Working Together to Build Cooperative Food Systems

he combined challenges of food insecurity, agriculture-related environmental decline, corporate concentration, and the decline of community resilience are being met by growing societal interest in developing more just and sustainable food systems. A recent emphasis on cooperation and innovative forms of collective action within the food movement invokes a community-centered approach to food provisioning where collective problem-solving and democracy take center place in the development agenda Cooperative alternative food networks are becoming powerful tools for community development and important vehicles for cultivating democratically controlled food systems at multiple scales. The papers in this special issue provide an important contribution to our understanding of the function, the challenges, and the potential of collective action in enabling more just and resilient food systems.