22 July 2022

Food as a Commons

The Connecting the Commons Project was a collaboration of International Innovation Network, Right Livelihood College (Bangkok Campus), and Towards Organic Asia. The project aims to explore the importance of the “commons movement” for the future of Thailand and SE Asia Region, thus the project activity in 2022 are consisting of

1. Connecting the Commons- Data and Communication to keep the network alive by organizing “Food as a Commons” Focus Group Meeting to develop a collaboration among the partners.
2. Connecting the Commons- Community Research Development and Participatory Action Research to accumulate and co-create “lesson-learned knowledge” and experience, to illustrate the many aspects of communing by organizing a site visit to discuss the research question and plan with partners.
3. Connecting the Commons- Asia networking to identify opportunity for common collaboration in Southeast Asia by organizing the online meeting or forum on “food as a commons” in Southeast Asia, to share the experience and concern among the partners and discuss the future collaboration.

The “Food as a Commons” Focus Group Meeting was organized on 22 July 2022

The online meeting was arranged for big and small group discussion. The expected outcome of the meeting is a more concrete and practical form of collaboration with our Commons network that will eventually lead to the development of the body of knowledge, tools, and theoretical approach to the concept of “Foods as a Commons”.

The fist session, the project shared the find out and the collaboration plan from the previous meetings, referring to the literature review about concept of the commons.

• Self-organized social practices meeting needs in fair & inclusive ways
• Social life, Peer governance, and Provisioning
• Commoning to Scale Commons-public partnership

Free, Fair and Alive. The Insurgent Power of the Commons

by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (2019)

• How to de-commodifying food
• Food system & multiple commons
• Food citizenship

Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons (2018)

Revisiting the collaboration plan from “Food as a Commons” Focus Group Meeting #2, the results were presented into 3 groups.

The second session, participants joined the small group discussions, to develop the goal, the action plan (short, medium, and long term), and stakeholder analysis for concrete collaboration.

The results from the 3 groups – Food Connection, Food Data Tank, and Food Co-Space are:

• Connect the issues of the community with the other networks, consolidating the commons issues instead of the individual issues.
• Connect the producer with social entrepreneur as a case study, and work with consumer towards sustainable food system.
• Data Tank Online Platform on knowledge space, community food and seed bank, skills and tools sharing, and community research.

Create a community market in various forms (commons food hubs, commons food city, commons food sharing, commons food market) for learning, sharing experience, transferring local wisdom, preserve biodiversity, and etc.

Food Connection

Food Data Tank

Food Co-Space