Transforming Food Systems Through Food Sovereignty: An Australian Urban Context

Abstract

This article draws on La Via Campesina's definition of food sovereignty and its potential for reconceptualising food as a basic human right within the dominant Australian food discourse. We argue that the educative value that emerges from urban food production in Australia stems from the action of growing food and its capacity to transform individuals' social and environmental concerns over food systems. Community participation in urban food production can promote a learning process that generates political understanding and concerns over food systems. We use the education theories of transformative learning and critical consciousness to discuss how Australian urban food production systems can create this social and environmental support for alternative food systems. By having control over food production practices and building collective understandings of how food choices impact global food systems, elements of food sovereignty can develop in an Australian urban context.

Adult Learning in Alternative Food Networks

“…the work of Green & Duhn, ); supporting the creation of more meaningful relationships with other species (e.g., farm animals); and increasing awareness of the complexity and interrelatedness of the earth's life support system (cf. Davila & Dyball, ).…”

Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony and Food Systems Literacy: Transforming the Global Industrial Food System

“…It is this awareness and understanding, developed through meaningful action, which, the authors contend, provides the greatest opportunity for developing a critical consciousness about food systems and one's role and responsibilities within them. Davila and Dyball (2015) argue further that this makes food sovereignty, as a project for political and economic transformation of the food system, relevant and important in the Australian urban context, through the expansion of a growing ecological citizenry.…”

“…Walter (2013) argues that 'social movements, including the environmental movement, can be considered as pedagogical sites for adult learning which foster communicative dialogue, collective identity, democratic civil society and socio-environmental sustainability' (p. 523). In the Australian context (while we draw on that context for a number of examples, it is applicable to other advanced capitalist economies), and drawing on theories of transformative learning and critical consciousness, Davila and Dyball (2015) argue that urban food production systems create opportunities for informal and experiential learning that enable 'urban dwellers [to] develop a broader : : : awareness of [the multiple] social and ecological injustices' (p. 39) that flow from the dominant food system. It is this awareness and understanding, developed through meaningful action, which, the authors contend, provides the greatest opportunity for developing a critical consciousness about food systems and one's role and responsibilities within them.…”

“…This movement brings together an estimated 200 million small, family and peasant farmers in more than 80 countries across five continents, under the umbrella of La Via Campesina: The Farmers' Way (Desmarais, 2007). It also includes a growing number of urban food activists and organisations, as well as several national and local governments that have enshrined food sovereignty principles and aspirations in constitutions, national laws and municipal policies and strategies (Clark, 2016;Davila & Dyball, 2015;Walsh-Dilley, Wolford, & McCarthy, 2016). The core of those principles is, first, that food is not and should not be a commodity but rather should be a public good or, indeed, a commons (Vivero-Pol, 2017).…”

“…We contend, together with Berry and ecological economists such as Kate Raworth (2017), that we must shift from parasitic symbiosis to mutual symbiosis, from an extractive and exploitative political economy to a more equitable one that meets the needs of all people within the means of the planet. If this task is to be realised, environmental education must play a central role in raising consciousness among growing numbers of people regarding both the unsustainability of the current state of affairs as well as the existence and desirability of feasible alternatives (Davila & Dyball, 2015;Swan & Flowers, 2015). Since the food system is so foundational to all life, and since it is both a cause of many of the ills we are currently experiencing as well as the source of some of the most hopeful and inspiring practices of transformative change, and further that it is an arena of social life that connects 'personal actions with environmental consequences' (Stapleton, 2015, p. 12), we share the view that it is a very fruitful arena for the development of critical environmental education curricula and pedagogies.…”