1. What is Food Citizenship?

Simply put a Food Citizen is someone “who wants to, can and does shape the food system for the better, and encourages others to do the same”. (source: New Citizenship Project - www.newcitizenship.org.uk/)

Why is this concept important for driving change in food systems? Because it both empowers and places responsibility on all of us to make change happen. For change to happen, we as individual need to feel like our actions and choices have an impact and meaning in the food system – and we need to want to use that power. We also need to perceive that things – at least to some extent – happen in the food system because of our choices, and change won’t happen unless we actively work towards it – so we have a responsibility to use our power.

While we are all innately Food Citizens, we may not all have claimed our citizenship and taken it to active use. What is needed in order to do that, is a change in mindset. Food Citizenship as a concept makes us active members of the food system and allows us to take ownership. Food systems cease to be something that someone else dictates from somewhere else and start to become our communities that are constructed here and now by us.