Feeding Cities. The Potential of Sustainable Agriculture for Economic and Social Development

Food is becoming an increasingly disputed issue, and food movements have emerged in both the Global North and Global South. Food security and food sovereignty are still influencing the everyday life of almost 1 billion people in the World. Indeed, the agro-industrial food system, based on the ‘Green Revolution’ aim to feed the World, presents several emergencies and negative externalities which have been affecting people, the environment, and both global and local economy. The ongoing financial and economic crisis has strengthened the corporate’s economic and political power and it has exacerbated inequalities. It has also reduced the citizens’ perception of security and the State’s policies effectiveness. To face this scenario, it appears necessary to study how global society is facing these negative externalities. Starting from the recent debate around these emergencies, the increasing industrialization of food production and the Great Recession’s consequences, this dissertation ill present several initiatives emerged over the last twenty years providing a sustainable alternative to this panorama. Specifically, in the first part, through an interdisciplinary approach which overlaps the most recent international scientific contributions, food issues will be presented as the ‘new’ vehicle to re-embed the social within the Market and contention politics. Hence, the literature review allows to better understand the rise of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) which can lead to a more sustainable way of living and buying food. In the second part, the theoretical nodes opened by the international literature will be faced going beyond the findings gathered through the empirical research. Following a qualitative approach, the research has been developed in two different case-studies: a middle-sized town of Northern Italy (Bergamo), and a middle-sized town of Southern Brazil (Florianópolis). The empirical body consists of four chapters, each focusing on a specific aspect of Alternative Food Networks and each one responds to a specific research question. The first empirical chapter focuses on the discussion of AFNs as a social movement. The attention is directed toward the AFNs as an example of what in literature is labelled as Sustainable Community Movement Organizations (SCMOs). The second chapter considers AFNs evolution during the economic, financial, and social crisis. By combining insights from AFNs literature, the contemporary economic, financial and social crisis, this chapter shows how AFNs are evolving in the Global World. The third empirical chapter displays the ongoing state of the sustainable agriculture within the two studied contexts. It shows the AFNs farmers’ profile, thus their claims, and their perspectives. The fourth chapter focuses on the processes of strengthening AFNs through a specific framework such as Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGSs). The study considers two examples of PGSs: the PGS of Lombardy (Northern Italy) and the Rede Ecovida’s PGS (Southern Brazil). This dissertation aims to collect insights on how sustainable agriculture is shaping new economic social movement organizations and alternative forms of consumption and distribution within the urban areas of both the Global North and the Global South. It focuses on how AFNs were created, who takes part in, and through which pathway they are going to. The key-question behind this work is to investigate how the nature, the organizational form, and the alliances of (and among) different actors, who promote alternative forms of food consumption and distribution, are changing along the time in the urban areas, comparing the insights gathered in both Global North and Global South. This research highlights also how people get collectively engaged in AFNs initiatives, and how these networks are shaped by the economic, social, and cultural institutions. Moreover, this research investigates how the Great Recession has been encouraged or constrained these grassroots collective networks. Finally, specific adopted tools will be considered in a comparative way to understand whether and how they are fostering and strengthening the AFNs framework.