Several grassroots initiatives in the last two decades have shown the need for different food practices that should be locally based and founded on ethical goals of social and environmental justice. Among the many “alternative food networks”, the Community Supported Agriculture model is particularly significant and interesting. By redefining meanings and social norms around food practices, this model actualizes significant processes of food re-socialization and re-territorialization. Focusing on Italy, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of the potential of this model. It does so through two investigations carried out in 2019 and 2020, aimed at analyzing, respectively, structural and organizational aspects of CSAs and the features of resilience shown by these initiatives during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. On the whole, the two surveys give us the image of a radically innovative experience, potentially capable of deeply redefining production and consumption practices, being rooted in socially-shared knowledge, motivations, willingness, commitment and sense of community. In addition to being characterized by a determination to pursue sustainability and equity goals, the model shows a remarkable character of resilience thanks to the original arrangements that the common value basis and the strong sense of interdependence and solidarity of its members can provide.

This study examines the strategies developed by Italian Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their attempt to prefigure alternatives to dominant capitalist agri-food systems. To do so we answer the following research questions: What type of strategies do these CSA initiatives employ to that end? What insights can be gained as regards the potential and barriers to fuller and more accomplished post-capitalist labour management within CSA initiatives? Data were collected through a participatory action research project involving 16 Italian CSAs, participant observation in meetings of CSA initiatives and the Italian CSA Network, and official documents collection. Across the three crucial moments considered in this study, we observe substantial difficulties in realising post-capitalist labour management as the initiatives are constrained by external requirements (e.g., legislation) and also internally by members’ weakness in implementing the CSA model due to their remaining integrated in the capitalist system. These findings point to the importance for CSA initiatives of deepening the collective process of deliberate deconstruction of valuation logics and predefined roles, as well as legal frameworks to find ways to enable the realisation of post-capitalist labour management. In this regard, we also suggest that the Italian CSA Network could play a more active role in addressing some of the internal and external factors hindering the consolidation of CSA initiatives and the manifestation of their transformative role.

Decentralized forest management is criticized for not involving women in decision-making. The study explores what the introduction of affirmative policy in community forestry committees means for the participation of women in decision making in four cases in the middle hills of Nepal. The qualitative analysis of interviews and observations draws on feminist political ecology, a women’s participation typology, the critical mass theory and gender justice. The findings centre on the importance of electoral procedures, the role of authorities, the role of the familial context and whether and how women internalized and contested patriarchal norms. The women’s quota was found to have had as yet little impact on substantive participation, yet the enhanced exposure of female committee members to the discrepancy between the gender equality discourse introduced in community forestry and the persistent male domination seemed to create, in a few women performing as critical actors, an enhanced awareness of male suppression; an awareness that is a prerequisite for contestation of those patriarchal norms denying women access to power over forest and, generally speaking, of gender injustice. This research reports examples of women, brought in the executive committees by the studied affirmative policies, successfully contesting traditional gender roles and gender injustice, negotiating for them and for the other women, a more effective and meaningful participation in the management of Community Forests.

A significant amount of fungicides consumed in European agriculture are used in viticulture, despite vineyards only occupying a very limited percentage of the cultivated area. Cultivation of disease-resistant hybrid grape cultivars can reduce vineyard treatments by half, with a significant decrease in climate-altering emissions, farmer costs, occupational injury risks, and excessive soil compression. The objective of this study is to investigate the motives and barriers that winegrowers in South Tyrol, Italy face when considering the conversion to fungus-resistant grape varieties (PIWI) farming. We conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews and participant observation with winegrowers to gain insight into their perspectives on the reasons for and challenges in adopting or practicing PIWI viticulture. The paper tests two hypotheses: the environmental commitment and concerns of producers with their personal values and environmental ethics in adopting PIWI varieties and relational and social influences, leading producers towards the consideration of social sustainability. The results present a picture aligned with the existing literature, emphasizing a stronger commitment to environmental sustainability while also considering economic and legislative constraints in the cultivation of a niche wine variety, which still has a limited market presence and distribution.

This article gives an account of a two-year project named CRETA (participatory construction of egalitarian societies) carried out by a group of 20 people in northern Italy. The initiative has tried to find concrete paths to establish an egalitarian society by building a new religious paradigm inspired by Modern Matriarchal Studies. After intensive training sessions, the participants began to develop concrete steps to get closer to the goal of creating an egalitarian community. The core aspects of matriarchal spirituality chosen by the participants which inspired the whole project are gender equality, immanent divinity and a cyclical worldview. The article presents the main results of the feminist participatory research that accompanied the community project. The pursuit of the participants to establish new, egalitarian religious practices is discussed and the challenges and achievements are reflected.