Community-supported agriculture networks in Wales and Central Germany: Scaling up, out, and deep through local collaboration

Multiple systemic crises have highlighted the vulnerabilities of our globalised food system, raising the demand for more resilient and ecologically sustainable alternatives, and fuelling engagement in practices such as community-supported agriculture (CSA). In CSA, local farmers and households share the costs and products of farming, allowing them to organise food provision non-commercially around short supply chains. While this may prefigure alternatives to the dominant food system, CSA is considered limited in regard to its scalability and accessibility. While these shortcomings apply to individual CSAs, we know little about whether multi-CSA networks can tackle them by expanding and institutionalising their practices at scale. This paper alleviates this blind spot by investigating local CSA networks in Wales and Germany through a lens of ‘food movement networks’, identifying their scaling practices and encountered challenges. It draws on semi-structured interviews with CSA actors and observations at network gatherings. The paper shows that local collaboration enables CSAs to integrate their supply chains (scaling out), engage their communities (scaling deep), and participate in food councils (scaling up), while further networking at regional level helps new initiatives start up. It also reveals competitive tensions between neighbouring CSAs, which constitutes a hitherto unknown challenge to CSA’s potential scalability

‘What we'd like is a CSA in every town.’ Scaling community supported agriculture across the UK

As the Covid-19 pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of our globalised agri-food system, local sustainable food alternatives, such as community-supported agriculture (CSA), are on the rise. In CSA local farmers and households co-produce food sustainably and independently of the market. CSA's benefits and shortcomings are well-understood but we know little about how larger CSA networks can expand and consolidate the practice at scale. This paper investigates the UK CSA network, showing its ability to upscale, outscale and downscale CSA through institutionalisation, replication and politicization, before discussing the network's strategic limitations and dependencies

‘The real power must be in the base’ – decentralised collective intellectual leadership in the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City

The ongoing commodification of housing and urban space in Europe has led to the formation of a burgeoning housing movement, consisting of large anti-eviction networks in Southern Europe, as well as tenants’ unions and right-to-the-city networks in Central and Northern Europe. These different forms of housing activism have become increasingly connected at the transnational level, primarily due to the work of the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’. Consisting of activist groups from over 20 different countries, this coalition facilitates mutual exchange, organises collective campaigns and has begun engaging in institutional advocacy at the European Union level. It steadily expands in size and tactical repertoire, aiming to develop a more unified transnational strategy for attaining affordable and self-determined living space across Europe. Drawing on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, this article makes the case that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ increasingly performs the function of a ‘collective intellectual’ that organises a transnational struggle against neoliberal hegemony. Based on qualitative analyses of documents, interviews and field notes, it demonstrates that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ exhibits a counter-hegemonic perspective that opposes neoliberal capitalism as a whole and manages to facilitate mutual solidarity across different activist communities explicitly on the basis of class struggle. At the same time, instead of organising a democratic centralist political project the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ pursues a more decentralised approach to collective intellectual leadership that prioritises domestic struggles, yet also lacks a cohesive long-term strategy

Allied against austerity:Transnational Cooperation in the European Anti-Austerity Movement

Contains fulltext : 220551.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Radboud University, 15 september 2020Promotor : Verbeek, J.A. Co-promotores : Wigger, A., Horn, L.376 p

Community-Supported Agriculture Networks in Wales and Central Germany: Scaling Up, Out, and Deep through Local Collaboration

Multiple systemic crises have highlighted the vulnerabilities of our globalised food system, raising the demand for more resilient and ecologically sustainable alternatives, and fuelling engagement in practices such as community-supported agriculture (CSA). In CSA, local farmers and households share the costs and products of farming, allowing them to organise food provision non-commercially around short supply chains. While this may prefigure alternatives to the dominant food system, CSA is considered limited in regard to its scalability and accessibility. While these shortcomings apply to individual CSAs, we know little about whether multi-CSA networks can tackle them by expanding and institutionalising their practices at scale. This paper alleviates this blind spot by investigating local CSA networks in Wales and Germany through a lens of ‘food movement networks’, identifying their scaling practices and encountered challenges. It draws on semi-structured interviews with CSA actors and observations at network gatherings. The paper shows that local collaboration enables CSAs to integrate their supply chains (scaling out), engage their communities (scaling deep), and participate in food councils (scaling up), while further networking at regional level helps new initiatives start up. It also reveals competitive tensions between neighbouring CSAs, which constitutes a hitherto unknown challenge to CSA’s potential scalability

“I’m Happy for People to Collaborate, but I Don’t Want to Join in”. Addressing Failure in Community-supported Agriculture Networks

Strategies for transforming capitalist economies often struggle with scaling up more socially just and ecologically sustainable alternatives. To avoid being stuck in a “local trap”, many prefigurative initiatives form larger networks and coalitions. Agroecological practices, such as community-supported agriculture (CSA), have been especially expansive in recent years. However, since most scholarship on the growing CSA networks focuses primarily on their development and positive achievements, we learn little about their encountered challenges and their strategies for overcoming them. This article therefore investigates the causes and extent of “network failure”, including barriers to collaboration and potential responses, among CSA networks in the UK and Germany. It draws on qualitative case studies, based on interviews, observation and document analysis. The article finds that CSA networks operate well at national and local level, but have experienced relative network failure at regional level, and encounter regular barriers to collaboration due to capacity limitations, differences and competition between members, all of which they are trying to address

‘We need to organise millions of people’ – how Alter Summit and DiEM25 struggle to create a European ‘modern prince’

The European anti-austerity movement is generally associated with spawning leftist electoral projects, which exemplify the domestic institutionalization of activism. That the movement also generated a number of transnational coalitions with unusually broad and far-reaching ambitions remained somewhat under the radar. Projects like Alter Summit and DiEM25 seek to expand the anti-austerity movement’s struggle to the European level, by developing transnational organizational structures and challenging the political course of the EU. However, neither project managed to live up to its ambitions thus far and this article explores why. It argues that Alter Summit and DiEM25 represent attempts to create a transnational ‘modern prince’: a party-like organization that unites social movements around a counter-hegemonic strategy. While both managed to develop such strategies they also encountered challenges in facilitating democratic cohesion between transnational leaders and domestic supporters. This is partly the result of idiosyncratic shortcomings, but also reveals general challenges for transnational activism

Thesis Spotlights – European Austerity Programmes under Transnational Contestation

Contains fulltext : 229827.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access