Dwelling on Urban Farmland: Restoring Sustainable Foodways through Lo-cal Engagement with an Alternative Agricultural System

Abstract

The current industrial agricultural food production and consumption system is re-sponsible for much of today’s environmental degradation. The unsustainability thereof expresses itself physically, but also socially, as people are increasingly dis-connected from their food sources. Yet, alternative agricultural foodway system are emerging in response thereto and attempt to restore more sustainable engagement with food. This thesis constitutes an effort to explore the ways in which the urban agriculture initiative of Koningshof may contribute to a restoration of sustainable foodways. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out with the intention of finding out how Koningshof facilitates access to sustainable food production methods and how it encourages sustainable food consumption. This was analysed through Marvin Harris’ cultural materialism for its important contribution to the anthropology of food and agriculture. The ethnographic fieldwork centred on two main groups: Vol-unteers supporting the activities of Koningshof and Tuinders – people renting al-lotment gardens at Koningshof. What the research revealed is that participation at Koningshof is motivated by an inherent interest in sustainability, and that much of the restoration process is actualised in participants’ attitudes towards food waste. The instances of restoration have very pragmatic and instrumental underpinnings that relate to its impact on their own physical and mental wellbeing, as well as con-tributing to the emergence of socio-environmental reciprocity between participants and the food crops at Koningshof. Yet challenges to this restoration process give in-sight into the difficulties for alternative agricultural foodway systems of establishing meaningful forms of resistance to the industrial agricultural paradigm.