Introduction

The current food system is widely seen as unsustainable. Accounting for one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, it is one of the major causes of climate change (Crippa et al., 2021). The industrialisation of food production, distribution and consumption has been blamed for accelerating loss of biodiversity, producing inequality and insecurity among food workers and leading to a homogenisation of diets that is damaging to human health. There is therefore a widespread call for a fundamental transformation towards a sustainable food system that is inclusive, resilient, safe and able to provide healthy and affordable food for all people (Eakin et al., 2017; Levkoe, 2011). One example is the Farm to Fork strategy—launched in 2020 by the European Commission as part of the European Green Deal—that envisions the transition to a fair, healthy and sustainable food system in the European Union (European Commission, 2019, 2020).

Although the state and the market are expected to play roles in food system transformation, there is also a striking emphasis on the role of citizens and civil society. Civil society participation is said to be able, given the right circumstances, to “open the door to food system transformation” (Anderson, 2019, p. 124; Koc et al., 2008, p. 125; Giménez & Shattuck, 2011; Renting & Wiskerke, 2010). One increasingly relevant civil society actor is the Food Policy Council (FPC) that has been gaining in prominence over the past 20 years (Andrée et al., 2019). FPCs engage in the sustainability transformation of the local food system and commonly play a role in developing sustainable food strategies and policy propositions. They seek to unite a plurality of local food system actors from across society: farmers and other food producers, concerned citizens, activists, scientists, food business owners and local gastronomists. The majority of FPCs also include representatives of local or regional governments among their members. Working especially at the local or regional level, these organisations thus attempt to engage all kinds of citizens in food system politics and policy-making whereby they act as a driver, as well as an expression, of civil society. Despite the variety of different types, agendas and contexts of FPCs around the world, all are concerned with targeting unsustainable aspects of the food system. They aim to democratise food policy-making processes by including a wide range of different actors and voices and by deepening their involvement in the agenda- and rule-setting debates around food.

Underlying the call for increasing the participation of civil society is the assumption that feasible policies and practices for a sustainable food system can only be forged by harnessing the local and embodied knowledge of those who practice food-related exchanges daily. The interaction between “local-lay knowledge” and “expert-codified-scientific knowledge” has been considered particularly important for a transformative change of the food system (e.g. Balázs, 2012, p. 406). FPCs facilitate the interactions between local lay actors and scientific experts by integrating citizens from across society. That is why they have also become seen as “hub[s] of knowledge” (Schiff, 2008, p. 225), and why they might become crucial organisations in what has been referred to as the “co-production” of knowledge for sustainable food policy-making. As defined by Elinor Ostrom (1996, p. 1073), co-production refers to the process by which inputs are provided by individuals from different parts of society, implying active citizen involvement.

In this paper, we seek to explore the potential role of FPCs in the sustainability politics of an alternative food system, with a particular focus on the co-production of the knowledge relevant for sustainable food policy-making. We propose that the co-production of knowledge requires knowledge inclusion, exchange and transmission, and we focus on the challenges that can arise for FPCs. Our aim is to extend the literature on alternative food organisation as well as on civil society inclusion in food system transformation and policy-making by outlining both the emerging contributions and the potential challenges of FPCs in the co-production of sustainable food knowledge. We start by briefly describing the deficiencies of the current food system, and the importance of integrating civil society and its local knowledge in the transformation towards sustainability through alternative forms of organising food. Next, we refer to the understanding of knowledge co-production and the role of citizens’ lay knowledge in co-producing sustainable food knowledge. We then consider in more detail the potential of FPCs for the co-production of knowledge for sustainable food policy-making and food system transformation, focusing on the majority of FPCs that have emerged out of the grassroots collective action of civil society. Finally, we map out various challenges related to knowledge inclusion, exchange and transmission. Our contribution shows that bottom-up FPCs emerging out of civil society can be seen as constituting a new form of alternative food organisation (AFO) that can integrate and support the critical capacity of civil society in food system transformation but also face potential struggles in the co-production of knowledge. The paper further highlights that the co-production of knowledge for sustainability policy-making is fundamentally a political process, with politics broadly conceived: it not only has relevance for the institutions of formal politics, but emerges in and is intricately linked to the grassroots collective action of contentious and prefigurative politics in civil society.

Calls for an Alternative Food System

Contemporary patterns of food production, distribution and consumption constitute a globalised food system that has been widely denounced as unsustainable (Bornemann & Weiland, 2019a; Fanzo, 2021; Guyomard et al., 2012; Levkoe, 2011). Widespread and intensive farming techniques that rely on fossil fuels have led to biodiversity loss, disruption to nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, pollution and increased greenhouse gas emissions (Hadjikakou et al., 2019, p. 62). Changes in land use, large-scale monoculture farming and the concomitant shrinking diversity in national diets have exacerbated health issues including malnutrition, obesity and chronic disease (Kuhnlein, 2014, pp. 2415–6; Guyomard et al., 2012). At the same time, most socio-economic relations surrounding food are exploitative of farmworkers and other food system workers (Hunt, 2016; Allen, 2008, p. 157; Blay-Palmer et al., 2016).

The unsustainability of the food system has been seen as a consequence of contemporary capitalism, primarily shaped by globalised corporations and a dominant market logic (Levkoe, 2011, p. 688; Bornemann & Weiland, 2019a, p. 2; Bornemann & Weiland, 2019b, p. 106). It is not only food activists and academic scholars who make these claims and call for a fundamental transformation of the food system (see Capone et al., 2014, p. 13; Guyomard et al., 2012; Hinrichs and Lyson 2007). Demands for an alternative system that would ensure the provision of environmentally sound, secure, accessible, adequate, safe, healthy and affordable food for present and future generations have grown louder through various recent high-profile initiatives in the political arena. For instance the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, launched in 2015 as an international agreement between cities around the world, aims “to develop sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse”.Footnote 1 Similarly, the Farm to Fork strategy “aims to accelerate our transition to a sustainable food system” in the European Union.Footnote 2 Interestingly, while these initiatives expect such transition to be led by the state and facilitated by market instruments, they expect civil society to play a key part in this. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact asserts that civil society along with the private sector “have major roles to play in feeding cities, bringing experience, innovation and campaigns for more sustainable food systems” (2015) while the European Commission writes in its Green Deal that a “new pact is needed to bring together citizens in all their diversity, with national, regional, local authorities, civil society and industry working closely with the EU’s institutions and consultative bodies” (European Commission, 2019, p. 2; see Machin & Tan, 2022).

Sustainability Politics Through Alternative Food Organisations

Indeed, civil society is involved in sustainability politics concerning food in numerous ways. For instance, research on civil society organisations has shown their role in private food governance (Fuchs et al., 2011) by filling regulatory voids and “practical gaps” left by public programmes (Andrée et al., 2019, p. 125). As indicative of grassroots civil society activity, alternative food organisations and networks (AFOs) have been created in many parts of the world, including community-supported agriculture, farmers’ markets, urban gardening communities and food banks. Scholarship on AFOs highlights their collective action by bringing about alternative forms of food production, distribution and consumption (e.g. Forno & Graziano, 2014; Goodman et al., 2012; Huber & Lorenzini, 2022; Motta, 2021; Pascucci et al., 2021). As progressive social movement organisations in the food sector, AFOs are united both in their critique of the contemporary industrialised food system and in their striving for a fundamental, transformative change towards a radically alternative food system.Footnote 3 Charles Zalman Levkoe suggests that these sorts of bottom-up political initiatives can potentially contribute to a “transformative food politics” that goes beyond a tinkering with the current food system (2011, p. 688) and rebuilds it through creative, experimental and inspirational projects (2011, p. 690). Rather than merely contesting the contemporary industrialised food system through contentious politics of protest (e.g. Tarrow, 1998), AFOs build sustainable alternatives in their cities, communities and regions. AFOs’ crucial role in food system transformation lies in their focus on prefigurative organising (Monticelli, 2021; Schiller-Merkens, 2022a; Yates, 2015). By practicing just, democratic and ecologically sustainable forms of organising food production, distribution and consumption (Forno & Graziano, 2014; Lorenzini, 2017), these organisations prefigure alternative practices and values around food that are not yet realised at a broader scale (Bosi & Zamponi, 2015; Monticelli, 2018; Schiller-Merkens, 2020). They act as “laboratories of the future” (Burkhart et al., 2020, p. 5) where participants experiment with social innovations around sustainable food.

We propose that many (if not most) FPCs fall into the category of AFO.Footnote 4 They share AFOs’ contestation of the current food system and their attempt to prefigure future alternatives in the present through local food projects such as helping to establish community gardens or farmers’ markets in their city or region. However, FPCs differ from most other AFOs in their activities, strategies and means of achieving transformative change of the food system, in particular by seeking to shape public policy-making. In general, they promote the idea that food system transformation cannot occur without support from institutional politics, which is why they try to achieve “hard law” regulatory changes in the form of sustainable food policies. By contrast, other AFOs often take a critical stance towards political institutions and public authorities. They put their emphasis on achieving transformation through a form of prefigurative politics that does not seek state support. With their multi-political approach to sustainability transformation—combining prefigurative, institutional and occasional involvement in contentious politics (Schiller-Merkens, 2022b)—FPCs can play a crucial role in the fundamental transformation of the food system. Their important intermediary role was also noted by the European Commission (2021, p. 5) when demanding in its Farm to Fork strategy to “foster the collaboration across “food policy councils”, rural and urban networks, city-regional collaboration models and regional innovation platforms”. FPCs can be seen as key actors in the co-production of knowledge around food that we consider in the next section.

Citizens and the Co-Production of Sustainable Food Knowledge

Scholarly work on policy-making for food system transformation has emphasised the value of a “holistic approach” (Guyomard et al., 2012) that draws from a diversity of scientific disciplines to “define an appropriate agenda for action” (Eakin et al., 2017), and to develop effective evidence-based policy that “promotes production efficiencies and sustainable diets” (Hadjikakou et al., 2019, p. 62). However the assumed superiority of science over different types of (expert) knowledge in policy-making has been increasingly questioned (e.g. Bäckstrand, 2003; Irwin, 1995; Jasanoff, 2005). From that perspective, transforming the food system cannot be a straightforward matter of scientifically guided “template” policies, because science cannot convincingly, legitimately or fully resolve what Neva Hassanein (2003, p. 78) points out are “very real disputes over the consequences and direction of the agro-food system”. Local citizens and alternative food organisations can provide extensive knowledge of the particularities in their municipalities and regions to create feasible alternative solutions and strategies that can be shared more widely (Blay-Palmer et al., 2016; Guyomard et al., 2012).

As scholars have long pointed out, to assume that scientific knowledge alone is relevant for environmental or food policy-making is to misunderstand the relationship between science, expertise and citizens (Bäckstrand, 2003, p. 24). This is why Sheila Jasanoff (2010, p. 235), for example, queries “the erasure of local specificity” by scientific abstraction, which cannot by itself produce a full picture of environmental problems. She therefore recommends “re-linking larger scales of scientific representation with smaller scales of social meaning” and “the mundane rhythms of lived lives and the specificities of human experience” (Jasanoff, 2010, p. 238). She also rejects the simplistic depiction of citizens as scientifically and technically illiterate individuals who simply need educating by experts, describing them instead as “full-blooded cognitive agents” capable of critiquing expert knowledge claims (Jasanoff, 2005, p. 271). “Knowledgeable citizens”, she writes, “are more than ever demanding meaningful control over the technological changes that affect their welfare and prosperity” (2005, p. 14).

It is not simply that citizens can interrogate scientific knowledge claims, but that they are also capable of providing their own in the form of “local”, “indigenous” or “lay” knowledge (Irwin, 1995; Jasanoff, 2005; Machin, 2020; Parsons et al., 2017; Wynne, 2004). Frank Fischer defines local knowledge as “knowledge about a local context or setting, including empirical knowledge of specific characteristics, circumstances, events, and relationships, as well as the normative understandings of their meaning”. This, he continues, constitutes “a complex, valuable source of largely untapped knowledge that speaks directly to specific kinds of problems” (Fischer, 2000, p. 146). Residents of a particular region may, for example, be able to offer crucial insights into how a policy or technology may or may not work in a specific context and what obstacles and opportunities it might face. For example, as Alan Irwin describes (1995, p. 113), farmers have valuable knowledge about the conditions and circumstances when they should spray pesticides (if at all) which could not be found in scientific papers.

This work has informed the growing body of research on the “co-production” of knowledge that attempts to involve diverse sets of actors in addressing existential problems and solving them as well as finding the pathways to those solutions (Howarth & Monasterolo, 2017; Ostrom, 1996). More specifically, knowledge co-production in relation to sustainability transformation has been defined as “[i]terative and collaborative processes involving diverse types of expertise, knowledge and actors to produce context-specific knowledge and pathways towards a sustainable future” (Norström et al., 2020, p. 183). Knowledge co-production seems to be especially pertinent in relation to food policy (Howarth & Monasterolo, 2017). Various voices have called for the incorporation of the indigenous or local knowledge of “ordinary people” in food policy-making and food system transformation (Fonte, 2008, p. 202; Kuhnlein, 2014, p. 2416; Kloppenburg et al., 2000).Footnote 5 This is because food is deeply rooted in local economic, ecological, social and cultural contexts (Norgaard, 2019). The meaning of “good” food and the traditions surrounding it, as well as the social practices of its production, consumption and preparation, not only differ between and within countries and regions. Food norms, beliefs and practices vary, with differences also existing between social collectives and milieus (Bourdieu 1984) and even between individuals due to their unique socialisation and time–space paths within and across social systems (Giddens, 1984). Knowledge about food is thus intricately linked to social praxis, much of it is situated, habitual and embodied.

For these reasons, forging feasible policies and practices for transforming food systems crucially depends on incorporating the local “know-how” of those who practice food-related exchanges on a daily basis alongside other types of expertise. In this way, scientific research from different disciplines can be connected with a practical understanding of the potential opportunities and barriers for particular policy strategies. But how can different types of knowledge and “the rich expertise of stakeholders” (Howarth and Monasetrolo 2017, p. 104) be brought together to develop legitimate and feasible sustainable food policies and to support the transition to an alternative food system? In the next section, we examine why FPCs as organisations allowing for the sustained collective action of civil society can be seen as crucial in the co-production of sustainable food knowledge.

Food Policy Councils as Spaces for Co-Producing Sustainable Food Knowledge

Civil society plays a central role in the creation of knowledge about alternative forms of organising and democratic innovations; it intervenes in social processes through the interpretation and sense-making of knowledge, and it engages in education and the dissemination of knowledge (Suarsana et al., 2022, p. 2). In the food sector, alternative food organisations that bundle the civic collective action of a variety of actors help to create the “knowledgeability” (Giddens, 1984) and experience-based knowledge that is essential to govern sustainable food (Reynolds et al., 2020). In this respect, FPCs in particular can function as “collective spaces of knowledge production” that “foster the coordination of disconnected, local, and highly personal experiences and rationalities” and allow them to have an impact on broader social and political changes (Della Porta & Pavan 2017, p.298–300) According to a website for a local food programme in the United States, FPCs “provide a means through which community members can actively participate in communicating their needs and values”.Footnote 6 FPCs mediate between and coordinate interests that are not typically present in food policy-making, and aim to increase the participation of diverse citizens (Bassarab et al., 2019).

While FPCs differ in various ways, they all strive to unite a plurality of actors who are relevant for local policy-making processes on food. These include educators, parents, government officials, researchers, farmers, fishers, restaurant and business owners, food distributors, consumers, faith leaders, media representatives, food experts and other concerned citizens (see Harper et al., 2009). FPCs provide organisational platforms to sustain civic action around food, where local citizens can come together to learn about sustainable food and to critically discuss and contest their ideas about how to transform the food system. As such, they contribute by providing spaces not only to include local insights and to foster mutual knowledge exchange to improve and legitimise policy (Levkoe, 2011; Hassanein, 2003; Schlosberg & Coles, 2016). They also act as arenas for “food democracy” in which citizens can contest dominant knowledge claims and contribute their own expertise and ideas (Bornemann & Weiland, 2019b; Hassanein, 2003, p. 85; Baldy & Kruse, 2019). The critical assessment and contestation of dominant beliefs, values and knowledge claims around food is supported by the initiation of and involvement in local sustainable food projects, in which FPCs prefigure practices of an alternative food system. In these projects, members collectively experiment with alternative food practices in constant processes of trial and error (Monticelli, 2018). It helps them redefine and refine their knowledge about sustainable food and to develop strategic guidelines and policy propositions that are ultimately feasible in the local context.

FPCs facilitate the potentially lively encounter between different cultural traditions and perspectives on food, underpin the formation of alliances across different societal spheres and provide a space for experiential sustainable innovations (Hassanein, 2003). We can therefore say that FPCs politicise food in various ways: they carve out spaces for contestation and critique in which ideas, beliefs, values and practices around food are brought to attention and discussed; they initiate and develop prefigurative food projects; and they develop fair and feasible policies for sustainable food (Schlosberg & Coles, 2016). Realising this crucial contribution of FPCs to food system transformation, however, is not a straightforward undertaking but needs to take into account the challenges that arise in the attempt of co-producing knowledge for sustainable food policy-making.

Challenges of Co-Producing Sustainable Food Knowledge in Food Policy Councils

FPCs seek to incorporate the unique perspectives and valuable knowledge of local citizens alongside that of academic experts and policy-makers, in order to generate solutions and decisions related to sustainable food policy-making and transformation. However, the co-production of food knowledge is difficult as well as valuable. We propose that there are a variety of challenges related to co-producing knowledge for food policies that support the transformation towards a sustainable, inclusive, safe and healthy food system. It requires, firstly, that those affected by policies are included in the process of generating knowledge for their development. Thus there is the challenge of knowledge inclusion. For a FPC to be legitimate and effective it must encourage the participation of all kinds of local citizens, and not only those who are already mobilised around food politics. The second challenge is that of knowledge exchange. It is not enough to allow actors with different types of knowledge into the organisation; there must also be a way to manoeuvre around the barriers to communication between them. The third challenge is that of knowledge transmission, pertaining to the connection between the FPC and the broader political process of policy-making around food. In the following, we bring together studies of alternative organisations and FPCs with critical literature on deliberative politics to exemplify the challenges that can arise in the attempt to co-produce knowledge for sustainable food policy-making.

  1. (a)

    The Challenge of Knowledge Inclusion

As we have seen, a vast amount of research emphasises the validity of different types of knowledge and the importance of including it in both scientific and policy-making processes around food. A central prerequisite for knowledge inclusion is to have a diverse membership composition, including those who are traditionally marginalised or underprivileged. Work on multi-stakeholder participation in relation to food, for example, claims that the integration of actors from public and private sectors as well as civil society can improve the quality of decision-making (Zanella et al., 2018; de Zeeuw & Dubbeling, 2015, p. 58). Nevertheless, just like other attempts to engage citizens in politics, “FPCs struggle to engage under-represented groups in food systems decision-making” (Porter & Ashcraft, 2020, p. 2). For instance, the time restrictions on single parents (mainly women), language barriers facing ethnic minorities and the low socio-economic resources of underpaid workers limit their ability to participate in FPCs, although their knowledge is important for developing effective, legitimate and sustainable food policies. “Doing inclusion” should not be seen as straightforward; the aim of including marginalised stakeholders should not be a matter of box-ticking (Kok et al., 2021, p. 1812). What is taken to be local knowledge is generated in the efforts to make policy-making more participatory by dominant groups and planners (Mosse, 2001, p. 17). There is also apparently a tendency to exclude more radical voices (Moragues-Faus & Morgan, 2015, p. 1569).

Difficulties can also arise, on the other hand, through attempts to attract representatives of public authorities from the formal political arena. Responsibilities for food-related issues are distributed across various departments of public administration. In aiming for an inclusive knowledge base, FPCs should have representatives from each of them. Often, however, local governments do not have the budget or personnel to delegate officials to participate in FPCs. Uniting citizens from all societal spheres is also challenging when it comes to actors who are less critical of the current food system. Most FPCs are alternative food organisations where “alternative” means contestation of the current system and continued mobilisation for its fundamental transformation (Schiller-Merkens, 2020). FPCs thereby commonly pursue an activist agenda—that is, they question the whole system and mobilise towards its fundamental change—that can be much more radical than the dominant ideas, beliefs, values and worldviews of other citizens. Members of the local food economy, for instance, might not question the system as a whole even though they still recognise the need for sustainable food policy-making. In some FPCs these less critical, more conventionally oriented actors already form part of their membership, but questions remain as to whether and how actors from the more mainstream food economy should be included in the co-production of knowledge in FPCs.

In short, while FPCs differ in their membership composition and some are capable of attracting a greater variety of local citizens, it is important to examine exclusions and underrepresentation and to consider how FPCs might be able to realise a more diverse and inclusive citizen participation.

  1. (b)

    The Challenge of Knowledge Exchange

While research already acknowledges the problem of inclusion within fora such as FPCs, less attention is given to the problem of how actors from different backgrounds can communicate effectively. Tastes in food also become habits, deeply linked to situated social practices, which might make them difficult to talk about in a formal environment. As Colin Peile puts it, “knowledge not only exists in our minds but is also enfolded in peoples’ muscles and skeletons” (Peile, 1998, p. 45). Knowledge about food is, at least in part, embodied and habitual knowledge. It is informed by the situated and unique time–space paths, lived experiences and material practices of human actors (Carolan, 2011). Food is not only about survival and nutrition, but is also bound up with potent memories, religious rituals, family traditions, cultural practices, household routines, collective identities and personal regimens that vary across and within regions and social milieus. Delind (2006, p. 126) talks about the importance of the “sensual dimensions” of food in any attempt at sustainable transformation of the system, which she points out must resist reductive market rationalities and instead tap into emotions and identities. Knowledge of food is not always available at the level of what Giddens calls “discursive consciousness”, but is bound up and intricately linked with social practices (Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1984). This means that it is sometimes difficult to put knowledge about food into words and to convey it in formal discussion.

Contrary to the claim that food can be a “connecting link” across cultural differences (Stuiver & O’Hara, 2021), it can actually create and nurture social divisions. As Pierre Bourdieu has observed, structures of consumption, including that of food, are differentiated by class (1984, p. 183); “tastes in food also depend on the idea each class has of the body and of the effects of food on the body” (1984, p. 187). More recently, Rachel Slocum has shown how in the US alternative food practices create “whiteness” through the “clustering together of white bodies in the often expensive spaces of community food” (2007, p. 526). As well as affecting attempts to attract a diverse membership (and thus the challenge of knowledge inclusion), this is also relevant for knowledge exchange. Because even if there is a diverse and inclusive membership in an FPC, underlying social divisions can harm the exchange of knowledge within the organisation.

Some recommend the creation of “deliberative spaces” for cultivating inclusive discussion around food and allowing an interaction among such differences (Mah & Thang, 2013; Roberts, 2000). Indeed, FPCs have been referred to as “spaces of deliberation” (Moragues-Faus & Morgan, 2015, p. 1558) in which diverse sets of actors can exchange knowledge and arrive at a consensus on practices and policies. Others, however, have already pointed to the limitations of the underlying assumption of a rather unproblematic knowledge alignment (Diver, 2017; Machin, 2019). Spaces such as FPCs are not fully representative and free of power relations and social hierarchies (Moragues-Faus & Morgan, 2015, p. 1569). The subsistence of power relations, embodied differences and diverging capabilities of communicating and relating are too frequently overlooked by proponents of deliberation (Esteves, 2008). Certain bodies, coded in certain ways, are given authority while others are marginalised in political spaces (Machin, 2015). As Albena Azmanova asks: “How do we know that public deliberations are really free of power asymmetries, ideological idiom, and various forms of manipulation?” (2010, p. 48). Bassarab et al., (2019) describe in more detail the challenges of deliberation within FPCs, particularly the difficulty of including under-represented voices in the process of deciding policy priorities. Likewise, studies on alternative organisations reveal the threat of oligarchisation whereby a minority of participants accumulate disproportionate influence over internal processes (e.g. Laamanen et al., 2019; Reedy et al., 2016). Authority, domination, informal leadership and power structures can arise even in alternative organisations that attempt to create free, autonomous and horizontal spaces. The emergence of such structures would impede FPCs’ ability to become the “facilitators of knowledge exchange” as they have also been described (Leitheiser et al., 2021, p. 11).

There are ways to approach the challenge of knowledge exchange and to combat the privileging of what is understood to be the “rational speech” in deliberative fora. Iris Marion Young (1996), for instance, suggests supplementing deliberation with other forms of communication, such as greeting, testimony rhetoric and story-telling (see Esteves, 2008, p. 1938). Relatedly, organisation scholarship describes how alternative organisations experiment with new forms such as rotating leadership roles (Sutherland et al., 2014), the creation of assemblies (Reedy et al., 2016; Simsa & Totter, 2017) or stigmergy and adhocracy (Laamanen et al., 2019) in their attempt to realise principles of democracy and equality in their daily practices. Footnote 7These studies provide insights into ways of addressing the challenge of knowledge exchange, suggesting that the concrete design of FPCs seems to be crucial in facilitating the exchange of knowledge (Bornemann & Weiland, 2019b). However, we still lack empirical work on FPCs themselves and their ways of dealing with the challenge of an inclusive and equal knowledge exchange on which the ideal of deliberative processes rests.

  1. (c)

    The Challenge of Knowledge Transmission

As we have argued, knowledge about food is—at least in part—situated and embodied. It is implicit and not available to discursive consciousness. The transmission of the practical conscious body of knowledge occurs in and through social praxis (Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1984); it is transmitted through practice or the continued collective engagement of various actors in alternative food practices. Therefore, transmitting knowledge for food policy-making requires shared social praxis and collective action including those actors who finally decide about food policies; in other words, public officials and members from local government. FPCs that deny them membership can experience difficulties in translating their propositions into public policy.

A few FPCs—such as the one in Berlin—explicitly exclude governmental or public officials as members of their council (Sieveking, 2019). This might free the discussions from the influence of authoritative actors and discourses, but it can also impede the knowledge transmission capacity and therefore ultimately reduce the impact of a FPC on food system transformation. Most FPCs, however, pursue a “collaborative” instead of an adversarial approach and seek to work with local governments on building a sustainable food system (Bassarab et al., 2019). This might also help them gain acceptance and support from the municipal government for their urban sustainable food strategies. As Leitheiser and colleagues (2021) describe in their study on three German FPCs, only one was successful in this respect. From early on, this FPC sought to integrate public officials into its processes. Still, a dilemma remains, as Bassarab and colleagues (2019) explain: “A relationship with government can lend credibility and legitimacy to the work of an FPC and thus enable policy success, or it can hinder and even halt the efforts of an FPC.” More radical voices from food activists may become diluted by compromises with public elites (Moragues-Faus & Morgan, 2015). Governments can be selective in the ideas and knowledge they are presented with; the translation of knowledge into policy might result in the flourishing of alternative ideas and practices, but it might also impoverish its potential (Dinerstein, 2017).

FPCs therefore must try to balance the critical stances of their members with the likely more circumscribed efforts of policy-makers. If they are to impact the sustainability transformation of the local food system, FPCs should continue being both distinct from prevailing regimes and connected to them. They should pursue what Leitheiser and colleagues (2021) refer to as a “dialectical approach”: mobilising a plurality of actors in their cities and regions while engaging with electoral politics. The knowledge transmission processes of FPCs will be particularly supported by progressive and prefigurative municipal governments that are more open to alternative governance regimes and already integrate alternative initiatives of local residents into its governance processes (Cooper, 2016).

Conclusion

In summary, we see that FPCs can play a crucial role for sustainable food policy-making and food system transformation. With a focus on the majority of FPCs that emerge bottom-up as alternative food organisations, we have proposed that they (re)politicise food through combining various kinds of sustainability politics: prefigurative politics of already living the change they envision for the food system as a whole, preparative action for institutional politics by crafting policy proposals for sustainable food policies, and sporadically contentious politics by, for instance, participating in public protest actions of social movement groups. Through this multi-political approach (Monticelli, 2021; Schiller-Merkens, 2022b), they politicise food in a broader sense which can further support the transformation towards a radically alternative food system. However, FPCs also face challenges in co-producing knowledge as a prerequisite for radical transformation. We have mapped out what we refer to as the challenges around the inclusion, exchange and transmission of sustainable food knowledge. These challenges might point towards potential “dark sides” of civil society in relation to the politics of sustainable food, suggesting that while FPCs aim to generate equal, democratically legitimate and inclusive discussion processes, they should not be seen as deliberative spaces for building full consensus between diverse sets of actors on sustainable food policies.

And yet while it might be difficult to fully realise the ideal of knowledge co-production for sustainable food policies, this does not render FPCs trivial actors in food politics and food system transformation. Instead, we argue that they are crucial actors in politicising food, and issues of sustainability more generally. By providing spaces for sharing contestation and critique of the current system, and for debating and constructing alternative worlds, FPCs affect the knowledge of those who are involved—an important path towards social change and transformation (Wright, 2010). In their everyday practices and struggles, their members create knowledge that is potentially transformative: they develop imaginaries of alternative food systems and ideas about how to get there (and sometimes already realise those imaginaries) and they experiment with alternative projects. In this way, they form what della Porta and Pavan (2017) refer to as local rationalities, tacit knowledge and good sense about which sustainable food policies and practices might work in their own local context. Furthermore, the existence of these prefigurative spaces can be seen as part of building mobilising structures for transforming the broader food system (Schiller-Merkens, 2020; Tarrow, 1998). FPCs provide organisational spaces to resist and contest dominant framings of food, to discuss and experiment with alternative food practices and to create and even realise new imaginaries for sustainable ways of interacting and living with regard to food. If food plays a role in celebration, enjoyment, tradition and culture, then food might stimulate and sustain political participation and the formation and galvanisation of collective identities, thus enlivening civil society. By politicising food, FPCs channel the “transformative role” that food can have, its ability to nurture “civic ties” across social differences (Flammang, 2009, p. 1).

To conclude, our paper provides insights into FPCs as a new type of alternative food organisation that arises out of civil society yet allows connections between citizens of different societal spheres, linking civil society with actors from businesses, government and academia and engaging them in sustainability politics. It contributes to the understanding of sustainability politics in and out of civil society by discussing both the potential and challenges of knowledge co-production in FPCs. Our paper suggests that FPCs are seen not as deliberative consensus-building spaces but as prefigurative alternative food organisations, which do not resolve but rather enhance and enliven sustainability politics around food.