There is a great
interest in local food and there are many initiatives, private and public. They
are, however, not coordinated or linked to each other. I am now working with a project to, on
a national (Swedish) level, develop concepts and strategies for how to further develop
these initiatives.
The project will
1) disseminate knowledge and experiences; 2) analyze opportunities and
challenges and; 3) identify needs for further developments.
The project can
increase the opportunities for enterprises to develop new market channels and a
more diversified and viable business. New forms of economic development, new
kinds of enterprises and market solutions can be identified. It can also
contribute to an environment where the stakeholders move together and to a more
coherent policy conducive for rural development.
The project will
work with the public sector, the agriculture and food industries and civil
society.
My question is always whether, in the absence of land access, we will look to markets for solutions when history has proven that markets (at least as they are currently configured) will never offer the solutions we are looking for. I think we have replaced the concept of community members (committed to working collectively to put food on the table so to speak) with "stakeholders". And while I understand that we cannot go back I yet dismiss (at least ideologically) that solutions to food security (or the lack thereof) can be resolved through economic development. Home economies are what resilient cultures always strived for - streamed down systems within the land base limits of place. How to reverse the history of brutal colonization and continued land theft is more the challenge. Without access to land we are all, only, indentured servants doing the best with what we have or, rather, don't have.
ReplyDelete