Lessons from the 3rd Utrecht Degrowth Symposium: Sowing sustainability in food and agriculture

On 29th September 2023, policymakers, researchers, students, farmers, and social movements came together  to explore what a degrowth perspective can bring to the debate on agri-food system sustainability. Here we summarise and reflect on the main insights of the afternoon and share video recordings of the keynote talks and panel discussion.

Degrowth emerged in the early 2000s as an academic and activist critique of our dominant socio-economic system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. Degrowth prioritizes social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. It also means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

Sustainable agri-food systems are essential for societies to be able to thrive within planetary boundaries. The debate is heated and multiple visions compete to cast light on the future of food production and consumption in the Netherlands and worldwide. Yet, the debate is also stuck in existing approaches and for many it has become difficult to imagine pathways to just and sustainable agri-food systems. In this context, the 3^rd Utrecht Degrowth Symposium explored whether degrowth is able to bring something new to the debate on agri-food systems sustainability.

Beyond socio-technical transformation

“The symposium made clear that agri-food system transformation is not a purely socio-technical form of change revolving around, for example, food production or transport technologies, and economic measures aimed at ‘correcting’ the market,” says symposium organiser Dr. Giuseppe Feola, Associate Professor of Social Change for Sustainability at Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Technical changes can play an important role, but real agri-food system transformation must challenge and reconfigure established power relations, vested interests, cultural imaginaries of desirable future in agriculture and beyond. “Political action is not limited to institutional arenas such as the parliament, but takes place in the streets as well as within universities, where educational programs are designed and research funding, to an extent, is allocated”.

The symposium made clear that agri-food system transformation is not a purely socio-technical form of change revolving around, for example, food production or transport technologies, and economic measures aimed at ‘correcting’ the market

It is common to refer to a collective ‘we’ striving for change, but who is ‘we’? While the added value of degrowth for agri-food systems specifically is still debated, the symposium made clear that political alliances – building movements, but also movement coalitions – are crucial for transformation.

The symposium also showed how political action through movement coalitions should have two mutually reinforcing objectives:

1. To challenge and phase out, to dismantle and unlearn the practices, imaginaries and structures that maintain the unsustainable industrial agri-food system in its place. This includes administrative procedures that effectively cut off smallholders from access to government funding and resources (e.g., access to land), but also untransparent decision-making institutions that hide power relations and allow shady influences on the policy-making process, as well as concrete subsidies that reinforce the financial position of those not supporting nor practicing agroecological or other forms of deeply sustainable agriculture.
2. To enable and empower alternatives to the capitalist, industrial agri-food system. This may mean defending the rights of farmers, especially those who are vulnerable, such as smallholders and agricultural labourers, but also advocating for access to land, knowledge and resources for food collectives practicing regenerative agriculture and building local communities.   

Cutting across these points, many speakers and participants touched upon how the urgency of responding to climate change and biodiversity loss, but also the urgency felt by family farmers at risk of losing their land to speculators or large corporations can be reconciled with the agroecological and degrowth principle of slowing down and the importance for both humans and ecosystems to respect natural cycles and what Vandana Shiva calls the ‘flow of life’.

Keynote: A degrowth perspective on agri-food systems sustainability

Julia Spanier and Jacob Smessaert, Utrecht University

Julia Spanier and Jacob Smessaert reflect on what degrowth can bring to food system transformation beyond capitalism. They underscore the similarities between degrowth and counterhegemonic agri-food movements such as agroecology and food sovereignty. For example, they all strive to realize alternatives already in the present and aim to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime. They also aim to realize new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations, and approach agriculture and food systems in ways that mimic nature and stress the importance of local knowledge.

Spanier and Smessaert introduce a workshop toolkit they co-developed with members of the UNMAKING research project. The workshop (materials downloadable here) is a tool that can be used by collectives wishing to reflect upon and strategize food system transformation from a degrowth perspective.   

Combining evidence from research and insights from their engagement with degrowth and various food movements, Spanier and Smessaert suggest that the emerging degrowth movement can be a humble, self-critical ally of existing social movements in the food system. They propose that it should (i) learn from other theories and movements that have made diagnoses of current unsustainable food systems and transformation pathways, (ii) avoid redundancy, as there already is a ‘degrowth’ approach to farming: agroecology, (iii) actively work against urban/rural divide: give practical support to rural movements, and (iv) engage with respect, humility and empathy.

Keynote: Degrowth scenarios for the food system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

David Meng-Chuen Chen, Humboldt University Berlin & Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

David Meng-Chuen Chen discusses a quantitative simulation model that integrates degrowth principles in the food and land system. The model was used to explore possible food system scenarios in light of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets and the nutrition transition. Results show that a structural, qualitative food system transformation can achieve a steady-state food system economy that is net GHG-neutral by 2100 while improving nutritional outcomes.

Chen argues that degrowth in relation to agri-food systems should not be equated with a reduction of GDP or economic activity in the agri-food sector, but rather with a qualitative change of the food system. The food system thus needs to be transformed both in terms of its material scale and its qualitative structure: resource-intensive and highly polluting industries, such as the livestock industry, would need to be downscaled along with a reduced consumption of animal protein. Other subsectors such as horticulture should in contrast be expanded due to their role in preventing malnutrition and chronic diseases. Furthermore, farmers would need to adopt low-polluting management practices, and supply chains would need to shift towards low-polluting source materials. The model suggests that to achieve such transformation, a combined intervention on efficiency (a global GHG tax) and sufficiency (reducing consumption of animal protein) would be needed.

The model also raises many questions about the governance of the food system and indirect consequences of the modelled policies, such as those on agricultural labour, which need to be further investigated by the scientific community.

Panel: Reflections on degrowth and agri-food systems transformation

The panel discussion explored which degrowth-inspired policies and actions can contribute to transforming agri-food system toward sustainability. The panellists shared their direct experiences of transformative action in multiple arenas: from farms to parliament, from street protests to social movement assemblies, and from education to trade organization. A complex picture emerged in which the pivotal role of politics, the existence of viable alternatives such as agroecology, and the need for multi-stakeholder alliances for transformation took a prominent place. 

Leonardo van den Berg, University of Twente, Toekomstboeren, Agroecologie Netwerk & European Coordination Via Campesina
Mariana Calcagni González, Free University Berlin & Centro de Análisis Socio Ambiental
Laura van Oers, Utrecht University & Ontgroei
Roos Saat, part-time farmer & activist
Christine Teunissen, Member of Dutch Parliament, Partij voor de Dieren

Moderated by Federico Savini, University of Amsterdam and Ontgroei