Data_Sheet_1_Dachas and food democracy—What makes a (good) food citizen?.docx

Against the backdrop of multiple crises within—and due to—the current industrial agri-food system, food is a highly political issue. As calls for food sovereignty grow louder and the war in Ukraine exposes the fragility of global food systems, the concept of food democracy calls on all (food) citizens to engage in a democratic and collective struggle for socially just and environmentally friendly food systems. To date, “Western” examples of food democracy and formal political procedures of civil society have dominated scholarship, ignoring the self-organized, low-key, and informal political activities around food in the post-socialist East. In this article, we shed light on the aspects of food democracy within Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) practices in Eastern Estonia, which is our case study. Our empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019–2021 with 27 gardeners on their so-called dachas—a Russian term for a plot of land with a seasonal allotment house used primarily for food production. The analysis focuses on the food-, farming-, and nutrition-related attitudes and practices of the gardeners, as well as the multitude of collective endeavors to improve food systems. Despite the precarious socio-economic and political status of the gardeners, we identified a variety of subtle, informal, and mundane forms of democratic practices and everyday resistance. We investigate the interplay of these aspects along the three dimensions of food democracy (input, throughput, output). On the one hand, FSP on Eastern Estonian dachas encompasses essential characteristics of the mainly “Western” concept of food democracy, allowing access to and participation in agricultural production while preserving (re)productive nature in the future. On the other hand, we caution against excessive optimism and romanticization of such local food communities, as they tend to remain exceptions and risk extinction or displacement if they are not valorized and reshaped through public discourse. We conclude with a plea for building and strengthening alliances between the marginalized elderly rural food producers and the more youthful urban food activists to achieve more democratic, just, and ecologically sound food systems.

在当前工业农业食品体系内外的多重危机背景下，食物已成为一个高度政治化的议题。随着对食物主权的呼声日益高涨，以及乌克兰战争暴露了全球食品体系的脆弱性，食物民主的概念呼吁所有（食品）公民参与到一场旨在争取社会公正和环境保护的食品体系的民主和集体斗争中。迄今为止，西方关于食物民主的实例和公民社会的正式政治程序在学术研究中占据主导地位，却忽视了后社会主义东欧地区围绕食物的自组织、低调和非正式的政治活动。在本文中，我们聚焦于爱沙尼亚东部食物自给自足（FSP）实践中的食物民主方面，这是我们的案例研究。我们的实证数据基于2019至2021年间对27位所谓的“菜园”拥有者——即用于食物生产的季节性分配房屋地块的俄语术语——进行的半结构化访谈。分析集中在园丁们与食物、农业和营养相关的态度与实践，以及改善食品体系的众多集体努力。尽管园丁们面临的社会经济和政治地位不稳定，我们仍发现了多种微妙、非正式和日常的民主实践形式以及日常抵抗形式。我们探究了这些方面在食物民主的三维（输入、吞吐、输出）维度中的相互作用。一方面，爱沙尼亚东部菜园上的食物自给自足包含了主要源自“西方”的食物民主概念的基本特征，允许人们获取并参与到农业生产中，同时保持（再）生产的自然性。另一方面，我们警告不要过度乐观和对这些地方性食品社区进行浪漫化，因为它们往往只是例外，如果不通过公共话语加以重视和重塑，它们可能会面临灭绝或被取代的风险。我们以呼吁构建和加强边缘化的老年农村食品生产者与更年轻的都市食品活动家之间的联盟作为结语，以期实现更加民主、公正和生态可持续的食品体系。