Welcome to Alternative Food Network Rijnmond #
What is AFN-R? #
AFN-R is a project that emerged from questions found in transformative food intiatives around Rotterdam.
While there are an abundance of urban and rural initiatives contributing to just food system transitions around the Rijnmond region, we realized that little was known about the connections and collaborations between them.
Urban-Rural dynamics are key to establishing more sustainable food systems, with the key being found in the ability to scale individual intiatives and smaller networks into a broader, more resilient alternative food network.
If just food system transitions and climate justice require transitioning towards stronger alternative food networks, how can we improve just urban-rural collaborations that these networks depend on?
How do we plan to do this? #
This project’s aim is to explore the initiatives and dynamics that make up the AFN in the Rijnmond region to identify experienced barriers and cocreate strategies that can strengthen initiatives’ participation or the network itself.
In doing so participants will hopefully strengthen and solidify critical, albeit invisible, rural-urban solidarity that these transitions, so far invisibly, hinge on.
Our primary research question is: How do urban and rural initiatives taking part in agroecological food system transitions around the Rijnmond region perceive, communicate, and relate to each other to create Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), and what barriers to strengthening existing AFN dynamics, or creating new connections, exist?
We plan to answer this question in a couple of ways:
- By having conversations with diverse food system actors. However, rather than the typical interviews that would otherwise be archived and never heard, we want to set our participants at the forefront of the project through live radio conversations.
- By mapping existing relationships
- By analyzing our conversations to figure out some of the barriers that currently exist to strengthening alternative networks around the Rijnmond region
Reach out to us if you’re keen to participate.
Our sponsors #
Resilient Delta initiative #
The Resilient Delta initiative is one of five programs of Convergence, an alliance between TU Delft, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus MC. At the Resilient Delta initiative, we collaborate across disciplines to design real-world solutions to the global challenges we face – from climate change to growing social inequality. With the Dutch delta as our living lab, our pioneering research aims to help the Netherlands and delta regions across the world navigate towards a resilient future.