Role of Citizens and / or Consumers in Urban Agriculture
Introduction
The current food system in the Western world is characterised by professionals carrying out production, processing and distribution and also a focus on formal coordination mechanisms i.e. market based transactions and/or bureaucratic control. Food production is left to professional parties, citizens are supposed to play a role as consumers not as producers. Self-provisioning (growing and processing food for your own consumption and/or for informal distribution through a social network) is seen as backward, well developed food economies don’t have that. Transition to more sustainable food systems is envisaged by governments setting higher environmental, social and health standards, producers including social responsibilities (CSR) and/or consumers adapting their buying behaviour (vote with your shopping cart).
More recently however this picture has been changing with the emergence of numerous civic food networks in which citizens play a more active role than just being consumers. Responsive citizens may engage themselves not just by being more responsible consumers but also by more actively organising consumer cooperatives or solidarity buying groups (Renting et al 2012). Citizens may also engage themselves more actively by providing financial capital, land or even labour or other key resources to support the development of more sustainable food production in their localities. This also induces a new role for the professional farmer, processor and distributor, who may respond to this civic engagement by opening up the one dimensional role of producing, processing and distributing ‘’nutrients’’ to food provisioning in a wider social and political meaning. It also induces a different balance in coordination mechanisms, more civil society driven governance mechanism and less market based transactions or bureaucratic control.
Background
There are many ways in which this new role of citizens as consumers and producers can be organised. It is also interesting to note the dynamic relation between these new models of organisation and the more conventional models where businesses target other businesses (b2b) or end-consumers (b2c).
In the beginning of a civic initiative, citizens in their role as engaged consumers may help each other out to get the food they desire on a (more or less) voluntary basis (one can thing of Eigengemaakt, a food fair for amateurs who produce and process their own food and share the surplus with others, Zuidermrkt, a farmers market organised and run by citizens, Thuisafgehaald, an internet platform where people share excess meals that they cook with neighbours, Rotterdamse Munt, a community garden where people work together and share the harvest, Stadslandbouw Schiebroek, an urban gardening project where participants use the harvest to prepare food that is sold at food fairs). This is the share economy as we know it (c2c). But at a certain point in time this civic initiative may develop toward a more business orientated approach. People may start to supply more professional customers (Rotterdamse Munt delivers herbs to restaurants and cafes, Stadslandbouw Schiebroek who also runs a catering operation for professional customers (c2b). Gradually it may be possible for the volunteer to get a (partial) income from the activities, one may start a professional business (b2c and b2b, Rechtstreex, a webshop for local produce started as a neighbourhood initiative and now is run by –self-employed- professionals who earn a (partial) income).
The second graph shows how the role of citizens (businesses and other governments) as consumer of government services is generally represented (last column). To the extent that citizens / consumers who set up an alternative food initiative not just provide services to each other but at the same time help governments to reach public goals this role can be represented by the C2G section in the graph. An example would be if citizens for example invite homeless people or people with distance to the labour market to work on their community garden, thus providing a service that is usually considered part of the responsibilities of the welfare state (Rotterdamse Munt and Voedseltuin). In some cases here also consumers/citizens get compensation from local governments (B2G), as they succeed in entering local tenders for public services (green maintenance, social care, etc.).
Possible conflict or coordination between citizen/professional initiatives.
The more active engagement of citizens in urban food production is not altogether positive if we take an economic perspective. Farmers complain that citizen initiatives which provide food as cheaply as possible to urban dwellers also spoil the market that they want to service as professional food suppliers (hence with costs incurred recovered and a remuneration for capital and labour expended by the farmer). Citizens initiatives are often coordinated by self employed professionals, but it is very hard for these crucial people to get proper remuneration for their work. They are neither volunteers nor staff member of social or public institutions. They are not recognised by charities (who fund citizen initiatives) nor by the state (which funds professional initiatives). But these self employed professionals perform a crucial role in the restructuring of the social welfare state, they are active where the traditional institutions have disappeared or remain stuck in their conventional (customer client). But they come up with new initiatives and practices that are not yet recognised to be financed structurally by new mechanisms emerging from the welfare state in transition. An initiative will be described in Rotterdam where a dozen of more or less professionally run citizen initiatives is trying to get structural finance from the Municipality of Rotterdam and / or social housing institutes in Rotterdam.