Leveraging Blockchain Technologies and Platform Cooperativism for Decentralized Food Networks

Summary

How democratic governance, collective ownership, and circular token economics can be used to create decentralized food networks — a research proposal.

It can be argued that the sustainable food transition towards decentralized and regional food economies is one of humanity’s most pressing challenges (Satterthaite et al., 2010). Like the energy transition, in which energy production and consumption is being changed from a centralized production and distribution model to decentralized smart mini-grids, a similar trend is emerging in the agrifood industry. The current industrialized agrifood regime is arguably unsustainable (Johnson, 2015; Pollan, 2009; Satterthaite et al., 2010; Sedghi, 2013; van Staalduinen, 2014), especially when taking into account the estimated increasing global population and rapid urbanization by mid-century (Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012, UN DESA, 2014; UN DESA, 2015, Wagner, 2008). Hence, short food supply chains (SFSC) via decentralized food networks and regional food economies have been proposed as a possible solution for a sustainable agrifood industry (De Schutter, 2010; Groesbeek, 2009; Kneasfey et al., 2013; McIntyre et al., 2009).