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This paper utilises the ‘sustainable innovation journeys’ concept to trace how people organise and design urban food initiatives and influence city-region food policy. We evaluate whether designs succeed or fail and monitor the exchange of ideas that takes place between stakeholders. Tracing these interactions reveals the transformative potential of innovative projects, particularly if the food system changes they bring to the fore are aligned with policy interests. Three case studies provide on-the-ground insights to assess how small and medium-sized enterprises at the micro-level induce sustainability shifts. The case studies are businesses in the city-regions of Rotterdam, The Netherlands (urban farm and circular food economy); Vigo, Spain (food, forest and multi-functional land use); and Zurich, Switzerland (organic food and short supply chains). Each initiative was studied in-depth over a two-year period, with follow-up analysis for a further four years to monitor change over time (2013–2018). The cases promote the adoption of micro-level innovation practices: locally designed transition pathways that bring the benefits of change to the city-region (i.e. from the micro-level initiative to meso-level policy). The analysis highlights the importance of ‘soft change’. This can be something as simple as visiting an inspiring urban food initiative and meeting with stakeholders to generate mutual understanding, from where interests align to influence food chain practices and policy. Soft changes act as ‘seeds of transition’ for a shift towards more sustainable urban food systems, but we observe too potentially negative impacts due to lack of alignment at the micro- (initiative) or meso- (city-region) levels.

Brands hold a promising contribution to align the food system with sustainable farm development. The food system consists of a myriad of, generally small-scale, producers and consumers and retail chains provide the link between the two. As such, their brands determine to a large extend what is understood by sustainability. This article focuses on brands' sustainability definitions and their requirements from a producer's perspective. Theoretical exploration of interlinkages between the heterogeneity in farming practices, transition processes in the food system, and brands' general isomorphic character provide a lens for an empirical analysis of their contribution to change farm production towards more sustainability practices. Case studies from three European regions illuminate how institutional settings determine whether family farms and rural livelihoods benefit from the brands' sustainability claims or are restricted and endangered by the new rules and regulations imposed upon them. This way, the paper provides theoretical understanding how brand development provides the institutional conditions for farmers to reconcile economic goals with sustainability claims, but obstructs a more profound transition to agroecological practices. This asks for political intervention to create the conditions and means for capacity building at community level that will allow for a more far-reaching transition to sustainability.

The modernisation of agriculture has been, and continues to be, the cause of an increasing disconnection between farming, nature, and society. This has given rise to a series of social, economic, and ecological crises in the food chain. Some farmers are responding to this by adjusting their land-use and farming practices so as to make their farms more sustainable. But such changes need to be aligned with the specificities of the local bio-physical environment and the logic of the political economic environment. This article highlights how cooperative approaches allow public and private regulatory systems to support ecological transitions. Through a theoretical lens on place-based and restorative farming practices it analyses and interprets three complementary cooperative approaches as possible starting points for the transition towards a more sustainable agri-food system. The case studies show how farmers cooperatives can be either linked to the environment and to public policies (and thus extrinsic product quality), or to the market (and intrinsic product quality), or a combination of both. These links provide competitive advantages to farmers, and enable them to increase income from farming. We then discuss the effectiveness of these forms of self-governance, and how cooperative approaches, if well organised and implemented and appropriately embedded, can empower farmers to further change and adapt their farming practices so as to restore and improve their endogenous resource base. The analysis shows that while they are place-specific they are far from locally/regionally-bounded and that their success (or failure) critically depends on their alignment with national, supra-national and global actants.

The development of food production in cities has raised some important questions about the governance of these activities and the role of city-regions. In this paper through four European case studies– Bristol (UK), Ghent (Belgium), Vigo (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland) –we consider the ways in which food is governed at the city level. Our case studies demonstrate the role played by citizens in urban food and the challenges this brings to city-region governance. Through horizontal networking, being inspirational to other cities and citizens, communicating their demands and successes very clearly, urban food activists have raised significant questions about how cities are governed. Using the creation of localized identities, which are inclusive and embracing but rooted in their city, these food activists are looking to a future controlled by a democratic impulse rather than the technocracy of professional city managers. This paper uses a range of Weberian influenced theory to explore the topic of urban agriculture not as one simply about environmental performance but of the construction of new civic identities.

This paper introduces the concept of commoning in circular economies, and explores how commons reproduce over time. The starting point is that commoning can have an important role in fostering circular economies and sustainable and socially-inclusive development. By commoning, we refer to local stakeholders working collectively to preserve or restore their natural resource base to generate benefits that are locally shared. Through the analysis of a specific case of a group of commoners’ associations in Galicia (Spain), the paper describes and discusses the development, and ultimate unravelling, of an innovative and decentralized waste management project to convert waste biomass from the monte (often-neglected upland green spaces, largely consisting of brush and trees) into compost. In order to make this composting project economically viable the possibility of collecting and processing urban green waste was also explored. While the project’s application of the principles of a circular economy had the potential to bring locally-shared economic and ecological benefits, and foster territorial prosperity and resilience, it was ultimately frustrated by questions of scale, administrative and regulatory barriers, competing and conflicting land-use claims and financial cutbacks in the public sector.

The path to sustainable development involves creating coherence and synergies in the complex relationships between economic and ecological systems. In sustaining their farm businesses farmers' differing values influence their decisions about agroecosystem management, leading them to adopt diverging farming practices. This study explores the values of dairy and beef cattle farmers, the assumptions that underpin them, and the various ways that these lead farmers to combine food production with the provision of other ecosystem services, such as landscape conservation and biodiversity preservation. This paper draws on empirical research from Galicia (Spain), a marginal and mountainous European region whose livestock production system has undergone modernization in recent decades, exposing strategic economic, social and ecological vulnerabilities. It applies a Q-methodology to develop a values-based approach to farming. Based on a sample of 24 livestock farmers, whose practices promote landscape conservation and/or biodiversity preservation, the Q-methodology allowed us to identify four 'farming styles'. Further analysis of the practices of the farmers in these groups, based on additional farm data and interview material, suggests that all 24 farmers valorize landscape and nature and consider cattle production and nature conservation to be compatible within their own farm practices. However, the groups differed in the extent to which they have developed synergies between livestock farming and landscape conservation. We conclude by discussing how rural development policy in Galicia could strengthen such practices by providing incentives to farmers and institutionally embedding a shift towards more diversified farming and product development.

The local turn to food is often claimed to be a way to increase the value-added component retained by primary producers and to provide healthy, fresh and affordable food to consumers. Rio do Grande do Sul in Brazil has several governmental support programs that aim to empower family farmers and open up new market opportunities for them. This article examines these programs, investigates how small-scale farmers engage with them and the resultant changes in farming and marketing practices that ensue. The article uses cluster and content analysis to identify and interpret the extent, and the different ways, in which these farmers engage with and make use of the local knowledge and innovation system. The results provide useful insights into how policy instruments improve the performance of family agribusinesses, helping them to make better use of the resources available to them, encouraging farm diversification, and strengthening local interrelations between producers and consumers.