Local Sustainable Economic Development: Insights from the Food System

R O B E R T A S O N N I N O

S C H O O L O F P L A N N I N G A N D G E O G R A P H Y

C A R D I F F U N I V E R S I T Y , U K

Local Sustainable Economic Development: Insights from

the Food System

The Early Days: Local as Sustainable Food

A sustainable food system emphasizes locally-grown food, regional trading associations, locally-owned processing, local currency, and local control over politics and regulation –Kloppenburg et al., 2000

The Early Days: Local as Sustainable Food

Concept of “embeddedness” behind the sustainability of local food systems

Local production is more ecologically benign and healthier

Locally embedded food chains promote relationships of trust and accountability between producers and consumers

The development of a local sustainable food system provides not only economic gains for a community but also fosters civic involvement, cooperation, and healthy social relations (Feenstra, 1997)

Questioning Normative Views

Can we really assume that the sustainability of a food system depends on its relationship with a specific territorial and social context? Who has the authority and power to set the boundaries of such a context? And can this context change over time, or is it historically defined and bounded?

Role of individual agency in constructing local food networks

Re-localization in the Placeless Foodscape: the Steve Turton Meats Network

We did it at the height of the BSE, mainly because I had had enough of it, I was sick and tired of people coming into our shops and moaning about it…


Effectively that’s a totally regional offer, 100% traceable meat, we have spent 85,000 quid on our traceability system…so when a customer goes to a store they can actually find out where the meat comes from, and that has been solely driven by regionality.


With Steve Turton we are visiting the farm, we are discussing what we are going to breed, how we are going to feed it, when we are going to produce it…it’s a partnership arrangement, I just have to fit with his philosophy…I got two of the best eating quality breeds, and he’s looking for eating quality, so we fit --Southwest Chairman of the National Beef Association.

The wonderful flowers […] bloom for two weeks and they must be picked up early in the morning, before they open up. You put them in a basket […] and then on a table indoor, covered with a cloth, and then using your hands, and your hands only, you pick the three red pistils up and dry them. The first time […] I used charcoal at a certain temperature, all things that I have learned by reading books. I obtained a few packages of saffron and I said ‘I must let people know that saffron can grow in this area’

Re-localization in the Place-based Foodscape: Saffron in Tuscany

We can no longer support our families through conventional farming, as it used to be ... The price of wheat is the same now as it was twenty years ago. […] We are all farmers in search of something new, of new markets but also the opportunity to get together again, as it used to be. We want to work together to become stronger, we realised that we cannot go on alone.


Rapidly expanding market (quality outlets, saffron-flavoured cheese)

Need to increase the total output

Structural problems within the Association and changing spatial distribution of the network


Re-thinking Place in the Food System

Local food systems as active attempts to empower a place through new bio-regional discourses

Saffron as a productive activity that respects the ‘natural’conditions of the land

New type of hybridity promoted by members of the Turton‟snetwork

Constructed as the ‘local’, such place provides the food network with a renewed but contested identity that must be continuously defended and renegotiated

Re-thinking Place in the Food System

Need for a broader research approach that accounts for

the socio-ecological (and actively constructed) dimension of embeddedness

its vertical dimension – to become and remain sustainable over time and space, local food networks need specific governance arrangements

Calling into question the role of the State

Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System: The “Local Trap”

Local social relationships, power relations, and environmental management practices are not always positive, and communities can pursue elitist or narrow ‘defensive localization’ strategies at the expenses of wider societal interests (Allen et al., 2004)

Three powerful counter-arguments developed by the “local trap” approach:

Local food systems are not always ecologically sustainable

Local food consumption may exacerbate social injustice – example of famers‟ markets, which leave struggling producers and citizens “to weigh concerns with income and price against the supposed benefits of direct social ties” (Hinrichs, 2000)

Local food is not necessarily healthier

Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System: The “Local Trap”

The celebration of the local began to be replaced by its detraction Local as a “neo-liberal” discourse

Devolution as displacement, which creates “inevitable disparities” (Allen and Guthman, 2006) and “marginal, safe spaces for the privileged” (Allen, 2008)

Local as a site of experimentation

If accompanied by local empowerment, devolution creates contexts where sub-national units address issues that are not yet mature on the national scene (Sonnino, 2010)

Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System: Addressing the “Local Trap”

To progress the debate, we need to focus on the tangible outcomes of discursive practices

Do different views and discourses on re-localization promote defensive, parochial, elitist and autarkic tendencies? Or are they embedded in a more relational and cosmopolitan view of the local that takes into consideration its connections and potential synergies with other locals?

Escaping the Local Trap: School Food Reform in East Ayrshire, Scotland

Deprived rural county of 120,000

Far-sighted council working in the spirit of „joined-up thinking‟

School food as a platform on which to tackle many of the region‟s most glaring problems at once


Strict “straightness” guidelines for class 1 vegetables made more flexible to attract organic suppliers

The bidding contract was divided into 9 lots

Reaching out to small local suppliers to encourage their participation in the system


45 primary and 2 secondary schools involved in the reform

70% of the ingredients utilized are now local, 30% are organic, and 90% of the food sourced is fresh and unprocessed


The benefits of re-localization include:

Multiplier effect of £ 160,000/12 schools

Reducing food miles by 70%! Less packaging waste Improving children‟s knowledge

of food Increasing users‟ satisfaction

with the service Social Return on Investment

Index of 6.19

Food Miles

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Bef or e Af ter

Sustainability in the Food System: Beyond Provenance

“Linear” food systems

Even largeragri-business

Even largerprocessors

Even largerretailers &caterers

Over-use ofnatural capital

Consumers

“Circular” food systems

Waste

Operations:Primary Production – Processing –

Distribution – Marketing –Retail / Food service

Inputs:The

5Capitals

Waste

Consumption

Local Food Systems: Looking at the Future

Re-localization in the “New Food Equation”: Food price surge Sharp increase in food insecurity Food riots as threats to national security Effects of climate change on agri-food systems Land conflicts

Emergence of cities and regions as food policy actors

Urban and regional food strategies are forging new alliances between food producers and consumers and between urban centres and their rural hinterlands


A new paradigm is emerging for eco-system based, territorial food system planning [that] seeks […] not to replace the global food supply chains that contribute to food security for many countries, but to improve the local management of food systems that are both local and global (FAO, 2011)


New and important connections developing

Between human and environmental health (“a good food system prioritizes the health and wellbeing of our citizens, make healthy and quality foods financially accessible, contributes to economic development, protects and strengthens biodiversity and the natural resource base of the region as a whole” - Los Angeles Food Policy Task Force, 2010)

Between local and global action (New York aspires to become a “model of how targeted local action can support large-scale improvement interventions” – NYC, 2010)

Between citizens of different backgrounds

Between different locals


Role of researchers in supporting and connecting local actors who are working to engender sustainable transformations

None of these actors, left alone in their own local context, can change the world; but all together, they can create a collective commitment to the values of environmental integrity, economic equity and social justice

Economy & Finance

Local Sustainable Economic Development: Insights from the Food System