By 2050, the world will need 70 per cent more food to feed an additional two billion people (FAO 2009). The main challenges here are not can we do it? but can we do it sustainably? Merely feeding well and sustaining the current situation is not enough. We should not only sustain but improve our food and environment. ‘Regenerative Food Systems’ is one crucial step to move beyond sustainability. As per California State University (2017) regenerative agriculture is: ‘a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density.’

Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Regenerative Food Systems

Reducing food waste is widely recognized as critical for improving resource efficiency and meeting the nutritional demand of a growing human population. Here we explore whether the sharing economy can provide meaningful assistance to reducing food waste in a relatively low-impact and environmentally-sound way. Analyzing 170,000 postings on a popular peer-to-peer food-sharing app, we find that over 19 months, 90t of food waste with an equivalent retail value of £0.7 million were collected by secondary consumers and diverted from disposal. An environmental analysis focused on Greater London reveals that these exchanges were responsible for avoiding emission of 87–156t of CO2eq. Our results indicate that most exchanges were among users associated with lower income yet higher levels of education. These findings, together with the high collection rates (60% on average) suggest that the sharing economy may offer powerful means for improving resource efficiency and reducing food waste. Reducing food waste is important. Here the authors investigate whether digitally enabled social networks can efficiently reduce food waste and find that in 19 months, around 91t of food waste were collected by secondary consumers and diverted from disposal.

/pdf/social-and-environmental-analysis-of-food-waste-abatement-17bqeevkmp.pdf

Social and environmental analysis of food waste abatement via the peer-to-peer sharing economy.

https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2020/rmrs_2020_devine_wright_p001.pdf

“Re-placed” - Reconsidering relationships with place and lessons from a pandemic

In heterodox economic geography, there is an ongoing debate as to how our economic, social, and environmental needs may be better addressed by organizing the economy differently, through more equit...

On the Significance of Alternative Economic Practices: Reconceptualizing Alterity in Alternative Food Networks

Food lies at the heart of our lives. It is vital for our survival, and links us to our natural and social environment in a unique way. But our food system is unsustainable. How can we ensure future food security without treating people unfairly or leaving them behind? Food systems have complex social, economic and ecological components, and radical transformation is needed to make them sustainable. This report from SAPEA lays out the science on how that transition can happen in an inclusive, just and timely way. he global demand for food will increase in the future. To meet this demand, it is not enough simply to increase productivity in a sustainable way. We also need to change from linear mass consumption to a more circular economy — which will mean changing our norms, habits and routines. The evidence shows that this kind of behaviour change needs to happen collectively, not just individually. So we need joined-up governance at local, national and international levels. Food systems also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. This can be addressed by reducing waste or directing it back into the supply chain. A mix of different measures will be most effective. The evidence shows that taxation is one of the most effective ways to modify behaviour. Accreditation and labelling schemes can also have an impact. Meanwhile, reform of European agriculture and fisheries policies offer great opportunities to develop resilience and sustainability. But there is not yet enough evidence to know for sure exactly what works in practice, so the steps we take should be carefully evaluated, and trade-offs anticipated.

A sustainable food system for the European Union

Sharing food and risk in Berlin's urban food commons

Households and community organizations are involved in the creation, use, care, and management of urban spaces, including through food practices such as planting, foraging, harvesting, weeding and ...

https://tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02723638.2019.1615819

Unbundling property in Boston’s urban food commons

This paper intervenes in critical debates on the role of charitable food aid in meeting the material, social, emotional, and cultural needs of the people who depend on this aid. It offers a detaile...

/pdf/customer-is-king-staging-consumer-culture-in-a-food-aid-4qltnsc971.pdf

“Customer is king”: Staging consumer culture in a food aid organization:

The production of nature has been employed to theorize shifts in nature-society relations that have accompanied historical transformations in production and social reproduction. While Marxist scholars have employed this framework to theorize the nature-society relations that accompany capitalist production, they have paid less attention to those that accompany non-capitalist production. In the meantime critical food studies has grown abundant with more-than-human and more-than-capitalist encounters with nature. This paper attempts to bring these two streams of thought together, in order to explore what they reveal about encounters and entanglements with microbes and non-human labor in the non-capitalist production of yogurt. Drawing on ethnographic research with a yogurt making cooperative in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA, I explore the contribution of microbial labor to the co-production of nature and post-human ethics in a cooperative food enterprise.

Ball jars, bacteria, and labor: CO-producing nature through cooperative enterprise

Reframing both the city as commons and food as commons changes how we think about urban food governance. Food is currently governed as both a privately owned and traded commodity and a public good that should be healthy, safe, and accessible to everyone. This public/private or state/market binary is insufficient for governing the diverse ways in which people provision food; it can also stand in the way of achieving more just and sustainable food systems. The commoning activities of community food initiatives, activists, policymakers, growers, sharers, and eaters – have the potential to create, share, and care for urban food commons as collective public goods. Yet, these commoning activities are rarely examined as urban food governance practices. At the same time, commoners often lack access to the legal and policy tools that govern the urban food commons they are creating and caring for. This chapter explores how community gardens have used technology, mapping, and community organizing to make urban food governance visible and accessible to urban food commoners. In doing so, they have transformed legal and zoning tools around land use, land trusts, and the public trust doctrine into tools for commoning. 

Governing and Commoning Activities around Urban Food Commons

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Oona Morrow

Author Tools

Chat about Author