Food for Justice: How (in)just is our food system?

Renata und Facundo, your research on claims or models for socioecological transformation is also closely related to different aspects of inequalities. 

Meanwhile, the IAI partners in Mecila – Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (external link, opens in a new window) (BMFTR (external link, opens in a new window), 2020-2026), an international research project with its main hub in São Paulo. Mecila emploays conviviality as an analytical concept to describe ways of living together in specific contexts which also adresses consequences of inequalities . 

All projects combine point of views from Latin America and Europe. 

What can Europe and Latin America learn from each other?

Facundo Martín: Europe can draw significant insights from Latin America's grassroots agroecological movements and their success in integrating bottom-up approaches into public policy frameworks through popular education traditions rooted in peasant movements. 

Latin America's innovative merger of agroecology with solidarity economy principles offers Europe models for food system transformation addressing social and ecological objectives. The region's social movement-driven approach demonstrates how to build coalitions that successfully promote agroecological integration into governance structures, providing valuable lessons for European efforts to scale sustainable food practices. 

Conversely, Latin America can benefit from Europe's sophisticated policy frameworks that integrate environmental sustainability, health, and equity across multiple sectors and scales. Europe’s experience with multi-stakeholder governance models, cross-border coordination mechanisms, and urban food system innovations provides valuable lessons for Latin America's rapidly urbanising populations and regional integration challenges. 

This bidirectional exchange of knowledge—combining Latin America's social movement-driven agroecology with Europe's policy sophistication and private-public partnerships— creates a powerful foundation for addressing shared global challenges of food security, climate change, and equitable food system transformation.

Renata Motta: Food for Justice has searched for contextualized examples of social mobilization over food and agriculture and the differences show important insights about what one country can learn from the other. 

The Brazilian movements have a strong agenda on hunger and food security. In Germany, it was only very recently that food movements started to see food insecurity in the country, as it was dealt before as a matter from the Global South. Gender justice and feminism are strong themes and actors in Brazilian food movements; while in Germany gender inequalities in the agrifood system are also significant but not object of mobilization as much. 

By contrast, animal rights are one of the most important themes in German food movements, and hardly appear as a topic in Brazil, apart from vegan movements. In both countries, there is an incipient anti-racist agenda in food movements and this could be a topic of common interest, given the coloniality of the global agrifood system. 

Global challenges like a socioecological transformation in agrifood systems need contextualized discussions and conversations and mutual learning. 

Is it possible to support change also as a single consumer?

Facundo Martín: I feel that this is always a tricky question. I would answer: only partially. Although individual and everyday decisions on food consumption are important and even the subject of research, the transformation of agri-food systems requires structural collective policies and collective actions.

Renata Motta:  I agree with Facundo. Food is a topic that lends itself to various forms of politicization and strategies of change. The transformation of everyday food practices like production, acquisition based on political and moral criteria (fair trade, ecological, etc), cooking and eating, can indeed generate important aggregate effects and signal cultural dynamics of change that inform markets and states. However, even when consumers change their food behaviour, it is usually a result of collective action, namely, a cultural change following years of social movements engaged with specific social problems, signaling solutions, raising awareness, mobilizing attention. 

Thank you very much for this interview to both of you!