the Food System Belo Horizonte has been able to develop an exemplary government-led and integrated action on the food system (Rocha and Lessa 2009), guided by a strong vision and a set of principles on the right to food, social justice, and universal food and nutrition security (IPES Food 2017b, p. 22). The fact that Belo Horizonte’s municipal food strategy has been running for almost three decades (established in 1993) is indicative of its robustness and resilience. Among the factors behind its success is the strong commitment of the Mayor Patrus Ananias as well as the role of a motivated and competent administrative staff in charge of running and implementing the strategy (Rocha and Lessa 2009). In the early 1990s, the Mayor and his staff were dealing with a city in which 11% of the population suffered from absolute poverty and 20% of the children were hungry (Lappé 2011). To address this, a new municipal department on food and nutrition security, the SMAB (later on named SMASAN) was created by the Ananias’ coalition in the early 1990s, to manage an alternative food system and run several food programmes in Belo Horizonte (ibid., 2011). The food programmes include, to name a few, popular restaurants, food and nutrition assistance programmes such as school meals, food outlets selling fresh food at a price fixed by the municipality (sacolȃo/ abastecer), a programme for sustaining urban agriculture, and a food nutrition and education programme. Among the key devices mobilised by the SMASAN to ensure integrated food system action was partnership-making with civil society and the private sector, as well as collaboration with other (continued) 11  For more detailed information on the programme see, for instance, Thomas (2014) and Baker and de Zeeuw (2015).

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Box 2.2  (continued) city departments, whose joint action was essential to deliver on some of the key programmes (IPES Food 2017b). This joint-management also explains how Belo Horizonte’s integrated food strategy is economically sustainable, not requiring more than 2% of the municipal budget (Rocha and Lessa 2009). A supportive policy environment at the federal level has also contributed to the success and resilience of the Belo Horizonte’s action on the food system (ibid., 2009). Around the 1990s, civil society movements were advocating for a national policy on food security, paving the way for a gradual anti-hunger and food and nutrition security institutionalisation process at the federal level. Key steps include the establishment of the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) policy in 2003, the creation of a new federal body and a new legislative framework on food and nutrition security, and the inclusion of the human right to food in Brazil’s Constitution in 2010 (IPES Food 2017b, p. 28). Thus, a supportive federal policy framework has helped Belo Horizonte to secure additional funding and be buttressed by legislative support through federal policies such as Fome Zero, the National School Meals Programme (PNAE) and the Food Procurement Programme (PAA) (communication from Prof. Cecilia Rocha, 2019). Furthermore, the federal government level has also contributed to formalising the establishment of key governing bodies such as the Municipal Council of Food and Nutrition Security (COMUSAN), the Intersectoral Chamber of Food and Nutrition Security (COISAN-BH), and the Municipal Forum of Food Supply and Food Security (IPES Food 2017b). These bodies have been contributing to the implementation, monitoring, and assessment of Belo Horizonte’s food system action. They have supported its inter-sectorial nature as well as formalised the participation of civil society in the governance of the strategy.12

since 2015–2016 and through various passages within participative food policy processes, the Municipality of Quito has launched an agri-food strategy, the Quito AgriFood Pact, then officially recognised by the new Mayor in 2019. The intention is to incorporate urban agriculture into a more systemic policy framework that addresses questions related to power and control over the food system, the universal right to food, and food as a Commons (RUAF 2019, p. 20). Other examples of integrated approaches to urban food policy from cities in the Global North are, for instance, Vancouver and London. In 2003, after years of grass-­ roots mobilisation and community organising, municipal authorities in Vancouver undertook a more programmatic commitment to food, with the

 For a more complete assessment of this interplay with the federal level and for a more exhaustive picture of Belo Horizonte’s food policy see IPES Food (2017b), Rocha (2016) and Rocha and Lessa (2009). 12

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ambition of creating a “just and sustainable food system” (Mendes 2008). The Vancouver food strategy document clearly states its objective of integrating urban food production in a single policy framework that jointly considers food production, distribution, access, and waste management (City of Vancouver 2013). Vancouver food movement actors also explore what food can do for the city and how food issues are connected with wider socio-economic and environmental challenges such as the disappearance of farmland, obesity, health and nutrition, climate change, and biodiversity loss. After the creation of the Food Board—a food agency that partly drew from the example of the TPFC—in 2006, the Mayor Ken Livingston launched the London food strategy. As Reynolds (2010) tells, this strategy explicitly displays the intention of addressing the food system holistically from the production to the disposal phase. Despite programmatic attempts to adopt a food system lens, urban food initiatives face challenges in addressing food as a system. For instance, while these initiatives tend to focus on the two ends of the food chain, i.e. production and consumption, more difficult for cities is addressing the in-between steps (Sonnino 2019). Another major challenge is that the municipal level lacks some of the competences necessary to deal with the food system (MacRae and Donahue 2013). Indeed, policy guidelines and regulations concerning food are scattered across scales, jurisdictions and policy domains. As such, one of the difficulties is overcoming a “silo mentality”—an inward looking logic with which city departments tend to operate—and fostering, instead, cross-agency and cross-divisional collaboration (Blay-Palmer 2010). Furthermore, fruitful collaborative alliances addressing the food system should also involve higher scales of governance, since the responsibility of addressing food system change is not only that of local authorities (Sonnino et al. 2019). Section 2.6 dives into major organisational and institutional mechanisms devised by urban food movements in their attempts to deal with the food system.

2.6 Mobilising Organisations and Policy Networks for Urban Food System Change As illustrated above, over the last decades urban food movements have emerged with a new dynamism in taking the challenge of food system change seriously, moving towards a programmatic attempt to build better food systems. To this end, urban food movements have been experimenting with novel spaces of cooperation and co-creation across actors, sectors, and scales. This experimentation has concretised into the establishment of organisational devices and policy initiatives such as FPCs, Urban-Regional Food Strategies, and, more recently, Trans-local Food Policy Networks. Despite the existence of many contextual variants of such platforms for cooperation, these types of initiatives are the most common and representative ones. It is therefore worth providing a brief overview of their features.

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2.6.1 Food Policy Councils (FPCs) The rapid escalation of FPCs in North America and, more recently, in other geographical areas such as Western and continental Europe as well as Australia, is indicative of the spread and success of FPCs as a type of organisational arrangement for local food system change across urban food movements (Ilieva 2016; RUAF 2019). After the first pioneers at the beginning of the 1980s, FPCs in North America increased from around 60  in 2000, to 150  in 2011 (Scherb et  al. 2012), to over 280  in 2015 (Ilieva 2016). According to estimations from the annual survey on FPCs in North America by the John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, this number rose to 339 FPCs in 2018 (Bassarab et  al. 2019). More recently, FPCs have begun to spread in Western Europe and elsewhere in Continental Europe and Australasia.13 In particular, in the UK (starting with Bristol’s FPC established in 2011) and Ireland (Carey 2013). In recent years, cities in European countries such as in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019) and Italy (RUAF 2019, p. 40), have also begun to experiment with FPCs. Similar types of organisational arrangements—variably called food boards, food labs, multi-stakeholder food partnerships, food coalitions, and so on—are also found in Global South realities. The recent study on FPCs by the RUAF,14 for instance, reports cases from South America and Africa (RUAF 2019). The most common type of FPC takes place at the local jurisdictional level, such as the municipal, provincial, or regional levels. However, there are some experiments of FPCs having been launched by national jurisdictions. The state of Conneticut provides the first example of a national FPC, established in 1998 (Winne 2008). Moreover, national FPCs on health and nutrition have been founded in countries such as Scandinavia, Norway, and Finland (Sonnino and Spayde 2014). As illustrated later in this chapter, in recent years there has been a remarkable evolution of Trans-local Food Policy Networks that try to connect placed-based FPCs or similar food coalitions among each other (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). These translocal networks blur any simplistic distinction between geographical scales or institutional levels. Based on local contextual conditions and specific trajectories, FPCs originate in different ways. Broadly speaking, in most cases the formation of FPCs is mainly driven by bottom-up forces, such as by organised citizens, interest groups, or community initiatives that mobilise, asking local authorities to take more serious action on food systems (Harper et al. 2009, p. 25). One case in point is the above-­mentioned Detroit Black Community Food Security Network established in 2006. In 2008 this grass-roots network, representative of the African American population of Detroit, pushed the city council to pass a resolution for the creation of the Detroit Food Policy Council (Pothukuchi 2015). In other circumstances, the genesis of FPCs has  See Food Policy Groups around the World: http://www.foodpolicynetworks.org/fpc-map/FPC-­ around-­the-world.html, accessed 14 Oct 2020. 14  RUAF started in 1999 as a Resource centre on Urban Agriculture and Food security. To know more about the history, consult: https://ruaf.org/about/, accessed 8 Feb 2022. 13

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a stronger “top-down” component, established as part of certain state procedures, or operating under governmental mandates since the beginning (Gupta et  al. 2018; Schiff 2008, p. 211). In a way, the TFPC reflects this kind of origin; thanks to innovations in state institutions, the TFPC was established as a sub-committee of the Toronto Board of Health, which is a committee of the City Council (courtesy of Prof. Rod MacRae). As such, the TFPC’s coordinator is part of the municipal staff and reports to the Board of Health and the Department of Health. Similarly, in the case of Quito an institutional “house” was provided for the FPC through the creation of a FPC as a council for its food strategy, institutionalising and legitimising this participative body by means of a legal mandate by the Mayor (RUAF 2019). Yet, it can be argued that the genesis and working of FPCs always entail dynamic interactions between bottom-up and top-down forces, involving for instance the joint role of supportive state actors, communities, and other actors of the food system (Harper et al. 2009). Ideally, FPCs seek to create platforms or fora where all relevant actors of the food system come together and express their values and objectives around the aspired direction of food policies (Bassarab et al. 2019). In particular, FPCs aspire to create new civic institutions where actors meet and decisions are taken horizontally, with the participation of citizens, bottom-up groups, activists, state actors, farmers, retailers, other food system professionals, and so on. In a way, this type of organisation embodies the ambition to change the food system and its governance, giving power to citizen-consumers, community initiatives, disempowered food chain actors, and privileging forms of participatory or deliberative democracy against top-down and hierarchical structures of decision-making concerning the food system (Welsh and MacRae 1998). As expressed by Welsh and MacRae (1998) regarding the case of the TFPC, FPCs also seek to facilitate communication and mutual learning across sectors of the food system, such as the health, agriculture, food industry, education sectors, as well as across jurisdictional levels (Welsh and McRae 1998, p. 239). Among the common roles and functions of a FPC is networking, partnership-­ making, advocacy for policy change, as well as involvement with local state structures in developing and implementing food programmes (Harper et al. 2009; Ilieva 2016). To mention a case from the Global South, the recently created FPC of Antananarivo expresses this role as a networker and promoter of partnerships through the idea of “policy-making as a practice” (RUAF 2019, p. 30). This means that by embracing a food system lens, Antananarivo’s FPC becomes a facilitator of networks among partners taking ownership of projects in areas such as urban-rural networks, agro-ecology, school feeding programmes, food waste management, food literacy, and so on (ibid., 2019). With respect to advocacy and programming, the FPC of Rio de Janeiro, called CONSEA-Rio, provides an example in the area of school food procurement. For the past several years this Council has been engaged in policy support, advocacy and legal action, in order to change the Municipality of Rio’s procurement guidelines towards meeting the requirements of the National School Meals Programme (PNAE) (RUAF 2019, pp. 42–44). In particular, Brazil’s national law foresees that 30% of the federal budget spent for school purchases should come from family farmers, preferably local ones (ibid., 2019, p. 42).

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In general, FPCs seek to foster policy change by sensitising other actors (such as planning or policy agencies) of the need to provide support to community food initiatives. FPCs, for instance, can advocate for changing regulations in order to allow for more farmers’ markets across the city; they can ask to modify planning guidelines in order to enable urban gardening or agriculture in neighbourhoods (RUAF 2019). In addition, FPCs can create coalitions with other actors to demand changes at higher institutional levels, such as improving national regulations to enhance sustainable agriculture, or creating enabling policy frameworks that facilitate farm-to-­school programmes and sustainable public food procurement (Harper et al. 2009). Yet fostering cross-organisational and cross-sectoral dialogue, as well as implementing food policy change, is often a difficult endeavour given the divergences of perspectives and value systems among actors as diverse as state agents, community organisations, or the private food sector. Furthermore, it is challenging for FPCs to represent a wide spectrum of food system actors, including state actors at higher institutional levels, or the agrofood industry. Local food movement players in Flanders, for instance, underline the difficulty of connecting with the conventional farming sector, which dominates the agriculture and food economy of that region and produces for the global market (RUAF 2019, p. 40). Finally, FPCs often struggle to be fully inclusive and representative of people with different backgrounds and origins, including socio-economically disadvantaged groups or minorities (Bassarab et al. 2019; Horst 2017).

2.6.2 Urban-Regional Food Strategies Over the last two decades, as aforementioned, the number of cities setting up Urban-­ Regional Food Strategies has escalated. Signatory cities of the MUFPP cover the entire globe, including a relevant number of cities from lower and middle-income countries in the Global South (IPES Food 2017b). When they co-exist in a certain urban-regional reality, FPCs and food strategies are often interlinked. For instance, although this is not always the case, FPCs are frequently involved in the set-up and design of Urban-Regional Food Strategies, such as in the case of Toronto (Blay-­ Palmer 2010). Besides, in certain cases the establishment of Food Strategies clearly precedes the set-up of FPCs. This is valid, for instance, for the abovementioned case of Quito, where decisions on setting up a FPC followed the mayoral approval of an agro-food policy for Quito (RUAF 2019, p. 23). Similarly, in the case of Bristol, the establishment of a food strategy in 2009 was an essential prelude to the genesis of a food council 2 years later (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). In many cases, it is difficult to delineate clear boundaries between FPCs and Urban-Regional Food Strategies. It can be argued that these initiatives work in tandem to create the organisational and institutional framework to address local food system challenges. For instance, since its establishment in 2013, the FPC of the Belgian city of Ghent, named “Gent en Garde”, has taken the lead in formulating, operationalising, and monitoring food policy objectives and projects (Reed et  al. 2018; RUAF 2019, pp. 18–19).

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Initiatives such as Urban-Regional Food Strategies and FPCs travel across contexts and are replicated or adapted in diverse contextual realities. Yet, the specificity of urban-regional contexts and their trajectories also count in determining the ways in which local food policies take root and develop. In many cases, the establishment of formalised Urban-Regional Food Strategies is preceded by a history of mobilisation and food activism by concerned citizens, interest groups, professionals, and so on. Referring to the Vancouver food strategy, the author Wendy Mendes (2008) expresses this point, explaining how the strategy was formalised in 2003 “after over a decade of community organizing and lobbying” (ibid., 2008, p. 944). Thus, this “bottom-up” or informal food planning appears to be an essential fuel that germinates despite a formalised institutional food policy mandate (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). Keeping this in mind, the political leadership of actors such as mayors and policy officials who decide to embrace the cause of food is pivotal in the origins and development of local food policies. Indeed, as mentioned above, it would be impossible to think pf Belo Horizonte’s municipal food strategy, its genesis and success, without recognising the leadership role played by the Mayor Patrus Ananias and his administrative staff (Rocha and Lessa 2009). Sometimes the perceived urgency to tackle specific food system problems—such as food insecurity and obesity in the case of Belo Horizonte, or environmental or climate concerns in other cases—can act as an instigating element for the genesis of Urban-Regional Food Strategies. In certain cases, Urban-Regional Food Strategies can take the shape of sectorial policies that address specific areas of the food system, such as actions on urban agriculture, or rather, food waste, or school food programmes or public food procurement (IPES Food 2017b). Other renowned examples, such as the case of Toronto, Vancouver, London, and Belo Horizonte, show clear attempts to bring forward an integrated and comprehensive approach to the food system since their beginnings (Mansfield and Mendes 2013; Mendes 2008). In a way, Urban-Regional Food Strategies can be considered attempts to “institutionalise” a local or regional level engagement on food. This means creating an institutional and policy framework able to empower emerging food initiatives and deal with food systems’ problems while being aligned with other city policy and planning initiatives. Thus, among their functions, Urban-Regional Food Strategies constitute informal and formal spaces of policy making and deliberation among diverse actors (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015), such as grass-roots and civil society-led organisations, state agents, professionals, academics, and the private sector. In particular, Urban-Regional Food Strategies provide spaces in which actors develop shared missions and visions, and establish formalised partnerships and other collaborative frameworks with the purpose of implementing urban food projects and policies (Manganelli 2020). Often, innovative and creative institutional arrangements can act as vehicles of this partnership-making, as the case of the city of Seattle shows, for instance, through the creation of an inter-departmental team in charge of implementing and monitoring the food strategy (Ilieva 2016). This is quite emblematic of the cross-sectorial and inter-administrative nature of food policies. Furthermore, actors involved in Urban-Regional Food Strategies also engage

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collectively in monitoring, assessing, and revising key policy objectives and targets (Deakin et al. 2016). Despite their rapid escalation and expansion across geographical contexts, Urban-Regional Food Strategies are often “precarious” and, as in FPCs, they are not free from challenges. For instance, one of the constraints to an integrated and coordinated institutional action on food is the fact that local authorities lack a food policy department and do not recognise food among their competences (Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999, 2000). As a result, Urban-Regional Food Strategies and FPCs often have no formal or institutional mandate. Among others, lacking an institutional mandate means that Urban-Regional Food Strategies can be subject to changes in political coalitions and shifts in political priorities of state institutions. Furthermore, Urban-Regional Food Strategies frequently involve a certain section of the state, such as a specific state agency or department, but struggle to acquire credibility and legitimacy in the wider local policy environment (Manganelli 2020). The experience of Belo Horizonte confirms this observation: despite the success of its long-lasting food strategy, the SMASAN has also experienced challenges throughout its history due to shifts in electoral cycles and changes in political and professional leadership that threaten its integrity and core values (IPES Food 2017b). Furthermore, Urban-Regional Food Strategies are often constrained in terms of their human capital and funding, which undermines their capacity to last in time and implement meaningful food policy action (Bedore 2014). Finally, seeking food system transformation requires building solid networks at higher spatial-institutional scales, involving for instance national and international policy levels. Yet, it is rather challenging for urban food policy actors to have a say on international policies such as international trade and agriculture and to deal with conventional food system actors (Sonnino et al. 2019).

2.6.3 Trans-local Food Policy Networks A further way in which urban food movements try to amplify their voice and become stronger is through the development of Trans-local Food Policy Networks. These networks connect cities that are engaged in urban and regional food policies or that have established local food coalitions and partnerships targeted to local food system change (Ilieva 2016; Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2018). The sharing of initiatives and practices across place-based urban food movements in diverse localities is not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, FPCs, food strategies and other policy innovations have spread across contexts also thanks to peer-to-peer learning and dialogue among food actors and initiatives active in diverse geographical areas (Welsh and MacRae 1998). The London Food Strategy, for instance, was a model for other food policy initiatives in UK cities and provided inspiration for the establishment of the Toronto Food Strategy in 2008 (City of Toronto 2008). However, in recent years there has been a veritable escalation of more or less formalised multi-city food policy networks. This increased interconnectedness of urban food movements

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worldwide is a sign of efforts to look beyond municipal limits, sharing practices, and learning from fellow cities dealing with similar challenges. Trans-local Food Policy Networks range from regional or national, to international and global (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). A pioneer example of a national network is, for instance, the UK Sustainable Food Cities Network, recently re-­ named as Sustainable Food Places UK, established in 2011 by the joint effort of three UK-based no-profit organisations, i.e. the charity Soil Association, the national alliance SUSTAIN, and the advocacy organisation Food Matters (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). Through this network, UK cities share resources and knowledge, and engage in joint visioning around the future of food systems (ibid., 2019). Indeed, the Sustainable Food Places UK acts as a reference organisation providing support to local authorities in their attempts to develop food strategies or action plans (Sonnino 2019). In addition, it seeks to make food system issues visible at higher governance levels through campaigning and advocating for reforms to be made to food systems at the national scale (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019, p. 82). Besides the UK case, national networks of cities engaged in food policy initiatives have popped up in other European countries. Some examples include the “Food on the Urban Agenda” multi-city partnership established in 2017  in the Netherlands (IPES Food 2017b, p. 20), the network of German and neighbouring countries’ food policy councils (Das Netzwerk der Ernährungsräte), and the Italian network of local food system policies (the Rete Italiana politiche locali cibo). Another initiative in the US is the Food Policy Networks project,15 established in 2013 by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future with the purpose of connecting, providing support to, and sharing resources among FPCs active in North America. Among the examples of trans-local networks at the international level is the CITYFOOD Network, established by the Local Governments for Sustainability Network ICLEI and RUAF.  CITYFOOD Network fosters South-to-North peer learning across local initiatives and provides training, advice and guidance on how to strengthen city-regions’ food systems (Ilieva 2016; IPES Food 2017b). Another network sharing a similar orientation is the City-Region Food Systems (CRFS), a collaborative city partnership triggered among others by FAO, ICLEI, Habitat International, and RUAF (FAO & RUAF 2015). This initiative fosters collaborative city partnerships with the purpose of strengthening urban-rural linkages and improving regional food systems. Other international and global networks that are worth mentioning are the C40 Food System Network, a sub-set of the larger environmentally oriented alliance “C40 Cities” and the EUROCITIES food working group, which gathers around 70 European cities engaged in urban food policies. Last but not least is the abovementioned MUFPP established in 2015  in occasion of the Milan World Expo “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”; it is currently the largest international urban food policy network and a leading voice in global urban food policy (Ilieva 2016). It not only provides a platform for knowledge sharing across cities, but also seeks to stimulate engagement and commitment by mayors and city

15

 For an overview see http://www.foodpolicynetworks.org/, accessed 14 Oct 2020.

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leaders in pursuing urban food system change and advancing a shared global urban food policy agenda. In sum, among their many roles, Trans-local Food Policy Networks stimulate connectivity, joint-learning, and shared knowledge across urban initiatives. These networks are a means through which urban food movements establish channels of communication across geographical areas, learn about their successes or failures, and, at best, develop joint visions and frameworks of collaboration. Furthermore, by establishing joint targets and giving incentives in the form of “sustainable food systems awards” (see the MUFPP or the UK example), multi-city networks can be a means through which food policy actors increase their leadership and international visibility as vehicles for more sustainable food systems. As studies on Trans-local Food Networks highlight, however, the question remains as to what extent this increased international profile and connectivity of cities reinforces the role of urban areas as contributors to actual food system change (Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2018; Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). Despite efforts to empower place-based food movements, these urban coalitions find it difficult to incorporate structural questions related to food distribution, trade, socio-economic inequities, and sustainable diets (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019, p. 86).

2.7 On the Relevance of Governance This chapter has given an overview of urban food movements, delineating some of their key features, aspirations, and challenges. It has shown how, especially in the last decades, urban food movements have begun to take the issue of food system change seriously. In fact, as part of a broader alternative food movement, urban food movements hold transformative ambitions and aspire to reverse unsustainability of dominant food systems. This utopic search for a better food system is well expressed by alternative values and principles, such as those of food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice. Pointing to key shortfalls and injustices in the ways food systems are organised and governed, these alternative ideologies ask for the reconfiguration of power relations around food systems. They seek to empower marginalised food actors and call for an active civil society and supportive state institutions to collectively build more democratic food systems. What this chapter has also pointed out is that implementing these principles, and thus, reinventing local food systems from the bottom-up, involves concrete material as well as symbolic struggles. These efforts are realised, for instance, in securing access to land and other key operational resources for food production and short supply chains—which in turn requires grass-roots movements to mobilise in order to foster alternative uses of land. Among other things, this involves sensitising other actors and often navigating the opposition of landowners, state authorities, or disenabling land use planning systems. This chapter also introduced some of the major challenges urban food movements encounter when trying to scale up their action, addressing the food system as a whole, and thus starting to tackle some of the key

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food system problems illustrated at the beginning of this chapter. Dealing with food insecurity, for instance, brings into the picture systemic questions of corporate control over food production and distribution. It necessitates dealing with structural determinants that condition access to good food such as socio-economic and racial disparities. FPCs and Urban-Regional Food Strategies are examples of organisational and institutional devices conceived by urban food movements to support their transformative agency and to implement some of the aspired food system’s objectives. These organisations and policy initiatives are able to shape new collaborative networks, but they also struggle to foster communication across scales and to navigate diverse jurisdictional domains and power structures affecting food systems. Furthermore, values and organisational principles such as food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice (fostered by grass-roots actors and community initiatives) can enter into tension with very different perspectives such as the ones represented by other initiatives or state actors; likewise, these values may be ignored, bypassed, or opposed by the private food sector. This characterisation of urban food movements, their transformative aspirations, but also concrete day-to-day challenges they face, leads to highlighting the importance of governance. This book argues that a definition of governance adapted to the reality of urban food movements should necessarily entail this hybridity of relations among different actors, value systems, material practices, organisational cultures, and jurisdictional and spatial scales. Moreover, as these hybrid relations are always dynamic and evolving, such a perspective on the governance of urban food movements needs to take into account the elements directly relating to their lived experiences and realities (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021). To this end, the next chapter provides a conceptual analysis of the hybrid governance of urban food movements, which depicts this hybridity of relations and interactions. In particular, the chapter will illustrate how, as urban food movements develop, scale out and seek to amplify their voice, key tensions arise that may enable or constrain concrete possibilities for transformative action.

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IPES Food (2017b) What makes urban food policy happen? Insights from five case studies. Report of the International Panel of Experts in Sustainable Food Systems. https://www.ipes-­food. org/_img/upload/files/Cities_full.pdf. Accessed 4 Feb 2022 IPES Food (2020) COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems: symptoms, causes and potential solutions. Special Report of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. https://www.ipes-­food.org/pages/covid19. Accessed 22 Jan 2022 Koç M, MacRae R, Desjardins E, Roberts W (2008) Getting civil about food: the interactions between civil society and the state to advance sustainable food systems in Canada. J Hunger Environ Nutr 3(2–3):122–144 Lang T (1998) Towards a food democracy. In: Griffiths S, Wallace J (eds) Consuming passions: food in the age of anxiety. Mandolin, Manchester, pp 13–23 Lang T (1999) Food policy for the 21st century. In: Koç M, MacRae R, Mougeot LJA, Welsh J (eds) For hunger-proof cities: sustainable urban food systems. International Development Research Centre Books, Ottawa, pp 216–224 Lang T (2005) Food control or food democracy? Re-engaging nutrition with society and the environment. Public Health Nutr 8(6a):730–737 Lappe FM (1975) Diet for a small planet, revised edition. Ballantine Books, New York Lappé FM (2011) The city that ended hunger. In: Gerwin M (ed) Food and democracy. Introduction to food sovereignty. Polish Green Network, Poland, pp 53–56 Lerza C, Jacobson M (1975) Food for people, not for profit. Ballantine Books, New York MacRae R, Donahue K (2013) Municipal food policy entrepreneurs: a preliminary analysis of how Canadian cities and regional districts are involved in food system change. Toronto Food Policy Council. https://foodsecurecanada.org/sites/foodsecurecanada.org/files/municipalfoodpolicyreport_may13_0.pdf. Accessed 31 Jan 2022 Magdoff F, Foster JB, Buttel FH (eds) (2000) Hungry for profit: the agribusiness threat to farmers, food, and the environment. Monthly Review Press, New York Manganelli A (2020) Realising local food policies: a comparison between Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region’s stories through the lenses of reflexivity and co-learning. J Environ Policy Plan 22(3):366–380 Mansfield B, Mendes W (2013) Municipal food strategies and integrated approaches to urban agriculture: exploring three cases from the global north. Int Plan Stud 18(1):37–60 McMichael P (2015) The land question in the food sovereignty project. Globalizations 12(4):434–451 Mendes W (2008) Implementing social and environmental policies in cities: the case of food policy in Vancouver, Canada. Int J Urban Reg Res 32(4):942–967 Mendes W, Sonnino R (2018) Urban food governance in the global north. In: Marsden T (ed) The SAGE handbook of nature. SAGE, pp 543–560 Moragues-Faus A (2017) Problematising justice definitions in public food security debates: towards global and participative food justices. Geoforum 84:95–106 Moragues-Faus A, Battersby J (2021) Urban food policies for a sustainable and just future: concepts and tools for a renewed agenda. Food Policy 103:102124 Moragues-Faus A, Morgan K (2015) Reframing the foodscape: the emergent world of urban food policy. Environ Plan A Econ Space 47(7):1558–1573 Moragues-Faus A, Sonnino R (2018) Re-assembling sustainable food cities: an exploration of translocal governance and its multiple agencies. Urban Stud 56(4):778–794 Morgan K (2013) The rise of urban food planning. Int Plan Stud 18(1):1–4 Morgan K, Sonnino R (2010) The urban foodscape: world cities and the new food equation. Camb J Reg Econ Soc 3(2):209–224 Nyéléni (2007) Nyéléni 2007: Forum for Food Sovereignty. Sélingué, Mali. https://nyeleni.org/ DOWNLOADS/Nyelni_EN.pdf. Accessed 4 Feb 2022 Paddeu F (2017) Legalising urban agriculture in Detroit: a contested way of planning for decline. Town Plan Rev 88(1):109–130

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Passidomo C (2013) Going “beyond food”: confronting structures of injustice in food systems research and praxis. J Agric Food Syst Community Dev 3(4):1–5 Patel R (2009) Food sovereignty. J Peasant Stud 36(3):663–706 Poppendieck J (2014) Food assistance, hunger and the end of welfare in the USA. In: Riches G, Silvastri T (eds) First world hunger revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 176–190 Pothukuchi K (2015) Five decades of community food planning in Detroit: city and grassroots, growth and equity. J Plan Educ Res 35(4):419–434 Pothukuchi K, Kaufman JL (1999) Placing the food system on the urban agenda: the role of municipal institutions in food systems planning. Agric Hum Values 16(2):213–224 Pothukuchi K, Kaufman JL (2000) The food system: a stranger to the planning field. J Am Plan Assoc 66(2):113–124 Raja S, Picard D, Baek S, Delgado C (2014) Rustbelt radicalism: a decade of food systems planning practice in Buffalo, New York (USA). J Agric Food Syst Community Dev 4(4):173–189 Raja S, Morgan K, Hall E (2017) Planning for equitable urban and regional food systems. Built Environ 43(3):309–314 Reed M, Mettepenningen E, Swagemakers P, Garcia MDD, Jahrl I, Koopmans ME (2018) The challenges of governing urban food production across four European City-Regions: identity, sustainability and governance. Urban Agric Reg Food Syst 3(1):1–10 Renting H, Schermer M, Rossi A (2012) Building food democracy: exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. Int J Sociol Agric Food 19(3):289–307 Reynolds B (2010) Feeding a world city: the London food strategy. Int Plan Stud 14(4):417–424 Reynolds K, Cohen N (2016) Beyond the kale: urban agriculture and social justice activism in New York City, vol 28. University of Georgia Press Riches G (2018) Food bank nations: poverty, corporate charity and the right to food. Routledge, London/New York Rocha C (2016) Belo Horizonte: the opportunities and challenges of urban food security policy. In: Deakin M, Borrelli N, Diamantini D (eds) The governance of city food systems: case studies from around the world. Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan, pp 29–40 Rocha C, Lessa I (2009) Urban governance for food security: the alternative food system in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Int Plan Stud 14(4):389–400 RUAF (2019) Food Policy Councils, RUAF Urban Agriculture Magazine 36. https://ruaf.org/document/urban-­agriculture-­magazine-­no-­36-­food-­policy-­councils/. Accessed 4 Feb 2022 Santo R, Moragues-Faus A (2019) Towards a trans-local food governance: exploring the transformative capacity of food policy assemblages in the US and UK. Geoforum 98:75–87 Scherb A, Palmer A, Frattaroli S, Pollack K (2012) Exploring food system policy: a survey of food policy councils in the United States. J Agric Food Syst Community Dev 2(4):3–14 Schiff R (2008) The role of food policy councils in developing sustainable food systems. J Hunger Environ Nutr 3(2–3):206–228 Sonnino R (2019) The cultural dynamics of urban food governance. City Cult Soc 16:12–17 Sonnino R, Hanmer O (2016) Beyond food provision: understanding community growing in the context of food poverty. Geoforum 74:213–221 Sonnino R, Spayde J (2014) The ‘new frontier?’ Urban strategies for food security and sustainability. In: Marsden T, Morley A (eds) Sustainable food systems: building a new paradigm. Routledge, London, pp 186–205 Sonnino R, Tegoni CL, De Cunto A (2019) The challenge of systemic food change: insights from cities. Cities 85:110–116 Spijker SN, Parra C (2018) Knitting green spaces with the threads of social innovation in Groningen and London. J Environ Plan Manag 61(5–6):1011–1032 Steel C (2013) Hungry city: how food shapes our lives. Vintage, London Thomas G (ed) (2014) Growing greener cities in Latin America and the Caribbean: an FAO report on urban and peri-urban agriculture in the region. FAO. https://www.fao.org/documents/card/ en/c/4b8afd1d-­e530-­4825-­b32d-­4f088e5b62ae/. Accessed 4 Feb 2022

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Chapter 3

Hybrid Governance and Its Tensions in Urban Food Movements

Abstract  This chapter conceptualises urban food movements as hybrid governance. After introducing the concept, the chapter dives into its definition as applied to urban food movements. Hybrid governance highlights the interactions and tensions among different agencies and modes of governance (bottom-up, horizontal, top-down, market-driven) characterising the constellation of actors, organisations, and institutions that urban food movements are part of. As urban food initiatives raise, develop, and seek to access essential resources in order to spur food system change, they experience critical governance tensions. This conceptual analysis identifies resource, organisational, and institutional governance tensions as particularly relevant. In particular, these tensions reveal the key obstacles faced by urban food initiatives in their growth and development. They also display the pathways through which food governing practices can be improved and food movements can exercise a relevant impact in their socio-institutional contexts. While the urban food literature already hints at important aspects of these tensions, the interactions among them and their outcomes in urban food movements need to be fully explored. This chapter constitutes the conceptual stepping-stone towards the analysis of real life cases of urban food initiatives in Toronto and Brussels. Keywords  Urban food movements · Hybrid governance · Governance tensions · Resources · Organisations · Institutions

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world (…) (Margaret Mead).

After briefly explaining the concept of hybrid governance and its origins, this chapter specifies how hybrid governance works in urban food movements, also providing examples and reflections based on insights from Chap. 2.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_3

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3.1 Characterising Hybrid Governance In a way, any governance system or process can be characterised as “hybrid”, since it entails diverse modes of interaction (such as coordination, stirring, management and so on) across a diversity, or hybridity, of agents and scales. In particular, debates on social movements and collective action highlight how governance involves interactions among (coalitions of) actors aligned towards common identities and interests, but also (conflictual) relations among agents belonging to different organisational spheres and embodying diverse values, habits, and cultural frames (Della Porta and Diani 2020; Diani 1992; Gonzalez and Healey 2005). Let’s imagine, for instance, a group of citizens setting up a community garden or starting an advocacy network for community gardening. These bottom-up actors come together as they share the same goal of fostering urban agriculture. Yet, in advancing their objectives, they most probably come across various agents, such as landowners, municipal or regional planning authorities, activists, grass-roots networks, and so on, with whom they need to forge different kinds of agreements and engage in collaborative or conflicting relations. These other agents may align with, or rather constrain, the objective of the community gardeners to access land and spaces. In sum, the hybridity coming from this wider constellation of actors, organisational modalities, and (formal or informal) institutional relations, largely shapes the everyday existence of the gardening initiative, being at the same time the product of its agency, interactions, agreements, etc. As a preliminary definition, (hybrid) governance can be described as the self-­ coordination among actors coming together for a common purpose, but also interacting with a diversity of agents (e.g. communities, state, entrepreneurs, businesses, and so on) towards the achievement of aspired societal objectives. In the case of food systems, achieving food system change towards greater sustainability and empowerment can be considered the overall objective, which is necessarily contested and negotiated by diverse players and interests on the ground (Moragues-­ Faus et al. 2017). The literature on social innovation and collective action from the tradition of studies on neighbourhood and territorial development is useful in characterising the relational hybridity between different forms governance, starting in particular from the “bottom-up” and “horizontal” organising of community-led initiatives (Moulaert and MacCallum 2019; Moulaert et al. 2013; Van den Broeck et al. 2019). This body of research highlights how bottom-up initiatives emerge in neighbourhoods and cities, mainly moved by solidarity, affective, and informal affiliations, creating peer-­ to-­peer networks and alliances. Examples are neighbourhood associations, NGOs, cooperatives, land trusts, food security organisations, and other types of civil society-­driven initiatives searching for the satisfaction of unmet needs (Moulaert et al. 2013). These needs may concern better housing, enhanced citizenship rights, the search for land in common, but also the need to produce and access fair and nutritious food. Thus, one important aspect to consider is the spectrum of motives

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and values driving the agency1 of collective initiatives, such as urban food initiatives. Chapter 2 highlighted how transformative ideologies and value systems— such as food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice—can inspire urban food movements to rise. Yet, food initiatives may also respond to very concrete, practical and day-to-day needs, such as gaining access to funding and material resources, or governing the everyday life of their organisations and networks. Thus, the complexity of practical needs, but also long-term values and aspirations driving urban food movements, deserve attention. When considering food systems, it is useful to take a relational and inter-scalar perspective in order to understand the hybridity of interactions among diverse agents and governance forms. For instance, bottom-up or community driven food initiatives are diversely affected by “top-down” forms of governance that are typical of multi-scalar state agents, or “market-led” modes of governance fostered by private food system players, and so on. To put it simply, urban agriculture or other food initiatives may face the resistance, opposition, or inertia of policy officials or of various city departments that do not recognise food in their habitual routines and modes of operation. More in general, urban food movements need to navigate a jungle of multi-level regulatory apparatus that may hamper their food sovereignty purposes. On the other hand, hybrid interactions can lead to forms of cooperation among actors. This occurs, for instance, when agreements are made between grass-­ roots and state actors, or forms of cooperation are achieved among state administrations, or between state and the private sector, in order to implement food strategies through collaborative partnerships. The social innovation literature calls these forms of cooperation “bottom-linked” governance, involving productive synergies between top-down and bottom-up forces (Moulaert et al. 2019; Pradel et al. 2013). It would be too simplistic or abstract to consider hybrid governance merely as a system of interactions among diverse actors, values, and scales—it also involves a material dimension. In other words, dealing with food systems entails considering the governance of land, material infrastructures, labour, and other resources qualifying food production. Short-food chain organisations such as consumers-producers networks are constantly confronted with their own materiality, as they need to manage the functioning of their food distribution networks, from food sourcing to food basket deliveries. Food itself is a composite resource that circulates, and whose processes of production, distribution, access, preparation, consumption, and disposal are negotiated by a collectivity of agents, value systems, and scales. Thus,  Decades of debate in social sciences have provided multiple conceptualisations of and methodological approaches to “agency”, both as a standalone analytical category as well as in its dialectic relations/interpenetrations with structure and institutional mediation (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). This book refers to the strand of studies in urban-regional sciences that defines agency as “any meaningful human behaviour, individual or collective, that makes a significant difference in the natural and/or social words, either by direct, unmediated action or through the mediation of tools, machines, dispositifs, institutions, or other affordances” (Moulaert et  al. 2016, p.  169). Agency and institutions are mutually related, since institutions (such as rules, norms, codes guiding behaviours) shape, constrain, or enable social action; at the same time, institutions can be subject to redefinition, more or less radical or incremental change through collective agency. 1

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attention should also be given to the metabolism of the access to and control of key resources feeding alternative food systems (such as productive land, basic infrastructure, funding, human capital, and so on). As urban food movements need stable access to land and other resources, they need to mediate with diverse agencies, power, and regulatory structures (e.g. land access guidelines, policy and planning systems) conditioning access to material resources. The concept of hybrid governance is not an invention of this book. In fact, broadly speaking, hybrid governance concepts are used in the analysis of the allocation, pooling, and management of resources in different strands of economics and social science literature. Seminal analyses of common pool resources and common property regimes (Ostrom 1990) refer to hybrid arrangements or “hybrid institutions”, neither private nor public, as governing the management of common pool resources (German and Keeler 2009; Sandler 2010). Fisheries, forests, irrigation systems, pastures, lakes, and so on, are common examples of such resources, as considered in the tradition of research pioneered by the political economist and Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom. These resources can be owned by public, private, or community agents. They can be co-managed, for instance, by state and community actors in hybrid arrangements (Ostrom 2008). However, it is particularly in the field of New Institutional Economics (NIE),2 and most of all in the theory of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), that hybrid governance finds its original and most renowned theorisation. A core analytical focus of TCE, especially in the tradition marked by the Nobel Prize winner Oliver Williamson (1985),3 is the analysis of transaction costs involved in contractual exchanges between economic actors and the study of the different organisational and governance structures that support these transactions (Ménard 2004). Hybrid governance structures are identified by Williamson (1985, 1989) as a basic form of coordination among economic agents—focusing in particular on governance structures that coordinate economic exchanges and that are able to minimise transaction costs (North 1992). Since its origins in the NIE, research has expanded on hybrid governance structures or organisations, their modes of functioning, and their mechanisms of competition or cooperation (Van Huylenbroeck et al. 2009). Along with analyses of hybrids in private markets (Ménard 2000, 2004), authors such as Van Huylenbroeck et al. (2009) look at the role of hybrid governance structures in enabling the functioning of public good markets related to agriculture and natural resource management.  Broadly speaking, ‘New Institutional Economics’ (NIE) moves beyond neoclassical theories of economic behaviour as well as previous formulations of institutional economics and focuses on the importance of institutions (informal and formal norms, rules, codes, etc.) that regulate economic behaviour and govern economic transactions (see for instance North 1990; Williamson 1985). As a sub-discipline within NIE, Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) analyses ways of organising transactions between economic agents and governance structures that coordinate these transactions (Williamson 1985, 1989; North 1992). 3  In 2009, Oliver Williamson (1932–2020) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences together with Elinor Ostrom, “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm” (see nobelprize.org, accessed 11 Jan 2022). 2

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Examples of such markets are agro-environmental schemes and conservation practices, water irrigation schemes, or tradable permits regulating CO2 emissions or common pool resources (Van Huylenbroeck et al. 2009, p. 175). These pioneer economic investigations in hybrid governance generally tend to focus on how hybrid forms of coordination among agents can help economise transaction costs and effectively deliver private or public good markets in such circumstances (i.e. identifying where they have limited individual resources as well as uncertain knowledge about outcomes of decisions) (Ménard 2004). There is no systematic study in the social science and economics literatures on the variable uses of the notion of hybrid governance through time (beyond the original formulations of hybrid governance in the NIE literature). However, it is worth mentioning that hybrid governance arrangements have also been studied in reference to the changing modes of public service delivery and management (Powell et al. 2018; Vickers et al. 2017) and in the context of research on neoliberal environmental governance, especially by Australian authors (Higgins and Lockie 2002; Higgins et al. 2014; Lockwood and Davidson 2010).

3.2 Defining Hybrid Governance in Urban Food Movements The characterisation of hybrid governance provided in Sect. 3.1 is a helpful starting point to depict the governance reality of urban food movements, at least on a conceptual level. Indeed, as highlighted in Chap. 2, many urban food initiatives are bottom-up, involving informal, “affective”, or solidarity-oriented alliances among citizens, producers, activists, interest groups, and so on. Examples of such urban, grass-roots food initiatives include: a group of citizens setting up a community garden, an urban agriculture network fostering guerrilla gardening, a consumer-led food cooperative, or a food organisation linking consumers with producers in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Of course, the reality always offers a more complex and nuanced picture than the theory. As mentioned in Chap. 2, state officials belonging to the “top-down” side of state administrations, or other actors such as entrepreneurs or academics, can also be part of the “bottom-up” movement. Moreover, solidarity-oriented value systems, or even the alignment with food sovereignty or food justice principles, are not the only drivers that push grass-roots or citizen-consumers to take part in urban food initiatives. However, aware of this complexity, at this stage it is enough to consider how these initiatives, guided by transformative values and ideologies, activate their own governance forms, establishing horizontal networks with peers but also interacting with state agencies or other top-down actors through lobbying, advocacy, or other organisational strategies. These interactions can be enabling or collaborative when, for instance, the political environment is supportive of alternative food systems. Here the example of Belo-Horizonte comes back to mind. Through its supportive mayor and political leadership, accompanied by a progressive and resourceful administrative staff, Belo-Horizonte had some of the enabling conditions that allow urban food

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initiatives to flourish. In general, the food literature provides several examples in which these enabling synergies across actors and forms of governance happen (Mansfield and Mendes 2013; Rocha and Lessa 2009). For instance, Ashe and Sonnino (2013) provide the example of the New York City school food programme. More specifically, the authors highlight how this programme has exercised a catalytic role of “convergence in diversity” for a variety of actors in New York City’s food movement (ibid., 2013, p. 64). In particular, the authors underline how policy framings around hunger, public health, ecological integrity, and re-localisation played a preeminent role in creating areas of convergence among diverse actors of the food system, allowing them to agree upon common objectives, or at least recognise mutual benefits in cooperating through advocacy, campaigning, or project implementation. Yet interactions can also be conflictive when urban food initiatives need to fight for their legitimacy and political support, or need to compete over scarce resources such as land or funding. Reed et al. (2018), for instance, highlight how in the case of Ghent and its food policy “Gent en Garde”, access to land constitutes one of the main points of argument between the city administration, urban agriculture activists, and conventional and new farmers (ibid., 2018, p.  4). As pointed out in Chap. 2, initiatives such as Food Policy Councils (FPCs), food strategies, and others are often precarious, voluntarily based, or under-resourced. They commonly seek to find the means to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of wider policy structures, and sometimes run the risk of being silenced or swept away by changing political priorities, conservative political coalitions, or state structures not recognising their role. Hybrid governance looks at how these types of interaction through time can trigger forms of negotiation and bargain, but can also give place to alliances, coalitions, advocacy-networks at different scales, strategizing for more enabling political spaces and more supportive multi-level policies (Manganelli et al. 2019). In their attempts to mediate collaborative relations among diverse actors and scales, FPCs and food strategies—as semi-institutionalised organisations and policy initiatives fostering “bottom-linked” modes of governance—embody these types of interactions among diverse governance forms, modes of organising, and value systems. One of the main tasks of FPCs and food strategies, as well as of other kinds of platforms and partnerships, is to show how food can become a means through which different actors, including state agencies, learn how to collaborate in a Commons food governance, while at the same time achieving their own objectives. Furthermore, interactions and tensions can also involve solidarity-led and corporate forms of governance. Supermarkets linking with local producers to source local farm products are an example of a cooperative alliance (King et al. 2010). Yet, urban and peri-urban food production initiatives often conflict with real estate agents privatising urban or peri-­ urban land through corporate practices. Moreover, monopolistic market players can co-opt alternative food initiatives, and in general, hegemonic corporate food regimes seek to oppose the flourishing and growth of alternative food movements (Holt Giménez and Shattuck 2011; Manganelli et al. 2019). In sum, hybrid governance takes into account these interactions and tensions among the socio-­ecological,

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economic, and political logics of diverse agencies, and their organisational modes and institutionalisation dynamics. This understanding leads us to the next step towards the identification of key types of governance tensions in urban food movements: the distinction between institutions and organisations.

3.3 Institutions and Organisations in Urban Food Movements This book adopts a sociological and relational perspective for understanding institutions with respect to the agency and transformative dynamics of urban food movements (Pel et al. 2020). As a basic definition, institutions can be characterised as “frameworks of norms, rules and practices which structure action in social contexts” (Healey 2006, p. 302, see also Manganelli et al. 2019). Institutions are generally associated with formalised bodies, such as municipal authorities, city councils, and state agencies operating through formal structures of representative democracy. Yet, from a sociological and relational viewpoint, institutions are both the formal modes of operating state or market structures, as well as the informal, customary, and socially embedded norms and codes of behaviour (such as the ones characterising community-based initiatives). Thus, for instance, a bottom-up food sovereignty network, or a food cooperative, can establish its own codified procedures of decision-­making, rules of conduct, and modes of coordinating its network of participants. Similarly, members of a FPC can establish more or less formal agreements on how to take decisions; for example, by following principles of direct democracy, to decide which food systems’ objectives to prioritise, and so on. At the same time, it is important to understand how customary modes of governance embedded in food initiatives interact with “outside” institutions and what type of tensions, adaptations, or changes, these interactions bring about. To this end, a distinction is drawn between institutions and organisations. In order to pursue their aspirations and objectives, food actors tend to associate and build organisations and movements (Della Porta and Diani 2020; Moulaert and MacCallum 2019). Some of the drivers ushering food actors to associate and mobilise include their reaction to unjust conditions of food insecurity, meeting an unsatisfied need for fairly produced food, and pursuing a common objective of food system change. The current Covid-19 pandemic offers an extreme picture of how organisations quickly form in many urban areas in response to food security needs. These organisations encompass, for instance, food charities, diverse types of food sharing infrastructures and networks, solidarity initiatives led by citizens, ICT-driven food distribution platforms, and so on. Yet, beyond these exceptional times, it is generally true that food movement actors organise and associate. Therefore, a citizen-led food platform, a FPC, a consumers-producers organisation, a food coalition or partnership, are examples of bottom-led or multi-actor organisations with more or less formalised status. Other examples of institutionalised or structured organisations are administrative departments and state agencies, or private food companies.

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Thus, in their life-course and development, urban food initiatives establish and govern their own organisational networks that, at the same time, are impacted by the “wider” institutionalisation processes of, say, multi-scalar state structures, funding agents, market players, and so on. For instance, state authorities generally operate with a top-down and hierarchical structure that may conflict with the modes of organising of bottom-led initiatives. This is particularly visible when changes in political coalitions translate into more severe restrictions for accessing funding or in a diminished political consensus towards the food movement. These changes can create disruptions and trigger new questions of legitimacy, values, and identity in food movement organisations. However, as highlighted in Chap. 2, the establishment of policy initiatives such as Urban-Regional Food Strategies can also trigger positive outcomes, ushering administrative agencies to learn new modes of collaboration with citizens’ initiatives based on bottom-linked forms of governance. To summarise, the analytical distinction between diverse food movement organisations and their institutionalisation dynamics allows for understanding what kind of institutionalisation processes occur in a given socio-institutional context and how these interact with food movement initiatives (Coulson and Sonnino 2019; Moulaert et al. 2016). Institutionalisation processes can create tensions in food movements and their organising strategies, but they can also be conducive to new empowering modes of governance, possibly creating spaces of opportunity for progressive food system change. Finally, it is also important to consider how interactions among diverse agencies (their organising strategies and institutionalisation dynamics) are often mediated by their need to secure resources. Securing access to resources such as productive land, infrastructures, funding, human capital, and so on, is crucial for the very survival of food movement organisations (Angotti 2015). In particular, urban food movements require resources such as fertile land to feed the food system; they need infrastructures and logistics to develop alternative food distribution channels; in general, they seek modalities to ensure sustainable food production and govern its fair distribution. Thus, the access and use of resources are very often objects of interactions, negotiations, and contestations between urban food movements and their socio-­ institutional system (Campbell 2016; Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). Consequently, considering the dynamics of access to and share of essential resources constitutes a further component to embed in the framework in order to understand how diverse governance tensions in urban food movements arise and can be conceptualised.

3.4 Elucidating Three Types of Governance Tensions The distinction between organisations and institutions, mediated by the pursuit of access to and use of resources, constitutes a bridge towards the identification of three types of governance tensions characterising urban food movements, namely: resource governance tensions, organisational governance tensions, and institutional governance tensions. Rather than being rigidly separated, these tensions are tightly

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connected to one another. For instance, the need to access land and other resources (resource governance tensions) triggers urban food actors to mobilise (organisational governance tensions); in doing so, these initiatives confront diverse agents and regulatory powers mediating for the access to resources (institutional governance tensions). The following section gives a brief explanation of each of the tensions, while Table 3.1 provides a summary of their key features, including potential outcomes of the tensions that will be addressed later on in this chapter.

3.4.1 Resource Governance Tensions Overall, resource governance tensions refer to tensions in securing access to key material resources such as land, infrastructure, logistics, human capital, finance, as well as good and fair food. Acquiring stable access to resources and guaranteeing the sustainability and continuity of a resource basis are key concerns of actors and organisations of the urban food movement (Angotti 2015; Reed et al. 2018). Indeed, material resources such as land and infrastructures for food production, distribution, and supply are essential to enable alternative food chains. Yet, especially in urbanising environments, in most cases there is scarcity of available land, as well as competition over its access and use (Manganelli et al. 2019; Tornaghi 2017). Speculative real estate agents driving up land values (often with the compliance of local or higher level state authorities) are often contradictory, sometimes enabling alternative land uses as fostered by community initiatives or interest groups. Moreover, conflicts regarding aspired land uses can occur across community initiatives themselves, when urban food production becomes intertwined with profit-seeking practices fostering exchange value and engendering market-led modes of governance (McClintock 2013). In sum, as summarised in Table 3.1, (land)resource governance tensions refer to different values and approaches of a diversity of actors (state, corporate, communities, farmers, residents, and so on) over the use of land. It refers to tensions and divergences between actors regarding their capacity to control and power to influence the access and use of land and related resources. Material resources also relate to funding, human capital, skills, food produce, material or immaterial infrastructures, which are needed to run food organisations, coalitions or projects, and are essential for guaranteeing the sustainability of food initiatives through time. As they develop, scale out, and attempt to implement resilient alternative food chains, urban food initiatives need a sustainable resource basis. Yet, most often, these initiatives operate in a context of austerity and constrained availability of financial resources (Bedore 2014). Moreover, legal procedures to access resources, such as funding and subsidises, are often constraining for many organisations and community initiatives, causing differential capacities across initiatives to access resources (Cohen and Reynolds 2015; Coulson and Sonnino 2019). Thus, the necessity to secure essential resources can lead to critical tensions across administrative and institutional structures with which urban food actors and organisations need to interact and confront in order to claim and negotiate sustainable resource access.

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Table 3.1  Summary of governance tensions and their features

Type of governance Factors triggering tension tensions Resource-related governance tensions Tensions in the Competition over governance of the access to and control of access to and use of material resources resources (cultivable land, infrastructures, logistics, finance, food produce, etc.)

Nature of the tensions Interactions between bottom-up food networks and top-down state/corporate systems for negotiating/claiming access/control of resources Tensions between a diversity of actors (state, corporate, communities, organisations) as to their power and control capacities in the access and use of resources Conflicting visions concerning the fair allocation, access, and use of resources Administrative, regulatory, institutional structures impacting the possibility for accessing resources

Organisational governance tensions Tensions triggering Actors mobilising and the mobilisation of seeking opportunities actors as well as for food system change tensions in the Growth in the governance of urban organisation/ network food movements’ (increase of actors, organisations social, spatial/material stemming from bases, functions) different sources requires other governance structures Seeking for connections among actors, sectors, and scales of the food system Cross-territorial food projects intersecting different jurisdictional subdivisions (constraints/ opportunities)

Needs, values, principles, triggering food initiatives to form and self-organise Tensions between top-down hierarchical and bottom-up participative decision-­ making arrangements Tensions in values, principles, imaginaries, identities Fragmentation across organisations, sectors, scales Fragmentations in the administrative organisation of territories

Reflexive outcomes. Opportunities for overcoming or valorising tensions Strategic leadership, forms of proactive conflict management Achieving shared values attached to a land-resource New forms of cooperation between diverse agents for a common governance of a land-resource Cross-­ jurisdictional collaborative capacity

Developing effective organisational strategies and reflexive modes of governance Modalities of mediation and conflict resolution Developing shared visions and organisational models to surmount conflictive value systems Developing effective organisational models to overcome fragmentation (continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued)

Type of governance Factors triggering tension tensions Institutional governance tensions Power struggles Tensions in the between urban food socio-political and initiatives and state/ socio-professional governance structures corporate institutions at different scales embedding urban food movements and Divergent values, behavioural routines their governance and agendas across urban food initiatives and with institutional or other agents responsible for or influencing food governance.

Nature of the tensions

Reflexive outcomes. Opportunities for overcoming or valorising tensions

Constraining vs. enabling institutions Hybrid actors and policy networks negotiating supportive policy/institutional spaces and empowering modes of governance Frictions among regulatory frameworks and policy structures scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-institutional scales

Socio-political transformative forces Relation building towards participative reflexive governance institutions Seeking convergences across actors and agendas to engender food system change

Source: Adapted from Manganelli et al. (2019)

3.4.2 Organisational Governance Tensions Organisational governance tensions refer to tensions in governing urban food movements’ organisations as they are established and grow and scale out, seeking resources and navigating the socio-institutional environment in which they are embedded. As summarised in the table, organisational governance tensions relate to what triggers urban food movement actors to mobilise, self-organise, and build diverse types of organisations and governing networks. As aforementioned, strong value systems and transformative ideologies are often at the basis of food initiatives, their organisational strategies, and endogenous modes of governance. Yet, contextual conditions such as the need to respond to socio-economic, environmental, or health emergencies (i.e. worsened conditions of food insecurity or uneven food access), also trigger urban food initiatives to arise. Second, it follows that organisational governance tensions also refer to tensions in governing and coordinating food organisations through time, as they develop and possibly enlarge their network of participants, or increase their impact and scale of operation. These “growth dynamics” can give place to diverse types of tensions. Examples are struggles to ensure inclusiveness and representativeness of an enlarged basis of participants, including diverse socio-economic profiles, as Chap. 2 mentioned with respect to FPCs. A further possible source of tension relates to contradictions between guaranteeing efficiency in running and coordinating food organisations, while at the same time keeping the network cohesive and safeguarding democratic/participative modes of governance (Levkoe 2014; Levkoe and Wakefield 2013). Thus, tensions between

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top-down/hierarchical versus bottom-up/participative decision-making structures can arise, as the network grows. Finally, alongside these “internal” organisational dynamics, organisational governance tensions are also spurred by “external” factors. As highlighted in Chap. 2, fostering food system transformation also means building networks and relations across agencies, sectors, and scales of the food system. Thus, organisational governance tensions also refer to the challenges of developing organisational strategies to overcome barriers between actors, sectors, and fragmented administrative structures. In fact, with respect to the latter, the fragmented administrative organisation of territories can clash with the aspiration of food projects going beyond administrative borders.

3.4.3 Institutional Governance Tensions The passage from organisational to institutional governance tensions comes almost naturally. Institutional governance tensions refer to frictions and divergences in value frames, regulatory practices, and behavioural routines between diverse actors and initiatives in the food and socio-institutional system (Manganelli et al. 2019). As mentioned, urban food system governance encompasses relations among actors belonging to diverse organisational and professional spheres, and which often adopt divergent values, objectives, and agendas as far as food systems are concerned. For instance, the development of small-scale food production and processing facilities can encounter barriers from state regulations at local or federal level, in that they may prioritise vested interests of large scale industrialised farming. Values and objectives of a grass-roots driven food sovereignty initiative can converge only partially with the ones of local state actors, and are likely to be radically different from the ones of conventional food players. Thus, tensions in food coalitions or partnerships can occur concerning the dominance of private sector interests, the fear of co-optation of more radical voices, or the risk of excluding certain players from the picture (Coulson and Sonnino 2019; Moragues-Faus 2019). On the other hand, institutionalised agencies such as municipal authorities can shift towards recognising the value of small-scale agriculture, granting support and legitimacy to agro-­ ecological farmers and developing land protection schemes (Perrin and Baysse-Lainé 2020). Higher-level state agencies can recognise the need to support farm-to-school programmes and provide local and regional authorities with incentives to link regional producers to public canteens (Sonnino et al. 2014). Thus, going through institutional governance tensions means dealing with a multi-level institutional environment that can exercise an enabling or constraining role with respect to the development of urban food initiatives, as well as their transformative and emancipatory potentials in terms of progressive social change. As Table 3.1 highlights, institutional governance tensions also involve frictions among regulatory frameworks and policy structures that are scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-institutional scales. For instance, dealing with food

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insecurity means touching policy domains related to social welfare, education, and health in order to remove structural barriers that prevent socio-economic disadvantaged groups from accessing diversified and nutritious food (Warshawsky 2016). Indeed, as illustrated in Chap. 2, dealing with the (urban) food system involves structural and systemic questions related to the power and dominance of the big agro-food industry, and touches upon the role of local, national, and international policies. Thus, multi-scalar state systems, regulatory frameworks, and power structures may constrain the advancement of alternative food systems or provide opportunity spaces for convergence across actors and agendas in order to negotiate transformative and emancipatory processes of food system change.

3.5 Governance Tensions and the Urban Food Debate Although not explicitly addressing hybrid governance tensions, core contributions from the food debate hint at how similar kinds of tensions affect urban food movements. What has been said about these tensions and what questions remain unanswered? In order to clarify this, this part of the chapter uses the governance tensions as lenses to interrogate the (urban)-food literature, positioning strands of the debate according to the three types of tensions. A first strand of literature concerns the politics and governance of land accessibility for urban agriculture, thus fitting under the rubric of (land)resource governance tensions. It reflects on challenges to enhance accessibility to land and spaces for food production in urban areas. A second group of literature examines how both resource needs, but also value systems of food organisations, may be affected by the initiatives growing and scaling out. This debate primarily connects to organisational governance tensions. Finally, a third strand of literature has to do with the debate on urban food governance and planning and has strong overlaps with institutional governance tensions. Indeed, this debate displays the multi-scalarity of institutional systems, such as planning, state or market institutions, challenging the transformative potentials of urban food movements.

3.5.1 The Politics of Land-Resource Access for Urban Agriculture In general, the question of how urban agriculture can be better incorporated in the socio-spatial fabric of cities, also through greater accessibility to land and spaces for urban food production, has been a major concern of classical studies on urban agriculture since the origins of the contemporary debate on cities and food production (De Zeeuw and Dubbeling 2009; De Zeeuw et al. 2000; Gorgolewski et al. 2011; Mougeot 2005; Smit et al. 1996). Key authors such as Mougeot (2006), De Zeeuw et al. (2011), and Gorgolewski et al. (2011) have produced empirical knowledge on how productive practices (such as vegetable and fruit production, animal breeding

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etc.) take place informally or formally in numerous urban realities around the world. Moreover, organisations such as RUAF or the International Development Research Center (IDRC) have conducted action research projects strengthening local knowledge and capacity on how to better integrate urban agriculture into the physical as well as socio-political space of cities (De Zeeuw and Dubbeling 2009). With respect to (land)resource governance tensions, a key merit of these studies is to clarify what major barriers and constraints farmers, community groups, and urban agriculture activists are facing in regards to the availability, accessibility, and usability of land for urban-peri-urban agriculture (Mougeot 2000, 2006). These studies highlight possible strategies to overcome such constraints, including reflections on what local authorities can do to enhance land and spaces for food production (De Zeeuw et al. 2000; Quon 1999). Over time, however, the debate on the politics and governance of (land)resource accessibility has progressed. In particular, in recent years a number of contributions, mostly focused on urban gardening and small scale urban food production, have started to advance a relational and socio-political perspective on how land accessibility is negotiated and contested among urban actors and initiatives (Adams et al. 2014; Angotti 2015; Purcell and Tyman 2014; Tornaghi and Certomà 2019). Because of this greater focus on relational and socio-political dynamics, this strand of literature is particularly interested in the hybrid governance framework advanced in this chapter. In particular, the research conducted in this area of literature starts from a bottom-up and dynamic focus on how grass-roots groups and local communities organise and mobilise, making claims over the right to use land for urban food production. In this sense, urban gardening or small scale growing becomes an act of rebellion (Purcell and Tyman 2014), through which citizens or grass-roots initiatives autonomously reinvent spaces or building networks with others. Purcell and Tyman (2014), for instance, interpret the act of gardening and farming as a way to claim what Henri Lefebvre calls the right to the city. The latter refers to the right of citizens and collective actors to devise modalities to use land, spaces, and other urban resources that present an alternative to privatisation and economic profitability. In this sense, as Wekerle and Classens (2015) illustrate, the notion of property is not a given (a substance) but is rather relational, contested, and negotiated among diverse actors and visions on how land should be developed (ibid., 2015, p. 1176). Overall, this literature sheds light on possible tensions organised groups face in fostering land accessibility for urban food production. One key challenge is to overcome ambiguous, divergent, and often hostile perceptions of the values and benefits of urban agriculture held by residents, private landowners, local state authorities, and planning agencies (Adams et al. 2014). This also includes critical voices concerning the actual benefits of urban agriculture and its scaling out in space (Horst et al. 2017; McClintock 2013). Indeed, recognising the intrinsic contradictions of urban food production practices, some studies underline how urban agriculture may

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be attached to profit seeking values and strategies fostered by short-sighted state departments, private market players, or middle class inhabitants (McClintock 2013). Indeed, claims on land-resource for urban agriculture can usher conflicts within neighbourhoods around socio-racial justice as well as the fair uses of space (Alkon et al. 2020). Thus, questions pop up concerning what types of strategies or initiatives, such as NGOs or land trusts, in agreement with landowners and public authorities, can become mediators for alternative land tenure modalities; or how contextual strategies and modalities to foster urban agriculture can become vehicles for empowering and inclusive forms of land governance for urban food production. In synthesis, these literature contributions suggest taking into account how diverse value systems (e.g. exchange values versus use values), visions, and modes of governance (bottom-up, top-down, networked, market-oriented) play a role in qualifying governing processes and outcomes related to urban agriculture and access to (land)resources. As a result, advancing the understanding of governance tensions around land-resource access means considering how interactions among diverse agencies occur; what conflicts, mediations or pathways for pragmatic local solutions this generates; and how this leads or not to socially optimal, and always contested, institutionalisation pathways (e.g. socially beneficial modes of land development, adapted land use agreements, collective modes of planning for urban agriculture, and so on).

3.5.2 Dynamics of Growth in Urban Food Movements Tensions related to the development and scaling out or up of local food initiatives were initially addressed in the “conventionalisation” debate (Hinrichs 2000, 2003; Morgan et al. 2008; Sonnino and Marsden 2006). In short, this debate underlines how interpretations between what can be called alternative and conventional types of social relations are a reality in the ways many “alternative” food initiatives operate. A straightforward example is the rapid scaling up of the organic and fair trade sectors as globalised food industries. Reproducing modes of operation of conventional food chains, these scaled-up initiatives got rid of many of the original values and principles qualifying grass-roots led organic movements (Jaffee and Howard 2009). Moreover, dialectic relations between instrumental-market oriented modes of behaviour on the one hand and socially embedded ones on the other exist among smaller scale or bottom-up types of food initiatives. Among others, Hinrichs (2000) provides the example of CSA and farmers’ markets initiatives. Although emphasising socially embedded relations of trust and reciprocity among participating members, these food network organisations in certain cases turn out reproducing

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commodified and individualistic behaviours that are typical of market-led modes of governance.4 Other contributions addressing scale dynamics in alternative food movements focus on so-called “post-organic” movements (DuPuis and Gillon 2009; Goodman and Goodman 2007; Rossi and Brunori 2010), studying organisations such as CSAs, direct-marketing initiatives, and various types of consumers-producers networks. Rossi and Brunori (2010) for instance, shed light on organisational governance tensions in the case of the Italian Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (GAS) (in English, Solidarity Purchasing Groups). Similar to consumers-producers organisations such as the AMAP in France, the Voedselteams in Flanders, or the GASAP in the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) (see Chap. 5), the GAS are civil society associations linking producers and consumers in solidarity alliances. These networks seek to foster direct and transparent relations with the idea of supporting agro-ecological farmers and building a radically different system of food provision from the conventional supermarket chains. Yet, the authors underline, as these innovations start to develop and grow, they are confronted with multiple material and immaterial constraints, including the risk of falling into conventional approaches to food provision activities. In particular the authors underline “the continuous tension between the willingness to maintain the coherence with principles of the origins and the need to survive on the market” (Rossi and Brunori 2010, p.  1921). Thus, questions arise from the literature concerning the point at which these initiatives need to compromise with their value systems in order to exercise a transformative role in established dominant regulatory systems and institutional structures constituting conventional food systems; or what are the adequate conditions in which these types of alternative movements can operate without overturning their nature. These and other concerns around the scaling out or up of alternative and urban food movements are also raised by a more recent debate on organisational dynamics from Canadian scholars (Andrée et  al. 2019; Campbell and MacRae 2013; Hammelman et al. 2020; Knezevic et al. 2017; Levkoe and Wakefield 2013; Mount 2012). These studies focus on food movement organisations such as food hubs, food box programmes, farmers’ markets, community kitchens, and other examples of community food security organisations or networks. First, this debate highlights how initiatives such as food hubs need funding, physical and digital infrastructures, logistics, and other resources in order to ensure their very operation as they grow and seek to involve a greater number of consumers, producers, processors, and so  These analyses are linked to the debate on the “local” scale in food systems’ re-localisation practices (Allen 2010; DuPuis et  al. 2006; Hinrichs 2003). According to these analyses, the local should not be considered as an absolute, pure and inherently positive category, lest it fall into a “defensive” type of localism (Hinrichs 2003). Local initiatives are not necessarily a vehicle for more sustainable or socially just outcomes (Born and Purcell 2006). On the contrary, local initiatives can for instance embed instrumental or functional logics of operation, intermeshed with collaborative or solidarity relations (Feagan and Henderson 2009). Thus, scale is best characterised as a social construct, products of different agendas and “scalar” strategies (Born and Purcell 2006); furthermore, the local should be regarded in dynamic interaction with multiple spatial scales— local to global—constituting the food systems. 4

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on (Beckie et al. 2012). In this sense, authors underline the pressures many organisations face when “operating with too little funding (and) over-reliance on volunteers” and their “search for economic independence and long-term viability” (Blay-Palmer et al. 2013, p. 526). Second, these authors also interrogate how values and intangible qualities related for instance to social ties, community connectedness, transparency, accountability, and food quality can be maintained if the initiatives scale up, involving for instance larger farms, or a wider number of consumers-producers participating in the network, and so on (Mount 2012). Exploring diverse examples of alternative food network initiatives in Canadian provinces, Levkoe (2015), for instance, points to different kinds of tensions these initiatives face in the governance of their networks. An example is the trade-off between a more centralised and formal governing structure and a more informal and decentralised type of network. As the author underlines, while a more centralised structure would allow the network to exercise greater political influence at the provincial level, this has ushered tensions among network’s members on the perceived bureaucratisation of the organisation. In sum, this area of literature highlights the importance of understanding the types of tensions and contradictions alternative food initiatives confront as they diversely develop and activate their organisational and scalar strategies to foster change in the food system. In particular, what requires deeper attention is how value systems interact or conflict with organisational dynamics of the initiatives; what sorts of tensions food initiatives encounter, both triggered by their internal growth (e.g. the need to run the organisation, gain access to resources, infrastructures, enlarge the network of participants, and so on) as well as by the socio-political environment in which they navigate; and, finally, what type of organisational strategies food movement actors activate in order to respond to and deal with these tensions.

3.5.3 Urban Food Governance and Planning At its core, the urban food governance and planning debate investigates participative and empowering modes of governance that (can) enable food movements in city-regions. It seeks to understand the challenges of providing institutional support to urban food movements towards progressive and inclusive socio-political change (Coulson and Sonnino 2019; Mendes and Sonnino 2018; Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021; Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015; Morgan 2014; Rocha and Lessa 2009; Sonnino et  al. 2019). Seminal contributions of the urban food governance debate analyse how the food system question enters the urban governance and planning agendas (Ilieva 2016; Morgan 2014; Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999, 2000), also emphasising the role of local state institutions and improved “governance capacities” in strengthening the food movement (Mah and Thang 2013; Mansfield and Mendes 2013; Mendes 2008). Focusing on the case of Vancouver, for instance, Wendy Mendes (2008) illustrates how local state authorities activate structural as well as procedural mechanisms in order to enforce an urban food system’s

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governance, enhancing the city’s capacity to exercise food system action (see also Mansfield and Mendes 2013). In general, a core part of the literature focuses on how urban food movements can be enabled through more or less institutionalised structures such as inter-departmental teams, food commissions, food policy task forces, FPCs, and other multi-actor platforms for collaborations and cooperation (Ilieva 2016). Urban food governance studies have also pointed out how participative and political spaces of deliberation take place through fluid networks of diverse actors and organisations operating both within and outside formal state structures (Cohen and Reynolds 2014; Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). Referring to urban agriculture practices in New  York, for instance, Cohen and Reynolds (2014) observe how “hybrid” networks of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders—including among others FPCs, NGOs, networks of guerrilla gardeners, citizens, and so on— constitute formal and informal arenas of deliberation for alternative food practices (ibid., 2014, p.  224, see also Manganelli et  al. 2019). These observations aptly reflect institutional governance tensions related to how hybrid actors and policy networks attempt to carve out supportive institutional spaces (see Table 3.1). These political spaces of deliberation can lead to clashes and conflicts among divergent values and objectives or, rather, generate productive and co-constructive modes of cooperation. The literature highlights the potential of socially innovative initiatives such as FPCs or other arrangements, in facilitating cooperative forms of governance (Blay-Palmer 2010; Sonnino et al. 2019). Indeed, with the aim of creating enabling political environments, FPCs or other initiatives can lead to forms of productive cooperation among diverse actors and sectors. Reed et al. (2018), for instance, highlight the role of the “Food and Nutrition Forum Zurich” in activating a dialogue between the city administration, activists, and private players on the strategic role of urban food production in Zurich (Reed et al. 2018). Sonnino et al. (2019) mention the case of Mexico City’s Comedores Comunitarios [community canteens] as a particularly successful example of collaborative governance among the city administration, local citizens, and the private sector. With diverse roles and responsibilities, each of these actors contributes to enforcing an alternative food system that feeds the urban poor in Mexico City. Recent contributions from the debate highlight how food movements often navigate socio-political and socio-spatial contexts that are highly unequal in terms of the distribution of power and resources among actors (Cohen and Reynolds 2015; Coulson and Sonnino 2019). This reality creates differential capacities across agents in accessing the necessary resources and political opportunities to exercise radical and transformative action on food systems (Coulson and Sonnino 2019; Moragues-­ Faus 2019). Taking into account these disparities, authors ask whether institutional and collaborative frameworks are able to change power relations, or whether they reproduce dominant interests of the most powerful; whether these new governance configurations are really inclusive of different voices or whether they fail to consider relevant actors or scales of governance (Coulson and Sonnino 2019). These observations further feed the analysis of tensions in negotiating empowering institutional relations that are able to exercise socio-political transformative forces.

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The urban food governance and planning debate also reveals how power struggles between urban food movements and state/corporate institutions take place at different scales. For instance, Reed et  al. (2018) describe the urban agriculture movement in the city of Ghent, underlining how Flemish agriculture and land-use guidelines as well as the EU level Common Agricultural Policy constrain a more radical and transformative change of land access for local growers and of the development of sustainable agriculture. Referring to the sub-Saharan African context, where food insecurity is a compelling issue, Warshawsky (2016) also sheds light on these kinds of multi-scalar institutional governance tensions. Warshawsky highlights that in order to tackle the multi-scalar and multi-sectorial institutional relationships that reproduce food insecurity, inter-administrative and jurisdictional cooperation is needed. Indeed, in certain circumstances, enabling policy reforms at higher scales of governance can have an immediate effect on the local level (Born and Purcell 2006). Yet, in most cases, fragmentation and lack of communication across spatial-institutional scales prevail over the capacity to engender inter-­ jurisdictional collaboration. This lack of cross-jurisdictional collaborative capacity is at the core of institutional governance tensions. Finally, insights from the urban food governance and planning debate highlight the importance of creating socially innovative and empowering institutional relations for urban food governance. Among others, investigating institutional governance tensions means understanding the ways in which urban food movements connect with, influence, reform, or rather, oppose or bypass key actors or institutions at different scales (Manganelli et al. 2019). Investigating this requires elucidating challenges of actors in shaping improved modes of communication, cooperation, and trust between professionals and interest groups at different spatial-institutional scales (Reed et al. 2018). In sum, the analysis of institutional governance tensions necessitates a contextual understanding of how participative political spaces are negotiated, what values are prioritised, and how this can lead to improved modes of governance that are supported by sustainable and empowering institutional relations.

3.6 Outcomes of Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in Urban Food Movements Illustrating the three types of interrelated governance tensions has meant touching upon important aspects of the governance reality of urban food movements: i.e. the challenge of gaining sustainable access to and use of key material resources (in particular, land); the need to deal with key tensions in governing sustainable food network organisations; and the challenges involved in building supportive institutions for urban food governance. As illustrated above, the (urban) food debate already covers important elements of these three types of governance tensions. Yet, these studies have not addressed the tensions and their interrelations explicitly, nor have they reflected upon effects and outcomes of the tensions in the life-course of urban food movement initiatives. Thus, in what ways do urban food movements

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experience these tensions? What are the outcomes in the life-course and development of food initiatives? Ultimately, what can urban food movements learn from the experienced tensions? Through the very process of perceiving and trying to overcome or valorise experienced tensions, urban food movement initiatives can acquire greater awareness of their own limits and challenges. They may be encouraged to reflect on their own governance and search for pathways to become more effective and build a more resourceful, connected, and empowering food movement. In this respect, it is important to understand how experienced tensions can be a vehicle of reflexivity and learning in urban food movements. Indeed, the concept of reflexivity is useful to characterise the capacity of food initiatives to develop awareness about their own governance challenges and, more largely, about their position and role with respect to food system and societal transformation.5 Reflexivity refers to the worldviews and positionalities of food movement actors as well as to the capacity of food actors and initiatives to self-reflect on their own values, missions, and modes of governance, also in light of experienced tensions (Manganelli 2020; Sonnino et al. 2014). Exploring land-resource governance tensions and their outcomes means understanding how “reflexive” actors seek new modes of governing land in common. This involves developing a deep understanding of key barriers these actors encounter and understanding how, by facing these constraints, food movement actors in diverse contexts succeed or do not succeed in building an improved territorial governance of access to land. Furthermore, as food movements build diverse networks and organisations seeking to change the food system, it is essential to explore the intricacies between value systems and modes of governance as food movement organisations diversely develop and seek to amplify their impact. Investigating organisational governance tensions unravels the manner in which, by interacting with other actors and dealing with diverse types of tensions, these initiatives are brought to a position of self-reflecting on their role, missions, societal objectives, and governance strategies (Manganelli and Moulaert 2018). For instance, a bottom-up consumers-producers organisation may be ushered to further reinforce and stress its transformative values and ideologies through time, in order to keep the motivation and cohesion in its enlarging network of participants. Yet, it may also be pushed to revise its organisational structure and its modes of conducting advocacy in order to ensure its greater financial stability or larger political support. Thus, reflexive processes can lead urban food initiatives to further reinforce or defend strong values and positionalities, or, rather, they may invite these initiatives to change modes of governance, and perhaps, to build more connected and inclusive organisational networks. Finally, in order to exercise a significant role in food system change, food initiatives need to find their way within a complex and often contradictory socio-political landscape. Among others, the latter involves entrenched power structures of state

 For an in-depth analysis of the concepts of reflexivity and learning in urban food movements, revisited through the lenses of hybrid governance and governance tensions, see Manganelli (2020). 5

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and private agents, as well as multiscale institutions that are not always responsive or sensitive to claims for greater food sustainability and justice. Thus, there is space to explore whether and how facing institutional governance tensions leads to the building of more participative and reflexive institutions for the urban food governance in given socio-spatial contexts. The following three short paragraphs provide some additional considerations on outcomes of the tensions and reflexivity in urban food movements. Key points are also summarised in the fourth column of Table 3.1 (reflexive outcomes, opportunities for overcoming, and valorising tensions). These considerations raise key questions that feed into the exploration of the empirical case studies found in the next chapters of this book.

3.6.1 Towards a Commons Governance of Land-Resources The challenge of land-resource access is intimately connected to organisational and institutional aspects. Social innovation literature highlights that gaining stable access to resources is often what drives initiatives to self-organise and put in the effort to establish formal or informal relational networks with other actors, including state authorities and other institutionalised agents (Moulaert et al. 2010). Key questions for an empirical exploration of land-resource tensions relate to how alternative values attached to land—such as caring for land, fighting for more sustainable and just land development and allocation, etc.—prompt different actors to come together and build cohesive organisational networks. As they deal with the advocacy and implementation of alternative land uses, food actors face practical and material, but also symbolic and immaterial barriers and conflicts. Thus, the empirical inquiry should reveal the sorts of tactics and strategies put into place by organised actors to overcome resistance, or find pragmatic ways to manage conflicts, and highlight lessons urban agriculture activists and interest groups learn from their successes or failures. Furthermore, the role of key governance tensions concerning land-resources is further amplified when taking into account wider spatial-institutional scales. Indeed, while most of the literature on the politics of land access focuses on small-scale agriculture or gardening initiatives, it becomes critical to explore what happens when the land-resource question is brought up at higher scales. For instance, what barriers or opportunities to scale up land-resource access for urban-peri-urban agriculture stem from the interplay of different jurisdictional scales? To what extent is it possible to build reflexivity in key actors, organisations, and multi-scaled jurisdictions concerning the long-term benefits of preserving and enhancing land for small-­ scale urban-peri-urban agriculture? In sum, these questions relate to the role of existing or new institutions for the Commons governance of a land-resource, especially when a diversity of actors, interests, and scales are involved.

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3.6.2 Building Reflexive and Resourceful Food Movement Organisations This chapter has highlighted the distinction as well as the links between organisations and institutions, often mediated by the need to access resources. Driven by their own values and ideologies, food movement organisations form and establish their informal or formal modes of governance. Yet, as they develop, food movement initiatives may encounter diverse types of tensions in governing their organisational networks, including conflicts with other agents, institutions, and regulatory systems that exercise an impact on the reproduction of food movement organisations (e.g. through new political guidelines, constraining market or food safety regulations, funding schemes and so on). Thus, the empirical analysis of organisational governance tensions leads to an improved understanding of the key drivers behind the self-organisation of actors and the scaling out of diverse types of organisations and networks. Important here is the role of value systems, ideologies, and societal ambitions in setting up alternative food delivery systems. Yet, it is also critical to grasp the ways in which given values and modes of governance are more or less resilient in guiding the organisation as it scales out, enlarging its networks and facing diverse types of tensions. Thus, what kind of adjustments do food organisations make in their modes of governance in order to respond to certain tensions? To what extent is a food organisation prone to negotiate its values or radically change its modes of governance? What kind of reflexive attitude do organised food actors develop regarding their own roles, missions, or ethical stances, as they perceive and seek to respond to these key tensions? In sum, exploring organisational governance tensions allows us to dive into the key contradictions and dilemmas food movements experience, thereby highlighting promising organisational strategies and self-reflexive governance mechanisms put into place to overcome these contradictions. Examples can be the development of new modes of communication, or new self-regulatory mechanisms to manage the network; or the establishment of mutually beneficial and more empowering relational networks across agents and scales. These analyses are likely to provide better insights on how to build more resourceful and resilient food movement initiatives able to achieve a more effective and socially beneficial impact when pursuing their food security and sovereignty objectives.

3.6.3 Shaping Reflexive Multi-scalar Institutions for Urban Food Governance By aspiring to build more just and sustainable food systems, urban food movements seek to empower members for socio-political change and transformation in food and institutional systems (Moragues-Faus 2019). Ultimately, institutional governance tensions point to the search for enabling existing or new institutions to address

3.7 Conclusions

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urban food governance as vehicles of progressive food system change. Exploring institutional governance tensions means diving into the establishment of informal or formal relational networks among actors, the set-up of strategic channels of communication, the building of advocacy coalitions, and the search for collaborative arrangements, and joint modes of co-governance across actors and sectors. Yet, the co-construction of joint institutions for urban food governance also passes through conflicts and frictions among agents holding divergent values, visions, objectives, and institutional cultures. These interactions can lead to failures and frustrations among actors. But they can also be conducive to proactive forms of leadership able to find pragmatic modes of cooperation that accommodate divergence in values and frameworks of action. Thus, empirical questions concern how to establish cooperative frameworks that can represent a diversity of agents and can engender effective modes of cooperation and joint action able to stir progressive food system change. The interplay of different jurisdictions, sectors, and scales of governance adds another layer of complexity to the analysis of institutional governance tensions. As highlighted above, different jurisdictional scales can have a more or less constraining or enabling role and impact on the development of alternative local food systems. Thus, capacity for cross-scalar coordination, but also inertia or inability to cooperate, as well as the set-up of different strategies capable of bypassing disenabling policy and institutional systems, need to be captured by the empirical inquiry. Key questions concern the role of institutional leadership and the capacity of policy agencies to cooperate in order to support joint local food projects (Manganelli et al. 2019). Finally, the investigation of institutional governance tensions and their outcomes should unravel how, through time, food movement actors become aware of key tensions and challenges they need to overcome in co-constructing modes of cooperation and joint action; how they can become responsive to these tensions; and whether they are able or not to develop adaptable strategies to revise or reconsider modes of governance and turn experienced tensions into promising vehicles for food system change.

3.7 Conclusions This chapter developed a conceptualisation of the governance reality of urban food movements as hybrid governance. Hybrid governance pinpoints the key tensions urban food initiatives experience as they originate, mobilise, scale up or out in the pursuit of socio-political and food system change. Moved by long term objectives and transformative ambitions, such as food democracy, food sovereignty, and food justice in their day-to-day governance, urban food initiatives are also confronted with their own material-organisational challenges. These challenges range from the need to secure land and operational resources, to ensuring financial stability and the necessary infrastructure to build sustainable food chains, to the need to govern the everyday life of food networks whilst navigating contradictory multi-scalar political environments. The hybrid governance framework conceptualises these challenges

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in terms of resource-related tensions and organisational and institutional types of governance tensions. The distinction between organisations and institutions is pivotal for identifying the types of tensions as well as clarifying the relations among them. In particular, this distinction highlights how food movement organisations form and establish their own customary institutions and mostly bottom-up/horizontal modes of governance. Yet, as these initiatives develop, they also interact with a variety of other agencies and multi-scalar institutions that have an impact in the reproduction of food movement networks and their aspired modes of institutionalisation, generating different sorts of tensions and outcomes. The three types of governance tensions described also provide useful lenses to dialogue with the urban food debate, in that different strands of the debate refer to diverse aspects of these tensions—though they don’t make explicit their interrelations and miss a full comprehension of the outcomes of these tensions in urban food movements. To this purpose, the concept of reflexivity provides an additional lens to understand how food initiatives are prompted to reflect on their own positionalities and modes of governance, learning from experienced tensions and possibly leading them into sustainable and empowering directions. On this basis, the conceptualisation of governance tensions and their outcomes in terms of reflexivity opens up new pathways for empirical analysis, focusing in particular on three aspects. The first aspect points to a deep understanding of the limits and potentials of building a “common” territorial governance in the access to land in different city-­regional contexts. The second calls for a grounded analysis of different sources of organisational governance tensions in urban food initiatives. This also involves recognising whether these initiatives develop reflexive attitudes (i.e. learning from the tension and adapting their behaviour accordingly). The third aspect concerns potentials to co-construct participative and reflexive institutions for urban food governance, capable of including diverse actors in shaping pathways for food system change. Ultimately, a grounded exploration of these tensions and their interrelations allows to clarify what kind of challenges and contradictions urban food movements experience in pursuing socio-political change in land access, food, and socio-­ institutional systems. This is what the next chapters seek to achieve through the empirical analysis of real life cases and stories in the urban food movements of Toronto and Brussels.

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Chapter 4

Tensions in the Governance of Land Resources in Toronto and Brussels

Abstract This chapter addresses land-resource governance tensions by narrating and comparing the stories of two urban food growing initiatives: the Community Engagement and Entrepreneurial Development (CEED) gardens in Toronto, which aim to enhance land access for community development, and the Boeren Bruxsel Paysans (BBP) coalition in Brussels, which aims to scale out space for agroecological farming. The chapter highlights commonalities, as well as differences, in the struggle to implement these initiatives and gain access to land. Moving beyond these experiences, the chapter also addresses wider organisational and institutional responses to the land question in the two City-Regions. It examines key challenges in implementing cooperative governance of the access to land, informed by bottomlinked type of governance relations. Learning from the CEED gardens, the BBP, and other experiences in Toronto and Brussels, this chapter concludes with suggestions on how land-resource governance tensions can be directed towards sustainable and empowering courses. These suggestions revolve around: (a) valorising strategic leadership and proactive confict management and cooperation; (b) fostering socioinstitutional change; (c) connecting spatial institutional scales in dealing with the land question. Keywords Urban agriculture · Land-resource governance tensions · Toronto · Brussels

We have to fnd a way to convince people that whatever they want or need to accomplish, it can be accomplished through urban farming and urban agriculture (Rhonda Teitel-Payne, TUG co-coordinator, 2021).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_4

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4.1

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Tensions in the Governance of Land Resources in Toronto and Brussels

Introduction

Both Toronto and Brussels have a long history of (fourishing) urban agriculture initiatives and, in particular, in the recognition of these initiatives’ existence and relevance. Already in the mid-1980s, at the outset of the contemporary urban food movement in Toronto, the forward thinking Mayor Art Eggleton made a statement about the need to increase productive spaces in the City as a means to face the hunger and food insecurity afficting Toronto citizens at the time. In a progressive policy statement, which marks the origins of the community organisation FoodShare (see Chap. 5), he recommended “improving access to quality food by greatly expanding the City’s community garden space (…) and encouraging owners of suitable garden sites (…) to offer their land for such use” (City of Toronto 1985, p. 4). Toronto’s urban agriculture history is in fact marked by several moments like these, where policy support is provided through policy guidelines, programmes, or action plans. In 1997, after years of community pressure, for instance, the Toronto Park and Forestry Recreation Department launched a community garden programme in partnership with FoodShare and the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC)—a programme that is still running nowadays. Moreover, in 1999 the Toronto City Council endorsed a Community Garden Action Plan, recognising the social and environmental values of community gardens. The Action Plan seeks to establish a community garden in every Toronto ward (courtesy of Parks, Forestry and Recreation department, urban gardening manager). At the beginning of the 2000s, in the aftermath of the last phase of Toronto “amalgamation” process,1 progressive coalitions such as the Environmental Task Force and the Food and Hunger Action Committee stood in support of urban agriculture, stressing its value for ecological, economic, as well as food security aspects. More recently, in 2012, the GrowTO action plan was launched, convening a wide range of actors and initiatives from the food community and providing policy recommendations to the City on how to strengthen its support of urban agriculture.2 In the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR), as in other urban-regional areas, allotments, family gardens, community gardens, and similar forms of self-production have been endemically present through history, and especially in times of crisis and economic insecurity (Manganelli 2013; Zitouni et al. 2018). Furthermore, as Chap. 6 illustrates, a key trigger for the genesis of the Brussels’ food movement around the early 2000s, and a key stimulus to an institutional action on food, was the promotion of urban gardening initiatives by organised citizens and grass-roots groups seeking to access productive spaces across the Region. Indeed, pushed by a revived community interest in urban gardening and agriculture, and by grass-roots movements

For more contextual information regarding the phase in which the old City of Toronto was merged with crowning municipalities turning it into a larger administrative area, see Chap. 1 of the book and Chap. 6. 2 The document of the GrowTO action plan is retrievable here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/ mmis/2012/pe/bgrd/backgroundfle-51558.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2021. 1

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Introduction

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stirred by agro-ecology and food sovereignty values, sensitised Regional agencies, such as the Brussels’ Environmental Administration, started to support the creation of community gardens. Thus, in a way, the challenge of enhancing urban agriculture and favouring access to land and spaces was at the very origins of the Brussels’ food policies. It’s no coincidence that the expansion of urban food production is still one of the key policy axes of the current Regional Food Strategy (see also Chap. 6). Yet, despite this dynamism and progress in terms of organisational and institutional support for urban agriculture, when it comes to establishing projects on the ground, securing access to land, spaces, and material resources remains a constant struggle and a source of tension in the governance of urban agriculture initiatives in both City-Regions (Baker et al. 2022; Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). As is common in many community-led initiatives and more entrepreneurially-led projects, urban agriculture initiatives in Toronto must navigate a jungle of bureaucratic and administrative procedures that are often unclear, contradictory, and unsupportive. These procedures include things such as submitting applications, obtaining permissions, conforming to zoning guidelines, establishing adapted lease agreements, and supplying resources (e.g. funding, infrastructures, etc.) for operationalising projects. This reality also implies that more disadvantaged individuals and communities (among which are racialized groups that lack power, resources, and political connections) experience the greatest burdens in establishing food growing projects (Hammelman 2019). Similarly, urban agriculture experiments in Brussels rely on diverse and often ad hoc types of land lease agreements (often temporary or precarious), since the consideration of urban agriculture within offcial administrative and planning structures is still scarce (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019, p.  394). In synthesis, both CityRegions are exemplary of key land-resource barriers shared by many urban areas around the world (Baker et al. 2022; Mougeot 2006). These barriers relate to the challenge of liberating land and spaces for alternative uses, such as urban agriculture, considering the realities of scarcity of land as well as speculative pressures by real estate agents and proft-oriented landowners (Tornaghi 2017). In other words, the transformative and, in a way “utopic”, ambition of scaling out food production across the city is up against real-life challenges of accommodating urban agriculture within different or competing types of urban uses. Thus, how do urban agriculture initiatives in Toronto and Brussels experience land-resource governance tensions? What organisational strategies and institutional responses have been mobilised to cope with such tensions? And what do we learn from common and different blockages to enhance access to land experienced by key initiatives in the two contexts? To respond to these questions, this chapter narrates the story of two urban agriculture projects: the Community Engagement and Entrepreneurial Development (CEED) Gardens project in Toronto and the Boeren Bruxsel Paysans (BBP) launched in Brussels. Both initiatives involve a hybridity of actors (ranging from grass-roots organisations to institutional players) attempting to collaborate but also entering into confictual interactions with one another, in order to tackle the land-resource question. Furthermore, both experiences demonstrate that scaling out land access for urban agriculture in the City-Regions is both

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possible as well as benefcial. Following this scaling out intention, the second part of this chapter (Sect. 4.3) refects on key governance tensions related to expanding urban agriculture across the City-Regions, as well as beyond administrative borders, by looking at the role of key organisations and institutionalised-agencies in addressing these tensions. Finally, this chapter considers lessons learned from key actors involved in these initiatives, as well as what we can learn from the way in which key tensions related to land access governance have been surmounted.

4.2

Mobilisation for Access to Land: Stories of Toronto’s CEED Gardens and Brussels’ BBP Coalition

Both the CEED Gardens and the BBP coalition involve the establishment of new spaces for urban agriculture and the development of short food chains. Yet, in line with the multifunctional character of urban agriculture and its capacity to respond to different needs (Pearson 2011; Van Veenhuizen 2006), these projects have slightly different purposes. Indeed, informed by food sovereignty values, a key focus of the BBP is the promotion of agro-ecologically-oriented forms of food production, adapted to small-scale land plots typical of urbanised environments. Besides its focus on ecologically sustainable practices, CEED Gardens uses food production as a means to foster social inclusion, stimulating access to land, food security, and community economic development in highly marginalised, racialized, and lowincome neighbourhoods of the East side of Toronto. In this sense, the CEED Gardens’ project espouses values related to community food security as well as food justice. Key actors and organisations behind these projects have gone through common as well as divergent barriers in gaining access to land and in setting up the necessary infrastructure to implement these initiatives. What is interesting is their ambition to infuence or modify existing institutions and processes conditioning land access, such as obtaining land access approvals and land use permits, establishing clear and enabling procedures to assess soil quality, and devising adapted land use agreements for urban food growers. What follows illustrates how actors behind these initiatives mobilised themselves to obtain access to land, what their emerging values and aspirations are, and how these actors experienced and addressed land-resource governance tensions.

4.2.1

Empowering Communities Through Food: The Origins of the CEED Gardens Project

The genesis of the CEED Gardens project dates back to 2012–2013, against the backdrop of Toronto’s enhanced dynamism and invigorated interest in urban agriculture stemming from diverse actors and organisations including single

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personalities behind these organisations. This dynamism translated into people coming together to set up new collaborative networks supporting urban agriculture, and into actions to sensitise institutional actors and show public offcials and city divisions possible pathways to strengthen urban food growing (courtesy of Toronto Urban Growers’ members). The generalised enthusiasm for urban agriculture is evidenced by the numerous studies, reports, and action plans dedicated to this subject that came during those years. A key example is the report “Scaling-up urban agriculture in Toronto” (Nasr et al. 2010), commissioned by the Metcalf Foundation in 2010, which also shows the role of private players, including interested donors or private foundations, within the hybrid landscape of actors characterising the Toronto urban agriculture community. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, 2012 was also the year in which the GrowTO action plan was launched. This action plan gathered a diversity of grass-roots organisations and community groups engaged in urban agriculture, ranging from citywide networks such as the Toronto Urban Growers (TUG), to other community gardening associations, to large community food security organisations such as FoodShare, The Stop Community Food Centre, and Greenest City. It also involved semi-institutionalised players such as the TFPC, whose coordinator at that time was advocating for the enhancement of urban agriculture in tandem with the Toronto Food Strategy. Moreover, institutional players such as the City of Toronto Energy and Environment Division and other city divisions were also interested in understanding barriers and pathways to enhance urban agriculture in the City.3 In sum, these collaborative dynamics are exemplary of the building of relations of urban agriculture supporters attempting to knit hybrid horizontal networks among each other and with city offcials. Aiming to engender a programmatic action on urban agriculture, one of the priorities identifed by the urban agriculture community through the GrowTO plan was to “link growers with land and spaces” (ibid., 2010, p. 21). In response to these and other priorities of the GrowTO plan, and also thanks to the leadership of organisations such as the TFPC, an inter-divisional and inter-organisational steering group was set-up called the Toronto Agriculture Program (TAP). This group involved members from city divisions and agencies such as the City Planning, Economic Development, Parks Forestry and Recreation, Social Development, Finance and Administration, Toronto Community Housing, Toronto Public Health, Toronto Region Conservation Authority, as well as the TFPC and other community organisations such as FoodShare and TUG (courtesy of the City of Toronto).4 Managing such a complex multi-stakeholder group was a big challenge in itself, involving working across organisational and institutional cultures—which led to moments of inaction and to diffculties in moving a programmatic agenda forward (courtesy of TAP’s participants). A key decision that was made in this arena was to narrow down 3 For an overview of the key actors, organisations, and institutions convening for the urban agriculture action plan, consult the GrowTO Action Plan’s document. 4 For of an overview of the programme and the participating actors, consult the offcial documentation released by the City of Toronto, accessible here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/ pe/bgrd/backgroundfle-62375.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2021.

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the scope of action to the implementation of concrete urban agriculture projects. Thus, from that phase on, the story of the TAP becomes the story of the CEED gardens. Land owned by Hydro One (the provincial electricity company) in transmission corridors in the east side of Toronto was identifed as the target area in which implementing community food growing projects in the form of market gardens,5 since “the hydro corridor seemed to be the most suitable space, being a long strip of green area that is not utilised. Also, there were already other examples of community gardens in hydro corridors” (quote from a TUG coordinator). Thus, key actors advocating for this project thought that arranging lease agreements with Hydro One (but also with the City Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department, which generally handles lease agreements for community gardens in Toronto’s green areas) would be relatively easy. Moreover, as actors from TUG explain, “we wanted to try to establish lease agreements that would enable more kinds of urban farms to happen, not only for growing, but also for selling”. Yet, the implementation process turned out to be more burdensome and intricate than expected. At the time of writing this chapter, and thus, after 7 years of implementation, two market gardens out of the fve originally planned have been completed: the Flemo Farm, a half-acre (0.2 ha) piece of land located in the Flemingdon Park in North York Toronto, and the Malvern garden located in East Scarborough and consisting of about 2 acres (approximately 0.8 ha) (see Fig. 4.1). Both sites are now prepared; the Flemo Farm has fve active farmers, whereas the Malvern has 16. Both farms are in use for the 2021 season. Community activities have slowly started, keeping in mind Covid-19 restrictions.

4.2.2

Coping with Land-Resource Governance Tensions in the CEED Gardens

Undoubtedly, the need to surmount barriers and overcome controversies in the access to land largely explains why the CEED gardens took so long to be established. First, the project involves a rather complex type of land lease arrangement, where the landowner, Hydro One, has a master lease agreement with the City of Toronto, which pays rent and other property taxes and then sub-leases the land to other users for secondary purposes (see also Hammelman 2019). Among others, this means that communications and decisions about land assessment, access, and use had to go through several players such as Hydro One and the City of Toronto, whose bureaucratic machines operate with very different logics from community organisations. Overall, actors from the CEED coalition highlight how the communication and coordination among the landowner, city offcials, administrative divisions, and Overall, market gardens can be defned as the cultivation of vegetable, fruits, and plants in a small surface area of a size comparable to that of community gardens, but having commercial production purposes as well (see for instance https://cityfarmer.info/market-gardening-a-start-up-guide/, accessed 20 Mar 2021). 5

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Fig. 4.1 Concept Map of Toronto showing area location and images of the sites of urban agriculture. (Source: Personal elaboration from Manganelli (2019); images: courtesy of TUG)

community organisations was often problematic, involving conficts among divergent needs, perceptions on the access to land, as well as organisational cultures. One initial source of controversy between grass-roots urban agriculture groups instigating the project and institutional actors was the possibility of using public land for income generation purposes. Although the intention to establish market gardens for low income communities was clear since the beginning—at least in the eyes of urban agriculture’s supporters—institutional actors such as the City of Toronto and the Parks Forestry and Recreations Department reacted to the perspective of making proft out of public land, saying “This is not what we do, this is not what we allow in our property” (quote from CEED gardens’ participants). Thus, land-resource governance tensions began to manifest in divergences between views and perspectives on the access and use of land (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). The intention of community actors to activate market gardens came up against existing logics behind lease agreements fostered by institutional actors, based on the

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rationale that public land should not be used for private or proft purposes. Overcoming these controversies and getting the necessary agreements to advance the project took time and provoked delays. Among others, it required rethinking the leadership of the project and understanding who should take responsibility in managing gardens’ leases (since this role is usually taken by the Parks Division). In 2015, after a frst phase of uncertainties, the participating actors agreed that the Social Development and Finance Administration Department (SDFA) should take leadership and responsibility, working in cooperation with other divisions such as the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division and Toronto Public Health. Indeed, being used to working across silos, the SDFA was considered the most suitable “bottom-linked” type of institution, fostering bottom-linked forms of governance (see Chap. 3 for the notion of bottom-linked governance). As CEED actors recognise, the SDFA has been capable of bringing other divisions together, mediating, and communicating between them as well as with grass-roots actors. The leadership role of key public offcials as well as civil servants behind divisions such as the SDFA and the Toronto Public Health were pivotal for overcoming some of the landresource governance tensions involved in the project. Indeed, “SDFA and Toronto Public Health were determined, strategic and creative at surmounting obstacles as they arose and were well-supported by their managers. They played an invaluable role in coordinating communication between stakeholders, managing the assessment and submission processes (…)” (CEED’s mid-term report, 2017, p. 22, communication with the Malvern Family Resource Center). The role of TUG was also critical in terms of bridging different positions and expectations. The urban agriculture network provided a further layer of mediation between SDFA, Toronto Public Health, and the community organisations involved in the CEED gardens. In particular, as TUG is neither embedded in the City bureaucracy nor directly responsible for delivering community programming, the organisation acted as a critical bridge between the different expectations and perspectives of City staff, Hydro One, and the community organisations for the approvals process. One of the TUG coordinators explains, the NGOs are accountable to their communities, whereas City staff operates in a different context and at a very different scale. We are a network that serves as many urban agriculture interests as possible (…) So, we spent a lot of time meeting with the non-proft organisations, making sure they knew what the parameters of the projects were and then taking back their concerns to the City (…) We fltered and coordinated communication between city staff and non-proft staff. And that took a lot of time (quote from a TUG coordinator).

Alongside these processes, issues of soil testing and aspects related to the provision of material infrastructures also provoked governance tensions. Indeed, as the TUG reveals, “one of the reasons why it is so diffcult to access community gardens’ land in Toronto is that the process for establishing soil safety is long and expensive. So the objective was to help in fguring out how to embed soil safety procedures within the city processes”. Nonetheless, getting the soil tested and preventing liability issues by the landowner for the safety of the soil turned out to be unexpectedly burdensome. Despite the fact that Toronto Public Health had already developed a peerreviewed, award-winning protocol for community gardens to assess the presence of

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potential contaminants in urban soil,6 these soil testing guidelines were not accepted by Hydro One or Parks, Forestry and Recreation. Instead, the landowner required much more demanding and onerous processes of Environmental Safety Assessment, in order to meet provincial standards, recommending soil removal and remediation, which caused additional costs and delays (Hammelman 2019). Alongside soil contamination constraints, getting permissions for accessing water, and installing necessary infrastructures such as fences, gazebos, shelters, storage sheds for tools, washrooms, and so on, also turned out to be very costly and burdensome for community organisations. In order to prevent liability issues and guaranteeing the safety of the operations in the gardening areas, the landowner required detailed technical drawings of the site, specifying for instance the property lines, the foreseen uses, the distance to towers and other Hydro One’s facilities, access allowances for vehicles, and so on. In reaching agreements, there was a lot of bureaucracy we weren't anticipating and when it came to the practicality of actually agreeing on certain things, they (city divisions, the landowner) were reluctant to make major changes to the way they do things, as that sets a new precedent…As this is on a hydro corridor, we were not allowed to have large or permanent structures—we used a deer fence because it can be removed relatively easily (quote from members of the Malvern Family Resource Centre).

Liaising with key funders was essential to cover the costs of soil assessment, site preparation, and the provision of the necessary infrastructure to activate the farms. Indeed, organisations such as FoodShare, TUG, and other community organisations running programmes in the two farms, connected with funders and applied for fnancial resources to private foundations, other non-profts, and some sections of the government; they maintained these relations throughout the duration of the project. Thus, gaining access to fnancial resources and ensuring the fnancial viability of the project was a connected source of (land)-resource governance tensions, provoking organisational responses. Indeed, these grass-roots organisations highlighted how exhaustive and competitive it was to raise funds. Yet, cultivating relations with funders turned out to be essential in order to concretise the projects. For instance, thanks to the willingness of some funders such as the Weston Family Foundation to keep supporting the project notwithstanding the delays, a level of fnancial viability could be guaranteed despite the length of the project and the constraints to its implementation. We always try to fnd a diversity of funders in all the phases of community consultations and development of the sites. For the Flemingdon Park site we raised about 350,000 dollars or more through funders such as TD Bank, Park People, the Weston Foundation, smaller family foundations, but also working with the federal government through the Canada Summer Jobs and an Indigenous organisation for employment opportunities (…) (quote from a FoodShare’s community food growing manager).

6 See the document “from the Grounds up”, issued by Toronto Public Health in 2013, and considered as a good and enabling guide for urban gardeners (see https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2019/09/96a1-FromtheGroundUp_Guide-Soil-TestingOct2013.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2021).

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Raising fnancial resources from funders also served to fnance community consultations. Indeed, the manager of the community food growing programme within FoodShare tells how community consultations in the Flemo Farm accompanied the development of the project in three phases: in the establishment of the farm, the setup of a space for a community orchard, and the implementation of infrastructures for the community. Analogously, grass-roots organisations managing the Malvern site highlight: it was so important to have strong support from the community. We needed to really have those conversations with the community in the beginning to make sure that they wanted it and that they saw the value of it. This gave a little more leverage with our city counsellors as well, because they were also hearing from community members about the importance of the project for their neighbourhood (quote from members of the Malvern Family Resource Centre).

Yet, interactions with residents and perceptions from local inhabitants can generate divergent outcomes, being themselves sources of confict and tension. As the CEED participants tell, one out of the four originally planned gardens was stopped because of reactions from the residents who feared that a new urban agriculture project would bring “exogenous” and extraneous people in the neighbourhood. This confrms how the perceptions and values of residents, including sensitive socio-racial interactions, can be part of the picture of land-resource governance tensions conditioning access and use of spaces for urban agriculture (Alkon et al. 2020; Colasanti et al. 2012). The story of the CEED gardens shows that when embarking on the practical implementation of a project, tensions related to the governance of access to land come to the fore. In the case of the CEED gardens, although there was initial enthusiasm from diverse actors to sit at the same table, revise established approval processes, and forge more enabling guidelines to develop market gardens, a number of barriers, some unexpected, sprang up. These barriers triggered land-resource governance tensions, which actors and organisations had to confront and tackle in order to surmount.

4.2.3

Enhancing Small-Scale Agro-ecological Agriculture: The Genesis of the BBP Coalition

The year 2015 constituted the offcial start of the BBP project—formalised by the approval of the EU through funding from the ERDF (European Regional Development Funds) framework. The actual genesis of the BBP coalition occurred before this, being the result of the building of relations among diverse actors fostering alternative values on land and dealing with divergent logics of land allocation. In particular, around the year 2014 civil servants from the Municipality of Anderlecht (one of the 19 Municipalities of the BCR) began to react against urbanisation pressures in the proximity of Neerpede, an agricultural area located in that municipality.

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In response to the Regional planning authority’s granting of a building permit for new housing expansions at the borders of Neerpede, sensitised municipal state agents called for protecting and enhancing the rural and ecological character of Neerpede, as one of the few remaining agriculture lands in the BCR. The Municipality was against building there, but the Region wrote in the PRAS [Regional Land Use Plan] that this agricultural land should be turned into buildable (…) So we feared that these processes would progressively colonize Neerpede/Anderlecht, shrinking the available rural land. So we felt that we needed to do something (quote from a civil servant, division of Sustainable Development, Anderlecht).

Facing pressure on land, these actors began to connect with other policy offcials at the Regional level, and in particular with the Ministry of the Environment, which at that time had already launched a regional programme on the food system transition.7 Thus, having common interests in protecting and enhancing urban and peri-urban agriculture, regional actors from the environmental cabinet and its administration were open to collaboration, envisaging concrete proposals for enhancing local food production and re-localising food chains in that area of Brussels (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). In parallel to this, actors from the grass-roots urban agriculture organisation Le Début des Haricots (DDH) became interested in negotiating access to land for small-scale agro-ecological farming. They considered the Municipality of Anderlecht as a key target area for seeking available cultivable land. As such, the DDH started to build relations with the civil servants of the Anderlecht municipality as well as with the Regional Environmental Cabinet. Thanks to converging motivations and claims on land protection and access, but also in reaction to competing logics of land development, a core hybrid network of actors formed, encompassing the Municipality of Anderlecht, the Regional Environmental Cabinet, and in particular its administrative agency called Bruxelles Environnement (BE), and the noproft association DDH (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). This core coalition applied for the ERDF in order to launch a pilot project to implement and scale out small-scale agro-ecological agriculture and increase the proximity in food chains in Neerpede-BCR (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). Not so differently from the CEED project, the idea was “to show that a project of this kind is possible. We wanted to have a pilot project that could be reproducible and in which we identify pathways to re-localise food production at a human scale and in an environmentally friendly way, creating links between producers and consumers” (quote from administrative staff at BE). Alongside this core coalition, two other main actors joined the partnership during the elaboration and submission of the ERDF project. First, the non-proft organisation Terre en Vue, a type of community land trust already operating in Wallonia whose key mission is to liberate land and enhance land tenure rights for small-scale local food producers. This organisation saw the BBP project as a promising This refers to the “Alliance Employment-Environment” (Alliance Emploi Environnement), an inter-governmental programme started around 2013 that included a policy axe “Towards a sustainable food system in the Brussels-Capital Region”. This programme preceded the launch of the Brussels´ Regional Food Strategy in 2015. 7

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opportunity to orient their action to the BCR. Second, the organisation Credal—a non-proft entity that supports and accompanies entrepreneurial initiatives, including those related to agriculture and food. Thus, while this partnership was largely fuelled by established knowledge networks and trust relations among participating actors, the ERDF funding scheme helped formalise a framework for collaboration (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). Furthermore, and in contrast to the CEED gardens project where actors had more challenges in fnding suitable leadership, the regional institutional actor, i.e. BE, exercised a rather effective leadership role since the beginning.

4.2.4

Dealing with Land-Resource Governance Tensions Through the BBP Coalition

As specifed, unlike the CEED gardens project, the BBP coalition beneftted from a fve-year European funding framework, which fnanced the implementation of pilot urban agriculture sites as well as the re-activation of infrastructures for food processing and re-localised food chains in an area of Neerpede-Anderlecht (see Fig. 4.2). Gaining this funding meant that the project partners were not required to dedicate as much effort in fundraising over the course of the years. Part of this money, therefore, could be used to provide material infrastructures for the new urban farming sites, such as glasshouses, tools, machineries, and so on. This fveyear framework has also given a relative fnancial security to bottom-up initiatives participating in the project, such as DDH and Terre en Vue, which could perform their role without needing to continuously raise funds to sustain their own organisation. It is a considerable budget (…) having about 300,000 euros for fve years allows us to have fnancial stability for a particular project and focus on the complex issue of urban agriculture rather than on the fnancial ftness of our NGO at least for the frst two to three years. (…) It also gives us a clear timeframe to reach objective results and organize our actions around these. The FEDER fund can only be used within the administrative borders of Brussels, which adds an interesting restriction allowing us to focus (quote from a coordinator of Terre en Vue).

Although some implementation challenges occurred, it was relatively easy for the BBP project partners to install new farming sites in two plots of land of about 3 hectares, as foreseen by the project. Furthermore, the fact that the Municipality of Anderlecht, active participant in the partnership, is the landowner made it simpler to establish a suitable type of land lease arrangement among the parties. At the outset of the project, a lease agreement for a duration of 9 years was formalised and permission was given for farming sites to be established in two areas within NeerpedeAnderlecht. Processes of soil quality checks were also relatively straightforward, given the fact that these lands were unused for a long time, being also designated as agriculture land. The urban agriculture association DDH has the specifc responsibility of taking care of these new farming activities in Anderlecht. It is in charge of

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Fig. 4.2 Concept Map of the BCR showing area location and images of the sites of urban agriculture. (Source: Personal elaboration from Manganelli and Moulaert 2019)

issuing a call for projects for new agro-ecological farmers who wish to access these spaces to test their modes of production and start up their activities, with attention being given to locally embedded food networks informed by agro-ecological principles. The DDH is also responsible for supporting these growers with training activities throughout the duration of their incubation period. One key objective of the BBP project also includes searching for more land in Anderlecht and in the BCR. The organisation Terre en Vue was assigned the specifc role of “fnding land(s) for small scale farmers in Brussels” (courtesy of Terre en Vue). One of the frst actions that Terre en Vue undertook in order to tap the potentials for more available land was to develop a cartographic GIS map in order to collect data concerning existing as well as potentially usable land for urban

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agriculture in Brussels. Data was collected on the potential suitability of unbuilt land, the ownership structure, the type of farming systems in existing farmed land, and so on. Terre en Vue thought that these and other contextual data could provide a basis for conversations with landowners, as well as with institutional actors, citizens, and potential new farmers, around the place that urban agriculture and access to land can exercise for the City-Region. Alongside the cartographic database, Terre en Vue recognised that we also needed to have a different kind of information, in order to understand the feasibility of it (…) We needed to understand who is occupying the land, what kind of contracts, what is the vision of the owner on land use (…) but we also needed to check the soil quality, the sun exposure, the availability of water infrastructures, the proximity to roads. If you want to understand that, you have to go to the feld, talk to neighbourhoods, open communication channels with landowners and land holders (quote from a coordinator of Terre en Vue).

Proactively engaged in searching for more land to expand urban agriculture in the Region, Terre en Vue came across a diversity of land-resource constraints. Among the major constraints encountered by Terre en Vue is the fragmented landownership and tenure structure of many plots of land resulting from land subdivisions between owners and successors occurring generation after generation (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). This reality implies making more efforts to negotiate and forge land use agreements with different owners. Furthermore, Terre en Vue highlights the “patrimonial” and speculative attitude on land by most of the landowners or tenants in Brussels: most of the landowners—private as well as public—advance instrumental and speculative attitudes on land. They consider land as dormant capital that one day they want to wake up and use (…). There is no vision or coordination among different owners of the land towards the fostering of alternative land use practices (…) creating a consortium that sensitises different owners and stimulates coordination among them would be desirable, although very challenging (quote from a coordinator of Terre en Vue).

A further thorny issue Terre en Vue came across, also recognised by other actors of the BBP coalition, concerns the dominant land lease law in vigour in the Belgian context called “Bail à ferme” in French and “Pacht” in Dutch. Under this legal framework, a considerable amount of agriculture land in the BCR (but also in the other bordering regions) has been rented out to conventional farmers or other farmers who have matured long-term rights on the use of land. This type of consolidated model of land use contracts protect existing farmers but are very constraining for new farmers who wish to experiment with novel forms of agriculture, such as agroecological food production on a small scale (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019, p. 396). The law is so strict that landowners are no longer willing to rent out their land to new professional farmers. At best, they prefer to rent to hobby farmers, because they are not protected by the law. This is especially damaging young, small-scale farmers, because it has become almost impossible for them to fnd land for rent. Buying land would be too expensive given the high land values (quote from the Flemish land agency Vlaamse Landmaatschappij, VLM).

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In the frame of the BBP partnership, actors such as Terre en Vue and DDH proactively collaborated in trying to tackle some of these land-resource constraints in order to address land-resource governance tensions and open possibilities for new farming sites in Brussels (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). Among other activities, these organisations engaged in sensitising potential landowners on the possibility of making space for alternative land uses. At the same time, they began to search for new potential small-scale growers, acting as mediators and facilitators of potentially adapted and mutually benefcial land use arrangements. So far, the results of these actions are uneven. Although it is still very challenging to convince landowners as well as municipal and planning authorities that other uses are possible, and despite the fact that it is still “a challenge to give legitimacy to farming in an urban setting” (quote from a coordinator of Terre en Vue), Terre en Vue has achieved some results. At the time of writing this chapter, for instance, the organisation launched four calls for project proposals for new small scale farming installations in four municipalities of the BCR (Anderlecht, Ganshoren, Jette, and Ukkle). Yet, Terre en Vue underlines how this is the result of long-term efforts involving processes of discussion and conversation with landowners and land holders that initiated years before. Indeed, Terre en Vue highlights the time that is needed to build trust and forge relationships based on confdence with landowners, devising contract types that are adapted to the legal frame while, at the same time, accommodating the needs of different parties.

4.3

Organisational and Institutional Responses to the Land-Resource Question in Toronto and Brussels

So far, the stories of the CEED gardens and the BBP coalition have shown how actors and organisations involved in the two projects experienced similar as well as different types of land-resource governance tensions. While in both cases actors instigating these projects aimed for more land for low-income communities or agroecological producers, participating actors and organisations within the two projects dealt with land-resource governance tensions in different ways. CEED gardens’ actors needed to invest signifcant energy in implementing the market gardens’ sites, overcoming key barriers in making land agreements effective, and obtaining permits. Key participants in the BBP project, on the other hand, could turn towards tackling land-resource constraints more generally in Brussels from the onset of the project, experiencing nonetheless critical governance tensions therein. In light of these projects, what general considerations can be made on key organisational and institutional responses to the land-resource question? In other words, how can these projects be positioned within the wider picture of organisational and institutional dynamics and tensions with respect to the land-resource governance in the two City-Regions?

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Organisational and Institutional Dynamics of Land Access in Toronto

The landscape of organisational and institutional support or enablement to urban agriculture and access to land in Toronto is neither black nor white; it presents a nuanced or multi-coloured picture. On the one hand, forms of collaborative or bottom-linked governance between institutional players (also in the form of landowners and civil society-led initiatives) support the enhancement of urban agriculture and access to land. On the other hand, these processes go along with variegated, fragmented, and often ad hoc processes through which urban agriculture initiatives are stirred, attempting to overcome tensions on the access to land. What follows illustrates this reality, highlighting the role of key actors and organisations as well as institutional responses to the access to land in Toronto. 4.3.1.1 The Role of Key Actors and Organisations What we learn from the CEED gardens experience is the critical role played by key organisations, as well as actors within them, in mobilising to tackle land-resource constraints. The reference here is to organisations such as FoodShare, and its programme on urban agriculture, or TUG within the CEED gardens project, but also to several other organisations beyond the CEED gardens (such as The Stop and the TFPC, to name a few) operating at a wider scale in Toronto. In a way, these organisations act as mediators or facilitators in helping community groups and community leaders infuence policies and procedures and address public offcials such as local councillors in order to be able to access land. A former urban agriculture programme manager in FoodShare highlights: “a lot of our time is spent supporting community groups or grass-roots from the ground-up, creating community consultations, creating decision-making bodies, partnership agreements, terms of reference, supporting with fundraising, supporting groups, and getting permissions from the landowners”. The role of an organisation like TUG in facilitating communication and coordination among local organisations and state actors is also illustrative (see Sect. 4.2). A citywide urban agriculture network that is not directly accountable to a specifc community group could play that role. Referring to the CEED gardens experience, but also to wider challenges of scaling out urban agriculture and access to land in Toronto, these actors highlight how challenging it is to “move the wheels of an entire institution, getting people to think differently about the possible use of space” (quote from a FoodShare’s manager). This shows clear connections between organisational and institutional governance tensions on land, which relate to dealing with administrative, regulatory, and institutional structures affecting access to landresources (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). More generally, this reality shows how urban agriculture supporters need to face pragmatic challenges in dealing with conficting

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uses of land and spaces, entering into tension with other actors or institutions that may hold divergent visions concerning the best use of urban space. Thus, organisations like these, and the people behind them (programme managers, coordinators, leaders, and so on) play a relevant role in building relations and, among other things, supporting gardeners or other small-scale growers in negotiating agreements with landowners, such as the City of Toronto, city divisions, faith organisations, or other private landowners (courtesy of FoodShare). Driven by strong motivation, organisational leadership, and experience, initiatives such as TUG, FoodShare, the STOP, or the advocacy work of individuals within organisations such as the TFPC or supportive state institutions, play a critical role in trying to change the perception of some institutionalised actors (such as city departments) and in taking steps towards overcoming departmentalised silos. As one TUG coordinator explains, “it was a big leap to get Parks Department to accept community gardens in their land and the idea that citizens could come into parks and do gardening for themselves”. Urban agriculture supporters observe how there is still a lot of reluctance, controversy, and institutional resistance to legitimising the use of public land for community economic development initiatives such as market gardens, as the CEED gardens story demonstrates. In addition, planning and zoning regulations impacting the access to land and spaces for urban agriculture in Toronto create constraints and trigger land-resource governance tensions related to what uses are permitted and what type of “economic” activities are allowed or not in a certain space. Again, the logics with which institutional structures operate clash with views and perceptions of bottom-up initiatives on the use of space, creating land-resource tensions. Overall, the role played by enabling organisational and relational dynamics is undoubtedly a powerful resource for the food and agriculture movement in Toronto. Indeed, many of these organisations have a long-term trajectory, holding expertise, experience, as well as some level of legitimacy, in doing their work. A very clear example of the energy, effectiveness, and reactivity of organisational responses to land dynamics happened recently with the restrictions related to the Covid-19 outbreak. In March 2020, as a result of the frst lockdown, both the provincial and municipal authorities issued an ordinance requesting community gardens as well as public food markets to close down, since they were considered as types of nonessential recreational activities. Urban agriculture advocates immediately reacted to this, joining forces and mobilising against this ordinance. They argued that gardens and markets should be rather considered as essential food services and provided draft guidelines for Covid-19 safety that were adapted by Toronto Public Health and Parks, Recreation and Forestry. These organisational reactions and responses were successful in obtaining permission from the City and the Province to keep the gardens open.

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Nuanced Institutional Responses and Hybrid/Bottom-Linked Forms of Governance

In this variegated and nuanced landscape of organisational-institutional dynamics and tensions on land-resource, the role of sensitised institutional players in helping to scale out access to land or spaces, and to enhance urban agriculture, is also very relevant. For instance, some of the city divisions or other (semi)institutionalised agencies have been quite proactive, or at least supportive, in enabling urban agriculture and access to land by partnering and establishing fruitful bottom-linked forms of governance with grass-roots players. One example is the Toronto District School Board with which FoodShare has established agreements for setting up urban agriculture activities on schools’ rooftops or lawns. At the time of writing this chapter, FoodShare was engaged in establishing one of the biggest farms in the District School Board’s lands. This is a three acre (approximately 1.2 ha) urban farm located in the west side of Toronto, which is meant to involve nearby residents in activities that include a community compost programme, an orchard, fruit trees, a farmers’ market, as well as a pollinator garden (communication by FoodShare’ school grown manager). Another example of support from a city division, which is also the landowner, is the Toronto Community Housing, with which organisations like FoodShare have also established partnerships. Managers from the FoodShare organisation highlight how reaching consensus and some form of support for small-scale projects such as community gardens or community kitchens has become more and more the norm for that agency. Yet, they also emphasise how persuading civil servants to give stable support to the establishment of projects has required time and effort. Although the Toronto Community Housing division is generally recognised as encouraging and providing resources for residents to request community garden space on their property (courtesy of the City of Toronto), the picture is more nuanced when considering the challenges still faced in meeting the rights of residents, especially disadvantaged residents, to grow food in community housing properties.8 At a wider scale, a further example of an enabling institutional actor is the Toronto Region and Conservation Authority (TRCA), an agency with a jurisdiction covering a majority of the Greater Toronto Area, whose mandate comes from Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) under the auspices of the Conservation Authorities Act. Being a large landowner in the Greater Toronto Area, the TRCA leases approximately 299 hectares of agricultural land (courtesy of the TRCA), partly managed under a management agreement with the City of Toronto. As part of a series of projects, in 2003 the TRCA collaborated with the City of Toronto to set up the Toronto Urban Farm within the Jane and Finch community, City of Toronto (see Box 4.1). Furthermore, from the year 2008, TRCA began to Hammelman (2019) illustrates this through the story of the social housing project in Toronto’s Regent Park. Highlighting power disparities and unequitable logics through which bureaucratic procedures unfold, Hammelman shows how the revitalisation plan of the social housing neighbourhood was not able to adequately meet residents´ requests for gardening spaces. 8

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proactively support forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture and access to land. With the introduction of TRCA’s Sustainable Near-Urban Agriculture policy in 2008, TRCA has supported interested farmers to access land and to establish local food growing projects. Overall, the above examples show attempts to instigate proactive forms of leadership, confict management, and cooperation (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3), among bottom-up groups, residents, citywide organisations, and institutional actors. These forms of bottom-linked governance, based on fruitful cooperative relationships, are good examples of modes of stirring land-resource governance tensions into proactive or empowering directions. Yet, alongside cooperative dynamics, the hybrid governance of the land-resource in Toronto continues to generate tensions, also in terms of conficts and clashes with existing institutions, ultimately impacting access to land. As key interviewees within the urban agriculture community reveal, the ways in which many urban agriculture initiatives happen is by fnding creative or ad hoc modes of navigating land-resource barriers, sometimes failing, and often conficting with established institutional and regulatory guidelines on the access to land. This can be seen, for example, in zoning bylaws creating obstacles to the use of space for the production and sale of food from urban gardens; or local planning offcers in the various Toronto wards being more or less responsive to requests for setting up urban agriculture initiatives.

Box 4.1: The Story of Black Creek, a Community-Led Farm The Black Creek Community Farm (BCCF) occupies a 3.2 hectares (8 acres) site in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood on the north-west side of Toronto. Jane and Finch is a low income highly racialized and multicultural neighbourhood with high rates of poverty and a high representation of people of colour, Latinos, Asians, and migrant communities. As one staff member at the BCCF points out, the Jane and Finch neighbourhood is one of the most stigmatised communities in Toronto. As explained below, BCCF is known for being embedded in the neighbourhood and representing racialized communities. Not too dissimilar from the CEED project, a major vocation of the farm is to enhance community food security and implement food justice. The site has been hosting agricultural activities since at least the 1950s, when TRCA acquired the land from dairy farmers, due to the high heritage and conservation value of that area. Today, the BCCF is a certifed organic farm, following agro-ecological production principles and also promoting culturally diverse crops. The farm hosts different programmes related to food production and collateral activities. For instance, the BCCF leases land to food justice organisations such as Afri-Can FoodBasket so that they can run their own programming. The farm also includes eight community gardens, part of which are managed by Afri-Can FoodBasket in a land lease agreement with the BCCF.  Other programmes include a food baskets programme, an (continued)

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Box 4.1 (continued) Urban Harvest programme that redistributes surplus food to communities, cooking workshops, and other educational and training activities. To get to its current type of arrangement, however, the farm took several steps in terms of its land governance and management model. Urban agriculture experiments in the area were frst set-up in 2002. The use of a Management Agreement was established between the TRCA and the City of Toronto, allowing the latter to manage the land. The idea was to create the frst urban agriculture farm in Toronto—named the Toronto Urban Farm—displaying the value of sustainable agriculture practices combined with educational and training activities. The newly established Toronto Urban Farm was embedded in the Toronto Community Garden Program, managed by Parks, Forestry and Recreation. However, in 2011, after budgetary evaluations, the City of Toronto decided to withdraw its support to the Farm. Among other factors, the productivity outcomes of the Farm were not convincing in the eyes of the City’s decisionmakers (Trompette 2014). Yet, a further step in the land access governance process occurred in 2012, when the TRCA launched a call for proposals for combining land conservation with enhancing local food production practices in the site. A consortium of fve organisations won the call and took lead of the project. The partnership comprised the environmental learning centre Everdale as leading partner, the Fresh City Farms (see also Box 4.2), FoodShare Toronto, the food justice organisation Afri-Can FoodBasket, and the grass-roots organisation BCCF. Food growing operations were initially hampered by the need to clean up the land from plastics and contaminants, as well as by the necessity to comply with land conservation measures (courtesy of staff at the BCCF). After fve years, however, the land governance arrangement of the BCCF site evolved considerably. In tune with the grass-roots spirit of the BCCF, the purpose was to ensure a wider representation from the community of residents belonging to the Jane and Finch area, including residents who are racialized and historically marginalised. Indeed, decision-making processes had been taking place within a committee of the fve organisations, and lacked community input and accountability. To rectify this, TRCA assigned FoodShare the status of farm operator and land tenant and, on its side, FoodShare supported the BCCF organisation in its responsibility to manage the land. Supported by FoodShare through the “Supportive Partnerships Platform”—i.e. a programme set-up by FoodShare to empower community organisations through training, mentorship, and capacity building—the BCCF became responsible for paying the land accessibility fees and for managing the site. Furthermore, to ensure community accountability, a steering committee was set up, comprised mostly by racialized people living in the community. In line with food justice values, this committee envisions empowering communities so that they can express ideas concerning the farm, while (continued)

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Box 4.1 (continued) major decisions have to pass through the supervision of the community-based steering committee. Despite being a virtuous model in terms of bottom-led governance, holding a certain stability in terms of land tenure, the BCCF has, through time, experienced challenges in terms of securing land, ensuring funding and resources to run programmes, and making them accessible to low-income communities. Indeed, as key interviewees underline, the farm has always been operated with scarce funding and for most of its existence has relied on few and lowpaid staff. Thus, it is a work in progress for staff running the BCCF to understand how to raise adequate funds and to ensure a continuity of resources so that most of the people can buy food baskets or access food justice training programmes. After all, in the eyes of the BCCF staff, access to training opportunities can help disadvantaged communities to overcome some of the barriers that constrain the fulflment of food justice. Overall, the BCCF example is emblematic of a food justice politics that through the years has increased its weight and impact in the Toronto urban food community (see also Chap. 6). Source: exchanges with staff at the BCCF, with TRCA; consultation of the Carrot City project and of web documentation.

Box 4.2: Farming on Federal Land. The Story of Fresh City Farms Fresh City Farms was set up in the year 2011  in a plot of land situated in Downsview Park, in the north of Toronto. This project differentiates from other urban agriculture initiatives illustrated in this chapter in that it is an entrepreneurially driven for-proft company. In fact, Fresh City Farms is more than an in situ farm. It is a company that involves online retail of food and beverage products that combine organic, seasonal, local (as much as possible) products, delivering with electric bikes or vans to households, but also selling food produce in stores within Toronto. The experience of Fresh City Farms is emblematic in terms of the theme of land access and negotiated relationships with landowners. Not dissimilarly to the BBP in Brussels, Fresh City Farms involves two acres (approximately 0.8 ha) of land where interested urban farmers can experiment with food growing and get access to infrastructures such as greenhouses, seeds, tools, storage space, cold spaces, and so on. The aim of this “Member Farmer Program” is to link (urban) growers to land. This plot of land is federally owned; before the 1990s, it was a military base. The long-term vision of the owner, the Canada Lands Company, was to refurbish and re-design the site to develop a national park. A design competition was launched (involving, among others, star architects) to design possible scenarios for the site, but not much was done in terms of implementation in the following 15 years. (continued)

Box 4.2 (continued) The establishment of an urban farming site was not part of the original vision of the federal landowner. On the contrary, it was the idea of community organisations from the area, which even before the Fresh City Farm was set up, had started to lobby and advocate to install urban food growing activities on that land. Farmers from the Fresh City Farm took over in 2011. Yet, for a long time they had to deal with a landowner whose main portfolio and vision did not include urban farming. Indeed, the farm was considered rather as a temporary pilot project, or an interim activity in view of further developments. In addition, the Canada Lands Company is a government land corporation accustomed to managing buildings and infrastructures in federal land and renting them out to corporate clients. Being used to corporate relationships and proft making out of their lands, they are quite far from the scopes and the competency required to deal with urban farming. As the leader of Fresh City Farm explains, in the last ten years land lease arrangements have been very precarious. Farmers had to operate with a month-to-month lease, or a seasonto-season lease in the last two years. Over time, relationships with the unsupportive landlord have become rather confictive, to the point that attempts were made to evict the farmers. A shift occurred after the years 2015–2016 with new federal elections and a reorganisation of staff in the decision board managing the Park. Some members of the board were more supportive of the idea of having a cultivation site in the park. In 2018, they issued a call for proposals for an urban farming site occupying an extended surface of the Park. Fresh City Farms was successful in submitting and winning the proposal. By demonstrating the beneft to the Park (in terms of creating amenities and jobs, and providing environmental, educational, and social benefts) members of the Fresh City Farm secured agreements for a long term lease of 20 years and an extended tenure of six additional acres (2.43 hectares). In synthesis, thanks to negotiations, improved communication, good confict management, as well as the supportive role of decision-making authorities, these relational dynamics linked to the access to land culminated in a positive outcome. As the leader of the Fresh City Farms admits, the fact of operating in a federally owned land allowed farmers to bypass some additional bottlenecks that would have occurred when dealing with the City of Toronto’s lands. In sum, although the process took a long time and required perseverance, options were opened for scaling out farming activities thanks to a good land security framework. The idea is to extend the Member Farmer Program, attracting new farmers, communities, and organisations to work on the land, among which will potentially be Black and Indigenous farmers and organisations. This fact is also indicative of an emerging awareness of the existence of socio-racial disparities and the tendency of some urban agriculture activities, although often involuntarily, to privilege middle class, mostly white, educated inhabitants. Source: exchanges with the leader of Fresh City Farms (2017, 2021).

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Organisational and Institutional Responses to the (Hinter)Land Question in Brussels

Over the course of the BBP project, the wider landscape of organisational and institutional dynamics underpinning the enhancement of urban agriculture and access to land in Brussels has evolved. The BBP coalition is currently negotiating forms of institutionalisation that could help further actions beyond the four-year life cycle of the ERDF funding. In parallel to this, and also inspired by the BBP project, Brussels’ State institutions are giving new incentives to the development of urban agriculture, including through the launch of the Brussels’ GoodFood strategy in 2015. Yet, further institutional governance tensions on land are evident in the initial attempts to sensitise planning institutions as well as to look beyond administrative-territorial borders in tackling the land-resource question. 4.3.2.1

Enabling Urban Agriculture and Access to Land Within and Beyond the BBP

Nowadays the BBP coalition is undergoing a strategic phase, as actors within the coalition are envisioning and negotiating forms of institutionalisation and support that go beyond the duration of the project. A civil servant at BE explains, “the ERDF funding ends in mid-2021. A few of the activities can be fnanced for a bit longer. However, what we are working on now is to identify modes of incorporating some of the actions and achievements of the BBP as public services or missions of public institutions, which will continue to exist beyond the duration of the project” (quote from a civil servant at BE). At the same time, new incentives to the development of urban agriculture come from Brussels’ regional food strategy, i.e. the GoodFood Strategy. As Chap. 6 illustrates, the GoodFood Strategy fnds its institutional home in the Cabinet of Economy and Employment and in the Cabinet of Environment. One of the priorities of the Strategy is to support urban agriculture in the form of collective gardening for recreational purposes as well as more professionally oriented projects.9 DDH is negotiating agreements for extended funding with the Urban Agriculture Unit (in French Cellule Agriculture) of the Cabinet Economy and Employment in order to pursue its action on the urban agriculture sites of the BBP. The idea is that the “space test” for producers in Anderlecht could carry on for at least another 3 years, allowing for new rounds of farmers to test their activities and receive training and support (courtesy of the DDH). Alongside this, Terre en 9 See pillar 1 of the Strategic Document, “Increasing sustainable local food production”, available here:  http://document.environnement.brussels/opac_css/elecfle/Strat_GoodFood_FR, accessed 25 Mar 2021. A section of the Strategy states that “it is essential to develop planning and land use policies which favor a “smart” densifcation, thus enabling new urban agriculture sites in the Brussels’ Region (…), and preserving existing agricultural land in the Region and in its periphery.” (See document p. 34, translated from French).

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Vue is negotiating longer term funding to pursue its action in facilitating access to land in the region. At the same time, BBP actors, together with other agents involved in the Strategy, have been jointly thinking about further ways to embed some of the BBP’s missions within Brussels’ institutions. Among the results of these conversations are new organisations and initiatives recently created to support urban agriculture, access to land, and to represent (agro-ecological) producers in the BCR. One of these initiatives is the so-called “Urban Farming Facilitator” (in French Facilitateur Agriculture Urbaine, in Dutch, Facilitator voor Stadslandbouw), which started in 2018 and thus during the course of the BBP project. Composed of organisations with expertise in juridical, economic, and entrepreneurial aspects of urban agriculture (among which is Terre en Vue itself), the role of the Urban Farming Facilitator is to support and guide urban agriculture projects in their development and implementation. The idea is that interested farmers, but also public institutions and landowners, citizens, or urban agriculture groups that wish to set up projects, or that encounter implementation challenges, can refer to the Urban Agriculture Facilitator as a contact point; the facilitator assists in sorting out issues such as access to land, planning regulations, economic and feasibility aspects, business plans, and so on. Alongside this, other devices are being set up in order to give complementary support for access to land and new urban farming initiatives. These devices include, for instance, the “local economy desk” (in French, Guichet d’Économie Locale, in Dutch, De Lokale Economieloketten), which is supposed to act in complementarity with the Urban Farming Facilitator to accompany and support the feasibility of urban agriculture projects; the Federation of Brussels’ Urban Farmers (in French, Fédération bruxelloise des professionnel.le.s de l’Agriculture Urbaine, in Dutch, Brusselse Federatie van Professionals in de Stadslandbouw), which is meant to represent and federate small scale agro-ecological producers in Brussels and its periphery; and an Urban Center for Agroecology that will work in tandem with the Federation in order to build a narrative as well as provide research and technical support to the development of agro-ecology in Brussels. Thus, through time, a range of initiatives that seek to scale out support to urban agriculture and access to land in Brussels have developed. They emerged within, in parallel to, and as an evolution of the BBP coalition. Undoubtedly, issues such as the budget, complementarities, and the division of roles among actors and organisations stirring these initiatives are still under discussion. Nonetheless, these dynamics are a sign of fertile and creative ways in which actors in Brussels are seeking to negotiate modes of institutionalisation and support to urban agriculture and access to land (as a further example, see also Box 4.3). 4.3.2.2 Widening the Scope of Urban Agriculture in Brussels and Its Hinterland Urban agriculture supporters’ experience in Brussels brought them to recognise that developing more urban agriculture in their city meant having to cope with other institutions infuencing access to land and spaces. In particular, they had to deal with

Box 4.3: The Brussels’ Farm “Chant Des Cailles” and Its Struggles for Land Established in 2012, the Chant des Cailles is one of the frst farms of its kind developed in Brussels, fostering a hybrid model that combines food production with other socio-economic activities such as a Community Supported Agriculture scheme, gardening, leisure spaces, recreational and educational programmes for children and citizens, and so on. The hectare farm is located in a residential suburb of the municipality of Watermael-Boitsfort, in the south east of the BCR. The wasteland in which the farm is established was formerly used by a farmer who stopped his activities in 2008. The Chant des Cailles was established thanks to the joint work of local inhabitants and urban agriculture activists interested in establishing professional farming activities. These fruitful interactions between inhabitants from the neighbourhood and professionals working on the farm have been vital all along the development the farm and essential to the implementation of activities. Being a successful example of a community-supported farm integrated in the neighbourhood, the farm has become a landmark and a reference space for nearby inhabitants. In 2015–2016, however, the farm started to experience revived tensions on the use of land. The newly elected Cabinet of Economy and Employment issued new directives foreseeing the building of new housing dwellings in the site. Among others, this shows how divergent and sometimes contradictory agendas (such as urban agriculture and housing) can take place within the same institution, since this Cabinet is also responsible for the Food Strategy in Brussels. The landowner of the site is a social housing company called “logis foreal”, with whom farmers of the Chant des Cailles established a precarious land lease arrangement. This agreement has unlimited duration, on the condition that, in case the housing agency had other plans with the land, the site could be taken back by the company. The new plans from the Regional authority triggered reactions in the form of tensions and conficts among inhabitants and professionals involved in the farm. If some inhabitants took a more radical position, self-organising to stop the housing plans, other actors from the Chant des Cailles were more open to negotiate a vision in which housing and farming could be combined. Nowadays, the destiny of the Farm du Chant des Cailles is still uncertain and under discussion. Key leaders of the farm are trying to show that in addition to its ecological added value, the social value of the farm is very important to the neighbourhood, and that it would be an unfortunate political move to dismantle an exemplary urban farm in Brussels—especially by a Cabinet that has promoted the Food Strategy and whose priority is to enhance land access for local food production in Brussels. This story speaks to many similar struggles urban agriculture initiatives around the world are facing. It shows tensions regarding the need to accommodate urban growth, clearly displaying the priority that housing and other traditional urban uses have in the mind-set of state institutions. It is also exemplary of a reality of precarious land use agreements with which many urban agriculture initiatives in Brussels and elsewhere still need to cope. Source: personal participation in the initial phases of the farm; conversations with farmers.

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planning institutions and juridical aspects related to the access to land. Already in 2018, the urban agriculture unit of the Cabinet of Economy and Employment commissioned a study aiming to sort out the legal and planning barriers to the development of more urban agriculture in Brussels (Lefebvre et al. 2018).10 In light of this study, the urban agriculture community increasingly recognised the importance of dialoguing with and sensitising planning and land-use decision-makers. Because of these dynamics, in 2020 a new “action plan” was released that identifes pathways to remove some of the legal and juridical barriers conditioning stable access to land for small-scale growers in Brussels.11 As interviewees from the urban agriculture unit of the Cabinet explain, some of the recommendations highlighted in that study are currently brought to the attention of planning decision-makers. Among others, the Cellule Agriculture of the Cabinet has been contacting actors from the administration in charge of urbanism and territorial development in Brussels in order to discuss changes in the Regional land use plan (in French, Plan Régional d’Affectation du Sol—PRAS) that can be benefcial for urban agriculture. Other aspects under discussion concern how to adapt and modify instruments such as urban planning regulations in order to favour the integration of urban agriculture with other functions, among which housing (to which urban planning regulations in Brussels mostly apply), green spaces, and public infrastructures. Further discussions concern the reform of the abovementioned “bail à ferme” i.e. the dominant legal framework determining land tenure rights for farmers in Brussels as well as in the other Belgian regions. Actors such as Terre en Vue are in conversation with institutional players in order to identify pathways for revising this framework, or, at least, for adapting some of the legal aspects to create more suitable land use agreements for new farmers as well as for landowners. Thus, by dealing with institutional governance tensions on land, interactions and communications have intensifed between urban agriculture advocates, including supportive public agents, and other institutional players, such as planning decisionmakers. This reality testifes to a greater openness and sensitivity to questioning or revising some of the institutions conditioning the scaling out of access to land and spaces for urban agriculture. Despite this, as interviewees from the Cabinet highlight, “certainly urban agriculture is not the main priority for territorial development in Brussels. It will probably never be. It will always come after the need for housing or recreation, or green spaces. We are aware of that. It will never pass ahead housing” (quote from a civil servant from the Cellule Agriculture).

The study, entitled « Etude Juridique et Urbanistique pour le Développement de l’Agriculture Urbaine en Région Bruxelloise » is available here: https://goodfood.brussels/fr/contributions/ etude-urbanistique-et-juridique-pour-le-developpement-de-lagriculture-urbaine-en, accessed 26 Mar 2021. 11 The action plan, entitled “Plan d’action 2020. Agricultures urbaines: modifcations législatifs” is available at https://goodfood.brussels/sites/default/fles/plan_daction_2020_cadre_juridique_et_ urbanistique_agricultures_urbaines-min_1.pdf, accessed 26 Mar 2021. 10

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Alongside carving out spaces of support to urban agriculture within the Region, other institutional governance tensions on land began to emerge in Brussels—bringing the land question beyond the Regional administrative borders. One of the strategic objectives of the GoodFood Strategy is to supply Brussels with at least 30% of fruits and vegetables coming from its hinterland by 2035 (courtesy of BE). Whether this objective is achievable or not is subject to discussion. Yet, what is sure is that institutional actors and other urban agriculture advocates, also part of the BBP coalition, are recognising that the issue of land and proximity agriculture for Brussels should be strategically addressed at a wider spatial scale. The limited agricultural land in the BCR is in competition with an increase in the population (+ 20% in 25 years) and the consequent need for infrastructures. Such pressure mortgages [FR: hypothèque] agricultural projects over the long term. Collaborations between the BCR and the Provinces of Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant—the two provinces forming the rural and food belt of the BCR—must favour the set-up of a proximity agriculture, from which the BCR can beneft as well (quote from a leader of the organisation Credal).

Food strategy actors are recognising the importance of building relations with the Flemish and Walloon Regions to sustain local agriculture in the Brussels’ hinterland. Some initiatives going in this direction emerged from the Flemish side, were a consortium of actors have recently obtained European funding on rural development in order to identify what the missing links are to strengthen peri-urban agriculture and shorten food supply chains addressing Brussels’ markets. Indeed, the objective of the rural development project Hup HUB Brussel (2020–2022), which is the continuation of a previous project called Brussels Lust (2018–2020), is to link more peri-urban producers to Brussels by developing the necessary infrastructures, and overcoming knowledge barriers that prevent peri-urban producers from taking advantage of Brussels’ markets (message from a partner of the Hup HUB Brussel). These initiatives are still at their infancy stage and it is still unclear whether these processes will lead towards programmatic and strategic forms of cross-regional and inter-jurisdictional cooperation. Yet, they are signs of an enhanced will to overcome administrative silos; “what I learned from the Brussels Lust project is that everyone tends to work on its own island. It is not working this way. We need to fnd pathways for cooperation. The good thing is that in Brussels and Wallonia there is awareness about this” (quote from a Hup HUB Brussel partner). As such, the need to strengthen inter-jurisdictional cooperation is emerging through these types of initiatives, and it is increasingly present in the discourse of some of the institutional players involved in the Food Strategy as well as in the promotion of urban agriculture in Brussels. Pathways for a more systematic cooperation still need to concretise and should involve a more mature and responsible dialogue among decision-makers from the bordering provinces and regions (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019). Nevertheless, the above refections are demonstrative of how enhancing support to urban agriculture in Brussels increasingly means dealing with cross-jurisdictional challenges within and beyond Regional administrative borders.

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Discussions and Conclusions

By narrating the stories of the Toronto CEED gardens and the Brussels’ BBP coalition, this chapter participated in the efforts of actors to carve out land and spaces for urban agriculture. It is possible to argue that these cases are representative and informative to many other urban food growing experiences. In fact, taken together, these two initiatives show the range of land-resource constraints that are common to several urban agriculture initiatives around the world. The Toronto CEED gardens’ main land-resource constraints consisted of arranging and negotiating land lease agreements for community economic development purposes with the landowner and the parties involved; mobilising technical knowledge and material resources to deal with land quality and suitability assessment; dealing with permits and addressing liability issues when designing the sites and installing the necessary infrastructures to activate urban agriculture projects; and raising funds and engaging in consultations in order to favour community consensus and stewardship on the food growing sites. In the case of the Brussels’ BBP, actors engaged in the challenge of fnding more land and scaling out land access across the Region. In doing so, organisations such as Terre en Vue experienced multiple land-resource constraints related to the availability of land, its suitability for urban agriculture, the nature of the ownership structure, as well as the impact of the dominant legal framework conditioning the right to use land. The way in which the organisation Terre en Vue has addressed land-resource governance tensions has been by trying to sensitise landowners and tenants and fnding adapted land lease agreements in which needs and expectations of interested farmers and owners can be accommodated. Against this background, we may wonder what these initiatives have learned by experiencing and trying to overcome critical land-resource tensions. Overall, actors from both initiatives affrm the value of having a project concretised and implemented. A coordinator of TUG provides their assessment: “whatever critique and discouragement about this process, the bottom line is that we now have two urban farms that we did not have before. And this is so valuable. Any farm that we can establish is so important” (quote from a coordinator of TUG). Not so differently, refecting on the BBP experience, the DDH organisation stresses that by implementing this project we have come across with the truth spot of the reality on the ground. We are really confronted with what it means to implement this type of initiative. And this is not necessarily negative. Through the BBP project we could act on the ground, put into place new mechanisms (in French dispositifs) for the access to land and support to urban agriculture such as the “space test”, the urban agriculture facilitator, the training and accompaniment for farmers (…). I think the opportunities were really big (quote from a DDH staff).

In line with this, as some actors from the CEED gardens stress, the very act of documenting concrete results and being strategic in demonstrating key achievements is a very important tool to sensitise other actors about the benefts that urban agriculture can bring.

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Urban agriculture supporters have divergent opinions concerning the extent to which agents such as public institutions have learned to enhance urban agriculture and access to land (also in their role as landowners) through these and other struggles. Some of the interviewees recognise that over time public institutions (especially in some sections of the government) have become more sensitive to the role that urban agriculture can play for the city. For instance, voices from Brussels affrm that we see the difference even from two or three years ago, when actors from other administrations would have never taken into account urban agriculture. Now with the proactive role of initiatives such as the urban agriculture facilitator, we have many more interactions with actors from other administrations and institutional landowners (…); urban agriculture is taken into greater consideration (quote from a civil servant in the Cellule Agriculture).

Besides, few actors from the CEED gardens initiative remain sceptical about the effectiveness of this experience in changing mind-sets and modes of working of key institutions. An interviewee from the TUG concludes that aspirant urban farmers should not only focus on publicly owned land. Rather, they should exploit the whole range of “hybrid” land use arrangements and creative modes through which urban agriculture can be expanded beyond public ownership. In the same vein, actors in Toronto are aware that divergences of perceptions about the use of land for community entrepreneurial purposes will remain a source of tension between urban agriculture supporter and state institutions. Overall, it can be observed that despite contextual differences, an overarching common lesson emerging from Toronto and Brussels is the awareness of the need to deal with divergent and conficting values and visions on the use of land and spaces. This resonates with a key land-resource governance tension highlighted in Chap. 3 (see Table 3.1). As shown in this chapter, divergent values and visions are those of proft-oriented or unsupportive landowners who do not consider urban agriculture in their land development vision, or planning institutions that do not care about urban food growing or do not prioritise the role of urban agriculture enough, when compared to more traditional urban uses (although food growing is more traditional than one may think). Indeed, “there is still the assumption that lands for employment, housing, and transportation, are more important than lands for growing food because there is still the perception that these uses pertain to the rural world” (quote from a coordinator of TUG). Moreover, as the CEED gardens initiative demonstrates, tensions regarding divergent perspectives and perceptions can also relate to the values of local residents who may actively support but also vigorously oppose new urban agriculture projects. Undoubtedly, values are plural and often divergent within the urban agriculture movement(s) itself. For instance, urban agriculture and access to land can be claimed by Indigenous people or communities of colour as a matter of land and food sovereignty (Trauger 2017). Thus, in this case, re-appropriating land becomes intertwined with strong ethical, cultural, and racial connotations and power struggles. It involves utopic, reformist, emancipatory objectives related to claiming the rights of those who have been originally excluded (Williams and Holt-Giménez 2017).

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In general, this chapter has shown how, in both Toronto and Brussels, the very pragmatic objective of implementing new urban agriculture projects required the more “utopic” or transformative objective of infuencing or modifying existing institutions and modalities of land allocation and access, thus engendering some structural change. Indeed, in the CEED gardens the scope was to unravel pathways to facilitate more market gardens in public land, opening up opportunities to make more land and food accessible for marginalised, racialized, and low-income communities. Since the early phase of the BCR project, BBP (and of Terre en vue with them) aimed to scale out access to land for agro-ecological farming across the Region. As such, it appears that enhancing land and spaces for urban agriculture necessarily passes through changing or revising perceptions of key actors—among which are decision-makers, institutions, and (public/private) landowners (including institutional landowners). An overarching lesson from the experiences narrated in this chapter is that mediating between different uses of space, as well as different values attached to land, is an ongoing struggle that implies balancing utopic and transformative objectives with pragmatic and context-sensitive approaches. This implies perseverance, awareness, and strategic orientation. It requires urban agriculture movements knitting relations towards supportive and empowering policy spaces when it comes to negotiating a place for urban agriculture (see Chaps. 2 and 3). As Chap. 3 has anticipated, this also means that food movements should be refexive, that is to say, they should cultivate transformative objectives while at the same time adapt visions and narratives to given circumstances. Refexivity should also involve the recognition of forms of inequities with which land is allocated across communities and initiatives, taking into account who has less power, resources, and opportunities to exercise infuence. On this point, the CEED garden project is exemplary: the awareness of the structural disadvantage of low-income groups and people of colour with respect to access to land, food, and economic opportunities has been critical in motivating community organisations to push through all the barriers and keep promoting the project (courtesy of a TUG coordinator). Thus, recognising and trying to remedy food injustices can also be an element that nurtures the food movement and reinforces the sense of its existence. Based on the above refections, we may wonder what conclusions can be drawn about possible pathways to bring land-resource governance tensions into “positive” or sustainable directions. The following three short paragraphs provide some suggestions that are connected to key refexive lessons highlighted in the analytical framework (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3).

4.4.1 Valorising Strategic Leadership and Proactive Confict Management and Cooperation One of the aspects that emerged from this chapter concerns the role of key organisations as well as collaborative relational networks that sustain and support urban agriculture and access to land. Operating city-wide as well as locally, organisations

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such as FoodShare, the STOP, the TUG and several others in Toronto, or Terre en Vue and DDH in Brussels, constitute very important resources for the urban agriculture community. As shown, Terre en Vue is engaged in fnding solutions by devising adapted and mutually benefcial land use agreements among landowners and aspirant farmers. Similarly to other organisations and networks, it has a proactive role in negotiating changes and fnding pragmatic solutions to questions of access to land, by mediating for instance between divergent views and perspectives of landowners and farmers. Good human capital, passion, experience, and proactivity in solving conficts is what drives this type of organisation. Yet, too often, these organisations need to deal with acquiring legitimacy and coping with their own fnancial sustainability, which could undermine their very role as mediators for access to land and community development. Thus, the role of these organisational and relational networks should be recognised, valorised, and strengthened. Alongside this, the urban agriculture community should also be smart in identifying good leadership in grass-roots players but also in supportive institutional actors or other types of players. This was clear in both the CEED gardens’ experience, when actors from the Social Development and Finance Administration took the leadership, as well as in the BBP, which benefted from the leadership role of the institutional actor belonging to the administration of the Environment. In sum, the role of leaders and single personalities holding infuential positions remains important. Sensitised institutions, landowners, and motivated civil servants are an important lever that urban food movements should continue to valorise.

4.4.2

Fostering Socio-institutional Change

This chapter has also highlighted the existence of bottom-linked forms of governance involving positive and enabling relations between diverse actors such as landowners and urban agriculture supporters, or community organisations, land trusts, and institutional actors. Playing a signifcant role in both Toronto and Brussels, these forms of governance are good signs of positive changes, and highlight the essential role that progressive institutions, among which sensitised civil servants but also infuential decision-makers do play in the food/agriculture movement. In Brussels, the Environmental agency, which has been traditionally more sensitive to urban agriculture, is currently devising ways to give more land out of its property for installing more urban farming sites (courtesy of the Cabinet of Environment). Furthermore, as shown, the BBP coalition in tandem with supportive institutional players from the GoodFood Strategy have opened the way for new supportive organisations and agencies to emerge, such as the Urban Agriculture Facilitator. Initiatives such as the latter constitute promising ways of collecting and sharing knowledge and resources to enable more urban agriculture. This example can be used as a model for Toronto and for other contexts as well. In short, these types of supportive bottom-linked organisational and institutional dynamics are ways to stir governance tensions into promising directions.

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However, with respect to the fostering of socio-institutional change, it is noticeable how the discourse on urban agriculture in both Toronto and Brussels, as in many other urban realities, is not yet able to enter the more structural dialogue with key decision-makers and players (such as planning and territorial development institutions). Although positive steps have been made in the BCR, the urban agriculture community has not arrived to the point of decisively infuencing narratives and informing decisions about the course of urban development. This means, in other words, modifying perspectives of, for instance, planning institutions and territorial development agents about the opportunity of redirecting urban growth. It means fostering greater awareness in these players about the idea that preserving land, restoring soil quality, making land available for agro-ecological farming or for creative uses that combine community development with food growing, is important. In summary, the urban agriculture community should be strategic and work in the direction of better exploiting the full potentials of institutional governance tensions on land, related to the fostering of progressive and sustainable socio-institutional change. State institutions are called into question here, in that they need to play a progressive and empowering role.

4.4.3

Connecting Spatial Institutional Scales

The empirical analysis of organisational and institutional responses to the landresource question bring us to the opportunity of “widening” the land question for urban agriculture. In Brussels, the Strategy’s vision of fostering a greater degree of food autonomy for the Region has ushered public institutions and other actors of the urban agriculture community to look beyond administrative borders. This means considering land and urban agriculture not only as a local matter, but also in its wider territorial context. According to the Brussels’ urban agriculture community, this view should involve the hinterland and should trigger a dialogue with the bordering regions with respect to proximity agriculture, short food chains, and the promotion of direct links. Finally, looking at the interaction across the spatial-institutional scale means, frst of all, recognising that diverse scales are connected and that fostering crossorganisational and cross-jurisdictional cooperation is not only a source of tension, but also a strategic opportunity for considering sustainable territorial development. In other words, this point invites refection on the role and responsibility of diverse jurisdictions and levels of governance in providing long-term support as well as opportunities to create territorially-based alliances that help local farmers access land and connect to local markets. Horizontal coalitions and institutionally-led initiatives such as food strategies, progressive food policy councils, multi-stakeholder partnerships, inter-municipal or inter-regional alliances, can be triggers of a fruitful territorial governance in which urban farming is integrated in a wider strategy to valorise proximity agriculture and short food chains. However, the promotion of territorially-based coalitions also calls into question the role of leaders and

References

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institutions at different levels in co-fnancing and co-promoting a joint territorial governance of the land question. The federal level or the European level in Europe are part of this picture. In Europe, for instance, the Common Agriculture Policy and the rural development schemes within the frame of the new Farm to Fork strategy12 should be also considered in their direct impact on the local level, in terms of access to land for farmers as well as the fnancing of territorially based partnerships across cities and regions. Inspired by this wider territorial view, the next chapter observes the development of short food chain initiatives from the point of view of organisational dynamics and tensions.

References Alkon A, Kato Y, Sbicca J (eds) (2020) A recipe for gentrifcation: food, power, and resistance in the city. NYU Press, New York Baker L, Kuhns J, Nasr J (2022) (forthcoming) Urban agriculture practice, policy and governance. In: Clark J, Moragues-Faus A, Davies A, Battersby J (eds) Routledge handbook on urban food governance. Routledge, London/New York City of Toronto (1985) FoodShare Toronto. A concept to help fght hunger in Toronto. https:// foodshare.net/custom/uploads/2015/11/1985-CityOfToronto-A_concept_to_help_fght_hunger_in_Toronto.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2021 Colasanti KJA, Hamm MW, Litjens CM (2012) The city as an “agricultural powerhouse”? Perspectives on expanding urban agriculture from Detroit, Michigan. Urban Geogr 33(3):348–369 Hammelman C (2019) Challenges to supporting social justice through food system governance: examples from two urban agriculture initiatives in Toronto. Environ Urban 31(2):481–496 Lefebvre A, Tsurukawa N, Jijakli HA, Dumartin PN, Peeters S, Hanique P, Goisse G, Lamal V (2018) Etude Juridique et Urbanistique pour le Développement de l’Agriculture Urbaine en Région Bruxelloise. https://goodfood.brussels/fr/contributions/etude-urbanistique-etjuridique-pour-le-developpement-de-lagriculture-urbaine-en. Accessed 23 Mar 2021 Manganelli A (2013) Nurturing urban development. The impact of urban agriculture in the Brussels-Capital Region. Dissertation (Master’s of Science), Milan Politecnico Manganelli A (2019) Unlocking socio-political dynamics of alternative food networks through a hybrid governance approach. Highlights from the Brussels-capital region and Toronto. Dissertation, KULeuven, VUB, Leuven, Brussels (Belgium) Manganelli A, Moulaert F (2019) Scaling out access to land for urban agriculture. Governance hybridities in the Brussels-Capital Region. Land Use Policy 82:391–400 Mougeot LJA (2006) Growing better cities: urban agriculture for sustainable development. IDRC, Ottawa Nasr J, MacRae R, Kuhns J (2010) Scaling up urban agriculture in Toronto: building the infrastructure. Metcalf Foundation, Toronto. https://metcalffoundation.com/publication/scaling-upurban-agriculture-in-toronto-building-the-infrastructure/. Accessed 12 Feb 2021 Offcially launched in May 2020 in the frame of the New European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy constitutes a new strategic framework through which the EU level intends to promote a transition towards more sustainable food systems through a comprehensive approach to the food system. In order to access key documentation on the EU Farm to Fork strategy, consult https:// ec.europa.eu/food/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en, accessed 28 Oct 2021. 12

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Pearson C (ed) (2011) Urban agriculture: diverse activities and benefts for city society. Routledge, London Tornaghi C (2017) Urban agriculture in the food-disabling city: (re)defning urban food justice, reimagining a politics of empowerment. Antipode 49(3):781–801 Toronto Public Health (2013) From the ground up. Guide for soil testing in urban gardens. https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/96a1-FromtheGroundUp_Guide-SoilTestingOct2013.pdf. Accessed 22 Mar 2021 Trauger A (2017) We want land to live: making political space for food sovereignty, vol 33. University of Georgia Press, St. Athens Trompette P-A Jr (2014) Urban agriculture: a social development tool: improving access to affordable, healthy food in a low-income area of Toronto, Canada. Dissertation (Master’s of Science), Norwegian University of Life Sciences Van Veenhuizen R (2006) Cities farming for the future. In: Cities farming for future, urban agriculture for green and productive cities. RUAF Foundation IDRC IIRP ETC-Urban agriculture, Leusden, pp 2–17 Williams JM, Holt-Giménez E (eds) (2017) Land justice: re-imagining land, food, and the commons. Food First Books, Oakland Zitouni B, Cahn L, Deligne C, Pons-Rotbardt N, Prignot N et al (2018) Terres des villes: enquêtes potagères aux premières saisons du 21e siècle. éditions de l'éclat, Paris

Chapter 5

Organisational Governance Tensions of Food Movement Initiatives in Toronto and Brussels

Abstract  This chapter deals with organisational governance tensions by tracing the genesis and development of two urban food initiatives: the Good Food Box (a project of FoodShare Toronto—a food security and increasingly food justice organisation) and the GASAP, a Brussels-based food sovereignty network. The chapter brings us through the different stages of their development, exploring how transformative value systems percolate into the everyday governance of these organisations and interact with key resource and organisational challenges that these initiatives face as they scale out. Furthermore, looking at these initiatives in their socio-spatial specificities, this chapter highlights their efforts to seek connections between actors, sectors, and scales of the food system. Based on a hybrid governance analysis, this chapter concludes by highlighting the lessons these organisations have learned as a result of governance tensions and the revived food sovereignty and food justice concerns triggered by the pandemic crisis. These lessons show the importance of well-balanced self-reflexivity, bold and pragmatic leadership, and coping with governance tensions. Keywords  Food Movement Organisations · Organisational governance tensions · FoodShare (Toronto) · GASAP (Brussels)

It is like a tree that is able to bend in the wind, rather than break (…) FoodShare has many lives and will have many lives, being able to evolve and be resilient (Debbie Field, FoodShare’s former executive director 2021).

5.1 Introduction The protagonists of this chapter are two food movement organisations: the Toronto based Good Food Box (GFB), established in 1994 as part of the wider community food security organisation FoodShare, and the Brussels’ network Groupe d’Achats

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_5

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Solidaires de l’Agriculture Paysanne1 (GASAP), set up in 2006. The GFB establishes short food chain relations between farmers and citizens, and is strongly informed by food security objectives (Johnston 2003). In line with the key missions of the FoodShare organisation, the GFB seeks to promote universal access to good food across Toronto inhabitants. It does so by providing citizen-consumers with enhanced access to fresh vegetables and fruits, with the aim of empowering consumers and building an alternative to the charitable food distribution model qualifying food banks (Scharf 1999). In a way, in its attempt to build new relationships of citizen-consumers with healthy and adequate food, the GFB also aligns with food democracy ideologies (Hassanein 2008; Renting et al. 2012). Triggered by citizens-activists, including small-scale producers connected to the Brussels’ Region, the GASAP network incarnates food sovereignty ideologies (Holt Giménez and Shattuck 2011; van Gameren et al. 2014). Its core values and missions relate to the defence of peasant agriculture, the promotion of agro-ecological farming practices, and the building of transparent and solidarity-based relationships between small-scale producers and citizen-consumers (see GASAP 2021). Far from being the only examples of their kind, the GFB and the GASAP took inspiration from similar alternative food systems’ models present elsewhere and travelling across contexts. Indeed, the GFB’s pioneers learned from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) models that began to spread in the US between the 1980s and the 1990s (courtesy of the GFB’s founders). In turn, these CSA experiments (launched by figures such as Robyn Van En in the US) had imported and adapted models already present in Europe, informed by alternative principles such as biodynamic agriculture.2 Furthermore, experiences from the Global South, and in particular from the Brazilian Sacolão markets, constituted inspiring examples for the GFB as well as for other programmes within the FoodShare organisation, such as the Good Food Markets (hereon GFMs)3 and the Student Nutrition Programs (see also Box 5.1). Similarly to the Toronto case, the GASAP movement was inspired by other food sovereignty networks present in Europe and worldwide. Indeed, initiatives such as the Flemish Voedselteams (in English, Food Teams), the French AMAP (Association pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne), the Italian GAS (Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale), and the Teikei cooperative system active in Japan (Kondoh 2015), share similarities in values, missions, and organisational principles. This is emblematic of a key modality through which these initiatives scale out, by proliferating and setting up alternative economies in diverse territorial contexts. Learning from these and other experiences in Toronto and the BCR, this chapter investigates governance tensions from an organisational perspective. In particular,  The English translation is “Solidarity Purchasing Groups for Peasant Agriculture”.  Inspired by the ideas of the philosopher and social reformist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), biodynamic agriculture is a type of alternative agriculture that shares similarities with organic principles, but advances peculiar practices of soil treatment, in combination with crops and animals. It also embeds esoteric and astrological principles in the practice of agriculture. 3  The Good Food Markets (GFMs) programme encompasses self-managed and decentralised community markets that are operated by community organisations (Classens 2015). Active in low-­ income neighbourhoods, GFMs provide access to fresh food at lower price levels. 1 2

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Box 5.1: A Snapshot of FoodShare’s Student Nutrition Programmes The Student Nutrition Programmes are another way in which FoodShare’s actors promote the idea of a public food system and implement a community service informed by some of the same principles qualifying the GFB, such as universality, nutritional quality, health promotion, community connection, and cultural appropriateness.4 These principles are shared by other renowned examples, such as the Brazilian school food and food security programmes, from which the Toronto food community took inspiration (courtesy of FoodShare’s former executive director). In the same vein as the GFB and other initiatives, Toronto Student Nutrition Programs started in the early 1990s as pilot projects promoted by City councillors and school board trustees and implemented initially in eight schools. The idea was to tackle food and nutrition insecurity by providing breakfast and healthy meal programmes to children in schools situated within socio-­ economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In fact, especially in socio-­ economically distressed areas, conditions of food insecurity and inadequate nutrition were undermining the concentration and learning capacities of children in schools. The pilot programmes developed quite rapidly. Individual groups started up in diverse areas of Toronto prior to the amalgamation process and then, after 1998, they got together as part of the enlarged City of Toronto. In this context, FoodShare became involved as part of a broader partnership willing to apply for provincial funding. This partnership encompassed, among others, Toronto Public Health, school boards, the City of Toronto, and funding agents. The role of FoodShare was to act as the community member, taking care of community development at the school level. Indeed, quite early the partners recognised that in order to make these programmes sustainable, they needed to be stewarded by communities and embedded within school boards, teachers, children, parents, and so on. Thanks to its reputation as a community organisation fostering community empowerment and ownership, FoodShare could perform the role of community developer. As mentioned at the beginning, among the key principles driving these programmes are universality and health promotion. Indeed, although prioritising more disadvantaged communities, FoodShare’s intention was “to fight the stigma associated with these programmes. We need to provide them for all the children, make them universal” (quote from the manager of the FoodShare’s Student Nutrition Programme). In the same line, FoodShare has been consistent in sensitising state actors about the fact that Student Nutrition Programmes should not fall under a poverty reduction lens, but, rather, under a health promotion portfolio. (continued)  Concerning the principles see for instance https://www.healthyschoolfood.ca/guiding-principles, accessed 20 Sep 2021.

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Box 5.1 (continued) Over the years, Student Nutrition Programmes were rather successful in scaling out at the local level. By 2017, over 800 school food distribution programmes were active in Toronto, covering roughly 60% of the schools and addressing 52% of the children between the age of four and eighteen (courtesy of FoodShare’s manager). Yet, across Canadian provinces, the situation is diverse and fragmented. A lot is left to the bottom-up initiative of NGOs, community-driven organisations, and supportive local or state actors. These programmes face resource and institutional governance tensions in that they may be subject to budgetary constraints and to governmental turnovers. To overcome this fragmentation and develop an overarching framework, organisations such as the Coalition for Healthy School Foods5 and others have consistently advocated for a universal and publicly supported School Food Program at the Federal level. Thanks to this advocacy, on 16 December 2021 a considerable step forward was made. The Canadian Government issued official mandates inviting dedicated ministries to work together in order to “develop a National School Food Policy and to work toward a national school nutritious meal programme”.6 In the eyes of the Coalition for Healthy School Food, a federal School Food Program should be informed by universality principles and should be tailored to health promotion. Ideally, the federal level should take a substantial role in financing and regulating these programmes. Yet, bottom-up actors such as community driven organisations, schools, and local authorities should be left with the appropriate space of action to co-govern these programmes from the ground-up. Sources: conversations with FoodShare’s former executive director and leader of the Canadian Coalition for Healthy School Food, the manager of the Student Nutrition Programmes, and secondary resources.

the first part of the chapter (Sect. 5.2) highlights key organisational dynamics and tensions triggering the establishment of the two initiatives. The second part (Sect. 5.3) illustrates similarities and differences in the ways these organisations grew, reaching out to a greater number of citizens-members-consumers and interacting with a wider network of actors. In line with the hybrid governance framework, the aim is to grasp how governance tensions take place as these organisations scale out.

 See https://www.healthyschoolfood.ca/, accessed 10 Feb 2022. FoodShare leaders were among the founding members of the Coalition for Healthy School Food in 2014. Encompassing many partners across Canada, this coalition transposes to the federal level the battle for a publicly supported school food programme. 6  See the Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food Mandate Letter: https://pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-­ letters/2021/12/16/minister-agriculture-and-agri-food-mandate-letter, accessed 10 Feb 2022. 5

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The third part of the chapter (Sect. 5.4) pictures the ways in which governance tensions manifest nowadays, in more mature organisations, but also in the face of contemporary challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and by revived claims for food sovereignty and food justice. Finally, the concluding part of this chapter (Sect. 5.5) draws lessons on what type of self-reflexivity these initiatives have developed concerning their own organisational governance as a result of experiencing and trying to overcome governance tensions.

5.2 Governance Tensions at the Genesis of Two Food Movement Organisations As mentioned above, while sharing similarities, the FoodShare’s GFB and the Brussels’ GASAP originated with different missions and objectives related to food security and food sovereignty. The following section narrates how founding values, but also practical needs and challenges, informed the organisational governance of the two initiatives at their genesis.

5.2.1 Organisational Tensions at the Origins of FoodShare’s GFB The GFB began largely thanks to the creative initiative of the social entrepreneur Mary Lou Morgan,7 supported by the community food activist Debbie Field,8 who became executive director of FoodShare in 1992. The contextual conditions that led to the creation of the GFB (as well as to the emergence of other food security initiatives in Toronto) were analogous to those that motivated the genesis of the umbrella organisation FoodShare in the mid-1980s (see also the introduction of Chap. 6). More specifically, FoodShare emerged during a time of economic recession and socio-economic distress in Toronto and the wider North American context (Fisher 2017). With rising unemployment and precarious social safety nets, Toronto

 Mary Lou Morgan worked in all aspects of the food system from working in a greenhouse, to growing food and then working in retail and wholesale companies before co-founding The Big Carrot, a successful health food store in Toronto. The Big Carrot was structured as a worker co-­ operative. In 1990, a chance to work at FoodShare Toronto allowed Mary Lou to take this passion for food and FoodShare’s commitment to social justice to create programmes based on the social enterprise model, the first being the Travelling Food Truck. 8  Debbie Field became involved in food works as a concerned mother, advocating and taking action for healthier meals in Toronto’s schools. She became executive director of FoodShare in 1992, leading the organisation for 25 years. Together with organisations such as Food Secure Canada, nowadays Debbie Field pursues her advocacy for a pan-Canadian universal school food programme as the Coalition for Healthy School Food’s Coordinator and continues to promote a public food system as an Associate with the Centre for Studies in Food Security (ex-Ryerson University). 7

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households started facing food insecurity and many disadvantaged residents became rapidly exposed to hunger. As a result, food banks and emergency food networks began to escalate (Tarasuk et al. 2014). The reality of growing inequalities urged concerned civil society and policy actors in Toronto to take action, developing among other things alternative approaches to dealing with hunger (courtesy of the first Toronto Food Policy Council’s coordinator). Indeed, in the policy guidelines formalising the genesis of FoodShare (see also Chap. 4), City Councillor Anne Johnston urged Mayor Art Eggleton and the City to “become a catalyst in the creation of food coops by providing vehicles for transportation of food orders from the Terminal Market to coop distribution sites” (City of Toronto 1985, p. 4). In short, the essence of the GFB. The situation of distress generated organisational governance tensions, especially because it was a catalyst for the genesis of civil-society initiatives such as FoodShare (originally named FoodShare Metro Toronto). Not dissimilarly from other anti-hunger and emergency food networks (see also Box 5.2 on The Stop community food centre), the initial purpose of FoodShare was to connect people in need with agencies able to donate surplus food and other support services (City of Toronto 1985). Yet, recognising that charitable approaches alone cannot solve hunger and food insecurity in the long-term, FoodShare leaders redirected the focus early on from an anti-hunger and charitable food distribution model to a community food security model. Thus, emphasis was put on promoting community empowerment and universal access to food as well as on advocating for structural solutions to the problem of food insecurity and hunger (Esteron 2013). These programmatic principles pushed FoodShare leaders to network with other initiatives and actors of the local food system, including community agencies, founders, policy actors as Box 5.2: Building Communities Through Food: The Stop Community Food Centre The Stop Community Food Centre is another example of a Toronto-based community food security organisation. It originated in the same contextual circumstances as FoodShare. Initially called the “Stop 103”, this organisation emerged as a bottom-up response to the socio-economic crisis of the 1980s. At its origins, The Stop was a charitable initiative activated by church members willing to help people in need. Not dissimilarly from FoodShare, value tensions among alternative approaches to food insecurity qualified The Stop since its beginnings. Indeed, while the founding members were aware of the need to go beyond the food-banking model, The Stop was de facto operating as a food bank. It was one of the earliest Canadian food banks and its emergency food programme has been maintained throughout its life-course. Thus, for more than a decade The Stop was a volunteer-run organisation operating with very few staff and delivering emergency food. Already in this early stage, few other programmes were set up alongside the food bank, including for instance community kitchens, community dining, and gardening. (continued)

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Box 5.2 (continued) A key shift in the history of The Stop happened in 1998, when the food and social justice activist Nick Saul9 took leadership of the organisation. Retracing the story of the Stop, Saul explains how at that time he encountered a very fragile and vulnerable organisation, relying on scarce human and financial resources (Saul and Curtis 2013). He committed himself to changing the philosophy of the organisation from a purely emergency and charitable logic, to a holistic approach towards community empowerment and socio-­economic development. As the community leader tells, it was “a journey of trying to transform the organisation and using food as a tool or a way to build health, to build belonging and connection, to build a sense of sustainability in terms of the way food is grown, to build a sense of pleasure and joy” (quote from Nick Saul). These processes of reframing the role and identity of The Stop translated into changes in the governance and functioning of the organisation. The new leadership succeeded in developing a range of programmes at The Stop including a community garden, perinatal health programmes, food literacy programmes, a community kitchen, cooking classes, and a good food market (the latter being operated in conjunction with FoodShare). These programmes were tailored to develop a community food model, promoting empowerment, a sense of community, skill development and ensuring the dignity of the food insecure. The Stop also began to engage in sustainable food sourcing strategies by developing relationships with organic growers in order to improve the quality of food delivered to low-income people. Thus, through time, the organisation has grown and scaled out, nowadays providing different community food programmes in three locations in the North West side of Toronto. In particular, the opening of the Green Barn site, a hub fostering different programmes revolving around urban agriculture, community gardens, youth programmes, and farmers’ markets, constituted a remarkable moment of expansion and flourishing of the organisation during its central years. Yet, the way in which The Stop scales out spatially is different from that of FoodShare. While the former is a neighbourhood-based organisation with a local catchment area, FoodShare is a citywide organisation. Most of its programmes (such as good food boxes, GFMs, school food programmes) aim to reach out to different neighbourhoods in Toronto. (continued)  Born in Tanzania in 1966 from a family involved in Southern African liberation struggles, Nick Saul moved back to Canada with his family in 1972. Before taking leadership of The Stop in 1998, Saul engaged as activist and community organiser in the field of homelessness and public housing tenant struggles. After leaving The Stop in 2012, Nick Saul and fellow food activists launched the organisation Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC). This organisation moves the target of advocacy from the local and provincial levels, to the federal level, aiming to scale out the concept and model of community food centres throughout Canada. Nowadays CFCC counts 35 staff and involves a network of 300 other organisations. It is expected to reach 20 new community food centres across Canada by 2022 (conversations with staff at CFCC). 9

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Box 5.2 (continued) Managing a bigger organisation has also meant The Stop providing a critical mass of appointed staff supported by volunteers in order to deliver programmes. Organisational governance tensions arise in ensuring a committed volunteer force, while at the same time achieving a balance between this informal/volunteer blood of the organisation and a strong degree of professionalism that is needed to manage the organisation, to ensure funding, and to engage in advocacy action. A different approach to volunteer labour is visible in The Stop compared to FoodShare’s latest stage. Indeed, while FoodShare recently turned towards the complete elimination of volunteer labour, nowadays The Stop still relies on a high number of volunteers at the different sites. As volunteers are often also recipients of programmes, volunteers’ participation is considered part of a community building process (courtesy of a subsequent leader of The Stop). Furthermore, the idea is that volunteering can be a stepping-stone from being a recipient of a service, to acquiring skills and bringing them back to the community, to then possibly being contracted as a staff in the organisation (courtesy of a former Stop staff). Ensuring the sustainable growth of The Stop over the years has also meant developing a solid fundraising strategy. Among other activities, this involves making use of an expanded fundraising team and developing relationships with actors such as state institutions, but most of all private donors, individuals, philanthropic foundations, corporations, and social enterprises. Fundraising also includes promoting events and awareness campaigns (Scharf et al. 2010). Not dissimilarly to FoodShare, The Stop has opted for a mixed-funding strategy in order to avoid depending on a single source of funding. In general, thanks to this fundraising strategy, its finances have been rather solid over time. Yet, keeping good relationships with funders and maintaining a solid fundraising capacity are always complex and tense for community organisations like The Stop. While in the phase of Nick Saul’s leadership, The Stop focused on growing and expanding its programming, in the following stage The Stop went through a phase of stabilisation and consolidation of the organisation (courtesy of a subsequent leader of The Stop). In a similar vein to FoodShare, interactions between organisational and institutional governance tensions are also visible in the ways the organisation has been pursuing its battle against poverty and food insecurity. This has been done in particular through advocacy and outreaching strategies oriented towards social justice, mainly at the local and provincial levels. Aspiring for better social policies, The Stop raises its voice on issues such as income security, equity, and health promotion (courtesy of a Stop staff member), recognising its limited role in fully addressing those issues. Indeed, “we are doing something in terms of alleviating impacts of unjust systems at the community level (…) but what needs to change is big picture policies around health, equity, and income security” (quote from a Stop staff member). Finally, (continued)

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Box 5.2 (continued) although in a different way than FoodShare, in its latest stage The Stop has faced enhanced socio-racial tensions. Indeed, criticisms of The Stop’s leadership and staff have pointed to the need for better empowerment and representation of minorities and people of colour. This is indicative of how racial justice aspects constitute substantial components of key tensions that food movement organisations need to face, especially in the North American reality. Sources: interviews with The Stop leaders and staff (2017, 2021); primary and secondary literature.

well as organisations such as the recently formed Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC). Housed in the Board of Health, the TFPC provided a link to the city bureaucracy and helped facilitate access to financial resources as well as to physical spaces in the city for warehouse operations—all of which created an enabling environment for some of FoodShare’s programmes (courtesy of the first TFPC’s coordinator). In particular, one of the initial alternative food delivery systems experimented by FoodShare was the so-called “Field to Table” travelling food truck, whose feasibility study was commissioned by the TFPC to Mary Lou Morgan, together with a community nutritionist (Ursula Lipsky, also hired by the TFPC). The idea of the Field to Table was to create a delivery mechanism that could redistribute surplus food of local farmers to urban communities. The sharp vision and pragmatic leadership of the FoodShare’s executive director were also essential in making the project take off in 1992. Yet, the Field to Table programme underwent some practical challenges in its operations (courtesy of the founder). One problem was the amount of money citizens needed to spend. Indeed, often being recipients of social assistance, most of the target communities had little money to spend near the end of the month. A second aspect was the logistical burden of loading and unloading the tracks at each stop in Toronto neighbourhoods. Among others, the slugging and unloading of the truck at every stop often affected the aesthetic qualities of the produce. Remedying these practical issues, the GFB programme was set up in 1994 as a natural evolution of the Field to Table(see GFB´s images in Fig. 5.1). Initial discussions among pioneer actors and staff concerned the organisational model that could be suitable to make this alternative financially viable, while, at the same time, providing a community service and meeting the need of food insecure inhabitants. The idea of implementing a social enterprise model, proposed by a pioneer social entrepreneur, constituted an initial source of tension between diverse organisational and economic cultures. As Mary Lou Morgan explains, “this was due to the idea of inserting a revenue generating type of business within a no-profit and solidarity type of organisational culture (…) I think it was a new idea at that time. There was an idea that a non-profit was out of place within the money-­making arena”.

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Fig. 5.1  Good Food Box’s activities in the early and intermediate stages. (Images: Courtesy of © Laura Berman)

The need to deal with resource governance tensions emerged during the early stages of the organisation. Indeed, it soon became clear that the social enterprise could not cover the entire costs of the operations, including for instance trucks, transportation, salaries for the staff, and so on. Thus, FoodShare would have to fundraise the difference; funding came from different levels of government, and (most of all) foundations and individual donors. Overall, maintaining the financial viability of the GFB and other programmes would remain a constant source of tension throughout FoodShare’s life course (see also Sect. 5.3). Besides targeting those experiencing food insecurity, GFB’s original objectives included supporting local (organic when possible) farmers from Southern Ontario. Indeed, learning from CSA models proliferating in the US, the intention of the GFB’s pioneers was to connect to family farmers, helping them to secure a food distribution outlet in Toronto. In particular, Mary Lou Morgan recalls how already in the earlier Field to Table initiative, solidarity connections were established with organic growers from Southern Ontario. These relations were further strengthened through the GFB, encompassing for instance traditional family farmers belonging to the Old Order Mennonites (diary of memories of Mary Lou Morgan). Yet, meeting the requirements of a growing number of citizens-members-consumers meant having to create a capacious food infrastructure. To this purpose, FoodShare

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established connections with a buyer at the Ontario Food Terminal,10 from which food produce could be acquired in bulk. Furthermore, the objective of primarily addressing food insecure inhabitants meant balancing organic and local criteria with affordability criteria. Thus, while prioritising fresh and seasonal just-in-time vegetables and fruits, the good food boxes do not only include local organic products but also imported and conventional produce, the amount of which may vary depending on the season (Johnston and Baker 2005). We could not include anything that costs a lot of money. We thought let’s try flour, let’s try beans; we tried various things and always failed. So just-in-time production, just-in-time fresh became the signature of it. And more than fresh, I would say healthy first. We tried to promote healthy eating through vegetables and fruits (quote from FoodShare’s former executive director).

Indeed, it soon became clear that different priorities needed to be balanced, and values attached to food readjusted, finding a middle ground between “getting fruits and vegetables to people at a cost that they can afford, educating and promoting healthy eating, but also fostering local procurement from Ontario farmers in terms of supply chain” (quote from FoodShare’s former executive director). In sum, these early years were very experimental. Founding values and organisational principles needed to be balanced with the practical challenges of setting up a new system, making it viable, and promoting it within Toronto.

5.2.2 Organisational Tensions at the Birth of Brussels’ GASAP Similarly to the GFB programme, the GASAP network was instigated by grass-­ roots actors, and in particular, by citizens-activists, agronomists, and small-scale producers who aimed to establish a radically different system of food provision from the mainstream food supply chains. As such, the GASAP began as a genuinely bottom-up and people-driven initiative where the militancy of engaged citizen-­ consumers forging solidarity alliances with small-scale producers constitutes the essential engine of the GASAP “movement” (courtesy of founding actors). GASAP’s core values were clearly defined at its origins, encompassing the support to peasant agriculture and the establishment of a solidarity-based alternative food provision system that promotes agro-ecology and food sovereignty. Core values largely shaped the ways in which the GASAP functioned. Indeed, to a certain extent, ideologies related to food sovereignty and the defence of peasant agriculture helped to define clear boundaries and priorities. For instance, diverging from the GFB, the GASAP network exclusively targets small-scale family farmers in the proximity of the Brussels’ Region. Furthermore, compared to the GFB, the GASAP initiative gives greater importance to the promotion of direct and transparent relations between producers and consumers based on  The Ontario Food Terminal is Toronto’s main wholesale market and food distribution hub for fruits and vegetables. It is the biggest food hub of its kind in Canada, attracting producers and processors of different sizes and types. 10

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the absolute absence of intermediaries and formalised by solidarity contracts. In short, the support to small-scale producers, the fair remuneration of farmers, the promotion of a type of production that is respectful to people and environment, are unquestionable pillars informing the GASAP’s genesis and development (courtesy of the GASAP’s coordination). These principles are formalised by the establishment of a constitution to which GASAP members—both consumers as well as producers—need to adhere to (see GASAP 2007, 2021). After the first GASAP groups were established in 2006, other food-basket groups started to form and began to rapidly spring up in the Regional territory. These groups—each of them connecting on average 15–20 households with one or more producers—began to scale out in a rather informal way, through word of mouth and peer-to-peer channels of communication among citizens and activists living in proximity to each other. New GASAP pick-up groups started to arise like mushrooms, mainly through ‘word of mouth’ and informal contacts…I also talked a lot about the GASAP in meetings and public gatherings (quote from a GASAP producer) (…) At the beginning, there was no pre-­ conceived strategy of expansion of the food baskets’ pick-ups. It was more of a spontaneous process. Requests to enter (the network) became quickly numerous; there was a huge waiting list and we needed to manage this in some way (quote from a GASAP founding leader).

Analogously to the GFB, GASAP’s leading members were soon confronted with the practical challenge of making this organisation functional (courtesy of founding actors). As a result, in tandem with the spontaneous development of the GASAP network, new governing and decision-making bodies organically emerged within the organisation; these included working groups dealing with the recruitment of producers, the organisation of consumers’ groups, the writing of the internal constitution, and the coordination of the food basket deliveries. As a result, the spontaneous growth of the GASAP brought about considerable management challenges, being the source of organisational governance tensions. Furthermore, as the GASAP network began to enlarge, greater human and material resources were needed for coordination purposes. In particular, with the help of the urban agriculture organisation DDH (see Chap. 4), in 2009–2010 the GASAP obtained state funding to finance a coordination position for a limited duration. While these core resources helped to facilitate management tasks, they also marked the beginning of a period of negotiated dependence of the GASAP organisation on external funding. These contested and often precarious connections with state actors continue to affect the GASAP’s resource and organisational governance. Tensions began to arise between the spontaneous/informal governance of the network and the need for a more structured organisation; these tensions were connected to resource governance dynamics and were already evident in the initial stages of the GASAP’s life-course. Some of the GASAP’s leading members began to fear that the need for greater professionalization would stifle the spontaneous character of the grass-roots network. One of the key concerns expressed was about how “to preserve the volunteer and militant spirit of the organisation, while and at the same time, improve the efficiency in the management of things (…); we needed

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to avoid that volunteers become executors of the professionals” (quote from a GASAP’s founding leader). In sum, tensions between bottom-up participative and top-down hierarchical governing modes (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3) manifested rather early in the GASAP. Although in slightly different ways from FoodShare’s GFB, GASAP actors also experienced organisational governance tensions, resulting in the need to balance key values and principles triggering this initiative with practical management and governance challenges as the organisation grew.

5.3 The Two Food Movement Organisations in Their Intermediate Stages This section interrogates how key tensions pan out in more mature organisations. In particular, GFB’s intermediate stage covers a length of time that goes from the late ‘90s—a period characterised by changes in the administrative configuration of Toronto—up to around 2017. In fact, that year constituted a bridge to the latest stage, in which the organisation underwent the most radical changes in its mode of operation (see Sect. 5.4). GASAP’s intermediate stage encompasses the years 2012–2016, a period in which connections among the tensions were reinforced as it grew in its socio-spatial outreach, forging new networks and partnerships with other actors of Brussels’ food community.

5.3.1 Tensions During the Central Years (1998–2017) of FoodShare’s GFB The year 1998 marked a threshold in the administrative configuration of the municipality of Toronto: with the launch of the City of Toronto Act, 1997 (Bill 103), the old City of Toronto went through an “amalgamation” process and was incorporated into a wider administrative body encompassing five surrounding municipalities (see also Chap. 6). On the one hand, the consequence of the amalgamation was that FoodShare lost some funding, due to the conservative leadership of the new Toronto. On the other hand, the organisation could pursue its intent to reach food insecure inhabitants in all parts of the new amalgamated city, and the amalgamation constituted an opportunity for FoodShare to tackle marginalised neighbourhoods located in Toronto’s outskirts. Indeed, the aim to target lower income groups remained strong during these central years, and the GFB was still a programme in which environmental, social, and cultural values attached to food needed to be balanced and adjusted according to prevailing priorities (Laporte Potts 2013). As mentioned earlier, this process involved making compromises between locally sourced organic produce and the

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(partially imported) conventional food system’s produce, giving priority to keeping food prices below the grocery stores’ level (Morgan et al. 2008). As a FoodShare manager explains, “the box prices should always stay the same (…) So, during the peak of the growing season, it can occur that the box is a 100% locally sourced because everything is sort of abundant and the price points are lower. But in the winter, we just don’t have that many options and so there is more imported stuff” (quote from a FoodShare manager). Moreover, as the programme developed, cultural aspects of food accessibility and security became stronger in orienting decisions concerning the composition of the boxes. This can also be said about the latest stage of the organisation (see Sect. 5.4): We also place a lot of value on considering the cultural make up of our city. We are opening up to the fact that people have culturally appropriate food that are staple foods in their diet. Sometimes we get those locally and that’s great and sometimes we can’t and it’s ok to make sure people have access to the foods that are important to them (quote from a FoodShare’s manager).

On average, during the year 2005 approximately 4000 GoodFood Boxes were delivered each month in neighbourhoods in Toronto, involving around 200 volunteers to coordinate drop-off sites and reaching out to about 8000–10,000 citizens-members-­ consumers (Johnston and Baker 2005, p. 318). As documentary literature shows, in 2010 the GFB reached its peak (Scharf 1999), and then slightly decreased until the latest stage. In those central years, the endogenous scaling out of the GFB organisation went hand in hand with the growth of the wider umbrella organisation FoodShare. Indeed, from a small budget of 20,000 dollars at its genesis, the organisation reached a budget of a 5.5  million dollars in 2011, relying on around 50 employed staff to run a wider range of community food security programmes (FoodShare 2011, p. 3, see also later in this section). In 2016, FoodShare counted 62 appointed staff and a budget of 6.6  million. This data demonstrates the steady growth of the organisation through time (cit. from internal documentation provided by FoodShare’s former executive director). Not so differently from its early days, and from the GASAP’s mode of out-­ scaling, in these central years the GFB continued to spread in Toronto neighbourhoods in a rather informal way, through peer-to-peer communication among residents and word of mouth. However, promotion and communication strategies by the management staff and the FoodShare’s leader, and more mature relationships of the FoodShare organisation with other NGOs, community leaders, community agencies, and donors, also contributed to a greater visibility and spread of the GFB model. 5.3.1.1 Managing the GFB in Its Intermediate Stage Overall, governing the endogenous development of a socially-oriented project such as the GFB has meant combining aspects of informality and adaptability with the need for efficiency and good coordination (courtesy of FoodShare’s

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former executive director). Indeed, it is possible to argue that balancing these aspects has been a constant factor of organisational governance tension in the daily management of the organisation. More specifically, as a very “labour intensive program” (Scharf 1999, p.  122), running the GFB meant ensuring fruitful coordination between appointed staff and a handful of volunteers who were considered essential for the daily operations of the GFB and of other FoodShare programmes (courtesy of FoodShare staff). This involved making efforts to recruit volunteers and to develop relationships of affiliation and reward in order to ensure their constant participation and keep their motivation high. As highlighted in the previous section, the volunteer workforce was involved in packaging the boxes, collecting money prior to deliveries, and coordinating community drop-offs (Scharf 1999). We have volunteers who have come for the past 15 to 20 years. It’s a longstanding relationship. Every programme, such as the GFB, GFM, and so on, requires volunteers. Without them it would be very costly to run the programmes (quote from a senior manager of FoodShare).

Making efforts to engage volunteers and ensure an effective volunteers-­professionals coordination was not the only requirement for the daily composition and delivery of food boxes. Besides, as the GFB developed, the need to build strong partnerships and to engage in outreach activities became more prominent, to the point that “not a single box could go outdoors without hundreds of partnerships. Each stop has a community coordinator, a volunteer in a neighbourhood or an agency staff member” (FoodShare 2011, p. 3). In fact, one of the elements of organisational governance tension experienced in these years by the GFB was linked to the need to develop adapted governance structures in order to manage the growth of the organisation (see also Table 3.1, Chap. 3) and to cope with the development of other programmes within FoodShare. FoodShare took the initiative to forge collaborations with different agencies at the community level, but also in targeting other sectors and scales. Partnership-making involved establishing links with NGOs, community leaders, community agencies, residents, schools, facilitating the deliveries of good food boxes, the establishment of GFMs in neighbourhoods, or the set-up of food nutrition programmes in schools (see Box 5.1), and so on. It also encompassed maintaining solid relationships with food suppliers of the Ontario Food Terminal, involving both local growers from Southern Ontario as well as suppliers from the conventional food system (Field 2014). Partnership-making also involved maintaining relationships with funding agents, such as individuals, donors, private foundations, and state agencies, in order to safeguard the financial viability of the GFB and other programmes. Thus, organisational governance tensions and their connections with institutional types of tensions are evidenced in the GFB’s efforts to establish partnerships at different levels. This outreach effort also included the proactive engagement of the umbrella organisation FoodShare in “seeking for connections among actors, sectors, and scales of the food system” (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3),

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among others by finding allies in elected officials and civil servants who were interested in the organisation’s policy agenda (courtesy of FoodShare’s former executive director). 5.3.1.2 Multiple Forms of Tension and Their Interlinkages in the FoodShare and GFB Organisations What is noticeable in these central years is the evident interplay between internal organisational, institutional, and resource governance tensions experienced by the FoodShare organisation and by the GFB within it. Organisational governance tensions amplify as FoodShare develops, implements, and maintains new community food security programmes. Specifically in line with its food system focus, during the 2000s FoodShare activated several programmes promoting community empowerment and tackling diverse aspects of the food system (Esteron 2013). Besides the GFB and the GFMs, FoodShare set up further programmes tackling food production, food distribution, food literacy, and food justice (see for instance FoodShare 2011). Ensuring the financial sustainability of these programmes has required constant fundraising efforts, through either government, foundations, or individual donations (courtesy of FoodShare’s former executive director). This has provoked considerable resource governance tensions. For example, the financial stability of all programmes is not equal. A few programs rely on rather stable funding, whereas other programmes are more precarious and run the risk of being stopped or entering into competition with other programmes: Right now, our programme (i.e. Field to Table School and School Grown) is in a good financial position, but this is cyclical: funders decide what their priorities are and sometimes we fit well, sometimes we don’t (quote from a FoodShare manager).

Dealing with resource governance tensions is an intrinsic part of Food Share’s life-­course. For the GFB, this has meant ensuring a balance between what the social enterprise system could cover and what needed to be constantly fundraised through government, and especially donors (courtesy of FoodShare’s former executive director). At the same time, while organisational efforts are pursued in programming, implementing alternative solutions, and working at the empowerment level, FoodShare leaders also recognise that this is not enough. Changes are required in the ways dominant food systems (re)distribute “garbage food for garbage people” (courtesy of FoodShare’s former executive director), away from a charity-­distribution model towards an empowering model that removes structural conditions determining poverty and food insecurity. Reforms are needed to the ways long food chains make cheap processed food the most democratic food choice for citizen-­consumers. Structural solutions in terms of income, basic services, and social safety nets are needed from progressive state institutions at different levels that should prioritise the right to food. In other words, FoodShare is caught in a structural challenge—a contradiction between implementing

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alternatives and advocating for policy and food system change. This challenge reveals deep connections between organisational and institutional types of governance tensions. During these central years, what kept the GFB programme going (and other social enterprise and community food security programmes necessary in the eyes of FoodShare’s leadership) was the awareness of the persistence of food insecurity. In other words, they were driven by the recognition that the starting conditions triggering the genesis of FoodShare were not solved, and were even amplified by situations of crisis and disruption. This was particularly evident in the 2008 global food crisis, which caused financial difficulties for farmers and determined a global food price surge (Morgan and Sonnino 2010), with consequent growing levels of poverty, hunger, and food insecurity across communities (Morgan et  al. 2008). Moreover, together with the awareness of the persistence of food insecurity, there was the recognition that food insecurity does not only consist of the lack of means (such as adequate income) to access food. Food insecurity is also the product of a food system that is “fundamentally broken when it comes to the kind of food being distributed” (quote from FoodShare’s former executive director). In other words, going deeper into the original claims in the imaginaries and value systems of FoodShare, it became clearer that the problem of food insecurity should be tackled from a food system perspective. As a result, in these years the FoodShare’s leadership advanced claims for developing a public, or common, food system (Field 2009), where farmers are paid the real costs of production, basic local food staples are subsidised, public funding is devolved to support producers-consumers networks such as the GFB, unhealthy food is taxed, and so on. Thus, despite the efforts of programmes such as the GFB, GFMs and other social enterprise programmes, it became clear that these programmes could not tackle food insecurity on their own. In addition to this, in these years it also became evident that the GFB programme was failing in its mission to reach out to low-income people. A mid-term evaluation of the programme conducted in 2007 revealed that despite efforts to keep prices below the average of grocery shops, the GFB was addressing a niche of residents that were clearly above the poverty line (Loopstra and Tarasuk 2013). While an initial survey of 1995 showed that it was kind of working that way (toward targeting food insecure inhabitants and local farmers) a second survey carried out in the year 2007 showed that change had already happened. (…) One factor could be the spread of similar food service boxes in the last 20 years in Canada, that created different niche markets concerning who chooses a certain system and for what purpose (quote from a GFB’s manger). Undoubtedly, this awareness triggered questions and dilemmas about the role of the GFB, ushering processes of reflexivity for actors within the GFB. Key questions concerned whether this initiative was really fulfilling its purposes; what the role of such an initiative should be in general and in relation to other programmes within FoodShare. Moreover, questions concerning how to combine environmental values

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(e.g. the fair remuneration of local organic growers) with social and cultural values (meeting food preferences, tackling food insecurity conditions) also emerged (Johnston and Baker 2005; Morgan et al. 2008). However, at this point these questions and dilemmas did not provoke radical changes in the GFB organisation (as much as they did in the latest phase of the GFB’s life-course).

5.3.2 Interaction Between Forms of Tension in the GASAP During Its Intermediate Stage (2012–2016) The overall picture of the GASAP in its intermediate years is one of a steadily growing network in terms of numbers of members (both of citizen-consumers and producers). In 2012, when the GASAP obtained the formal status of a no-profit association, the network counted with over 60 consumer-producer groups active in the Brussels’ Region and 20 horticultural producers and small-scale processors (GASAP 2012). Analogously to the GFB, in these years food basket groups continued to spread in a bottom-up and spontaneous way through the self-initiative of citizen-­consumers and proximity relations in neighbourhoods. Activities of self-promotion by the GASAP leaders and the participation of GASAP activists in food debates and events also contributed to diffusing the network (van Gameren et al. 2014). In these years, the GASAP coordination group had to respond to constant requests from both consumers as well as producers wanting to enter the network (GASAP 2012). At the same time, the geography of the network evolved, with most of the producers located outside Brussels’ Regional territory mainly coming from the neighbouring Walloon Region. In sum, the organisation began to acquire a greater cross-territorial character. 5.3.2.1 Facing Material and Logistical Challenges Alongside these evolutions, between 2012 and 2013 new material and organisational changes occurred in the network. These changes largely resulted from demands made by some consumer groups within the network for accessing a greater variety of products (and not just vegetables and fruits). Several consumers groups had already organised a type of “super-GASAP”, i.e. more capacious GASAP groups in which not only vegetables, but also products such as bio bread, cheese, or meat could be provided, and more producers and processors could be involved in delivering to each pick up point, also called “permanence”(see also Fig. 5.2). These spontaneous modalities of growth and diversification had an impact on the whole network, pushing the GASAP coordination group to seek solutions to improve the logistics of food distribution. Yet, scarcity of material resources in terms of human,

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Fig. 5.2  Activities during the GASAP’s permanences (intermediate stage)

financial, and logistical means hampered the possibility of meeting these diversification demands within the GASAP organisation. As a result, these revived interactions between organisational and resource aspects ushered new institutional governance dynamics and tensions. The GASAP coordination team began to seek new connections with the Brussels’ institutional food agenda. In 2010, the Regional Cabinet for Employment and Economy, together with the Cabinet for the Environment, co-promoted a new inter-­ governmental programme called Alliance Emploi-Environnement [Alliance for the Employment and the Environment]. The objective of this Alliance was to combine the creation of employment opportunities in Brussels with the development of a sustainability agenda. Due to the enhanced interest in food systems in some sections of Brussels’ government, in 2013 a sustainable food axis was included in the programme. In the eyes of the GASAP leaders, this constituted an opportunity to advance their own goals and so they submitted a project on its distribution’s logistics, which was accepted. However, in the short-medium term this new opportunity space did not translate into collaborative institutional support and mutual learning, nor did it facilitate concrete solutions to the GASAP’s logistical problems. This was mainly due to new governmental elections in the year 2014, which changed Brussels’ political environment. In particular, new orientations in the allocation of subsidies restricted access to core funding for the GASAP and other food initiatives. Thus, after 1 year, the

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logistics’ “food hub” project was stopped and the GASAP had to comply with more strict rules in the allocation of funding. The new Cabinet established different funding criteria (…) we lost 1/3 of our funding. It is not easy to fit into their criteria. They support more and more projects that create employment in Brussels; we do not create employment in Brussels, but in the countryside (quote from a GASAP’s leader).

Thus, these sharpened hierarchical governance modalities generated relational tensions between the GASAP organisation, its network, and the institutional actors involved (Manganelli and Moulaert 2018). These tensions also translated into increased uncertainty in accessing and securing funding. 5.3.2.2 Collaborative Opportunities and Challenges In a context of rising and inter-related tensions, the year 2014–2015 signed a threshold in the GASAP life-course both in terms of amplified tensions and in terms of new collaborative opportunities. First, the increased trans-territorial character of the GASAP organisation pushed the network to seek new (funding) opportunities in the Walloon Region. In particular, given that the network involved farmers located in Wallonia, the GASAP’s leaders thought that the organisation could connect to the rural development agenda of that region. Second, the GASAP leading team searched for new opportunities to advance projects and gain institutional support in the Brussels’ Region. At the end of 2014, the Brussels’ Regional Agency for Research and Innovation (INNOVIRIS) launched an action-research programme on sustainable food called the “co-create” programme. This programme foresees partnerships between research institutions and actors coming from other sectors, such as NGOs, public institutions, or private food actors. The aim is to implement local food projects and learn new practices in co-creation through Living Labs. Willing to seize this opportunity, the GASAP succeeded in being part of two Living Labs. One project was tailored to envision new logistical solutions for short food chain initiatives. The second project involved developing adapted criteria to evaluate the sustainability of different kinds of short food chain initiatives. For the GASAP, this was an opportunity to develop a Participatory Guarantee System, tailored to strengthen trust relationships between producers and consumers (Manganelli and Moulaert 2018). Together with the need to address logistical challenges, developing a Participatory Guarantee System had been at the top of GASAP’s agenda for a long time (courtesy of GASAP’s leading actors). These new governance networks fostered opportunities for the GASAP organisation but also ambivalences. On the one hand, the two partnerships ensured greater human capital, expertise, and stable funding for a duration of 3 years, thus strengthening the organisation and its resource basis. On the other hand, these partnerships triggered tensions related to the need to combine values, purposes, and time-­horizons of actors coming from diverse professional spheres (see also Table 3.1, Chap. 3). These projects involved the participation of civil society

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organisations including social enterprises, research institutions, as well as actors from the conventional food sector, such as Sodexo (a big enterprise responsible for institutional food procurement) and Delhaize (one of the main supermarket chains in Belgium) (Manganelli and Moulaert 2018). The resulting partnerships are described as such: needs, goals and timeframes of the associative world are very different from the ones of the corporate. By working in these partnerships you realize how challenging it is to implement a fruitful collaboration and to put into action the aspired objectives of everyone in the given timeframe (quote from a “Co-create” project staff within the GASAP).

The increased degree of professionalization required by the projects brought about revived organisational governance tensions in terms of volunteer-employee relationships. These tensions concretised in the need to implement projects’ objectives in an efficient and pragmatic way, while also caring for the participatory and volunteer-­driven character of the organisation. In other words, the GASAP experienced revived tensions between “participatory-horizontal” and “hierarchical-­ efficient” decision-making practices (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). Already an issue in the early years, the need to balance different “souls” and rhythms of the organisation continues to be a source of tension needing reflexivity in the current stage of the organisation.

5.4 The Two Food Movement Organisations Today Recent years mark a phase of changes and revived reflexivity for both organisations and their wider socio-institutional environment, not least due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. This section describes how the organisations are currently coping with multiple governance tensions in a reflexive manner as they deal with the effects of the pandemic crisis as well as deeper structural challenges.

5.4.1 New Sources of Tension and Reflexivity in GFB’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day) In its latest stage, the GFB programme has undergone substantial changes. Differently from the past, good food boxes are now distributed door-to-door to single households, and orders are placed through an online platform. In addition to these changes, the wider FoodShare organisation has also experienced relevant shifts in its leadership, strategic orientations, and organisational governance. In particular, in this latest phase, the concept of food justice emerges more prominently as a driving ideology and organisational pillar of FoodShare (2021). Although issues of food justice and the right to food have been always present in FoodShare’s principles, nowadays the organisation denounces racial inequities that lay behind food

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insecurity with greater emphasis. These and other changes are essentially the product of two factors. First, a shift of leadership in the FoodShare organisation, which led to a reassessment and revision of key missions, values, and organisational principles; second, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. 5.4.1.1 FoodShare’s New Leadership and Revived (Self)-Reflexivity on Food Justice With the appointment of Paul Taylor as the new executive director, the year 2017 represents a threshold in the recent history of FoodShare. As explained below, that year is also a turning point for the GFB programme. Raised by a migrant single mother, Paul Taylor is a Black Canadian who himself experienced poverty and food insecurity. He has a background as a teacher as well as grass-roots organiser working with community organisations dealing with homelessness, food insecurity, and poverty.11 Grounding his social mission in his personal life experience, among others Paul Taylor brings a “reinforced commitment to tackle anti-Black racism as part of our work to address food insecurity” (Paul Taylor, public speech, February 2021b).12 One of the key contributions that the new leadership has brought to the FoodShare organisation has been to reframe the concept of food insecurity, re-­inscribing it into a wider anti-racism, anti-oppression, and anti-colonialism discourse. Thus, although FoodShare stays anchored in its founding principles, related to the fostering community empowerment and the removal of forms of marginalisation and oppression determining food insecurity, a new food justiceoriented type of reflexivity now emerges. The key message is that it is not possible to fight food insecurity without “working to dismantle systemic forms of oppression that exist in our food system and in our food movement”, consisting of colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy (FoodShare 2021, p. 4). Thus, in line with the food justice ideology highlighted in Chap. 2, FoodShare now highlights marginalised and racialized groups, such as people of colour, new immigrants, people with disabilities and so on, who are “more consistently neglected and systematically made more vulnerable” (Paul Taylor, public speech, February 2021b). This revived reflexivity on food justice has so far translated into diverse strategies and actions. For instance, in 2019 FoodShare established a partnership with researchers from the University of Toronto, in the frame of the interdisciplinary research programme called PROOF, in order to investigate the connections between

 For more on Taylor’s biography, see for instance: https://torontolife.com/food/when-youre-­ black-youre-at-greater-risk-of-everything-that-sucks-foodshares-paul-taylor-on-the-linksbetween-race-and-food-insecurity/, accessed 10 Oct 2021. 12  This and other quotes are taken from Paul Taylor’s intervention in “Next economy conversations: Paul Taylor of FoodShare”, retrievable at: https://socialinnovation.org/event_auto/next-economy-­ conversations-paul-taylor-of-foodshare/, accessed 21 Sep 2021. 11

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food insecurity and anti-Black racism.13 Overall, insights from that study highlight that the probability of being food insecure is 3.56% higher for a person of colour than for a white person. Revealing various correlations between food insecurity and racial status (e.g. measured in terms of home ownership, access to social assistance, migrant status, impact of food insecurity in Black and white youngsters, and so on), the PROOF study constitutes a basis to “challenge some of the understanding around food insecurity” (Paul Taylor, public speech, February 2021b) and to carry out evidence-based advocacy (FoodShare 2021). The food justice ideology is also translated into a more systematic anti-Black racism training for the Board of Directors and staff.14 Furthermore, food justice principles start to shape more strongly the ways in which FoodShare builds alliances, taking inspiration from and partnering with movements such as Black Lives Matter as well as food organisations inspired by Black and Indigenous sovereignty principles in Toronto, such as the Afri-Can FoodBasket, the Black Creek Community Farm, and others (Taylor 2020). Consequently, values of food justice and Black-­ Indigenous sovereignty shape the ways in which FoodShare makes sense of its engagement in programmes targeted to empower communities and provide universal access to food. Indeed, there is a proactive intention to direct energy and resources to “work alongside communities that I think have been chronically underinvested in” (Paul Taylor, public speech, February 2021b), in order to rebuild their food infrastructures through community food programmes. Moreover, the justice and equity lens with which FoodShare positions itself within the food movement and in wider society does not only shape the ways in which FoodShare builds “external” alliances. It has also begun to affect the ways in which FoodShare is revising its own organisational governance (courtesy of the current executive director and FoodShare’s managers). Changes encompass, for instance, the introduction of a 60 member Indigenous advisory committee holding a consultative role in strategic decisions. This committee is strongly composed by racialized people (courtesy of the current executive director). Other organisational changes involve the revision of labour policies regarding FoodShare’s staff, orienting these policies towards greater equity criteria. One of the new elements is the almost complete elimination of unpaid volunteer labour and the exclusive reliance on regularly paid staff. This is a radical change in the management of the organisation—perceived as a sense of greater equity—that also involves the GFB programme (courtesy of the GFB’s manager). In short, these and other changes testify the will “to make it a priority for us to do the work in our organisation that we see needs to be done in society” (Paul Taylor, public speech, February 2021b).  Insights from the study, titled “Black-white Racial Disparities in Household Food Insecurity from 2005–2014, Canada” and conducted by Simran Dhunna and Valerie Tarasuk, can be retrieved here: https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-37839/v1/5df41e7b-7c44-4733-8d76-32d4f 8c7d909.pdf, accessed 12 Jun 2021. 14  See FoodShare’s Combating anti-Black racism action plan (2020–2021), retrievable here: https:// foodshare.net/custom/uploads/2020/09/Combating-Anti-Black-Racism-Action-Plan-_-website. pdf, accessed 12 Oct 2021. 13

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Finally, in this phase, the attention to socio-racial justice also affects programmes such as the GFB and the GFMs in terms of their food sourcing strategies (see also images in Fig. 5.3). First, with similarities to the previous phase, much emphasis goes to culturally appropriate food. A FoodShare manager explains: “we recognise that what is grown in Southern Ontario is not necessarily a representation of what everybody eats” (quote from a FoodShare’s manager). More profoundly, it is noticeable how a stronger socio-­racial justice ideology related to “dismantling white supremacy” values has begun to percolate in the GFB in this phase. Among others, justice and equity concerns on food sourcing practices relate, for instance, to how labour, such as migrant and minority workers, is treated in both local as well as global food chains. Thus the need to seek direct links with producers, to promote transparency and knowledge about the system behind food production and food sourcing, are all elements that (re)emerge in this phase with great strength. “We are more careful about what we are sourcing and who we source from (…) we look at our sourcing practices so that they align to us as an organisation but also so that we can do our part to change how the system works (…) we are in the process of thinking about this” (quote from a GFB’s manager). 5.4.1.2 The Impact of the Covid-19 Outbreak The Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly affected the GFB organisation, as well as the umbrella FoodShare organisation. A direct change has to do with the capacity and scale of the programme. In only 1 month after the start of the first lockdown, the

Fig. 5.3  Activities during FoodShare’s (GFB, GFMs) latest stage. (Images: Courtesy of © BritneyTownsend)

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GFB passed from 250 to 1000 deliveries per week, reaching up to 2500 deliveries in the peak moment, and now stabilising to 1600–1800 weekly deliveries (courtesy of the GFB’s manager). It should be specified, however, that at the time of the Covid-19 outbreak the GFB was already a different organisation in terms of its modes of operation. In 2017, after an evaluation of the functioning of the GFB, the FoodShare leader and the GFB’s manager decided to turn the GFB into an online platform from which citizens could order boxes to be delivered directly to households. The evaluation had made clear that the GFB was a rather inefficient system from a logistical perspective and that it was relying too heavily on donations, thus being rather cost-­ ineffective (courtesy of the GFB manager). Moreover, as highlighted in the previous section, it was failing to address food insecure people. When we surveyed who was actually buying the box, we found that the majority of people were living in higher income households (…) when we asked why they were buying the box (…) they felt that they were supporting FoodShare, so it was almost like a donation (quote from a FoodShare manager).

The decision was made to make the GFB a completely online social enterprise system, with the idea that it would generate a margin that could be reinvested in programmes such as the GFMs, which is actually targeting food insecure people. Folks who are experiencing food insecurity are more interested in the market (…) through the markets they have more control on what they eat. They would rather go to a market and buy exactly what they want for 7$ rather than paying 18$ and get stuff that they don't need (quote from a FoodShare manager).

In sum, the Covid-19 outbreak produced further disruptions and changes to an already different system. In particular, and analogously to what has happened for the community gardens (see Chap. 4), Toronto public markets and GFMs were banned by the City and the province, since they are not considered essential food services. This provoked the reaction of food movement actors and organisations, putting pressure for the reopening of the markets. While the decision to gradually reopen is only recent, in the meantime the GFB had to compensate for the markets’ closure. Moreover, the system needed to respond to a huge increase in citizens’ demand for door-to-door deliveries. This demand was also coming from vulnerable people, the most affected by the pandemic crisis. These challenges provoked considerable organisational and resource governance tensions in FoodShare. Indeed, the organisation had to rely on its partnership-­ making and fundraising capacity in order to expand the delivery system and respond to a situation of emergency in a short time. Among others, in a two-week period, FoodShare hired about 60 additional staff for packing and delivering a larger number of boxes. Furthermore, the organisation strengthened relations and built additional partnerships with grassroots community associations, agencies, and other actors who used to run markets and now had to shift to the GFB. Moreover, alongside expanding the capacity of the social enterprise system, FoodShare actors engaged in a huge fundraising action, with the purpose of delivering boxes at no cost to community members that were facing food insecurity.

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It is something that FoodShare never did. Technically, we are a charity but we have never been an organisation that gives food for free because we need to be able to change the system so that people can afford the food that they want and not be the recipient of food at no cost. So this is a huge shift in how we operate (quote from a FoodShare manager).

The prompt solidarity response of community agencies, donors, and people connected to FoodShare were pivotal to providing a rapid reaction to a situation of emergency. They helped FoodShare to fundraise the entire costs of a food box so that poor people in Toronto could receive food boxes in a charitable way. This reality of crisis and emergency response reveals how distinct facets of the FoodShare organisation manifest and overlap. In a way, within the GFB, the social enterprise model now converges with the charitable system in pursuing universal access to food in a situation of disruption and crisis. Through this capacity for flexibility and re-adjustment, the GFB and the wider FoodShare could respond to organisational governance tensions ushered by the emergency. Yet, this also involved compromising (at least temporarily) with some of FoodShare’s original values and normative stances related to charitable food distribution. Undoubtedly, the shift of focus towards systemic injustices in food systems introduced by the new FoodShare leadership has intermingled with the food insecurity challenges caused by the pandemic outbreak, triggering revived interactions between organisational and institutional governance tensions. Indeed, the FoodShare leader is aware that initiatives such as social enterprises or food access programmes are not going to solve a situation in which about 5 million people in Canada are still experiencing food insecurity (courtesy of FoodShare’s current executive director). Although we’re doing work investing in under-resourced communities, we do not have the capacity to end food insecurity or poverty—those are income issues. We are over-relying on charities to do the heavy lifting of tackling food insecurity and poverty (Taylor 2021a). In other words, FoodShare’s leadership recognises that a fragmented landscape of civil society initiatives rebuilding food infrastructures from the bottom-up should not become the new normal. On the contrary, state institutions should be held accountable. They should provide the basis for a public food system informed by a human rights framework that guarantees the right to food (courtesy of FoodShare’s current executive director). Thus, in this phase, revived interactions between conflicting values stemming from bottom-up solidarity responses and top-down forces constitute key factors of governance tensions.

5.4.2 Governance Tensions and Reflexivity in GASAP’s Latest Stage (From 2017 to Present-Day) At the moment of writing this chapter, the GASAP network counts with 35 participating producers and about 5000 citizen-consumers, for a total of about 94 food basket groups (courtesy of internal documentation provided by the GASAP 2021).

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When compared to the early and intermediary phases, these numbers show that in the latest years the network has grown, although with a less accelerated pace. Indeed, the growth management strategy of the coordination team is now privileging the consolidation of existing groups rather than the creation of new ones (courtesy of the GASAP coordination). The Covid-19 crisis has certainly affected the network, although not necessarily in a negative way. In fact, as shown below, this type of short food chain organisation has displayed a certain resilience towards the pandemic. Overall, the GASAP network continues to face key tensions affecting its organisational and resource governance. The nature and effects of these tensions are illustrated below, together with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. 5.4.2.1 The GASAP and the Covid-19 Pandemic The Covid-19 outbreak had an effect on the day-to-day management of the network. One example is the way in which the permanences have been organised differently. In order to avoid the gathering of people compiling baskets, permanences had to be organised in short slots. On the producers’ side, although small-scale agro-­ecological growers turned out to be rather resilient to the crisis, some of them had significant challenges; producers connected to farmers’ markets, restaurants, or retail had difficulties in securing part of their income due to the closure of these activities. They also experienced challenges in ensuring the necessary labour for the growing season, due to confinement measures and mobility restrictions (GASAP 2020). Overall, the GASAP network notes that the crisis has revealed the strength of the social contract between producers and consumers, fuelled by solidarity relations, which facilitated a prompt reaction of support by consumers to the affected producers of the network. Because markets stopped, producers had fewer outlets for their produce, so mangeurs [eaters] started to support producers more and more (…) at the beginning, for instance, there was a producer that had all its outlet cut. He lost 15.000 euros of income. However, the GASAP groups organised to buy all his produce in just three days (…) Solidarity is the secret of this success (quote from a GASAP’s coordinator).

In sum, horizontal networks, knowledge proximity, and (partially) the informal relations between producers and consumers were pivotal in allowing changes and adaptations towards increased solidarity and support. As a result, some of the food basket groups became larger, or increased the number of food basket deliveries per month in order to help producers with larger and more regular food outlets for their produce. “These spontaneous adjustments were the result of 15 years of work towards building relations and trust between mangeurs and producers—a product of the direct link between them” (GASAP 2021). In addition, since the pandemic, Brussels’ citizens have demonstrated a heightened interest in networks such as the GASAP or other food organisations, which promote direct links between consumers-producers (see also Box 5.3). Existing groups consolidated while a few others started. As a result, the GASAP

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Box 5.3: The Bees Coop: A Cooperative Supermarket in Brussels The Bees Coop is a food coop, and, more precisely, a cooperative supermarket located in Schaerbeek, one of the 19 municipalities of the BCR. Established in 2014, the Bees Coop was launched by a group of friends moved by reactionary and anti-capitalist ideologies. By setting up a food project, this pioneer group of young citizens aimed to build a political and economic alternative to the dominant capitalist system. This alternative is informed by principles of self-management (in French, autogestion), horizontality, autocracy, and participation, as opposed to top-down, hierarchical, and profit-­ oriented modes of managing an organisation. Moreover, from an economic viewpoint, the intention is to show that an alternative like this is possible and that this project can become self-sufficient and financially viable. Besides these anti-capitalist and reactionary ideologies, Bees-Coop has other core values. In particular (and recalling food democracy ideologies), the notion of purchasing and consuming as a vehicle for building a social movement and for creating a democratic community around food (courtesy of a founding member). Furthermore, and similar to both GASAP’s and the GFB’s objectives, the Bees Coop seeks to combine environmental and socio-cultural aspects related to food. On the one hand, collaborating with food cooperatives and short chain initiatives in Brussels and Wallonia, the Bees Coop connects to local producers (among which peasant farmers) to guarantee a stable income for them, and to promote food sourcing and distribution in a short chain. On the other hand, there is also a clear intent to make good food accessible to all, targeting in particular marginalised and low-income social groups. Bees Coop founding actors underline tensions, but also potentials for combining these objectives in a fruitful way. Currently the organisation is reflecting on how to improve the social accessibility side. Possible pathways are networking with neighbourhood associations and community agencies, while seeking for solidarity funds in order to allow vulnerable people to purchase products at a fair price. In the same vein as the GFB and the GASAP, the BeesCoop took inspiration from cooperative supermarkets already existing elsewhere. In the first stage, pioneer actors travelled to New York in order to learn from the functioning of the cooperative supermarket Park Slope Food Coop,15 understanding how to reproduce this model in Brussels. Furthermore, Bees Coop’s leaders are in constant communication with the Parisian example of a cooperative supermarket, La Louve.16 The two initiatives have been reflecting on (continued) 15 16

 See https://www.foodcoop.com/, accessed 24 Sep 2021.  Consult https://cooplalouve.fr/, accessed 24 Sep 2021.

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Box 5.3 (continued) similarities and differences between each other, in order to improve their models. They also created an alliance of cooperative supermarkets in Europe, in order to promote and diffuse this example at the European level. On its side, the BeesCoop provides consultancy and accompaniment to other initiatives that aspire to become cooperative supermarkets. The growth and development of the Bees Coop occurred through different steps. Starting as a big food purchasing group as the embryonic stage of the future supermarket, in 2015 the initiative acquired the legal status as a no-­ profit association (in French: Association Sans Bout Lucratif—ASBL); in 2016 it became a social enterprise cooperative (in French: Société Coopérative à Responsabilité Limitée et à Finalité Sociale—SCRLS). Another important step in the life-course of the organisation was the purchase of the building where the supermarket is currently located. It was in the general assembly of March 2017 that we decided to buy the building. It was a special Assemblé Générale [General Assembly]. In terms of participation, it was remarkable. The collective energy was so rich. We conducted a hundred participative workshops to animate the process (…) And many people donated so much time and energy to carry out all the works to open the supermarket (quote from a Bees Coop funding member and employee).

Thanks to communication, dynamism, and diffusion activities, through time the organisation has grown in terms of participating citizens-members. Today, the Bees Coop counts with 1500 co-operators and eight employees, reaching out to more than 4000 people. A pivotal moment for attracting more members was a crowdfunding campaign that the Bees Coop launched in 2015. Besides allowing the Bees Coop to acquire a participative budget, this campaign provoked an explosion of cooperative members (courtesy of a researcher involved in Bees Coop, 2020). Becoming a member requires investing a share in the cooperative and devoting three hours per-month to help carry out supermarket activities. Certainly, the development and growth of the organisation has provoked tensions in terms of its management and governance. First of all, similarly to the GFB and the GASAP, the Bees Coop is a very labour intensive initiative. Running a supermarket in a self-managed and bottom-up way requires time and active participation by members. Most of the time, the rhythm of the daily activities is accelerated and an efficient division of tasks is required between employees and volunteer participants to coordinate the operations (courtesy of a researcher involved in Bees Coop, 2020). Moreover, the division of labour and specialisation of tasks brings up the need to negotiate new modalities of decision-making, given that not every decision can be taken in a horizontal and collective way. This triggers questions about what type of governing bodies are appropriate, how knowledge is shared between professionals and other members, who is entitled to take certain decisions, and what decisions should be taken autonomously or, rather, collectively. (continued)

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Box 5.3 (continued) Furthermore, as the organisation grows, working groups, ateliers, and dynamic activities are needed to keep the motivation and participation high. Yet, the level of engagement in practical activities but also in the philosophy of the organisation is not equal among all the co-operators (courtesy of a founding member). If a core group of members cares about the political and ideological aspects of the project, most members are not necessarily driven by a commitment to alternative values. These members limit themselves to a minimal participation to monthly activities. As such, the focus on the division of tasks, professionalization, and management of the organisation, risks overshadowing the radical democracy and militant values of the project (courtesy of a researcher involved in Bees Coop, 2020). Depicting the complexity and nuances of these and other tensions experienced by the Bees Coop is a very ambitious task that certainly goes beyond the limited space of this chapter.Yet, it is important to underline that, overall, the Bees Coop is a successful initiative. Nowadays the supermarket’s operations generate enough of a profit margin to finance eight employees, avoiding dependence on external subsidies. Thus, the organisation has succeeded in its intention of becoming economically viable. Certainly, the organisation faces challenges in exercising a greater impact, even at the local level, through an enlarged participation of socially disadvantaged groups. Core members underline how there are still barriers in achieving a socio-cultural mix. Key questions for the future of the organisation concern how to go beyond middle class citizens who are already sensitive to good food. Yet, through its history and activity, the Bees Coop constitutes an inspiring model for other initiatives in Belgium, Europe, and elsewhere. In conjunction with other food projects, this initiative can help nurture a dialogue about how food projects of this kind can achieve both social and ecological objectives. Sources: participation to the initial stages of the Bees Coop, dialogue with funding members, internal documentation.

coordination team and the volunteers have experienced organisational governance tensions in dealing with the growing waiting list of citizen-­consumers as well as producers willing to enter the network. This indicates the growing interest from citizen-consumers, but also the difficulty of the network in managing its own growth with the necessary speed and resource-human capacity. Furthermore, the leading actors of the GASAP wonder what will come next: more specifically, questions emerge concerning whether many of the consumers who entered the system during the pandemic will maintain their solidarity engagement in post-Covid times.

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5.4.2.2 Current Governance Tensions in the GASAP The contemporary reality of the GASAP network and the type of governance tensions it experiences certainly encompass issues linked to the Covid-19 situation, but they also go beyond this, revealing the more structural challenges this organisation is facing. A key structural tension relates to resource aspects. Indeed, despite being a rather mature organisation embedded in the Brussels’ food movement since its origins and recognised for its support to producers and sensitisation role towards consumers, the GASAP still faces considerable challenges in gaining access to funding and structural support. Although in the latest years the network has achieved a greater diversification of funding—with a small amount coming from a private foundation—a large part of its core funding comes from Brussels’ state institutions, and in particular from the Cabinets of the Environment and of Economy and Employment. This funding is still yearly-based and includes rather precarious subsidies. “In the year 2020 we were better financed, but there is no trend. Next year may be comparable to this year, but afterwards who knows? It may be a catastrophe” (quote from a GASAP’s coordinator). Despite the scaling out of the GASAP network in the Wallonia territory (see Sect. 5.3), there are challenges in obtaining structural funding and support from the Walloon government. The latter argues that the responsibility should belong to Brussels’ state institutions, since the GASAP is based in Brussels and targets Brussels’ consumers. This reveals how the “fragmentation in the administrative organisation of territories” (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3) is part of the organisational governance tensions that the GASAP is facing. The two multi-actor partnerships in which the GASAP became involved in 2015, and which guaranteed stable funding for 3 years, ended in 2018. As a result, the GASAP coordination team is under pressure to find further projects as well as financial resources. These challenges are indicative of the organisational capacity and leadership that are necessary to acquire new projects and incorporate knowledge and insights into the working of an organisation such as the GASAP over the long term. The network continues to experience organisational governance tensions today concerning, in particular, the strain between top-down hierarchical and bottom-up participatory modes of decision-making and management (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). These tensions are visible in the ways in which the GASAP manages the relationship between employees and volunteers. In particular, there is a constant tension between the need to be efficient and to produce concrete results with respect to the funding agents, while also animating the network and responding to the different rhythms and needs of more or less active volunteers (see some of the GASAP´s animation activities in Fig. 5.4). When I joined the network as a coordinator in 2017 there was only bad news: people wanted to stop financing us because they did not understand what we were doing (…) We need to do the job, produce outputs in face of subsidising powers. Volunteers did not always understand that. And this slows down the processes (quote from a GASAP Coordinator).

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Fig. 5.4  Activities during the GASAP’s recent stage (visits to producers). (Images: Courtesy of © GASAP, Author)

In general, the GASAP’s priority is to defend small-scale growers, guarantee a fair remuneration for farmers, and support a transition towards agro-ecological modes of food production guided by engaged citizen-consumers in alliance with producers. However, as the network grows, challenges increase in communicating these values to an increased ensemble of participating members, including active volunteers that are not always in tune with the founding values, organisational principles, and core strategies of the GASAP. A big challenge is for every Mangeur to understand well that this is about supporting peasant agriculture…I am not sure that all the citizens are well conscious about the GASAP’s missions…it is also problematic when the volunteers do not take into account the strategic logic of the network (quote from a GASAP Coordinator). In sum, in its day-to-day management, the GASAP network needs to mediate between governance tensions and the ambition to keep the organisation aligned with core founding values.

5.5 Discussions and Conclusions This chapter retraced the genesis and development of the FoodShare’s GFB and the Brussels’ GASAP network. Learning from these and other food movement initiatives is insightful for at least two reasons. First, these organisations have a relatively

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long history, with FoodShare covering more than three decades. This means that a lot can be learned from the ways in which these initiatives have experienced and overcome governance tensions throughout their development, also going through moments of crisis and disruption. Second, the FoodShare’s GFB and the Brussels’ GASAP are rather different and in a way complementary in their demands. By addressing issues of food insecurity and marginality, the FoodShare’s GFB targets the rights of citizen-consumers. It advances claims for a public food system that promotes food citizenship through universality and equity in access to good and healthy food. A key target of the Brussels’ GASAP are the rights of small-scale producers, squeezed by a dominant food system that brings about land consolidation and privileges large-scale farming systems (Borras et  al. 2015). On the one hand, these differences are indicative of the challenge of fully incorporating both aspects—food citizenship and producers’ sovereignty—within a single food movement organisation. Yet, on the other hand, these complementary demands show how fundamental it is to provide the basis for a justice-oriented food system, tailored to denounce and address marginality and inequity across the whole web of food relations. In light of these reflections, we may now wonder what these initiatives have learned from their own stories and, consequently, what the valuable takeaways are for other food movement initiatives. What follows organises these insights and takeaways into three points.

5.5.1 Aligning to Core Values While Being Reflexive A first key lesson emerging from this chapter concerns the relevance of setting up clear values as guiding principles, but also of being capable of (critically) revisiting or reframing these values according to changing circumstances. Both initiatives have demonstrated how transformative values and principles constituted strong anchoring points throughout the life-course of the organisations. These core values played a critical role in nourishing the self-reflexivity and, more profoundly, the identity and raison d’être of the organisations through time. In the case of the GASAP, the awareness of being a citizen-led movement promoting food sovereignty values through bottom-up and horizontal modes of governance has remained vivid throughout the development of the initiative, which has helped it overcome challenges in turbulent times. In the same vein, since its origins, FoodShare’s leaders were aware of the need to overcome a charity model, and to advocate for structural solutions to food insecurity. Throughout its development, the organisation has been rather consistent in its will to foster “good healthy food for all” and in its advocacy for a public food system (FoodShare 2021). The GFB, GFMs, and other programmes are expressions of these claims. At the same time, without undermining its core philosophy, FoodShare has been also able to reframe or re-adjust these values through time as it confronts changing circumstances. As shown in Sect. 5.4, in the latest stage, demands for a public food system intermingle with intensified claims for socio-racial justice, in tune with food justice concerns reawakened by the pandemic crisis.

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In the case of the GASAP, a reoccurring issue is the need to reconcile tensions between changes in the organisational governance (e.g. increased professionalization, more efficient decision-making modalities, stronger collaborative networks with other agents, etc.), and the safeguarding of a truly bottom-up organisation based on democratic and horizontal decision-making arrangements (Manganelli and Moulaert 2018, p. 13). Moreover, in both initiatives, organisational governance tensions also involve translating and adapting key values in the everyday management of the organisations. A clear example is the decision-making process concerning food-sourcing strategies and the manner in which compromises have to be made between different values attached to food, which are more or less readjusted through time. In the FoodShare case, for instance, aspects related to cultural appropriateness, socio-racial justice, and the rights of minority workers, have acquired greater importance in orienting the food sourcing strategies of the organisation in recent years. In sum, it appears that a valuable lesson in terms of organisational governance is that “if you build an organisation with strong commitments to principles and flexibility in terms of programming and changing, you can survive a very long time” (quote from FoodShare’s former executive director). The aspect of reflexivity is also important in that a strong attachment to certain ideologies may risk bringing about a close-minded attitude in food initiatives, leading organisations to focus only on certain aspects of the food system (thereby ignoring the need for a comprehensive understanding of the food system). By focusing on the defence of peasant agriculture, the GASAP brings forward important aspects of food system transformation related to the centrality of small-scale farmers, the fair remuneration for producers, and the true cost of food. Yet (and this is linked to its limited resources, organisational capacities, and institutional support) this initiative cannot address other aspects of the food system related for instance to social and cultural accessibility to (local) food by a diversified range of Brussels’ citizen-­ consumers. After all, aspects of food accessibility are very relevant in a cosmopolitan and multicultural Region such as Brussels. Conversely, the strong focus on food insecurity by the FoodShare organisation may lead the GFB to overlook injustices in the food production side or in other sections of the food system. Thus, hybrid governance also invites food movements to be open and reflexive about their values, recognising limitations and pursuing complementarities and collaborative networks with other actors and organisations of the food system.

5.5.2 Cultivating Bold and Pragmatic Leadership A second critical lesson relates to the importance of cultivating bold and pragmatic organisational leadership. It would be impossible to think about the identity and role of organisations such as FoodShare, but also The Stop community food centre, without acknowledging the role played by their executive directors. Thus, with no doubt, the guidance of strong personalities, driven by sharp visions, but also by bold and pragmatic capacities to turn these visions into practice, constitute a resource for

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food movement organisations. To use the words of the former FoodShare’s leader Debbie Field, executive directors act as “orchestra conductors”, mediating between the “internal” governance of the organisations and the “external” landscape of the community and policy arenas. Furthermore, cultivating leadership is important in relation to other levels. First of all, the example of FoodShare demonstrates the value of leadership and creativity at both staff and community levels. Similarly to what happened for the GFB, many programmes within FoodShare have been established thanks to the creative initiative of mangers. Dedicated staff play an extremely important role in programme delivery and implementation. Furthermore, as also highlighted through the example of student nutrition initiatives, developing community leadership and ownership is also a valuable ingredient for the success and resilience of programmes in the long run. In a way, the GASAP initiative incarnates the value of people’s leadership, where the perception of being a citizens-driven network strongly informs the values and identity of the organisation. Finally, leadership should be also considered in relation to the ways in which food movements seek to inspire other practices elsewhere. As shown, initiatives such as FoodShare, the GFB, but also the STOP, the GASAP or the Bees Coop, aspire to become models and references for other practices within and outside their regions. Thus, by communicating and exporting key principles, initiatives like these scale out and can be vehicles for transformative change in diverse socio-spatial contexts (Corsi et al. 2018). Therefore, an interesting aspect, also related to the previous point, concerns understanding how guiding values and principles diffuse to other initiatives, informing the organisational leadership as well as their reflexivity. A valuable lesson is cultivating consistent, pragmatic, and reflexive leadership at different levels in order to sustain food movement organisations, expanding their impact, capacity, and outreach.

5.5.3 Learning to Cope with Governance Tensions A third overarching lesson concerns the awareness about the need to constantly deal with governance tensions, devising strategies to bring them into sustainable and resilient directions. This chapter has for instance documented how material-resource challenges represent a constant source of tension for food movement organisations. In the GASAP’s second stage (see Sect. 5.3), the growth of the network provoked new material and logistical requirements, which triggered endogenous governance responses. Furthermore, the GASAP had to constantly face a financially precarious situation. This has meant developing strategies to economise financial resources and build networks with funding institutions in order to negotiate a continuation of funding. In the case of FoodShare, ensuring a sustainable financial basis has meant working towards financial diversification. The strong affiliations of FoodShare with agencies, individuals, donors, and foundations—as well as the remarkable reputation of the organisation—have contributed to guaranteeing an overall stability of funding through time. Thanks to its logistical and fundraising capacities, the GFB,

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for instance, has been able to pivot in order to become a much larger supplier than before during the pandemic, delivering a greater amount of emergency good food boxes to food insecure citizens in Toronto. Yet, resource challenges remain at the forefront of both food movement organisations’ concerns. Resource aspects are tightly connected with institutional (and organisational) governance tensions. Indeed, the GASAP’s story has shown how changes in governmental coalitions can lead to funding cuts and diminished support. This reality stands in contradiction with the fact that only a resourceful organisation in terms of material, human, logistical, and financial assets, can dedicate appropriate time, resources, and leadership to educational outreach, sensitisation, and policy advocacy. In many circumstances, food movement organisations need to co-live with a situation of inadequate resources as well as with unsupportive political climates. Once again, this reality speaks to the need to provide adapted bottom-­ linked governance arrangements between state institutions, non-governmental organisations, and other agents—where NGOs can exercise a substantial role in delivering key community services, yet be empowered as legitimate actors with structural support from other players such as state institutions.

References Borras SM, Franco JC, Suárez SM (2015) Land and food sovereignty. Third World Q 36(3):600–617 City of Toronto (1985) FoodShare Toronto. A concept to help fight hunger in Toronto. Available at https://foodshare.net/custom/uploads/2015/11/1985-­CityOfToronto-­A_concept_to_help_ fight_hunger_in_Toronto.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2021 Classens M (2015) Food, space and the city: theorizing the free spaces of foodshare’s good food markets. Can J Urban Res 24(1):44–61 Corsi A, Barbera F, Dansero E, Peano C (eds) (2018) Alternative food networks: an interdisciplinary assessment, 1st edn. Springer, Cham Esteron F (2013) The evolution of FoodShare: an exploratory investigation of the Canada’s largest community food security organisation. Dissertation, X-Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario Field D (2009) The crisis of food security: building a public food system. Esurio J Hunger Poverty 1(2):1–8 Field D (2014) Good food box. History, opportunities and challenges. FoodShare, public presentation, Toronto. https://foodshare.net/custom/uploads/2015/11/Good_Food_Box_Webinar_ Sustain_Decembe_2014.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct 2021 Fisher A (2017) Big hunger: the unholy alliance between corporate America and anti-hunger groups. MIT Press, Cambridge FoodShare (2011) Strategic plan 2009–2011. https://www.foodshare.net/files/www/AboutUs/ FoodShare-­StrategicPlan2009.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2021 FoodShare (2020) Combating anti-black racism action plan. https://foodshare.net/custom/ uploads/2020/09/Combating-­Anti-­Black-­Racism-­Action-­Plan-­_-­website.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2021 FoodShare (2021) Rooted in food justice. Strategic plan 2019–2021. https://foodshare.net/custom/ uploads/2019/05/Strategic-­Plan-­2019-­2021.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2021 GASAP (2007) Charte du Réseau des GASAP. https://urgenci.net/wp-­content/uploads/2016/11/ BEL_2014_GASAP_Charter.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2021

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GASAP (2012) Rapport d’activité du Réseau des GASAP asbl. Unpublished internal document GASAP (2020) Le réseau des GASAP, ses actions, ses enjeux, retour du terrain sur la période Covid-19. https://gasap.be/. Accessed 15 June 2021 GASAP (2021) Nouvelle Charte du Réseau des GASAP. https://gasap.be/wp-­content/ uploads/2021/05/2_Charte_2021_Version-­finale-­1.0.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2021 Hassanein N (2008) Locating food democracy: theoretical and practical ingredients. J Hunger Environ Nutr 3(2–3):286–308 Holt Giménez E, Shattuck A (2011) Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation? J Peasant Stud 38(1):109–144 Johnston J (2003) Food for all: the story of FoodShare shows how community food security programs can make a difference, even if they can’t end hunger. Altern J 29(4):29–31 Johnston J, Baker L (2005) Eating outside the box: FoodShare’s good food box and the challenge of scale. Agric Hum Values 22(3):313–325 Kondoh K (2015) The alternative food movement in Japan: challenges, limits, and resilience of the teikei system. Agric Hum Values 32(1):143–153 Laporte Potts SL (2013) Opening up the box: exploring the scaling out of the GoodFood Box across Canada dissertation. The University of Montana, Missoula Loopstra R, Tarasuk V (2013) Perspectives on community gardens, community kitchens and the Good Food Box program in a community-based sample of low-income families. Can J Public Health 104(1):e55–e59 Manganelli A, Moulaert F (2018) Hybrid governance tensions fuelling self-reflexivity in alternative food networks: the case of the Brussels GASAP (solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture). Local Environ 23(8):830–845 Morgan K, Sonnino R (2010) The urban foodscape: world cities and the new food equation. Camb J Reg Econ Soc 3(2):209–224 Morgan ML, Scharf K, Bieberstein R, Daalderop M-J (eds) (2008) The good food box: a manual, 2nd edn. FoodShare Toronto, Toronto Renting H, Schermer M, Rossi A (2012) Building food democracy: exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. Int J Sociol Agric Food 19(3):289–307 Saul N, Curtis A (2013) The stop: how the fight for good food transformed a community and inspired a movement. Random House of Canada, Toronto Scharf K (1999) The good food box: a case study of an alternative non-profit system for fresh fruit & vegetable distribution. In: Koç M, MacRae R, Mougeot LJ, Welsh J (eds) For hunger-proof cities. Sustainable urban food systems. International Development Research Center, Ottawa, pp 122–130 Scharf K, Levkoe C, Saul N (2010) In every community a place for food: the role of the community food centre in building a local, sustainable, and just food system. Metcalf Foundation, Toronto, Canada. https://metcalffoundation.com/wp-­content/uploads/2011/05/in-­every-­community.pdf. Accessed 10 Feb 2022 Tarasuk V, Dachner N, Loopstra R (2014) Food banks, welfare, and food insecurity in Canada. Br Food J 116(9):1405–1417 Taylor P (2020) When you’re Black, you’re at greater risk of everything that sucks: FoodShare’s Paul Taylor on the links between race and food insecurity. Toronto Life, Toronto. https://torontolife.com/food/when-­youre-­black-­youre-­at-­greater-­risk-­of-­everything-­that-­sucks-­foodshares-­ paul-­taylor-­on-­the-­links-­between-­race-­and-­food-­insecurity/. Accessed 10 Feb 2022 Taylor P (2021a) Black futures month: Toronto needs to do more than charity to end food insecurity. NOW Magazine. https://nowtoronto.com/news/paul-­taylor-­black-­futures-­month-­2021. Accessed 10 Feb 2022 Taylor P (2021b) Next economy conversations: Paul Taylor of FoodShare. Public speech, February 2021. https://socialinnovation.org/news/event_auto/next-­economy-­conversations-­paul-­taylor-­ of-­foodshare/. Accessed 15 June 2021 van Gameren V, Ruwet C, Bauler T (2014) Towards a governance of sustainable consumption transitions: how institutional factors influence emerging local food systems in Belgium. Local Environ 20(8):874–891

Chapter 6

Institutional Governance Tensions of Food Movements in Toronto and Brussels

Abstract  This chapter focuses on institutional governance tensions as triggers for the growth and development pathways of the food movements in Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR). Governance tensions are used to identify key stages in the two food movements’ trajectories and corresponding policy environments, unravelling similarities and differences in how the two movements deal with such tensions. The analysis shows that socio-economic crises and reconfigurations of policy agendas and political priorities are major tension-producing factors. These tensions oblige food movement actors to defend the legitimate space for food in the city. Furthermore, food movement actors respond to these tensions by co-­ constructing bottom-linked modes of food policy delivery and aligning values and agendas across actors and sectors of the food system. The chapter draws key lessons from the Toronto and BCR trajectories that can be insightful to urban food movements in general. These lessons point towards: (a) moving towards a food system lens; (b) empowering bottom-linked and reflexive food governing institutions; (c) navigating institutionalisation challenges and cultivating strategic leadership; (d) coping with and learning from disruptive times. Keywords  Institutional governance tensions · Toronto food movement · Brussels food movement · Urban-regional food strategies

Among most people engaged by food and public policy issues, food is increasingly seen as a solution-provider not a problem. In my experience that is both, the appeal of food policy councils and the energy they tap into (Wayne Roberts 2014, Food for City Building).

6.1 Introduction In order to grasp the ways in which urban food movements emerged and food governing institutions formed in Toronto and the BCR, it is necessary to go back to the genesis of the two urban-regional food movements. In the case of Toronto, this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_6

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requires diving into the context of emergency and socio-economic crisis of the 1980s, which ushered the escalation of food banks and urged organisational and policy networks to mobilise, attempting to develop alternative approaches to the charitable model (Fisher 2017; Riches 2002). Concerning the BCR, it was in the early 2000s that key bottom-up initiatives in the field of urban gardening, agriculture, and sustainable consumption began to proliferate in the regional territory (Manganelli 2013). These and other organisations started to weave bottom-linked relations with sensitised state agents, setting the stage for an institutional engagement on the food agenda (see Sect. 6.2.2). Moving from these origins, this chapter retraces the trajectories of Toronto and the BCR’s food movements up to nowadays. The purpose is to grasp the role of critical governance tensions in triggering the genesis and evolution of participative and reflexive institutions for urban food governance (see Chap. 3). Among others, pursuing an institutionalised engagement on food requires advocating for a legitimate space for food in the city (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015; Vara-Sánchez et al. 2021). With the objective of carving out this space, food movement actors in Toronto and the BCR seek to reveal the transformative and empowering potentials of food not only as a standalone policy area, but also in its powerful interlinkages with other urban policy domains (Cohen and Ilieva 2021). In both contexts, food movement actors face challenges in being recognised and seen as legitimate by wider institutional structures. Through time, food movements need to overcome critical tensions stemming from the impact of socio-economic crises, or the reconfiguration of policy agendas and political priorities. Furthermore, as the case of Toronto particularly shows, food movements struggle to develop empowering food policy delivery systems that are fully responsive to food justice values. By examining institutional governance tensions, this chapter seeks to unravel what (collectively) shaping and delivering urban-regional food policies actually involves. In this chapter, institutional governance tensions are used to identify key stages in the two food movements’ growth and development and corresponding policy environments (see also summaries of the food policy trajectories in Figs. 6.1 and 6.2). Similarities as well as differences are identified in how these movements deal with such tensions. With a rather long-term history, Toronto’s urban food movement is strongly shaped by food security and food justice values. This is largely due to the circumstances in which the food movement originated, but also to the food security and food justice traditions that are peculiar to food movements in North America (Clendenning et al. 2016). With a shorter-term but seemingly insightful history, the Brussels’ movement is largely driven by environmental, agro-ecological and, to some extent, food sovereignty ambitions. The movements converge, especially during their intermediate stages (Sect. 6.3), in their ambition to advocate for a food system approach (despite there being differences in how they define such a food system perspective). This approach leads them to reach out to wider actors, sectors and scales of the food system. As such, institutional governance tensions concretise in struggles to overcome administrative and policy barriers, laying the basis for a joint-governance of urban food systems across administrative and professional spheres. Capitalising from the hybrid governance analysis of the two food

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Fig. 6.1  Summary of the key stages of the Toronto trajectory

Fig. 6.2  Summary of the key stages in the BCR’s trajectory

movement histories, the chapter concludes by presenting general lessons for building more empowering and reflexive urban food governing institutions.

6.2 Institutional Governance Tensions in the Early Days of the Two Food Movements In both Toronto and the BCR, critical governance tensions played a role in the set­up of key food security organisations and policy initiatives. Searching for alternative approaches to food insecurity and poverty, the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) emerged as a key bottom-linked institution for urban food governance. In Brussels, early bottom-linked initiatives appeared largely thanks to grass-roots organising for food and environmental issues.

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6.2.1 At the Genesis of Toronto’s Food Movement When looking at the history of their movement, Toronto food actors generally agree that the Art Eggleton’s policy guidelines of 1985—which marked the official genesis of FoodShare Toronto—can be considered the first food (security) policy statement for the City of Toronto (City of Toronto 1985).1 This mayoral declaration was a clear call for action against hunger and food insecurity in Toronto. At the time, Toronto and other North American cities were facing a contradictory situation in which people and families were going hungry in a prosperous city of the Global North (Fisher 2017; Riches 1999). As historical food movement leaders underline, everyone in Toronto, whether from conservative or from radical thought, was shocked about a condition in which low-income families could not make it to the end of the month. People were literally missing meals (…) if they had social assistance, it was mainly in the fourth week of the month when people were running out of money and running out of food (…) and at that time of the month food banks had the biggest demand (quote from a former TFPC coordinator).

The socio-economic crisis of the 1980s generated serious organisational and institutional governance tensions, concretised in the establishment of food security organisations and policy initiatives holding diverse values and ideologies. As highlighted in Chap. 4, food banks and emergency food networks emerged as charitable responses to hunger and food insecurity. These initiatives generated reactions and controversies due to their sudden escalation and gradual institutionalisation as mainstream emergency food distribution networks (Fisher 2017; Tarasuk et  al. 2020). Furthermore, different waves of anti-poverty initiatives popped up in Toronto. Examples are the Basic Poverty Action Group, fighting for increases to welfare and social assistance, as well as initiatives such as “Bread, not circuses”, protesting against Toronto winning its Olympic bids and calling for action against hunger, poverty and homelessness (courtesy of a community worker and scholar at the Toronto Metropolitan University2). Besides these initiatives, community food security organisations evolved from emergency food networks, fostering alternative approaches to food insecurity and poverty. FoodShare Toronto and The Stop community food centre are two such examples (see Chap. 4). In a similar vein, the TFPC—which hosted its first meeting in 1990 (Blay-Palmer 2010)—looks at the structural determinants and policy failures determining food insecurity conditions (Roberts 2014). Among the advocates

 It is important to underline that, administratively speaking, in those years the City of Toronto overlapped with the current Old City of Toronto, being at that time an autonomous Municipality of around 650,000 inhabitants. Thus, although the Art Eggleton’s document also refers to the Metro and the provincial levels, it is that smaller administrative area that should be taken into account. As shown in Sect. 6.3, the situation radically changed with the Toronto amalgamation process that took place in the late 1990s. 2   The former “Ryerson University” has been recently renamed into Toronto Metropolitan University, to recognise the harmful legacy of Egerton Ryerson with respect to Indigenous people in Canada (see also the general introduction of this book). 1

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of the TFPC’s formation were progressive City councillors such as Jack Layton and Dan Leckie,3 who were also linked to Toronto Public Health (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). These councillors agreed with Mayor Art Eggleton that food insecurity and poverty were unacceptable conditions; the food agenda, they concurred, represented a way to work on empowering responses against these conditions. As such, they helped to facilitate alliances and create consensus among other political leaders in Toronto. Thus, it is arguable that at its genesis, the TFPC’s core mission largely consisted of “stopping food banks and having a policy alternative to food banks” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). However, besides food security and anti-poverty objectives, the TFPC’s genesis and core mission were also catalysed by other strands of the food movement. In particular, it was the public health lens and its connection to food that enabled the TFPC to structurally take off (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). Indeed, being one of the most progressive public health units in Canada at the time, Toronto Public Health had an advanced understanding of the social determinants of health, i.e. of the critical socio-economic levers that contribute to determine prosperous lives of individuals and communities—food being one of these (Raphael 2009). In the early 1980s, Public Health officials such as the associate medical officer of health Trevor Hancock4 consciously adopted the “healthy city approach” as a core mission, aiming to position Toronto at the forefront of the international Healthy City Movement (Hancock 2017; Manganelli 2020). Practically, Toronto Public Health issued a report directed to the City Council recommending the creation of the TFPC (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). The TFPC was established as an innovative food institution, acting as a sub-committee of the Toronto Board of Health while representing community voices. In the eyes of a former TFPC coordinator, one of the advantages of this organisational structure was that “we had access to the political machinery as nobody else working on food had”. Indeed, being a hybrid and bottom-linked type of institution, the TFPC essentially acts as mediator between the voices of food actors coming from a variety of organisational and professional spheres, and municipal policy structures.  Born in a family of prominent politicians, Jack Layton (1950–2011) served Toronto City Council between 1982 and 2003. He then became engaged in national politics as the leader of the New Democratic Party (2003–2011). During both mandates, he championed progressive social and environmental policies, also engaging in international politics. After successfully bolstering the New Democratic Party in the 2011 elections, he sadly died from cancer. Dan Leckie (1949–1998) served the Toronto City Council between 1994 and 1997, among other roles working as assistant and campaign manager for Jack Layton’s unsuccessful run as the Mayor of Toronto. He supported environmental justice policies and was appointed to the Toronto Atmospheric Fund after the amalgamation process (sources: Wikipedia and https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Layton, accessed 15 Nov 2021). 4  Dr. Trevor Hancock is a public health physician, retired professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy. He was the first leader of the Canadian Green Party and worked as a consultant for the World Health Organisation. Together with Leonard Duhl, he was one of the founders of the Healthy Cities and Communities movement, which looks at the key factors determining healthy life of citizens in urban areas. In line with this, Hancock’s major areas of interests revolve around health promotion, healthy cities and communities, public health, healthy public policy, and environment and health (see for instance https:// trevorhancock.org/about/, accessed 15 Jan 2022). 3

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The reflexive and outward looking attitude of the TFPC were visible since its beginnings. This attitude was particularly manifest in the search for a comprehensive approach to food insecurity and health, which tackles multiple sections of the food system (BlayPalmer 2010). While improving food security and health was its official mandate, the TFPC also searched for allies in other areas of the food system, targeting for instance the sustainable agriculture sector. As Rod MacRae,5 the first TFPC coordinator, elucidates, the concern for sustainable agriculture should be considered as another “soul” of the TFPC. In particular, figures such as Brewster and Cathleen Kneen6—farmers, prolific writers as well as advocates of a more sustainable food system—were also among the funding members of the TFPC, incarnating this internal wave of the movement. Other supporters and early members of the TFPC included academics and food activists affiliated to the Toronto Metropolitan University—Faculty of Community Studies,7 as well as farmers, retailers, food entrepreneurs, City councillors, and community food security organisations and representatives of anti-poverty movements. This wide array of members and the liaising between them reflected the TFPC’s official mandate acting as a mediator (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). Demonstrating a reflexive attitude, members of the TFPC recognised the need to act as catalysts for tangible actions in order to enhance the visibility and legitimacy of the TFPC in the eyes of municipal policy structures. As stated by a former TFPC coordinator, “we knew right away that we had to work on two levels: long term policy change, but we also needed some short term project, because the short term victories would help us to establish our credentials: why we needed to exist” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). A key project in which the TFPC engaged in the 1990s was the set up and expansion of Student Nutrition Programs in Toronto. As stated in Chap. 5, this programme also involved the FoodShare organisation as a community partner (see Box 5.1). Engaging rather early in this programme, the TFPC successfully facilitated access  Prof. Rod MacRae is a Canadian scholar in the field of sustainable agriculture and food systems. One of his key research areas concerns the creation of a national food policy for Canada (MacRae 2011). Other areas of expertise relate to strategies to localize the food and agriculture system as well as environmental aspects related to agriculture and food. Active in local politics from an early age, MacRae was appointed as the first TFPC coordinator between 1992 and the early 2000s, when amalgamation happened. 6  Cathleen Kneen (1944–2016) was a committed social activist and feminist with a farming background. In 1971 she moved to Nova Scotia together with her husband Brewster Kneen and their family. In Nova Scotia the Kneens operated as farmers until 1986, setting up a big commercial sheep farm. Cathleen and Brewster also co-founded Ram’s Horn, a magazine and newsletter dedicated to food systems. In 1986 the Kneens moved to Toronto, where Brewster started his career as a prolific writer and lecturer on food system issues. He has written several books on different aspects of the food system, among which Trading Up (1990), From Land to Mouth (1993), Farmageddon (1999) and Invisible Giant (2002). Overall, the commitment of the Kneens to the cause of just and sustainable food systems is widely recognised amongst Canadian food movement activists. 7  Another key figure in the creation of the TFPC was Jennifer Welsh, nutritionist and scholar who, at the time, was the dean of the Faculty of Community Services in Toronto Metropolitan University (ex-Ryerson University). Other food security scholars and anti-poverty activists who played a role in the creation were, among others, Graham Riches, Valerie Tarasuk, Barbara Davis, and Kathy Campbell (Blay-Palmer 2010). 5

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to funding from the City Council, the School Board, private foundations, and later the Province of Ontario, in order to gradually expand the number of School Food Programs across Toronto. Furthermore, in partnership with FoodShare, other priority actions of the TFPC were facilitating the Field to Table and, subsequently, the Good Food Box programme. These actions are indicative of the TFPC’s alignment with FoodShare’s values regarding the promotion of a public food system based on universal approaches to food security and health (see Chap. 5). Besides its role in the local food governance, it should be mentioned that early on in its history, the TFPC began to act as a reference for other FPCs in North America and around the world. Being one of the earliest FPCs, and the first that was set up in a large urban area, the TFPC quickly acquired recognition in the international research and in the community of food practices (Blay-Palmer 2010). All along the different stages of Toronto’s food movement, the TFPC constituted a model that travelled across contexts thanks to conversations among food policy actors in diverse realities. Thus, through time, TFPC’s coordinators were invited to give speeches and advise the formative phase of other food councils. Its hybrid mode of operating across state and community organisations has become exemplary for other practices. For example, TFPC member Cecilia Rocha8 made the link between Toronto and Belo Horizonte’s food security policies between 2006 and 2011. In general, TFPC and other Toronto food policy leaders have been also involved in international food policy networks, playing an active role in the formation and in the subsequent gatherings of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP).

6.2.2 At the Origins of Brussels’ Food Movement Urban food production initiatives, taking the form of allotments or family gardens, have been present throughout BCR’s history. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that a new wave of bottom-up food initiatives began to scale out across the Region, revamping in times of crisis and economic insecurity (Manganelli 2013). These initiatives included urban gardening projects (in French, potagers urbains), collective gardens, urban agriculture initiatives, sustainable food consumption networks, and so on (ibid., 2013). Key bottom-up organisations established in those years, such as the urban agriculture initiative Le Début Des Haricots (DDH) and the GASAP network (see Chaps. 4 and 5), were pivotal in facilitating the proliferation of bottom-up food projects across the Region. Indeed, initiated in 2005, DDH acted as a key intermediary organisation supporting groups of citizens in the establishment of collective gardens, facilitating on the ground as well as rooftop agriculture projects, and promoting composting and educational initiatives across the Region  Cecilia Rocha is the former Director of the School of Nutrition, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Professor of Food Security and Food Policy. Being also part of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES Food), Cecilia has great expertise on food security policies in Brazil, particularly focusing on the case of Belo Horizonte. 8

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(courtesy of DDH). Also inspired by models of collective gardens present elsewhere,9 the DDH and other organisations contributed to scaling out agro-ecological values among citizens, stimulating interest in urban agriculture and ecological aspects linked to food. As elucidated in Chap. 5, the GASAP network germinated in the same years as the DDH. This consumers-producers network was also instrumental in diffusing food sovereignty and agro-ecology values, promoting a food distribution model based on direct links between citizen-consumers and producers. Thus, in synthesis, organisational governance tensions, visible in the self-organisation of reflexive actors around alternative food values (such as food sovereignty, agro-­ ecological food production, and responsible food consumption) were pivotal to the emergence of a regional food movement (Manganelli 2020, p. 10). Searching for resources and institutional support, these grass-roots networks began to link with Brussels’ state institutions, and in particular with the regional Cabinet of Environment and its administration. In fact, at that time, the Cabinet of Environment, run by the Écolo minister Evelyne Huytebroeck,10 had already initiated actions on sustainable food. In particular, the Environmental Administration (Bruxelles Environnement, BE) was working on food waste reduction as well as sustainable food in public canteens (courtesy of administrative staff at BE). This early engagement was largely due to the government administration and the Cabinet’s awareness of the environmental impact of food in terms of greenhouse gas production (courtesy of administrative staff at BE). In addition, the environmental advisor of the Cabinet, Catherine Rousseau,11 had an organic farming background, which helped to link environmental aspects to food. Thus, “the Ministry in power at that time came from an ecological background, and was sensitive to food. Therefore that Ministry was very close and open to this kind of environmental and food related associations. This has allowed some collaborations to happen” (quote from the Cabinet of Environmental Minister who was in power those years). In synthesis, what also counted in the formation of a regional food movement were ways of engaging with institutional governance tensions through the setup of proactive forms of collaboration and bottom-linked modes of governance between state and grass-roots actors. In other words, “the development of sustainable food in Brussels is very linked to this culture of proximity and partnership between associations-­ administration” (quote from a consultancy organisation for BE).

 In the early 2000s, for instance, some DDH founders travelled to Canada in order to learn from urban agriculture initiatives in Quebec and import these models to the BCR. 10  Born in 1958 in Brussels, Evelyne Huytebroeck served various roles in the Regional and federal politics. She was Minister of the Environment, Energy and Urban Renewal for the BCR for two subsequent mandates—i.e. 2004–2009 and 2009–2014. Recently, she became co-president of the European Green Party. 11  Catherine Rousseau has a background in agriculture engineering and is also an organic farming practitioner. This background certainly informed her role as a councillor on sustainable food for Huytebroeck’s Cabinet. Maintaining her engagement on food issues, she later became appointed as a project leader at the Brussels’ Federation of Social Services (Fédération des Services Sociaux—FdSS), working on food security and the right to food. 9

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With similarities to what happened in Toronto, these bottom-linked connections among reflexive actors gave place to concrete initiatives and forms of collaborations. First, through its administration, the Cabinet of Environment started to support associations such as DDH and the GASAP with direct subsidises. Despite being short-term and subject to re-application and renewal, these forms of support helped these initiatives pursue their role as facilitators of alternative food projects across the Region. Furthermore, in 2008 the environmental administration also became co-responsible for the development of the sustainable food network called RABAD (in French, Réseau des Acteurs Bruxellois pour une Alimentation Durable, in Dutch, Netwerk Van Brusselse Actoren Voor Duurzame Voeding), which started receiving structural financing from the Cabinet. Gathering diverse members, including grass-roots associations, professionals from the fields of ecological agricultures, sustainable food in public canteens, fair trade and retail, etc., the RABAD is an important network in terms of training, education, and sensitisation on sustainable food in Brussels. Besides the RABAD, another grass-roots initiative engaged in education, training and behavioural change called Rencontre des Continents also started to receive support from the Cabinet of Environment. Furthermore, since 2011 the environmental administration issued annual calls for projects (in French Appel à projets12), for urban agriculture and sustainable food. The purpose was to stimulate the emergence of initiatives and to enable the formation of partnerships among diverse actors (such as bottom-up associations, citizens’ groups as well as state actors from Brussels’ municipalities) that could expand urban agriculture and sustainable food projects. Overall, the genesis of the Regional food movement in the BCR was very experimental. It was stimulated by the convergence of a bottom-up and a top-down sensitivity towards food sovereignty and agro-ecological and environmental values attached to food. This sensitivity translated into first attempts to put into place and partially institutionalise forms of support and collaboration, enabled by bottom-­ linked types of relations.

6.3 Food Movements Coping with Institutional Governance Tensions During Their Intermediate Stages The intermediate stage of Toronto’s food movement trajectory started at the end of the 1990s during the so-called “amalgamation” process. This process of administrative and institutional restructuring triggered critical governance tensions and had a decisive impact on the course of the food movement and policy trajectory. The intermediate period of the Brussels’ food movement and policy trajectory is  The “call for projects” is a device through which public institutions finance private or citizen-led initiatives through one-off funding based on a particular area or issue. Together with “public tenders” (in French Marches Publiques), the call for projects remains a key funding mechanism for actors involved in Brussels’ food policies. The adoption of these governmental practices reveal connections to neighbouring France, as they are also widely used by the French administration. 12

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shorter—covering the years 2013–2018; it can be characterised as a time of fertile and experimental developments, marked by the search for scaling up institutional support to the food system’s transition agenda.

6.3.1 An Enlarged Toronto: Threats and Opportunities of the Amalgamated City The administrative enlargement of Toronto in the late 1990s is a key part of the city’s history, and certainly marked its food movement as a trigger of critical governance tensions. Enforced by The City of Toronto Act (Bill 103) in 1997, the amalgamation process reconfigured the Old City of Toronto into a much larger administrative area, englobing other five crowning municipalities of the suburbs (i.e. Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, East York and York) together with the regional government of Metropolitan Toronto (Keil 2000). Consequently, the population size climbed from 650,000 inhabitants in old Toronto to over 2.4  million inhabitants in the merged City (Manganelli 2020). The amalgamation was a very contested process, being strongly resisted by both the old City of Toronto and by the other suburban municipalities (courtesy of historic food movement actors). This was evidenced by referendum results displaying a clear opposition from the majority of the population (Keil 2000). Fearing the advent of a neo-conservative agenda that would disrupt local democratic values, citizens organised demonstrations and political protests against the amalgamation (ibid., 2000). However, and in virtue of the exclusive legislative power of the provincial level with respect to the constitution of local jurisdictions, the neo-conservative provincial government bypassed the opposition, enforcing the amalgamation as of January 1998 (Keil 2000, p. 765). A key outcome of the newly merged City was that the progressive political and social culture of the urban core was suddenly confronted with the much more conservative political, administrative, and bureaucratic apparatus of the suburban areas (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator, see also Manganelli 2020). This had clear consequences for the food movement, since new relationships needed to be developed with suburban actors that generally showed scarce sensitivity to the cause of food: The old City of Toronto was a very progressive and urban city—culturally, politically and socially in the vanguard. Then all of a sudden it was made a minority in a larger city that included car suburbs such as Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke. These suburban cities didn’t admit or accept responsibility for their own poverty, hunger, or homelessness problems. Amalgamation really caused changes in food thinking, sensibilities, and priorities (quote from a former TFPC coordinator).

The top-down driven institutional restructuring provoked critical governance tensions in the food movement. Food security networks, for instance, feared that the government’s austerity plans would allocate to the charitable sector further responsibilities to help people in need (courtesy of historic food movement actors). Other

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food organisations and institutions—among which the TFPC—were threatened by serious resource cuts. More structurally, the TFPC risked being swept away by simplification measures that involved getting rid of “anomalies” in the administrative apparatus (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). In response to these threats, the TFPC had to fight for its survival and defend its identity and legitimacy in the eyes of the wider institutional apparatus of the enlarged Toronto. A former TFPC coordinator describes this phase: “structural changes dictated by the amalgamation had a huge impact on the ways in which the Council actually worked. We had reduced budget and staff support and we had to change our ways of making recommendations that would go to the City councillors. The relation to the City Council became more distant in a way” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). Experiencing governance tensions, food movement players were urged to take action. In the aftermath of the amalgamation phase, a new leader—Wayne Roberts13—was appointed as head of the TFPC, mandated by the City. At the time, the TFPC’s leader and members had to operate in a highly hostile political and institutional environment, where many of the progressive decision-makers and civil servants of the inner core were replaced by much more conservative staff of the suburbs (courtesy of former TFPC coordinators). Consequently, confronted with an enlarged city as well as with a different and rather understaffed bureaucracy, TFPC members were compelled to reaffirm the need for a progressive food security and health agenda for the City. This also meant advocating for the legitimacy of an institution such as the TFPC and devising strategies to acquire consensus within a very conservative-minded bureaucratic apparatus. These struggles gave place to the building of new alliances and coalitions. One of these alliances is the Food and Hunger Action Committee (FHAC), which was advocated for by food organisations belonging to the “hungerwatch” coalition (including organisations such as FoodShare, The STOP, the TFPC, among others) (Manganelli 2020, p. 8). Adopted by the City Council in 1999, the FHAC took initiative in documenting the state of food security and hunger in Toronto.14 Furthermore, in cooperation with the City Council and the TFPC, the Committee launched a Food Charter as well as a Food and Hunger Action Plan for Toronto. These documents constituted new mission statements on the right to food, urging the development of “concrete strategies to improve food security for all

 Wayne Roberts (1944–2021) took the lead of the TFPC between 2000 and 2010, after the leadership of Rod McRae. In the 1970s, prior to engaging in food and environmental issues, he was actively involved in labour movements, holding diverse roles as an activist, community organiser, teacher, educator, and journalist. As one of the pioneers of the food planning movement in North America, he is author of influential publications such as Real Food For A Change (1999), together with Lori Stahlbrand, and Rod McRae, The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food (2013) and Food for City Building (2014). The food movement mourns his loss in January 2021. 14  Consult the Food and Hunger Action Committee’s Phase I Report, “Planting the Seeds”, retrievable at: https://sustainontario.com/greenhouse/resource/planting-the-seeds-food-and-hungeraction-committee-phase-1-report-may-2000/, accessed 14 Oct 2021. 13

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Torontonians”.15 Furthermore, the Food Charter became a sort of terms of reference for the TFPC, since “it gives [the TFPC] a whole field of action. The role of the TFPC is to help the City implementing the Food Charter” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). A second coalition created in the aftermath of the amalgamated City was the “Environmental Task Force”. Facilitated by supportive City councillors and in particular by Jack Layton, in cooperation with the Toronto Environmental Alliance and the TFPC, the Environmental Task Force launched the first environmental plan for the City of Toronto. This was adopted by the municipal council in the year 2000. The environmental plan encompassed progressive measures concerning the promotion of initiatives such as urban agriculture, green roofs, urban forests, and other environmental and food-related measures (Roberts 2014). The story of the FHAC and the Environmental Plan illustrates the role of hybrid actors and policy networks in negotiating supportive institutional spaces as a way to deal with institutional governance tensions (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). In particular, in order to carve out a place for food, food security and environmental issues were re-­ framed to create consensus not only from the left-wing and progressive front, but also from the more conservative side of the political spectrum (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). This was done, for instance, by showing how food and environmental strategies could be also vehicles for economic and entrepreneurial opportunities for the City. Such strategies reveal how a politics of incremental and pragmatic tactic was used to surmount tensions. In synthesis, governance tensions coming from the amalgamation phase produced both considerable threats as well as new opportunities for the food movement. Thanks to its pragmatic leadership, the TFPC was able to re-position itself as a legitimate organisation, also playing an active role in forging new coalitions and policy initiatives that allowed opening up new spaces of action. As such, governance tensions can be seen to have translated into a proactive will to scale out food system principles and practices across administrative and policy structures of a brand new City.

6.3.2 From a Food Charter to a Food Strategy for Toronto A subsequent milestone in the policy trajectory of the Toronto food movement can be identified during the year 2008, when the “Proposal for Development of a Toronto Food Strategy” was declared by the Board of Health (Mah and Thang 2013; Manganelli 2020). Undoubtedly, the Toronto Food Strategy builds on the legacy of the FHAC and the Toronto Food Charter, whereby a major objective was to “promote a progressive understanding of food. We wanted many people to understand that hunger was not just about lack of money, it was also about a faulty food system

 This statement is quoted from the Toronto Food Charter and Food and Hunger Action Committee Phase II Report, retrievable at: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2001/agendas/council/cc010306/ cms2rpt/cl006.pdf, accessed 14 Oct 2021. 15

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that gives bad food to everyone, not only the poor. Food systems are everyone’s problem” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). In other words, the role of FHAC’s advocates, liaising with the TFPC, has been to foster a systemic approach to food, which looks at different facets of the food system and promotes “the need to enhance linkages or collaboration among departments and partnerships that bring together City, community, environmental and business organisations”.16 Taking up this legacy, the Toronto Food Strategy pursues a more conscious attempt to co-construct and institutionalise a framework for local food policy delivery (Manganelli 2020). The establishment of a Food Strategy was largely advocated by food movement actors, including the leader and community members belonging to the TFPC who actively participated in the co-development of the Strategy and competent civil servants such as Barbara Emanuel,17 among others. Another important player was the Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David McKeown,18 who believed in a food strategy as a means to realise many of the Public Health’s goals (courtesy of a former policy official in Toronto Public Health).19 Overall, a key way in which Toronto food policy actors deal with institutional governance tensions is by enabling supportive institutional spaces characterised by bottom-linked modes of food policy delivery (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). This means searching for synergies and collaborations with other City departments, encompassing for instance the Planning Division, Parks and Recreation, Social Development Finance and Administration (SDFA), and the Environmental Office and Licenses (courtesy of a former Food Strategy staff). In fact, in the view of the food strategy team, the best way of realising a systemic approach is to establish strong linkages with multiple divisions across the City. We collaborate on concrete projects—whether policy developments or practical initiatives—showing how, by collaborating on food initiatives, other City divisions can better fulfil their own mandates and perceive themselves as part of the solution. It is about building relationships on a personal level, I think—it takes time (quote from a former Food Strategy staff).

 This statement is quoted from the Toronto Food Charter and Food and Hunger Action Committee Phase II Report, retrievable at: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2001/agendas/council/cc010306/ cms2rpt/cl006.pdf, accessed 15 Oct 2021. 17  An experienced civil servant and committed food activist, Barbara Emanuel was the manager of the Toronto Food Strategy up to her retirement in 2020. She continues to be engaged in global urban food governance, sharing experiences and practices with trans-local networks such as the MUFPP, the C40 network, and others. 18  As a physician specialist with great expertise in public health, Dr. McKeown headed Toronto Public Health from 2004 until his retirement in 2016. 19  It is worth recalling that the year 2007–2008 marked the global food crisis that has contributed to the sharpening of food insecurity conditions globally. In Toronto, this disruptive event brought a renewed awareness about the fact that food is a poignant problem that intersects with structural factors determining food insecurity and poverty conditions (courtesy of an anti-poverty activist and scholar at the Toronto Metropolitan University). In reaction to the crisis, Toronto food security and anti-poverty movements gathered together. Among other things, they created coalitions such as the “Recession Relief Coalition”, activating campaigns to ask provincial and federal governments to put into place relief measures in terms of increased welfare rates. However, despite opening the eyes to a renewed scenario of food insecurity, the crisis itself did not play a major role in motivating the establishment of the Toronto Food Strategy and in stimulating the Food Strategy’s actions. 16

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Indeed, in those years, the Food Strategy team established new partnerships in order to implement projects targeting different aspects of the food system. On the urban agriculture front, for instance, the Food Strategy team partnered with the TFPC, other city divisions, and community organisations in the development of the Toronto Agriculture Program (described in Chap. 4). In the frame of that Program, the Toronto Food Strategy supported other organisations, such as Toronto Urban Growers (TUG) and the Greenest City, in compiling an urban agriculture inventory to facilitate the setup of food production initiatives by residents (courtesy of TUG). Furthermore, the Food Strategy also tackled food delivery and distribution initiatives. One example is the FoodReach project, involving partnership with several community agencies, the Ontario Food Terminal, Student Nutrition Toronto, and others. Set up in 2015, the objective of this project is to create an online ordering portal that enables larger purchasing volumes by community food organisations that deliver food produce to food insecure inhabitants.20 A further project involving fruitful partnerships between public health and the social assistance unit is the Community Food Works. The latter provides food training for refugees, and especially for women, allowing them to get a certificate in the food sector. This certificate increases their employment options in the food sector (instead of being recipients of social assistance). Once the Food Strategy was established, the TFPC took up a different role as the community advisory group to the Strategy, operating in tandem with the latter. As a result, the subsequent coordinators of the TFPC21 were part of a wider food policy staff, bridging between the voices of community members and the Food Strategy’s agenda. This change in governance structure had two key consequences. First, the day-to-day communication between Food Strategy and TFPC had to be organised, not without challenges, in ensuring productive interaction and joint work between the two bodies (courtesy of Toronto food policy actors). Second, the position of the TFPC coordinator in the City hierarchy was lowered with respect to the past. As a result, the capacity of TFPC leaders to directly interact with, and possibly influence, City decision-making structures diminished (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). Despite these challenges, the intermediate stage was a period of relative stability for the TFPC.22 What is noticeable overall is the greater maturity with which the TFPC, as well as the Food Strategy team, dealt with the City (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). A former TFPC coordinator explains the particular angle they  See the Toronto Food Strategy Update, 2015, retrievable at: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/ mmis/2015/hl/bgrd/backgroundfile-80280.pdf, accessed 21 Nov 2021. 21  The coordinators of the TFPC that succeeded Wayne Roberts are the food activists and intellectuals Lauren Baker (taking the leadership of the TFPC between 2011 and 2016) and Lori Stahlbrand, the latest TFPC coordinator (2017–2019). The food activist Jessica Reeve took the coordination role for a short intermediate period in 2017. 22  In these years of greater “institutionalisation” of a food policy agenda, the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council (TYFPC) was established to give voice to young generations as important actors in the food movement. Set up in 2011, the TYFPC has constituted a critical and fresh voice in the movement, operating in close connection with the TFPC while also having its independent agenda. Differently from the TFPC, which until recently received structural funding from the Province, every year the TYFPC has to fundraise support for its coordinating position. 20

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took in their interactions with the City: “At the time I was working with the TFPC there was a lot of thinking about what the city’s broader priorities are and how we can build and work on those” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). One example is the engagement of the TFPC in the Poverty Reduction Strategy, i.e. a long-­ term strategy endorsed by the Toronto City Council to tackle systemic barriers affecting residents living in poverty (see also Sect. 6.4.3). Another example is the promotion of the Food by Ward project set up in 2016 as a collective mobilisation tool in view of upcoming municipal elections. The purpose was to map neighbourhoods’ food assets, making them visible to local politicians so as to stimulate a greater consideration of food in local politics. Later, the project was further developed as a standalone participatory tool that maps community food infrastructures.23 Enabling forms of collaborations and bottom-linked governance modes certainly implies surpassing tensions and divergences among different values, behavioural routines, and agendas of bottom-up, institutional or other agents influencing food governance (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3, and Manganelli 2020). With reference to the private sector, for instance, a food strategy staff explains, We learned a lot through the Food Reach Project, where we partnered with big private sector distributors to get wholesale food (…) We realised that we should not call it partnership anymore, but service agreement. We became more practical about that (…) If you want to collaborate with the private sector you need to be honest and pragmatic about the different interests at play (quote from a former Food Strategy staff).

Notwithstanding tensions involved in collaborations, these are essential for increasing access to material resources (such as budget, human capital, and expertise) that are needed to sustain the implementation of the Strategy. A Food Strategy staff elaborates, “We rely on a very tiny budget and staff. We necessarily have to attract a lot of outside funding from the Federal government, from foundations, donors, etc.” (quote from a former Food Strategy staff). Thus, partnership making is also a means through which actors optimise resources by sharing them with community organisations and other (institutional) actors. This is particularly true in a context where city authorities allocate scarce budget and implementation resources, as will be visible in the latest stage (courtesy of food movement actors, see also Sect. 6.4.3).

6.3.3 Pushing the Strategy to the “Next Level”: Amplifying a Food System Approach As the Toronto Food Strategy has evolved in recent years, the intention to put into place a systemic and outward looking approach has also amplified. In the eyes of the Food Strategy leaders, such an approach should regard food as a “vehicle to realise multiple city goals”.24 After all, the idea of embedding a food lens across different  Consult, for instance, the TFPC activities report 2017–2018, retrievable at: https://www.toronto. ca/legdocs/mmis/2018/hl/bgrd/backgroundfile-118056.pdf, accessed 21 Oct 2021. 24  Consult the Toronto Food Strategy Report, 2018, retrievable at: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/ mmis/2018/hl/bgrd/backgroundfile-118079.pdf, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 23

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actors and the city division, considering food as a “lever to solve seemingly non-­ food related problems of the City” (ibid., 2018), was already in the spirit of the FHAC and in the work of the TFPC in the central years. This approach is also stated in the Food Strategy’s initial report—i.e. the “Food Connections” report, issued in 2010.25 This document can be considered the first strategic report of the Toronto Food Strategy, co-developed by civil servants, food movement leaders, academics, and community food initiatives that were part of the Toronto Food Strategy Steering Group. What is noticeable in the recent phase of the Toronto Food Strategy, however, is the intention to push the Strategy to “the next level” in the pursuit of a food system approach (see the Toronto Food Strategy report 2018). This intention is readable, for instance, in the ways in which food insecurity is re-framed in the late stage of the Toronto Food Strategy, being more purposely linked to a food system lens (ibid., 2018). This lens considers not only poverty reduction interventions tailored to address food insecurity, but also the connection among aspects of environmental sustainability, social equity, and food system resilience (ibid., 2018). In line with a food system perspective, the Food Strategy team has attempted in these late years of the intermediate stage to further amplify cross-divisional connections, seeking alignment with actors and agendas of other City divisions (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). For example, the Strategy team began to collaborate with Solid Waste Management Services to co-develop food waste reduction approaches at the City level (courtesy of a former Food Strategy staff). Furthermore, seeking areas of convergence with climate change and environmental agendas, food strategy leaders have recently begun to reach out to the Environment and Energy Division. They intend to apply a food lens in strategies to reduce consumption-based emissions at the City level: “our job as food policy people is to branch across the whole City corporation and see how we can influence the ways in which other City departments are doing their work (…)” (quote from a former Food Strategy staff). Another element that contributed to pushing a food system approach is the engagement of Toronto in Trans-local Food Policy Networks, such as the MUFPP and the C40 Cities network. First, by being part of these networks, food policy actors seek to enhance the global reputation of Toronto as a food policy leader, gaining legitimacy and visibility in the eyes of international fellow cities. Second, these networks allow Toronto food actors to share practices and engage in co-learning across urban areas. Indeed, “there are so many lessons to be shared in terms of how to support policy making or even programme development at a practitioner level and how to communicate that to a senior manager. Many of us across the cities have that in common” (quote from a former Food Strategy staff). Moreover, participating in a network such as the MUFPP allowed Toronto food actors to refer to a common framework on which to orient and evaluate the food system’s actions. Much of our work was focused on food access, working on things like healthy corner stores, mobile good food markets, community food hubs etc. But when I did a baseline with the MUFPP’s framework, I understood that there were opportunities in other aspects of the food system as well, such as connections with waste reduction strategies, circular economy, and resilient short supply chains (quote from a former Food Strategy staff).  Consult Toronto Public Health, 2010. Food Connections: Toward a Healthy and Sustainable Food System for Toronto A Consultation Report, retrievable at: http://torontourbangrowers.org/ img/upload/food_connections_report.pdf, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 25

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These reflections show how the communication and exchange with a Trans-Local Food Policy network has helped Toronto reinforce the framing of a food system approach, not only by dealing with local challenges, but also by positioning itself in dialogue with international experiences.

6.3.4 The Prelude to Brussels’ Food Strategy The years 2013–2014 brought numerous evolutions in the trajectory of the BCR food movement and food policy action. In this phase, institutional governance tensions were linked to the proactive negotiation work of food movement actors, and in particular of institutional actors, for enabling institutional spaces for a sustainable food agenda (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). Similar to Toronto’s intermediary stage, the Brussels’ Cabinet of Environment and its administration brought a more holistic agenda on sustainable food to the attention of other regional cabinets (Manganelli 2020). In 2013, state actors from the Cabinet of Environment began to negotiate a place for food in the framework of an inter-departmental programme called “Alliance Employment-Environment” (in French, Alliance Emploi Environnement), also involving the Regional Cabinet of Economy and Employment. Launched in the year 2010, the programme’s key objective is to enhance employment opportunities while favouring a transition towards greater sustainability in certain urban policy areas, including sustainable construction, water, waste and, later on, food. As institutional food actors underline, negotiating a space for food in the Alliance has been a struggle (courtesy of the Environmental Cabinet). Initially, leaders from the Cabinet of Economy opposed the food agenda, not recognising how food could bring sustainable economic and employment opportunities for Brussels (courtesy of the Environmental Cabinet). Yet, after negotiations between Cabinets, but also thanks to the transition to a new Ministry of the Economy in early 2014, a food axis was finally recognised within the Alliance. The former Minister [of the Economy] did not consider sustainable food a priority and a pillar that had to be considered. So, the sensitivity of the political actor counts a lot. It is not even a problem of political party, since the new ministry has the same political colour, the centre-right. But she has sensitivity towards sustainable food (quote from administrative staff at BE).

The food transition axis within the Alliance should be considered a step towards a greater institutional engagement in food. It was the product of the recognition that food initiatives were proliferating in those years—from urban agriculture to short food chain initiatives, from food literacy and sensitisation, up to sustainable food procurement in public canteens, and so on—demanding supportive policy spaces from Brussels’ state institutions. Thus in a way, the Alliance constituted a space of reflexivity, where actors could engage in sense-making, build partnerships, coordinate, and create synergies among projects (courtesy of the Cabinet of Environment in power at that stage, see also Manganelli 2020). In short, this inter-departmental

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programme created new spaces of opportunity for institutional support, fostering institutional, organisational, and resource governance tensions (Manganelli 2020). In particular, the programme involved the set-up of participatory tables and workshops tailored to create alliances among actors, pushing food actors and organisations to establish partnerships in order to propose projects and access funding opportunities. Key administrative staff from Bruxelles Environnement played a strategic role in organising the participatory tables, commissioning baseline studies and reports, and conducting the overall administration of the process (courtesy of staff from BE). These actors constituted a core team that would slightly grow for the subsequent Food Strategy (see the following Sect. 6.3.5). To a considerable extent, the Alliance was the prelude to Brussels’ food strategy. First of all, from the Alliance emerged the need for an integrated vision of the food system; the idea of developing a Regional Food Strategy was among its key recommendations (courtesy of the Cabinet of Environment at power in this stage). Secondly, and similarly to the Toronto trajectory, Brussels’ food actors began to engage in a more conscious food system approach through the Alliance. More specifically during its participative ateliers, the idea was launched to investigate constraints as well as leverage opportunities for a food system transition, taking into account the diverse aspects of the system—from production to processing, distribution, consumption, resources, and waste.26 Concretely, the Alliance elaborated and started to finance around 50 projects or actions, spanning across different components of the food system. Thus, for instance, a line of action addresses the enhancement of local food production through the piloting of urban agriculture projects. Other actions involve favouring more re-localised food processing structures as well as improving the logistics of short food supply chains. Others deal with food recovery and redistribution projects, training, and sensitisation to sustainable food, as well as sustainable procurement in collective canteens (see the Alliance’s report). These axes form the basis of the subsequent food strategy (see Sect. 6.3.5). Despite considerable limits in terms of implementation capacity and continuity of resources in order to effect the foreseen actions, the Alliance undoubtedly constituted a creative process of collective dialogue, confrontation, and co-construction. It was instrumental in assembling food actors belonging to different organisational spheres, including grassroots initiatives, state and private actors, as well as research institutions. With respect to the latter, one fertile outcome of the Alliance was the launch of a financing framework in the field of sustainable food called the “Co-Create”. Supported by the Regional Cabinet of Research and Innovation,27 Co-create started in 2015 as a three-year programme financing action-research projects in the field of sustainable food systems. The programme engaged actors from

 Consult the Alliance’s report at: https://environnement.brussels/sites/default/files/user_files/ rap_aee-cd_rapport_pluriannuel_2014_fr.pdf, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 27  Here it is worth mentioning a specific actor within Innoviris—i.e. the scientific counsellor Xavier Hulhoven—who actively promoted the Co-Create axis on sustainable food within Innoviris. 26

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academia, the state, and private and non-governmental sectors in joint projects, considering the work on sustainable food systems as a way to devise solutions to key socio-economic and environmental challenges faced by the BCR (see also Chap. 5). Among other activities, Co-create has financed projects targeting the field of agro-­ ecology and urban food production, short supply chain logistics, sustainability criteria in diverse types of retail initiatives, as well as socio-economic and cultural accessibility to quality food.28 Overall, with similarities to the intermediate stage of Toronto’s trajectory, this step of the Brussels’ trajectory shows a first conscious attempt to scale up food system action, bringing into dialogue a diversity of food actors and initiatives in the BCR. Furthermore, during this stage can be found attempts to establish links with other regional divisions, negotiating a legitimate space for a sustainable food agenda within a regional policy arena (Manganelli 2020).

6.3.5 Transitioning Brussels’ Food System Through the GoodFood Strategy Along with the momentum building through the Alliance for Regional Food Strategy was the pivotal participation and leadership role of Brussels’ environmental division in the European multi-city project URBACT. Developed between 2012 and 2015 and financed by the European Union, the URBACT project involved a network of 10 European cities29 diversely engaged in bringing “sustainable food in urban communities”.30 This multi-city network ran in parallel to the Alliance, and, to certain extent, was complementary to the latter. Revolving around the thematic areas of “growing”, “delivering”, and “enjoying” food, in Brussels the URBACT project was launched and administered by staff from the Environmental Administration working on food policies; this facilitated Brussels’ institutional food actors exchanging with other city partners. These exchanges constituted elements of reflexivity that also allowed Brussels’ food institutions to make sense of their own action on food. In a way, with the URBACT we were guided to follow a structure that had to end up with an Integrated Action Plan as a local output. That was the beginning of the construction of the Strategy. URBACT allowed us to find a fil rouge [a connection] among the several actions going on. We profited a lot from exchanges with other partners that had complementary ideas. We exchanged a lot with Lyon, which has similar characteristics to Brussels. Also, the city of Bristol was inspiring to us. They already had a Good Food Charter—an example from which we drew from a lot. We decided to proceed like Bristol, firstly developing a study on supply, then on demand, before going into an action plan (quote from a food strategy staff at BE).  To this day, 11 projects on the topic of food have been funded through the Co-Create framework. These projects are retrievable here: https://www.cocreate.brussels/projets/, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 29  Besides Brussels, other cities included in the URBACT project are: Bristol (UK), Ourense (Spain), Lyon (France), Messina (Italy), Athens (Greece), Vaslui (Romania), Gothenburg (Sweden), Oslo (Norway), Amersfoort (Netherlands). Consult: https://urbact.eu/sustainable-food-urbancommunities, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 30  See the URBACT Handbook, available at http://www.sustainable-everyday-project.net/urbactsustainable-food/?page_id=5830, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 28

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The Brussels’ “Good Food Strategy” (in French, Stratégie GoodFood, in Dutch, De Good Food-strategie) was launched in 2015. The adoption of the Strategy was preceded by changes in state institutions bringing about (institutional) governance tensions in terms of threats but also opportunities to push a food agenda further. In 2014, new governmental elections in the BCR had brought about a shift to a new centre-right Minister, Céline Fremault,31 who took the leadership of the Cabinet of Environment, replacing the former Écolo coalition. The new elections involved revisions of budgetary lines, agendas, and responsibilities. On the one hand, the new budgetary decisions provoked resource governance tensions related to greater restrictions and uncertainties in the continuity of financial resources for bottom-up food organisations, and especially for those associations that were relying on structural support from subsidises. With the new Minister and the rather degraded budgetary context, priorities needed to be set up in function with the available budget, which in 2014 was diminished. After all, we are a funding power, we give subsidises and we need to give them in accordance to the political will of the Ministry (quote from staff at BE).

On the other hand, the new Cabinet believed in the food agenda, at least in the political discourse, and the Food Strategy became a political flag. Moreover, the revision of responsibilities implied that the new Ministry assembled the portfolio of Environment with the one of the regional agriculture unit—the Cellule Agriculture— located in the Cabinet of Economy. This produced new opportunities for institutional support, as the Strategy was supported by two cabinets and two administrative bodies (i.e. that of environment and of agriculture) and included a few additional staff members from the Cellule Agriculture. Overall, the Strategy pursues a systemic vision that draws from the key lines of action that had emerged from the Alliance (see Sect. 6.3.4). In tune with the critical role played by urban agriculture and bottom-up food networks in the genesis of the movement, one of the priority axes of the Strategy is “enhancing sustainable local food production”.32 This axis considers forms of self-production through collective gardening initiatives as well as more professionally oriented urban agriculture initiatives. In addition to food production, another strong axis of the Strategy is the development of more sustainable food distribution channels, including the enhancement of short food supply chains connecting the BCR with its hinterland. In this respect, as mentioned in Chap. 4, the Strategy has set the ambitious target of provisioning Brussels’ inhabitants with 30% of fruits and vegetables coming from a 10 Km radius in the Brussels’ hinterland by 2035. It soon became clear, however,

 Born in 1973 in Brussels, Céline Fremault is a centre-right Belgian politician who has served diverse political positions: from a member of the Brussels’ Parliament, to Minister for the Brussels’ regional government, to occupying positions at the municipal level. With the Regional elections of 2014, she became Minister of Housing, Quality of life, Environment and Energy. 32  Consult the Food Strategy document, retrievable at https://goodfood.brussels/fr/content/strategie-good-food, accessed 14 Nov 2021. 31

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that self-sufficiency targets could not be achieved without considering a much larger food belt, which involves targeting the bordering Regions of Flanders and Wallonia (see also Chap. 4).33 Thus, with similarities to the Toronto Food Strategy, the Stratégie GoodFood seeks to create a framework for collaborations and partnerships among a hybridity of agents. This process also includes building relations with other regional agencies and administrations that could create synergies with a Regional food agenda (see in particular Sect. 6.4.5). Overall, drawing and building up from the Alliance, the Strategy provides an experimental ground where actors and policy networks negotiate supportive institutional spaces and empowering modes of governance (Table 3.1, Chap. 3). However, this endeavour is not free from challenges. In particular, the early stage of the Strategy shows how the need to cope with governance tensions is an integral part of the implementation process. Initial tensions concerned, for instance, the modalities of granting financial support for services and projects foreseen by the Strategy (through mechanisms such as public tenders and calls for projects). In particular, at that stage some of the historic bottom-up food initiatives of the Brussels’ food movement complained about the tendency to reduce structural support while privileging tenders or project-based funding that create competition among actors and increase the uncertainty of obtaining funding. One member of DDH explains the shift: compared to the past, the requirements of the public tenders are more strict, rigid, and detailed (…) our urban gardening team struggles to respond to the calls as they are more demanding while giving less resources and room for freedom (…) We are in danger of losing our mission (quote from staff of DDH).

This has also led to tensions related to disparities in resources and power relations when it comes to applying for funding, since “through the tenders we are put into competition with other associative actors, or even with private actors, or any more powerful actor or consortium which may apply for a given tender, also considering that tenders are becoming larger” (quote from Rencontres des Continents). In sum, dealing with food policy delivery is a very experimental process, which needs fine-tuning and necessitates finding modalities to cope with key governance tensions. Indeed, by going through the implementation process, Brussels’ food actors became aware that food policy delivery involves dealing with conflicts and mediating among diverse actors looking for access to implementation resources as well as for transparent and accountable criteria of policy implementation (Manganelli 2020, p. 12).

 Other axes of the Strategy relate to stimulating a sustainable food supply, encouraging food literacy and education, promoting sustainable food procurement, and reducing food waste (see the Food Strategy document). 33

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6.3.6 The Set-Up of a Food Council for Brussels What is noticeable from this stage of the Brussels’ trajectory is the enhanced awareness of (institutional) food actors about the need to build relations across organisational and institutional spheres. In fact, relation building is essential not only to advocate for the legitimacy of the Strategy in the eyes of wider policy structures, but also to lay the basis for the implementation of the Strategy itself. The decision to establish a Food Council for the Strategy (in French Conseil Consultatif, in Dutch Adviesraad) at the end of 2015 reflects this awareness. The genesis of the Council a few months after the launch of the Food Strategy illustrates the need to establish a reflexive organisational structure that gathers a diversity of actors and engages them in accompanying and advising the development of the Strategy. Indeed, similarly to the role of the TFPC with respect to the Toronto Food Strategy, the Council plays a role in the exchange of information, advising, and evaluating. It advises the Strategy in shaping a vision, setting priorities, and going through the implementation steps (courtesy of Food Council’s members). Inspired by the example of the Bristol food council within the URBACT project, the Brussels’ Council gathers actors from diverse sectors of the food system and organisational and professional spheres. Promoted by the Environmental Administration, initially the Council encompassed 28 participating members, ranging from bottom-up food associations active in food, environment, and education, to players from the private food sector, representative of professional federations in the fields of production, processing and distribution, food aid agencies, and research institutions (Peuch 2017). The Brussels’ Food Council is a young and very experimental organisation and, to a certain extent, (endogenous) organisational and institutional governance tensions accompany its development. This is visible in the need to continuously adapt and fine-tune its modes of operation through time. The initial decision was to divide the members into thematic sub-groups (such as food culture, food waste, research, and innovation) reflecting the expertise of the members but also in accordance with the thematic axes of the Strategy (Peuch 2017). These groups were expected to advise and orient the Strategy on the basis of their expertise about key thematic areas. Yet key challenges emerged from the very start of the process. A first challenge relates to how to ensure a balanced and effective participation of all members, overcoming power discrepancies while also making sure that a diversity of voices is represented.34 A second problem concerns the lack of time, and in some cases competences, of the participating members to read the documentation provided by the administration and give meaningful advice—considering that all Council members participate as volunteers. Finally, a more structural question regards the overall representativeness and power of the Council as a tool for deliberative democracy (Bassarab et al. 2019).

 See the final evaluation document of the Brussels’ Food Strategy, retrievable at: https://goodfood.brussels/fr/content/evaluation-de-la-strategie-good-food-2016-2020, accessed 15 Nov 2021. 34

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What happens is that the Conseil Consultatif has an advisory role, but then it is up to the Ministry to decide whether to follow the advice or not, according to her political agenda. So what we [members of the Conseil] proposed is to turn the Conseil Consultatif into a Conseil Participatif. The idea is that we present propositions and if the Ministry does not follow them at least she is obliged to give a justification to the Council (quote from Rencontres des Continents).

Thus, the search for greater accountability and transparency emerges from the decision to make the Council evolve into a “Participative Council” (in French, Conseil Participatif, in Dutch, Participatieve raad). Yet, the Council remains an advisory body whose decisional weight is limited and needs to be negotiated with respect to (top-down) power structures of the Regional Cabinet. Despite evolutions and adjustments in its ways of organising through time, reflections on the nature and day-to-­ day governance of the Council are still ongoing. These reflections mainly revolve around opening up to a greater diversity of actors, including citizens, ensuring meaningful participation as well as increasing power and capacity to influence key decisions (courtesy of Food Council’s members). Overall, the Council constitutes an essential reflexive mirror for the Strategy, functioning in tandem with its development and implementation. This is also true for the current stage, where thematic groups reporting to the Council are engaged in the co-construction of the new Regional Food Strategy.

6.4 Revived Sources of Tension in the Two Food Movements’ Recent Years If someone were to write the history of the Toronto food movement in 5 or 10 years, they would surely identify 2019–2021 as a key threshold years that set a new stage for the movement. Resonating with key events of the early and intermediate stages, there have been a number of crisis and disruptions that have prompted critical governance tensions. The years 2019–2021 also constitute a turning point and transition period for the BCR’s institutional action on food, albeit in a different manner than in Toronto. This transition has led to the adoption of a more purposive systemic approach through the upcoming Stratégie GoodFood 2.0.

6.4.1 Coping with a New Reality of Crisis and Disruptions in Toronto Institutional and resource governance tensions began to threaten Toronto food policy institutions in the year 2019, when the newly elected provincial government (belonging to a neo-conservative political party and in line with top-down institutional dynamics found in the amalgamation phase) announced drastic funding cuts for Public Health units. Although these measures were never implemented due to

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the advent of Covid-19 (see below in this section), Public Health officials and civil servants—including the ones employed in the Food Strategy team and in the TFPC’s coordination—felt threatened. They feared that the reprioritisation of internal resources and budget by Toronto Public Health would cause the dismantling of the food policy work. We were worried about the future of food in all that, because we knew that the current leadership prefers the medical side of public health and nutrition—and of course this became essential with the pandemic. But all the progressive food systems and community work and even the nutrition staff—we felt that we would not be valued and therefore would be subjected to those cuts (quote from a former Food Strategy staff).

These threats led to internal processes of overseeing and reallocating staff employed in Public Health, with uncertainties and a lack of clarity about the refilling of staff positions concerning food work. Facing these ambiguous perspectives, several officials and public servants—among whom Food Strategy staff and the TFPC coordinator—left their positions. Historically part of Toronto Public Health, the TFPC has fallen into an uncertain and precarious limbo when it comes to institutional anchorage, dedicated resources, and staff support (see Sect. 6.4.2). These resource and institutional dynamics are indicative of the precarious setting in which the food policy work is situated in terms of leadership and institutional anchorage (see also Sect. 6.5). Indeed, some frustration emerges from food policy leaders concerning a rather clear disinvestment by Public Health hierarchies in the food system agenda: It was no longer a discussion about our Food Strategy office as much as it was about two remaining staff positions (…) understanding the history of the food policy work and the strong governance that used to be there, it was a real shame and disappointment to see that there wasn’t a recognition of the importance of the food strategy and of the Food Policy Council together (quote from a former Food Strategy staff).

The immediate outcome of the crisis was a renewed dedication on behalf of Toronto’s food policy leaders to safeguard and promote the Food Strategy team and the TFPC. These actors identified the annual meeting of the Toronto Food Strategy (held in October 2019 at the premises of Toronto Public Health) as a key opportunity to advocate for the importance of advancing food system work and thus, for the role of the TFPC and the Food Strategy. As a result, food policy actors called Public Health and City officials to the table in order to stress the urgency and relevance of thinking strategically about food in the City (courtesy of a former TFPC coordinator). This meeting produced better outcomes than expected, since at the end of 2019 a resolution was adopted that recommended that not only Public Health, but all city divisions, integrate a “Food Lens” in their own practices, given the existence of systemic challenges such as food insecurity and climate change.35 Two staff

 Consult the “Food Lens” report, available at: http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewPublishedReport. do?function=getDecisionDocumentReport&meetingId=15404, accessed 16 Nov 2021. 35

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members were appointed by Public Health to help implement a Food Lens approach across city divisions. The Food Lens story shows how the energy and will to push in the direction of empowering institutional frameworks is still vivid among food movement actors, together with the recognition of the importance of systemic work. It is also a sign of an enduring and unsolved struggle, which goes back to the origins of the food movement, to embed food system practices across city structures. The period of hope stemming from the “Food Lens” motion was disrupted by the advent of another emergency, i.e. Covid-19. With the epidemic outbreak, Toronto’s food movement has fallen back to a scenario of crisis and disruption that, to a certain extent, recalls the situation at the genesis of the movement. Analogously to the crisis of the 1980s, Covid-19 has further aggravated the effects of endemic inequities—such as food insecurity and poverty—affecting inhabitants of Toronto, and especially vulnerable and racialized communities (Stahlbrand and Roberts 2020). As it happened in the aftermath of the 1980s’ crisis, the frequency of food banks’ usage by food insecure inhabitants spiked in the city, reaching a 7% increase at the end of 2019 (Daily Bread Food Bank 2020). In addition, evidence shows that neighbourhoods with the highest presence of racialized communities (such as Black, Latin American, Asian residents) have been the most affected by the health and socio-economic burdens generated by the crisis (Ahmed et al. 2021). Similarly to the previous phases of the food movement history, this context of crisis revamped critical governance tensions. In particular, organisational governance tensions manifested in the mobilisation of a diversity of actors and organisations ushered to provide responses to the emergency. First, food security and emergency food networks active in Toronto faced pressure to tackle the immediate effects of the crisis. Food banks, for instance, had to reorganise their food delivery infrastructures, dealing with augmented demands for emergency food while trying to minimise health risks connected to people assembling in lines (Daily Bread Food Bank 2020). As a result of the closure of several food banks’ branches for health prevention measures, institutions such as libraries or community centres started to collaborate with food banks and other emergency food networks in order to provide space for delivery hubs where solidarity food baskets are packed and delivered to families in need. Furthermore, new solidarity initiatives formed from the ground­up, while established community food security organisations pivoted their food programmes and infrastructures in order to provide emergency food supplies. This is the case of organisations such as FoodShare and the GFB, explored in Chap. 5. These organisational dynamics went along with resource and institutional governance tensions. Food emergency and food security organisations, for instance, had to negotiate greater access to philanthropic funding in order to deliver emergency food services in times of crisis (Stahlbrand and Roberts 2020). Furthermore, as mentioned in Chap. 4, food organisations and institutions such as TUG, the TFPC, and Sustain Ontario were at the forefront of a battle with the City of Toronto for the recognition of community gardens and farmers’ markets as essential food access points that needed to be accessible during the pandemic. Moreover, food justice actors and organisations such as the Black Creek Community Farm (BCCF), the Afri-Can FoodBasket, and others enacted another layer of mobilisation, raising

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claims for the right to food justice and sovereignty (see also Box 6.1). Their advocacy efforts reach to the roots of justice issues, pointing to the need for greater income security and arguing for the removal of key barriers affecting access to resources, power, and opportunities by historically disadvantaged groups. The above picture gives only a partial account of the hybridity of agential, organisational, and institutional dynamics characterising the Toronto food movement within a situation of emergency. Of course, being a public health crisis, the Covid-19 also urged the frontline action of the responsible state authority for health and epidemic emergencies, i.e. Toronto Public Health. As it generally happened across Public Health units in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, the Toronto Board of Health mainly responded through infection prevention and control measures, devolving most of the financial and human resources to this type of response (courtesy of a former policy official at Toronto Public Health). From the point of view of institutional dynamics and tensions, these orientations had relevant consequences for Toronto’s institutional action on food. In short, not without controversies and conflictual dynamics, Public Health officials decided to redeploy the food strategy team, moving it away from Public Health. The decision was made to re-allocate a much more reduced Food Strategy staff within the SDFA division36 in a food security unit operating in the frame of the Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy (see Sect. 6.4.3).

Box 6.1: Rooting Food Justice in the City: The Black Food Sovereignty Plan The Black Food Sovereignty plan constitutes another layer of food policy work. Situated within a wider Confronting Anti-Black Racism (CABR) unit,37 the plan can be defined as a Black-led food policy driven by food justice and food sovereignty missions. The initiative is particularly relevant here because it demonstrates the ways in which institutional governance tensions (linked to implementing food justice and food sovereignty values) have crystallised in a successful bottom-linked type of governance configuration. The establishment of the Black Food Sovereignty plan occurred in a context of societal turmoil and grass-roots concerns around racial justice. These concerns are well expressed by movements such as the Black Lives Matter in (continued)

 More precisely, two appointed staff were redeployed in the Covid-19 food security Team, against a total of eight staff members working in the previous Food Strategy team. 37  Located within the SDFA, and thus in the same institutional house as the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Confronting Anti-Black Racism unit (CABR) is responsible for implementing an Anti-Black Racism plan for Toronto. This plan tackles structural barriers preventing people of colours from benefiting from equal economic and social opportunities. For an overview of the Plan consult: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/community/confronting-antiblack-racism/, accessed 16 Nov 2021. 36

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Box 6.1  (continued) the US, which has given place to “glocal” demonstrations and protests such as the Black Lives Matter Toronto in 2016. Against this backdrop, Black leaders in Toronto—including Black members of the TFPC as well as leaders at the head of food justice organisations such as the Afri-Can FoodBasket, FoodShare, the BCCF, and so on—started to mobilise themselves. These actors raised joint conversations concerning how to organise Black leadership, how to bring Black community voices to the table, how to enable Black leaders to drive food issues, and how to implement aspired changes in Black communities experiencing food insecurity (courtesy of a manger of the Plan). These conversations—which also led to an online symposium called “Cultivating Black Food Sovereignty in Toronto” in 2020—were nurtured by a strong awareness of the structural disadvantages experienced by Black and Indigenous communities when it comes to food insecurity. There was also the recognition that the benefit of food security policies were not shared by Black residents in an equal way (courtesy of staff at the CABR). Establishing networks such as the Black Food Sovereignty initiative, which gathered Black leaders along with supportive institutions (in particular, the Centre for Studies in Food Security of the Toronto Metropolitan), these actors put pressure on state institutions to embrace a Black food sovereignty framework and action plan. The Covid-19 emergency crisis constituted another wake-up call for food justice leaders, making visible the disproportionate impact of this health crisis on the lives of Black communities. Thus, urged by these grass-roots concerns, in 2020 the Board of Health passed a motion to support the development of the Black Food Sovereignty Plan, inserting it into the work of the CABR Unit, operating in the SDFA. In short, two main forces have driven the establishment of this policy. First, organisational and institutional governance tensions catalysed by the bottom­up organising of Black leaders putting pressure on state institutions. Second, the bottom-linked operations of certain institutions, such as the Centres for Studies in Food Security and the SDFA, which had previously established collaborations with organisations such as the Afri-Can FoodBasket and others operating in a food justice framework. Furthermore, what is particularly instructive of the Black Food Sovereignty plan is that both its establishment as well as its implementation are carried out in a bottom-linked participative way, where community voices are empowered to influence the course of action. This dynamic is explained by a former staff member of the Plan. The Black Food Sovereignty Plan was really pushing for a governance structure where the City had to be in constant communication with Black food leaders of Toronto. I think it is an incredible way to hold more accountability for that plan and to make sure that whatever result from that Plan, it is approved by and directed by the communities (quote from a former staff working at the Plan).

(continued)

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Box 6.1  (continued) Another staff member explains the resulting process: “We have built in an engagement mechanism that ensures that the delivery and progress of the plan is continuously reported to the community and remains accountable” (quote from a staff at the CABR). As a bottom-led policy, the key priorities and recommendations of the plan were also self-determined by Black communities through the consultative process and development phase of the plan (courtesy of a staff at the CABR). These priorities aim to tackle some of the structural factors determining systemic inequities in Black and Indigenous communities. Thus, a first priority area deals with the allocation of adequate resources and structural support to community-based food organisations, which are at the forefront of community organising as well as food provisioning. A second and third area respectively deal with access to land and food infrastructures (e.g. community kitchens, food hubs, farmers’ markets, incubator spaces) for communities of colour. A fourth line of action concerns building a supply chain of culturally appropriate food through initiatives such as “Black food markets”, or Black food businesses. The last area of action deals with removing inequities in health care and nutrition. Overall, this Black-led food policy reveals the hybrid and multi-layered nature of food policymaking, where diverse frameworks and policy initiatives co-exist even within a single urban context. On its side, this plan displays the transformational socio-political forces coming from bottom-linked modes of governance. Certainly, there are spaces of opportunity for fruitful connections of this Black-led initiative with other urban food policy structures. Sources: conversations with city staff working at the Black Food Sovereignty Plan, internal documentation, web sources.

Thus, because of a series of factors catalysing critical governance tensions, the trajectory of the Toronto food movement in general and food policy work more specifically, entered a new stage. This stage is characterised by shifts in the institutional configuration of food policy structures and food institutions leading to a new arrangement and to a future scenario whose contours are still very uncertain.

6.4.2 The End of the Toronto Food Policy Council? At the moment of writing this book, the TFPC finds itself in a very precarious condition, with great uncertainties about its future. To frame it differently, “after 30 years, the TFPC is fighting for its life. The most prominent and successful Food Policy Council in the world is fighting for its life in a time where food has never been more

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important” (quote from a former TFPC coordinator). More specifically, the confluence of unfortunate factors ushering critical governance tensions threatens the very existence and legitimacy of the TFPC in unprecedented ways. First of all, for several years the TFPC has seen its budget and staff support significantly reduced. This situation of diminished support in terms of resources and staff is indicative of a more profound lack of understanding of food and the food system agenda in the eyes of Public Health authorities as well as of wider city structures (courtesy of a TFPC member). Secondly, these institutional and resource tensions were further accentuated in the year 2019, when budget cuts were announced and the TFPC entered in a “panic crisis mode”, fearing once again of being radically dismantled. The situation then exploded with the Covid-19 outbreak and the decision of Public Health to redirect priorities and resources to the medical side of the emergency, moving food works out of its operations. Because of these dynamics, the TFPC finds itself in an unplanned vacuum, with no associated budget and uncertain perspectives in terms of an organisational setting and institutional housing. In addition to this, having to cope with the hurdles of the pandemic crisis, some of the volunteer members have either left the Council or been less active in volunteer participation. Finally, besides these dynamics, another key institutional governance tension has been raised by Council members of Black origins—criticising the Council for an inadequate consideration of Black food sovereignty objectives in its agenda and priorities, and for its lack of meaningful impact on the Black community (courtesy of TFPC members). This food justice critique has further challenged the Council in a time of institutional precariousness. It has generated internal divisions, which brought historic members to highlight passed efforts of the TFPC to actually embrace diversity (courtesy of a TFPC member). Certainly, in the eyes of TFPC members, the critique constituted a potent warning and a key element of reflexivity concerning the ways in which the TFPC perceives its future, especially in a context of revived race and food justice demands going along with the crisis. We are in desperate need for a renewal of our membership (…) we will need to make a change. We must be better at involving and ensuring that those voices are loud and clear at the policy table. I think the Council is at risk of not being relevant if it can’t be a Council for all the people who live in the City (quote from the TFPC chair).

Where these tensions and reflexive dynamics will lead is still very uncertain. Is it the end of the TFPC? Will the TFPC be capable of reinventing its future? If so, in what way will it reconstitute its space and role? These are legitimate questions in a phase in which the future of the TFPC is negotiated among the Council’s members, the Board of Health and other City decision-making structures. Overall, while being full of uncertainties and unsettling tensions, this bridging phase also displays an appetite for reinventing the identity and role of this food movement institution. Whatever the direction will be, a future Food Council will have to rebuild its positioning and legitimacy as an institution that represents the diversity of the Toronto urban food community and citizenry. It will have to search for other operational resources (budget, staff etc.) outside of Public Health, depending more closely on the City of Toronto. Finally, as a result of the experienced tensions, a future Food

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Council will have to re-negotiate its space as a socio-political transformative force (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3) that embraces an integrative perspective on food, capable of embedding food justice and Indigenous food sovereignty values.

6.4.3 A New Framing for the Toronto Food Strategy As anticipated above, nowadays food policymaking work in Toronto has taken a considerably different shape. In particular, as the Food Strategy team is now merged into the Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy within the SDFA division, the positioning and framing of the Toronto Food Strategy has shifted, being now more closely linked to a food security and poverty reduction agenda. Thus, in a way, the food security and the anti-poverty threads that were present since the early period as well as in subsequent stages of the movement nowadays stand out as key in a situation of revived emergency and urgent need for greater food justice. These institutional dynamics and shifts are not free from conflicts and contestations. Some food movement leaders express a certain disappointment and frustration, particularly underlining the dismantling of a systemic approach on food system transformation, which had started to be developed in the previous stage, due to the focus on short-term food emergency responses (courtesy of food policy leaders). On the other hand, however, opportunities also emerge from this new arrangement. In contrast to Public Health, which is an autonomous division mandated by the provincial authority, the SDFA is a City division, working directly for the City of Toronto, and reporting directly to the Council. This institutional setting can constitute an opportunity for food policymaking in terms of increased power to influence urban policy agendas. It also brings more opportunities for inter-divisional collaboration (courtesy of staff in the Poverty Reduction Strategy). Indeed, being mostly focused on policy and community development, the SDFA is a division that works across silos and in a bottom-linked way with community initiatives (see also Chap. 4). As highlighted in Chap. 4, it was engaged in urban agriculture and access to land through the CEED gardens project. Thus, beyond emergency food security responses, there is the potential to link the food question with an equity agenda that tackles systemic challenges related to food justice, Black as well as Indigenous food sovereignty, urban agriculture and access to land, community food procurement, etc. There are opportunities to work with the Black food sovereignty plan and also with the Indigenous affairs office, which has an Indigenous reconciliation plan, with a section on food security and food access (…) Looking at both plans gives us opportunities to move forward with the food work (quote from staff in the Poverty Reduction Strategy). Thus, Toronto food policy institutions are in the midst of a new phase of reframing and strategically readapting a food system agenda. In this phase, strategic relationships and alliances need to be (re)built in order to connect with some of the most urgent challenges and structural questions related to food justice and Indigenous

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food sovereignty. Yet, a systemic and transformative approach risks being neglected if it does not consider other important dimensions related, for instance, to climate justice, energy, and food system resilience. It should involve a systematic dialogue across city divisions and institutions, as advocated through the Food Lens motion (see Sect. 6.4.1). Successfully (re)embedding the food system in the City will also depend on whether key leadership and decision-making structures in Toronto recognise and invest in food work. Concretely, this means devolving dedicated staff and core budget to food policy development and implementation. Instead, what has happened over the course of the Toronto trajectory is a gradual but constant reduction of the budget allocated to food policy work. This tendency shows the weak understanding of key decision-making structures in regards to the importance of food for the city—an attitude particularly brought to the fore in the actions of Public Health authorities in this latest phase.

6.4.4 Brussels’ GoodFood 2.0: A Food Strategy for the Future As mentioned above, the years 2019–2021 constitute a key bridge to the current stage of Brussels’ food policies. Two key factors were pivotal in opening this new stage. First, the pandemic outbreak also had an impact on key sectors of Brussels’ food system, such as on the hospitality and public food catering sectors (including producers and caterers linked to these sectors, which are central targets of the Strategy) and the emergency food sector (courtesy of RABAD). Analogously to Toronto, the crisis has been particularly harmful for vulnerable and food insecure inhabitants of Brussels, amounting to a high percentage (33%) of the population.38 It is estimated that a 25% increase in Food Banks’ usage occurred in the BCR as a result of the crisis (courtesy of a food security and social services agency in the BCR). This surge had harmful effects on the already precarious capacity of Food Banks and other emergency food networks to meet an increased demand from people in need. Thus, the pandemic crisis has uncovered the link between food and health, shedding light on just how central food insecurity and poverty challenges are in the city, despite not being key priority targets of the Strategy so far (see the Food Strategy evaluation document). At the same time, in 2019 new governmental elections took place, which played a key role in laying the political conditions for a continued support to institutional action on food. The new Environmental Minister from the green

 This estimate mainly refers to income-based poverty. The rate goes up to 38% for people who are considered at risk of poverty or social exclusion according to European indicators. Such indicators are based on data on income, severe material deprivation, and precarious employment. The most recent data concerning Brussels can be consulted here: https://www.ccc-ggc.brussels/fr/news/2020barometre-social, accessed 16 Jan 2022. 38

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coalition, Alain Maron,39 gave political support to the Regional policy on food system transition and declared the necessity for a “reinforced Strategy based on a common vision, co-­constructed with all the actors of the food sector” (extracts from the governmental declaration of the Minister). Civil servants who were dealing with the Food Strategy management in the Environmental Administration played a crucial role in ensuring this consensus. Over the years, the advocacy of these actors has been pivotal in pushing the importance of pursuing an engagement in the food system agenda (courtesy of Food Strategy staff). In 2019, a consultation and co-construction process started, tailored to imagine the course of Brussels’ food policy for the next 5 years. Building on the evaluation of the previous Strategy (2014–2019), Food Council members (together with other actors) began to work in different thematic groups linked to the key lines of the Strategy. In particular, these groups focused on urban agriculture and access to land, agroecology, short supply chains, food processing, food accessibility, as well as governance aspects, with the intention of co-­shaping the “Strategie GoodFood 2.0” (2021–2026). Although the future of the Strategy is difficult to assess at this stage, key ambitions and challenges emerge from the co-construction process, which will be crucial for the implementation of the Strategy in coming years. These aims and challenges stand at the roots of critical institutional governance tensions. They consist of the programmatic will of Brussels’ food institutions to implement a systemic and transformative institutional action on food by working across administrative and professional sectors as well as scales of the food system.

6.4.5 “De-siloing” the BCR’s Institutional Action on Food One of the key outcomes emerging from the evaluation of the previous stage of the Strategy, according to a Food Strategy staff, is that We did many things in the last years, but we were too isolated, we worked in too much of compartmentalised way, too focused on the competences of Environment and Agriculture. We need the contribution of others; we need partnerships with competences on social and health affairs, stronger links with urbanism and planning, and with Flanders and Wallonia as well (quote from a Food Strategy staff).

While struggles to progressively scale out a food system agenda across administrative and professional spheres are visible throughout the history of the movement, this outward looking intention now becomes the key strategic target. In the framework of a new Food Strategy 2.0, this translates into establishing dialogue and

 Born in Wallonia in 1972, Alain Maron is a Belgian politician, member of the green party Ecolo. After serving different offices at the local level and in the BCR’s parliament, in 2019 he became Minister of Environment, Climate, Property and Energy for the BCR. 39

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shaping frameworks for collaboration with other administrations as well as across sectors. Concretely, the Food Strategy unit is negotiating collaborative agreements with Regional agencies responsible for health, social affairs, as well economic development. More specifically, since 2020, agreements have been made to integrate the GoodFood Strategy targets into the development of the social and health plan for the Region, called “Brussels Takes Care”. This plan is tailored to improve the access and quality of health and social services for vulnerable citizens in the BCR, working at the neighbourhood scale. According to Brussels’ food institutions, this collaboration can be instrumental in orienting the food policy work towards targets of food accessibility and social inclusion (courtesy of a Food Strategy staff). Indeed, connections with health and social justice aspects were relatively overlooked in the previous phase of the Strategy. The fact that the current Minister of Environment also has responsibilities in the social and health spheres helped us enter into relations with state agencies responsible for preventive health and care for fragile people. We are working with them in a common plan with common actions that we want to re-inscribe in the future strategy (quote from a Food Strategy staff).

In addition to these new links, Food Strategy actors are establishing collaborations with the Regional Economic Transition Plan, i.e. the policy “GO4Brussel 2030”. This plan aims to combine economic and climate objectives, implementing a transition towards decarbonisation and circular economy. The purpose of this collaboration is to integrate a portfolio of actions related to food economy and co-developing tools such as calls for projects or other financing schemes for the support of small-­ scale entrepreneurial initiatives in the food sector (courtesy of a Food Strategy staff). Furthermore, as agro-ecological food production and short supply chains will be reinforced as key strategic axes, the Food Strategy unit is pressured to connect with agencies responsible for planning and real estate development in the BCR. This takes into account what emerged from the previous phase, recognising that “the lack of space is the primary constraint to food production initiatives (…) In the Region we observe a strong tension between urbanisation and spaces to cultivate” (extract from the Food Strategy mid-term evaluation). Thus, the objective is to connect to planning agencies so as to include spaces for urban food production, storage and processing in strategic plans, as well as in operational land use plans (see the Food Strategy evaluation document). We see opportunities to use the tools of other regional administrations. Not only budget but also their operational tools, such as policy initiatives, plans, partnerships, and modes of working. By changing the ways in which we collaborate with other administrations, we can take advantage of their tools and co-share resources. This, in turn, will be advantageous for our own implementation (quote from a Food Strategy staff).

Certainly, there is still a long way to go with respect to overcoming institutional barriers and establishing productive collaborations across administrations, sectors, and spatial-institutional scales. Indeed, some forms of collaboration are at their infancy, while others are more in the planning rather than in implementation phases. As highlighted in Chap. 4, for instance, while the intention is there to

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establish formal partnerships with the neighbouring regions of Flanders and Wallonia for joint policies tailored to support of short supply chains, there are significant political barriers to overcome. These blockages are due to the fact that agriculture policies are regionalised and institutional-administrative systems operate in a very disjointed way (courtesy of the Flemish land agency Vlaam​se Landmaatschappij, VLM). Besides these dynamics, partnerships are also established with actors from the conventional food system, and in particular, with federations that represent the food industry and the retail sector, including big conventional supermarkets. As expressed by one staff member of Food Strategy: “Our will is to reach out and try to change everyone’s practices, including the conventional food sector” (quote from a Food Strategy staff). As such, representatives of the conventional food sector take part in the Brussels’ Food Council. Food Strategy players also aim to strengthen agreements with conventional food actors in order to work on projects related to food waste recovery and redistribution and on improving the sustainability of food in the conventional retail sector (courtesy of a conventional food sector’s representative). While these partnerships were already initiated in the previous phase of the Strategy, the transformative impact of these initiatives on the behaviour of conventional food actors is questionable. A representative of the conventional food sector explains this further: there are some limitations on what we can achieve on a more local level. Supermarkets can take actions for specific points of sale in a specific Region, but a commitment from the whole sector would require a concertation between Regions and with the Federal authorities as supermarkets work on a Federal level. This is especially important for specific goals that go beyond the scope and competences of Brussels’ authorities, for instance with regard to price transparency (…). At a higher scale, the European level—the competition law for instance poses constraints in terms of prioritising Belgian products or making changes that, from an environmental and social perspective, would make more sense (quote from a representative of the conventional food sector involved in the Strategy). These reflections are indicative of the role played by key institutional governance tensions when it comes to shaping and delivering a food policy, which carries systemic and transformative ambitions. Particularly visible in the above dynamics are frictions among regulatory frameworks and policy structures scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-institutional scales (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). The ways in which these tensions are recognised, acknowledged, bypassed, or negotiated is an integral part of the pragmatic ways in which food policy objectives are implemented. In general, these latest developments in the reflexivity of Brussels’ food institutions towards a greater integrative and collaborative approach resonate with the outward-looking perspective characterising Toronto’s institutional action on food. In a way, this reveals how attempts to surmount divergent values and find areas of convergence across actors, institutions, and agendas are the common way by which food policy agencies deal with institutional governance tensions (see Box 6.2 for the municipal level).

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Box 6.2: A New Municipal Food Council in Brussels The recent formation of a municipal Food Council in Brussels (in French, Conseil Consultatif de l’Alimentation Durable, in Dutch, Adviesraad voor Duurzame Voeding), testifies how the governance of the BCR’s food system is played out at different levels. Established in 2021, the Conseil is an institutional innovation coming from Ixelles, one of the 19 municipalities of the BCR that is particularly active in state-led policies but also in grass-roots dynamics on environment and food. Indeed, pivotal to the formation of the Council has been the role of enabling local institutions, capitalising from a fertile landscape of bottom-up initiatives and ongoing actions on sustainable food present in the Municipality (as well as in the Region). In particular, the establishment of the Council was mandated by the alderman in charge of Climate, Energy and Environment, who saw the connection between the food agenda and municipal climate policies. The decision was made to activate new municipal services in order to implement the Climate Plan of Ixelles, integrating a staff position on sustainable food as part of these services. Drawing from the momentum of the Regional Food Strategy and the Conseil Participatif GoodFood, the creation of a local food council was perceived as responding to key municipal priorities. These priorities relate to enabling local food production, improving the quality of food in municipal canteens, reducing the environmental impact of school food procurement and, in general, reinforcing the role of sustainable food within the Municipal climate objectives (courtesy of the Food Council’s coordinator). The set-up and arrangement of the Council displays the typical organisational governance dynamics characterising Food Councils in general (RUAF 2019). Founding actors of the Council sought for adequate representation of members belonging to different organisational and professional spheres active in Ixelles’ food community. These include local state actors, civil society organisations, and the private food sector. Different sections of the food system are also touched upon. In choosing their organisational arrangement, founding actors took inspiration from the BCR’s Conseil Participatif, making sure that the latter is represented in the municipal councils and that there is good communication between levels. Yet being locally rooted, the ambition was also to ensure the bottom-up representation of citizens, thus going beyond officially recognised “food experts”. As a result, five among the 20 council members are citizens’ representatives. Similarly to the BCR’s Food Council, the members are divided into thematic working groups, among which is a “strategic” working group whose objective is to develop a food strategy for Ixelles. In addition to networking and exchanging information, in a similar vein as the Regional Food Council, the Ixelles Food Council has the role of “advising, so that its members can suggest and propose to municipal authorities initiatives that have the potential to enable and reinforce solidarity and sustainable food in Ixelles” (translation from the Food Councils’ terms of references). In (continued)

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Box 6.2  (continued) this respect, and resonating with the BCR’s Food Council, reflections emerge on the capacity of the local Council to act as a tool for deliberative or radical democracy. On the one hand, since the Council is mandated by local authorities, and since the alderman is among its members, the Council is well embedded in the municipal politics. From a strategic viewpoint, this position can turn out to be advantageous in terms of information exchange and alignment with municipal policies. However, on the other hand, the power of the Council to influence the course of actions and determine key municipal policy decisions may be limited due to its merely advisory role. The use of available budget in order to realise strategic objectives also plays a role. Indeed, while the Food Council received 75,000 euros from the Region to work on strategic actions for the next 3 years, budget allocation has to pass through municipal approval and procedures (Courtesy of the Food Council’s coordinator). Thus, Council members will have to act strategically and pragmatically, carving out spaces of action and advancing key priorities while negotiating their role and space within a certain institutional framework. Overall, the emergence of the Food Council in one of the BCR municipalities is a further expression of the hybrid and multi-layered nature of the food movement, which is hardly reducible to a single policy or institutional space. Opportunities are there for this Council to be inspirational at different levels. Horizontally, there are chances to inspire other municipalities in Brussels to activate local food agencies. Vertically, there is potential to strategically communicate and link with both grass-roots projects and citizens’ initiatives emerging from the ground up as well as with the upper level of the BCR’s Council and Strategy. Sources: conversation with the Food Council’s manager, internal documentation, web sources.

6.5 Discussions and Conclusions This chapter has investigated the role of key governance tensions, and of responses to them, in conditioning contested institutionalisation pathways of food movements in Toronto and the BCR.  From this inquiry emerge institutionalisation dynamics that are intrinsically hybrid and multi-layered, being hardly reducible to a homogeneous institutional space or set of values. These dynamics involve the agency of reflexive actors mobilising according to value systems, but also the co-existence of diverse and often conflicting values, even within a single urban-regional context (IPES Food 2017). Thus, to a considerable extent, dealing with institutional governance tensions in Toronto and the BCR has meant seeking for convergences across actors and agendas and attempting to scale out or up transformative values into the

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thinking and practices of diverse agents and policy structures (see also Manganelli 2020). The histories of food movements in Toronto and the BCR show how scaling out transformative food system thinking requires an enduring endeavour, which reveals both the strength and the fragilities of food movements. On the one hand, dealing with institutional governance tensions has produced positive outcomes, leading to the creation of empowering and reflexive spaces of collaboration and collective sense-making across administrations, or between administrative and bottom-up agents. On the other hand, food movements are still struggling to be empowered and to negotiate a legitimate space within wider institutional structures. Overall, the food movement trajectories (Figs.  6.1 and 6.2) show how governance tensions play a role in both radical moments of crisis and disruption as well as in the day-to-day organisation and implementation of food policy delivery systems. Shifts in governmental coalitions leading to unsupportive political climates, as well as the advent of disruptive crises (such as the socio-economic crisis of the 1980s, up to the most recent pandemic emergency) are certainly among the most critical factors threatening and producing tensions that challenge the resilience of urban food movements. Yet, governance tensions are also measures in the day-to-­ day incremental politics of urban food system change. The examples of Toronto and the BCR show that this day-to-day governance can take place, for instance, in the organisation of bottom-linked modes of food policy delivery through food strategies, food policy councils, or other frameworks of collaboration. Key actors and coalitions in food movements deal with (institutional) governance tensions in their everyday governance through mobilising, building alliances, and trying to sensitise other actors and policy structures to the cause of food; food policy councils organise dialogue and representation across actors and sectors of the food system. Both elements, namely wider circumstances of change and disruption, and the day-to-day incremental work, should be acknowledged and strategically valorised by food movements. As shown in different stages of the Toronto and the BCR’s histories, moments of disruption can trigger threats and crises in the food movement, but they can also lead to new spaces of opportunity to scale out a food system agenda. Learning from institutional governance tensions, the rest of this section highlights key lessons to stimulate reflexivity in food movements in Toronto, the BCR, and beyond.

6.5.1 Moving Towards a Food System Lens As this chapter has shown, adopting a food system perspective means being able to incorporate diverse challenges and aspects of the food system within a policy framework. This is visible in both Toronto and the BCR’s institutional trajectories. Indeed, while tackling food access and food insecurity constitutes the key driver of the Toronto food movement, Toronto food institutions also attempt to irradiate to other policy areas, such as the environment, climate, and food system resilience (see

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Sects. 6.3.2 and 6.3.3). Conversely, while the BCR’s key focus is on agro-ecology, short food supply chains, and environmental aspects related to food, recent developments in the Brussels’ food movement aim to integrate aspects of food access, health, and social inclusion (Sect. 6.4.5). The involvement in Trans-local Food Policy Networks such as the MUFPP or the URBACT also counts in stimulating a food system approach. Implementing a food system lens does not come without its obstacles. As the Toronto case has shown with respect to the Food Lens motion, positive advancements were disrupted by a phase of crisis that pushed back to a more disintegrated approach (see Sect. 6.4.3). Overall, it can be argued that implementing a food system perspective goes along with the need to reflect upon and trying to surmount key governance tensions. A key tension consists in dealing with frictions among regulatory frameworks and policy structures scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-­ institutional scales (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). Among others, this is visible in the proactive involvement of the private food sector in the BCR’s institutional action on food. Indeed, although engendering a systemic and transformative approach also implies reaching out to conventional food players, there are limits to what a single food strategy can achieve in terms of transforming the modes of operation of the conventional retail sector or the agro-food industry. Thus, one of the critically reflexive questions that food policy institutions should ask is: How should conventional food chains be dealt with? Most of all, what type of change should be pursued and how can this be achieved? Adopting a systemic approach also means being able to reach beyond certain actors, including the most powerful ones, and giving voice to other actors, among which the most disempowered (Moragues-Faus 2020). In Toronto, this was particularly visible in the amalgamation phase (see Sect. 6.3.1), which ushered food movement actors to look beyond the city core, reaching out to the suburbs, where issues of cultural diversity, as well as marginalisation and racialized food insecurity were particularly pressing. The legacy of these processes is still visible nowadays. Indeed, as highlighted in Sects. 6.4.2 and 6.4.3, challenges to incorporate diversity and to adequately embed food justice and Indigenous food sovereignty values are likely to constitute key factors of governance tensions for the future of the food policy work.

6.5.2 Empowering Bottom-Linked and Reflexive Food Governing Institutions It can be argued that the role of bottom-linked, participative, and reflexive food governing institutions has been instrumental to both the food movement of Toronto and that of the BCR. Examples are the first collaborative relations between bottom-up food initiatives germinating in the BCR and the supportive state institution of the Cabinet of Environment. Despite being very experimental and sometimes conflictive, these collaborative relations have nurtured the food movement through time. In

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fact, in the second stage, these bottom-linked relations scaled up into the Alliance— which constituted a space of reflexivity and collective sense-making around food system transformation. This was an important step towards the GoodFood Strategy, which aims to further institutionalise a framework for collaborative relationships. In the case of Toronto, the TFPC has been the earliest bottom-linked and reflexive institution that, since the beginning, has assembled a diversity of food system actors, creating spaces for encounter, alliances, and joint projects. The leadership of the Council and other (semi) institutionalised agencies played a role in enhancing reflexivity on the need for food system change across city structures and, at a wider level, in changing the cultural landscape around food (courtesy of a scholar and member of the TFPC). Moreover, as highlighted in Box 6.1, the Toronto Black Food Sovereignty Plan as well as the wider Toronto Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism are good practices of bottom-linked modes of governance informed by food justice values from the ground up. Thus, bottom-linked and reflexive institutions— taking different forms and coexisting within a single urban-regional context—constitute structures that promote food leadership and expand food movements. As such, they should be recognised and valorised by these movements. Yet, these bottom-linked structures are not free from challenges and necessitate improvement. First of all, the supportive role of the state or other institutions is critical to ensure stability and resilience. The exemplary case of the TFPC shows how these relations can be undermined by contexts of crisis and narrow political views. While food movements should be aware of these risks, it is also necessary to cultivate strategic leadership at the political level (see also the following point). Second, what emerges from the analysis are strong demands for these bottom-linked structures to be truly representative, accountable, and empowering. The demands are visible for instance in requests for greater food justice raised to the TFPC; in the challenge to embed Indigenous food sovereignty; and, in general, in the need to speak to the diversity of socio-cultural profiles characterising Toronto and the BCR’s inhabitants. Thus, another important lesson is that meeting demands for greater empowerment and diversity is a necessary way forward for these food governing institutions to remain meaningful.

6.5.3 Navigating Institutionalisation Challenges and Cultivating Strategic Leadership A key observation that can be drawn from the analysis is that food movement institutions (can) undergo critical tensions between carving out an autonomous institutional space as agents of (urban) food system change and being linked or embedded in other urban policy structures. In other words, on the one side, one of the strengths of food movements is the multidimensionality of food (Baker et al. 2022)—i.e. its tight connections with other urban policy domains, from health to social affairs, to planning to the environment and so on. Yet, on the other side, what emerges from

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the BCR and in particular from Toronto, is the difficulty of urban food institutions also being recognised as a legitimate and standalone urban policy domain—in other words, as agencies in charge of urban-regional food system improvement. This challenge touches the roots of “institutionalisation tensions”. This is particularly visible in the case of Toronto. Indeed, while being internationally recognised as a leading example of urban food governance, Toronto also shows how precarious the institutional place of food in the city can be. The lack of recognition of the relevance of the food question by Public Health hierarchies, together with the disruptive circumstances caused by the pandemic, put into question the anchoring of food within its historic institutional house in Toronto. The new framing of the food policy work within a poverty reduction lens may bring about more embedding of food in City structures, but it may also undermine the visibility of food system action as a standalone area of policy work. Overall, there is no ultimate solution to this kind of institutionalisation challenge and food movements have to deal with this challenge strategically. To take from Cohen and Ilieva (2021), on the one hand it is necessary to expand the boundaries of food policies by connecting them with structural questions such as greater equity and social justice, as well as with other urban policy domains. This is instrumental for strategically re-framing and re-politicising the food question, by linking it with urgent urban policy demands. Yet, on the other hand, it is also essential to urge city leadership structures to guarantee structural support to urban food as a legitimate urban policy agenda. To refer back to the Toronto case, “I think the future of the work will very much depend on the resourcing of the work (…) If new mangers and specialists will be hired, trying to backfill those roles so that food work has a voice again internally in the City, I would then have some hope” (quote from a former Food Strategy staff). It is therefore essential for food movements to recognise and strategically mobilise key levers—such as critical food leaders, including the strategic role of key civil servants—to cultivate leadership and advocate for supportive institutional spaces at the higher level of urban decision-making structures. These supportive spaces should also concretise in terms of adequate budget and staffing resources to sustain food policy work.

6.5.4 Coping with and Learning from Disruptive Times Analysing urban food movements in their long durée fosters an understanding of the impact of crises and disruptions on their trajectories. One overarching point is that crises and disruptions are recurrent and, to a certain extent, unavoidable. Furthermore, given the effects of climate change and the instability of dominant economic and political systems, in the future crises are likely to become even more frequent (Watts et al. 2020). Disruptive times are moments in which governance tensions amplify, giving place to different reflexive outcomes. In particular, instabilities fostered by shifts in political climates, or by socio-economic downturns, generate disruptions, disorientation, and a sense of urgency. As the Toronto trajectory illustrates, crises

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can lead to the dismantling of food organisations or institutions, or to the radical reconfiguration of food policy structures. Yet, disruptive phases can also constitute reflexive and generative moments of awareness as wakeup calls, where governance tensions can be directed towards improving the course of action. In Toronto this was visible in several circumstances, not least with the Food Lens motion, which constituted a moment of hope and resurgence in-between crises (see Sect. 6.4.1). Indeed, crises can for instance stimulate reflexivity on urgent questions that need to be taken into account, such as the necessity of a comprehensive look at the food system which does not leave aside questions of justice and empowerment in different sections of the local-global food system (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021). Furthermore, crises also constitute moments of positive innovation, where new initiatives, including alternative food infrastructures and new collaborative relations, take place and constitute inspiring examples to learn from (Friedmann 2020). Overall, the effects of socio-economic crises reveal the endemic presence of inequalities in food systems as well as in societies. Indeed, the recent Covid-19 emergency brings back some of the socio-economic inequities that have ushered the genesis of food banks and the surge of community food security organisations and institutions, such as FoodShare, the STOP, and the TFPC. To a considerable extent, in order to respond to the emergency, these food organisations had to come to terms with the same charity model and emergency approach that they aim to overcome (see also Chap. 5). This demonstrates that the dream for a just food system is far from being realised—in part, due to the inadequate investment of state institutions to repair some of the food systems’ distortions (Roberts 2014). Despite the contradictions coming along with crises, the recent pandemic emergency finds a more mature food movement, with a long history of engagement that, to some extent, has contributed to change approaches and sensitivities around food. It also comes with a more globally engaged food movement that has a role to play when it comes to transformative food system targets (Sonnino et al. 2019). Thus, crises should be also considered as strategic opportunities to provide a sharper view on food system inequities and to empower the urban food movement by reframing and re-orienting the urban food agenda with new targets of food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice.

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Chapter 7

Epilogue: Urban Food Movements and Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis

Abstract  The core aim of this chapter is to highlight key lessons learned from the hybrid governance analysis of land-resource, organisational, and institutional governance tensions in urban food movements. By reflecting upon the experiences of Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR), this chapter highlights: (a) the role of transformative values and ideologies as a guide for urban food movements; (b) the role played by leaders—incarnated in actors, organisations, or institutions— their value systems and transformative agency; (c) the role of pragmatic mediation and conflict resolution in both the phases of crisis and in the everyday governance of urban food movements; (d) the need to cultivate spaces where bottom-up and top down forces productively encounter in order to bring about bottom-linked organisations and institutional designs; and (e) challenges associated with triggering socio-­ political transformation at multiple levels—i.e. in diverse jurisdictions, policy scales, as well as sectors of the food system. This chapter also embarks on a reflection on the value of the hybrid governance analysis for the contemporary context of crisis associated with the pandemic and climate change emergencies. By revisiting the analysis of key tensions, this chapter opens up to a multi-dimensional food justice view, attentive to procedural, distributional, recognition, and restorative dimensions of justice. Finally, recognising the planetary scale of socio-ecological transformative processes, this chapter invites us to look beyond the boundaries of the here and now, connecting to critical spatial as well as temporal aspects of justice in food and socio-ecological movements. Keywords  Urban food movements · Hybrid governance analysis · Crisis · Multi-dimensional food justice · Spatial and temporal justice

For a time, we had come to believe that civilization moved in the other direction—making the impossible first possible and then stable and routine. With climate change, we are moving instead toward nature, and chaos, into a new realm unbounded by the analogy of any human experience (David Wallace-Wells 2020, The Uninhabitable Earth).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Manganelli, The Hybrid Governance of Urban Food Movements, Urban Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05828-8_7

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7.1 Introduction Let’s go back to the image of collective gardeners highlighted in Chap. 3 of this book: that of a group of urban food growers asking to set up gardening activities in an urban area, in a city of our choice or simply in an imagined one. Imagine these gardeners easily getting in touch with an urban agriculture service or an urban food system office that communicates with planning agencies. Imagine this office facilitating access to spaces for this group to practice its urban food growing, and supporting them by activating responsible agencies for land reclamation to check the soil quality in cooperation with other city departments. In this scenario, citizens would also receive support from community food animators to improve skills in gardening and preparing or cooking meals from scratch. Community agencies or public services would integrate food in their operations through food curricula and practical training that would stimulate reflections about where food comes from, triggering critical thinking in young generations, and so on. We could further enrich this image by adding to it other initiatives such as good food markets in public spaces, uniformly distributed as alternative food access points in various spots of the city. Far from being exclusive or conflictual, in this imagined urban area alternative food systems open up spaces for dialogue and encounter across various cultures, ethnicities, and races. The above picture conveys the idea of a situation in which peace and cooperation prevail over tensions and conflicts, in a context where food is sustainably integrated in the city. The scenario described a realised utopia, where food movements thrive harmoniously in cities that guarantee a place for alternative food practices. While some pieces of this image are a reality in many urban contexts around the world, other pieces of this image seem beyond idyllic—and simply unrealistic. Can a movement without (governance) tensions ever exist? And if such a tension-less movement existed, what would its purpose (aims and ambitions) be? Far from designing the pathways to a realised utopia, this book provides an instructive journey into the reality of urban food movements and their governance. The focus on hybrid governance and its tensions was critical for showing key blockages encountered by food movements in pursuing their transformative ambitions, but also for shedding light on the promising directions through which these movements tackle different aspects of the food system. Starting from land-resource aspects, the inquiry on governance tensions addressed the materiality of land and other material resources that constitute alternative food systems (Moragues-Faus and Battersby 2021). Next, the book explored a diversity of contextual strategies through which urban agriculture initiatives build relations with other actors, negotiate access to land and spaces, and, potentially, establish cooperative modalities of land tenure governance (Chap. 4) (Baker et al. 2022; Halvey et al. 2021). Displaying the connections between resource and organisational aspects, this book illustrated how food movement organisations need to cope with the materiality of their own growth, including the need to access resources—such as farmland, alternative food infrastructures, logistics, human capital, and so on. The book then

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moves on to show how urban food movements attempt to build reflexive and resourceful organisations capable of implementing alternative food systems. They do so by dealing with the “internal” dynamics of growth as well as with the “external” challenges coming from their socio-institutional environment (Chap. 5). Reflexivity—i.e. the capacity to reconsider and reframe key values and organisational strategies through time—was identified as a key tool through which food movement organisations adapt to changing circumstances and cope with adverse socio-institutional environments (Manganelli and Esteron 2022). Finally, institutional governance tensions completed the analysis. The book unravelled how urban food movements seek to carve out empowering and reflexive institutional spaces, attempting to amplify their voice and become relevant in urban-­ regional realities (Chap. 6). Doing so, food policy institutions seek for convergences across diverse actors and institutional agendas as the key way to exercise an impact on food system change. Nevertheless, frictions among regulatory frameworks and policy structures scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-­ institutional scales are major barriers to transformative action (IPES Food 2017) (see also Table 3.1, Chap. 3). By narrating key initiatives in Toronto, the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) and elsewhere, this book has given flesh and substance to hybrid governance and its tensions. This was done by identifying key actors of urban food movements, their ways of associating with each other, and the socio-spatial relations involved in their search for empowering modes of resource allocation and adapted forms of institutionalisation (Manganelli 2019). One aspect emerging from this book is the role of transformative values and ideologies as a guide for urban food movements. To highlight this, Chap. 2 stressed the important role of (urban) food movements in expounding the failures of conventional food systems and in advocating for alternative food systems informed by strong ideologies, the most prevalent being food security, food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice. Urban food initiatives in the BCR and Toronto explored in this book are inspired by these ideologies. In Brussels, the Boeren Bruxsel Paysans project has a strong stake on agro-ecology and food sovereignty. Similarly, Brussels’ GASAP gives a prominent place to food sovereignty and the defence of peasant agriculture. In Toronto, CEED garden actors are most strongly driven by food justice and community food security ambitions. The FoodShare organisation has been a consistent advocate of a public food system that supports universal access to food. As shown in the recent phase of its trajectory, food justice values increasingly qualified its key claims and modes of organising (see Sect. 5.4). Furthermore, a historical protagonist of the Toronto food movement, the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) aims at representing a plurality of values, embedding them within a food institution that promotes food citizenry and food democracy (Welsh and MacRae 1998). By narrating different stories of urban food movements, this book shows what bringing these transformative utopias to life actually means. Among other things, translating transformative values into practices means finding a middle ground between different and sometimes conflicting value systems and ways of doing. It

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necessitates negotiating supportive spaces in a reality where state institutions do not always play an enabling role. It implies dealing with conflicts with a diversity of actors, not least residents or communities that may oppose local food projects (see Chap. 4). Thus, while transformative values provide guidance and targets to aim for, these values are also transposed and retooled in the daily practices of urban food movements and their on-the-ground reality. Confronted with day-to-day practices, values acquire new connotations and meanings, loosing, or rather reinforcing, their radical and transformative potential. The dimension of reflexivity in urban food movements makes visible how these values are reconsidered or re-asserted through time, also in response to tensions stemming from the socio-spatial development of food movement organisations as well as from the wider socio-political climate in which urban food initiatives are embedded (see also Sect. 7.3). Furthermore, this book has highlighted various modalities through which urban food movements seek to export their transformative values across spatial-­ institutional scales as well as sectors of the food system. One modality used by urban food movements to expand their action is by scaling out and proliferating into different realities and territorial contexts. This is done through the traveling of ideologies, organisational models, and practices (Pitt and Jones 2016). Several initiatives narrated in this book took example from other models while constituting sources of inspiration themselves. Thus, for instance, FoodShare’s Good Food Box (GFB) and Good Food Markets (GFMs) were inspired by Community Supported Agriculture models active in Europe and in North America. They also attempted to replicate the subsidised Sacolão markets established in Brazil. Similarly, the GASAP and the cooperative supermarket Bees Coop were inspired by food sovereignty and cooperative models present elsewhere and, conversely, they also provided guidance to similar initiatives in other contexts (courtesy of the two organisations). The establishment of the TFPC was likewise inspired by international models. Besides dialoguing with other FPCs germinating in the North American context at that time, TFPC’s pioneer actors took inspiration from the Greater London Council’s Food Commission, directed by Prof. Tim Lang. In fact, during the 1980s, visits between Toronto and London were organised in order to dialogue about ways of organising community health initiatives (Blay-Palmer 2010). The scaling out of values and practices across contexts constitutes a further way in which seemingly “pure” models are hybridised and reinterpreted in diverse socio-­ spatial realities. On the one hand, by percolating into different socio-spatial contexts, (urban) food movements seek to enact their “silent revolution”, to implement a common project (Sage et al. 2014). On the other hand, when transposed in a given socio-institutional and spatial setting, common ethics and transformative stances necessarily give place to a plurality of outcomes and contextual reinterpretations of original models. Among others, this can include radical reinterpretations of certain values, different ways of turning food sovereignty principles into practices, or even barriers and failures to take root in certain socio-spatial realities. Moreover, as an organisation evolves, a more or less conscious distancing from original models can take place. This is partially visible in FoodShare, where the GFB model radically evolved from its original conception, becoming an online food distribution system

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and even turning into a charity model during the pandemic outbreak (see Sect. 5.4). This suggests that models are not fixed entities, being on the contrary subject to evolution and hybridisation. Thus, the potential dialectic between seemingly pure models and their practical reinterpretation in diverse territorial contexts constitute elements for further research.

7.2 Cross-Cutting Contributions of the Book and Ways Forward 7.2.1 Conceptual and Methodological Aspects As summarised in Table  7.1, a core contribution of this book is conceptual and methodological. In particular, this book has redefined hybrid governance—transposing this concept from the New Institutional Economics literature, where it was Table 7.1  Outline of the key cross-cutting contributions of the book Conceptual and methodological contribution Description Ways forward Re-definition of the concept of Hybrid governance and urban social theory hybrid governance Application to a diversity of contextual realities Empirical contributions Description Ways forward (for research/practices) Leadership, value systems, Role of leadership at different levels (institutional, transformative agency administrative, organisational, bottom-up) Role of leadership in changing dominant power structures Cultivating bold and pragmatic leadership Cultivating emancipatory leadership from the ground up Pragmatic mediation and conflict Finding synergies among organisational and professional resolution spheres around common objectives Devising strategies of mediation and conflict resolution (mediating among different values) Transposing transformative values into incremental, pragmatic action Bottom-linked organisations and Bottom-linked initiatives and the role of the state institutional designs Role of bottom-linked initiatives in facilitating accountable modes of local food system governance Ensuring operational resources and adapted modes of institutionalisation Socio-political transformation at Enabling cross-territorial and cross-jurisdictional multiple levels collaborations Amplifying the sphere of influence of a food policy Pathways for effective leadership and advocacy in critical sectors and policy levels Opportunities to involve the conventional food sector as an ally, but also as a transformative target

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first theorised, to social sciences’ perspectives on governance, particularly applying it to urban food movements (see Chap. 3). Doing so, this book has characterised hybrid governance as the hybridity of different governance forms (bottom-up solidarity, hierarchical, market oriented, networked), incarnated into specific actors, organisational modes and cultures, and formal and informal institutional mechanisms—all of which condition the life-course of urban food movements (see also Manganelli 2019). The identification of key governance tensions served to assess and compare diverse urban food initiatives in Toronto and the BCR, which illuminated different aspects of the tensions. As such, the hybrid governance analysis provided a methodology that allowed bridging theory to the empirical investigation of real life practices. Food movement actors’ capacity to reflect on the tensions and learn from challenges also constituted key elements of this analysis. This methodological framework can be applied to the analysis of food movements in other urban-regional contexts, including Global South realities.1 The analysis of land-resource tensions could be further informed by comparisons between modalities of scaling out access to land in different city-regions, including ways of coping with experienced tensions when addressing urban agriculture from a wider territorial perspective (Davies et al. 2021). Furthermore, organisational governance tensions could inspire further comparative research on the ways in which urban food organisations deal with different modalities to scale out or up; what common as well as diverging dilemmas they face as they develop and grow; and what types of reflexive strategies these initiatives put into place to cope with key tensions (Hammelman et  al. 2020). Finally, institutional governance tensions may inspire further comparisons of the ways in which reflexive and empowering food governing institutions are advocated and pursued by urban food movements in diverse contexts (Vara-Sánchez et al. 2021). This would produce further input on key barriers experienced in carving out a place for food within urban policy structures. Based on this, action-oriented research could inform practices on pathways to achieve a more integrated approach to food system improvement (e.g. specific pathways of institutionalisation and inter-agency cooperation, modalities through which the legitimacy of local food institutions can be negotiated, modalities to orient participatory processes, etc.).

7.2.2 Empirical Aspects A key cross-cutting topic emerging from the empirical chapters is the leadership role of specific actors and organisations, their value systems and transformative agency, in stirring socio-political change (see also Table 7.1). Leaders can be found in different professional and organisational spheres and institutional settings. They

 See for instance the use of the hybrid governance approach by Letelier et al. (2020), referring to Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) in Chile. 1

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can operate for instance within the state or other institutions. This is the case of historic political leaders in Toronto such as Mayor Art Eggleton, or City councillors such as Jack Layton, Dan Leckie, and others. Policy officials as well as civil servants in key positions within the administration who recognise and support the cause of food can also exercise a strategic leadership role. This is the case of department heads as well as administrative staff who have direct linkages with official decision-making structures (see Chap. 6). Besides state structures, other institutional settings can also nurture food movement leadership. In this respect, we may think about the Centre for Studies in Food Security (CSFS) of the Toronto Metropolitan University,2 which had a key role in the genesis of the TFPC and, overall, represents a hub of activists-scholars who have been influential in the development of the food movement in Toronto and the wider Canadian context (courtesy of Toronto food movement actors, see also Chap. 1). Furthermore, the example of FoodShare and of other food justice initiatives shows that leaders are embedded in organisations as well as in grass-roots communities that seek to stir change from the ground-up (Manganelli and Esteron 2022). It is arguable that all these spaces and sources of leadership—including the opportunity to mobilise collective forms of leadership (Giambartolomei et  al. 2021)— should be strategically identified and valorised by the food movement. In the cases of Toronto and the BCR, supportive leaders have been capable of recognising the urgency of the food question and of perceiving the nexus between food system objectives and other contextual needs and concerns. Furthermore, as the example of FoodShare illustrates (see Chap. 5), bold and pragmatic leaders are capable of connecting value systems with praxis, thus helping facilitate and scale out transformative food system action (Giambartolomei et al. 2021; IPES Food 2017). Leadership and capacity to influence are also connected to the opportunity of mobilising resources and exercising (collective) power. This implies that a consideration of leadership in urban food movements should also target the role of powerful food system players on the one hand (e.g. the corporate sector, the agro-food industry, supermarkets) and of less powerful actors on the other (e.g. recipients of charitable food programmes, Indigenous people, communities of colour). Thus, key questions emerge concerning the capacity of food movement leadership to reach out and exercise an influence on powerful players; and regarding the opportunity for disadvantaged actors—who are often silenced by more powerful players, here included prominent leaders—to be protagonists in food movements’ leadership. These reflections can open up a whole research agenda on the role of leadership in its broad sense, from the role of community leadership in cultivating emancipatory transformation from below, to the role of leadership as a vehicle through which to reach out and change dominant power structures (Ospina and Foldy 2010; Parés et al. 2017).

  The former “Ryerson University” has been recently renamed into Toronto Metropolitan University, to recognise the harmful legacy of Egerton Ryerson with respect to Indigenous people in Canada. 2

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A further insight concerns the role of pragmatic mediation and conflict resolution. The food movement initiatives explored in this book demonstrate how dealing with governance tensions involves a high degree of pragmatic thinking and problem-­ solving attitude (Roberts 2014). Along with this, modalities to surmount divergent value systems and deal with other conflictual dynamics require food movement actors to devise strategies of mediation and conflict resolution. The Toronto amalgamation process, which took place during the late 1990s, is a straightforward example. The consequences of the amalgamation destabilised the local food movement but also provided opportunities, in the medium to long term, to build new narratives and alliances around food security and the right to food, thus making a case for the development of local food system policies (see Sect. 6.3.1; see also Manganelli 2019). Mediation and conflict resolution were essential in this phase to surmount conflictive value systems (see also Table 3.1, Chap. 3). Engaged food movement leaders and leading food organisations helped navigate a conflictive political climate by re-framing the food system question, building new alliances, and trying to find areas of convergence and consensus around food (Manganelli 2019). Besides in phases of crisis or disruption, the necessity to mediate between different values and find synergies across organisational and professional spheres is also part of the day-to-day governance of urban food movements (Moragues-Faus and Morgan 2015). Some examples are the practical challenges of sensitising planning institutions to enable access to land for urban food production; or the need to devise adapted cooperative agreements that involve the private food sector (see Chap. 6). FPCs that try to bring to the same table private food sector actors and radical grass-­ roots initiatives provide a further example (MacRae and Donahue 2013; RUAF 2019). Thus, proactive attempts to establish frameworks for collaboration go along with the need to continuously mediate or synergise between diverse objectives and organisational-professional spheres (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3). These processes can lead to different outcomes, including, for instance, the refusal of more radical actors to cooperate with state or private players. In a way, there can be tension between the power of radical ideologies and the need for pragmatic mediation. More specifically, collaborative frameworks based on pragmatic agreements may lead to inhibiting the transformative power of certain ideologies. Again, these reflections bring about the central question of how transformative values, which are essential engines of urban food movements, are transposed into incremental pragmatic action, and, consequently, how seemingly pure values are continuously mediated, revisited, and reassessed without losing a strategic and transformative attitude. A third cross-cutting lesson concerns the need to cultivate spaces where bottom­up and top down forces productively encounter in order to bring about bottom-­ linked organisations and institutional designs (see Table  7.1) (Eizaguirre et  al. 2012; Van den Broeck et al. 2019). The story of the two food movements shows that in different ways, the establishment of hybrid or bottom-linked organisations or institutions—such as FPCs or food strategies—was almost intrinsic to the development of the two food movements (see Chap. 6). The analysis illustrates that these initiatives, driven by the leadership role of key food movement actors, tried to facilitate the co-construction of accountable modes of local food system governance and

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policy delivery (Mah and Thang 2013). Overall, it can be argued that examples of bottom-linked organisations or institutions go far beyond FPCs and food strategies. Chapter 3 provides the example of the Social Development Finance Administration (SDFA) Division in Toronto, supporting the CEED gardens project, in cooperation with grass-roots urban agriculture groups. Other examples are organisations such as FoodShare or The Stop Community Food Centre collaborating with community agencies and other actors in order to facilitate community food projects (see Chap. 5). While certain bottom-linked initiatives are temporary and project-based, other bottom-linked structures—such as food strategies, food councils, or other organisations and institutions— aim to be durable and to sustain the local food movement through time. This leads to the importance of guaranteeing a certain stability, accessibility to resources, and accountability structure to these kinds of initiatives. Achieving this requires a careful thinking about the role of the state and of other institutions as cells where bottom-linked relations can be cultivated (see Chap. 6 and Sect. 7.4). Indeed, besides being monolithic entities, state agencies or sections of the state apparatus are heterogeneous. They can exert both a constraining as well as an enabling role with respect to new initiatives and more empowering governance modes (Lévesque 2013; Pradel et al. 2013). In general, a progressive and open state culture is likely to sustain enabling modes of governance, helping more or less subversive and progressive experiments of food democracy to exist and flourish (Manganelli 2019). Yet, the recent history of the TFPC shows that negotiating enabling forms of institutionalisation is an enduring struggle for urban food movements. Institutions such as FPCs need to think carefully about operational resources and adapted modes of institutionalisation in order to enhance the capacity of these bottom-linked institutions to exercise food democracy (see also Sect. 7.4). A final insight that is worth highlighting concerns challenges associated with triggering socio-political transformation at multiple levels—i.e. in diverse jurisdictions, policy scales, as well as sectors of the food system, including the conventional food sector (see also Table 7.1) (Sonnino et al. 2019, see also Manganelli 2019). The inquiry on land-resource governance tensions and the analysis of local food policy trajectories shows how governance tensions amplify when tackling more systemic challenges. More precisely, Chap. 4 illustrates how enabling a territorial governance of urban-peri-urban agriculture in the BCR means activating cross-territorial and cross-jurisdictional collaborations. Despite their good intentions, Brussels’ food institutions have not reached the stage of proactively engaging allies from other jurisdictions (see Chap. 4). Instead, they are still struggling to cooperate with the neighbouring Regions of Flanders and Wallonia, as well as with other sectors and policy levels, on the enhancement of short food chains (see Chap. 4). Given the fact that regulatory frameworks and policy structures influencing local food systems are scattered across diverse jurisdictional domains and spatial-­ institutional scales, a key point concerns the ways in which food strategies, FPCs, and other key actors and organisations can effectively work across diverse sectors and policy levels. More specifically, how these actors and food institutions can prioritise critical domains of the food system (e.g. agriculture land protection policies,

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school food programmes, the improvement of food environments, etc.) where other jurisdictions can effectively contribute as allies. This process of convergence across sectors and jurisdictions is necessary in order to amplify the sphere of influence of a food policy. In order to pursue this, food institutions need to lead strategic and consistent action nurturing alliances and instigating changes in critical sectors and policy levels (Moragues-Faus 2021). Challenges associated to socio-political transformation have also popped up in the institutional governance trajectory of the food movements analysed (see Chap. 6). In this case, institutional governance tensions are seen in the proactive will of Brussels’ food institutions to enable collaborations with private food players from the retail sector and the agro-industry. While these collaborations are at their infancy and seek to engage private food players in specific projects, so far they do not reach the point of radically changing the modes of operating of conventional food players. As such, there is space for further research on modes through which Urban-Regional Food Strategies can relate to the private food sector in a pragmatic but also transformative way (Moragues-Faus 2021; Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). Critical questions concern how to involve the conventional food sector as an ally, but also as a transformative target within policy initiatives aimed at improving the local food system; and whether these partnerships are able to change or whether they reproduce exploitative and extractive practices of globalised conventional food systems.

7.3 Reflecting on Land-Resource Governance Tensions As summarised in Table 7.2, a first insight emerging from land-resource tensions concerns the recognition that the contextual characteristics of the (land)resource itself—the pragmatic conditions of its actual availability and accessibility—inevitably impact the concrete possibilities of engendering transformative action (Manganelli and Moulaert 2019; see also Manganelli 2019). The BCR example shows a context of land fragmentation and patrimonial and speculative approaches to land fostered by landowners, market agents, and state institutions (Borras et al. 2015; McClintock 2013; see Chap. 4). In a similar vein, the case of Toronto displays how the qualities of land and its usability conditions constrain transformative action, generating conflictual dynamics. In response to this, CEED garden actors worked to remove key barriers and streamline enabling mechanisms that could facilitate access to land. These mechanisms include soil safety procedures, land lease approvals, planning regulations on the use of land, and mechanisms related to the acceptability of urban agriculture projects by residents. In short, the materiality of the land-­ resource, including the political economy and ecology of its access and use (Tornaghi 2014, 2017), are key elements to take into account. In fact, these factors can hamper or enable the possibility of allocating land for urban agriculture. In general, a reality of fragmentation and unequal distribution of power and control over land inevitably incites the search for pragmatic, incremental, and contextually adapted modes of fostering alternative uses of the land-resource, including urban-­ peri-­urban agriculture (see also Manganelli 2019).

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Table 7.2  Synthesis of specific insights and pathways for research/practices Land-resource governance tensions Insights Materiality of the (land)resource and pragmatic conditions for transformative action Opportunities for socio-political transformative forces and communities of change Urban agriculture and experimentation

Looking at urban-peri-urban agriculture at a more systemic level

Pathways for research/practices Taking into account material conditions; acting pragmatically Supporting and valorising key actors and organisations as a medium for alternative land uses Using experimental projects as ways to foster urban change and introduce new practices Considering issues of replicability, legacy, and lessons learned from experimental practices Surmounting logistical and knowledge barriers Scaling up experimental practices through cross-territorial food projects Enabling institutional frameworks that sustain cross-territorial food projects

Values, reflexivity, and cooperative praxis Insights Ways forward (for research/practices) Links between values, ideologies and Facilitating value alignment as a vehicle for cooperative praxis in urban food movements alliances and transformative agency Surmounting fragmentation and narrow-looking approaches Devising adapted and pragmatic forms of cooperation Inclusion, exclusion, and representation in Opting for different degrees of permeability and urban food movements openness to a plurality of alternatives Reflexivity and urban food movements Making strategic use of reflexivity by urban food initiatives Creating flexibility and openness to value adjustment and cooperation Seeking for complementarities across initiatives Bottom-linked institutions and the enablement of food democracy Insights Ways forward (for research/practices) Promoting collective decision-making, Seeing food councils and food strategies as collaboration, and policy delivery vehicles for food democracy Contested relation of food governing Dealing with the state as enabler/backbone vs. the institutions with the state state as a constraint Enhancing the capacity of exercising change in established institutional frameworks Coping with tensions between radical aspirations and established frameworks Negotiating a space and role within wider Enabling adapted forms of institutionalisation, institutions stability, and rootedness Ensuring operational capacity (budget, staff)

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A further insight is that socio-political transformative forces, or communities of change, are possible and play a critical role. The BCR’s BBP coalition, as well as key actors and organisations within that partnership, such as Terre en Vue and Le Début Des Haricots (DDH), are examples. The same applies to CEED garden actors and intermediary organisations, such as Toronto Urban Growers (TUG), FoodShare and others. As shown in Chap. 4, these agents are essential medium for the fostering of alternative uses of land (Manganelli 2019). They act as facilitators of urban agriculture initiatives through diverse means. These means consist of establishing channels of communication among local authorities, land owners, residents, and potential new urban farmers; mediating and negotiating with these actors; promoting locally adapted institutions for enabling land access for urban agriculture, such as win-win land use contracts, or mutually beneficial agreements between land owners and potential new farmers. These organisations have a high degree of contextual knowledge about land use dynamics and local politics. At the same time, they are moved by guiding values—such as community food sovereignty, agro-ecology, food justice, community land trust principles, and so on—that inspire and strengthen their transformative role (Sage et al. 2014; Tornaghi and Dehaene 2019). In a way, experiences such as the CEED gardens and the BBP act as testing grounds or as urban (agriculture) experiments (Bulkeley et al. 2018; Evans et al. 2016). They aim to demonstrate that urban agriculture can further percolate in urban environments in order to enhance land access for socio-economically disadvantaged communities or to provide spaces in which agro-ecological farmers can productively integrate their work in urban communities. In Brussels, the BBP coalition, supported by enabling sections of the state, has been facilitated the creation of further tools and mechanisms tailored to support urban agriculture, such as the Urban Agriculture Facilitator, as well as programmatic agreements with planning authorities. In Toronto, the CEED garden experiment faced considerable challenges in its implementation phase. Some of the actors were discouraged about the replicability of this experiment and its capacity to constitute a model that inspires landowners and planning institutions (courtesy of CEED gardens actors). In general, these types of experiences are widely spreading and constitute incremental ways through which innovations are initially tested and, possibly, reproduced by means of experimental practices (Karvonen and van Heur 2014). As a result, the analysis of land-resource tensions can inspire further empirical research on how these urban experimentations last in time; what their short-term effects as well as their legacy and long-term outcomes are for the urban system beyond the duration of project-based partnerships; and what key agents and institutions can learn from processes and outcomes of these experiments. Finally, endeavours to scale up land-resource access brought the analysis to consider land-resource governance tensions at the regional and higher spatial-­ institutional scales. In particular, in the case of Brussels, Chap. 4 has shown how Brussels’ food institutions have become aware that the land-resource question requires cross-organisational and cross-institutional collaborations with both urbanism and planning institutions within the BCR as well as with the neighbouring Regions of Flanders and Wallonia (see Sect. 4.3.2). Despite Brussels’ multi-layered

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administrative structure being rather unique, its productive agriculture land intersecting with different administrative subdivisions is not unique. On the contrary, this characterises most of the urban-regional realities in which food movements are active (Angotti 2015; FAO & RUAF 2015). As a result, when looked at a systemic level, the question of enhancing land for urban agriculture merges with a complex analysis of how to surmount logistical and knowledge barriers that prevent proximity farmers from delivering produce to urban areas. Certainly, logistical factors represent key material challenges that constrain a systemic action on urban agriculture in the BCR. Although not analysed in depth in this book, the same systemic and inter-scalar challenges are true for Toronto. Here, food movement actors are also reflecting on how to strengthen local food hubs—including public food markets—in order to connect proximity farmers with urban markets (Blay-Palmer et al. 2018; communication with a food movement actor working on public food markets). As mentioned in Chap. 4, food hub experiments have been recently established in Brussels as well, through projects such as the “Brussel Lust”, or “hup HUB” Brussels, facilitating short supply chains among local farmers and BRC’s markets. There is space to investigate the ways in which urban agriculture experiments scale up into cross-­ territorial food projects at the intersection of different territorial and administrative subdivisions (see Table 3.1, Chap. 3), and how different urban areas deal with these challenges. In order to further investigate these types of organisational and institutional governance tensions related to land and logistics, further empirical knowledge and support from higher institutional levels are required. In Europe, for instance, EU institutions can play a role in enabling institutional frameworks—such as urban-rural development funding and implementation schemes—that sustain territorially-based partnerships and promote cross-jurisdictional cooperation (Manganelli 2019).

7.4 Values, Reflexivity, and Cooperative Praxis in Food Movement Organisations The analysis of governance tensions and reflexivity in food movement organisations brings us to reflect on the links between values, ideologies, and cooperative praxis in food movement initiatives (see also Table 7.2). In this respect, it can be argued that the shared recognition of a (food system) problem, an urgency, or an unmet need, can be the driver for value alignment around food system objectives and can trigger socially innovative cooperative action (see also Manganelli 2019). This was visible, for example, at the genesis of FoodShare. The need to tackle tangible conditions of poverty and food insecurity triggered cooperation between actors on food system questions. Recognising the urgency of poverty and food insecurity, Mayor Art Eggleton and other political leaders supported the establishment of FoodShare and the TFPC. Driven by strong values of community food security, food justice, and “healthy food for all”, FoodShare itself is a strong catalyst of partnerships and

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alliances among different actors including communities, private foundations, donors, and state agents (Manganelli and Esteron 2022). Thus, transformative ideologies moved by reactionary attitudes against food system failures can be vehicles of alliances and transformative agency. Notwithstanding, strong ideologies and egos, as well as possible conflicts among values and priorities, can also give place to inward-looking approaches, which risk generating fragmentation among food movement organisations and between these organisations and other players. A radical food sovereignty initiative, for example, may refuse to cooperate with state actors or the private sector due to its militant and anti-systemic ideologies. The GASAP organisation, for instance, will never become a state service, although it is structurally dependent on the state for funding. As Chap. 5 shows, the GASAP’s reflexive attitude has led the organisation to maintain its space of autonomy and relate to state agencies and other actors in a very pragmatic and instrumental way. These reflections are strongly linked to fundamental dilemmas between negotiated forms of institutionalisation of food initiatives on the one hand, and the necessity to maintain spaces of independence and autonomy on the other (Knezevic et al. 2017). The above insights raise questions concerning what type of transformative action is possible in a given socio-political context and through what types of collaborative approaches. Indeed, one could argue that long lasting or structural socio-political change may require strong value alignment and shared belief on the necessity of food system change. As academic research documents, this recognition may be instrumental to sustain long lasting change in important sections of the food system (Sonnino et al. 2019; Manganelli 2019). The CEED garden experience, for instance, has shown that values such as food justice and the right to food sovereignty for disadvantaged communities can work towards keeping actors aligned through a shared purpose. On the other hand, divergences among value systems may be significant, leading to conflicts, constraints to collaboration, or even to inertia, deadlocks, and the incapacity to cooperate (ibid., 2019). These divergences can also give rise to important questions about who is included and who is excluded in food movement alliances and collaborative networks. Who should sit at the table of a FPC or a food strategy as legitimate part of the movement and who should not? Should big supermarket chains be involved? How can value tensions be addressed with more radical actors of the food movement? These questions are relevant not only for the corporate food sector, but also for other actors of the food system. This is the case, for instance, of agro-ecologically oriented urban agriculture versus more technology-led food production systems, such as indoor farming, or up-scaled commercial agriculture, hydroponics or aquaponics. Are these technology-led practices part of the (same) movement? Should they be involved as interlocutors despite divergences with more radical forces? These questions have to do with urban food movements’ different levels of permeability and openness to a plurality of alternatives. These value- and identity-related “tensions” are likely to become more pressing as the urban food movement evolves and diverse types of initiatives pop up.

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In a way, organisations like FoodShare are emblematic of the coexistence of diverse rationalities and approaches to collaboration and co-construction, even within a single organisation. Long term/radical ideologies of food system transformation and universal access to good and healthy food play a crucial role in guiding the agency of this organisation. These ideologies of radical change also condition the types of allies with which FoodShare connects and collaborates. Yet, this organisation also needs to devise diverse types of collaborative approaches, which may lead to partially deviating from the adherence to leading principles, or to purposively reframing key principles through time, in order to practically implement transformative ambitions (Manganelli and Esteron 2022). As such, situated, incremental, day-to-day efforts take place to sensitise and build alliances with local communities; strategies of conflict resolution and mediation with agents that often do not recognise the value or benefits of local food projects occur; “opportunistic” alliances with corporate food donors that do not necessarily embrace anti-poverty or food security principles can also take place for the purpose of securing resources to implement programmes, and so on (see also Manganelli 2019). In summary, strong values and ideologies, as well as divergences in identities, priorities, and value systems, may end up inhibiting cooperation, or may lead to ad hoc forms of cooperative praxis that do not necessarily alter behaviours, approaches, and cultures of agents. This is also visible in the ways in which food strategy actors enact cooperative agreements with other state agents or with the private food sector. Forms of cooperation are often ad hoc and project-based, where actors such as city divisions and community agencies, living up to diverse rationales and perspectives, see their own interests recognised and fulfilled (see Chap. 5; Manganelli 2019). As a result, a crucial point of further inquiry concerns the extent to which deep value alignment among diverse actors can occur. Besides this, one may ask whether forms of “instrumental” cooperation are able to more structurally alter behaviours and trigger more structural and long lasting socio-political change (Pradel et al. 2013; Manganelli 2019). The concept of reflexivity and its strategic use by food movement organisations or institutions can help answer some of these questions. As it emerges from Chap. 5, reflexivity is primarily a tool that guides food organisations throughout their life-­ course, helping them be cohesive and align with unquestionable pillars and principles. Yet, reflexivity also has other functions. It can make food movement organisations (and institutions) aware of key socio-political tensions they need to face, including tensions in mediating between and trying to overcome divergent positions and values. Reflexivity can also help food movement initiatives anticipate key challenges stemming from their socio-institutional as well as socio-cultural environment. Again, the FoodShare organisation constitutes an example. In its recent stage, this organisation began to advance stronger food justice values, anticipating key food justice priorities and challenges emerging from a context of revived food insecurity, inequalities, and socio-cultural tensions (Sect. 5.4.1). As a result, reflexivity can also usher food movement organisations to be more flexible and open to readjusting and reframing key principles and ways of behaving, working in the direction of greater adaptability and openness to cooperation. It is

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arguable that reflexivity can synergise with diversity, democracy, and cooperative praxis when food organisations are capable of critically reflecting upon their values and re-adjusting or improving their behaviours accordingly. Thus, by strengthening its reflexive attitude, an organisation that is overly focused on producers’ sovereignty can self-reflect on its practices or limitations and find complementarities and synergies with other initiatives that focus on other aspects of the food system. A FPC may learn from its own trajectory and challenges in order to embrace a greater diversity and representativeness in terms of participating members and targeted communities, thus enhancing its accountability. In synthesis, reflexivity invites urban food movements to be open about their own values and to recognise their limitations, changing what is possible and finding spaces of integration, complementarities, and convergences with other actors of the food movement.

7.5  Bottom-Linked Institutions and the Enablement of Food Democracy The study of Toronto and the BCR’s food policy trajectories showed how food councils and food strategies are vehicles for the co-construction of accountable modes of collective decision-making, collaboration, and policy delivery (see also Table 7.2). As such, these food movement institutions intend to enhance food democracy (Hassanein 2003; Welsh and MacRae 1998). As highlighted in Chap. 2, food democracy aims to give power to the bottom, by giving voice to less represented actors such as citizens, small-scale producers and processors, minority food workers, Indigenous, and racialized community groups (Halliday and van Veenhuizen 2019). By favouring radical forms of democracy, institutions like FPCs seek to stimulate citizen-led initiatives to flourish and to influence the direction of food policies (De Schutter et al. 2020). This means that, among other objectives, food governing institutions aim to subvert, or at least, redefine traditional relations and established decision-­making mechanisms among actors such as the state, civil society, and citizenry (Bornemann and Weiland 2019; see also Manganelli 2019). The opportunity to engender radical forms of democracy inspires reflections on the contested relation of food governing institutions with the state. To a considerable extent, the examples explored in this book show state institutions acting as facilitators of bottom-linked food initiatives. This is visible in both the Toronto and BCR food movements. In fact, it is also thanks to progressive sections of the state, open to bottom-linked experiments, that initiatives such as the TFPC and the Toronto Food Strategy, as well as the BCR’s GoodFood Strategy and the Counseil Participatif, could be established. Because the TFPC is a food democracy institution embedded in formal bureaucratic structures (MacRae and Donahue 2013), it has sought to strategically connect with institutional priorities and City’s agendas. In doing so, the TFPC acted as an agent of food democracy without necessarily overruling or radically contesting the very existence and role of formal political structures. In fact,

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TFPC leaders and members have always been attentive to negotiating a space of action while aligning and working with overarching city priorities (courtesy of Toronto food movement leaders, see also Chap. 6). With a younger history, the Brussels’ Counseil Participatif also shows tensions between searching for its appropriate space of influence and being necessarily subordinate to top-down decisions and policy priorities coming from the Cabinet. Holding an advisory role with respect to the Strategy, key questions relate to its actual capacity to influence top down decision-making structures. These questions touch the roots of food democracy in practice, and can be asked of food movement institutions in other contexts as well. They relate to the capacity of initiatives such as the TFPC or a (grass-roots informed) food strategy to engender democratic innovations. Do these initiatives actually have the power to set new priorities and agendas that are taken up by decision-making structures of the city? Or are they destined to conform to an already-established agenda and more powerful overarching frameworks? The answers to these questions are necessarily nuanced. They relate to the capacity of food movement institutions to carve out contextual opportunities to exercise change in established institutional frameworks. The possibility of realising such a change may necessitate mediating between radical and subversive aspirations and the need to respect the boundary conditions of given institutional frameworks. The relevance of these questions is further amplified when considering that the relation of these experimental initiatives with the state can change over time. The example of the TFPC is a case in point. As Chap. 6 illustrated, the institutional setting, role, and even existence of the TFPC is being questioned as the Board of Health prioritises the pandemic response over of the food system agenda. In general, food governing structures such as FPCs and food strategies are often under-­ resourced and subject to changing political climates (RUAF 2019). In the case of Toronto, for instance, behind official adoptions of food policy statements, is a city that refrains from recognising and devolving resources and political power to food institutions in terms of programming and operationalisation (courtesy of Toronto food movement actors). A paradoxical consequence is that, overall, the TFPC is far less recognised in local politics than in international food policy networks (courtesy of Toronto food movement actors). The above considerations show how food governing institutions are still negotiating their identities and role as transformative agents and vehicles for innovative bottom-linked practices. Through contested relations with the state, they struggle to secure a legitimate and sustained position in the frame of established state structures. It can be argued that adapted forms of institutionalisation, stability, and rootedness are necessary for these initiatives to thrive (see also Chap. 6). Yet, these elements are still precarious and often FPCs need to pragmatically adapt to contextual circumstances and carve out spaces for transformative action on the basis of what is contextually achievable. In particular, these food-governing institutions need to overcome tensions between subversive or transformative aspirations as expressed, for instance, by bottom-led food sovereignty organisations or citizens’ initiatives, and budgetary constraints and fluctuating policy priorities of elected

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officials (see also Manganelli 2019). These resource constraints and precarious institutional bases also turn out to negatively affect the capacity of these food-­ governing institutions being accountable and relevant for a diversity of actors and communities. Despite recognising these challenges, spaces of opportunity exist for food governing institutions to contribute to an overarching urban democracy agenda. After all, the need to further democratise food and institutional systems is even more urgent in contemporary times of disruption and uncertainty.

7.6 (Rethinking) Governance Tensions in Times of Crisis This chapter would be incomplete without reflecting on the value of hybrid governance for today’s challenges—especially since we are living in times of urgent global crisis. On the one hand, we need to radically change pathways of resource consumption and growth in order to implement a socio-ecological transition here and now (Wallace-Wells 2020). On the other hand, however, there are great uncertainties about timeframes and modalities to implement such a change (Pelzer and Versteeg 2019). The Covid-19 pandemic has produced tangible disruptions in the organisation of urban life and generated visible impacts on local-to-global food systems, reawakening a general sense of crisis. “Precarious” certainties about our position of dominance and control with respect to other species have faded away, as the pandemic outbreak has made visible the interrelations between human, animal, and ecological systems. Furthermore, far from affecting human beings homogeneously, the effects of the Covid-19 also relate to the specific position of people within human settlements and societies, in terms of socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity as well as in terms of income and employment situations (Alkon et al. 2020; Men and Tarasuk 2021). Alongside the global epidemic, the climate change emergency also unfolds, exposing our species to threats and risks that involve no-less than the whole planet (Brenner 2014). The frequency and impact of extreme events such as floods, droughts, wildfires, and similar environmental catastrophes can be hardly overlooked, even by the most short-sighted. These calamities indicate how the anthropogenic impact on the environment has surpassed planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015), calling for imminent and responsible action in terms of reducing carbon emissions, rethinking our consumption habits, and promoting more sustainable resource uses in urban environments. Both crises have made visible how risks and effects associated with the pandemic and climate change emergencies are not equally distributed across urban areas and urban communities alike (Chu et  al. 2015). Although exercising a low impact on the environment, vulnerable populations (such as poor inhabitants, or racially or ethnically disadvantaged groups) often experience the greatest burdens, being the most exposed to challenges such as energy or food shortages, health calamities, and catastrophic events (Rice et al. 2019).

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Taking this context into account, we may wonder what the implications for hybrid governance and its tensions are—both in terms of their relevance in these specific circumstances, and with respect to how the analysis can be further enriched. In general terms, the relevance and impact of the tensions on urban food movements are strengthened by this scenario of disruption and uncertainty. Within aspirations for radical and sustainable change, resource governance tensions call for addressing the materiality of food systems and for focusing on the responsible use of resources. This implies recognising that land, soil, plants, and other species, but also human beings (such as farmers, migrants, and food workers) should not be considered as objects to be exploited. On the contrary, they are agents with their own rights, to be respected and cared for. As a result, a different vocabulary is needed that replaces terms such as exploitation, extraction, appropriation, and use with concepts such as care, restoration, regeneration, and rights. This vocabulary should inform a multidimensional consideration of justice through which the analysis of governance tensions can be revisited or enriched (see also Sect. 7.6.1). Furthermore, as also highlighted in Chap. 6, while crises bring about destructive effects, they are also (re)generative of new initiatives and modes of organising food systems. As such, the contemporary scenario reinforces the relevance of organisational governance tensions in terms of accounting for the harmful effects of crises to the life-course of urban food movement organisations, but also highlighting the potentials to strengthen organisational networks and reinforce driving value systems in light of global demands for change. Thus, organisational governance tensions should be also framed in terms of new opportunities to advocate for values such as food sovereignty, food democracy, and food justice, moving beyond context-­specific struggles, and aligning with globally framed narratives and transformative objectives (Santo and Moragues-Faus 2019). This alignment should also reinforce the connections between the urban food agenda and key global targets, such as deep decarbonisation and climate mitigation-adaptation (Castán Broto and Westman 2020). Indeed, because urban areas are considered part of the solution to global climate-­ food challenges (ibid., 2020), urban food movements can raise their voice in global networks and fora that are tailored to co-define policy targets and enable policy interventions on global issues such as deforestation, carbon neutrality, exploitative and unsustainable food chains, and international trade (Moragues-Faus 2021). Here, institutional governance tensions come to the fore, related to enabling accountable and empowering institutional frameworks through which to implement these targets. On the one hand, enabling these frameworks is even more urgent in a context of sharpened inequalities and revived claims for justice. On the other hand, food movement institutions need to be prepared to cope with possible tensions between fulfilling requirements of efficiency and effectiveness—i.e. needs for engendering food system transformation and documenting results in a given timeframe—while also being open to embrace diversity and being respectful of the procedural and substantive dimensions of justice.

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7.6.1 Towards Multi-dimensional Food Justice As highlighted in the above section as well as over the course of the book, global crises such as the pandemic and the climate change emergency have revived strong demands for justice. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been particularly harmful for those in precarious socio-economic conditions, exacerbating pre-­ existing structural inequities. These inequities were also the product of past crises, such as the 2008–2010 global financial downturn, followed by the spread of austerity responses across nations (Clapp and Moseley 2020). In sum, the current reality is a symptom of an economic and societal system that is structurally unequal. In Canada, the advocacy action of organisations such as Food Secure Canada demonstrates a clear intent to prevent and avoid narrow or short-sighted responses to these types of crises.3 In general, activists, professionals, and scholars seek pathways to use the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to build more resilient and just food systems, for instance by taking advantage of recovery funds and relief measures to implement the needed transformation. As a result, food security organisations in Canada—among which initiatives studied in this book—have reinforced their advocacy towards state institutions for adequate social protection measures, including the need for a guaranteed basic annual income for all (Tarasuk and McIntyre 2020). Overall, this disruptive reality has reawakened debates on systemic questions related to food justice and the right to food (Alkon et al. 2020; Santo et al. 2020). In Toronto, as well as across Canada and North America, concerns about race and class disparities in food systems have been revived—and sharpened and made more visible as a result of the pandemic crisis (Friedmann 2020). FPCs in North America are increasingly adopting a food equity lens to both denounce as well as try to tackle racial injustices in food systems through targeted interventions, including public procurement policies and other measures (Santo et al. 2020). As the evolution of the Toronto food movement shows, not only Black communities, but also Indigenous people—who were historically displaced from their lands—claim for their voice and power to decide how food systems are organised and who benefits from them (Trauger 2017). Thus, human and Indigenous rights to food sovereignty, as well as reconciliation frameworks, represent key justice claims emerging from the organisational and institutional dynamics of urban food movements. Furthermore, the crisis has made visible key vulnerabilities of the food system related to the role of essential workers, including in particular undocumented migrants and exploited labour in food chains (Blay-Palmer et al. 2020, 2021). As such, claims for the rights of migrants and minority workers raise food justice demands that go beyond urban administrative borders.

 In this respect, emblematic is the action plan composed by Food Secure Canada titled “Growing Resilience and Equity: a Food Policy Action Plan in the Context of Covid-19” (https://foodsecurecanada.org/2020-growing-resilience-equity, accessed 20 Nov 2020), which collects and summarises inputs and suggestions from Canadian food movements on how to capitalise from the current crisis for a better food system. 3

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The above reflections indicate how food justice claims generate tensions linked to conflicts and demands for greater justice and Indigenous food sovereignty. As seen over the course of this book, these challenges have implications for the hybrid governance model and should be an integral part of the analysis of governance tensions. On the one hand, this book has made visible how food justice claims cut across the different types of governance tensions, including: (fair) land-resource access and use; organisational dynamics; and equity frameworks that shape modes of working of new or established urban food governance institutions. On the other hand, claims for justice in food systems can be also regarded as standalone types of (governance) challenges, given their poignancy in today’s global challenges. They can be referred to as justice-related governance tensions, i.e. tensions connected to implementing different dimensions of justice in food systems. A multi-dimensional perspective on justice is needed to properly reflect the multi-vocality of justice-­ related claims and values emerging from urban food movements. Thus, procedural justice aspects raise questions about how to improve representation, transparency, and accountability in decision-making processes in order to account for the needs and identities of the most affected communities; substantive and distributional aspects bring the focus on equity in outcomes, i.e. in the fair distribution of costs and benefits in the organisation of urban food systems. Furthermore, procedural and substantive aspects should be accompanied by considerations of recognition and restorative justice (Fraser 2005; Svarstad and Benjaminsen 2020; Young 2011). The former dimension of justice focuses on tackling the underlying drivers of vulnerability that produce differential capacities to access resources and benefit from urban food systems. The latter focuses on repairing historic forms of inequities. Indeed, overlooking or silencing these inequities risks normalising unfair conditions. These considerations lay the ground work for future investigations on how contemporary claims of urban food movements deal with these different dimensions of justice and how these dimensions are pragmatically negotiated through values and organisational dynamics of food initiatives. Connected to this is the key question of how governance and policy frameworks can be shaped that account for different dimensions of justice.

7.6.2 Looking Ahead The opportunity to align the food system transformation agenda with other pressing challenges of our time, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, opens the way for a joined research and programmatic agenda on social and ecological justice in urban food and other socio-ecological movements. Examples of these are urban climate justice movements that seek to develop more socio-ecologically sustainable energy and resource uses in urban areas. Both movements advance claims for a radical transformation of socio-ecological conditions. As such, they stand at the intersection of multiple dimensions of justice highlighted above, such as recognition,

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procedural, distribution, and restorative justice (Svarstad and Benjaminsen 2020). Moreover, these movements reveal how both the socio-economic and the ecological components of justice are intimately related. In this view, having a healthy environment is a pre-condition for the realisation of social justice (Agyeman et al. 2016; Schlosberg and Collins 2014; Yaka 2019). As a result, the rights attributed to nature and resources, including fertile land, are an integrative part of justice claims. Yet implementing socio-ecological justice is not free from tensions. Indeed, justice ambitions need to be continually negotiated and balanced by situated actors and initiatives on the ground (Aylett 2010). Advancing claims for transformative and emancipatory action, food and climate movements invite us to look at justice beyond the boundaries of the here and now, connecting to critical spatial as well as temporal aspects of justice. Concerning the spatial aspect, while the urban space is a strategic site where claims for socio-­ ecological justice are negotiated, several processes bring the focus beyond a narrow and clearly bounded consideration of the urban. In particular, reflections on the planetary nature of urbanisation processes, the history of global climate declarations and agreements, as well as the increasing relevance of Trans-local Food Policy Networks in delineating a “global city food movement” (Moragues-Faus 2021; Sonnino and Coulson 2021), have contributed to a different understanding of the urban dimension (Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015). More precisely, these processes trigger an enhanced awareness of how urban life is intertwined with forms of socio-­ nature exploitation (e.g. carbon emissions, unsustainable and long energy or food supply chains, deforestation, etc.), as well as structural disadvantages (e.g. labour exploitation, socio-spatial disparities in access to infrastructures, services, opportunities) that cut across institutional borders, jurisdictional boundaries, or territorial demarcations (Angelo and Wachsmuth 2015; Wachsmuth et al. 2016). Hence, claims of contemporary food and other socio-ecological movements should be located within the specificity of place-based struggles, but also understood across wider geographies and spatialities of justice (Kythreotis et al. 2021; Nicholls et al. 2016). Thus, focusing on intersecting spaces or scales of (in)justices means looking at the tensions between claims of place-based food movements and other policy domains as well as higher scales of interests and policy processes. As a consequence, urban food movements can create stronger alliances with other urban movements fighting for better living conditions—such as ecology, climate, housing, or migrant movements. Moreover, situated food movement actors and decision-­ makers can reflect on how the enablement of local food or environmental measures can produce more or less positive outcomes beyond the strictly local, i.e. in wider territories and at wider spatial-institutional scales. Conversely, local food institutions and city food networks can direct a more purposive and strategic advocacy to higher policy levels responsible for agreements with the private sector, trade policies, the rights of migrants and food workers, or national school food programmes. Indeed, instigating targeted changes at higher scales can also produce immediate effects on the local.

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Temporal aspects of justice are also critical, given the urgency and short timeframe with which contemporary discourses and scientific forecasts call for a radical and deep decarbonisation of society to be implemented (IPCC 2021). This urgency may trigger critical tensions or contradictions. On the one hand, for instance, food democracy requires time in order to be effected. It needs incremental action tailored to build trust, account for a diversity of agents and sectors, co-construct inclusive and participative decision making-processes that guarantee a wide civil society participation, and so on. On the other hand, there is no more time to wait for triggering the needed (socio)-ecological transition, which includes changing exploitative and polluting forms of agriculture, reforming wasteful and carbon-intensive food systems, and rethinking and deciding for a reorganisation of global food chains. These ambitions require speeding up measures and, therefore, can involve the enablement of very top-down and efficiency-oriented decision-making structures that counteract the idea of food democracy. Moreover, claims for deep decarbonisation are likely to go against short-term and entrenched political and economic interests of decision-makers and actors of the private sector. As also shown in this book, building better food systems requires a sustained commitment that needs to go beyond the short-term logic of political cycles. In addition to this, this book has shown how facing crises such as the pandemic or other types of emergencies brings about a tension between immediate and short-­ term responses to the emergency on the one hand, and the idea of (re)building better for the long-term. Short-term responses following the Covid-19 outbreak have consisted in repurposing food infrastructures, delivering emergency food baskets, activating other food security initiatives, etc. Moreover, a number of innovations, including new businesses, socially innovative initiatives, and ICT-driven networks have been developed as the pandemic hit. Yet, how these types of initiatives will evolve in the long-term and in what ways future pathways for a sustained change can be designed—are yet to be seen. As a result, it is very likely that food strategies, food councils, and food institutions will need to re-think their temporal frameworks. Among others, this involves embedding policies such as preparedness, responsiveness, and resiliency to shocks (Béné 2020; Blay-Palmer et al. 2021) in their day-to-­ day work and strategically understanding what can be achieved in the short-term while acting incrementally and (re)organising long-term change. After all, ethics of responsibility and care for inter-generational justice are fundamental dimensions when food or climate challenges are at stake (Skillington 2019), leading us to the question: What core values as well as material realities will our generation pass to the next? The answer to this question does not lie so far away in the future. Despite the value of long-term visions, the certainty lays in what we have today, in the current tensions as well as in the positive ways forward that can be envisioned. It is therefore essential to deal with this messy, provisional, but also rich and fertile material, in order to lay the basis here and now for better food systems and societies of the future.

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