Confronting the coming five decades from our present conjuncture demands – to paraphrase Antonio Gramsci’s famous mantra – both critical pessimism and a wilful politics of hope. In this article, we engage with the politics of climate breakdown and the responses to wider socio-ecological crises with a necessary critical pessimism. Specifically, we confront the capture of green transition imperatives by finance capital, as well as the troubling orientation of transition towards building new structures of accumulation around the vision of an electrified consumer society. We also see the coming decades being marked by the ever-increasing wealth of global asset-owning classes – who, by definition, enclose the atmospheric commons faster than any other community. Against this dystopian picture of increasingly concentrated wealth, corporate excess, and terrestrial crisis, we focus on the stubborn reproduction of socio-ecological life through various grounded projects across the world. We engage with communities who work against structural constraints to reproduce life from below through urban commoning, food sovereignty, Indigenous organising, and caretaking economies – all of which are scaling out their visions through alternative internationals. All of these projects, we argue, present a planetary and multiscalar political economy in practice, which connects grounded experience with resistance to the dynamics of capitalism at the state, corporate, and transnational levels. With lessons from these communities in mind, we call for a ‘planetary political economy of the global majority’, which prioritises the reproduction of socio-ecological life according to the visions of grounded anti-systemic projects.

The Neotropics have vast river catchments with untapped hydroelectric potential, but there are multiple expected negative impacts of dams, including those on local food security and livelihoods. Yet, monitoring of dam effects on subsistence is rare, particularly during initial implementation. Our study assessed changes in human fish consumption near the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon during the period 2012–2021, which covers construction, operation and a severe El Niño-induced drought. Over time, fish became less common and were consumed in smaller amounts, even though fewer people shared meals. The largest changes occurred between 2013 and 2016 (post-construction but prior to full operation), resulting in a downward trend in fish consumption, particularly during the drought season. Adding more fish species to the diet did not increase consumption per person. These changes in fish consumption suggest that they stem from environmental impacts of the project (e.g., reduced river level), despite secondary effects from climatic events. These findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive assessments of the social and ecological impacts of large infrastructure projects in the Amazon, along with sustainable and equitable management strategies to ensure food security and meet the needs of local communities.

Our dominant food system is a primary driver of worsening human and planetary health. Held in March 2022, the Public Health Association of Australia’s Food Futures Conference was an opportunity for people working across the food system to connect and advocate for a comprehensive, intersectoral, whole-of-society food and nutrition policy in Australia to attenuate these issues. Conference themes included food systems for local and global good; ecological nutrition; social mobilisation for planetary and public good; food sovereignty and food equity. Students and young professionals are integral in transforming food systems, yet they are under-represented in the academic workforce, across publishing, scientific societies and conference plenaries. A satellite event was held to platform initiatives from early career researchers (ECR) in areas integral for improving planetary and public good. The research topics discussed in this commentary reflect sub-themes of the conference under investigation by ECR: food systems governance and regulation; local food policies; commercial determinants of health; sustainable healthy diets; and food equity and sovereignty.

Agrobiodiversity conservation is vital for food security, maintaining ecological balance, and preserving socio-cultural norms. There is substantial evidence to support that agrobiodiversity hotspots coincide with localized, small-scale peasant food systems. Preserving such food systems is necessary for protecting agrobiodiversity. The current legal framework over agrobiodiversity is fragmented and inadequate. A major portion of this framework is situated within intellectual property law and farmers’ rights law, neither of which are designed to foster sustainable management of agrobiodiversity. In this context, the 2018 Peasants’ Rights Declaration has the potential to fill the gaps in the existing framework. The paper critically analyses the Declaration by exploring some of its legal innovations in improving agrobiodiversity conservation. While some of these innovations are commendable, they are unlikely to be adopted by states owing to their radical nature. Their adoption would require a massive overhaul of the existing agricultural model and power structures embedded within it.

Regionalization of food systems is a potential strategy to support environmental, economic and social sustainability. However, local preconditions need to be considered to assess the feasibility of such a transformation process. To better understand the potentials and perspectives of food self-sufficiency in urban and peri-urban areas, we determined the food self-sufficiency level (SSL) of a German metropolitan region, i.e., the percentage of the food demand that could be potentially provided on existing agricultural land. Main input parameters were actual food demand, agricultural productivity and its temporal variability and land availability. Furthermore, we considered changes in diet, food losses and land management. Based on current diets and agricultural productivity, the administrative region of Leipzig achieved a mean SSL of 94%, ranging from 77 to 116%. Additionally, an area of 26,932 ha, representing 12% of the regionally available agricultural land, was needed for commodities that are not cultivated regionally. Changes in food demand due to a diet shift to a more plant-based diet and reduced food losses would increase the SSL by 29 and 17%, respectively. A shift to organic agriculture would decrease the SSL by 34% due to lower crop yields compared with conventional production. However, a combination of organic agriculture with less food loss and a more plant-based diet would lead to a mean SSL of 95% (75–115%). Our results indicate the feasibility of food system regionalization in the study area under current and potential near future conditions. Addressing a combination of multiple dimensions, for example plant-based and healthier diets combined with reduced food loss and organic farming, is the most favorable approach to increase food self-sufficiency in urban and peri-urban areas and simultaneously provide synergies with social and environmental objectives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted food security and food access in urban communities of colour. Loss of income, often associated with food insecurity, has affected Hispanic, Black, low-wage workers, single mothers and women of colour more than other groups of individuals. Mutual aid organisations have proliferated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet a description of the contributions of these organisations in addressing food insecurity has yet to be described in the literature to date. This article aims to describe the unique role and contributions of mutual aid organisations in addressing food insecurity and food access disparities in Chicago’s communities of colour during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local mutual aid organisations can function as hubs to feed urban communities while reducing food waste and building community. During the pandemic, mutual aid organisations in Chicago have distributed thousands of pounds of food to families and individuals. Mutual aid organisations provide short-term food security while engaging with community members to create a more equitable and sustainable food system. The development of robust mutual aid hubs facilitated unique opportunities for collaboration and expansion of infrastructure that may allow mutual aid organisations to address food access in their communities well into the future.

Will we, by 2050, be able to feed a rapidly growing population with healthy and sustainably grown food in a world threatened by systemic environmental crises? There are too many uncertainties for us to predict the long-term evolution of the global agri-food system, but we can explore a wide range of futures to inform policymaking and public debate on the future of food. This is typically done by creating scenarios (story lines that vividly describe what different futures could look like) and quantifying them with computer simulation models to get numerical estimates of how different aspects of the global agri-food system might evolve under different hypotheses. Among the many scenarios produced over the last twenty years, one would expect to see the future advocated by the food sovereignty movement, which claims to represent roughly two hundred million self-described “peasants” (small farmers) worldwide. This movement defends a vision of the future based on relocalized, sustainable, and just agri-food systems, self-governed through direct and participatory democratic processes. Yet, food sovereignty is conspicuously absent from quantified scenarios of global food futures. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay identifies seven obstacles that undermine the creation of food sovereignty scenarios by examining two attempts at crafting such scenarios.

Hunger and food insecurity are viewed as global problems, requiring global responses. Even though there is no distinct field of ‘international food law’, many areas of international law in some way deal with issues related to global hunger and food insecurity. Hunger and food insecurity are immensely complex problems that cannot possibly be understood and addressed through an inherently limited disciplinary perspective. This article argues that food regime theory – an analytical tool developed and used mostly in the field of sociology – can provide a useful means through which to better lay bare the role of international law in constituting global food relations. If international lawyers are serious about contributing to reducing global hunger and realizing food security, it is imperative to situate international law and its specialized fields within the broader political economy of food.

Agroforestry systems have long been implemented in Bolivia, but little is known about their overall current status. Interviews with farmers, policymakers and members of civil society organizations about the challenges and opportunities that agroforestry faces, as well as field visits to agroforestry projects revealed a wide range of agroforestry initiatives in Bolivia that provide ecosystem services, food and income to local families. All interviewees attributed a high potential to agroforestry, for example, to promote biodiversity, water conservation, food sovereignty and adaptation to climate change impacts. However, agroforestry initiatives lacked support because government incentives were channelled to cattle rearing and large-scale monocultures rather than diversified farming systems, and agroforestry initiatives tended to be small and isolated. A nationwide policy is needed which is coordinated with civil society organizations and individual farmers and strategically and efficiently supports agroforestry initiatives – especially in the most vulnerable first years of establishment – through extension services and access to materials, markets, knowledge and financial resources.

As health threats appear with increasing regularity in our food systems and other food crises loom worldwide, we look to rural areas to provide local and nutritious foods. Educationally, we seek approaches to food studies that engage students and their communities and, ultimately, lead to positive action. Yet food studies receive only generic coverage and tangential attention within existing curricula. This article, reporting a pilot study located at Canada's geographic and cultural edge, focuses on local knowledge about past and present food practices. Objectives are to test pedagogies that bring all students greater opportunities for engagement and learning about their physical environment and food history, and that can be applied to rural and, with modifications, urban settings. Three critical, place-base pedagogical approaches — experiential, discovery and arts-based — to classroom teaching and learning are discussed, as well as implications for educational leadership, teacher training and curriculum development.

This article draws on La Via Campesina's definition of food sovereignty and its potential for reconceptualising food as a basic human right within the dominant Australian food discourse. We argue that the educative value that emerges from urban food production in Australia stems from the action of growing food and its capacity to transform individuals’ social and environmental concerns over food systems. Community participation in urban food production can promote a learning process that generates political understanding and concerns over food systems. We use the education theories of transformative learning and critical consciousness to discuss how Australian urban food production systems can create this social and environmental support for alternative food systems. By having control over food production practices and building collective understandings of how food choices impact global food systems, elements of food sovereignty can develop in an Australian urban context.