Alternative Food Initiatives Research Articles

Fifty years of Teikei: the evolution of the movement’s ten principles and its impact on alternative food initiatives in Japan

IntroductionJapan’s teikei movement, recognized as a source of inspiration for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Western countries, is now entering its fifth decade. Built upon trust and shared values, teikei has continued to rely on mutually supportive relationships between organic producers and consumers. The movement’s commitments were originally articulated through the ten principles of teikei, which offer a roadmap to create food systems based on solidarity principles going beyond market transactions. Despite a decline in numbers, teikei groups continue to operate in the midst of societal shifts that are altering food practices and consumption patterns. These changes have had an impact on the implementation of the ten principles and on the power dynamics between producers and consumers.MethodsThis research investigates how such shifts have affected the development of alternative food systems in Japan, the evolution of teikei as a social movement, and the tensions that arise from contrasting notions of agri-food system alterity rooted in decommodified relationships versus market-based transactions. We employ the ten principles as a framework to investigate the transformations of some representative teikei groups over time, and identify three types of shifts: relational, operational, and ideological. These shifts show how different teikei actors have been engaging in realizing the vision of building sustainable agri-food systems through alternative market relations.ResultsThe shifts also underscore the fluid and situated nature of agri-food system alterity within historical, geographical, and cultural relational spaces. The current variations of teikei configurations and the progressive diversification of approaches to address the challenges of upholding the original principles demonstrate the movement’s adaptability over time. However, they also demonstrate the necessity to strike a compromise between conflicting needs.DiscussionThe development of the teikei movement is not only important from an historical and geographically-situated perspective, but also as a dynamic and evolving experiment in the potential and challenges of active food citizenship. The democratic decision-making processes embedded within teikei principles and practices offer a valuable model for understanding how individuals enact their food citizenship and contribute to ongoing transformation of the agri-food system. Simultaneously, these shifts also serve as a warning against how democratic principles can be eroded by conventionalization and neoliberalization, and about the assumptions that arise during the process of building alternative agri-food systems, such as gendered labor.

‘Good Work’ and Alternative Food Initiatives: A Workplace Spirituality Perspective

AbstractThis paper explores ‘good work’ as purpose‐driven organizing for positive social impact in the case of alternative food initiatives (AFIs). AFIs accommodate alternative ways of food production and consumption that tackle the world's pressing sustainability challenges. Considering the centrality of workers’ motives, beliefs for generating/sustaining alternative and spiritual work/organizational contexts, this study bridges the knowledge on AFIs and workplace spirituality (WS) through the individual‐level perspective. The paper explores AFI members’ workplace motives and experiences to understand how these individuals make sense of their work, and to draw insights on what ‘good work’ entails in this organizational realm. Data were collected via a two‐phase study from a total of 28 members of organizations based in Glasgow, Scotland. The results show that AFI members’ work drivers include spiritual (as other‐regarding) motives and that the perceived value of their work is in contributing to the welfare of others through a workspace of belonging, freedom and care. The findings suggest that a WS perspective can help in understanding how AFI members approach their work to create (greater) good. Drawing on the lessons from the case analysis within the AFI context, this paper highlights the relevance of WS for repurposing work and organizing.

Intersectional coalitions towards a just agroecology: weaving mutual aid and agroecology in Barcelona and Seville

Although in theory social justice is considered as a core dimension of agroecological transitions, alternative food initiatives related to agroecology have been criticised for their exclusionary practices based on important social and economic biases. In this article, we adopt the lens of political intersectionality to study two cases of Agroecology-oriented Food Redistribution Coalitions in Spain that emerged to address the rising levels of food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the coalitions represent a convergence of diverse social struggles, placing intersectionally marginalized groups at the centre of their activism. However, we also uncover that coalition members participate in different ways depending on their socioeconomic profiles, which could perpetuate inequalities in organizational practices. One major point of tension is the need to balance the goal of providing access to healthy and sustainable food with the affordability of such produce. This leads to the adoption of hybrid food networks that include conventionally produced food. We also highlight that while the predominance of women in these coalitions reflects the unequal distribution of food-related care work in society, the collectivization of such work through AFRCs practices points to a transformation of gender relations. Territorialized alliances between actors from urban and rural settings and between urban centers and peripheries are established through the coalitions. However, such networks fall short on involving large numbers of agroecology-oriented initiatives and providing direct encounters between consumers and producers. Overall, the article underscores the importance of addressing intersecting inequalities within alternative food initiatives and argues that intersectional coalitions offer an intriguing example of how to promote such understanding and pave the way towards (more) just agroecological transitions.

Socially embedding the food system: the role of alternative food initiatives to build sustainable food models

ABSTRACT The current industrial food system is failing in all aspects of sustainability. Alternative Food Initiatives (AFIs) and the industrial green food market (iGFM) both claim that they are building sustainable food models. This study looks into common strengths and challenges of AFIs in relation to iGFM. The research conducted a comparative case study of AFIs in the city of Sant Cugat del Vallès in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain) through a combination of qualitative methods. The results show that strengths reside in their socially embedding characteristics with decommodification and commoning aspects, whereas the biggest challenge for AFIs is to manage being competitive while keeping their principles. The paper concludes that AFIs contribute more to building sustainable food models than the iGFM, as the latter only partially green the system for profit. For AFI models to prevail, public sector support to shift the power imbalance of the market is significant. Key Policy Highlights: Alternative food initiatives (AFIs) are socially embedding sustainable food models. AFIs need help to compete within the current industrial green food market. The city government can play a counterbalancing role in favour of AFIs. Examples of city government measures include the cession of public space or providing farmland to AFIs.

Social movements as agents of change: Fighting intersectional food inequalities, building food as webs of life

What does the diversity of social movements and food initiatives tell us about processes of social change? I argue that they offer a productive analytical lens to observe social change because they identify injustices and dynamics of inequalities in the food system and are actively engaged in transforming these. Alternative local food initiatives react to the environmental impacts of globalized food relations; food sovereignty movements highlight class inequalities and power asymmetries in the food system that affect people’s rights to culturally appropriate foodways; food justice movements denounce institutional racism; feminist movements fight persistent gender inequalities from food production to consumption; vegan movements defend animal rights. These are often mapped onto different world regions, with food justice movements more present in the US; food sovereignty movements louder in the Global South; feminist food movements more active in Latin America; and local food movements commonly in the Global North. This article brings together diverse strands of activism and research on social inequalities related to food under the conceptual umbrella of food inequalities. In addition to concept building, it contributes to a sociology of food studies by mapping the geopolitics of knowledge about social change behind the growing mobilization around food issues.

Committing to change? A case study on volunteer engagement at a New Zealand urban farm

Urban agriculture is a promising avenue for food system change; however, projects often struggle with a lack of volunteers—limiting both their immediate goals and the broader movement-building to which many alternative food initiatives (AFIs) aspire. In this paper, I adopt a case study approach focusing on Farm X, an urban farm with a strong volunteer culture located in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Drawing on a significant period of researcher participation and 11 in-depth interviews with volunteers and project coordinators, I first contextualise and explore the history of Farm X, then offer themes to describe key factors which help or hinder their volunteer engagement. Engagement is helped by strong leadership, learning by doing, socialising around plants, and contributing to a movement. Conversely, engagement is hindered by time scarcity, economic hurdles, and struggles over direction. Drawing on McClintock’s (Local Environ 19(2): 147–171, 2014, 10.1080/13549839.2012.752797) insights into the hybrid and contradictory nature of urban agriculture as a tool for social change, the paper continues with a discussion of two important trade-offs involved in both farm management and the movement building promoted by Farm X: focused leadership verses volunteer agency; and asking more verses less of volunteers. Finally, I suggest several avenues that may be useful for other urban agriculture projects interested in movement building.

Ingredients for displacement: an exploration of the role of street food advocates in San Francisco’s changing environment

ABSTRACT This paper draws on a case study of street food vending in San Francisco, California, to explore how the actions of street food advocates – who first helped vendors gain rights and legitimacy – also advanced their displacement. The ways in which street food vending has been losing space, both culturally and materially, are analyzed in three directions: (1) claiming rights and creating places; (2) falling prey to urban boosters; (3) shifting cultural capital and geographies. The study calls for an updated understanding of how street food vending operates in fast-changing environments and addresses how oppositional and alternative food initiatives may serve as part of a wider neoliberal strategy. In San Francisco, the ways in which advocates and operators spatialize street food have provided an unusual frontier space for exclusion and displacement. The paper thus contributes to emergent research on local food initiatives and their survivability practices in gentrifying North American cities.

Re-centering labour in local food: local washing and the growing reliance on permanently temporary migrant farmworkers in Nova Scotia

This article explores the labour behind local food in the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers, migrant farmworkers, and farmers’ market consumers in the province, we suggest that the celebration of local food by government and industry is a form of “local washing.” Local washing hides key aspects of the social relations of production: in this case, it hides insufficient financial and policy supports for Nova Scotian farms and the increased reliance on migrant farmworkers via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our research found that a growing reliance on migrant farmworkers was not just the case for larger, industrial farms, but also for smaller farms participating in local and alternative food initiatives, like farmers’ markets and fresh produce subscription boxes. Additionally, our surveys show that while farmers’ market shoppers expressed an interest in supporting local foods, they reported knowing little about farm workers or working conditions. Our paper contributes to the literature on local and alternative food initiatives by connecting the relations of production to consumption. Rather than focusing solely on the nature of the relationships between farmers and consumers and the values embodied in direct agricultural markets, this research explores the central role of permanently temporary migrant workers in local agriculture.

Food charter as a critical food guidance tool in a rural area

Food charters have been one means of mobilizing critical food guidance relevant discussions among stakeholders and policy makers in rural areas. As actors in the rural food system of Grey and Bruce counties, we describe the counties' charter development led by the Food Security Action Group. We deepen discussion of each of the six domains (health, social justice, culture, education, sustainable economic development, and environment) through examples of alternative food initiatives and practices, which both informed the charter and were supported by it. We emphasize the cross-domain synergies realized as examples of critical food guidance, while cautioning about the constraints facing county efforts in the face of ongoing changes at provincial to global levels that are not consonant with the Food Charter vision.

Social movements as agents of change: Fighting intersectional food inequalities, building food as webs of life

What does the diversity of social movements and food initiatives tell us about processes of social change? I argue that they offer a productive analytical lens to observe social change because they identify injustices and dynamics of inequalities in the food system and are actively engaged in transforming these. Alternative local food initiatives react to the environmental impacts of globalized food relations; food sovereignty movements highlight class inequalities and power asymmetries in the food system that affect people’s rights to culturally appropriate foodways; food justice movements denounce institutional racism; feminist movements fight persistent gender inequalities from food production to consumption; vegan movements defend animal rights. These are often mapped onto different world regions, with food justice movements more present in the US; food sovereignty movements louder in the Global South; feminist food movements more active in Latin America; and local food movements commonly in the Global North. This article brings together diverse strands of activism and research on social inequalities related to food under the conceptual umbrella of food inequalities. In addition to concept building, it contributes to a sociology of food studies by mapping the geopolitics of knowledge about social change behind the growing mobilization around food issues.

The history of the land: a relational and place-based approach for teaching (more) radical food geographies

The History of the Land (Brown et al., 2019) is a workshop, field trip, and pedagogical lens developed at Grow Dat Youth Farm in New Orleans and led with teenagers and adults. Using popular education methods, the lesson explores the relational biography of the land on which the farm currently resides. We argue that the history of the land is essential to understanding the spatial and social configurations of contemporary foodscapes; however, critical land histories are not engaged with in many alternative food initiatives and food justice organizations. We offer the adaptable pedagogical apparatus of the History of the Land as a tool for others to further the generative convergence of food geographies and anti-oppression work. In addition to discussing the workshop at Grow Dat, we reflect upon our own learning and healing from participating in an ongoing series of history of the land field trips to rural Mississippi where several of us hold deep personal ties to the land. We coauthors are a collective of farmers, food activists, educators, and academics. Across differences of gender, race, sexuality, class, location, and history, learning about the land together has brought us into intimate conversation about loss, memory, narration, transformation, and how we imagine alternate, liberatory futures.

Varieties of green: On aesthetic contestations over urban sustainability pathways in a Copenhagen community garden

Alongside kindred civic-driven and place-based urban greening initiatives, studies document an upsurge over the last decade in urban gardening and alternative food initiatives across a range of Euro-American settings. Meanwhile, historical and cultural inquiries into urban design, planning and politics suggest that the place and role of ‘nature’ in the city is now undergoing significant shifts. In this article, we deploy a case study of a civic-driven permaculture garden in Copenhagen in order to suggest a novel analytical grid of the imaginative and material domain of public aesthetic norms shaping current-day tensions over interventions in and valuations of the fabric of multiform green-spaces in the city. Reading across existing literatures, we model this domain along two structuring axes – of ‘orderliness’ versus ‘wildness’ and ‘pastoral nature’ versus city-nature ‘imbrication’ – and illustrate the usefulness of the resulting grid for making sense of internal debates and external criticisms in the Copenhagen permaculture gardening case. By assisting us in explaining how and why this garden struggled to carve out a legitimate space in a city otherwise committed to urban nature, we argue that attention to variable urban-green aesthetic commitments helps recast questions of urban sustainability politics in important ways.

Collective Agency in the Making: How Social Innovations in the Food System Practice Democracy beyond Consumption

As the deleterious impacts of conventional food systems on areas including public health, environmental sustainability, and farmers’ livelihoods are progressively unveiled, citizen-led initiatives have ubiquitously sprouted, collectively building what is now known as the alternative food system. Despite recent academic interest in the role of alternative food initiatives in countering a narrow view of democracy based on market-based purchasing power, little attention has been paid to a specific democratizing feature that allows for collective expression beyond consumption, that of collective agency. This article argues that it is precisely by focusing on collective agency as the driving force for food systems’ change that we can recognize the diverse contributions of social innovations to the democratization of food systems. By engaging with the reasonings of consumer sovereignty proponents, building on academic literature on the concept of collective agency, and drawing from empirical work with over a hundred local social innovations of the global North, this article proposes an agency typology that allows for parsing out its different dimensions, highlighting social innovations’ key role as agency enablers and agents of change in the democratization of food systems.

In-between Anxiety and Hope: Trusting an Alternative Among ‘Alternatives’ in the (Post) Organic Food Market in Turkey

Abstract. This paper argues that in Turkey there are plural alternatives within the alternative food channels and even in the recently emerging post-organic movement, by offering comparative cases from largely ignored international literature on alternative food initiatives. It examines a growing consumer food cooperative, a popular natural food store, and a well-known organic farmers’ market in Turkey, which together are considered the most prominent alternative food channels in ?stanbul by varying consumer segments. It interrogates the hows and whys of what becomes a reliable alternative and for whom in this recent complexity. This research is based on thirty in-depth interviews with the consumers and producers of ?pek Han?m’s Farm, Ferikoy Organic Farmers’ Market, and Kad?koy Cooperative. It reveals that food anxiety, trust, and hope appear as crucial dynamics of alternative relationships in the organic and post-organic food market in Turkey. These affects are visibly influenced by the social, cultural, and economic capital of consumers and interlinked with the meanings consumers attribute to their food practices. These meanings are dynamically (re)constructed through certain trust-building strategies and discourses of the ‘alternative’ which are presented by various actors (producers, marketers, cooperatives) and the ways consumers negotiate them. This study also suggests that consumers’ varying forms of food anxiety and relationship to each alternative have different repercussions in terms of social and political visions about alternative food initiatives. The major difference is derived from whether they prioritize their bodily health with the mentality of ‘neoliberal governmentality’ or share some political ambitions and hope for transforming collectively the current agri-food system.

Pursuing dignified food security through novel collaborative governance initiatives: Perceived benefits, tensions and lessons learned

Food security governance is broadening and diversifying, resulting in organizations coming together in novel collaborative actions, despite little history of working together. Alternative food initiatives coexist alongside traditional charitable, emergency-based approaches. Tensions can arise between approaches and collaborating organizations due to differences in philosophy, priorities, constraints and practices. There is limited knowledge on how converging interests are interacting with one another within shifting landscapes of collaborative intervention, or the experiences of governance stakeholders involved. Through in-depth interviews this case-study examines the experiences of diverse stakeholders involved in a novel food security coalition and their perceived benefits, challenges, tensions and lessons learned. Benefits included greater communication, information sharing, understanding of diverse needs, more frequent and customized referrals, and the development of a community food centre that has increased access to affordable fresh produce in inclusive manners. Simultaneously changes in governance have produced turf wars and competition over resources. We reveal the importance of sensitivity when advocating for food system reforms to avoid ‘villainizing’ organizations that have been supporting those in need through charitable means, or further marginalizing populations who may perceive less access barriers when using food banks. Our findings suggest perceptions on what it means to provide ‘dignified’ food access vary according to unique needs and lived experiences, and one delivery model is likely inappropriate. Food banks and alternative food initiatives serve unique roles and efforts should be made to ensure they can co-exist and that those with lived experience play an influential role in changing food governance systems.

Infrastructures of taste: Rethinking local food histories in Lithuania

Lithuania hosts a diversity of places that offer consumers a taste of local food, which appear to mirror the recent popularity of local and alternative food initiatives globally. In this paper we show that the proliferation of local foods in the region is not a novel phenomenon, nor is it solely a manifestation of taste preferences or identities associated with food. Drawing on the growing scholarly work on the role of infrastructures in mediating social, economic and political relations, we conceptualize the taste for local food as embedded in broader networks and reproduced through material facilities. To advance this argument, our empirical analysis shows how the infrastructure for local food has been fostered, transformed, threatened, but never eradicated during: the Soviet policies that supported subsidiary agriculture and market infrastructures; neoliberal market reforms in the 1990s that made public markets into mainstays for farmers and consumers; and EU accession that brought more stringent regulations and subsidies. Our research demonstrates that today's taste for local foods in Lithuania is neither a local nor global phenomenon, but an outcome of historical processes that foregrounded the formation of smallholder agriculture, direct sales, and self-provisioning practices in the region. More broadly, our research shows how local food persists as an integral part of a broader agro-food infrastructure.

Revealing the hidden geography of alternative food networks: The travelling concept of farmers’ markets

Alternative food networks in post-socialist settings are often studied using concepts and analytical tools developed in the Anglo-American context. As a result, the findings tend to replicate and confirm rather than challenge and extend the extant knowledge and theorisations. Based on a recent study of farmers’ markets in the Czech capital Prague, the paper claims that viewing these ‘from the periphery’ produces novel insights complementing those garnered in researching them in the West. In the context of earlier alternative food initiatives, the boom of farmers’ markets, which Prague experienced in the early 2010s, was unparalleled. In less than 24 months, 41 farmers’ markets were established in and around the city. Focusing methodologically on the discourse of the organisers of farmers’ markets and theoretically on the complex hidden geography underlying the farmers’ markets’ boom, we are able to unpick the intricacy and paradoxical nature inherent in this development. While acknowledging the farmers’ markets embeddedness in the local context, we argue that a more comprehensive understanding of farmers’ markets requires engagement with a flow of ideas and know-how transcending the locality. The ensuing type of farmers’ markets is a result of interactions among different travelling concepts as well as of their encounter with the specificities of the local post-socialist context. We argue that the fact that these concepts were not necessarily concordant with each other and also insufficiently adapted to the local context had a profound effect on Prague farmers’ markets’ boom.

From Initiative to Movement: The Growth and Evolution of Local Food Networks in Bandung, Indonesia

Within the last three years, the growth of alternative and local food initiatives in Bandung, a medium-sized city in Indonesia, has been extraordinary. Not only has the number grown rapidly, but the types and modes of entities have also evolved from merely initiatives, to collaborative networks and movements, to the extent that this movement in unity may have the capacity to influence the way in which the local and national governments govern the agricultural sector. Through in-depth interviews, participant observation and a series of group discussions, this paper documents the seemingly smooth transition of agri-environmental practices that are engineered by the community sector in Bandung. The research thus leads to a conclusion that we need to look beyond individual actions in seeing social transformation, and through a coordinated collective movement, there is a promising impact on the sustainability of the local food system in Bandung and elsewhere. Practitioners and activists within the local food networks need to take a precaution in safeguarding this rapid interest in the movement.

Scaling-up short food supply chains? A survey study on the drivers behind the intention of food producers

The growing interest for alternative food initiatives has ignited the debate on scaling-up such initiatives. Empirical studies on such initiatives tend to ignore the underlying psychological constructs that affect farmers’ intentions and decisions. This paper investigates the intention to scale-up their businesses in Sweden based on a survey of 338 Short Food Supply Chain producers utilising the construct of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical framework. The findings show that attitude can be considered the most important driver for their intention to scale-up their business. Also, the perceived level of control and the positive perception of personal referents, i.e. family members, co-workers and consumers, foster their intention to scale-up. In contrast, perceptions of other farmers and competitors as well as the perception of framework conditions (e.g. state support, availability of financial resources) do not have any significant influence. However, several socio-economic characteristics such as size of farm, type of production and use of infrastructure are identified as significant influences. This insight is relevant for the numerous countries experiencing growing interests in alternative food initiatives.

Revealing Materials: plastics in alternative food economies

ABSTRACTThis article draws upon recent geographical work on assemblage to reconsider how we understand alternative food economies. In particular it brings attention to the devices upon which these economies rely—specifically plastics. Since the mid-twentieth century, plastics have developed close and complex relations with our agrifood systems; they facilitate commodity valuation and product circulation worldwide but are also recognised as problematic due to their environmental and human health impacts. Despite this paradox and the attention plastics increasingly receive, we know little of their relations with alternative food initiatives (AFIs). How do plastics inhabit alternative food economies? What associations and circulations become performed? What do these markets look like from a device-oriented perspective? To address these questions, the paper draws on fieldwork undertaken in Brisbane (Australia) with two AFIs—a weekly organic market and an online box program/wholesaler. Using visualisation and an assemblage approach discloses the presences, flows, functions, and tensions of plastics in AFIs. In this way, plastics are revealed but also act to reveal alternative food economies. This analysis steps away from evaluations of AFIs’ (in)effective challenge to neoliberalisation to consider them as complex, processual, sometimes ambivalent efforts that not only distribute ‘good food’ but engage in important ways with things like plastics.