Workshop 4

Autonomy, sovereignty, and reduction of food dependency

Moderators : L. Piccin (Origin for Sustainability), F. Casabianca (INRAE), G. Bigler (URGENCI), T. Anthopoulou (Pantheon University, Athene), F. Wallet (INRAE Toulouse), S. Loudiyi (VetAgroSup), G. Belletti (University of Florence)

Sessions

Visits

This workshop will focus on the resilience strategies of territories based on the search for food sovereignty, with a view to food autonomy. It is a question of exchanging between researchers and other actors of food systems on the dynamics in progress in urban and rural territories around the mobilisation of the actors involved in food autonomy processes. The globalisation of trade has led to a strong specialisation of territories on the most profitable productions to the detriment of a local food function. The empowerment process goes against this dominant regime by stimulating diversification and shortening the value chains. It is important to specify which stakeholders interact (producers, civil society, researchers, actors in a territory or a commodity chain, etc.) and how (regulations, material or immaterial flows, controversies, power relations, etc.), around which objects (labour, technical systems, prices, natural resources, quality criteria, knowledge, identity, etc.) and in which situations or frameworks of interaction (a farm, a cooperative, a territory, a commodity chain, a system of innovation, a governance mechanism, etc.). The interrelationships between these multiple entities make it possible to link the problems of climate resilience with social and ecological dynamics. From individual consumption to the structuring of sectors, they involve forms of infra- and inter-territorial cooperation, which are deployed at different scales and need to be clarified.

Different trends can be identified:

  • Some aim to respond to crises in terms of access to quality food for all. They seek to provide concrete responses to the problem of food insecurity, which affects a growing number of individuals, thus renewing the reflection on social food aid and its intersection with empowerment processes in a food democracy perspective.
  • We can also observe mechanisms that involve public authorities alongside civil society actors (territorial food projects (PAT) in France, Food Policy Councils in America, Ernährungsrat in Germany, etc.), which reflect responses to different crises (climatic, health, geopolitical, etc.), with little-known impacts on the evolution of practices and organisations.
  • Other dynamics concern the science-politics-society nexus. Indeed, we can observe partnership research mechanisms that innovate in connecting to territories with the creation of third-party food sites, living labs and other collaborative experiences that aim to accelerate these processes of change while renewing territorial food governance.

• Finally, it is also essential to consider the temporality of the approaches studied: projects that were once innovative and whose contribution to sustainability has been proven may fall by the wayside. Thus, a territorial approach needs to consider the innovations linked to path dependencies that lock in the possibilities of transformation towards sustainability. The modalities of resilience of territories cannot be limited to techno-economic responses to a shock (i.e. financial support to a sector following a supply disruption), but require a systemic reconfiguration, and question the status of entities and power relations are often asymmetric

Workshop 1
Workshop 2
Workshop 3
Workshop 4
Workshop 5