Putting Food on the Regional Policy Agenda in Montpellier, France

Abstract

Cities have been propelled into the forefront of the debate about sustainable food policies because, with rapid urbanization, the urban realm has become a locus for three of the most significant challenges to the conventional food system—multifunctionality, co-governance and city-regionalism. Under the banner of multifunctionality, the urban food movement has challenged the conventional idea that food should be treated as a simple commodity like any other. But urban food campaigners resist this idea by arguing that food cannot be so easily commodified because, unlike manufactured commodities, we ingest food and it plays a vital role in the health and wellbeing of people and the planet. The urban food movement—a loose and sometimes chaotic assemblage of municipal activism and civic engagement—is also challenging the idea that the food policy arena is reserved for corporate interests, national governments and international bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of the most rapidly growing social movements of our time is the advent of food policy councils, or food policy partnerships, where civil society organizations are joining forces with municipal politicians and officers to fashion a more sustainable urban foodscape, one in which the values of public health, social justice and ecological integrity are treated more seriously in the food policy equation. New forms of co-governance are beginning to emerge in our cities as politicians realize that they have to design policies with rather than for civil society—and urban food policy is in the forefront of this process. City-region food systems constitute a third challenge to the conventional food policy mindset, which has been dominated until recently by the logic of globalization and the placeless foodscapes where price is extolled over provenance. The new urban food movement champions a sustainable food system in which cities are able to reconnect with their regional hinterlands as well as consuming fairly traded products from afar. Sustainability should not be confused with green autarchy! Sustainable city-region food strategies pose a challenge because they contest one of the deepest divisions in capitalist society—between town and country.