What Grows During a Crisis? Cultivating the Food Commons in Oxfordshire

Abstract

The need for a fundamental transformation of food systems is now widely recognized. As a response to the intersecting crises facing the food system, scholars and activists have proposed to move beyond understandings of food as a commodity, instead reconceptualizing it as a commons. Drawing on political ecology, feminist theory, and diverse economies literatures, this paper focuses on the concept of food commoning, defined as the activities conducted by communities who co-produce, manage, and benefit from shared food resources. Through the case study of Oxfordshire, it explores how COVID-19 has strengthened and expanded creative practices tied to food sharing. This study's emphasis on the praxis of commoning multiplies the sites and temporalities that can be commoned, revealing the existence of commoning efforts and practices at all levels of the food chain. The findings suggest that these initiatives produce resilient entanglements grounded in reciprocity, care, and sustainability, thereby resignifying the values that govern food production, distribution, and consumption. Beyond individual food commons, I argue that building food commoning networks creates opportunities to integrate heterogenous food commons operating at all levels of the food system into a systemic alternative, which points to the possibility of (re)commoning the entirety of the food system. Highlighting their prefigurative potential, commoning assemblages are carving out spaces of possibility in the current socio-political context for the transition towards more sustainable, resilient, diverse, and just food systems.