The Grassroots’ Perspective on Just and Sustainable Food Systems: Updates on our Participatory Policy Positioning Process
Last December, we launched our policy positioning on Just and Sustainable Food Systems from a Grassroots Perspective. This ongoing process is grounded in dialogue and deliberation with our members and partners, aiming to surface the real barriers and opportunities that community-led initiatives (CLIs) face in transforming food systems. Through a series of participatory workshops, seven key themes have emerged, each reflecting not only the challenges, but also the creativity, resilience, and transformative potential of community-rooted approaches to food.
Together, these themes form a blueprint for a just and sustainable food system, one that places people and planet above profit. Now is the time for EU policy to recognise, support, and invest in the pioneering work already happening on the ground by community led initiatives across Europe.
As we move forward, we pause to reflect on the journey so far: why we began this process, what it has revealed, and how it continues to evolve. This reflection is an invitation to deepen our collective understanding and sharpen our shared vision for systemic change.
Why food?
Food is something we all share. It connects us to each other, to the land, and to the systems that shape our lives. That’s why food is such a powerful entry point for systemic change.
Food systems, how we produce, distribute, and consume, are responsible for around 20% of Europe’s environmental and climate impacts, contributing to biodiversity loss, pollution, and soil degradation. They are also increasingly vulnerable to crises like climate change, pandemics, and conflict.
But food systems are not only part of the problem, they’re also an integral part of the solution. Sustainable approaches can cut emissions, restore ecosystems, and build resilience. Community-led action and shorter supply chains empower people to live within planetary boundaries.
Why community-led initiatives?
When we talk about food systems, we’re referring to everything: from production and farming to processing, cooking, transport, consumption, and waste reuse, essentially, the full cycle of how food moves through society. Our focus is on how community-led initiatives are transforming food systems to support climate and environmental action.
Examples include Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where farmers and consumers collaborate for fairer conditions; as well as food councils, cooperatives, regional food networks, collective kitchens, zero-waste projects, urban gardens, and food forests among others. These initiatives are reimagining how we produce, share, and value food, building more resilient and sustainable systems from the ground up.
Why now?
Food and agriculture are high on the EU agenda. In February, the new European Commission released its Vision for Agriculture and Food, a roadmap that will shape upcoming policy and legislation. While this vision is a positive first step, acknowledging key elements like agroecology, circularity, short supply chains, and the need for democratic governance, it remains vague, fragmented, and lacks concrete commitments. With priorities outlined but no binding framework yet in place, there’s a clear need for stronger policy recommendations. That’s where our positioning process comes in.
Why a policy positioning process targeting the EU?
This is part of what we call advocacy: a key mechanism for shaping policy. It’s how civil society organisations and interest groups seek to influence decision-makers. For community-led initiatives, this opens real opportunities to influence food and agriculture policy in line with sustainability goals. By organising, building coalitions, clearly positioning ourselves, and making our voices visible, through evidence, storytelling, and lived experience, we can help shape the future of food systems from the ground up.
How do we plan to do that?
We’re shaping our EU-level policy recommendations through a multi-stage, participatory process aimed at amplifying grassroots voices in food policy.
We began in December with a briefing and visioning phase, establishing a shared understanding and showcasing good practices. We’re now in the deliberation phase, exploring key themes and building blocks to deepen our collective analysis. Next, we’ll co-create a visually engaging, written policy position, guided by sociocratic principles.
Our approach centres on one main output:
a policy position—a set of clear, co-developed policy recommendations to be finalised over summer, that will include a collection of community-led stories, each illustrating one recommendation—bringing policy to life through real-world examples.
This policy position will be presented at our main policy event in Brussels in November to policy makers and stakeholders. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that community-led solutions are visible, credible, and influential in shaping the future of EU food systems.
The process: How we’ll get there
So far, we’ve completed five sessions. To make sense of all the rich discussions and feedback, we organized everything into seven key themes, which we call building blocks. This framework helps us deepen our conversations and focus our work.
For each theme, we examined three key questions:
- What needs to change, and what should be left behind?
- What is our shared vision for the future of food systems?
- What are the enablers: the policies, resources, and actions required to turn our vision into reality?
Alongside this, we’ve gathered a series of case studies—some of which are highlighted here—that illustrate these themes in practice. This same structure will guide our discussions in the upcoming sessions.
Seven building blocks for Just and Sustainable Food Systems
1. Local/Regional and Community Led
Reimagining food systems from the ground up necessitates a shift away from centralised, global supply. CLIs present compelling alternatives. By prioritising local produce, developing bioregional food networks, and practising regenerative land stewardship, they illustrate how food systems can serve as engines of ecological renewal and social cohesion. Initiatives such as urban food gardens, community-supported agriculture, and local food hubs reconnect individuals with the sources of their food and with one another. Shared meals and communal spaces foster a culture of food sovereignty and mutual care.
2. Farming with nature for nature
CLIs across Europe are pioneering a transformation in agriculture. Through agroecology, permaculture, regenerative practices, and community stewardship, they demonstrate how farming can enhance biodiversity, sequester carbon, and strengthen resilience to climate shocks. These initiatives serve as bioregional anchor points where farmers and communities collaborate to restore ecosystems and build food sovereignty. The European Environment Agency emphasises the importance of such practices in restoring Europe’s agricultural ecosystems and enhancing resilience (European Environment Agency, 2024: p. 1).
3. Farming as a profession: valued, attractive and rewarding
Beyond environmental and economic pressures, many farmers feel systemically neglected. A 2024 survey indicated that 53% of French farmers cited income and economic instability as their primary concerns, while 35% pointed to burdensome regulations and lack of policy support. Revaluing farming as a profession necessitates structural change. Ensuring fair incomes, secure land tenure, supportive policies, and meaningful participation in local economies is essential. CLIs play a vital role in this transformation, offering farmers not just economic opportunities but also connection, purpose, and resilience through networks of solidarity and shared ecological commitment.
4. Education, awareness raising & reconnection
Contemporary food systems have fostered a profound disconnection: between people and the origins of their food, between urban and rural worlds, and between consumers and producers. Many citizens are unaware of the seasonality, geography, or ecological footprint of their food choices, often prioritising convenience and cost over quality and sustainability. CLIs provide powerful spaces of reconnection. Urban gardens, school projects, local markets, community-supported agriculture, and community kitchens offer experiential learning that reawakens ecological awareness and nurtures food literacy.
5. Knowledge, research, innovation & tech
For decades, research and innovation policies have favoured industrial agriculture, technological solutions, and patent-driven approaches. This focus has often marginalised the social and ecological innovations emerging from grassroots movements, where experimentation, low-tech tools, and local wisdom flourish. Recognising the innovation potential of CLIs is critical. Their pioneering work in agroecology, circular economies, community governance, and solidarity-based finance offers scalable solutions to today’s pressing challenges. Bridging the gap between grassroots innovation and formal research frameworks requires investment in participatory action research, transdisciplinary collaboration, living labs, and knowledge-sharing platforms.
6. Bridging the urban / rural divide
The divide between urban centers and rural landscapes presents a significant challenge in Europe. Rural communities often bear the brunt of climate change’s direct impacts, such as droughts and floods, while urban populations experience indirect effects like heatwaves and supply chain disruptions. This divide extends beyond geography, encompassing sociological and cultural dimensions. CLIs offer promising avenues to bridge this gap. Models like Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA), urban food forests, rural-urban partnerships, food councils and food hubs foster direct relationships between producers and consumers, enhancing mutual understanding and shared responsibility. Rebuilding urban-rural connections is essential for creating food systems that are resilient, just, and democratically governed. Strengthening these ties can also mitigate societal polarisation, fostering trust across diverse communities.
7. Advancing Food Democracy and Equitable Access to Land and Resources
The struggle for sustainable food systems is fundamentally a struggle for justice. The commodification of food, land, and natural resources has led to a concentration of power, marginalising small-scale producers, communities, and consumers. Food democracy seeks to reclaim collective agency by ensuring communities put in practice their right to shape their own food systems. This includes equitable access to land and resources and inclusive, participatory decision-making processes. CLIs serve as powerful laboratories for food democracy, modelling governance arrangements that are transparent, accountable, and rooted in shared values of care and reciprocity. The development of local food councils exemplifies this, as they provide platforms for diverse stakeholders to engage in food system governance.
Interested to find out more? Join our next event!
Just and sustainable food systems: Presentation of our Draft Policy Position
Date: 7th July 2025
Time: 13:00 pm CET
Interested in joining the process?
