While researchers have identified numerous problems with food systems, sustainable, just, and workable solutions remain scarce. Recent developments in the food justice literature, however, show which local food movements favor sustainability and justice as problem-solving measures. Yet, some of the ways that these approaches could work in concert are overlooked. Through focusing on how they are compatible, we can understand how such endeavors can improve the conditions for community control and reduce the detrimental effects of agribusiness. In this paper, the (...) author proposes a participatory budgeting project that involves a relatively new process called “vertical agriculture” to alleviate some of the harm that current agricultural practices cause. In turn, we see how such a measure can improve the integrity of municipal governance and reshape the power structures that control food systems. (shrink)

The topic of food sovereignty has received ample attention from philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars, from how to conceptualize the term to how globalization shapes it, and several areas in between. This bounty of research informs us about food sovereignty’s practical dimensions, but the theoretical realm still has lessons to teach us, especially how to develop action-based guides to achieve it. This paper is an exploration in that direction. To have that effect, the author interrogates the question, “what is food sovereignty?”, (...) through asking about its motivations, scale, and the answers that will inform solutions. This process reveals that, despite the differences between conceptions of food sovereignties, there is a pattern at play that concerns their nature. The benefit of gaining an understanding of this pattern is to uncover the necessary elements that each solution will require. (shrink)

Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), which include local food and Fair Trade, work to mitigate some of the many shortcomings of mainstream food systems. If AFNs have the potential to make the world’s food systems more just and sustainable (and otherwise virtuous) then we may have good reasons to scale them up. Unfortunately, it may not be possible to increase the market share of AFNs while preserving their current forms. Among other reasons, this is because there are limits to both the (...) productive capacities of small owner-operated farms and to the distribution capacities of Farmers Markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). These limits tell in favor of AFN partnerships with larger producers and distributors. But some advocates of AFNs have worried that these partnerships would sacrifice too much. (shrink)