Abstract
The industrial food system, which is becoming highly dominant, is increasingly failing to fulfil its basic functions: producing food in a sustainable manner, feeding people adequately and avoiding hunger. As hunger remains steadily high and obesity numbers do not cease to grow in a world that is overconsuming natural resources far beyond planetary boundaries, producing food unsustainably and wasting one third of it, there is a need to bring unconventional perspectives into the debate on possible solutions for a transition towards a fairer and sustainable food system. The dominant paradigms that have sustained human development and economic growth during the twentieth century (productivism, consumerism, individualism, survival of the fittest, the tragedy of the commons and endless growth) do not provide viable solutions to the multiple crises and the current challenges. Considering food as a commons can be an alternative paradigm worth exploring. The food commons, anchored to the adequate valuation of the multiple dimensions of food to humans, can provide a discourse of convergence that embraces contemporary (i.e. urban innovations) and customary (i.e. indigenous practices) food activities, being at the same time the aspirational vision that coalesce the different collective actions for food into a networked web that relentlessly grows to challenge and render obsolete the industrial food system that only values the economic dimension of food as a commodity, keeps food producers hungry and makes food consumers obese.
Highlights
If food is a vital resource for every human being and much of it is produced by nature, why cannot food be treated as a commons to be guaranteed to every person every day?Photograph: Finabocci Blue, Flickr Creative Commons ‘The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones’ John Maynard Keynes, British economistWhat is the common bond between Caleb Harper, a bright MIT scientist and director of the cuttingedge Open Agriculture Initiative [1], and Daniel Pascual, leader of a peasant and indigenous movement (Comité de Unidad Campesina) that fights against the privatisation of local seeds and agricultural mono-cropping in Guatemala [2]? The answer is food, more precisely openknowledge commons-based food systems
In this paper I present the idea of “food as a commons” being a useful paradigm for food systems that are fair-to-the-people and sustainable-to-the-planet, and I contrast it with other paradigms that are trying to become hegemonic in the transition of the global food system. This customary but at the same time innovative narrative opposes the food-as-a-commodity narrative by valuing the multiple dimensions of food and not just its price in the market. This approach emphasizes the importance of food to every human, gives relevance to collective, cooperative, fair and sustainable aspects of food production and consumption and, I argue, can provide a common ground for the convergence of contemporary alternative food initiatives --mostly emerging in urban areas and led by consumers-- and customary commons-based sustainable practices that have been resisting industrial modernization --mostly rooted in rural and indigenous communities
Just a clarification: when I say the food system is broken, I refer to the industrial food system dominated by transnational corporations that control all aspects of food, shrinking the commercial agro-biodiversity, driving prices down at farm gates and convincing consumers to buy profitable but unhealthy ultra-processed foods [11]
Summary
The industrial food system, which has become dominant, is increasingly failing to fulfil its basic functions: producing food in a sustainable manner, feeding people adequately and avoiding hunger. The dominant paradigms that have sustained human development and economic growth during the twentieth century (productivism, consumerism, individualism, survival of the fittest, the tragedy of the commons and endless growth) do not provide viable solutions to the multiple crises and the current challenges. The food commons, anchored to an adequate valuation of the multiple dimensions of food to humans, can provide a discourse of convergence that embraces contemporary (e.g. urban innovations) and customary (e.g. indigenous practices) food activities. The food commons represents the aspirational vision that coalesce the different collective actions for food into a networked web that inexorably grows to challenge and render obsolete the industrial food system
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