Our food paradigm shift
Last updated
Last updated
Through an asynchronous conversation, Maarten Crivits-- researcher at the Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries Research (ILVO) and the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Ghent, as well as Community Engagement expert in the FoodSHIFT2030 project-- shares with us valuable insights on where we'd like our food system to go. Principally, it's about shifting from being consumers to food citizens. With Maarten, we hope to:
Demonstrate what a shift in our food system could look like
Connect key concepts in the food system transition to food technology
To facilitate, the interview is divided into three capsules: Why we want to shift from our current food system, How we might do that, and What a paradigm shift looks like in tech.
Maarten Crivits: There are numerous indications that there are environmental problems related to our food system - leading to a loss in biodiversity, an increase of greenhouse emissions, and nitrogen pollution. This is known and communicated widely as well as other more social and economic problems related to unfair trading practices, expropriation of local indigenous people and an unequal access to the means of production. We have become increasingly conscious and knowledgeable of the problems in our food system.
What is however often left unaddressed is our own role in all this and how we have in fact have become somewhat isolated individuals within the food system.
Food producers have become increasingly anonymous within our food system, where there used to be a closer connection between farmers, local sellers and consumers. Farmers have increasingly become absorbed by ever larger systems of global trade flows.
Furthermore, where citizens once were more concerned and active with the direction of our food system, these active roles have been taken up by research and marketing institutes, government agencies and the market. To give an example, at the end of the 19th century in quite some European countries, challenges within the domain of food consumption (what we eat, our food environment, food safety) were taken up by women groups led by feminist thinkers such as for instance Helene Mercier in the Netherlands. They wanted to promote moderate but healthy food consumption and they set up works of food education, with the aim to foster solidarity between middle class and working class women.
It was this kind of civic action that led to the emergence of communal food kitchens but also to civil society actively interrogating the state about food safety and the market about the importance of a convenient food environment on the working floor. These kinds of civic activities were gradually replaced by state, political groups, academia and market institutions, pushing citizens to a passive observer role. Questioning this passive role is key.
MC: Today there are a number of interesting concepts that put the citizen back at the heart of the food system: Food democracy and food citizenship are two of them. The core idea is that one does not any longer see oneself as a consumer at the end of the food supply chain, with the sole choice to either buy or not buy certain products. When becoming a food citizen, there are so many new options and possibilities that emerge. One comes to be a member of a community of inquiry, where one collectively thinks about common concerns. It is a shift in perspective but with a lot of practical consequences!
Say, that there is a problem with the local school meals, i.e. sourced from a global supply chain with insufficient income for local farmers and insufficiently nourishing all children from the school, including the most vulnerable ones. A food consumption perspective would put the matter to rest and leave state (school) and market (global food suppliers) in charge. But as a food citizen one would think about co-organizing the way in which we feed ourselves and have a constructive say in things such as a tender that includes local ingredients, cooking sessions on local farms, food education, a solidarity fund to support less affluent parents, and many more synergies along the road.
MC: Within a perspective of food democracy, the domain of food is opened up to all social groups. The challenge is to design such a participatory structure so as to include all voices, talents and to take into account structural inequalities such as the root causes of unequal access to the food system and the linkages with other societal domains (housing,social security, education). As a food citizen, we all have a say whether we are a professional expert or not and regardless of background. Equally important is to find a common eagerness and willingness to collectively think and act, and create an open environment in which all can participate. This is not so straightforward today, but the domain of food has the power to bring people together.
MC: This is another discussion, which links up with food democracy, but rather concerns the relationship we have with food and the taken for granted actualisations of the market economy we live in today. Food is predominantly understood as a commodity today, and to some extent this will remain the case as we seem to be bound to keep on operating within markets, at least for a while. Food is however more than a product to buy or sell: it is a human right, it is a cultural driver,it is part of a natural cycle, it is the carrier of photosynthesis.
There are some crucial benefits in seeing food as a commons, and this view is very much complementary with food democracy/citizenship. When food is a commons, food in its various dimensions from sowing to eating becomes a shared good that needs to be nurtured for its own sake. A group of people can collectively invest in a piece of land, a local shop, a community garden, a communal kitchen to grow, nurture, share, distribute, and cook food.
There is something special and peculiar about food commons. When there is collective investment - this can be in terms of money, land, work - there is a sense of ownership created which is not there when we see food as a commodity. At this point things become interesting and new for most of us. When we collectively invest in something, we need to think ahead on how to cooperate.These forms of cooperation via food systems and natural systems have been part of our ancestral past, as the commons have existed throughout history and were strongly present before market thinking and individual property were institutionalized gradually. The enclosure of the commons has been massive and is still taking place at this very moment from the Amazonian forests in Brazil to the European Carpathians.
MC: Here, defining a shared intention is crucial and it is really important to talk things through. What is the collective aim: is it to become self-sufficient, is it to create new food environments which are pleasurable and which are in sync with agroecological principles, is it about creating a collective space for reflection? When there is a collective, commons perspective there is no longer a dominant focus on creating a market share and engaging customers. This is less easy than we think because we are trained to think in terms of developing a unique selling proposition to the right group of customers. When commons comes into play, all the participants’ talents become relevant. Unlocking these talents in relation to the commons is some form of magic once enrolled.
MC: Commoning is about creating a shared intention in relation to collectively fostering a common. If the common is related to knowledge or the open use of technology, the group responsible needs to think about what they want the role of technology to be.
Speaking generally, there are two ways in which technology can be supportive towards the commons/food democracy.
A first way concerns technology’s labor saving effects. There are ample examples of technology resulting in less labor and more free time. The question is however what is being done with the time opened up by technology. Is it freed up in order to invest in more and bigger systems of production or is it used to create new meaningful social relationships?
A second way is to directly make use of technology to foster more cohesive and open relationships within a particular system. Examples can be apps that allow more easy communication between a CSA and its harvesters, apps that enable local residents to interactively map and connect with their food environment or an open source platform where people can offer their skills to a community.
MC: Engaging with the commons and perspective of Food Democracy can bring new opportunities I think. Technology is often seen as instrumental to the labor-saving and efficiency-increasing objectives of the market. A technology serves either to increase productivity or to become a product of its own, and it is not seen as a companion in the commons. When the food tech development and its open source is accompanied by other fields of action in which individual ownership and entrepreneurship are revolved towards commons, they will soon become instrumental in collective action, ownership and the growing of wealthy, healthy and of even ‘sacred’ places for their own sake.
