Short food chains not only create a sense of community and of “living together” by building trust and social bonds, they also generate jobs and strengthen local economies. Yet despite these social and economic benefits, local food systems are threatened by transnational corporations gaining monopoly control over different links of the food chain and the modernist development agenda that encourages jobs in sectors other than food production.

This volume of RCC Perspectives offers insights into the motivations, benefits, and limitations of local food systems. It aims to shed light on the complexity of the debate while remaining unified by a single message: that where our food comes from and how it is produced matters.

Daniel Philippon looks at local food and how it coincides with Slow Food, given that Slow Food constitutes both a distinctive articulation of the local food movement and the closest thing to an institutional embodiment of that movement as we are likely to find.