Redefining power relations in agri-food systems: transformations, power configurations and practices

In order to create and assess real and long-term transformations in agri-food systems it is argued that it is necessary to examine how existing power relations become reconfigured. The paper will, from a comparative perspective, first consider this premise by exploring a revised conceptual basis for both understanding and considering transformations in contemporary food systems and their changing power relations. This will build upon current transition theory and postulate a dynamic framework for understanding the existing power relations in agri-food systems. It will be argued that existing power relations are subject to considerable endogenous and exogenous sets of vulnerabilities, which in turn create conditions for potential transformations over time and space. These transformations are also fuelled by broader socio-political shifts in wider society associated with the politics of consumption and care, and the development of social as well as technical innovations which re-connect urban and rural social actions with regard to food and agriculture. Three arenas are chosen as examples of their strong interactions and transformative potentials with the dominant food ‘regime’ and power constellations. These are participatory plant breeding; public food procurement and farm-based multifunctionality. Building on these arenas, the paper will advance and explore some of the conditions for enduring reconfigurations of agri-food power relations. These include: (i) the need to link and co-design ecological production and sustainable and healthy diets; (ii) the need to change the rules governing production, supply and consumption at relevant scales; (iii) the need for systemic and structural innovation rather than product innovation; and, (iv) the need and capacities of these arenas to develop sufficient internal integrity and independence such that they can continuously fend off pressures for co-optation and appropriation from dominant regimes of power. The paper will conclude in elucidating how such an analysis becomes relevant for understanding the social and political conditions for just and ecologically sustainable transitions within agrifood systems