At the ESRS conference, currently ongoing, there are a few working groups situated around empirical and theoretical work on ” Alternative Food Networks (AFNs)” . Different studies have identified many different alternative food initiatives and networks which are situated outside the consolidated agro-industrial complex both physically and in their socio-political organisation.

The working groups show different cases from Europe and beyond in which participant involvement is being analysed. How participants of AFNs frame their involvement varies. The frames are often overtly political referring to marxist ideologies and anarchist principles or quite the opposite. The latter – no overt political statements – can be found in the cases presented by Esther Veen on two urban agricultural initiatives in the Netherlands.

Participants were extremely hesitant to frame their membership in political terms and were outright rejecting ‘ oppositional’  language. They were downplaying the significance of their membership, not prepared to place it in broader ideas of societal change, but framed it instead as a personal choice, as something nice to do and as their little contribution to make the world better.

Particularly in one case, this contrasted starkly with the initiator of that case who strongly voiced his political statements and discontent with the agro-industrial system. The audience to the presentation suggested that one of the explanatory factors could be Dutch culture which generally avoids politization but focuses on the ‘ tolerance’  of leaving you to do your thing while I do mine. Certainly, so far food has not underwent the same level of politization as is the case in Britain. But further unpacking is needed of these initiatives in order to firmly conclude at this point.

Today we had the last session of our working group ” Comparative perspective; governing semi-subsistance food and farming strategies in the countryside and city” . In this group we deliberately were seeking to contrast  cases of food and farming in urban and rural contexts. Can urban agriculture be compared with small-scale farming in rural areas? What has peasant farming literature to offer in how we can look at what is going on with food growing in cities?

We discovered useful and potentially bridging concepts and concepts which may confuse more than they reveal. To start with the latter, “semi-subsistance farming” may not be a useful concept. One reason is the many definitions as Imre Kovach showed us. But another is the meaning of the separate terms in the different rural and urban contexts. Is the ” semi”  in subsistance referring to selling surplus or buying the remaining part of the food supply if you only produce some of your vegetables? And is ‘ farming’  the appropriate term for growing food in allotments or community gardens?  From a rural perspective food production as a side, or part time activity is easily seen as farming and the person foremost as a producer and only in second instance as consumer. In city initiatives it is the reverse. Consumers usually do not ‘ farm’  but ‘ grow food’  or ‘ garden’  and hence are only a ‘ producer’  after their identity as a consumer. This while a rural hobby farm may be as intense in land use as an allotment at the city fringe. The focus on food provisioning strategies  seems therefore better since it refers to the activities one undertakes to eat, which may include growing activities too.