Local food | TableDebates

Elena

Podcast episode

Elena Lazos Chavero on Scale, Seeds and Sovereignty (rebroadcast)

Power dynamics don't only come from the outside, but also exist within local communities.

Subsistence Agriculture in the United States

Subsistence Agriculture in the United States

This book examines subsistence agriculture practices in the United States, including hunting, fishing, gardening, gathering, and keeping livestock. It frames subsistence activities as “shadow structures” in response to industrial capitalism.

Biocultural Rights, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

Biocultural Rights, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

This book gives an overview of the concept of “biocultural rights” and the tools that indigenous and local communities can use to protect their ways of life and their rights to land, territories and resources.

Being Brave: Innovative solutions to public food procurement

Innovative solutions to public food procurement

This report is a case study on the Greater Manchester city-region food system. It looks at how the city’s commitments on net zero and access to sustainable, healthy food can be met, drawing on interviews with 20 participants from across the food supply chain. The report discusses food waste auditing, procurement standards, procurement processes that enable small businesses to take part in contracts that otherwise have complex paperwork, collaboration between local caterers and suppliers, and investment in kitchen capacity in public institutions, urban agriculture such as allotments, and vertical farms to provide fresh food all year round.

Rethink vegetable supply chains as networks not markets

Rethink vegetable supply chains as networks not markets

This policy brief from the UK’s Food Research Collaboration argues that thinking of vegetable supply chains in the UK as interactive and entangled networks of state, community and commercial actors, rather than primarily as markets, can give communities greater influence over supply chain governance and provide growers with alternatives to supermarket supply chains.

Hungry for Health: what citizens want from food

Hungry for Health: what citizens want from food

This report from the UK’s Food, Farming & Countryside Commission investigates how people who are experiencing food insecurity make decisions about what to eat. It focuses on Devon, with the report interviewing food producers, people receiving emergency food, and others in the food system. Buyers and producers want to see more investment in small and sustainable food production, food projects built around community access, sharing of resources, and collective food buying and preparation.

Local responses to UK food insecurity during COVID-19

Local responses to UK food insecurity during COVID-19

This report from the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute explores how local authorities and non-profits across the UK responded to household food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the period between September 2020 and September 2021. It finds that some existing initiatives were adapted for the pandemic, while other new initiatives emerged.

School Farms: Feeding and Educating Children

School Farms: Feeding and Educating Children

This book explores the potential of school farms to educate students and also increase access to fresh food. Chapters discuss school farms in a range of locations, including the UK and Kerala.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel-2, ESA, Flevopolder by Sentinel-2, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en). Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2018.

Support Your Locals: on international solidarity in a resilient and sustainable urban food system

Anke Brons is a PhD candidate at Aeres University of Applied Sciences Almere and the Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research. Her research focuses on questions of inclusiveness in relation to healthy and sustainable food practices. Dr Sigrid Wertheim-Heck is associate professor global food system transformation in the Environmental Policy Group at WUR, and is professor Food and Healthy Living at Aeres University of Applied Sciences, both in The Netherlands. Her interest in urban food systems informs her agenda on the relationship between urbanisation, food provisioning and food consumption. She is part of TABLE’s board of directors. This blog post is based on a Dutch essay, originally published in the Flevo Campus essay bundle ‘Veerkracht als opdracht’ (Resilience as a mission).