What would food policy look like if it put people and planet first? How can social movements work to deepen our analysis of the problems, to strengthen relationships across boundaries and to effectively articulate our demands to policy-makers? How can government be opened up based on practices of participatory democracy and how can we continually deepen democracy both within the formal political system and in the everyday spaces of life in rural and urban places?

We are working collectively to explore these, and other related questions, here in the UK and beyond.

1. We have been involved in supporting England’s A People’s Food (PFP) Policy: www.peoplesfoodpolicy.org. Please click here for conference presentation slides, here for a poster sharing reflections on the process and here for an article that discusses the PFP.
2. We are also exchanging with people’s food policy processes internationally so that people doing similar work in different places can learn from one another: e.g. in Canada, Australia and at the European level

Literature/Resources:

Anderson, C. R. (2017). Policy from Below: Politicising urban agriculture for food sovereignty. Urban Agriculture Magazine, 32. RUAF Foundation.

Anderson, M. (n.d.). Make federal food assistance rights-based. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems,1-3. doi:10.1017/S1742170519000024

Bellows AC (2019). A systems- based human rights approach to a national food plan in the USA. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 1–3.

Martin, S. J., & Andrée, P. (2017). Putting food sovereignty to work: civil society governmentalities and Canada’s people’s food policy project (2008–2011). Journal of Civil Society, 13(4), 374-391.

Kneen, C. (2010). Mobilisation and convergence in a wealthy northern country. Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(1), 229-235.

Levkoe, C. Z., & Sheedy, A. (2017). A people-centred approach to food policy making: Lessons from Canada’s People’s Food Policy project. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 1-21.