The post The Pandemic as a Catalyst for Institutional Innovation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

By Jose Luis Vivero-Pol (Editor), Tomaso Ferrando (Editor), Olivier De Schutter (Editor), Ugo Mattei (Editor)

From the scientific and industrial revolution to the present day, food – an essential element of life – has been progressively transformed into a private, transnational, mono-dimensional commodity of mass consumption for a global market. But over the last decade there has been an increased recognition that this can be challenged and reconceptualized if food is regarded and enacted as a commons.

This Handbook provides the first comprehensive review and synthesis of knowledge and new thinking on how food and food systems can be thought, interpreted and practiced around the old/new paradigms of commons and commoning. The overall aim is to investigate the multiple constraints that occur within and sustain the dominant food and nutrition regime and to explore how it can change when different elements of the current food systems are explored and re-imagined from a commons perspective. Chapters do not define the notion of commons but engage with different schools of thought:

• the economic approach, based on rivalry and excludability;
• the political approach, recognizing the plurality of social constructions and incorporating epistemologies from the South;
• the legal approach that describes three types of proprietary regimes (private, public and collective) and different layers of entitlement (bundles of rights); and
• the radical-activist approach that considers the commons as the most subversive, coherent and history-rooted alternative to the dominant neoliberal narrative.

These schools have different and rather diverging epistemologies, vocabularies, ideological stances and policy proposals to deal with the construction of food systems, their governance, the distributive implications and the socio-ecological impact on Nature and Society.

The book sparks the debate on food as a commons between and within disciplines, with particular attention to spaces of resistance (food sovereignty, de-growth, open knowledge, transition town, occupations, bottom-up social innovations) and organizational scales (local food, national policies, South–South collaborations, international governance and multi-national agreements). Overall, it shows the consequences of a shift to the alternative paradigm of food as a commons in terms of food, the planet and living beings.

Reviews

“If you want to understand why the commons isn’t tragic, what gastronomy has to do with a democracy or what the practice and theory of a future food system might look like, this wonderful collection of essays is well worth reading.” — Raj Patel, food scholar, communicator and author of Stuffed and Starved, 2013 and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, 2018

“The adoption of a holistic and complex vision of gastronomy is the only way to restore the true value of food. It is not only about production and consumption, but also wisdom, memory, knowledge and spirituality, traditional practices and modern technologies combined in an ecological interconnection between people and the planet. This book starts a needed and welcome reflection on the change in paradigm, and traces a possible pathway towards food sovereignty.” — Carlo Petrini, founder and president of the international Slow Food movement and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Italy

“If we are really to transform the food system, we need bold ideas. Food as commons is one of them. If you are serious about exploring new ways of fixing the food system, read this book.” — Professor Corinna Hawkes, Director, Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, UK and Co-Chair of the Independent Expert Group of the Global Nutrition Report

“Finally, a rich and rigorous assessment of food as a commons! This landmark collection of essays reveals how much we need to rethink the very language and frameworks by which we understand food and agriculture. The food we eat is not a mere commodity, it is the cherished, complicated outcome of culture, history, vernacular practice, ecological relationships, and identity. Insights on these themes can help us build new food systems that are stable, fair, and enlivening.” — David Bollier, scholar and activist on the commons, author of Think Like a Commoner, 2014 and co-editor of The Wealth of the Commons, 2012

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: the food commons are coming

Jose Luis Vivero-Pol, Tomaso Ferrando, Olivier de Schutter and Ugo Mattei

PART I: REBRANDING FOOD AND ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES OF TRANSITION

2. The idea of food as a commons: multiple understandings for multiple dimensions of food

Jose Luis Vivero-Pol

3. The food system as a commons

Giacomo Pettenati, Alessia Toldo and Tomaso Ferrando

4. Growing a care-based commons food regime

Marina Chang

5. New roles for citizens, markets and the state towards an open-source agricultural revolution

Alex Pazaitis and Michel Bauwens

6. Food security as a global public good

Cristian Timmermann

PART II: EXPLORING THE MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF FOOD

7. Food, needs and commons

John O´Neill

8. Community-based commons and rights systems

George Kent

9. Food as cultural core: human milk, cultural commons and commodification

Penny Van Esterik

10. Food as a commodity

Noah Zerbe

PART III: FOOD-RELATED ELEMENTS CONSIDERED AS COMMONS

11. Traditional agricultural knowledge as a commons

Victoria Reyes-García, Petra Benyei and Laura Calvet-Mir

12. Scientific knowledge of food and agriculture in public institutions: movement from public to private goods

Molly D. Anderson

13. Western gastronomy, inherited commons and market logic: cooking up a crisis

Christian Barrère

14. Genetic resources for food and agriculture as commons

Christine Frison and Brendan Coolsaet

15. Water, food and climate commoning in South African cities: contradictions and prospects

Patrick Bond and Mary Galvin

PART IV: COMMONING FROM BELOW: CURRENT EXAMPLES OF COMMONS-BASED FOOD SYSTEMS

16. The ‘campesino a campesino’ agroecology movement in Cuba: food sovereignty and food as a commons

Peter M. Rosset and Valentín Val

17. The commoning of food governance in Canada: pathways towards a national food policy?

Hugo Martorell and Peter Andrée

18. Food surplus as charitable provision: obstacles to re-introducing food as a commons

Tara Kenny and Colin Sage

19. Community-building through food self-provisioning in Central and Eastern Europe: an analysis through the food commons framework

Bálint Balázs

PART V: DIALOGUE OF ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES OF TRANSITION

20. Can food as a commons advance food sovereignty?

Eric Holt-Giménezand Ilja van Lammeren

21. Land as a commons: examples from United Kingdom and Italy

Chris Maughan and Tomaso Ferrando

22. The centrality of food for social emancipation: civic food networks as real utopias projects

Maria Fonte and Ivan Cucco

23. Climate change, the food commons and human health

Cristina Tirado-von der Pahlen

24. Food as commons: towards a new relationship between the public, the civic and the private

Olivier de Schutter, Ugo Mattei, Jose Luis Vivero-Pol and Tomaso Ferrando,

Text sourced from Routledge.com

The post Book of the Day: Handbook of Food as a Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“How did we get to accept that food, one of the three essentials for life, along with air and water, can be produced, distributed, appropriated and even destroyed on the basis of pure economic considerations?”

Download Commons and ‘Commoning’: A ‘New’ Old Narrative to Enrich the Food Sovereignty and Right to Food Claims

From the Introduction

Tomaso Ferrando and Jose Luis Vivero-Pol: Over the last ten years, Watch readers have become familiar with the consequences of the capitalist economic model: from the depletion of natural resources to climate change, and from the concentration of wealth to the corporate capture of our food system. Despite a decade of mobilizations and struggles, we continue to witness the effects of capitalism’s appropriation and transformation of nature: the enclosure of land, the rapid disappearance of small-scale farming, the privatization of customary fishing rights, the misappropriation of seeds, deforestation to cultivate cash crops for industrial long food chains, the gradual extinction of biodiversity, human-induced pollution, meal impoverishment, nutrient-poor ultraprocessed foods, and widespread famines, to name but a few.

Policy makers, social movements, grassroots groups and engaged scholars have discussed legal initiatives, policy options and examples of how bottom-up organizations and new forms of governance can facilitate, redress and prevent some of the malfunctions and harmful effects of global capitalism. However, they
often stop at the symptoms; or their attempts to introduce a new vision of what a new food system could look like are thwarted. In this respect, we invite readers to re-interpret the relationships between humans, animals, nature and food, and present a value-based paradigm shift that goes to the root of a failed economic system. Rather than perceiving natural resources and food as commodities, this article shows that a paradigm shift towards valuing, governing and stewarding nature, labor and food as commons can enrich the claims for food sovereignty and the human right to adequate food and nutrition.

This paradigm change is neither a proposal for a quick fix, nor a short-term solution to the converging crises, but rather a long-term, ecological and bottom-up
alternative to the dominant economic model. Our notion of the commons goes beyond an economic understanding of commons as rival but hardly excludable natural resources shared by a community. We advocate for an understanding of the commons that reflects a combination of material and immaterial common resources (e.g. fish stocks and cooking recipes). The commons also encompasses the shared social practices that have been institutionalized by societies to govern resources (referred to as ‘commoning’), and collective management with a sense of common purpose (i.e. to guarantee access to food to all members of the community). Thus, commons are not only resources but also practices where each member of the collectivity is thinking, learning and acting as a ‘commoner’. It is through commoning’ that resources become part of the commons, and not the other way around.

The commons-based approach to humans and the planet informs a transition from nature as a resource that serves human needs, to nature as a co-constructed
and co-inhabited web—a life enabler that also sets limits to human activities. This paradigm shift is rooted in historical and customary practices (e.g. indigenous groups producing food in rural areas, transhumant pastoralists in grassland steppes) as well as in innovative contemporary urban actions (e.g.
young dwellers consuming organic food produced in urban gardens or sharing meal initiatives via Internet apps). Therefore, it is both a new and an old paradigm that clearly confronts the dominant neoliberal narrative that is marked by profit oriented market hegemony and individualism. We begin with a critique of the idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and we then discuss the role that commons and ‘commoning’ can have in decommodifying nature. In the last section, we introduce the idea of food as ‘new’ old commons in opposition to food as a pure commodity, and discuss how this narrative and praxis may enrich other transformational civil society claims.

Download the full report here.

The post Commons and ‘Commoning’: A ‘New’ Old Narrative to Enrich the Food Sovereignty and Right to Food Claims appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Recently, the media was abuzz with news of plans by the Scottish Equalities Secretary to legislate the right to food within Scottish law. This would be a step towards tackling food poverty in Scotland. This potential legislation will be historic, as Scotland will be the first country in the European Union (EU) to expressly recognize the right to food.

Despite rising numbers of food insecure households and a rise in the use of food banks all over Europe (see here and here), the right to food is completely absent from the fundamental EU treaties, the European Convention on Human Rights, and from the jurisprudence of national and regional courts. In other words, the right to food does not exist in the European laws, except for the recent regional law in Lombardia, Italy and the yet-to-be approved draft bill on the right to food in Belgium.

As one of us (JLV-P) discussed in a recent BMJ Global Health article, the stance of EU authorities and member states in the defence of human rights has not included the right to food as a fully-fledged right domestically. Europe is lagging behind Latin America in the protection of the right to food. The EU often fails to advocate for its inclusion in internationally-negotiated agreements such as the SDGs, where the right to food was deliberately removed at the very end of the negotiating process.

There are almost no EU funds to support advocacy, law- and policy-making process and implementation of this right domestically or internationally. Although Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Norway have traditionally provided financial support to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for projects on the right to food, they have recently been replaced by Brazil and Mexico as actors in the promotion of the right to food.

In the EU and elsewhere, the right to food should be one of the pillars of public food policy, from food production to food waste. Protecting, defending, and fulfilling this right depends on recognising the dignity of hungry people, their legitimacy to claim the right to food, identifying spaces of collective participation where those most affected by food insecurity can contribute as citizens to public policy design, and coherence of all policies and legislations that may affect the right to food.

To fill the political gap left by the EU and launch a debate on the right to food, a group of academics, practitioners and activists are inviting blogs to be featured on the BMJ Global Health blog. We are looking to feature a transdisciplinary approach—on understanding how political actors perceive the right to food, the role of grassroots mobilisations and the differences between the right to food, the right to nutrition, the right to food security and the right to food sovereignty.

However it is defined, achieving this right requires education, awareness, and the production of new legal and political knowledge that will result from debate and dialogue. Please join the discussion on Twitter using #RightToFood and pitch your ideas for blogs to the BMJ Global Health Blog Editor at [email protected].

Jose Luis Vivero-Pol is a Research Fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of Law (CPDR) and Earth and Life Institute (ELI), Universite catholique de Louvain. Jose Luis has been directly involved in food law making and policy implementation in Latin America and the academic analysis of processes and outputs.

Tomaso Ferrando is an Assistant Professor, Warwick University School of Law. Tomaso also acts as scientific director of the Master on Food Law and Finance of the International University College of Turin and has been involved in the discussions and preparatory work that anticipated the Regional Law on the Right to Food in Lombardia.

Photo by Michael Stern

The post Let’s talk about the right to food appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Cat Johnson: The commons are generally thought of as shared resources — these include everything from the public spaces we share to the air we breathe. A new movement hopes to redefine food as a commons.

As agricultural engineer Jose Luis Vivero-Pol explains in a new proposal to create a food commons in Europe, food should be considered a commons based on its “essentialness for human survival and the commoning practices that different peoples maintain to produce food for all.” He points out that the ethos surrounding the commons is different from those surrounding for-profit capitalistic ventures, and that food should not be treated as the latter.

The proposal notes that “the theory of the commons has barely touched upon food.” Vivero-Pol recommends a number of policy options for food to be valued and governed as a commons in Europe — here are 10 from a list of 15 ideas published by the P2P Foundation:

1. Declare food as a commons
A Declaration of the European Parliament to consider food no longer as a commodity but a commons, public good and human right to be included in national legal frames and public policies.

2. Create food commons initiatives
European Citizen Initiative to consider food as a human right, a public good and a commons in European policy and legal frameworks. Policy priorities should be geared towards safeguarding farmer’s livelihood and eater’s rights to adequate and healthy food.

3. Get healthy food into schools
Local, organic, freshly-made school meals as universal entitlements, governed by parents and school staff.

4. Support food councils 
Promote Food Policy Councils at all levels through participatory democracies, financial seed capital and enabling laws. Once enough numbers are achieved, an EU Food Policy Council could be established to monitor the reform yet-to-be Commons Food Policy.

5. Reframe the role of food producers 
Food producers to be employed by the state to provide food regularly to satisfy the state’s needs (i.e. for hospitals, schools, army, ministries, etc).

6. Ensure that everyone is fed 
Guaranteed daily bread for all. Establishing public bakeries where every citizen can get access to a bread loaf every day (if needed or willing to).

7. Reduce food waste 
Stricter and innovative rules to avoid food waste (binding regulations).

8. Keep public research in the commons All agricultural research funded with public funds to be in the public domain.

9. Support civic actions 
Food-related subsidies to support innovative civic actions for food such as Territories of Commons, community-supported agriculture, food buying groups, open agricultural knowledge, etc.

10. Food banks as a right 
European Parliament to elaborate a communication to call for an E.U. food bank network that is universal, accountable, compulsory and not voluntary, random and targeted, shifting from charitable food to food as a right.

The post 10 Policy Ideas to Make Food a Shared Resource in Europe appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Food, a life enabler and a cultural cornerstone with multiple meanings, is governed as a mere commodity by the neoliberal food policies that prevail in Europe. These meanings so relevant to human are reduced to the one of tradeable good and the value of food is mixed with its price in the market.

RE-VALUING MULTIDIMENSIONAL FOOD AS A COMMONS: A WORK IN PROGRESS

The Food Commons in Europe

A  proposal by Jose Luis Vivero-Pol for the European Commons Assembly. Read the full proposal here.

Considering any good as a commons is a political arrangement to govern a particular resource in a situated place and time. Along those lines, the consideration of food as a commons rests upon its essentialness to human life and the revalorisation of the different food dimensions (see figure 1) that are relevant to people (value-in use) and thus reducing the tradable dimension (value-in exchange) that has rendered it a mere commodity. A regime based on food commons would inform an essentially democratic food system (food democracy) based on sustainable agricultural practices (agro-ecology) and open-source knowledge (creative commons licenses) using non-material (cuisine recipes, agrarian practices, public research) and material items (seeds, fish stocks, land, forests, water) as commons to reach a global commons (food and nutrition security for all).

Fig 1: The six food dimensions relevant to humans: multi-dimensional food as commons VS mono-dimensional food as commodity

Source: Vivero-Pol (in press). http://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201701.0073/v1

CUSTOMARY AND CONTEMPORARY FOOD COMMONS IN EUROPE

Food shall be re-constructed as a commons based on its essentialness and the commoning practices that different peoples are maintaining (customary) or inventing (contemporary) to produce food for all, based on a rationale and ethos different from the for-profit capitalistic one.

Customary Food-producing Commons (territorial[1], many of them being ICCAs) are located in rural Europe, associated to cultural heritage, landscape preservation and biodiversity stewardship, being mostly owned in collective proprietary regimes, and still resisting the privatisation and enclosing waves triggered by capitalism. Despite centuries of encroachments, misappropriations and legal privatizations, more than 12 Million hectares of customary common lands have survived up to now in Europe (9% of France, 10% in Switzerland, 4.2% in Spain or 8.4% in Wales, UK). Their utility to human societies and efficiency in terms of resource management enabled them to survive up to present day. Despite this abundance, its relevance is hardly noticed by general media and neglected by the EU and national authorities and the mainstream scientific research.

Anyone can forage wild mushrooms and berries in the Scandinavian countries, thousands of surviving community-owned forests and pasturelands in Europe where livestock are raised in free-range, namely Baldios in Portugal, Crofts in Scotland or Montes Vecinales en Mano Comun in Spain. Additional examples can be provided by the irrigation system in the Huertas of Valencia, the emphiteusis proprietary regimes in Italy, the management of oyster beds in the Arcachon bay, the pastoral traditions of Sami people in the Scandinavian countries, the hunting licences in Switzerland and so on, so forth. In Spain, more than 6600 farming households depend entirely on them for earning their living, are grounded on legal principles that ensure the preservation of the communal condition of such property, as they cannot be sold (unalienable), split into smaller units (indivisible), donated or seized (non-impoundable) and cannot be converted into private property just because of their continued occupation (non-expiring legal consideration). In Galicia (Spain), common lands represents 22.7% of total surface and they are owned and managed by resident neighbours inhabiting visigothic-based parishes, a legal figure recognized in the 1968, 1989 and 2012 laws. Finally, in the medieval village of Sacrofano (Roma province, Italy), a particular and ancient University still functions for the local residents: the Università Agraria di Sacrofano holds 330 ha of fields, pastures, forests and abandoned lands where the citizens residing in the municipality can exercise the so-called rights of civic use (customary rights to use the common lands).

Contemporary Food-producing Commons (community-based, mostly urban, innovating practices). These social innovations re-invent traditional methods of governing commons (sharing home-made meals, community gardens) or design new commons that did not exist before, using internet, communication technologies and hyper-connectivity. European examples are mushrooming, such as Ecovillages (human-scale settlements consciously designed through participatory processes to secure long-term sustainability), Transition Towns (a placed-based movement to live with less reliance on fossil fuels and capitalistic markets) or Community Supported Agriculture (initiatives to re-connect small producers and consumers in local, organic, fair networks). They can be complemented with food buying groups, solidarity purchasing groups or food policy councils enrooted in alternative narratives of transition such as food sovereignty and agroecology such as Xarxa de Economia Solidária de Catalunya (Spain), Genuino Clandestino (Italy) or Cork Food Policy Council (Ireland).

Harvesting clams in Galicia. Photo by Jose Luis Vivero-Pol under CC-BY-NC-SA license

RELEVANCE TO EUROPE AND EU AUTHORITIES

Food is treated as a mere commodity in European policies, legal frameworks and normative views. Actually, food is not even considered as a human right in EU charters, constitutions and legal frameworks, nor a public good subject to public policies and universal access (such as health, education or water) and least to say a commons, although many commons and community-owned resources are producing food for Europeans.

The impacts of EU policies on agriculture, fisheries, natural resources, biodiversity (including seeds) and traditional knowledge are generally detrimental to the common lands, the material and immaterial commons and the commoning practices of governance. The European industrial food system with its many externalities (climate change, disappearance of small-farming, unhealthy ultra-processed food, food waste, unfair prices to producers, the absence of the right to food, subsidies diverted to corporations and bigger farmers, water and soil pollution, biodiversity reduction, etc) is driven by the valuation of food as a commodity and the ethos of profit maximisation. As a token, a recent foresight report on the global food security by 2030 considers food as “an opportunity for trade, innovation, health, wealth & geopolitics” (p.34) with no single mention to food as vital need, a human right or a cultural determinant for Europeans. The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), what represents 40% of EU budget (52 billion Euro in 2014), deals with food as a for-profit commodity, subsidising the industrial food system and denying the food-producing commons. None of the five relevant regulations that conform the legal/political corpus of the reformed CAP include any mention to “commons”, “common resources” or the “right to food”.

The commodification of food ended up in the dominant industrial system that fully controls international food trade and, although it does not even feed half of the European population, has given rise to the corporate control of life-supporting industries, from land and water-grabbing to agricultural fuel-based inputs. This industrial food system did not even achieve the goal of feeding adequately, in quantity and quality, the European eaters. Food Insecurity (understood as the inability to eat meat every second day) is rising in Europe, already affecting 13.5 M people (10.9%) with a 2.7% increase since austerity measures were implemented; there are 50 M people with severe material deprivation including food and water and 30-40% children in 6 EU countries are below poverty line.

At present, there is a consultation on the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). Out of the ten topics that are considered relevant to the domain “Adequate and sustainable social protection”, none refer to the basic protection of two vital human rights, the right to food and the right to water, because they are considered as commodities (to be provided through markets and accessed through purchasing power) instead of public goods, rights or commons (to be provided through a polycentric governing system formed by public provision, market access and collective actions). Needless to say, the right to land or the right to have breathable air are also absent from this debate.

The next Common Agricultural Policy has to include food commons and the right to food. Perhaps also to be renamed as “Commons Food Policy”?

THE TRICENTRIC TRANSITION PATHWAY

A myriad of local transitions towards local, sustainable, agro-ecological food production and consumption are taking place today across Europe. Drawing from Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance, food is being produced, consumed and distributed by agreements and initiatives formed by state institutions, private producers and self-organised groups under self-negotiated rules. Those food commons tend to have a commoning function through a multiplicity of open structures and peer-to-peer practices aimed at sharing and co-producing food-related knowledge and items. The combined failure of state fundamentalism (in 1989) and so-called ‘free market’ ideology (in 2008), coupled with the emergence of these practices of the commons, has put this tricentric mode of governance (see Figure 2) back on the agenda.

Fig 2: Scheme of a tri-centric governance and transition pathway for food systems in EU

Vivero-Pol (forthcoming, 2017).
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2548928

Over the last 20 years there have been two streams of civic collective actions for food growing in parallel but disconnected ways, divided by geographical and social boundaries: (a) the challenging innovations taking place in rural areas, led by small-scale, close-to-nature food producers, increasingly brought together under the food sovereignty umbrella, and (b) the Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) exploding in urban and peri-urban areas, led by concerned food consumers who want to reduce their food footprint, improve the quality of their diets and produce part of their own food. Their maturity, however, have paved the way for a convergence of interests, goals and struggles. Large-scale societal change requires broad, cross-sector coordination. It is to be expected that the food sovereignty movement and the AFNs will continue (and need) to grow together, beyond individual organisations, to knit a new (more finely meshed and wider) food commons capable of confronting the industrial food system for the common good.

The transition towards a food commons regime will need a different kind of state (national states and EU authorities), with different duties and skills to steer that transition. The desirable functions of this Partner State are shaped by partnering and innovation rather than the Leviathan paradigm of top-down enforcement (command-and-control via policies, subsidies or regulations. This enabling state would be in line with Karl Polanyi’s theory of its role as shaper and creator of markets and facilitator for civic collective actions to flourish. Amongst the duties of the partner state are the prevention of enclosures, triggering new commons, co-management of complex resource systems, oversight of rules and charts, care for the commons (as mediator or judge) and provider of incentives and enabling legal frameworks for commoners governing their commons.

The private sector presents a wide array of entrepreneurial institutions, encompassing family farming with just a few employees, for-profit social enterprises engaged in commercial activities for the common good with limited dividend distribution and transnational, ‘too-big-to-fail’ corporations that exert near-monopolistic hegemony on large segments of the global food supply chain (van der Ploeg, 2010). The challenge for the private sector is to be driven by a different ethos while making profit, focusing also much more on social aims and satisfying needs. Thus, this food commons transition does not rule out markets as one of several mechanisms for food distribution, but does it reject market hegemony over our food supplies. In plain words, governments will support private initiatives whose driving force is not shareholder value maximization (e.g. family farming, food co-operatives, producer-consumer associations), while citizen/consumers will exert their consumer sovereignty by prioritising food with a meaning (local, organic, fair, healthy) beyond the purely financial (not just the cheapest). The private may also rent commonly-owned natural resources to produce food for the market.

The transition period for this paradigm shift should be expected to last for several decades, a period where we will witness a range of evolving hybrid management systems for food similar to those already working for universal health/education systems. The Big Food corporations will not allow their power to be quietly diminished, and they will fight back by keep on doing what has enabled them to reach such a dominant position today: legally (and illegally) lobbying governments to lower corporate tax rates and raise business subsidies or mitigate restrictive legal frameworks (related to GMO labelling, TV food advertising, local seed landraces, etc.) among other things.

HOW THE “FOOD COMMONS” COULD BE SUPPORTED BY EU AUTHORITIES? 15 MEASURES

If food is valued and governed as a commons in Europe, the following food policy options could be considered, to be then materialised in concrete political, legal and financial measures.

1.- A Declaration of the European Parliament to consider food no longer as a commodity but a commons, public good and human right to be included in national legal frames & public policies.

2.- Set EU targets for food provisioning in 2030: 60% private sector, 25% self-production (collective actions), 15% state-provisioning through Universal Food Coverage (see point 12).

3.- European Citizen Initiative to consider food as a human right, a public good and a commons in European policy and legal frameworks. Policy priorities should be geared towards safeguarding farmer’s livelihood and eater’s rights to adequate and healthy food.

4.- Food commons and right to food in the CAP reform with specific references and a recognition of the importance of the food-producing commons in Europe.

5.- Local, organic, freshly-made Schools Meals as universal entitlements, governed by parents and school staff

6.- Promote Food Policy Councils at all levels through participatory democracies, financial seed capital and enabling laws. Once enough numbers are achieved, an EU Food Policy Council could be established to monitor the reform yet-to-be Commons Food Policy.

7.- Farmers and fishermen as public servants. Food producers to be employed by the State to provide food regularly to satisfy the State needs (i.e. for hospitals, schools, army, ministries, etc).

8.- Guaranteed daily bread for all. Establishing public bakeries where every citizen can get access to a bread loaf every day (if needed or willing to).

9.- Universal Food Coverage to guarantee a minimum amount of food to every EU citizen, similar to universal health coverage and universal primary education.

10.- Patenting living organisms should be banned as an ethical minimum standard.

11.- Food speculation should be banned, because it does not contribute to improving the food system.

12.- Stricter and innovative rules to avoid food waste (binding regulations)

13.- All agricultural research funded with public funds to be in the public domain.

14.- Food-related subsidies to support innovative civic actions for food such as Territories of Commons, community-supported agriculture, food buying groups, open agricultural knowledge, etc.

15.- European Parliament to elaborate a communication to call for an EU food bank network that is universal, accountable, compulsory and not voluntary, random and targeted, shifting from charitable food to food as a right.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• De Moor, M., L. Shaw-Taylor and P. Warde, eds. (2002). The Management of Common Land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.
• EUROSTAT (2015). Eurostat statistics explained. Material deprivation  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Severe_material_deprivation_rate
• Kostakis, V. and M. Bauwens (2014). Network society and future scenarios for a collaborative economy. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Lana-Berasain, JM. & I. Iriarte-Goni (2015). Commons and the legacy of the past. Regulation and uses of common lands in twentieth-century Spain. International Journal of the Commons 9(2): 510–532. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.488
• Maggio, A., T. Van Criekinge and J.P. Malingreau (2015). Global Food Security 2030. Assessing Trends in View of Guiding Future EU Policies. Joint Research Centre Science and Policy Reports. Foresight Series. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/global-food-security-2030-assessing-trends-view-guiding-future-eu-policies
• Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Ostrom, E. (2009). A polycentric approach to climate change. Policy Research working paper WPS 5095. Washington, DC: World Bank.
• Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time. Reprinted in 2001. Boston: Beacon Press.
• UNICEF (2014). Children of the Recession: The impact of the economic crisis on child well-being in rich countries. Innocenti Report Card 12, UNICEF. www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc12-eng-web.pdf
• Vivero-Pol, J.L. (accepted, in press). Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition. http://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201701.0073/v1
• Vivero-Pol, J.L. (forthcoming, 2017). The food commons transition: collective actions for food and nutrition security. In: Ruivenkamp, G. & A. Hilton (eds.). Autonomism and Perspectives on Commoning. Zed Books. Pp. 185-221.
• Vivero Pol, J.L. & C. Schuftan (2016). No right to food and nutrition in the SDGs: mistake or success? BMJ Global Health 1(1) e000040; http://gh.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000040

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

1.- SCIENTIFIC PEER-REVIEWED TEXTS

Handbook of Food as a Commons. Routledge, London. Edited by Vivero-Pol, J.L., T. Ferrando, O. De Schutter & U. Mattei (due in 2017, 28 chapters and 38 authors).

Transition towards a food commons regime: re-commoning food to crowd-feed the world. In: Ruivenkamp, G. & A. Hilton (eds.). Perspectives on Commoning: Autonomist Principles and Practices. Zed Books. Pp. 185-221. (forthcoming, 2017). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2548928

Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition (accepted in Sustainability) http://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201701.0073/v1

The Value-Based Narrative of Food as a Commons. A Content Analysis of Academic Papers with Historical Insights (under review in Journal of Rural Studies). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2865837

No right to food and nutrition in the SDGs: mistake or success? BMJ Global Health 1(1) e000040; DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2016-000040 (2016). http://gh.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000040

2.- PRESENTATIONS WITH POLICY PROPOSALS

How to reclaim our food commons? Meaningful food to crowd-feed Europe http://www.slideshare.net/joseluisviveropol/how-to-reclaim-our-food-commons

Food is not a right in the SDGs: the EU position analysed http://www.slideshare.net/joseluisviveropol/food-is-not-a-right-in-the-sdgs-the-us-and-eu-positions-analysed

3.- OUTREACH SHORT TEXTS

Staying alive shouldn’t depend on your purchasing power. The Conversation (2013).

https://theconversation.com/staying-alive-shouldnt-depend-on-your-purchasing-power-20807

Why isn’t food a public good? Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2014)

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/00289

Food as a commons: A shift we need to disrupt the neoliberal food paradigm. Heathwood Institute (2015)

http://www.heathwoodpress.com/food-as-a-commons-a-shift-we-need-to-disrupt-the-neoliberal-food-paradigm-jose-luis-vivero-pol/

SPANISH

Soberanía alimentaria y alimentos como un bien común. En: Seguridad Alimentaria: derecho y necesidad. Dossier 10 (Julio): pp 11-15. Economistas Sin Fronteras, Spain. (2013)

http://www.ecosfron.org/portfolio/seguridad-alimentaria-derecho-y-necesidad/#.Uh3BAfW3vbk

FRENCH

Peut-on éradiquer la faim à l’horizon post-2015 en continuant à traiter l’alimentation comme une marchandise ? CTA Knowledge for Development Blog.  February 2016. http://knowledge.cta.int/fr/Dossiers/S-T-et-defis-agricoles/Securite-alimentaire/Articles-de-fond/Peut-on-eradiquer-la-faim-a-l-horizon-post-2015-en-continuant-a-traiter-l-alimentation-comme-une-marchandise

[1] During the European Assembly of Commons, there was a policy proposal presented at the European Parliament session on “Territories of the Commons”. See here for text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309859387_Territories_of_Commons_proposal_JL_Vivero_hackpad_V_1  And here for presentation:  http://www.slideshare.net/joseluisviveropol/territories-of-commons-food-heritage-nature-climate-mitigation-democracy

[2] Indigenous peoples’ and Conserved Community territories and Areas: natural areas, resources, species and habitats conserved in a voluntary, common and self-directed way by local communities and indigenous peoples throughout the world http://www.iccaconsortium.org/

[3] This figure is downsized since it includes only 13 countries and only refers to Utilised Agriculture Area, so forested or coastal areas are not included. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Common_land_statistics_-_background

[4] Legislation in Finland (www.ym.fi/publications )

[5] Those who have “an open house and a burning fireplace” what means they regularly inhabit that house, either owned or rented. Therefore, commonality is not inherited but granted by living in the community.

[6]There are 2800 Montes Vecinales de Mano Comun (Collectively-Owned Community Forests) legally protected, representing a third of total forest area. They produce wood, food, pasturelands, income by selling wood or renting land for wind-power turbines. They are an example of direct assembly democracy that can be replicated on other settings applying the EU’s principle of subsidiarity in decision-making. More info at: http://montenoso.net/wiki/index.php/MVMC/es

[7] Law 13/1989 (10 October) de Montes Vecinales en Man Común (DOG nº 202, 20-10-1989) and Law 7/2012 (28 June) de montes de Galicia.

[8] The term “Università” derives from the ancient roman term “Universitas Rerum” (Plurality of goods) while the term “Agraria” refers to the rural area. http://www.agrariasacrofano.it/Storia.aspx

[9] ECOLISE http://gen-europe.org/partners/ecolise/index.htm and Global Eco-village Network Europe http://gen-europe.org/home/home/index.htm

[10] Transition Network https://transitionnetwork.org/

[11] http://urgenci.net/the-network/

[12] http://www.xes.cat/pages/xs100.php

[13] http://genuinoclandestino.it/

[14] http://corkfoodpolicycouncil.com/

[15] Country studies have been done for England, Italy, Croatia and Spain https://www.cbd.int/protected/ts64-country-case-studies/

[16] http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/towards-european-pillar-social-rights_en

[17] http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/adequate-and-sustainable-social-protection_en

• Jose Luis Vivero Pol is an engaged scholar, food commoner. Click here to read more of Jose Luis’ writing on this blog. Universite catholique of Louvain, Belgium Email: [email protected]
• The P2P Foundation is serializing videos from the European Commons Assembly. See all videos here.
• Lead image: Conviviality in Central Africa Flickr CC Luca Gargano

The post The Food Commons in Europe appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Pollenzo, June 20, 2016 – was officially launched with the ceremonial signing of the FLF Manifesto by Mr Carlo Petrini (Founder of the Slow Food International Movement), and by Professor Ugo Mattei (Academic Coordinator of the International University College of Turin).

As underlined in the Manifesto, the Master will start in 2017, will be structured as a joint program between the International University College of Turin (IUC) and the University of Gastronomic Science of Pollenzo (UniSG), and will involve a limited number of highly selected students in 18 months of study, investigation and practice around the global food regime, its legal construction and the role of finance. The main aim of the FLF Master will be to challenge and critically engage with the perceived inevitability of contemporary food regimes, in particular helping students imagine a new model based on ecologically connecting all living beings and the planet.

Recognizing that nowhere the inequality of “global” society is more visible than in the polarisation of the contemporary food regime, the FLF Master of Research aspires to strengthen the legal and financial intellectual critique with the pro-active development of alternative styles of professional practice and active citizenship, strengthening students’ awareness of the deep-seated entanglement of legal reasoning and financial innovation, and providing them with knowledge and experience of the strategies of civil society organization and practices of legal resistance.

Open to students with different backgrounds and degrees, the Master will engage with (i) the material processes and competing paradigms of food production and consumption, (ii) the institutional design possibilities allowed by the legal imaginary, and (iii) the forms of economic organisation nurtured by different types of financial architecture, to account for and circulate value within society.

In the words of Petrini and Mattei “Our FLF Master of Research will welcome students engaged with these guiding questions: How do different varieties of (i) legal institutions, (ii) financial architecture, and (iii) material practices of the food systems combine? What transformations do they work on the social and natural ecologies of our planet? How can they be redefined and recombined in order to produce new realities based on equality, ecology and justice?”

Please find here further information on the joint postgraduate research program

Text of the Agreement

The agreement was signed by Carlo Petrini, Ugo Mattei, Nora McKeon and Olivier De Schutter

MASTER OF RESEARCH in FOOD, LAW AND FINANCE

Constructing innovative and ecological understandings of food regimes

The Master of Research in FOOD, LAW AND FINANCE (FLF) is an innovative joint program of the International University College of Turin (IUC) and the University of Gastronomic Science of Pollenzo (UniSG) which aims at fleshing out the complementarities and political crossovers between law and finance understood as material forces that shape not only the food regime, but the lives of social and natural communities on the planet.

Structured around 18-months of study, investigation and practice, the FLF Master will challenge and critically engage with the perceived inevitability of contemporary food regimes, while helping students re-think the inevitability of the current system and imagining a new model based on ecologically connecting all living beings and the planet. The main objects will be (i) the material processes and competing paradigms of food production and consumption, (ii) the institutional design possibilities allowed by the legal imaginary, and (iii) the forms of economic organisation nurtured by different types of financial architecture, to account for and circulate value within society. Therefore, the FLF Master is built on the conviction that it is only through an innovative triangulation of these areas (Food, Law, Finance) that the complexity of the material tensions and political trade-offs implicit in the global production regime can be properly brought into focus. We all believe that considering “law” or “finance” in isolation (as realms of practice one step removed from the metabolic processes that fold the life of human communities into the ecological dynamics of the planet) has itself contributed to a range of widening and unsustainable inequalities.

Nowhere is evidence of the inequality of “global” society more visible than in the polarisation of the contemporary food regime, torn between the unhealthily fed and the life-threateningly undernourished. That’s why the FLF Master of Research wants to shift beyond intellectual critique towards the pro-active development of alternative styles of professional practice and active citizenship, by strengthening its students’ awareness of the deep-seated entanglement of legal reasoning and financial innovation, and providing them with knowledge and experience of the strategies of civil society organization and practices of legal resistance. It is our conviction that this foundational dimension – an ecological dimension that keeps together the complex web of life – ought to shape any heterodox study and thinking of the food regimes, and has supported our research activity for the last years.

Our FLF Master of Research will welcome students engaged with these guiding questions: How do different varieties of (i) legal institutions, (ii) financial architecture, and (iii) material practices of the food systems combine? What transformations do they work on the social and natural ecologies of our planet? How can they be redefined and recombined in order to produce new realities based on equality, ecology and justice? We are glad to be actively involved in the FLF project since its inception, and we look forward to welcoming the first class of M.Res students in January 2017.

Photo by USDAgov

The post Constructing innovative and ecological understandings of food regimes (M.Res) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

From the Abstract:

” Then, using the food regime theory and exploring the developments in the industrial food system (mainstream) and the urban alternative food networks (AFNs) and rural food sovereignty movement (innovative niches), the author proposes a transition pathway (the re-commonification of food) towards a food commons regime in which primacy rests in its feature as human beings’ absolute need and the different dimensions of food are properly valued, in opposition to the corporate mono-dimensional valuation of food as a commodity. In order to crowdsource this transition, this paper argues the food sovereignty movement and the AFNs need to grow together, beyond individual organisations, to knit a different and bigger food web capable of confronting the industrial food system for the common good. This ongoing transition that will span decades is to be steered by a tricentric governance system (urban and rural civic collective actions for food, partner states and social private enterprises) that enables access and promote food in all its dimensions through a multiplicity of open structures and sustainable peer-to-peer practices aimed at sharing, co-producing and trading food and knowledge. Unlike the market, the food commons are about cooperation, sharing, stewardship, equity, self-production, sustainability, collectiveness, embeddedness and direct democracy from local to global. Shifting the dominant discourse from the private sphere to the commons arena will open up a whole new world of economic, political and societal innovations, not least the Universal Food Coverage.”

Photo by markus spiske

The post Essay of the Day: The Transition Towards a Food Commons Regime appeared first on P2P Foundation.