This study examines how dairy farmers make sense of contemporary demands for transparency in the livestock sector. Transparency is commonly framed as the disclosure of information about how products are made, by whom, under what labour conditions, and with what environmental impacts. Transparency is commonly understood as the disclosure of information about how products are made, by whom, under what labour conditions, and with what environmental impacts, and is often presented as a means of increasing public trust and strengthening the legitimacy of agri-food systems. Yet the perspective of primary producers remains underexplored. Drawing on two focus groups with fifteen dairy farmers in Lombardy, Northern Italy, this exploratory case study shows that, from farmers' perspective, transparency entails additional costs in terms of time, labour, and moral and emotional exposure, adding to the everyday work of managing and caring for animals. Participants describe public visibility as ambivalent: necessary to explain agricultural practices, yet risky when images, technical procedures, or moments involving animal illness and death are interpreted outside their context. The analysis identifies four themes: transparency as a demand for moral justification; the need for institutional mediation and third-party credibility; experiences of exposure and ethical vulnerability; and selective forms of communicative openness. The findings suggest that greater visibility does not automatically generate trust; when responsibility for transparency falls mainly on individual farmers, it may become a form of unrecognised moral labour. The study therefore argues for understanding transparency as a distributed responsibility across the value chain, supported by institutions and associations able to create fairer and more shared interpretive contexts.
This article examines the experiential dimensions of food insecurity in Rome, Barcelona, and Athens through a qualitative framework informed by the Capability Approach (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000). Drawing on 64 in-depth interviews with beneficiaries and coordinators of three strategically selected food-assistance initiatives, Rome’s Emporio della Solidarietà (‘Solidarity Supermarket’), Barcelona’s Tarjeta Solidaria (‘Solidarity Card’), and Athens’s O Allos Anthropos (‘The Other Human’), the analysis considers food insecurity not only as a problem of material access but also as a condition negotiated through emotional and relational processes. It conceptualises food insecurity as a deprivation of substantive freedoms, directing attention to what people are effectively able to do and be in relation to food. Beneficiaries’ accounts bring into view dignity, autonomy, relationality, and agency as interconnected dimensions of food assistance, while coordinator interviews illuminate the ethos of care that informs the normative orientation and affective labour of each initiative. Across contrasting institutional arrangements, Rome’s moral-caretaking model, Barcelona’s welfare-managerial system, and Athens’s mutualist-solidarity approach, food assistance emerges as a site in which structural deprivation may be both reproduced and contested. The article contributes to debates in food ethics and social policy by specifying the limits of charitable provision and identifying the conditions under which food-assistance initiatives can support more rights-based approaches to food security.
Food sovereignty has become an important lens for understanding agrarian transformation in Southeast Asia, yet existing scholarship remains fragmented across country cases and thematic concerns. This study examines the development of food sovereignty research in Southeast Asia through a bibliometric analysis combined with qualitative interpretation under the Research–Policy–Practice (RPP) framework. Data were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases, and 68 English-language journal articles published between 2009 and 2025 were included after screening. Descriptive analysis and keyword co-occurrence mapping were used to identify publication trends, geographical distribution, core journals, and thematic structures. The findings show that research in this field has expanded rapidly since the mid-2010s and is mainly concentrated in Indonesia, followed by the Philippines and Malaysia. Thematically, the literature has moved beyond a narrow focus on food provision towards broader concerns with governance, rights, institutional constraints, resource control, agroecology, and grassroots networks. Overlay analysis further indicates a recent shift towards climate-related pressures, conflict, justice, and resilience. These patterns suggest that food sovereignty in Southeast Asia is best understood not as a single policy objective, but as a contested process shaped by the interaction of state power, market pressures, local resource autonomy, and community-based practices. By integrating bibliometric mapping with the RPP perspective, this study offers a more coherent understanding of how food sovereignty is researched, governed, and practised across the region
This study examines the ethical practices and cultural capital embedded in the gastronomic traditions of the Banggai ethnic community within the Sea-Sea Festival, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Situated within the ecological context of coastal karst islands, it explores how local communities utilize marine and land-based resources, particularly seafood and Banggai yam, in ways that are both culturally meaningful and environmentally responsible. Using an ethnomethodological approach, the study investigates how ethical practices are produced, understood, and sustained through everyday culinary activities. The findings reveal that gastronomy in this context extends beyond cultural display and functions as an ethically grounded practice shaped by ecological awareness, intergenerational knowledge, and community-based norms. The responsible use of fish and endemic crops reflects forms of ecological ethics embedded within local food systems. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, the study shows that embodied knowledge of resource management, objectified culinary forms, and the institutional role of the festival are closely interconnected. The findings also provide empirical support for the concept of bounded commodification, illustrating how the community negotiates participation in tourism development while maintaining ethical and ecological limits. This research contributes to the literature by integrating gastronomy, ethics, and cultural capital within an indigenous small-island context and highlights the importance of local ethical frameworks in shaping relationships between culture, environment, and tourism.
Climate-smart Agriculture (CSA) has turned into a widely accepted method for promoting resilience and productivity in farming, especially as we deal with the challenges of climate change. This commentary looks closely at how CSA technologies and practices, even though they promise sustainability, can unintentionally strengthen or worsen existing social inequalities. Using a socio-technical approach and drawing on Philippine case studies, this paper examines the agricultural system in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. It shows that when implementing Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), there is often a focus on technology solutions. However, it does not pay enough attention to issues like power imbalances, different levels of access, and fairness in outcomes. The study points out three clear ways that CSA can continue to create inequality: (1) the gaps in digital technology that leave out small farmers, (2) the governance systems that favor big companies and government officials over local communities, and (3) the politics of data that allow for new types of exploitation and control. Research from case studies in the Philippines shows how these systems work in real life, particularly impacting small farmers, women, and indigenous groups more than others. The paper suggests that if we don’t focus clearly on social justice issues, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) might end up being a way for companies to appear ethical while still doing things the same old way by using sustainability terms to support their usual practices. Three ways to create a fairer Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) are suggested: designing technology with fairness in mind, creating shared governance systems, and making changes to tackle the deep-rooted inequalities in our food systems. This commentary urges the need to include ethical thoughts when creating and carrying out Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices. It also understands that just making these changes might not solve the deep-rooted issues of exclusivity found in private agricultural technologies.
