The Accessibility Working Group is cooperating with other organisations at different levels. At local level, MIRAMAP members (AMAP groups and local AMAP networks) are building partnerships with local public or private social structures, including community centers, local family allowance funds, local authorities, anti-poverty organisations and alternative agriculture partners also engaged in the fight against food insecurity. At national level, the MIRAMAP is a member of the Collectif pour une Sécurité Sociale de l’Alimentation (SSA), the collective for a Social Security for Food (https://securite-sociale-alimentation.org/).

At the level of the MIRAMAP, an agreement has been found with the Ministry of Social Cohesion within the framework of our research-action and spin-off programme: the network is now receiving subsidies from this Ministry for its two year-programme on accessibility.

The majority of anti-poverty organisations still support the food donation system (food banks and charities), whereas we MIRAMAP are trying to build sustainable alternatives to this system! This is a major challenge to collaboration. For example, the idea to fight food waste by giving left-overs to the people in a situation of poverty can be questioned. Why don’t we havearen’t there national political strategies to really fight against poverty and enable access to chosen food to everyone? And why are the majority of farmers still subjected to this food production system?  

With alternative food systems partners, we MIRAMAP call this kind of food “gift” a “food violence” (“Violence Alimentaire”, cf Bénédicte Bonzi PhD thesis). Even if it Whilst this can may be necessary in emergency situations (of course we don’t want people to starve), it is far away from food democracy, all the more that it has now become structural and not conjunctural anymore. Issues related to food donation (food banks and charities) are described in the following webinar series report. 

What could be done: the AMAP model should be better understood by social partners  (local public or private social structures, including community centers, local family allowance funds, anti-poverty organizations) and should receive more institutional support. The challenges of helping citizens in a situation of poverty to really settle down by improving their income, accommodation, social issues… should also be part of the objectives of those involved in the fight against poverty. But there is still a long way to go!

The initiative is closely linked to territorial food systems: in the AMAP and AMAP networks, the programs to support the development of ‘two-way solidarity’ baskets are sometimes partly supported by public funding and are part of local, territorial or national policies that aim to develop accessibility to quality food.

The WG developed a series of 8 webinars to foster exchanges between practitioners, combined with a major input from Food Justice experts (see links to the recorded webinars below). This way, we have tackled the following main topics while discussing with potential partner networks.