Concluding Remarks

The conclusions drawn from the analysis presented in this book underscore the potential of the food commons approach to catalyze a paradigmatic shift in EU agri-food policymaking toward sustainability. Despite a historical trend toward increasingly comprehensive policies, the recent alignment of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with the Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy signals a milestone in acknowledging the need for a paradigmatic change in the way the food system’s concepts, activities, and actors are framed. The food commons discourse offers a compelling framework to restructure the unsustainable industrial food system by condemning its harmful impacts and proposing proactive alternatives. Embracing the food commons concept entails reframing food not merely as a commodity but as a multidimensional entity, essential for human rights, public goods provision, and ecological sustainability, among others. In fact, by rebalancing governance dynamics among the state, market, and civil society, the food commons model promotes grassroots initiatives and collective actions for sustainable food systems. At the microlevel, it empowers individuals to become active participants in shaping ecological and socially inclusive food systems. The food commons discourse aligns with key objectives outlined in the Farm to Fork Strategy, offering solutions to enhance organic farming, short supply chains, sustainable consumption, and food waste reduction. However, significant challenges remain in mainstreaming the food commons narrative within EU policymaking and societal consciousness. This is particularly evident in relation to the new CAP 2023–2027 economic objectives, which are still anchored to a productivist and market-oriented approach that is intrinsically incompatible with the food commons approach. For these reasons, overcoming these hurdles requires coordinated efforts to harmonize diverse food commons initiatives at the EU level, enhance recognition by public authorities, and combat the misuse of the “commons” terminology. By raising awareness of this reality at the EU decision-making level, it is hoped that the enhanced flexibility, decentralization, and subsidiarity entailed by the new delivery model of the CAP could pave the way for greater integration of the commons’ environmental potential into the national strategic plans (NSPs) by the Member States, especially considering the ambitious and stringent targets set by the Green Deal for the ecological restoration of the European continent. These final pages are devoted to drawing some conclusive and hopefully proactive remarks from the analysis carried out in this book. Bringing back the central research question at the core of this work, could the food commons constitute a valid conceptual framework for a paradigmatic shift of the EU agri-food policymaking? Or, more precisely, could the food commons approach help reframe the EU agri-food and agri-environmental policymaking by steering it toward a more sustainable outlook, especially in consideration of the targets expressed by the incoming CAP 2023–2027 and the Farm to Fork Strategy synergy?