Advertiser’s description (via Frontiers)
Diverse Economies and Food Democracy: Implications for Sustainability from an Interdisciplinary Perspective
In view of the multifaceted challenge of transforming towards inclusive and sustainable food systems, scholars have drawn attention to diverse economies of food, such as food coops, community-supported agriculture, urban community gardens, or fair trade. Diverse economies of food have been labeled in various ways. The notion of alternative agro-food networks (AFN) has gained the broadest appeal in this regard. However, this notion and similar ones have been criticized on a conceptual level, and the assumption that diverse economies of food may substantially contribute to the sustainable transformation of food systems has been questioned on theoretical, methodological, and political grounds. Although food democracy is recurrently mentioned in relation to diverse economies of food, a proper operationalization of this concept is largely missing, as well as robust quantifications of the sustainability implications of those. By focusing on food democracy as forms of joint decision-making by food producers, consumers, public authorities, and stakeholders, on various scales, diverse economies of food can be clarified conceptually and the environmental impacts quantified, as well as trade-offs and synergies assessed. This allows us to investigate more precisely the possible sustainability and transformative impacts of diverse economies of food.
This Research Topic welcomes papers that investigate how forms of democracy within and between food system organizations impact upon economic, social, and ecological sustainability, and whether they may contribute to food system transformation towards sustainability, and in which ways.
Submission deadline is the 30 September 2023, for information see here.
