Community Food Pantries: When Residents Take Back Control of Their Food Supply

At the first forum on initiatives inspired by Food Security, held on June 23, 2026, the diversity of projects being carried out across the regions highlighted an emerging trend. Some of these initiatives, supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, use an action-research approach to explore new ways of ensuring dignified and sustainable access to food.

For a long time, grocery shopping had become a matter of compromise for Fabien. Standing in front of the shelves, he had to choose: stick to his already tight budget or buy products that aligned with his beliefs.

” My disposable income was really limited. I was frustrated that I had to resort to products that weren’t good for the planet—or always very good for my health. “

When he heard about an informational meeting on a food co-op pilot project organized by the VRAC association—Vers un Réseau d’Achat en Commun—in Nantes, he wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. But the idea immediately resonated with his situation. “ It was an opportunity to get food that had become unaffordable for me.”

A few months later, the eating habits of his entire family had changed. Thanks to the monthly allowance paid by the fund, they can buy local, high-quality, environmentally friendly products that provide better compensation for producers. But in the end, that’s not what Fabien mentions first when he talks about his experience.

He talks about meeting farmers, visiting farms, and discussing with other residents—from very different backgrounds—who are involved in this experiment. “Eating isn’t just about nourishment. Behind food lie issues of health, agriculture, climate, and social justice. I discovered that it’s possible to bring together very different people and decide together what constitutes desirable food—not just for ourselves but for the common good. It gives us back a little sense of agency. We know full well that we can’t change the world on our own, but it restores our confidence in our ability to build collective solutions.”

In Nantes, a food bank built with the help of local residents

Fabien’s experience is precisely what the initiative led by VRAC Métropole Nantes in collaboration with a group of partners: to enable residents to take back control of their food supply, while involving them in building a fairer and more sustainable system.

Launched in 2023, it is the result of a lengthy collaborative development process involving about ten stakeholders with complementary areas of expertise: organizations working to combat food insecurity, organic farmers, agricultural logistics providers, local currency initiatives, researchers, and local governments. For nearly a year, this collective developed a model tailored to the region’s realities, addressing issues ranging from governance to funding mechanisms and criteria for contractual agreements.

The project was deliberately rolled out in a specific area of western Nantes, where priority neighborhoods coexist with more affluent areas. Starting in 2024, about 30 residents joined a citizens’ committee. Through a series of meetings, training sessions, and discussions on food-related issues, they themselves defined the cooperative’s operating rules: contribution and allowance amounts, criteria for partnering with businesses, governance procedures, and more. Since the end of 2025, 72 households have been receiving a monthly allowance paid in the local currency, Moneko, which can be used at a network of participating businesses. The “44” Community Food Fund project has also been rolling out in the Pays de Retz region since 2025, with money transfers set to begin in mid-2026.

For the VRAC Métropole Nantes team, the initial lessons learned go far beyond the issue of purchasing power. “What stands out today is not just the financial impact of the food bank. Participants also talk about their improved understanding of the food system,” emphasizes Guillaume Hernandez, the association’s director. “Many tell us that it has changed the way they view what they eat and understand agricultural issues. We’re a long way from the simple logic of a food stamp.”

A variety of initiatives, a shared set of values

The democratic aspect is one of the model’s unique features and a cornerstone of it. “Today, consumers almost never have a say in how food is produced, processed, or distributed. Food co-ops aim to bring this issue back to the forefront,” summarizes Elsa Duparay, co-facilitator of the InterCaisses project, which has been led since 2024 by the Civam Network and VRAC France in collaboration with several food co-op project leaders.

Because the initiative in Nantes is not an isolated case. According to an initial national survey conducted in late 2025 by the Let’s Food association and the consulting firm Vertigo Lab, with support from four funding organizations—including the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation—more than 60 food box pilot projects have been identified in France, and that number continues to rise. What they all have in common is that they draw inspiration from the concept of Food Social Security. This concept proposes viewing food as a universal right, on par with health, and treating it as a common good organized through solidarity, via contribution-based funding tailored to each person’s means and sometimes supplemented by public or private funds.

But while the principles are shared, the structures remain very diverse. Some funds rely on mandatory contributions from participants, while others are entirely funded by local governments or private partners. Benefit amounts may be uniform or adjusted according to household circumstances. And while governance is sometimes open to all contributors, in other cases it relies on citizen committees tasked with mediating and facilitating collective decisions.

In this landscape that is still taking shape, theInterCaisses aims to connect stakeholders, share tools, and build on the initial lessons learned from local communities. About twenty of these initiatives have already been the subject of in-depth evaluations, confirming both the movement’s growing momentum and the diversity of approaches taken in local communities.

Laboratories Rooted in Their Local Communities

Each initiative is shaped by different local realities—the network of community organizations, agricultural dynamics, levels of economic insecurity, and the organization of food systems—which leads to tailored approaches rather than a one-size-fits-all model.

“There is a real challenge in working at the level of local communities. Supply chains, agricultural realities, levels of vulnerability, and residents’ expectations vary from one region to another. That is why pilot projects must be able to adapt to their local context,” explains Elsa Duparay.

In Gironde, a pilot program for collection bins led by the Acclimat’Action collective is being rolled out across four regions with very different profiles—Bordeaux Nord-La Benauge, Bègles, the Pays Foyen, and southern Gironde around Captieux—and aims to test the viability of a food box model in both urban and rural settings.

As in Nantes and Montpellier, the approach is based on an action-research model, involving residents, local stakeholders, and researchers from the very beginning of the project’s design. Even before the program was implemented, outreach activities (door-to-door visits, games, street interviews) helped reveal residents’ perceptions of food and their interest in a collective approach. In 2023, 40 residents joined engagement programs inspired by citizens’ assemblies, aimed at building shared knowledge about food systems and fostering participation in collective decision-making. They then collaboratively drafted a charter defining the criteria for certifying products and venues, before testing these rules in their actual purchasing practices to see how they held up in real-world situations.

This action research aims not only to test specific initiatives but also to understand their effects: how residents get involved, take ownership of food-related issues, and transform their relationship with food. “The researchers are here to observe what is happening both individually and collectively: how people move forward together, and how this changes their relationship with food, their level of engagement, and their perception of their health or their ability to take action,” explains Elsa Duparay.

Toward a Change in Scale?

Initial observations point to a common conclusion: learning experiences, meetings with producers, and group discussions enable participants to better understand the workings of the food system. Gradually, like Fabien, they broaden their perspective on the agricultural, economic, health, and environmental issues related to their food, which becomes less of an individual act and more a matter of collective decision-making.

These experiments are also changing the relationships among local stakeholders. Residents, producers, merchants, organizations, and local governments come together in forums for dialogue where common rules are established. From these exchanges emerge both new partnerships and decisions regarding which agricultural models to support, fueling a broader discussion on the conditions for a food democracy.

One key question remains, however: how can we scale up without losing the uniqueness of these initiatives? For those involved in the movement, it is not a matter of imposing a single model, but rather of highlighting the various experiences and sharing them widely. “ The goal of InterCaisses is precisely to pool the wealth of the regions, not to claim that there is only one way of doing things, ” summarizes Elsa Duparay.

Over the past two years, this networking effort has led to community meetings, opportunities for discussion among fund coordinators, webinars, and feedback sessions with local governments and project leaders. The goal is to share lessons learned and support the development of new initiatives.

This is because food pantries are not intended as an end in themselves, but as spaces where new ways of collectively deciding on one’s diet are explored. By supporting a range of initiatives in various forms, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation has chosen to foster an ecosystem of complementary experiments. This diversity makes it easier to observe the changes taking place and to identify what works—or doesn’t—depending on the context. More broadly, this helps demonstrate the value of scaling up a variety of food democracy initiatives, not just in the form of food boxes.

Read the summary of the roundtable discussion “Joint Food Funds: Overview and Challenges,” held on the occasion of the 5thth Sustainable Food Conference 2025.

Read the Meeting Journal

Photo credits: © Laurent Vève; © Hugo Jamard