Investigating the development of transformative capacity of food initiatives in Cape Town and Stockholm

Abstract As the global food system is linked to environmental degradation and contributes to detrimental health effects, transformation is vital for a sustainable and fair future for all. There is a growing body of research on food system transformations and the role that food initiatives can play in this. Drawing from the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project, we show how such ‘seed initiatives’ in Cape Town and Stockholm are finding ways to contribute towards building more sustainable and equitable food systems. Building on different transformations frameworks, we use these to analyse twenty such food initiatives across the two cities over a seven year timeframe. Our findings indicate that food initiatives are building momentum and developing transformative capacity within three areas: ecological processes, social sustainability, and agency and empowerment. The initiatives focus most on strategies of stabilizing and scaling deep to amplify their potential for transformative impact. We demonstrate how ‘seed initiatives’ can play an important role in building more sustainable and equitable food systems without scaling up. Through this finding, we challenge the traditional argument that transformations require initiatives to scale up into a new regime by showing that they can have impact by changing values, improving quality, and encouraging place-based diversity.