Anja Decker: Informal farmers and alternative food networks: Ambiguous entanglements in rural peripheries

Alternatives to industrial food production and provisioning are increasingly recognized in their potential to foster social and ecological change and to contribute to community resilience. This makes upscaling and inclusiveness of these practices central issues and tasks.

In the light of the immense interest scholars have developed in alternative foodscapes in the Global North, the debate is rather short of perspectives from less privileged rural dwellers. What is more, the term “alternative food networks” is often used in a surprisingly narrow sense, equating it with conscious and new enactments of lifestyle politics and consumer citizenship. Consequently, the respective literature is still taking little notice of household food production and the sharing and informal sale of homemade products, that are all widespread in CEE.

In my paper I take the empirical plurality of non-industrial agri-food practices in CEE as a starting point to contribute to the debate on a socially just and inclusive bottom up transformation of the food system. Drawing from ethnographic research in a peripherialized rural region of Czechia I show that the growing popularity, commodification and visibility of alternative food initiatives can have ambiguous effects for local informal farmers and rural communities. They diversify income opportunities, provide experiences of recognition and agency, and thus mitigate precarity and social devaluation. However, the encounters between informal farmers and representatives from urban creative milieus who consider themselves part of the global food movement can reproduce social hierarchies and distinctions, and thus reinforce the dualism between “established/non-engaged” and “innovative/engaged” alternative food networks.

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