34 research outputs found
Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning:overcoming disciplinary and teaching silos to fix the food system
[EN] While inter-university and interdisciplinary research projects are very common in Higher Education (HE), inter-university and interdisciplinary teaching programmes are still very rare. This paper reflects on the first year of the Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) programme. IFSTAL is a three-year project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) with the aim of bringing together postgraduate students from very different programmes to learn about food and farming beyond their own disciplines. IFSTAL creates learning environments and activities that encourage students to think systemically about the transdisciplinary challenges facing the food system. IFSTAL combines both face to face events and an inter-university virtual learning environment (VLE) that was created from scratch for this project. At the end of its first year, a survey was carried out to evaluate the programme and inform the structure for year two (Y2). Survey data revealed students preferred interacting at face to face events over the shared VLE. The programme for Y2 was re-designed to incorporate more flipped classroom features with an andragogy-based approach.Ajates Gonzalez, R. (2017). Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning: overcoming disciplinary and teaching silos to fix the food system. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 503-510. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.5271OCS50351
The solution cannot be conventionalized:Protecting the alterity of fairer and more sustainable food networks
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Fighting the cooperative corner and creating third spaces of cooperation in food and farming
Cooperatives can be deconstructed into four components: legal form, governance model, social movement and informal cooperative behaviours that predate all other layers. In the case of agricultural cooperatives, this multifaceted character is increasingly being fragmented by the mainstream food system that is co-opting the less radical elements of cooperativism that can be easily absorbed without requiring a wider transformation of neoliberal industrial practices. This paper explores the activities of niche cooperatives in the UK and Spain experi-menting with creative models of governance, finance and multilevel crosscutting collaborations attempting to fight back and reduce the risk of appropriation by the dominant regime. Drawing from the anthropologi-cal concept of “third space” and the permaculture principle that commends us to “use edges and value the marginal”, I argue that these initiatives are creat-ing both real and symbolic spaces that foster growers’ and consumers’ self-efficacy to construct more inclusive and sustainable cooperative models. These social experiments not only disrupt and reframe the “professional agricultural cooperative” imaginary, but also reaffirm people’s infinite creativity to reinvent their food systems
Going back to go forwards? From multi-stakeholder cooperatives to Open Cooperatives in food and farming
“They are not going to be able to copy this”:Fighting the cooperative corner and creating third spaces of cooperation in food and farming
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Agricultural cooperatives: promoting or hindering fairer and more sustainable food systems? The case of Spain and the UK
Agricultural cooperatives (ACs) are major players in the European Union, where they account for 40-60% of agricultural trade and thus are key actors in articulating rural realities and in shaping the sustainability credentials of European food and farming. Cooperatives, regardless of the sector they operate in, are expected to work for the benefit of their members, show concern for their communities (including sustainable development) and promote cooperative economies. This research analyses to what extent this is happening in the case of ACs. Evidence of how unsustainable and unequal farming in Europe is despite such a strong AC presence raises questions on the role and practices of these cooperatives. Despite their grassroots origins, concerns from civil society and a handful of scholars suggest there is an increase in top-down approaches and corporatisation trends in the sector. This research examines ACs in Spain and the UK (in the context of the EU/CAP framework), examining how the sector has evolved in both countries since its beginnings and analysing trends and factors shaping their current development. Using case study methodology, data from document analysis and 41 interviews with AC members, academics, policy makers and industry and civil society representatives are presented. The findings reveal the two countries have very different farming cooperative sectors, but their largest ACs are adapting to the EU policy context and the increasing concentration of power in the food system by following similar growth and corporatisation strategies. A reaction from social movements is however taking place both in Spain and the UK, where new innovative cooperative models are emerging. Thus, ACs can be placed in a continuum of alterity depending on the degree of embeddedness in industrial or more sustainable food practices. ACs can become disjointed and have their least political components co-opted by the dominant food system (as they fit its logistics model, trade requirements and help concentrate produce). Going beyond the economic perspective that dominates the study of ACs, this research also places a focus on emerging innovative multi-stakeholder governance models. The strategies used to protect their alterity as well as the diverse understandings of food sustainability that different types of cooperatives have and how they reproduce these through their practices are analysed. Given the insufficient explanatory potential of existing theories to accommodate a wide range of realities labelled as cooperatives in food and farming, a new theoretical framework was developed based on the findings of this research. The multilevel framework unravels the different dimensions that constitute cooperatives and their degree of alterity and commitment to sustainable food practices and the wider cooperative movement.
Key words: agricultural cooperatives, multi-stakeholder cooperatives, cooperative movement, Spain, UK, alterity, co-optation, producer organisation