This entry introduces the concept of food commons in the context of scholarship and activism on commons, commoning, and food systems transformation. I then draw out some key tensions and issues that have surfaced in research on food commons related to questions of materiality, scale, and urban-rural relations. I close with recommendations for approaches that future research can take to address these issues.
Public fridges are open-access community-stewarded spaces where food can be freely and anonymously shared. As such, they are fertile ground for understanding the obstacles and opportunities for governing food as a commons. This paper examines the governance strategies that have developed within and around Foodsharing.de, a grassroots food-rescue network in Berlin, to manage food as a commons. Analyzing the commoning of food in Foodsharing.de provides a novel entry point into the multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder governance processes that shape our broader food system.
Reframing both the city as commons and food as commons changes how we think about urban food governance. Food is currently governed as both a privately owned and traded commodity and a public good that should be healthy, safe, and accessible to everyone. This public/private or state/market binary is insufficient for governing the diverse ways in which people provision food; it can also stand in the way of achieving more just and sustainable food systems.
