Envisioning Alternative Economic Futures Through the Lens of Food

Abstract

[EN] No social or economic future is possible without food. It is therefore imperative to conceive well-grounded and feasible food scenarios. Drawing on current literature about the politics and narratives of the Anthropocene, four possibilities are discussed in this chapter: the business-as-usual, the tech-food, the bioregional, and the eco-global food scenarios. The bioregional scenario is closely scrutinized here because it raises a grand critique of the current globalized food system. Its adherents reject the current hegemony of large companies in the food supply chain. Instead, conscious individuals and committed communities have developed a vast array of economic arrangements (usually labelled as ‘alternative food networks’) which prefigure the sustainable, localized, and fair agrifood system they wish for everyone and everywhere. These alternative food networks are defined and outlined before discussing how they perform the future today and how they tackle with internal contradictions and external constraints posed by the hegemonic food system.