In this new paper for our autumn series of articles, Researcher Network member, John Andrews, explores how we should understand the changes we see around us in the food system. Do we need radical change or business as usual?
As the popularity of veganism and plant-based diets continues to increase and the range and availability of plant-based and vegan foods continues to expand, are we witnessing the beginnings of system-wide transformational change, or something much more limited? And what part is veganism playing in these processes of change? These and related questions are at the heart of the doctoral research on which I am about to embark at the University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School on its Science, Technology and Innovation Policy programme. In this article, I set out the background and context for my work and explain the contours of the research I will be doing.
Food and sustainability transitions
The food system is made up of a wide variety of actors with all sorts of relationships to one another, spread across different types of spaces, involving political, cultural, economic and other factors. Food has pronounced implications for the environment, public health, social justice and, of course, the lives and deaths of countless non-human animals. Researchers have described this system in many ways, with depictions ranging from complex webs of interconnected factors to highly stylised models of specific component parts. Work ranges from sweeping global analyses of the political economy of food, through to detailed case studies of individual food commodities and highly localised studies of alternative food scenes.
One research orientation that is increasingly used to study food is that of sustainability transitions. Sustainability transitions research aims to understand the “long-term, multi-dimensional, and fundamental transformation processes through which established socio-technical systems shift to more sustainable modes of production and consumption”, through the analysis of “the institutional, organizational, technical, social, and political aspects” of those processes (Markard et al., 2012: 959). This research is multidisciplinary, drawing on fields such as evolutionary economics and the sociology of technology to understand how change does (or does not) occur within socio-technical systems such as food, energy and transport.
For transitions researchers, the starting point is often the recognition that the dominant ways of doing things within socio-technical systems are locked-in as a result of historical path dependencies, which makes them difficult to change. But socio-technical change evidently does occur over time as various pressures come to bear on the existing ways of doing things, leading to changes in technologies, regulation, culture and user practices (Markard et al., 2012). Transitions researchers are interested to understand how and why these things change. What sorts of pressures lead to change? What do different sorts of actors do in response to those pressures? How do different people or groups of people – such as businesses, non-governmental organisations, policy-makers or social movements – interact as part of those responses? How can policy help or hinder change? How do all these factors need to come together to tackle the lock-ins that characterise the dominant socio-technical regimes?
Sustainability transitions frameworks thus provide researchers with a variety of tools, concepts, guiding questions and a related body of empirical research on which to draw to understand the processes of socio-technical change. In my research, I will be applying this framework to the food system to understand the potential emergence of a plant-based or vegan food regime. In particular, I will be focusing on how social movements contribute to transition processes by exploring the evolving place of veganism as a social movement and form of food activism within ongoing processes of food systems change.
Transitions, social movements and veganism
Transitions research recognises that social movements can influence the politics of transitions by generating support for, or opposition to, change, by incubating innovations or by influencing broader culture. However, social movements remain relatively underexplored in the literature and many questions remain around their roles in transition processes, such as their potential role in destabilising dominant regimes and their place in the governance and politics of change (Köhler et al., 2019: 10–11). And although there is an emerging literature exploring alternative proteins and the protein transition (i.e. dietary transitions away from conventionally raised meat, dairy or fish products towards novel plant-based or cell-based foods), to my knowledge there is not yet much published research that examines the place of veganism as a movement in the context of these socio-technical changes.
What makes this doubly interesting in the current environment is the way in which vegan activism within the food system seems to have evolved in recent years. The movement is diverse and multi-faceted, encompassing all manner of grassroots activism and various forms of social entrepreneurship. Even a cursory review of recent vegan activity within the food system indicates an expansion in its range and reach: numerous companies run by vegans are now household names, vegan campaigns such as Veganuary have gone global and there are even vegan venture capital firms looking to fund vegan start-ups. There are vegans organising direct action through secure messaging apps; vegans are exchanging fitness advice, cookery tips and memes online through websites like Reddit; vegan chefs are advising major supermarkets on their product ranges; vegan activists and influencers reach large audiences through social media; there are vegans working in the financial system to persuade investors to re-allocate capital to vegan start-ups; and vegans are working as lobbyists by engaging with policy-makers on issues such as food labelling and the regulation of novel foods. In short, there is plenty going on.
However, my sense is that this breadth of activity is not well understood within food systems research and, in general, veganism seems to be under-researched as a social movement or as a form of food activism. The literature provides little sense of the major actors in the movement, their visions of the future, their aims, strategies, internal tensions and conflicts, the ways in which activists engage with one another, or how they engage with other actors in the food system. One part of my research will seek to remedy this by exploring the nature of contemporary vegan food activism – who it involves, in what configurations, to what ends and with what internal variations.
Veganism and the food industry
I intend to focus my enquiry on how vegan food activism interacts with the mainstream food industry, given that vegan food has rapidly become big business. Numerous large companies have been involved in the development of plant-based proteins for decades and various industrial processing techniques for plant-based proteins have been used by these companies since at least the middle of the twentieth century. But although it is important not to overstate the novelty of industry interest in plant-based foods, it is nevertheless clear that there has been a step change in the nature and extent of this involvement from mainstream food businesses in the last few years, with more and more plant-based foods, produced using increasingly sophisticated techniques, appearing in supermarket aisles and food service venues. Major meat and dairy companies – such as Cargill, Tyson, JBS and Danone – are investing large sums in plant-based foods, as well as, in some cases, cellular agriculture. In fact, a recent research project in which I was involved at the University of Oxford has identified more than 150 instances of mainstream food producers investing in, or otherwise partnering with, alternative protein companies within the last five years alone.
For some commentators, the involvement of these enormous global companies does not bode well for the prospects of radical, transformative change within the food system. Caution around corporate involvement in the plant-based food boom is evident in work such as Clay et al. (2020), which argues that the recent growth of plant-based milk products is merely “palatable disruption” in a firmly neoliberal, consumerist mould. Lonkila and Kaljonen (2021) note recurring concerns in the literature on alternative proteins surrounding the role of Big Tech and biotechnology companies in relation to plant-based and cell-based proteins. For Howard et al. (2021), the apparent “rapid absorption” of plant-based foods by large firms is taken to show that these developments “pose little threat to business as usual”. Indeed, more broadly beyond plant-based foods, a sizeable body of scholarship demonstrates the challenges of achieving a more sustainable food system in the face of entrenched interests, path dependencies and lock-ins. A recurring theme of empirical work on alternative food niches is that they often fail to expand, or only contribute to minor incremental changes in the dominant food regime, while mainstream actors actively work to “marginalize or co-opt more radical innovations” (Gaitáin-Cremaschi et al., 2019: 5). In fact, this problem is so widely observed that some scholars of alternative food networks fundamentally question the ability of these networks to create change in the face of powerful food interests, which are adept at neutralising or adapting challenges to their dominant positions (e.g. Bonanno and Wolf, 2018; Busch, 2018).
For some activists, however, engaging with industry incumbents is represented as a necessity: large food companies know how to manufacture, distribute and market food, and their knowledge, relationships and infrastructure can be (and indeed should be) leveraged to grow the market for vegan alternatives more quickly than would be the case if vegan companies tried to go it alone. A prime example of this type of view can be found in Tobias Leenaert’s writing, in which he advocates for vegans to see some incumbent food companies – including meat and dairy companies – as “potential allies” (Leenaert, 2017: 89); this attitude is implicit (and indeed often explicit) in the commentary and work of many other actors. To some extent, this invites us to invert the co-optation narrative: rather than large food companies co-opting veganism, vegan food activists are represented as co-opting large food companies into growing the market for vegan food by exploiting the profit motive.
So what is really going on? Will veganism be co-opted by incumbent interests within the food system? Has such a co-optation already occurred? Or are there realistic prospects of contemporary vegan food activism delivering far-reaching change? Of course, we need not buy into this kind of binary as though there are only two possible outcomes. As Pel (2016) points out, we should expect competing interests and movements to interact in complex, ambiguous ways in pursuit of their own ends and we should recognise that what may look like the capture of a movement at one moment in time may turn into more significant change down the line. For critics of corporate capitalism, veganism might appear to have been co-opted as merely another profitable consumer lifestyle niche, whereas for some advocates of veganism the prospects for positive change have perhaps never appeared so good as they are today. Whichever way things pan out, we can be sure that for the foreseeable future vegans and non-vegans alike will continue to push different forms of change as the inevitable “jostling for influence” continues between those with differing visions of sustainable food futures (Lang and Mason, 2018: 338).
To return to my research project with the foregoing discussion in mind, my work will be a case study of what Köhler et al. (2019: 18) describe as “system innovation in-the-making” and my research will follow “situated actors in their negotiation of contested and uncertain attempts at system innovation”. Studying veganism as a social movement in the context of ongoing socio-technical change in the food system will show not only how social movements work to destabilise existing ways of doing things, but also how businesses respond, how both sets of actors interact to pursue their own ends, and what this might entail for the long-term sustainability of the food system. In doing so, I am hopeful that my research will help those with an interest in sustainable food systems to understand the dynamics of these complex processes of change and to work better and more effectively to make that change as good as possible for people, for the planet, and for the innumerable non-human animals with which we share it.
If you are interested in the work I have outlined here, please feel free to contact me at the University of Manchester at john.andrews-2[at]postgrad.manchester.ac[dot]uk
References
Bonanno, A. and Wolf, S.A. (2018) Conclusions: the contradictions of resistance to neoliberal agrifood. In: Bonanno, A. and Wolf, S.A. (eds) Resistance to the Neoliberal Agri-Food Regime: A Critical Analysis. Oxford: Routledge, 210–227.
Busch, L. (2018) Is resistance futile? How global agri-food attempts to co-opt the alternatives. In: Bonanno, A. and Wolf, S.A. (eds) Resistance to the Neoliberal Agri-Food Regime: A Critical Analysis. Oxford: Routledge, 21–34.
Clay, N., Sexton, A.E., Garnett, T. and Lorimer, J. (2020) Palatable disruption: the politics of plant milk. Agriculture and Human Values, 37, 945–962.
Gaitán-Cremaschi, D., Klerkx, L., Duncan, J., Trienekens, J.H., Huenchuleo, C., Dogliotti, S., Contesse, M.E. and Rossing, W.A.H. (2019) Characterizing diversity of food systems in view of sustainability transitions. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 39, 1–22.
Howard, P.H., Ajena, F., Yamaoka, M. and Clarke, A. (2021) “Protein” industry convergence and its implications for resilient and equitable food systems. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 5.
Köhler, J., Geels, F.W., Kern, F., Markard, J., Onsongo, E., Wieczorek, A., Alkemade, F., Avelino, F., Bergek, A., Boons, F., Fünfschilling, L., Hess, D., Holtz, G., Hyysalo, S., Jenkins, K., Kivimaa, P., Martiskainen, M., McMeekin, A., Mühlemeier, M.S., Nykvist, B., Pel, B., Raven, R., Rohracher, H., Sandén, B., Schot, J., Sovacool, B., Turnheim, B., Welch, D. and Wells, P. (2019) An agenda for sustainability transitions research: state of the art and future directions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 31, 1–32.
Lang, T. and Mason, P (2018) Sustainable diet policy development: implications of multi-criteria and other approaches, 2008–2017. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 77, 331–346.
Leenaert, T. (2017) How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach, New York: Lantern Books.
Lonkila, A. and Kaljonen, M. (2021) Promises of meat and milk alternatives: an integrative literature review on emergent research themes. Agriculture and Human Values, 38, 625–639.
Markard, J., Raven, R. and Truffer, B. (2012) Sustainability transitions: an emerging field of research and its prospects. Research Policy, 41, 955–967.
Pel, B. (2016) Trojan horses in transitions: a dialectical perspective on innovation ‘capture’. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 18, 673–691.
The views expressed by our Research News contributors are not necessarily the views of The Vegan Society.
