The shift to sustainable food production, distribution, and consumption lies at the heart of the ecological transition. Food systems have increasingly become central in any sustainability concern, both at the European and at the global level. A striking example is how the current food system contributes to climate change, responsible for 21–37% of greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC Special Report Climate Change and Land, 2019). The impact on society is the following: 2 billion suffer from obesity, 836 million remain undernourished, while 1.3 billion tons of food go to waste annually. These figures reveal the paradoxical nature of our food system, deeply entwined with global food security concerns. Recent crises like COVID-19 and conflicts in Ukraine have further underlined the vulnerabilities of food systems. Furthermore, the United Nations projections show that 66% of the world's population will be living in urban areas by 2050, boosting the role cities play in food security (UN, 2014). Understanding how local food systems can be strengthened and how sustainable circular economy may be build has become imperative to combat the challenges posed by food system failures (SAPEA, 2020). Consequently, cities worldwide are increasingly embracing urban food strategy initiatives to fortify their local food systems, emphasizing environmental, social, and economic sustainability. These efforts are crucial as cities become epicenters for innovation and agglomeration, fostering a new era of sustainable food practices.
The adoption of sustainable urban food strategies (SUFS) and the institutionalisation of food policy councils are increasingly seen as a possible response from local governments to both address the distortions of the global food system and the impasse experienced by grassroots efforts, such as Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) or Sustainable Community Movements Organisations (SCMOs) commonly characterized by attributes such as spatial proximity between farmers and consumers, fair trade, community supported agriculture (CSA). The fundamental feature of sustainable urban food strategies is the strong attention to justice and rights, which is summed up in food citizenship: engaging in food-related behaviours that support the development of a democratic, accessible, socially and economically just and environmentally sustainable food system. These principles are normally pursued through re-localisation and re-socialisation strategies and aim to take control of the food chain away from multinational companies and global players. While many analyses of individual cases of SUFS are available to date, what remains largely unexplored is how and why local food policies emerge and consolidate, as well as what factors influence them.
Against this background, the proposed paper contributes to advance the theoretical debate linking sustainable urban food strategies and food democracy. It will introduce guiding concepts of our analysis (such as ‘food democracy’) and map practices of SUFS within the European Union, developing an analytical framework aimed at the identifying the explanatory factors which have triggered such practices. Furthermore, our contribution provides an in-depth analysis of local food strategies developed by two Italian cities, Padua and Trento, unveiling in a heuristic fashion the main features of the policy process, its determinants and its links with the notion of food democracy.
