This document discusses local sustainable food systems and debates around their sustainability. It begins by exploring early concepts of local food promoting sustainability. However, it later questions if local always means sustainable, discussing issues like who defines local and if local contexts are static. Case studies on meat and saffron networks illustrate both place-based localizing and challenges in maintaining networks. The document also examines arguments that local can promote elitism or narrow interests. It concludes by looking at future connections between local, global, health and climate issues and the role of researchers in supporting local actors working for transformation.

1. R O B E R T A S O N N I N O
S C H O O L O F P L A N N I N G A N D G E O G R A P H Y
C A R D I F F U N I V E R S I T Y , U K
Local Sustainable Economic
Development: Insights from
the Food System

2. The Early Days: Local as Sustainable Food
A sustainable food system emphasizes
locally-grown food, regional trading
associations, locally-owned
processing, local currency, and local
control over politics and regulation –
Kloppenburg et al., 2000

3. The Early Days: Local as Sustainable Food
 Concept of “embeddedness” behind the
sustainability of local food systems
 Local production is more ecologically benign and
healthier
 Locally embedded food chains promote
relationships of trust and accountability between
producers and consumers
The development of a local sustainable food
system provides not only economic gains for
a community but also fosters civic
involvement, cooperation, and healthy social
relations (Feenstra, 1997)

4. Questioning Normative Views
 Can we really assume that the sustainability of a
food system depends on its relationship with a
specific territorial and social context? Who has the
authority and power to set the boundaries of such a
context? And can this context change over time, or is
it historically defined and bounded?
 Role of individual agency in constructing local food
networks

5. Re-localization in the Placeless Foodscape:
the Steve Turton Meats Network
We did it at the height
of the BSE, mainly
because I had had
enough of it, I was
sick and tired of
people coming into
our shops and
moaning about it…

6. Re-localization in the Placeless Foodscape:
the Steve Turton Meats Network
Effectively that’s a
totally regional
offer, 100% traceable
meat, we have spent
85,000 quid on our
traceability system…so
when a customer goes
to a store they can
actually find out where
the meat comes
from, and that has been
solely driven by
regionality.

7. Re-localization in the Placeless Foodscape:
the Steve Turton Meats Network
With Steve Turton we are
visiting the farm, we are
discussing what we are
going to breed, how we are
going to feed it, when we
are going to produce it…it’s
a partnership
arrangement, I just have to
fit with his philosophy…I
got two of the best eating
quality breeds, and he’s
looking for eating
quality, so we fit --
Southwest Chairman of the
National Beef Association.

8. The wonderful flowers […]
bloom for two weeks and they
must be picked up early in the
morning, before they open up.
You put them in a basket […]
and then on a table
indoor, covered with a
cloth, and then using your
hands, and your hands
only, you pick the three red
pistils up and dry them. The
first time […] I used charcoal at
a certain temperature, all things
that I have learned by reading
books. I obtained a few
packages of saffron and I said ‘I
must let people know that
saffron can grow in this area’
Re-localization in the Place-based
Foodscape: Saffron in Tuscany

9. We can no longer support
our families through
conventional farming, as it
used to be ... The price of
wheat is the same now as it
was twenty years ago. […]
We are all farmers in
search of something new, of
new markets but also the
opportunity to get together
again, as it used to be. We
want to work together to
become stronger, we
realised that we cannot go
on alone.
Re-localization in the Place-based
Foodscape: Saffron in Tuscany

10.  Rapidly expanding market
(quality outlets, saffron-
flavoured cheese)
 Need to increase the total
output
 Structural problems
within the Association
and changing spatial
distribution of the
network
Re-localization in the Place-based
Foodscape: Saffron in Tuscany

11. Re-thinking Place in the Food System
 Local food systems as active attempts to empower a
place through new bio-regional discourses
 Saffron as a productive activity that respects the ‘natural’
conditions of the land
 New type of hybridity promoted by members of the Turton‟s
network
 Constructed as the ‘local’, such place provides the
food network with a renewed but contested identity
that must be continuously defended and
renegotiated

12. Re-thinking Place in the Food System
 Need for a broader research approach that accounts
for
 the socio-ecological (and actively constructed) dimension of
embeddedness
 its vertical dimension – to become and remain sustainable
over time and space, local food networks need specific
governance arrangements
 Calling into question the role of the State

13. Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System:
The “Local Trap”
Local social relationships, power relations, and environmental management
practices are not always positive, and communities can pursue elitist or
narrow ‘defensive localization’ strategies at the expenses of wider societal
interests (Allen et al., 2004)
 Three powerful counter-arguments developed by the
“local trap” approach:
 Local food systems are not always ecologically sustainable
 Local food consumption may exacerbate social injustice – example of
famers‟ markets, which leave struggling producers and citizens “to weigh
concerns with income and price against the supposed benefits of direct
social ties” (Hinrichs, 2000)
 Local food is not necessarily healthier

14. Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System:
The “Local Trap”
 The celebration of the local began to be replaced by
its detraction
 Local as a “neo-liberal” discourse
 Devolution as displacement, which creates “inevitable disparities”
(Allen and Guthman, 2006) and “marginal, safe spaces for the
privileged” (Allen, 2008)
 Local as a site of experimentation
 If accompanied by local empowerment, devolution creates
contexts where sub-national units address issues that are not
yet mature on the national scene (Sonnino, 2010)

15. Re-thinking Sustainability in the Food System:
Addressing the “Local Trap”
 To progress the debate, we need to focus on the
tangible outcomes of discursive practices
 Do different views and discourses on re-localization
promote defensive, parochial, elitist and autarkic
tendencies? Or are they embedded in a more
relational and cosmopolitan view of the local that
takes into consideration its connections and
potential synergies with other locals?

16. Escaping the Local Trap: School Food
Reform in East Ayrshire, Scotland
 Deprived rural county of
120,000
 Far-sighted council
working in the spirit of
„joined-up thinking‟
 School food as a platform
on which to tackle many
of the region‟s most
glaring problems at once

17. Escaping the Local Trap: School Food
Reform in East Ayrshire, Scotland
 Strict “straightness”
guidelines for class 1
vegetables made more
flexible to attract organic
suppliers
 The bidding contract was
divided into 9 lots
 Reaching out to small local
suppliers to encourage their
participation in the system

18. Escaping the Local Trap: School Food
Reform in East Ayrshire, Scotland
 45 primary and 2
secondary schools
involved in the reform
 70% of the ingredients
utilized are now
local, 30% are
organic, and 90% of the
food sourced is fresh and
unprocessed

19. Escaping the Local Trap: School Food
Reform in East Ayrshire, Scotland
 The benefits of re-localization
include:
 Multiplier effect of £ 160,000/12
schools
 Reducing food miles by 70%!
 Less packaging waste
 Improving children‟s knowledge
of food
 Increasing users‟ satisfaction
with the service
 Social Return on Investment
Index of 6.19
FoodMiles
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Before After

20. Sustainability in the Food System: Beyond
Provenance
“Linear” food systems
Even larger
agri-business
Even larger
processors
Even larger
retailers &
caterers
Over-use of
natural
capital
Consumers
“Circular” food systems
Waste
Operations:
Primary Production – Processing –
Distribution – Marketing –
Retail / Food service
Inputs:
The
5
Capitals
Waste
Consumption

21. Local Food Systems: Looking at the Future
 Re-localization in the “New Food Equation”:
 Food price surge
 Sharp increase in food insecurity
 Food riots as threats to national security
 Effects of climate change on agri-food systems
 Land conflicts
 Emergence of cities and regions as food policy actors
 Urban and regional food strategies are forging new alliances
between food producers and consumers and between urban
centres and their rural hinterlands

22. Local Food Systems: Looking at the Future
A new paradigm is emerging for eco-system
based, territorial food system planning [that] seeks
[…] not to replace the global food supply chains that
contribute to food security for many countries, but to
improve the local management of food systems that
are both local and global (FAO, 2011)

23. Local Food Systems: Looking at the Future
 New and important connections developing
 Between human and environmental health (“a good food
system prioritizes the health and wellbeing of our citizens, make
healthy and quality foods financially accessible, contributes to
economic development, protects and strengthens biodiversity and
the natural resource base of the region as a whole” - Los Angeles
Food Policy Task Force, 2010)
 Between local and global action (New York aspires to become
a “model of how targeted local action can support large-scale
improvement interventions” – NYC, 2010)
 Between citizens of different backgrounds
 Between different locals

24. Local Food Systems: Looking at the Future
 Role of researchers in supporting and connecting local
actors who are working to engender sustainable
transformations
 None of these actors, left alone in their own local
context, can change the world; but all together, they
can create a collective commitment to the values of
environmental integrity, economic equity and social
justice