Is local food more sustainable? How can the global food system we changed to challenge prevailing inequalities? Peter van Dam and Fabio de Castro have been awarded the Healthy Future Seed Grant for research on the global food system. The project will revision food policy through the lens of the ‘food as commons’ approach. This entails a key paradigm shift: from food as an object for sale, to food as a global public good, or global commons.

The UvA's theme-based collaboration programme Healthy Future invites academics to formulate new, sometimes unexpected research questions on socially relevant themes at the interface of disciplines and faculties - and to also incorporate these in teaching. The project A planetary food commons for healthy and sustainable diets has been awarded 30.800 euro. The research team consists of Branwyn Poleykett (AISSR, Anthropology), Rebeca Ibáñez Martín (AISSR, Anthropology), Mary Nicolaou (Faculty of Medicine), Wilma Waterlander (Faculty of Medicine), Peter van Dam (Faculty of Humanities, History) and Fabio de Castro (Faculty of Humanities, CEDLA) .

To protect human and planetary health we urgently need to reform our highly unsustainable global food system. Drawing on the research team’s ongoing research in Europea, West Africa and Latin America, the project will explore the potential of the food as commons approach to deliver healthy and sustainable food for all. Blending new conceptual work with knowledge translation, the seed grant will fund an academic symposium focusing on “just transitions” towards local and decommodified food, and a coproduction workshop with key stakeholders in Amsterdam focused on operationalising the food as commons approach.