Speaker
Description
Agroecological rewilding can be understood as the integration of productive food plants into everyday landscapes to reinstate the latent, ancient understanding of the provenance of food, medicine, fibres and energy sources (Jin et al., under review). The deliberate collocation of the terms ‘agroecology’ and ‘rewilding’ is employed to stimulate an inquiry on the conceptual boundaries of agriculture and environmental management, creating opportunities for meaningful engagement with ecological processes through the incidental cultivation, preparation and consumption of food. Hawkes et al. (2015) describe food environments as consisting of everyday nudges that influence consumer food choices to shape dietary habits and preferences; on this basis, it is argued that agroecological rewilding has important potential to contribute towards creating healthier food environments that benefit urban populations. Downs et. al. (2020) define food environments as “the consumer interface with the food system that encompasses the availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality, and sustainability of foods and beverages in wild, cultivated, and built spaces that are influenced by the socio-cultural and political environment and ecosystems within which they are embedded.” While the distinction between built and natural environments is critical, I would question the division between ‘wild’ and ‘cultivated’, arguing that practices such as agroecological rewilding exist at the intersection of both, particularly in urban settings.
In this study, I investigate three projects in Australia, North America and the UK that demonstrate the practice of agroecological rewilding to understand their capacity to influence local food environments. The projects are first analysed according to the four key criteria for assessing agroecological rewilding initiatives—site context, growing systems, people and culture, and adaptive capacity—as previously proposed by Jin et al. (under review), who argue that the success of an initiative lies in the balance of these criteria. The projects are then further assessed on the characteristics of their food environment according to the framework proposed by Downs et. al. (2020) which include measures of availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality, and sustainability. Findings reveal that agroecological rewilding has significant potential to directly enhance local food security and promote biodiversity in urban settings. However, challenges such as limited land access, inadequate policy support, and entrenched normative behaviours must be addressed to effectively scale and sustain these practices.
Findings from this study point to the need for future work in this area to measure the longer-term impact of such initiatives. Specifically, longitudinal studies are needed to assess how these practices and initiatives influences local urban food environments, including the effects on food access, dietary behaviours, and community engagement over time. Since the case studies are situated in specific urban and cultural contexts, this may limit the broader applicability of the findings. Future research may also focus on overcoming scalability issues so that initiatives can transition from standalone projects to commonplace practices across diverse contexts. Despite the challenges outlined, agroecological rewilding offers an important pathway with the capacity to facilitate much needed reimagining of urban food environments that better foster the health and wellbeing of both people and the planet.
References
Downs, S. M., Ahmed, S., Fanzo, J., & Herforth, A. (2020). Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets. Foods, 9(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9040532
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. (2016). Influencing food environments for healthy diets. FAO. https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/060ce716-3d8b-4574-9857-dc38252fc283.
Hawkes, C., Smith, T. G., Jewell, J., Wardle, J., Hammond, R. A., Friel, S., Thow, A. M., & Kain, J. (2015). Smart food policies for obesity prevention. The Lancet, 385(9985), 2410–2421. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61745-1
Jin, L., Micheli, S., Corcoran, J., Brogden, L., & Schmidt, S. (in review). Negotiating the boundaries of agroecological rewilding: Learning from food-growing practices in the public domains of subtropical Australia. In W. Rolf, S. R. Grădinaru, & M. Egerer (Eds.), Productive urban and peri-urban landscapes – benefits, co-benefits and new modes for planning. Springer Nature.
| Keywords | agroecological rewilding; food environments; productive landscapes; sustainable food systems; urbanism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
