Local food and civic food networks as a real utopias project

For scholars and activists alike, local food is linked to visions of a more equitable, ethical and sustainable agro-food system. Notwithstanding an apparent unity, local food is mobilized for very different aims including environmental sustainability, the revitalization of rural economies, the reconnection of consumers to agriculture and nature and the promotion of land entitlements for marginalized populations. At the same time, local food has become a crucial element in protectionist and neo-ruralist ideologies that support bounded, defensive spatial strategies. These contradictions point to the limited heuristic value of the ‘local food’ concept, particularly when decoupled from an explicit attention to the political and power dimensions of the local. Building upon these considerations, in this article we explicitly focus on the political and transformative dimensions of different local food projects and propose to read local food as a ‘real utopia’ project whose aim is the transformation of the food economy in the direction of sustainability, social emancipation and social justice. Utilizing the framework developed by E.O. Wright, we look at local food as a diagnosis and critique of the present; as the prefiguration of a more sustainable, just and democratic future; and as a set of transformative strategies that aim at changing the system in the desired direction. Our analysis suggests that, differently from the oppositional movements of the Fordist era, the local food movement is characterized by its use of interstitial (“ignore the state”) and symbiotic (“use the state”) strategies. These strategies either seek to establish new economic and social relations at the margins of the neoliberal food economy, or partner with local institutions to consolidate new experiences with food democracy and food justice. By mobilizing non-ruptural strategies in the service of a real utopian project, local food initiatives are opening up new, enlarged spaces for non-capitalist or post-capitalist economies that constitute the basis for social learning and experimentation of a global more sustainable and just food system. A further step ahead could be constituted by the promotion of a reflexive, more democratic, socially empowering system of governance, able to lead the innovative potential of the food movement to its full expression.