Abstract In order to foster a transition of the food system toward more sustainable outcomes, scholars have increasingly pointed at the need for organizing strengthened food democracy. By increasing the participation of citizens and food system actors, democratic innovations, such as food policy councils, are believed to promote the quality and legitimacy of food policymaking. However, the question of whether and how food democracy initiatives do indeed contribute to more democratic modes of governance largely remains unexplored. This study addresses this gap by performing a systematic literature review of the existing scholarship on food democracy, assessing democratic innovations for their contributions to four democratic goods: inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgment and transparency. The analysis shows that food democracy initiatives tend to be dominated by organized interests, have more influence on agenda-setting and implementation compared to decision-making, and generally aim for some form of deliberation or knowledge exchange. The precise selection mechanisms, processes and quality of deliberation, and transparency of democratic innovations remain important research gaps. The paper ends with a plea to better connect food democracy scholarship with the broader political sciences, as well as various suggestions for future research. 

/pdf/power-to-the-people-food-democracy-initiatives-contributions-e7hhdezh.pdf

Power to the people? Food democracy initiatives’ contributions to democratic goods

Abstract In this article, we study how the global pandemic has affected food practices. We underscore how time, space, and modality as key facets of the everyday intersect with understandings, procedures, and engagements as components of practice, and how food practices in the pandemic context are transforming, at least temporarily, toward more sustainability. Our mixed-methods data were collected from participants in a local food initiative established in Trento during the first Italian lockdown in Spring 2020, which aimed to connect local producers to consumers more directly. We analyze data from a panel survey conducted with 55 participants of this initiative followed by ten in-depth interviews six months after the lockdown. The findings illustrate that the lockdown encouraged different people to search for “good food” through the food initiative. Sustainable food practices included more planning and less waste, but in some cases initial interest in the initiative changed back to prevailing industrial supply via supermarkets. Thus, not all food practices of our respondents were transformed to be more sustainable or permanent. We conclude that everyday food practices, when disrupted and if accompanied with well-functioning socio-technical innovations, can foster a transformation toward a more diversified and sustainable food system.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15487733.2022.2037341?needAccess=true

(Un-)sustainable transformations: everyday food practices in Italy during COVID-19

Neo-materialist movement organisations and the matter of scale: scaling through institutions as prefigurative politics?

Cities are responsible for about 75% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Various materials and energy sources, which are mostly produced by the rural areas rather than the cities, are consumed by the cities, and their waste is released back into the rural areas, thereby causing evident environmental damages. The Rural–Urban Metabolism approach can offer a comprehensive tool to understand the flux of resources that cross the urban environments and plan for more sustainable cities. Considering the strength of the relationship between the urban and rural areas, this paper offers a new perspective regarding the Rural–Urban Metabolism and its application in the Autonomous Province of Trento is discussed. The methodological approach consists of four main steps: data collection and management to support strategic territorial/urban plans; data assessment to critically evaluate the existing context; data mapping to visualize the data and territorial dynamics; and finally, the definition of the strategic and integrated development plan and actions. The Rural–Urban Metabolism proved to be a strategic approach for urban planning and design to monitor the flow of it, assess the impacts of it and promote more sustainable and circular urban policies.

/pdf/rural-urban-metabolism-a-methodological-approach-for-carbon-2cfstet3.pdf

Rural–Urban Metabolism: A Methodological Approach for Carbon-Positive and Circular Territories

Recently, food-related policy initiatives have proliferated, such as food strategies, food plans, food councils, food districts and food communities, just to name the more relevant ones. Far from being systematically defined and logically systematized, these concepts often overlap or are used as synonyms. The paper has systematically traced the current trends showing how these concepts are used in the current debate, the theoretical background on which they are grounded and the public policies they call for, following a threefold approach: (1) a literature analysis to establish the state of academic research on food systems in its multidimensionality; (2) a review of the existing national legislation to detect the utilization of food policy-related lemmas in the normative; (3) a computational linguistic analysis applied on institutional documentation to explore how cities and territories are using concepts and definitions in the grey literature. The results show that the construction of narratives around the topic of food systems planning is experiencing a momentum, with particular emphasis on principles, background premises and governance aspects. In this context, the risk of marginality for the agricultural sector in such discourses and narratives is highlighted.

pdf/food-di-lemmas-disentangling-the-italian-local-food-policy-44zi3j2ek7.pdf

Food (di)lemmas: disentangling the Italian Local Food Policy narratives

Contemporary food systems face several paradoxes regarding equity and sustainability. Considering food production—an issue that simultaneously affects both the supply (production) and demand (consumption) sides—several cities have begun to implement new strategies, called Urban Food Policies. These approaches aim to address the various challenges presented by food system failures, while also involving the existing network of grassroot initiatives. For this reason, these have established Food Policy Councils, arenas where institutions can engage with supply chain actors and food activists, deciding through the processes of participatory democracy their Urban Food Strategies. This article investigates the evolution of a new Urban Food Strategy in a middle-sized Italian town, Trento. Despite a growing number of case studies discussing the promises and problematic aspects of UFS, empirical research and analysis tend to overlook the role of the context in which these processes are embedded and how the system of political, economic, cultural, and environmental opportunities weigh upon the success of these policies. The paper draws upon a multi-method qualitative approach combining in-depth interviews, document analysis, and direct observations of the construction process of an Urban Food Strategy for the city of Trento.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/2/177/pdf

Urban Food Strategy in the Making: Context, Conventions and Contestations

The “System and sustainable Approach to virTuous interaction of Urban and Rural LaNdscapes” (SATURN) project is exploring how resilience at a city scale might be achieved and how the issues of landscape fragmentation, governance and land management can be addressed resulting in a sustainable future. The EIT Climate-KIC SATURN project is based on a collaboration between three cities of very different scales and contexts, those of Gothenburg in western Sweden, Trento in northern Italy, and Birmingham in the United Kingdom. This paper focuses on the ways in which urban farming can become an important tool to mitigate or adapt to climate change in urban environments by exploring how the three major cities of SATURN deal with these concepts. Using the experience gained throughout the SATURN project as well as the strong communication developed within the consortium, the paper introduces the reasons why urban farming is not just an agricultural activity, but it relates to climate awareness, health and an element of community. With the examples of different urban farming models, this research presents the fully entrepreneurial model of Gothenburg, where a business model fosters sustainable and successful small-scale farming through municipal management of small allotments with associated basic infrastructure leased out to entrepreneurs. Public underutilized land is matched with farmers in order for them to scale up their businesses and provide sustainable food, by limiting the shipping distance of the produce. In the Trento case, bottom-up and more institutional processes have been combined to foster short local supply chains through the Nutrire Trento networking process which could benefit from the introduction of a land lease scheme named “banca della terra” (to support agricultural land recovery). The case of Birmingham presents a different model where farming in an urban environment is mostly seen as a support to communities, mental health and awareness, rather than an entrepreneurial activity. The innovation in this paper comes in the form of different European models related to urban agriculture and best practices, demonstrating how abandoned and underutilised public and private land can be regenerated and become an active part of the urban realm. Insights on the ways in which the three different models operate, as well as results on how farming in an urban environment can enhance resilient cities are discussed in this paper. Keywords: urban farming, climate change, landscape ecosystems, entrepreneurial agriculture, community farming

/pdf/urban-farming-models-ecosystems-and-climate-change-22wjt8uz.pdf

Urban Farming Models, Ecosystems and Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Environments: The Case of SATURN Pan European Programme

The current paper belongs to a set of ongoing multi-scalar and trans-disciplinary research studies investigating potential approaches for regenerating rural areas in the Alpine areas of Italy, which have been suffering for years from underused phenomena (Balducci, 2019; Gretter et al., 2018a).The paper focuses mainly on the territory of the Autonomous Province of Trento to investigate how farmers face the current challenges in different ways while looking for sustainable and viable systems from the ecological and socio-economic perspectives (Bender & Haller, 2017). Trentino’s cultural context reflects a long tradition of specific law rules, which have granted a degree of self-government capabilities in various sectors such as territorial planning and land use policies, culture and school system, or social services (Gretter et al., 2018b).Rather than present specific results based on deep quantity-qualitative analysis, the goal of the manuscript is to overview the peculiar features of this alpine territory, opening a series of inputs of reflection and discussions. Some have already been locally activated, but most must be addressed in a broader and systemic approach, involving a more comprehensive series of stakeholders, moving from public authorities to citizens.In this manuscript, we highlight ongoing experiences that the Trentino Agro-food value chain faces today and how this impact the territory and its cultural landscapes’ preservation. 

Mountain Farming in the Making: Approaches to Alpine Rural Agro-food Challenges in Trentino

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Urban Food Strategy in the Making: Context, Conventions and Contestations

Urban Farming Models, Ecosystems and Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Environments: The Case of SATURN Pan European Programme

Mountain Farming in the Making: Approaches to Alpine Rural Agro-food Challenges in Trentino