The role of meso-spaces for the sustainable transformation of food systems

Faced with increasing risks from climate change, food systems will need to transition away from dominant industrial paradigms and move towards a more sustainable way of producing, distributing, and consuming food. One solution or one side alone though might not have the desired systemic change or might not capture the full complexity of food systems. To go beyond two known criticisms of local food sustainable initiatives, i.e. to be rather small and to be developed outside policy frameworks and/or in stark opposition to current food systems, in this paper we argue to look at new meso-spaces of network relations at local level where community members, professionals, and governments get together to share knowledge, deliberate, and collectively devise place-based strategies to address complex food systems issues. To completely understand these spaces, this article provides a conceptual framework of analysis combining ideas from environmental governance, grassroots innovations, and diverse economies.