Overview (2019)
The Many Scales of Food Law and Policy…
From local to global, personal to societal, and artisanal to industrial, issues of jurisdictional, spatial and temporal scale dominate food systems. Scale can determine what food is produced, harvested, processed, transported, imported, exported, labeled, sold, eaten and disposed of, as well as by whom and how. Issues of scale impact food insecurity, marginalization, the health sector, the environment and the economic viability of food enterprises. Businesses and social movement actors confront differing regulatory landscapes when deciding to scale up, scale down or otherwise adapt their activities. And food and agricultural laws, regulations and policies at once reflect, reproduce and drive decisions concerning scale within our food systems
Our previous conferences have provided the opportunity to develop and define the field of food law and policy in Canada, and to map the ways in which our food systems are governed. For our 4th annual food law and policy conference, we explore the complex issue of scale in all its dimensions. This year, we seek to reflect critically on time, space and size, as well as the factors that influence and drive the scale of food systems and food system governance. We also seek to explore new ways of thinking about scale in food law and policy itself, reflecting on ideas of scale as nested social spheres or as relational, spatial and colonial – experienced like webs, networks or subjugation.