Seeding chance: what discourse mobilizes the scaling of food forestry in the Netherlands
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2024-06-21
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Over the past decades, agriculture’s pressure on the environment has risen. In response, more sustainable forms of agriculture have gained popularity. The concept of food forestry, a way of producing different types of food in a forest-like setting, has grown considerably in the Netherlands. The practice is still small-scale, and little research has been done about the potential of food forestry to expand, becoming a true alternative to dominant agricultural models. This thesis will research the scalability of food forestry in the Netherlands through mobilizing discourse. A mobilizing discourse is a discourse that motivates people to take action, in this case, to start and scale food forestry.
This thesis addresses the following question: How do mobilizing discourses within the food forest concept contribute to the scaling of agroecology in the Netherlands? To answer this question, qualitative research is conducted through interviews with food foresters and analysis of policy documents regarding the future of agriculture.
The main findings of this thesis are that both policy documents and food foresters act out of the same shared problem: agriculture, as done today, puts too much pressure on the environment. Food foresters give a clear solution to this problem, namely using more food forestry. This uniform solution creates a strong and easily understandable frame. The policy documents lack this uniform solution by focusing on different forms of sustainable agriculture. However, even within the food forestry sector, there are also some differences in principles and ideals. Despite these differences in ideals and principles, there seems to be a mobilizing discourse with the potential to scale food forestry within the sector. Policy documents seem to water this mobilizing discourse down.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen