People are increasingly alienated from their food, not to mention from the complex system that determines what ends up on our plates. And government policy generally fails to address the problems with our current food system, let alone facilitate the emergence of agroecological solutions. So, what happens when people are put in charge of creating food policy? The case of the Swiss Citizens’ Assembly offers an inspiring model for creating active ‘food citizens’, but it also shows the limits to systemic transformation when a collective rejection of the capitalist food system is not on the table.
In 2022, a consortium of civil society organisations in Switzerland launched the Swiss Citizens’ Assembly for Food Policy (SCAFP) with the aim of fostering a nation-wide discussion about the country’s food system. The Swiss federal government, which had identified the transformation of food systems as a top priority in meeting the country’s sustainable development commitments, provided both public and financial support for this process. We have analysed this process and the outcomes through the lens of agroecology.
Deep dive into the food system
To convene a citizens’ assembly, people are randomly selected to demographically represent the population of a region (for instance a city or country) based on various factors (such as age and gender). Participants are then brought together to learn, discuss, and co-create policy recommendations on a particular theme. The citizens’ assemblies popping up around the world offer a promising avenue both for addressing complex issues and for the democratisation of political systems. They have been convened for a host of political, social and ecological issues, including the formulation of policy on climate change in France and Germany.
Over the course of a six-month period between June and November 2022, some 80 randomly selected Swiss residents from across the country collaboratively addressed the SCAFP’s guiding question: What kind of Swiss food policy is needed to provide all citizens with healthy, sustainable, animal-friendly, and ethically produced food by 2030?
Participants were divided into thematic groups and visited a wide array of initiatives
Participants were divided into five thematic groups: environment, agricultural production, economic affairs, social affairs, and health. They were then briefed by experts before taking part in facilitated discussions around their designated theme.
They also visited a wide array of innovative agrifood initiatives around Switzerland, many of them based on agroecological principles and practices. Their excursions included an urban garden and community-based supermarket cooperative in Geneva, a polyculture farm in Appenzell, an agroforest in Fribourg, a mountain-based Community Supported Agriculture operation nestled in the Alps of Graubünden, and a restaurant in the city of Bern that exclusively sources Swiss ingredients.
In November 2022, the assembly co-formulated and democratically approved an impressive 126 food policy recommendations for Switzerland (see box). Participants were able to co-create these solutions and bring their voices into political debates. They claimed to have learned a great deal about the complexity of the food system and their own agency in it: “In the last six months I have felt for the first time that I have a place in this society, that I can play a positive role, and that my views and experiences also have a place,” reflected one participant. This process showed that citizens’ assemblies offer a promising avenue for people to engage personally with food system issues.
Shifts rather than seismic change
The outcomes of the assembly revealed that its participants overwhelmingly desire a more sustainable, just and healthy food system and that they recognise the shortcomings of the current model. Several of the interviewed participants condemned the orientation towards profit maximisation in agricultural policy, with one describing the current system as “a profit machine.” Another participant reflected, “You suddenly realise [the normal way of doing things] is not nature at all. To me, it is not agriculture. It is agribusiness.”
Many policy recommendations focused on shifting consumer behaviour rather than systemic change
Nonetheless, many policy recommendations focused on shifting consumer behaviour rather than proposing more systemic change. We wondered what contributed to the emergence of these rather superficial results. The reflections of one participant provide some insight: most of us “are not equipped to think about these things.” So, could the guidance of an alternative political framework – based, for example, on the principles of agroecology – have led to more radical proposals? This provides food for thought: how can citizen’s assemblies play a role in holistic and transformative food system change?
Lacking proposals for systemic transformation
Although many of the outcomes from the assembly align with agroecological principles, they fall short of what is needed for the radical restructuring of the food system. For example, the recommendations seek to increase consumer confidence in food products through greater transparency. This objective corresponds with the agroecological principle of connectivity, which seeks to increase trust in the food system.
But while the SCAFP recommendations focus on improving information on food products and introducing voluntary certification programs, in agroecology the alienation that pervades the current food system is countered by fostering personal relationships between producers and consumers.
Furthermore, the SCAFP recommendations stress the need for education and awareness raising about the food system – certainly essential for catalysing agroecological transition. However, most of the proposed approaches to knowledge sharing are top-down and one-directional rather than horizontal and co-creative. Although these measures could certainly contribute to greater consumer consciousness and confidence, it is striking that these and many of the other approaches proposed in the SCAFP recommendations are insufficient when it comes to creating a radically different food system.
Engagement, education and practice
Recent research affirms that citizens’ assemblies on food policy can enhance food democracy and promote the emergence of ‘food citizens’ – active decision makers with political agency. This is because citizens’ assemblies require real engagement; they provide participants with the opportunity to practice food democracy. Education provided by experts as well as deliberations with other participants offer the possibility to enrich people’s understanding of the food system.
This kind of educational process is particularly important in urban communities, where most people are far removed from agricultural production. This dynamic is increasing, as the industrialisation and corporatisation of the food system undermine the economic and ecological viability of small-scale, community-based food webs.
In Switzerland, for instance, the proportion of people employed in the agricultural sector has decreased thirteenfold since 1900, dropping from 31% to only 2.3% in 2022. Raising more awareness about these trends in the food system can contribute to a critique of the profit-driven, socio-ecologically disastrous status quo and result in the conviction that its transformation is necessary and urgent. This analysis was not sufficiently explored and discussed in the SCAFP.
Constrained by capitalism
Ultimately, we believe that several factors limited the potential of the SCAFP to be truly transformative. Most importantly, the predominance of a capitalist-realist worldview – the acceptance of capitalism as the only viable political-economic system as the starting point of the Citizens’ Assembly – restricted the ability of the participants to envision wider change.
For example, although they preferred alternative food initiatives emphasising sustainability and fairness – like the innovative food projects they visited during the excursions – they remained doubtful about their overall feasibility. They asked questions such as: Were these alternatives only successful due to their specific context? Were they scalable? Could they ever become mainstream? Could they really be profitable in the long run?
This capitalist realism was also apparent in participants’ paradoxical views concerning the role of corporations in the food system. Whilst they criticised the immense power wielded by corporate actors and acknowledged their responsibility in exacerbating many food system problems and blocking change, they did not envision a food system without them.
Accordingly, they identified consumers as the primary agents and consumption as the primary act of food system transformation, and focused their recommendations on actions encouraging individual behaviour change. This focus mirrors the capitalist conceptualisation of people as rational consumers, focused only on their self-interest, and impedes organised collective action.
Depoliticised dynamics
Food system challenges were divorced from their political-economic causes and contexts
A second, related barrier to the assembly’s transformative potential was the apolitical approach to many of the topics. Food system challenges were divorced from their political-economic causes and contexts, the power dynamics that shape them, and the divergent or even antagonistic interests of different actors. The SCAFP often sought to find an optimal, rational solution requiring compromise on all sides, rather than acknowledging that food system transformation will require addressing root causes (such as profit maximisation) and defending some interests (such as smallholder farmers) over others (like Syngenta shareholders).
These dynamics were evident in the context of food waste in the SCAFP recommendations. Food waste is driven largely by profit maximisation, and its existence benefits some actors while hurting others. For example, manufacturers can sell more food products if they set conservative expiration dates. Although the reform of this wasteful mechanism was addressed in the SCAFP recommendations, there was no talk of tackling the drivers of food waste – for instance through the decommodification of food. In retrospect, a more radical outcome would have required a political discussion about the winners and losers in the industrialised food system.
Agroecology at the core
Overall, the results of the SCAFP are encouraging and provide food for thought. Citizens’ assemblies can create fertile ground for the collaborative exploration of the food system and the emergence of engaged food citizens that are passionate about shaping its transformation. However, to generate the radical policy proposals that encourage agroecological transformations, capitalist realism must be overcome and conversations about the food system must be (re)politicised.
Citizens’ assemblies can create fertile ground for the emergence of engaged food citizens
To this end, the findings from the Swiss experience can certainly inform future citizens’ assemblies for food policy. First, from the start organisers should integrate agroecological principles into the design and implementation of their citizens’ assemblies. This will nurture a holistic understanding and approach to transforming the food system without shying away from the fundamentally political nature of this exercise.
Furthermore, organisers could draw on the work of Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire and the field of critical pedagogy to foster a participatory, dialogue-based learning and reflecting environment that promotes critical thinking about the destructive and oppressive nature of the dominant food system. With this approach, participants would be empowered to collaboratively develop informed, inclusive solutions that radically align with principles of social and agroecological sustainability, justice and health.
Authors: Inea Lehner is a political organiser and agroecologist who did her master’s research at ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, on the potential role of citizens’ assemblies in radical food system transformation. She now works at Climate Vanguard. Johanna Jacobi leads the Agroecological Transitions research group at ETH Zürich. As members of SCAFP’s scientific support team, they observed the process, interviewed participants, and analysed the transformative potential of the recommendations through the lens of agroecological principles. Contact: inealehner@gmail.com
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This article is part of Issue 1-2024: Policies for Agroecology
