In the face of climate change, in the face of the inflation of raw materials and energy, in the face of the collapse of biodiversity, in the face of unemployment and food insecurity, agroecology and the values of sobriety, quality, equity and respect that it conveys is a global solution to the major challenges of the future. The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation is fully mobilized on this subject alongside its partners, the Fondation de France, the Civam Network, Trame, FADEAR and the CUMA network.
26 juin 2023
Programme of the Sustainable Food Meetings 2023
Agroecological transition
Accessible food for all
Resilient territories and sectors
New Narratives
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Created to promote the sharing of experiences and inspiring initiatives, the Sustainable Food Meetings on October 10, 2023 will aim to compare views between disciplines and sectors that are sometimes still too far apart despite possible convergences. We invite you to share our ambitions to nurture the transformations that are needed, around the 3 themes: agroecology, food democracy and territories.
Discover the programme of the Sustainable Food Meetings
Sharing our ambitions, nurturing transformations
The polycrises we are going through confront us with major challenges and sometimes lead to short-term responses, at the expense of systemic dynamics, on which the necessary transformation of our agricultural and food models is based. However, they also bring new opportunities. For this 4th edition of the Conference, the time has come to encourage interactions between the issues of agroecology, food democracy and territories and thus decompartmentalize approaches and practices to promote a systemic vision of food, equal to the challenges we have to face, and which concern even more generations to come.
Agroecology and agroecological transition
We see agroecology as a vision that can transform all current forms of agriculture and as an inspiration on the paths to achieve this. It requires profound changes in the way agricultural practices are analysed, evaluated and designed, as well as production and exchange systems with the downstream. It implies the abandonment of standardized, short-term agronomic solutions in favor of practices adapted to their environment and people, which integrate empirical knowledge and are part of the long-term ecological processes.
The fact that we are living in constrained food environments that do not facilitate sustainable food choices has become increasingly visible and problematic in recent years with the succession of crises and as the economic pressure on budgets becomes more and more strong. These food environments are shaped by a very small number of actors: public institutions and especially the major economic operators in the food supply chain. They have a preponderant weight on what is produced and offered for consumption today. However, their decision-making processes very rarely include citizens and inhabitants, and do not sufficiently take into account the societal costs of these food systems (health, environmental, social, etc.).
We hypothesize that the mobilization of all stakeholders, co-construction and co-responsibility at the territorial level, and the inclusion of all are powerful levers of action to enable sustainable and significant transformations of our agricultural and food systems. This often under-considered aspect of transition processes is based on participatory democracy, popular education, collective intelligence, empowerment and the empowerment of people to allow the reappropriation of agricultural and food systems as common goods by everyone. The opening up of decision-making processes, the evolution of forms of governance and cooperation and the strengthening of the capacity of all to act, including through the appropriation of economic levers, in the reorientation of food systems are major challenges in implementing responses that are equal to the challenges, as close as possible to the expectations and interests of the populations.
These food democracy approaches must absolutely integrate the people furthest from the decision-making bodies, in particular marginalized populations or those in precarious situations.
Through the support of a wide variety of initiatives for more than ten years, we have been able to observe a rise in approaches mobilizing the “right to food”, “food democracy” or “food justice”. These terminologies raise questions and are moving; For the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, food democracy means that each and every citizen has the ability to choose the food systems in which they participate and to act to transform them. We insist on the need to pay special attention to precarious and marginalized people.
Our food, from production to consumption, has an impact on all territories: biodiversity, climate, social justice, health, employment, etc. More and more players are taking up these issues by developing quality and local food sectors, projects to take back control of agricultural land, justice and food democracy, etc. These initiatives are being developed more particularly at the territorial level: in municipalities, inter-municipalities, metropolises, regions, in mainland France as well as in the Overseas Territories. Indeed, it is at this level that residents, associations, elected officials, or technicians of local authorities, sometimes feel the most concerned and able to move the lines.
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