Transformative Processes: Reimagining a Sustainable Dunedin Food System

Abstract

Food issues are part of a highly complex, variable and interconnected food system that can affect local and global communities. An awareness of the multifaceted problems and a growing dissatisfaction with the conventional food system has been generated through its failure to address mounting social, economic and environmental damage around the world. These include a shift to more people that are obese in the world now than are malnourished, the loss of up to 75 percent of the genetic makeup of all agricultural crops, and increased control by a handful of multinational corporations over most sectors of the food system such as the growing, producing, packaging, and distribution of food. This has led to the mobilisation by some individuals and groups to seek societal change. The important position that food holds in each person’s life provides an opportunity to bring diverse groups together to socially mobilise in the pursuit of creating an alternative food system. Under principles such as a just and democratic food system, the potential for sustainable food system transformation is seen as a process through which to facilitate the promotion of social change.

This research will investigate at the local level, a case study which aims to understand the transformative processes that occur by those people who have socially mobilised around the creation of an alternative and more sustainable food system in the Dunedin context. The study will determine the type of engagements that Dunedin food actors have established and the degree to which the relationships between different forms of social mobilisation are enabling the practice of food system transformation. An analysis of this data hopes to provide greater awareness of the barriers, tensions and contradictions which exist within the food system. This will support stakeholders’ ability to overcome difficulties and work more collaboratively towards common and diverse goals for social emancipation. The research argues that food system transformation will require attention from multiple entry points, at various levels, and a commitment by individuals and communities in order to address the variety of food issues that now impact society and the environment. Although sustainable food system transformation will involve the use of different mechanisms - both formal and informal approaches, stakeholders must realise that they are ‘on the same side’ of promoting social change. Only then, will social mobilisation be able to effectively challenge the dominant structures that maintain the neoliberal constructs of the conventional food system and engage with radically reimagining what an alternative food system in the future could look like.