Harnessing the power of food citizenship
A report of the Food Ethics Council
In June 2017, the New Citizenship Project launched its report ‘Food Citizenship: how thinking of ourselves differently can change the future of our food system’ at Borough Market, sparking huge interest from individuals working across the UK food and farming system. The question then was how to build a movement that would help the food citizenship mindset grow. Since then, the Food Ethics Council has taken on four key tasks to accelerate the transition from consumerism to citizenship being the dominant mindset in the food system:
Since 2018, the Food Ethics Council has engaged with food citizenship pioneers across the UK food and farming systems, including individuals working in businesses and civil society organisations (CSOs), through discussion seminars, system mapping workshops, in-depth interviews and analysis of different models and strategies of engagement in pioneering organisations.
This report is a synthesis of those conversations and research. It aims to highlight the window of opportunity that is currently opening across the sector for food citizenship to take root. The examples used throughout are all UK based, however it is worth noting that the wave of change is global.