Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Thank you for the invitation to share our inputs and views on the v1.0 draft ‘Towards a Common Understanding of Sustainable Food Systems’. We, the SHARECITY team, Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, would hereby like to make a contribution. We acknowledge the present section 2.2 which identifies key concepts in relation to sustainable food systems including food waste on p.23 of the draft. However, we feel like food sharing as a key concept is currently underrepresented.

Food sharing is one of the oldest forms of collective behaviour is currently experience a renaissance through the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Davies et al. 2017a).

We would hereby like to hereby submit the following definition for the inclusion in chapter 4:

Food sharing is defined as “having a portion [of food] with another or others; giving a portion [of food] to others; using, occupying or enjoying [food and food related spaces to include the growing, cooking and/or eating of food] jointly; possessing an interest [in food] in common; or telling someone about [food]” (Adapted from Oxford University Press, 2014) in Davies et al 2017b

Food sharing is often facilitated by grassroots and citizen led initiatives as they appear in the SHARECITY100 database (Davies et al. 2017a, 2017b). Food sharing initiatives include growing initiatives like community gardens, e.g. Muck and Magic community garden, Dublin, Ireland, initiatives, which facilitate cooking and eating together, e.g. Be Enriched, a community canteen from London, UK (Marovelli 2018), redistribution initiatives, e.g. Foodsharing.de from Germany (Morrow 2018; Weymes and Davies, 2018) and educational initiatives, e.g. Global Generation, London, UK. Many of the initiatives like Global Generation are multifunctional and are conducting many different services leading to a more sustainable food system.

Section 3 addresses different roads leading to a more sustainable food system. We feel that grassroots and citizen-led initiatives should be included into this section as key drivers of sustainability transitions. We would hereby like to suggest explicit mention the role of grassroots innovation and collective activities for facilitating more sustainable food systems which has been demonstrated internationally (Rut and Davies 2018a, Rut and Davies 2018b, Davies 2012).

We welcome the recognition of research and innovation on p.41 of the draft. In addition to this, we would hereby like to suggest SHARECITY as one of the research projects on p.43 leading food systems onto more sustainable pathways. This project uses a collaborative and trans-disciplinary approach to assess the practice and sustainability potential of city-based ICT-mediated food sharing economies. SHARECITY (2015-2020) is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and involves a team of international researchers and a high-level advisory panel of global experts.

SHARECITY establishes the significance and potential of food sharing economies by:

  • Developing deeper theoretical understanding of contemporary food sharing
  • Generating comparative international empirical data about food sharing activities within cities
  • Assessing the impact of food sharing activities
  • Exploring how food sharing in cities might evolve sustainably in the future

To conclude, we would like to add the following references:

The authors: Anna Davies, Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project SHARECITY, Professor of Geography, Environment and Society at Trinity College Dublin, Stephen MacKenzie, Postdoctoral Researcher with SHARECITY, Monika Rut, PhD student with SHARECITY, Vivien Franck, Research Assistant with SHARECITY

SHARECITY, Department of Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected], www.sharecity.ie