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Paper short abstract:

Representatively measures (Lima) and comparatively analyses (LatinAmerica) production and employment dimensions of the production network delivering 150000 food rations daily while building food production capabilities, reshaping urban food logistics and generating employment on food security claims

Paper long abstract:

Ollas Comunes is the Peruvian variety of a collective productive capability that arises when crises hit Latin America. Ollas Comunes emerged in Peru in the 1980s in the urban margins, mutated into a government-backed food program in the 2000s and re-emerged contentiously at the new urban margins in 2020. In each iteration, young women gather territorially and scale up a network that claims food rights for the poor and in doing so gather produce, build cooking and storage facilities and distribute hot-meals at a layered pricing scheme. They reduce costs by economies of scales mechanisms and redistributes costs and profits of food production. Organisers and cooks develop collective capabilities on food preparation, nutrition and safety food logistics, managerial skills, and political and advocacy skills. In their current iteration, organisers developed georeferenced auditing skills, urban farming skills and food recycling at the city level. Ollas Comunes was studied as subsidy from the poor to the poorest, as social non-for-profit enterprise, as women citizenship movement and bottom-up social policy. This paper delves into the production and employment dimensions of this production network delivering 150,000 food rations daily from 2020 up-to-date while building food production capabilities, reshaping urban food logistics and supply chains, and generating employment of heterogeneous quality (measured along three dimensions of dignity: earnings, respect and voice). This paper sketches the potential and limitations of a whole class of political productive enterprises for good job generation and food security.