Conference: Just transition in food systems

Thursday 30 May 2024, 9-17h, University of Antwerp – City Campus, Hof van Liere – conference room F. de Tassis, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp.

The corporate global food system is governed by a dominant paradigm based on food as a commodity. That paradigm translates into a mainstream dynamic of industrialization of the food system, characterized by private titling, profit maximization and money-mediated market interactions. The manufacturing of food on an industrial scale and its worldwide distribution contribute to pushing the environment beyond its ecological limits. In addition, the system fails to provide basic human needs for all and doesn’t guarantee freedom from exploitation and oppression.  

From farm to fork, the commodity-based food system keeps expanding so to progressively exclude any alternatives that focus on other worldviews and value sets, intensifying the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities and rights, with a limited amount of actors concentrating economic and political power and the vast majority of people being marginalized and dependent on processes that they do not control. That is why food systems have become a focus of transition studies that deal with the understanding of long‐term processes of transformative change towards more just societies. Still, a specific focus on the conceptualization of food justice at the crossroad between social and environmental lines is generally lacking. Because of this, ongoing and future changes in the structures and processes of food systems risk exacerbating or reproducing existing injustices rather than moving beyond them.

This is why it is necessary to engage with and give space to transformation for and within the food system, with close attention to ‘who gets what, when, and how’, to what qualifies as a just outcome, who gets to decide what is just, and what justice claims are raised in relation to socio-economic-environmental redistribution, cultural-legal recognition, and political representation.

One such alternative is conceptualizing food systems as based on commons rather than on commodities. This approach is less about the transactions that occur around food as a good but rather about the way in which societies organize food systems as essential networks and ecological connections that are constantly produced, reproduced, and managed. How can this be done collectively, beyond the idea of food as a mere object of consumption and circulation, and in a way that promotes social and ecological utilities and regeneration, rather than profit and accumulation? Recognizing food systems as based on the commons invites producers, workers, communities, and policy makers to propose novel approaches to ensure different forms of production and circulation, but also alternative ways of guaranteeing access to healthy, nutritious, and just food. Rather than a buyer-seller relationship, a food system based on the commons presupposes relational networking, social learning, caring and empowerment through community praxis in order to strengthen democratic self-determination.

The aim of the conference is to provide a platform to think collectively about a just food transformation from multiple angles and perspectives, including that of decommodification and adoption of alternative principles and premises. During a day of presentations, workshops and group work, we aim to showcase the voices of those who are involved in addressing various forms of inequalities that occur throughout the food system (production, labour, finance/rent, trade, accessibility to means of production or food, etc.) and explore together the notions of justice and the horizons of justice that inform their work and that support their transformative vision. Thanks to their experiences and knowledge, we hope to be highlighting the areas of convergence and thus fostering food justice within a multi-scalar politicized context, taking into consideration structural dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression.

Diverse representatives from the field of practitioners, social movements, policy making, and research are invited on the basis of their engagement with the subject matter of food system transition to find common ground within a European context.

More info: ucsia.org