Data on the food system's impact on environment, society and health point to a policy mismatch between current food consumption trends and long term viability. The role of public policy in this state of affairs requires critical attention. Public policy is generally weak and still dominated by a fixation on productionism and failing to integrate equally pressing concerns. Instead the facilitating power and responsibilities of the state are too often side-stepped. A new public policy approach is required that addresses the multi-criteria nature of how we assess contemporary food systems and their challenges. The role of the state is key to any transformation but states have been weak to support the creation of better infrastructure that would normalise what society and ecosystems really need namely sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. A genuinely systemic policy approach is required for urban populations, one which gives equal emphasis to all sector of food supply chains, not just primary production. The chapter explores ideological and practical logjams which hinder the pursuit of twenty-first-century progress. These include a reluctance to confront limitations in mainstream economics and uncritical acceptance of consumer power. Only the state has the potential legitimacy to facilitate a food system transformation and to provide the foundational economy which would normalise low impact living and eating.
This chapter presents the historical process of the Urban Agriculture (UA) at Rosario, in search of a socio-productive model with a high component of social inclusivity. It considers the first glimpses in 1987 through the conformation of the first Urban Group Farm until the present day where UA has become a public policy. This process has created its own dynamics under the different organisational structures of the municipality, by successfully integrating the production, the circulation and the consumerism of healthy products through fairs and community-based organisations; also incorporating the different suburbs of the city. Agroecology is presented as the conceptual and methodological framework. The systematisation of this experience aims to make visible the course pursued by the UA in Rosario offering a description which allows to understand its processes and to obtain more specific details of the bases and principles of Agroecology. The main results that are highlighted from this process are (1) Consolidation of a municipal public policy of urban agriculture, which guarantees democratisation and access to means of production for agroecological food cultivation, its commercialisation and distribution in the different districts of the city; (2) Social transformation of neighbours who found in the horticultural identity a personal and collective life project, consolidated as reference in the city, the country and the region; (3) Presence of a critical citizenship that is identified as a protagonist, through different roles on sustainability of the Urban Agriculture Programme.
