What Grows During a Crisis? Cultivating the Food Commons in Oxfordshire

1. Introduction

In a world increasingly disrupted by the effects of climate change, there is growing consensus among scholars that a “fundamental transformation of food systems” is necessary (Webb et al., 2020). While food systems are under severe pressure from climate stressors, the industrial production of food itself is an important driver pushing the environment beyond its planetary boundaries (Clapp and Moseley, 2020). By revealing the vulnerability of the global food system, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the need for this transition more urgent (HLPE, 2020). As the global food regime faltered during the pandemic, however, communities across the world began to reclaim their control over food production, resulting in a flourishing of food commons (Healy et al., 2020; Leitheiser & Horlings, 2021).

This revitalization is part of a global “renaissance of the commons” (Clippinger & Bollier, 2005). In response to the advance of privatization and individualism, researchers and activists have attempted to envision different forms of exchange, production, and living together (Nightingale, 2019). As part of these efforts, the commons have re-emerged as a viable alternative to state and market structures (Dawney et al., 2016). While early scholarship on the commons was embedded in the institutional approach of Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2010), a burgeoning body of work from political ecology, critical geography, feminist theory, community economies, and anthropology conceptualizes the commons as other-than-capitalist practices, relationships, subjectivities, and imaginaries (Federici, 2012; García-López et al., 2021; Gibson-Graham et al., 2013; Hardt & Negri, 2009; Singh, 2017).

This paper draws on this cross-disciplinary literature to explore the diversity and generativity of “actually existing” food commons (Eizenberg, 2012). Grounded in the case study of Oxfordshire, a county in the United Kingdom possessing a thriving alternative food network, the article analyzes the practices, values, and aspirations guiding food commoning initiatives – defined as the activities conducted by communities who co-produce, manage, and benefit from shared food resources according to negotiated rules (Bollier, 2014; Vivero-Pol, 2018). This study offers a unique perspective on the dynamics at play within and between different groups experimenting with the ideas of food commoning in response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Engaging with recent debates and developments in the commons literature, it explores how the political, prefigurative, and coordinating power of food commoning can contribute to generate just, ecological, and resilient commons-based food systems (Pettenati et al., 2018) and food futures at the local level, in the Global North.

Adopting and expanding the food-as-commons typology proposed by Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld (2021), this paper classifies the food commoning initiatives operating in Oxfordshire into four different discourses: “Joint responsibility for food production,” “Reducing food waste,” “Safeguarding and disseminating food culture and knowledge,” and “Solidarity-based redistribution.” Not only does this study utilize the classification to identify characteristics that distinguish different types of initiatives, but it also employs it to evaluate the overall potential of food commons in commoning the entire local food system, analyzing the linkages and complementarities between discourses and initiatives. By bringing heterogeneous food initiatives together, the concept of food commoning could constitute a plurivocal framework for socio-ecological food justice and transformation.

The paper proceeds as follows. The following section establishes the theoretical framework, examining the diverse literature on commons-as-practice, as well as the paradigm of food-as-commons. The next section presents the case study of Oxfordshire and delineates the research methods of this work. Findings are then presented and discussed. The paper concludes by engaging with openings and challenges faced by food commoning projects in building alternative food futures and providing pathways for their expansion.

2. Theoretical Framework

3. Methods

Oxfordshire is a county situated in southern UK. While annual incomes in Oxfordshire are higher than the national average, this masks stark inequalities: 8 to 10 percent of households in the county – or 55,000 to 69,000 people – are estimated to be food insecure, while 5 of its 86 areas are among the country’s 20 percent most income deprived (Good Food Oxford, 2021). This precarity is reflective of the larger UK foodscape, which is a space rooted in colonial legacies marked by stark inequalities resulting from state withdrawal and financial austerity since the Thatcher administration (Ferrando et al., 2021; Power, 2022). These themes are manifest in Oxfordshire, which saw a surge in grassroots activity during COVID-19 to support those experiencing food insecurity (Good Food Oxford, 2021). Across the country, food insecure households were most likely to be Black and minority ethnic (Food Foundation, 2021), but the majority of commoners interviewed in this study were white and middle class. The racial distribution of food insecurity reflects the UK’s colonial past and the impact of structural racism on food access (Ferrando et al., 2021); at the same time, the demographics of the commoners indicate the white privilege (Slocum, 2007) and “race and class-based disparities” (Cohen et al., 2012, p. 81) prevalent in the wider UK food movement – which is further discussed in following sections.

This paper is grounded in the case study of ten food commoning initiatives in Oxfordshire. A case study approach was chosen as it allows the analysis of complex and context-dependent phenomena (Flyvbjerg, 2006). This paper draws on data from fieldwork conducted between June and August 2021, comprising of participant observation, in-depth interviews, and informal conversations with members of ten food commoning projects (Table 1). During that period, 16 in-depth interviews were conducted. Participants included one man and 15 women – a split which reflects the gendered inflexions of care work and the central role played by women in sustaining the commons (Federici, 2012). Interviewees were asked about the functioning and aims of their food commoning initiative, their success in responding to COVID-19, and their vision for the future of food systems. Interviews were semi-structured, allowing for detailed insights into participants’ involvement with commoning projects (Turner, 2010). I also conducted participant observations by volunteering with various commoning groups: Oxford Mutual Aid, Botley Community Fridge, Oxford City Farm, and Kitchen Garden People. This allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of how social spaces, in this case food commons, are constituted, giving me an insight into the lived experiences and affective worlds of commoners (Watson & Till, 2010). Finally, content analysis of policy documents and research reports was conducted (Schreier, 2014), serving to triangulate the collected data and situate findings within a larger reference frame.

Employing the data gathered during the fieldwork process, this paper builds on and expands the typology established by Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld (2021), which proposes four different food-as-commons discourses: “Open source inputs in agriculture,” “Joint responsibility for food products,” “Reducing food waste,” and “Safeguarding food culture and knowledge.” Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld categorize initiatives underpinning each of these discourses according to the following characteristics: type of resource; whether the initiative is centered around the allocation of a resource unit or provision of the resource system; property rights regime (open access (OA), private property (PP), state property (SP), and common property (CP)); perceptions of food (food as: (a) a basic human need, (b) a human right, (c) a cultural determinant, (d) a marketable product contingent on fair trade and sustainable production, and (e) a global common good) (Vivero-Pol, 2013); food system level at which they operate (production, processing, packaging, distribution, retail, and consumption) (Marshall, 2015); main level of social change aimed (norms and culture, formal institutions, governance structures, and resource allocation) (Williamson, 2000); and ideas driving the initiatives (Schmidt, 2008).

While Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld employ this typology to evaluate the success of individual discourses and initiatives in influencing policy, this paper adopts it to assess the overall potential of food commons in commoning the whole food system, by examining the interconnections and complementarity between and within discourses and initiatives.

Focusing explicitly on the activity of commoning, this paper adapts Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld’s framework by removing the categories of “resource type” and “allocation/provision,” replacing them with “type of food commoning initiative” and “commoning practice.” This emphasis on praxis expands the scope of what can be held in common, leading me to broaden the “Safeguarding food culture and knowledge” discourse. Defined by Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld as mainly referring to recipes and traditions tied to preparing food, I enlarge it to include all practices and initiatives focused on educating communities about food culture and knowledge – renaming it “Safeguarding and disseminating food culture and knowledge.” As there were no initiatives focused solely on agricultural inputs in Oxfordshire, I do not include the “Open source inputs in agriculture” discourse in the classification I propose.

Departing from Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld’s policy-centric approach and allowing for greater consideration of the commons’ political power in creating radical alternatives (García-López et al., 2021), this study proposes a supplemental food-as-commons discourse: “Solidarity-based redistribution,” which encompasses initiatives that function as emancipatory spaces seeking to generate forms of togetherness premised on solidarity, like mutual aid networks (Ruiz Cayuela, 2021).

4. Results

5. Discussion

In reaction to the conditions of crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, resourceful practices and initiatives tied to food sharing have (re)emerged in Oxfordshire, generating new and creative ways of existing, creating, and being-in-common outside of the circuits of capital (Dawney et al., 2016). Adapting the typology proposed by Carceller-Sauras and Theesfeld (2021), this article classifies these initiatives into four distinct food-as-commons discourses. While these discourses reveal that commoning initiatives are driven by a plurality of distinct ideas and operate at different levels of the food system under various property rights regimes, they also converge around congruent practices. Focusing on the praxis of food commoning opens up and multiplies understandings of what can be kept in common, transcending the dichotomies of urban and rural, public and private, social and natural, and material and immaterial (Bresnihan, 2016). As the Results section of this paper shows, this emphasis enlarges the scope of commoning beyond the production of common pool resources to entanglements between humans and nonhumans based on reciprocity, care, and socio-ecological solidarity (Fisher & Nading, 2021; Singh, 2017). Commoning thus entails a continuous process of mutual transformation and co-becoming (García-López et al., 2021), while simultaneously fostering new imaginaries regarding the economy, the commons, and the food system.

The diversity of food-as-commons discourses that exist in Oxfordshire does not signal a lack of identity, but rather reflects the heterogeneity of commoning efforts, opening up productive opportunities to create the “pluriverse” – the Zapatista vision of “a world where many worlds fit” (Escobar, 2015). While the ontological struggle to defend multiple worlds against the neoliberal project of a singular, globalized world is rooted in the activism of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant communities in Latin America, ongoing efforts to defend and rebuild the commons in the Global North can be interpreted as analogous terrains of resistance (Escobar, 2020). As the case study of Oxfordshire reveals on a micro-scale, a “pluriverse” of ideas, practices, and discourses exists regarding food systems change in the Global North. The political and creative power of the commons can thus serve as a convergence paradigm between diverse movements, including degrowth, food sovereignty, and agroecology (Ferrando et al., 2021; García-López et al., 2021, Rossi et al., 2021). The case of Oxfordshire exemplifies this unifying power, with participants repeatedly noting that the pandemic brought sustainability and social justice groups together for the first time:

The food crisis triggered by COVID-19 consequently generated productive coalition networks that have successfully connected disparate food groups and movements. By bringing into conversation diverse voices of people seeking to tackle different issues within the food system, the concept of food commons holds the potential to generate a plurivocal and integrated framework for socio-ecological food justice (Coulson & Milbourne, 2021).

Despite the transformative potential of the commons, there is a risk that these initiatives could be co-opted, with a recurring point of tension centered around the concept of “welfare from below” (De Angelis, 2007). Commoners in Oxfordshire recurrently evoked the fear that their efforts could absolve the government of its responsibilities, echoing Pettenati et al.’s (2018) claim that overly relying on bottom-up processes for commoning food may serve as a justification for public actors to sidestep their responsibilities in the domain of food security and environmental sustainability. The affirmation of commoning practices should thus be tempered by the critical recognition that commons may be co-opted by neoliberal state policies eager to delegate responsibility to communities (De Angelis, 2013) or corporate powers seeking to appropriate their innovative potential (Rossi et al., 2021). One potential avenue to counter this takeover is to shift away from individualized food commons prone to appropriation, and work towards building assemblages of commoning initiatives that can converge into systemic alternatives, as communities in Oxfordshire have started to do.

In line with this, a growing number of scholars are proposing to “use the de-commodifying power of the commons to redefine (i.e. subvert) the entirety of the food system” (Pettenati et al., 2018, p. 43), based on the recognition that food cannot truly constitute a commons when the rest of the network rests on the commodification of nature as well as non-ecological, socially unjust practices (Ferrando et al., 2021; Rossi et al., 2021). Commoning the food system entails adopting a holistic and systemic approach to its transformation, involving all of its actors, sites, phases, and aspects (Pettenati et al., 2018). Transitioning towards a commons-based food regime also necessitates breaking the private and public sector duopoly over food production and distribution to create a tricentric governance system, under which the third pillar would be the self-organized food commoning initiatives that are (re)emerging across the world (Ostrom, 2010; Vivero-Pol, 2017b). This is exemplified by the case study of Oxfordshire, where a sudden socio-economic disturbance gave rise to an organized network of commoning initiatives with distributed agency and a shared objective. Beyond transcending the public-private dualism, developing a commons-based food system will also require all participants to engage in a democratic and reflexive process of co-creation, including carefully defining and allocating responsibilities, establishing spaces for deliberation and decision-making, and altering expectations around each node of the food system (Pettenati et al., 2018).

The local level constitutes a key site where this transformation could take place, giving rise to novel forms of governance by enabling civil society, local authorities, and economic entities to co-determine food policy (Rossi et al., 2021). Scholars have pointed out that the relationship between commoning initiatives and public institutions has the potential for mutual benefit (Pettenati et al., 2018; Vivero-Pol, 2017b): food commoning initiatives could be supported, resourced, and enabled by a renewed, participatory, and democratic state. This is currently the case in Oxfordshire, where commoning initiatives retain their autonomy but maintain a symbiotic relationship with local governance bodies, attesting to the commons’ fluidity. This partnership between the commons and local government could take multiple forms, including food policy councils, integrated local and regional food strategies, or more radical forms of food alliances (Rossi et al., 2021; SAPEA, 2020). Local authorities could also assume a coordinating role to facilitate decision-making and cooperation between commoning initiatives. Furthermore, they could leverage their financial and legal resources to facilitate land access and encourage the development of alternative ownership structures like cooperatives and community-supported agriculture, as participants of this study have called for. The Community Food Networks established in Oxfordshire during the pandemic, which enabled food groups and local authorities to convene and collaborate regularly, also point to the importance of creating informal spaces for dialogue and co-organizing, as they allow these various actors to experiment with innovative governance arrangements and practices (Rossi et al., 2021). Combined, these advances could be conducive to the coordinated establishment of place-based, resilient, and just foodscapes, paving the way for a larger, commons-based transformation of the food system.

Through everyday practices, commoners in Oxfordshire are thus conceiving, testing, and actualizing this alternative food system on a small scale, attesting to the prefigurative power of the commons (Brigstocke, 2016). This allows commoning initiatives to form de-commodified spaces within the current neoliberal landscape, as well as “counter-hegemonic projects” that disrupt and challenge dominant power structures (McCarthy, 2005). In spite of this, numerous participants of this study reported that commoning constitutes a continuous struggle between “‘feeling’ capitalism and its power relations, and developing autonomous self-sustaining initiatives” (García-López, 2020, p. 170). Because they emerge under conditions of hegemonic capitalist ideology and praxis, the “actually existing commons” like those featured in this study are often partial and imperfect (Eizenberg, 2012). Yet, in ‘feeling’ capitalism while re-thinking food practices based on principles of mutualism, affect, and solidarity with more-than-human communities, commoners in Oxfordshire are experimenting with a different way of sentipensar – a term employed by Latin American activists to express ways of knowing that do not uncouple thinking from feeling (Escobar, 2020). Through thinking-feeling novel practices, relations, and imaginaries, they show that “alternatives do exist” (De Angelis, 2003, p. 2), laying the groundwork for a reweaving of communal life based on radical relationality (Escobar, 2020).

However, commoning as a social process is not exempt from contestations, disputes, and contradictions. While food commons are driven by an ethic of cooperation and solidarity, producing a commons always implies a degree of enclosure, meaning they are only as inclusive as the groups managing them (Nightingale, 2019). With the exception of Oxford Mutual Aid, which was formed by LGBT and trade union organizers and whose members come from a diversity of socio-economic backgrounds, a majority of participants in this study were white and middle-class, reflecting the chronic whiteness of alternative food movements (Slocum, 2007). The ability of Oxfordshire’s commoners to imagine and experiment with alternative food practices thus partly stems from their access to privilege, resources, wealth, and education, as well as past and present geographic proximity to centers of capital (Ferrando et al., 2021). These dynamics demonstrate the necessity of integrating histories of oppression in food transformation discourses (including that of food-as-commons) and of recognizing the colonial and capitalist roots of the global food chains that feed the Global North (Ferrando et al., 2021). Despite these barriers, all initiatives reported a desire to diversify the communities they work with. Hence, as Ferreri (2016) notes, instead of viewing these dynamics as a failure of commoning, they may be understood as an inevitable point of departure for practices that generate greater reflexive ties between comparatively privileged groups and more vulnerable populations.

6. Conclusion

This paper has aimed to contribute to ongoing debates about food systems transformation as well as to the expansion of a more critical food scholarship. In light of the climate crisis and the susceptibility of the conventional food system to diverse shocks, including the pandemic and the recent food price crisis, the alternatives prefigured by food commoning projects like those in Oxfordshire merit attentive consideration.

This study’s focus on the praxis of commoning uncovers the existence of heterogeneous food commoning efforts and practices, which generate resilient entanglements based on care, reciprocity, and sustainability. Beyond individual initiatives, this paper also reveals the importance of building food commoning networks, giving rise to the possibility of integrating and merging food commons operating at all levels of the food chain into a systemic alternative. The concept of food commoning could thus form a convergence paradigm for socio-ecological food justice and transformation (Coulson & Milbourne, 2021).

This study further points to the willingness and ability of communities in the Global North to build localized food systems based on commoning that are more just, sustainable, and resistant to shocks – laying the groundwork for the possibility of (re)commoning the whole food system (Pettenati et al., 2018). To achieve this, this paper joins other scholars (Pettenati et al., 2018; Rossi et al., 2021) in arguing for a partnership between commoning initiatives and the public sector, which could create a political and socio-cultural context favorable to the protection, maintenance, and expansion of food commons. This association could empower local communities and authorities to co-create local food policies and sites for knowledge sharing and production, fostering an environment conducive to exploring alternative practices, structures, and governance arrangements. Through cross-regional cooperation, these could be replicated in other localities, allowing the coordinated establishment of place-based food systems centered around commoning principles.

By shedding light on alternative approaches to producing, distributing, and consuming food, this paper has sought to “bring them to visibility” (Dawney et al., 2016, p. 22) and increase their legitimacy as a way of reimagining the food system. Further research and experimentation is needed to assess the possibilities and limitations of commoning in creating more resilient, just, and regenerative food systems.

Funding Information

I am grateful to the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute for providing financial support for the development of this article.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.