Strengthening food systems governance

Civil society efforts within and beyond government

Abstract

Food systems face a polycrisis on multiple environmental, social, economic, and political fronts—each challenge amplifies the others, making solutions all the more complicated to achieve. To address these challenges, communities are turning to critical and creative approaches to make food systems governance more accessible to a wider range of people. Yet, there is still much to learn about how communities have contributed (and could or should contribute) to building solutions based on differing governance and engagement structures. The Participatory Food Governance project has studied diverse perspectives on governance issues from food movement and civil society (CSO) leaders through a national survey, in-depth interviews, and a series of case studies. To understand how the overall insights from the project resonated with the organizations, networks, and movements we studied, five CSO leaders from across Canada were invited to reflect on these insights.

This field report outlines a process of dialogue with five CSO leaders and how they experience food systems governance. By connecting conversations between academics, community-based practitioners, and CSO leaders, this process seeks to advance both theory and practice. The CSO leaders who participated offered stories about what governance means on the ground, while also expressing how government processes could better reflect local, contextualized realities. In addition to revealing important insights about the different power dynamics and objectives at play, the reflections captured in this field report highlight key possibilities, tensions, and complexities that proponents of participatory governance must address moving forward.