Guaranteeing access to local and quality food, the effective participation of the population in decision-making as well as democracy at the heart of the agri-food chain: these are the challenges that 17 initiatives are taking up to radically transform the ways of producing and consuming throughout France. For the second year in a row, we have dedicated part of the Feeding the Future call for projects to food justice, in partnership with the Fondation de France. Here is an overview of these projects that explore disruptive solutions and shape sustainable food and agriculture.
Food justice 2024 projects
“User experience” with a group of food-poor shoppers / Emplettes & Cagettes
For the past 5 years, the Emplettes et Cagettes association has been fighting against poverty and food insecurity by providing the most vulnerable with basic food products chosen and negotiated by them and with local producers and actors. This action, supported by the Chamber of Agriculture, the DRAAF and the department of Meurthe et Moselle, makes it possible to source products at the prices negotiated for collective catering. People in precarious situations buy and organise delivery times close to their homes among themselves. The laboratories of use, also called “CAP Labs”, organize the participation of buyers (by working on observations, analyses and proposals with buyers) actively guaranteeing a participatory governance of the association. The challenge is to rely on the collective intelligence of people who are aware of food insecurity and their knowledge, and with them to pool food purchases to regain the quality and offer of dignified and sustainable products.
Territoires à VivreS Aix Marseille Provence / Graines de Soleil
The “Territoires à VivreS” experiment (territorial experiments of cooperation for dignified access to quality food) is being developed in 4 territories, including the Aix-Marseille Provence Metropolis where the Graines de Soleil association is responsible for the engineering of cooperation with the Cité de l’agriculture. The local collective, made up of 8 structures, has entered an operational phase with the supply of organic and local dry products from social and/or solidarity grocery stores thanks to the partnership established with 18 organic producers in the territory and the deployment of the Graines de Soleil logistics platform which ensures collection, storage, processing, and delivery. The objective today is to reach 600 families directly involved through working groups, awareness-raising workshops and training on sustainable food. The project should make it possible to consolidate and deploy the collective’s action: continue to develop the supply of local and organic products, stabilize and strengthen the governance of the collective and open it up to new actors.
Caisse alimentaire commune et locale / Communauté de communes du Val de Drôme
The Community of Communes of the Val de Drôme en Biovallée brings together 29 communes at the confluence of the Rhône and the Drôme river. It carries out a territorial project aimed at maintaining social and territorial balances, guaranteeing access to public services for all, and controlling disruptions to meet ecological and climate challenges. The project aims in particular to offer “for all a chosen, sustainable diet, beneficial to the health and quality of life of women, men, the living, the common people of the territory”. It plans to build a food social security fund with local sustainable food partners, involving all the actors in the food system: mobilization and reflection actions, then the construction of governance, sustainable operating mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation.
Deployment of the local social food security fund in Dieulefit and surrounding area / Association Villages En Transition
Since 2021, the citizens’ initiative “Towards an SSA in Dieulefit and surroundings” has been running a local food social security fund with the aim of concretely experimenting with food democracy, developing the right to quality and chosen food for all and creating new outlets for agriculture that respects the environment and humans. In 2024, the food fund will change scale and the Local Food Council will be renewed. The challenge is to deepen the democratic experience and to experiment with a fund based on contributions, to involve more households, producers, and businesses. The aim is to structure a second phase of prototyping over 24 months (2024/2025) to lead to the formalization, development and evaluation of the first results of an autonomous food fund financially based on contributions, based on a participatory dynamic, the development of replicable tools and an evaluation co-constructed with research to facilitate its spin-off.
Caisse Alimentaire Commune de Montpellier / Association Caisse Alimentaire Commune
The Caisse Alimentaire Commune project is supported by the association of the same name, which continues the work undertaken by the Territoires à VivreS Montpellier collective. It is part of the search for a new governance of food transitions based on the concepts of solidarity and food democracy. This project has 3 main objectives: to promote access to quality food for as many people as possible (integration of 600 people into the Fund by the end of 2025), to bring a real food democracy to life by promoting the participation of the inhabitants (animation of the Citizens’ Committee, the Citizens’ Assembly and places of citizenship), to initiate a process of fair agricultural and food transition (to continue the process of agreement between points of sale and producers and respond to the challenges of the actors). The support targets the launch of phase 2 of experimentation (July 2024 / December 2025) and the sustainability of the Common Food Fund.
Experimentation towards a food democracy in the solidarity canteen / Saveurs d’Exil
In Toulouse, the Saveurs d’exil association works with vulnerable groups, particularly exiles. The association’s café provides 13,000 meals a year at free prices, while offering legal advice, counseling, cultural activities, or simply warmth and WIFI. Its project is to move towards a food democracy for its solidarity canteen, which is mostly frequented by people without housing solutions. The café is run by exiled people who have themselves been homeless, known as “chefs.fe.s”. The association is self-managed and administered on a collegiate basis by managers, employees and volunteers. It plans to increase organic sourcing to 80%, train chefs and users in the use of fresh, seasonal produce, create a space for debate and links between exiles and producers (farm visits), and share the results of the experiment with the department’s sustainable food players.
Strengthening food democracy in Greater Lyon / Territoires à VivreS Grand Lyon
Territoires à VivreS (TàV) Grand Lyon is one of the 4 winning territories to experiment with territorial cooperation engineering. Created in June 2023 in Vénissieux, the TàV association aims to mobilise residents, and in particular people affected by inequalities, to imagine and implement appropriate solutions and give them back the power to act and decide. It aims to propose a systemic approach by experimenting with various food democracy initiatives in several districts of the Metropolis of Lyon. The organisation networks these initiatives, tests and develops a food fund, structures an accessible sector to strengthen the supply of organic and local products in the neighbourhoods, and pools spaces and services in a common place dedicated to food resilience. The purpose of these actions is to move towards a change of scale by supporting several experiments and territories at the same time.
A third place for food solidarity and food democracy / Le Faitout
Le Faitout is a third place of food, located in the working-class district of La Saulaie, in the south of the Metropolis of Lyon, between the communes of Oullins and La Mulatière. It was created by SINGA-Lyon (an association that participates in the inclusion of newcomers) and Bellebouffe (an association that implements food democracy actions). The place started its activities in 2023 and already offers: a café-canteen with solidarity pricing and employees in professional integration, a VRAC purchasing group (groceries bought in bulk and sold according to a triple price, depending on income), the pooling of resources (educational kitchen, co-working, meeting rooms, etc.), a food democracy approach and “going towards” to mobilize residents and users. The support will enable the continuation and strengthening of these activities and the development of a fresh produce market.
Mangeuses! Mangeurs! / Communauté des communes du Diois
In the heart of a mountainous region, the Community of Communes of Diois in the Drôme brings together 50 municipalities for 12,000 inhabitants. This rural area is faced with a paradoxical situation: a pioneering and committed agriculture (60% of the agricultural land used for Organic Farming) rubs shoulders with a population that accumulates constraints, particularly economic. The challenge is to focus on the empowerment of the two extreme links in the food systems, producers and eaters, by offering them the means and spaces for experimentation and expression. Three complementary actions are thus deployed:
- The animation of a collective composed of producers, local actors and the community to draw together the contours of a third place acquired by the community, the Plantier
- The continuation of a dynamic of the Caisse Commune de l’Alimentation involving 30 precarious families, a local producers’ shop (the Silo) and VRAC
- The continuation of the activities of Les Popotes, a collective of precarious Dioises and Diois, which organises weekly collective canteens, monthly banquets and anti-waste workshops.
An experiment in social security for food in Gironde / Acclimat’action
Acclimat’action, with 40 citizens and local authorities (Gironde Departmental Council, cities of Bordeaux and Bègles), is exploring the ways of a local and democratic tool that would structure a sustainable and nourishing food system. The collective thus brings together local authorities, farmers, actors in social work, food aid, popular education, the social and solidarity economy and research to test the hypothesis of a social security for food: that a public policy based on territorial solidarity and citizen management, will guarantee a chosen, healthy and sustainable diet for all eaters and a fair remuneration for farmers. The aim is to experiment and evaluate for 18 months a system of 4 food funds in urban and rural areas. The project will allow 400 people to receive a monthly food allowance worth €150 in exchange for a free-price contribution. It gives a central place to the support and involvement of the people mobilized.
Residents of working-class neighborhoods and the right to food / Coordination nationale Pas sans Nous (PSN)
The project aims to organize and conduct collaborative action research to document the way in which residents, collectives and small associations in 15 working-class neighborhoods organize themselves to carry out actions around food justice and the right to quality food, outside known and traditional circuits (AMAP, VRAC, social grocery stores, etc.). The objective is to promote these practices, sources of emancipation and the development of the power to act, and in a second phase to popularize, disseminate, experiment with these practices and co-construct supportive public policies. This action-research will be carried out with key partners such as the Confédération Paysanne, France Nature Environnement, the Collective for a Citizen Transition, and teams of researchers such as the Laboratoire de Recherche Populaire, the collective of sociologists Rosa Bonheur de Roubaix, the UMR Innovation of INRAE and Dominique Paturel, in management sciences, in a logic of co-production of knowledge, popular, technical, economic and scientific.
A democratic and representative social food fund in Saint-Étienne / La Fabrique de la Transition
Based in Saint-Etienne, La Fabrique de la Transition aims to bring out and coordinate collective transition projects by and for the inhabitants. It is currently leading a project for a Social Food Fund within a group of actors who work with people in food insecurity: VRAC St-Etienne, COOPSOL42, La tablée, l’Accorderie and the Terrain des Saveurs. In particular, they wish to remove psychosocial obstacles and develop the “power to act” of the people concerned through awareness-raising, mediation and citizen mobilization actions, the construction of a cash register model and its experimentation, a monitoring, evaluation and promotion of results.
It takes a village to fight food insecurity / La Bascule
The association La Bascule was born in the town of Gentioux in the Creuse. One thing leading to another, she integrated a grocery store, a group ordering service, a wide range of activities and a place, La Renouée, a third place and social life space. Aware of the increasing difficulties of access to a decent subsistence in a hyper-rural territory (Millevaches plateau), the volunteers wanted to develop autonomy, solidarity and food democracy by involving all the components of the village. The aim is to set up food production activities in places that do not have a nourishing function and to cultivate them by the children of the leisure centre, the residents of the nursing home and by any inhabitant wishing to participate voluntarily. A second axis is dedicated to the implementation of a food solidarity system via a common food fund within the grocery store “La Nourricière”, and at the farmers’ market. The association also wishes to offer awareness-raising workshops on sustainable food.
Food democracy in urban and rural areas / VRAC Métropole Nantes
Vrac Métropole Nantes promotes access to dignified, sustainable, quality food, especially for people in precarious situations. It acts on issues of social and food justice, agricultural and ecological transitions and public health. In 2023, actors in the food field and research came together around a food democracy project, in two distinct and complementary territories: Nantes Métropole, an urban territory including a Priority District of the City, and the Pays de Retz, a rural territory. The objective is to contribute to the resilience of sustainable territorial food systems, and to strengthen access to chosen, quality and sustainable food for all through food democracy processes. This project relies on the cooperation of residents and other stakeholders to prefigure common food funds.
Operation Caisse que c’est bon! La CALIEN (Caisse de l’Alimentation Locale et de l’Engagement) /LesAnges Gardins
In the Pas-de-Calais, Les Anges Gardins works for integration, lifelong learning, the development of new social practices and activities specifically related to food. The association is embarking on the creation of 2 Local Food and Commitment Funds (CALIEN) in order to allow people of modest means to eat better, while promoting local and sustainable, circular agriculture, in line with climate issues and low in resource consumption. The experiment is being tested in urban (Lens-Liévin, 19 Quartiers Politique de la Ville) and rural (Audruicq region) environments with the principle of promoting citizen engagement and offering accessible quality food.
Canton de Seyne / ADEAR04 – Association pour le Développement de l’Emploi Agricole et Rural des Alpes de Haute-Provence (Association for the Development of Agricultural and Rural Employment in the Alpes de Haute-Provence)
The ADEAR04 works to develop sustainable peasant agriculture. Solicited by actors in the social sector confronted with growing food insecurity and the lack of diversity and quality accessible to the population concerned, it wishes to experiment with a solidarity fund dedicated to local food that meets the constraints of a landlocked mountain village, Seyne, in the Alpes de Hautes Provence. Supported by a consortium capable of reaching the entire population, the project will make it possible to initiate or strengthen solidarity within the population of the canton, to secure consumers and producers, to analyse the food choices made by the fund’s members, and thus the effects of this autonomy on agriculture and the local economy. This observation will feed into the work of developing a social security system for food on a national scale.
Let’s grow! Change of project scale / Le Bar Radis
The Bar Radis is a third place dedicated to healthy eating and living together located in Grenoble. A true laboratory of the food transition, its mission is to bring together and strengthen the links between local actors, to make healthy and sustainable food accessible to all, and finally to support all citizens of the Grenoble territory towards healthier, more sustainable and more supportive practices. After the merger of the associations responsible for the project, Cultivons Nos Toits, in charge of market gardening on site, and Les Ami·e·s du Bar Radis, in charge of the social and cultural component, the project aims to support and accompany the consolidation of the structure.