지역먹거리운동의 전략과 정책과제

Abstract

In today's global agri-food system, securing the safe food is getting very important. While there is growing interest in building local food systems as a way to assure food safety and improve sustainability of agriculture, the focus has been on producing locally grown products for large urban markets. Therefore, it is necessary to take notice of the local food movement which aims to reduce the physical and the social distance between the farmer and the consumer as one of the alternatives to today's global agri-food system. We should examine the meaning and direction of local food movement. Local food movements point to restore the self-reliance of the rural community and sustainable agriculture and to ensure the food safety through recovering the relation between agricultural production and food consumption which were broken off by the transnational agri-food conglomerates. To make develop local food movement, it is necessary to take account of some strategic elements. If we restrict the 'local' as an administrative district, we cannot promote thses movements efficiently because of the lack of business items. Therefore, we should consider 'local' as the social distance rather than physical distance. The local food movement should be pushed ahead to overcome the industrial, wasteful, and anti-circulation agriculture. It is also necessary to restore the food value chain based on the relationships and to systematize the policy and governance which support the local food movement.