Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 crisis, as well as the Ukraine crisis, have affected significantly the food chains in Turkey. This study focuses on food collectives in Ankara, exploring the alternative tools and strategies they have developed to create sustainable food chains.

Paper long abstract:

In the last thirty years, the agricultural sector in Turkey had massive transformations. In line with a neoliberal transformation that globally impacted the food chain, Turkey switched to the production of cash crops and increased its dependence on global markets for most of its staple food. The imposition of market-oriented farming contributed to massive rural-urban migration and further increased the need to import staple food that used to be abundantly produced in Turkey. In such a context, COVID – 19 crisis and the global raise of food prices that followed by the Ukraine crisis had a deep impact on the food chains in Turkey – especially in big cities - and are leading to reflections on sustainable revisions of the food chains. This paper explores the experience of food collectives all located in the urban area of Ankara. In the last 10 years, these collectives developed and implemented alternative tools and strategies to create sustainable food chains in the urban area of Ankara. We have been conducting ethnographic research about these collectives, with whom we are also directly involved in the activities of division and distribution of the food since June 2022. Sustainability among these grassroots movement is framed as part of a broader political alternative they aim to create against the policies of the government. The presentation will critically assess how the idea of sustainability is developed in these social realities and what kind of impact can have in the political landscape of the urban area of Ankara.