Food Governance Research Articles

What are the position and power of supermarkets in the Australian food system, and the implications for public health? A systematic scoping review.

Supermarkets have been described as having unprecedented and disproportionate power in the food system. This scoping review synthesized the literature that describes the position and power of supermarkets in the Australian food system, and the implications for public health. A systematic search of peer-reviewed and grey literature identified 68 documents that described supermarket power. Implications for public health were also recorded. Data revealed that supermarkets hold a powerful position in the Australian food system, acting as the primary gatekeepers. Supermarkets have obtained instrumental, structural and discursive power from many sources that overlap and reinforce each other. Few positive public health impacts of supermarket power were identified, providing many opportunities for improvement in the domains of food governance, the food system and public health nutrition. There is very little public health research examining the impact of supermarket power in Australia. More research is needed, and examination of supermarket own brands is of particular importance owing to their pivotal role as a source of power and their potential to improve public health outcomes, such as obesity.

The food territory: cultural identity as local facilitator in the gastronomy sector, the case of Lyon

In times of increased territorial competition, processes of territorialization of food and gastronomy are often considered as key assets of regional economic performances. Yet, for they are by nature diffuse and intangible, it is often hard to understand precisely through what mechanism they are operating and what kind of effects they have. Building on the framework proposed by the regional development platform approach, the present article explores the case of Lyon, trying to unveil the main communication patterns between local identity and economic performances. While territorial identity seems to be a facilitator of exchanges between stakeholders, it can also appear sometimes as causing inertia and slowing down institutional innovation. Beyond the specific findings on the case studied, the objective of the article is to propose innovative reflections on the debate of local identity dynamics and territorial marketing for local food governance and policy making.

Key policy actions for sustainable land and water use to serve people

Abstract To achieve food security for all, new resource policies for sustainable land and water use are needed. Land, water and energy need to be considered jointly in policies, not in isolation. United Nations, G20 countries’ policy makers, corporate and civil society actors, and those of other countries should act in coordinated fashion in the following four policy areas on which specific proposals are made in this policy paper: 1) focusing land, and water resource policies on human wellbeing, 2) investing in and sharing water, agricultural and energy innovations, 3) making wider use of digital opportunities for sustainable agriculture, and 4) re-designing global governance of agriculture and food.

Promoting Sustainable Food Provision; the Role of Networks in Global Food Governance

Food provision in contemporary societies is transforming due to challenges of globalization, sustainability and equity. The interactions between civil society organizations, governments, the food industry, consumers and producers constitute dynamic fields of environmental change in global food provision. Promoting equitable and sustainable food provision in a globalizing world requires well-informed insights in these social dynamics involved because global food governance involves a complex array of different public and private actors. Today we are faced with a fragmented, differentiated, hybrid and contested constellation of global food governance arrangements and therefore we need a network rather than a formalized perspective on food governance. Such a network perspective can serve as the start of a new research agenda for the study of global sustainable food governance.

Making visible: Interrogating the performance of food sharing across 100 urban areas

Interpersonal sharing of food has been an omnipresent feature of human civilisation from hunter-gatherer societies to the present, both as a mechanism through which sustenance is secured and as a means to cement social relations. While the evolutionary dynamism of this food sharing is relatively well documented, critical scholarship has tended to examine contemporary food sharing practices beyond family and friends through case studies of individual initiatives. A broader view of food sharing practices is absent. In addition, there has been little examination of the role that emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) are having on food sharing, despite claims that such technologies offer transformative potential to achieve more secure, sustainable and just food systems. In response, this paper presents a novel landscape level analysis of more than 4000 ICT-mediated urban food sharing activities operating across 100 cities in six continents. Adopting conceptual insights from the intersection of social and economic practice-oriented approaches, the resulting foodsharing database progresses understanding of, and makes visible, the ways in which food (and food-related skills, stuff and spaces) is being shared across diverse urban settings. To conclude, it is argued that the database plays an important productive and performative role in mapping and comparing diverse food sharing economies. Importantly, it provides a springboard for further explanatory research to fine-tune our understanding of the evolution, governance and sustainability potential of urban food sharing.

'We want to be part of the broader project' Family Farmers and Local Food Governance in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Brazil has been praised for the development of its agricultural sector, its policies against hunger, and its support for family farming. Yet, the future of small-scale family farmers remains uncertain. In this paper, we question whether food system localization facilitates the integration of small-scale family farmers into food governance processes in Porto Alegre, Brazil. To answer this, we present the City Region Food System (CRFS) as a conceptual approach to explore the relationship between food systems localization and enhanced participation of small-scale family farmers in food governance. After introducing the case study of local food in Porto Alegre, we highlight key structural inequalities that limit family farmers' participation in local food practices and influence their involvement in food governance. We then examine linkages between local food policy eff orts and family farmers' praxis, attempting to discern mismatches and related implications for the development of an inclusive CRFS. We argue that systematization of local food practices within the city region represents a double-edged sword as it may translate into a decrease in farmers' autonomy and ownership of local initiatives but could also burden them with regulations not fit for purpose. In conclusion, we suggest that a CRFS approach to planning can help to address structural inequalities and power asymmetries in local food governance only if informed by local dynamics and based on context-sensitive mechanisms for participatory governance incorporating a variety of small-scale family farmers (and other stakeholders).

A diagnostic framework for food system governance arrangements: The case of South Africa

Although policymakers and scientists are increasingly embracing the food system perspective, it has been poorly reflected in institutional terms. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question as to what forms of governance are most appropriate to govern food systems in a more holistic way. The article presents a diagnostic framework consisting of five principles: 1) system-based problem framing to deal with interlinked issues, drivers and feedback loops; 2) connectivity across boundaries to span siloed governance structures and include non-state actors; 3) adaptability to flexibly respond to inherent uncertainties and volatility; 4) inclusiveness to facilitate support and legitimacy; and 5) transformative capacity to overcome path dependencies and create adequate conditions to foster structural change. This framework is used to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of three food governance arrangements in South Africa, each of which deliberately aimed to embrace a holistic perspective. Although promising on paper, the outcomes are disappointing because of a reversion to a technical onedimensional problem framing during the implementation, the dominance of single departments, the limited attention to monitoring and flexible responses and the exclusion of those most affected by food insecurity. We conclude that the tensions between the ambitious objectives of the arrangements and the institutional constraints of implementing them can persist because of inadequate resources to facilitate transformative change. Finally, we propose an agenda to further elaborate the framework and improve its practical usefulness.

Governance by campaign: the co-constitution of food issues, publics and expertise through new information and communication technologies

ABSTRACTThis paper considers food as a site of public engagement with science and technology. Specifically, we focus on how public engagement with food is envisioned and operationalised by one non-profit organisation, foodwatch. Founded in Germany in 2002, foodwatch extensively uses new information and communication technologies to inform consumers about problematic food industry practices. In this paper, we present our analysis of 50 foodwatch e-newsletters published over a period of one year (2013). We define foodwatch’s approach as ‘governance by campaign’ – an approach marked by simultaneously constituting: (a) key food governance issues, (b) affective publics that address these topics of governance through ICT-enabled media and (c) independent food and food-related expertise. We conclude our paper with a discussion of foodwatch’s mode of ‘governance by campaign’ and the democratic limits and potentials of a governance mode that is based on invited participation.

Culinary Politics in Japan: The Shokuiku Campaign

In 2005, the Basic Law of Food Education (shokuiku kihon-hō) was enacted in Japan in response to a rise of lifestyle-related conditions and a high dependency on food imports. The enactment of this law was followed by a nationwide food education campaign—referred to as the shokuiku campaign—in collaboration with the ministerial bureaucracy and a number of food-related NGOs. In this article I assess how the Japanese state has revived the historical concept of food education (shokuiku) in the wider context of food governance. Shokuiku originated in the Meiji period (1868–1912) when food education provided nutritional guidelines that sought to enable Japanese citizens to cope with the demands of modernity. These objectives have shifted. The current revival of shokuiku is an anti-globalization force that seeks to improve the nation's eating habits and support ailing rural economies.

Towards integrated food policy: Main challenges and steps ahead

Repeated food crises have resulted in increased recognition of the boundary-spanning nature of governing food systems and in consequent calls for more holistic food governance. An increasing number of governments have followed up on this recognition by initiating or discussing the development of better integrated food policy. However, in spite of the emergence of integrated food policy as a policy paradigm worth pursuing, considerable challenges remain regarding its concrete realization. Drawing upon recent insights from the public policy literature, this policy letter sets out five particularly demanding areas of concern: (i) constructing a resonating policy frame, (ii) formulating policy goals, (iii) involving relevant sectors and levels, (iv) the question of what constitutes optimal policy integration, and (v) designing a consistent mix of policy instruments. Formulating answers to these challenges will enable policymakers and stakeholders to envision the next steps in concretizing integrated food policy.

Quality turns in Nordic food: a comparative analysis of specialty food in Denmark, Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACTThis article compares the development of specialty food in Denmark, Norway and Sweden using a number of quantitative indicators as well as a qualitative analysis of government policy. The analysis shows that specialty food has increased in importance in all three countries over the last twenty years, but there are important differences in the kind of specialty food that has developed and the nature of government intervention and governance structures. Overall, Sweden appears to have the largest production of specialty food and drink and is particularly strong in organic production and consumption, farm processing and farm shops. Norway has a large number of products with protected origin and also leads in the number of farmers’ markets. Denmark lags behind the other countries on most indicators, but has witnessed the fastest growth in microbreweries over the last five years. Theoretically, the article challenges the ‘negative’ definition of specialty food as ‘non-industrial’ or ‘alternative’, and suggests a more nuanced approach. Empirically, it points towards the possible existence of a ‘Scandinavian model’ of specialty food governance with extensive interaction between central government, local government and private firms to stimulate the growth of specialty food.

The trade-ification of the food sustainability agenda

This contribution argues that the food sustainability agenda in global food governance arrangements is becoming ‘trade-ified’. It shows that international trade has become normalized in these settings not only as being compatible with, but also as a key delivery mechanism for, food system sustainability. The paper first explains the rationale for this dominant narrative, which revolves around the efficiency gains from trade. Second, it outlines two important critiques of this approach – one that stresses the need to look beyond food as an economic commodity, and one that reveals the internal flaws of trade theory – which together provide important counterpoints to this dominant narrative. Third, the paper offers three interrelated explanations for why trade continues to be presented as a key ingredient to food sustainability despite the weaknesses of the dominant approach: institutional fragmentation in global food governance; the carryover of previous normative compromises regarding trade and the environment in other governance settings; and the influence of powerful interests.

Food safety and consumer trust in post-Fukushima Japan

The contamination of food with radionuclides has posed serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011. Many Japanese consumers were and still are worried about the safety of domestic food products. How did the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima affect consumer trust in food safety regulation, and how did the Japanese government try to (re)establish consumer trust in its food governance system? Drawing on empirical data from a consumer survey, expert interviews and documents issued by the Japanese government and public authorities, this paper argues that existing institutions had difficulty handling the situation and rebuilding consumer trust. I will argue that consumers in Japan lack trust in government institutions and the food industry and that the government's risk communication was not suitable for rebuilding trust. This specific situation saw the emergence of new actors from civil society, such as citizens’ radioactivity monitoring stations (CRMS). These actors took over some of the functions of public authorities by providing information and monitoring food. I argue that they have the potential to build trust by fostering the participation of lay people and encouraging a more democratic discourse on food safety. Nevertheless there are some limitations.

Book Review: Tetty Havinga, Frans van Waarden and Donal Casey(Ed.). 2015. The Changing Landscape of Food Governance—Public and Private Encounters

Tetty Havinga, Frans van Waarden and Donal Casey(Ed.). 2015. The Changing Landscape of Food Governance—Public and Private Encounters. Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp. 287. £80.00. ISBN: 9781784715403 (cased) 9781784715410 (eBook).

Governance of the table: Regulation of food and eating practices in residential care for young people

Abstract This paper explores how food and eating practices are governed in residential care for young people and who or what governs the table in residential care centres. The governance of everyday food and eating practices in residential care is multifaceted and conducted on multiple levels by external and internal authority and regulation. This paper draws on Coveney’s 2008 theory on ‘the government of the table’ that builds on the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality to explore the interplay between internal and external regulation, which in turn highlights the tensions between institutional and homely aspects of residential care. The approach taken involves an exploratory, sequential mixed-methods design of focused ethnography in five centres, a survey of ninety-two social care practitioners working in the field and a review of Health Information and Quality Authority inspection reports.

Tetty Havinga, Frans van Waarden, Donal Casey (Eds.): The changing landscape of food governance: Public and private encounters

The Changing Landscape of Food Governance: Public and Private Encounters is an interdisciplinary book, edited by three scholars with expertise in law examining the recent transformation of food governance. Food and agricultural policy and regulation were traditionally dominated by the state. Although in recent decades, private corporate actors and civil society organizations have become involved, creating private and hybrid public–private food governance arrangements. This volume is a good survey of the current food governance landscape. Editors Havinga, van Waarden, and Casey have divided the book into four sections examining broad issues in regulatory governance. Section 1 introduces current changes in food governance and regulation, setting the stage for the remainder of the volume. The first chapter identifies reasons for the transition from traditional food governance to transnational, global governance involving both private and hybrid structures. In Chapter 2, Havinga argues that scholars must acknowledge the complexity of current governance structures, or risk oversimplifying and overlooking relationships between state and non-state actors and new patterns in power. The state continues to be an active player in food regulation despite the rise in private actor involvement. Thus, the second part of the book explores public responses to food safety challenges. In Chapter 3, Abels and Kobusch examine institutional food safety differences among Austria, Sweden, and Hungary. These differences are based on the integration of risk assessment and risk management within a country’s policy institutions, influenced by the European Union (EU) and national historical traditions. Enticott and Lee proceed with exploring diseased animal compensation policies in the UK, finding inconsistently applied frameworks that continue to create confusion, and undermine policy goals for a safer food system. The next two chapters discuss China’s new food safety regime by looking at state actors. Collins and Gottwald examine the transition of the regime in recent years, finding contention between national and local authorities in charge of food safety, which is problematic due to reliance on local authorities for enforcement. As such in Chapter 6, Burns, Li, and Wang focus on local quality control officers. The authors find that under current policies, local authorities are incentivized to encourage high economic growth for a reward of promotion, opposing their task of ensuring compliance with safety standards often seen as slowing economic growth. Part 3 examines new forms of private food governance. Oosterveer begins by discussing changes in legitimacy and authority as a result of private food governance. Using two theories, Sassen’s assemblages and Rosenau’s bifurcation, he shows how authority and legitimacy are changing from shifts in food governance under two global standards (GlobalGAP and the Marine Stewardship Council). In order to achieve legitimacy and authority, governance must be effective as discussed by Kalfagianni and Fuchs in Chapter 9. In the area of sustainability, private standards must be stringent in order to be effective. This depends on many internal factors such as the structure of the group designing standards as well as external pressures like NGOs. The next two chapters discuss specific private standards. Casarosa and Gobbato analyze different networks of wine producers and the development of food quality standards in the wine industry. The dynamics of & Margaret Bancerz mbancerz@ryerson.ca

Insights into the black box of collective efforts for the registration of Geographical Indications

Registered Geographical Indications (GIs) communicate to consumers the reputation and quality characteristics of food products linked to the geographical origin. Therefore, farmers and processors consider the protection of GIs as Intellectual Property Rights as a tool for product differentiation and a solution for reducing misuse or free-riding. However GI-registration requires collective action and considerable efforts borne by multiple actors. According to the diverse GI-legal schemes, such as the EU framework, farmers and processors have to agree on the delimitation of the geographical area, production techniques and product quality characteristics contained in the Product Specification. Our paper enters for the first time into the black box of the GI-registration processes by analysing five Protected Geographical Indications in Colombia, Italy and Austria. Cases were selected among products registered according to the EU legislation (EC Regulations 2081/92, 510/2006 and 1151/2012) to represent supply chains of different length (e.g. short and long) and complexity (e.g. number of producers involved). We aim to identify the most critical and (time) demanding phases during the GI-registration processes and the type of private and public actors involved (e.g., farmers, processors, local public authorities, research staff) as well as to quantify their (collective) efforts and degree of involvement (e.g., consultation/co-decision vs. informing about decisions on behalf of others) and to analyse the outcome of the higher or lower involvement of actors. Cross-case comparisons are guided by the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and the empirical transaction cost analysis. Results show that collective efforts borne by producers and related GI-stakeholders and the resulting collective outcomes are affected by institutional frameworks, group size and heterogeneity as well as ex-ante organisational robustness. Well-established pre-existing producer organisations and the support of local public authorities are critical factors along the GI-registration process. Participatory processes, even if time consuming, may result in a co-learning process as GI-stakeholders can attain better awareness of the product specificities and develop collective strategies and initiatives that should go far beyond the mere GI-registration. This article also adds to the still very small body of the empirical transaction costs analysis. Insights about advantages and efforts of farmers and processors who aim to link terroir and taste of place are not only relevant for the governance of origin food, but also for other rural development processes.

Designing Global Governance for Agricultural Development and Food and Nutrition Security

AbstractWe point to deficits in current global institutional arrangements in support of agricultural development and food and nutrition security. A framework for global institutional arrangements proposed here is the set of essential international public goods for a well‐functioning world food system. These public goods include international natural resource management; trade and transboundary competition policy; research and innovation; handling large scale food emergencies; and transboundary food safety. Based on the framework, and institutional economics considerations, causes of current malfunctioning of global food governance are analyzed. It is proposed to redesign global food governance by establishing an international platform with policy clusters mapped along the set of global public goods. To support the platform with needed research‐based evidence an International Panel on Food, Nutrition and Agriculture (IPFNA) is suggested, partly following the design of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Existing organizations and mechanisms would form building blocks of the strengthened and redesigned governance system. A gradual approach toward redesign is proposed. Some redesign in the suggested direction was triggered by the food crisis of 2008, as demonstrated by the reform of the Committee on Food Security (CFS) with its high level panel of experts, but more is needed.

Serving a heterogeneous Muslim identity? Private governance arrangements of halal food in the Netherlands

The consumption of halal food may be seen as an expression of the Muslim identity. Within Islam, different interpretations of ‘halal’ exist and the pluralistic Muslim community requests diverse halal standards. Therefore, adaptive governance arrangements are needed in the halal food market. Globalization and industrialization have complicated the governance of halal food. A complex network of halal governors has developed from the local to the global level. In this paper, we analyze to what extent halal certification bodies in the Netherlands address the needs of the Muslim community and how they are influenced by international halal governance. The Netherlands serves as a case study with its growing Muslim community and its central position in international trade. The data comes from literature review and eleven qualitative semi-structured interviews with the most prominent actors in the Dutch halal governance system. Our analysis shows that the halal governance system in the Netherlands is weakly institutionalized and hardly adaptive to the needs of a heterogeneous Muslim community. Improvements are needed concerning stakeholder engagement, transparency, accessibility, impartiality and efficiency.

Chinese Public’s Risk Perceptions of Genetically Modified Food: From the 1990s to 2015

This article investigates the Chinese public’s risk perceptions of genetically modified (GM) food from the 1990s to 2015. We adopt socio-psychological and cultural approaches to investigate factors underlying the change of the Chinese public’s perceptions of the risk of GM food in this period. The analysis involves surveys of ‘Chinese publics and biotechnology’, Chinese newspaper coverage of GM food and website and social media sources. Our main finding is that the Chinese public’s risk perceptions of GM food have gone through three different phases: from ‘ignorant of the risk’ in the 1990s, to ‘tolerant of the risk’ between 2000 and 2009, to ‘mindful of the risk’ from 2010 to 2015. Among a variety of factors, social, economic and political transformations in China occurring over the same three decades as our investigation are major factors underlying the change of Chinese public’s risk perception of GM food. Furthermore, with the prominence of risk perception in recent years, as of yet there are no effective mechanisms for coping with the problems of risk communication and management that we have detected; this lack may impede the future development of GM food. We suggest that more studies are necessary to further investigate risk communication and risk governance issues, thereby contributing to better decision making with regard to GM food and risk governance of science and technology.