Volume 3 (2025)

Sustainable food systems are essential for societies to be able to thrive within planetary boundaries. Multiple visions compete to cast light on the future of food production and consumption worldwide. However, it has become difficult for many to imagine pathways to just and sustainable food systems. To navigate this bloc, this essay explores food system sustainability from a degrowth perspective. Departing from socio-technical and socio-ecological readings of food systems’ unsustainability, degrowth builds on a critique of our dominant socio-economic system that pursues growth at all costs, resulting in human exploitation and environmental destruction. Thus the purpose of this essay is to sketch visions and pathways for post-growth food systems, stimulating readers to imagine and practice food systems – and other forms of society and economy more broadly – that ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

Skeptics of degrowth often place their hopes in clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines, to offset the consequences associated with a growing economy that demands equally high rates of energy. Rather than reduce economic production, as proponents of degrowth argue is necessary to mitigate social and environmental consequences, clean energy is held up as a perfect ‘business as usual’ solution that will allow economic growth to continue. Taking a degrowth perspective, this paper uses a supply chain analysis to de-fetishize the wind turbine as a source of immaterial clean energy. While affirming that renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels are necessary, they are insufficient from a degrowth perspective to offset the consequences of continuous growth. Instead, technological improvements, including wind power, must be complimented by policy that reduces economic impact overall.

‘Degrowth’ is increasingly relevant as a transdisciplinary research and political discourse field. This makes it a key journalistic topic, especially with regard to climate and economic policy. Ultimately, media discourse shapes its political implementation, making examining this discourse relevant. This research analyses 389 articles from 27 different daily and weekly newspapers and political magazines using critical discourse analysis (CDA); in turn, determining the patterns, trends, and influencing factors informing the media discourse on degrowth in leading British and German print media sources between 2015 and 2023. This discourse was analysed using general structural features such as publication frequencies, time trends, sections, and outlets. Then, the sentiment of articles concerning degrowth was analysed, considering variables of political orientations of the media, their section (e.g. ‘Economy’, ‘Environment’), the gender identities of the authors (derived from the names), and frequent writers' respective institutional backgrounds. Overall results showed the prevalence of degrowth discourse is growing, albeit predominantly in superficial terms. Degrowth-negative articles are most likely to be written by men in conservative media, especially in the ‘Economy’ sections. By contrast, positive articles are most likely to be written by women in progressive media, especially in the ‘Environment’ sections. In addition, within the first few years of this timeframe (2015-2019), there were more articles on degrowth featured in leading progressive print media than in their leading conservative print media counterparts. However, from 2020 onwards leading, conservative print media dominated the discourse with degrowth-negative articles. In Germany, degrowth opponents in leadership positions at leading conservative print media outlets shape the degrowth discourse in the media landscape. This can be interpreted as a structural barrier to a positive media discourse on degrowth. In British outlets, there were fewer frequent writers on degrowth, which is a barrier at the agenda-setting level. In this article, the influence of mainstream economics, economic education, and cultural gender bias are discussed as possible causes for these results.

Drawing on Marx's previously unpublished research, Saitō argues for a radical rethinking of Marxist theory. The book critiques both green capitalism and state-led climate solutions, revealing how market mechanisms merely displace the contradictions of capital. Instead, Saitō advocates for degrowth communism through commons-based production, shortened work weeks, and worker cooperatives. These findings suggest that a revolutionary strategy of class war is more suitable to achieving social-ecological transformation rather than a reformist approach to markets and states.