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If the French municipal elections this spring taught us anything, it’s that what’s on our plates is most certainly political. Food is about much more than farming. In rural areas especially, food directly impacts health, landscapes, and quality of life, and it was a topic on doorsteps all over France during the recent campaign. Pauline Petit reports.
Right now a political window of opportunity is open: for communities to take the power back over their food systems. Because that is the true meaning of food sovereignty. As Hunger for Local Democracy, the 5th annual report by Terre de Liens, highlights: “food sovereignty is not just about the balance of trade: it constitutes a fundamental political right—that of collectively deciding what we produce, what we eat, and how we care for the land that feeds us.”
For every problem, a solution: Municipalities get creative
But before pulling up a seat at the table to discuss solutions that are in place locally, let’s identify the main barriers to food sovereignty. In France, food democracy and the agroecological transition are held back by the legacy of an agricultural model that began in the 1950s, rooted in productivism, industrialisation, and an openness to foreign trade.
Industrialisation was accompanied by specialisation, as territories gradually reduced the diversity of production that was to feed local populations. In 2020, nearly 70% of agricultural production supplied toward agro-industry—rather than feeding local communities—while accounting for 75% of the utilised agricultural area (UAA).
The industrial model still occupies a predominant place in decision-making spaces. Representatives of farmers’ groups are elected every six years to serve in France’s chambers of agriculture, departmental agricultural steering committees (CDOA), and regulatory bodies for agricultural land (SAFER). But the voting system is skewed towards big ag. The largest farmer group receives the most votes and is automatically awarded half the seats in the college of farm managers—and, by default, the presidency. The remaining seats are distributed proportionally among the minority groups. As a result, when it comes to determining a territory’s production choices, land access and use, or the diversity of crops and products, smaller farmer groups struggle to be heard at the table.
But citizen demands can act as a counterweight to such politicking. By shifting the conversation towards food security, food safety or health, local politicians can justify the participation of citizens and civil society actors in the debate.
Municipal councillors are getting creative and proposing new forms of cooperation to benefit from support, skills, and resources at different levels.
Strategies for cooperation
Agricultural land use: towards a land strategy
Governance of agricultural land stands out as a key lever for public action to address food, environmental, and territorial challenges.
In France, at the inter-municipal scale (which offers greater scope to mobilise resources and coordinate policies), a number of instruments are available to protect and structure farmland. Protected Agricultural Zones (ZAP) help to safeguard land against urbanisation, while Protection Perimeters for Peri-urban Agricultural and Natural Spaces (PAEN) offer a more robust framework to curb land speculation and secure agricultural land use in the long term.
Beyond their protective function, such mechanisms effectively open the way to a territorial strategy: directing land toward production that meets local needs, making space for new agricultural activities such as market gardening, supporting crop diversification, and bringing producers closer to consumers.
In the absence of these protective mechanisms, we see communities stepping up. For instance in Pussay, a small town in the Parisian hinterland, residents have been mobilising around food for several years now. There is an active AMAP association (French equivalent of Community Supported Agriculture), and parents’ groups are working on procurement for the school canteen. For these residents, food is about more than farming: it affects the landscape, environment, health, and local quality of life.
A patchwork of Territorial Food Programmes
France’s Territorial Food Programmes (PATs) also constitute new spaces for dialogue, aiming to bring together all actors of the food system around a common objective: to evolve local agricultural systems. As a core tenet of France’s food policy, the goal is to roll out PATs to 80% of the territory by 2030.
However, this ambition is undermined by a progressive withdrawal of financial and human resources: the French state is delegating the implementation of food policy but at the same time taking away the means that had been allocated to do so.
To fill this gap, many local authorities are getting creative to maintain and strengthen the momentum of their PATs, developing strategies based on cooperation between stakeholders and between territories.
For example, the Pays des Châteaux PAT has established a food council made up of a wide range of actors, including residents, to foster more participatory governance.
Meanwhile, the Nancy Sud Lorraine Multipole has created a land observatory to help local authorities better value their agricultural land and to support young farmers. This initiative is co-led by Terre de Liens Lorraine, the Department, the Grand Est SAFER, and the Meurthe-et-Moselle Chamber of Agriculture.
The challenge: Scaling from local experiences to more systemic transformations
A global transformation supposes, above all, a change in scale. Aware of the limits of local action in the face of the scale of transformations to be deployed, local councillors involved in this type of approach seek to organise into networks and share experiences in order to inspire other municipalities. With more than 35,000 municipalities in France, every territory constitutes an opportunity for experimentation.
The network of public farms is a good example. It’s run by the town of Mouans-Sartoux (Alpes-Maritimes), which has set up a municipally-managed farm to supply vegetables to its 100% organic canteens. The network brings together local authorities that are starting their own farms with the aim of producing sustainable, local, and high-quality food for their own canteens. To date, there are about fifty municipal farms across France.
The challenge is to multiply initiatives to demonstrate that these are not isolated experiments, but replicable initiatives with transformative potential. (To find out more about municipal initiatives in France, check out the Récolte database maintained by Terre de Liens.)
How does my municipality score on food sovereignty?
Territoires Fertiles is a digital tool that allows eaters in France to answer this question. Created by Les Greniers d’Abondance, in partnership with Basic, the National Federation of Organic Agriculture (FNAB), and Terre de Liens, this user-friendly platform invites you to enter the name of your municipality to pull up statistics on its capacity to feed its population. Users can even print off the data as an infographic to share with their neighbours.
As an example, the Montpellier metropolitan area scores 4/10 on production, meaning it can only feed 2% of the population from its farmland, given current consumption habits and agricultural activities (predominantly viticulture). Another startling statistic: in the past 30 years, the Montpellier area has lost nearly 77% of its farms.
And finally, the pièce de résistance…
Like seeds sprouting in a hostile environment, local initiatives for the food transition continue to emerge in a difficult climate marked by dwindling numbers of farms, collapsing ecosystems, growing health concerns, and an ever dominant agro-industrial system.
Forms of creative resistance are sprouting, not just in France, but in territories across Europe. By drawing on local resources, expertise, and complementarities, these initiatives show that other paths are possible. Above all, they serve as a reminder that the food transition is built collectively, at the intersection of local authorities, farmers, associations, and citizens.
Taken together, they sketch the outlines of a future food model that is resilient, democratic, and anchored in the local territory.
ARC2020 is a member of the coalition behind the Good Food For All! European Citizens’ Initiative. Click here to find out more about this initiative, and add your signature if you agree with the demands.
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