The Pascoe Moment: Towards a Decolonial Turn in Australian Agriculture

Summary Introduction The aims of this thesis are twofold; firstly, it aims to increase the understanding of the extent to which community gardens enhance social cohesion for those involved; secondly, it aims to gain insight into the importance community gardeners attach to food growing per se, and the extent to which participants perceive community gardens as an alternative to the industrial food system. I define community gardens as a plot of land in an urban area, cultivated either communally or individually by people from the direct neighbourhood or the wider city, or in which urbanites are involved in other ways than gardening, and to which there is a collective element. Over the last years, community gardens have sprung up in several Dutch cities. Although there are various reasons for an increasing interest in community gardens, there are two that I focus on in this thesis in particular. The first is the assumption made that community gardens stimulate social cohesion in inner-city neighbourhoods, to be seen in the light of the 'participatory society'. The second is community gardens' contribution to the availability of locally produced food, in the context of an increased interest in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The Dutch government aims to transform the Dutch welfare state into a participatory society in which citizens take more responsibility for their social and physical environment. This way the government not only hopes to limit public spending, but also wishes to increase social bonding and the self-organisational capacity of society. Community gardens fit the rhetoric around the participatory society, as they are examples of organised residents taking responsibility for their living environment. Moreover, the literature suggests that gardens are physical interventions that may decrease isolation by acting as meeting places. However, both the extent to which community gardens enhance social cohesion and under what conditions they may do so are unclear, especially as gardens come in various designs, shapes and sizes. The popularity of community gardens also seems to be related to an overall increasing societal interest in food, and can be discussed in relation to Alternative Food Networks. AFNs are food systems that are different in some way from the mainstream, and are seen as a reaction to consumer concerns about the conventional food system. They are often considered to be dictated by political motivations and injected with a 'deeper morality'. The category 'AFN' is however a heterogeneous category, as is the conventional food system; neither can be easily defined. The degree to which community gardens can be seen as AFNs is therefore unclear. While they do improve the availability of local food and operate outside of the market economy, we do not know how much and how often people eat from their gardens, nor do we know to what extent they are involved in the gardens in order to provide an alternative to the industrial food system. Hence, there is a lack of knowledge about the sense in which community gardens are alternative alternatives. Research questions The overall research question of this thesis is: What is the significance of community gardening in terms of its intention to promote social cohesion as well as its representation as an alternative food system? This broad question is instructed by the following sub-questions: Why do people get involved in community gardens? What are their motivations?How, to what extent, and under which conditions does community gardening promote the development of social relations between participants? How do participants value these social effects? To what extent do the diets of community garden participants originate from the gardens in which they are involved? What is the importance of food in community gardens?What is the importance of growing or getting access to alternative food for participants of community gardens? Methodology An important theoretical lens in this research is the theory of practice. Practices are defined as concrete human activity and include things, bodily doings and sayings. By performing practices people not only draw upon but also feed into structure. Routinisation – of practices, but also of daily life – therefore plays a central role in practice theory. Practice theory allows for an emphasis on practical reality as well as a study of motivations. This focus on how people manage everyday life, and how gardening fits within that, makes it particularly useful for this thesis. I define social cohesion as the way in which people in a society feel and are connected to each other (De Kam and Needham 2003) and operationalised it by focusing on 'social contacts, social networks, and social capital', one of the elements into which social cohesion is often broken up. This element was operationalised as 1) contacts (the width of social cohesion) and 2) mutual help (the depth of social cohesion). This research has a case study design; I studied four Dutch community gardens over a two-year period of time, and later supplemented these with an additional three cases. As practices consist of both doings and sayings, analysis must be concerned with both practical activity and its representation. I used participant observations to study practical activities, and interviews, questionnaires and document study to examine the representation of these activities. Findings Chapters 3 to 7 form the main part of this thesis. They are papers/book chapters that have been submitted to or are published by scientific journals or books. All of them are based on the field work. In chapter 3 we compare two of the case studies and determine to what extent they can be seen as 'alternative'. We argue that although reflexive motivations are present, most participants are unwilling to frame their involvement as political, and mundane motivations play an important role in people's involvement as well. By using the concept of 'food provisioning practices' we show that participants of community gardens are often required to be actively involved in the production of their food. This means that participants are both producers and consumers: the gardens show a 'sliding scale of producership'. This chapter also shows that political statements are not a perfect predictor of actual involvement in community gardening. This finding was one of the main reasons for starting to use the theory of practice, which is the main topic of the next chapter. In chapter 4 we compare one of my case studies with an urban food growing initiative in New York City. By comparing the internal dynamics of these two cases and their relations with other social practices, we investigate whether different urban food growing initiatives can be seen as variations of one single practice. We also study the question of whether the practice can be seen as emerging. In particular, we take the elements of meaning, competences and material (Shove et al. 2012) into account. We found both similarities and differences between the two cases, with the main difference relating to the meanings practitioners attach to the practice. We conclude, therefore, that it is not fully convincing to see these cases as examples of the same social practice. We also argue that urban food growing may be considered an emerging practice, because it combines various practices, both new and established, under one single heading. In chapter 5 we use the theory of practice to explore how urban food growing is interwoven with everyday life. We compare four community gardens - two allotments and two cases which we define as AFNs. We found that participants of the allotments are involved in the practice of gardening, while members of the AFNs are involved in the practice of shopping. The gardening practice requires structural engagement, turning it into a routine. The produce is a result of that routine and is easily integrated into daily meals. As AFNs are associated with the practice of shopping, they remain in competition with more convenient food acquisition venues. Eating from these gardens is therefore less easily integrated in daily life; every visit to the garden requires a conscious decision. Hence, whether members are primarily involved in shopping or in growing has an impact on the degree to which they eat urban-grown food. This shows that motivations are embedded in the context and routine of everyday life, and 'only go so far'. Chapter 6 concerns the organisational differences between the seven case studies in this thesis and the extent to which these influence the enhancement of social cohesion. We study people's motivations for being involved in the gardens and compare these with the three main organisational differences. This comparison reveals that the gardens can be divided into place-based and interest-based gardens. Place-based gardens are those in which people participate for social reasons – aiming to create social bonds in the neighbourhood. Interest-based gardens are those in which people participate because they enjoy growing vegetables. Nevertheless, all of these gardens contribute to the development of social cohesion. Moreover, while participants who are motivated by the social aspects of gardening show a higher level of appreciation for them, these social aspects also bring added value for those participants who are motivated primarily by growing vegetables. In chapter 7 we present a garden that exemplifies that gardens may encompass not only one, but indeed several communities, and that rapprochement and separation take place simultaneously. While this garden is an important meeting place, thereby contributing to social cohesion, it harbours two distinct communities. These communities assign others to categories ('us' and 'them') on the basis of place of residence, thereby strengthening their own social identities. Ownership over the garden is both an outcome and a tool in that struggle. We define the relationship between these two communities as instrumental-rational – referring to roles rather than individuals - which explains why they do not form a larger unity. Nevertheless, the two communities show the potential to develop into a larger imagined garden-community. Conclusions This thesis shows that the different organisational set-ups of community gardens reflect gardeners' different motivations for being involved in these gardens. The gardens studied in this thesis can be defined as either place-based or interest-based; gardens in the first category are focused on the social benefits of gardening, whereas gardens in the second category are focused on gardening and vegetables. Nevertheless, social effects occur in both types of gardens; in all of the gardens studied, participants meet and get to know others and value these contacts. Based on this finding, I conclude that community gardens do indeed enhance social cohesion. Place-based community gardens specifically have the potential to become important meeting places; they offer the opportunity to work communally towards a common goal, and once established, can develop into neighbourhood spaces to be used for various other shared activities. Most interest-based gardens lack opportunities to develop the social contacts that originated at the garden beyond the borders of the garden. These gardens are often maintained by people who do not live close to the garden or to each other, and those who garden are generally less motivated by social motivations per se. Important to note is that community gardens do not necessarily foster a more inclusive society; they often attract people with relatively similar socio-economic backgrounds and may support not one, but several communities. Most participants from place-based gardens eat from their gardens only occasionally; others never do so. This type of community garden can therefore hardly be seen as a reaction to the industrialised food system, let alone an attempt to create an alternative food system. Nevertheless, certain aspects of these gardens are in line with the alternative rhetoric. By contrast, most gardeners at interest-based gardens eat a substantial amount of food from their gardens, and to some of them the choice to consume this locally-grown food relates to a lifestyle in which environmental considerations play a role. However, this reflexivity is not expressed in political terms and participants do not see themselves as part of a food movement. Participants who buy rather than grow produce showed the greatest tendency to explain their involvement in political terms, but many of them have difficulty including the produce in their diets on a regular basis. I therefore conclude that community gardens cannot be seen as conscious, 'alternative' alternatives to the industrial food system. Nonetheless, the role of food in these gardens is essential, as it is what brings participants together – either because they enjoy gardening or because the activities which are organised there centre around food. Theoretical contributions In this thesis I used and aimed to contribute to the theory of practice. Using participant observations to study what people do in reality was particularly useful. It turned research into an embodied activity, enabling me to truly 'live the practice', and therefore to understand it from the inside. Deconstructing the practice of food provisioning into activities such as buying, growing and cooking was helpful in gaining an understanding of how people manage everyday life, and how food acquisitioning fits into their everyday rhythms. It sheds light on how and to what extent people experience the practice of community gardening as a food acquisitioning practice, and to what degree they relate it to other elements of food provisioning such as cooking and eating. The focus on the separate elements of food provisioning practices helped me realise that acquiring food from community gardens represents a different practice to different people; some are engaged in the practice of growing food, others in the practice of shopping for food. This thesis showed that motivations delineate how the practice 'works out in practice'; the way in which a practice such as community gardening is given shape attracts people with certain motivations, who, by reproducing that practice, increase the attractiveness of the practice for others with similar motivations. This implies that while community gardening appears to be one practice, it should in fact be interpreted as several distinct practices, such as the practice of food growing or the practice of social gathering. Motivations therefore influence a garden's benefits and outcomes. This thesis thus highlights that motivations should not be overlooked when studying practices. Apprehending the motivations of community gardeners is also an important contribution to the literature around AFNs, since it helps us to understand the extent to which urban food production is truly alternative. By studying motivations, this thesis reveals that AFNs do not necessarily represent a deeper morality, or that not all food growing initiatives in the city can be defined as alternative. However, participants of community gardens are often both producers and consumers (there is a 'sliding scale of producership'); the gardens are thus largely independent from the conventional food system. Moreover, for participants who buy produce, the meaning of the gardens often goes beyond an economic logic (there is a 'sliding scale of marketness'). Hence, while the gardens studied in this thesis are no alternative alternatives, most of them can be qualified as 'actually existing alternatives' (after Jehlicka and Smith 2011). This thesis showed that even those gardens in which the commodification of food is being challenged do not necessarily represent a deeper morality, which is contrary to what is argued by Watts et al. (2005). This implies that understanding whether or not initiatives resist incorporation into the food system is insufficient to be able to determine whether or not they can be defined as alternative food networks. However, determining whether or not deeper moral reflection is present is not a satisfactory way of defining food networks as alternative either, as this neglects the fact that motivations do not always overlap with practical reality. This suggests that establishing whether a food network can be regarded as alternative requires studying both motivations and practical reality. The thesis also raises the question to what extent the label AFN is still useful. Since it is unclear what 'alternative' means exactly, it is also unclear whether a given initiative can be considered alternative. Moreover, the world of food seems too complex to be represented by a dichotomy between alternative and conventional food systems; the gardens presented in this thesis are diverse and carry characteristics of both systems. I therefore suggest considering replacing the term AFN with that of civic food networks, as Renting et al. (2012) advocate.

Who Eats, Where, What, and How? COVID-19, Food Security, and Canadian Foodscapes

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of alternative food movements responding to growing dissatisfaction with the global, industrial, and corporate food system. In particular, scholars and activists have called for a re-localization of food systems as a way to foster health, justice, sustainability and other goals. Although a growing scholarship views food initiatives that shorten supply chains, such as farmers markets and community gardens, as forms of resistance against the capitalist pressures that strain the food system, other researchers provide evidence indicating that these have become increasingly popular among affluent and white urban residents. Such contradiction puts into question the claim that local food will foster democracy and justice. This article builds upon recent geographic research on scale and urban governance to explore the growth of local food practices in urban southern California and their role in resisting, challenging and reproducing neoliberal urban agendas. We focus specifically on farmers’ markets, which have grown exponentially. After investigating their geographic distribution in the County of San Diego, we turn our analytical gaze to three markets that uniquely illustrate the ambivalent relationships between neoliberal urbanism and alternative food systems. Conceptualizing the local scale as a strategy, we pay particular attention to the agenda of institutional actors in supporting alternative food initiatives and their role in reshaping cities along the lines of race and class. The research combines quantitative and qualitative data, including interviews of community stakeholders, to map the changing landscape of alternative food practices and the contradictions local actors face in creating a more just city.

Abstract: This article explores the ways that farmworkers, many of whom come from a culture deeply rooted in food and agricultural practices, cope with food insecurity by utilizing their agricultural and nutritional knowledge. Food assistance providers in the USA often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge about healthy eating, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color don't know “good” food. I argue that in contrast to food banks and low-income nutrition programs, home and community gardens provide spaces for retaining and highlighting agricultural, cultural, and dietary practices and knowledge. This paper investigates the linkages between workers' place in the food system as both producers and consumers, simultaneously exploited for their labor, and creating coping strategies utilizing agrarian and culinary knowledge. I argue that food security and healthy eating, rather than being a matter of consumers making healthy “choices”, is a matter of class-based and racial differences in the food system.

Food systems are influenced by discourses held by individuals and institutions. Market oriented food security and food sovereignty are frequently presented as co-existing discourses in food systems. This paper documents how smallholder farmers embody market food security and food sovereignty discourses in their agricultural practices, and how these discourses prevent new forms of agriculture from developing given socio-political and institutional rigidity. A human ecology systems framework is used to analyse semi-structured interviews with 39 coconut producing smallholder farmers from Leyte, The Philippines. The results document how smallholders perceive market food security discourse as the main way out of food insecure situations, and thus continue to seek institutional support for maintaining a coconut based agricultural system. Farmers also perceive elements of the food sovereignty discourse, notably decision-making agency and agricultural diversification, as parallel strategies to improve their food security. The ongoing support for coconut production and inequitable access to training and knowledge in rural systems traps farmers into an agricultural system influenced by a long history of colonial institutions and social structures. The paper demonstrates that farmers are aware of the interventions required to diversify food systems towards higher value commodities, yet sovereignty is unlikely to be enabled due to maladaptive institutions and the associated access to new training and extension opportunities. The use of human ecology advances food scholarship through embedding a systems analysis into qualitative studies to reveal the influence of food discourses on food systems’ behaviour and outcomes.

We explore and analyse caring regenerative agricultural practices using care ethics as a valuable tool. We define care as the ability to being responsible for, attending to, being concerned for or about, and paying watchful attention to the object of care. Following Tronto, caring includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it, looking for the needs not only of ourselves but also of our environment. We focus on potentially promising caring practices like community supported agriculture, urban agriculture, care and social farming, and organic and biological-dynamic farming. The empirical cases in the Netherlands and Italy described are guided by social justice, cooperation, respectful relationships, inclusion, and education. We describe how care for the community, vulnerable citizens, the environment, farm animals, and food is practised. Challenges farmers are facing are related to access to land, budgets, and dealing with the conventional system. An important question is to what extent these caring practices can influence the dominant agricultural and food systems and help to stimulate the transition towards regenerative agricultural and food practices.

Born out of resistance to a faceless and essentially placeless food system, the alternative food movement has acquired a global reach. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the practice and politics of local food encompass everything from backyard (and front-yard) gardens, to national appellations, to calls for indigenous sovereignty. Organics are standardized, mass produced, and traded nationally and internationally. Fair trade products are familiar grocery store fare, their value represented by logos and their processes often dominated by multinationals. There are those who see these changes as evidence of the movement’s success. What was once an alternative vision has now moved into the mainstream, into popular (and global) awareness, bringing with it many enlightened values – care, ecology, sustainability, health, equity. There are others who see these changes as yet another demonstration of the power of market (or corporate) capitalism, its ability to commodify anything, underwrite neo-liberal policies, and reinforce the structures that gave rise to the original resistance. Frequently, opposing arguments (among practitioners, activists and academics) are as polarized and impassioned as the initial rhetoric that advocated ‘a turn toward the local’ and away from an industrial food system. But, there are problems with either/or thinking, with seeing the world only in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Not the least of these is the question of who gets to say – act on and enforce – what is and isn’t possible; who gets to decide what does or doesn’t matter. Stated a bit differently, such essentialist thinking can lead to a loss of critical insight into the behavioural and thought processes that play out in lived contexts as well as across the many levels of what hopefully will become a generative and socially just food system. Given the severity of the problems we face on this once blue-green planet and the essential nature of food to our survival, we really need to stop cleaving to simplistic images and attacking convenient straw men. We need to expand our thinking and our tool chest in ways that permit, no, I really mean continually enable, public discourse and engaged citizenship. We also need to learn how to listen. Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics is a bold step in this direction. From the outset, authors Goodman, DuPuis and Goodman explain that they want to steer a course between arguments of food system conventionalization and accounts celebrating the tenacity and virtuosity of the alternative vision. As they put it:

<p>Multilateral organizations and research institutions are increasingly calling for transformation of the industrial food system due to its negative health impacts, its contribution to climate change and the fact that the system fails to provide adequate food to more than 800 million people. A common rationale given for food system change is the so-called obesity crisis. This commentary draws from critical weight studies and ecological public health discourses to argue that it is unnecessary to connect the crises of the food system with a rise in overweight and obesity. This approach contributes to fat stigma and further marginalizes a group of people who already suffer from stigmatization. A more inclusive rationale for food system change can be found in a concept articulated by the Canadian Public Health Association termed the ‘ecological determinants of health.’ These are features of the biosphere such as water, air, food and soil systems that support life on earth and human health. The current industrial food system threatens the ecological determinants of health by contributing substantially to climate change and environmental degradation. A shift in discourse in food policy and practice to focus on the ecological health impacts of the food system is more inclusive and promotes the well-being of all. </p>

<p>Multilateral organizations and research institutions are increasingly calling for transformation of the industrial food system due to its negative health impacts, its contribution to climate change and the fact that the system fails to provide adequate food to more than 800 million people. A common rationale given for food system change is the so-called obesity crisis. This commentary draws from critical weight studies and ecological public health discourses to argue that it is unnecessary to connect the crises of the food system with a rise in overweight and obesity. This approach contributes to fat stigma and further marginalizes a group of people who already suffer from stigmatization. A more inclusive rationale for food system change can be found in a concept articulated by the Canadian Public Health Association termed the ‘ecological determinants of health.’ These are features of the biosphere such as water, air, food and soil systems that support life on earth and human health. The current industrial food system threatens the ecological determinants of health by contributing substantially to climate change and environmental degradation. A shift in discourse in food policy and practice to focus on the ecological health impacts of the food system is more inclusive and promotes the well-being of all. </p>

Marketing ‘sustainable and humane’ super-premium dog kibble emerged alongside alternative food movements interested in sustainability, transparency, and welfare. To demonstrate the trends and implications of the alternative pet food movement, I selected Open Farm for a case study. Open Farm was the first certified humane and sustainable dog food on the market with a ‘transparent’ supply chain. Through interviews, autoethnography, and semiotic analysis, I demonstrate that certification represents a series of nested relationships in the dog food supply chain, from the dog through to the nonhumans used as ingredients. With the transparency tool, these relationships are commodified to increase the exchange value of the product. The added premium is meant to signal an intimate and improved food system, but I argue that the certification and representation of these specific relationships obscures the industrial scale of alternative pet foods and the consequential impact for humans and nonhumans within food systems. This research contributes to food and animal geographies by applying alternative food literature to the alternative pet food industry, and by researching a novel intersection in pet-farmed animal-human relationships: the pet store.

An estimated 80% of the global population, mostly poor and vulnerable farmers, are at risk of crop failure and hunger due to climate change. Food systems are the networks for organizing food production and distribution that make meals possible at the level of the consumer, however, the networks are varied. Agricultural practices are farming methods that are used to facilitate agriculture. An economic and social condition of ready access by all household members to nutritionally adequate and safe food will ensure food security. The intricate and interconnected relationship between food systems, food security, and agricultural practices amid climate change involves significant impacts on productivity, crop yields, and food resource availability, necessitating resilient and adaptable food systems to address challenges posed by climate-induced variations and ensuring overall sustainability. The study aims to assess the relationships between agricultural practices and food systems and their implication for food security in the changing climate in the three climatic zones of Gasa, Wangdue, and Punakha. Agricultural practices in Gasa, Punakha, and Wangdue districts (Dzongkhag) were compared and relationships were drawn. The sample for the study was 360 households stratified into three climatic zones (120 households in each zone), in five sub-districts (Gewog) having 12 villages (Chiwog) taking 30 randomly selected households from every village. Household-level data was collected using the survey method by administering the pretested semi-structured questionnaire. Agriculture productivity data and climate data for the last 23 years were gathered from the National Statistical Bureau (NSB) and the National Centre for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM) respectively. Food systems are fragile and present agricultural practices significantly impact food security. A systematic land leasing programme (SLLP), climate-smart agriculture mass land management for mechanized farming are recommendations from this study.

Multilateral organizations and research institutions are increasingly calling for transformation of the industrial food system due to its negative health impacts, its contribution to climate change and the fact that the system fails to provide adequate food to more than 800 million people. A foremost rationale given for food system change is the so-called obesity crisis. This commentary draws from critical weight studies and ecological public health discourses to argue that it is unnecessary to connect the crises of the food system with a rise in overweight and obesity. This approach contributes to fat stigma and further marginalizes a group of people who already suffer from stigmatization. A more inclusive rationale for food system change can be found in a concept articulated by the Canadian Public Health Association termed the ‘ecological determinants of health.’ These are features of the biosphere such as water, air, food and soil systems that support life on earth and human health. The current industrial food system threatens the ecological determinants of health by contributing substantially to climate change and environmental degradation. A shift in discourse in food policy and practice to focus on the ecological health impacts of the food system is more inclusive and promotes the well-being of all.

The concept of the moral economy directs attention to the moral and ethical frameworks through which everyday decisions are framed and enacted. This chapter shows that by exposing the very real differences in the priorities and actions of EarthShare members, people can escape imaginings of local food systems as perfect or entirely free from ambiguity or conflict but still see them as sites of political potential. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and locating CSA within a broader literature on local food, moral economies and ethics of care. CSAs have been heralded as offering opportunities to strengthen place-based community relationships between food growers and eaters. Community Supported Agriculture has been identified specifically as a form of food production/consumption that can be characterised as caring practice. EarthShare is a not-for-profit co-operative organisation which was founded in 1994 in Forres near Inverness, Scotland. It is the longest running CSA in Britain.

Media interest in food has intensified in recent years, leading to a contemporary food landscape where 'alternative' food practices are increasingly visible. Concerns that were once exclusively the domain of activist movements motivated by environmental, animal rights, health and anti-corporate agendas are now central to primetime television cooking shows, mobile apps and social media. This book is the first to explore the impact of popular media and culture on contemporary food politics. Through examination of a range of media and cultural texts, including news, digital media, advertising and food labelling, it brings together leading and emerging scholars in food studies, media and communications, sociology, law, policy studies, business, and geography. The book explores the practices of alternative food movements, the marketing techniques of conventional and alternative food producers, and the relationships between food industries, media, and the public. Covering topics ranging from agtech start-ups and social justice projects, to new ways of mediating food waste, celebrity, and 'ethical' foods, Alternative Food Politics reveals the importance of media as a driver of food system transformation. This is a pivotal time for media and food industries, and this book is essential reading for scholars and students seeking to better understand the futures, possibilities and limits of food politics today.

In recent years, scholars have turned their attention toward alternative food systems and diverse forms of food production, distribution, and consumption, often in response to the unsustainable practices of the dominant global food system. This mainstream food system, which governs food production and distribution on a massive scale, is widely recognized as environmentally and socially unsustainable. It is built upon capitalist structures entrenched in racism, colonialism, and imperialism, perpetuating ecological degradation, labor exploitation, and social inequalities. These impacts are far-reaching, contributing to environmental depletion, exploitation of workers and their communities, further marginalization of vulnerable populations, and exacerbation of global disparities in food access and security—issues central to rising global inequality. It is essential, however, not to position these “alternative” food systems solely as responses to the capitalist model. Rather than establishing a dichotomy of mainstream versus alternative, we can draw from J.K. Gibson-Graham’s concept of “diverse economies,” which moves beyond this binary (J. K. Gibson-Graham and K. Dombroski, eds. The Handbook of Diverse Economies. Cheltenham, UK: Edgar Elgar, 2020). This approach recognizes that alternative methods of organizing food production, distribution, and consumption are not secondary or peripheral to the dominant model; instead, they represent legitimate and transformative possibilities. These alternatives challenge the view that the capitalist food system is the central or most important model, highlighting instead a diversity of practices that are integral to reimagining sustainable food futures. Across the globe, farmers and food workers, grassroots food movements, community-led initiatives, and food justice organizations are promoting diverse practices and visions grounded in sustainability, social and ecological justice, and commitments to decolonial struggle and racial and gender equity. These groups actively resist the destructive tendencies of industrial food systems, proposing pathways to food systems that are more just, resilient, and attuned to the needs of people and the planet. To understand the depth and scope of these alternative food practices, it is essential to engage with scholarly research from a variety of fields, including political economy of food system transitions, agroecology and sustainable food systems, and labor and peasant studies. Scholars in these fields document a range of efforts that push against the status quo, demonstrating the potential of agroecological systems, local food networks, food cooperatives and community-supported agriculture. These approaches advocate for transforming food systems, restoring degraded ecosystems, and ensuring fair and equitable access to food. It is worth noting that the vast scope and diversity of scholarship on alternative food systems cannot be fully captured in this article. This work offers a starting point for those interested in exploring alternative food systems and practices but does not encompass the full breadth of the field. Readers are encouraged to consider this article as an introduction, providing foundational insights into the varied, community-driven practices of food production, distribution, and consumption across diverse regions and local realities.