1.1. Overview

Transforming Food Labour for Just Food Futures

Towards just food production in the green transition: law and the making of sustainable labour relations from below

This is a Veni project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for the period 2024-2027. The project’s primary focus is on the question of labour in food system transformations. What happens with agricultural labour in the pursuit of more sustainable ways of producing, distributing and consuming food? The project is based on a close collaboration between researchers and agroecological farmers and farmworkers. The research questions will evolve as the collaborative inquiry with farmers and farmworkers unfolds. The project has two preliminary starting points: 

Transformative Labour Practices in Food Production

First, the project seeks to advance the understanding of how agroecology and similar approaches to sustainable food production, distribution and consumption give rise to different labour practices and understanding of labour in farming. Through studying emerging labour practices in agroecology and related approaches, the goal is together with farmers and farmworkers to work out a broader vision about how food labour also can be transformed in a sustainable food system transformation. Second, while new understandings of farm labour in line with agroecology have emerged, they do not always necessarily translate into improved wellbeing of and working conditions for farmers and farmworkers. Structural issues that generate precariousness on agroecological farms persist. The project also seeks in collaboration with farmers and farmworkers to map the variety of issues that negatively affect farm labour and collectively seek for solutions that will improve the labour side of an aspired agroecological food system transformation.

Transformative Legal Change

After identifying transformative labour practices and visions as well as problems that working people face, the second goal is together with agroecological farmers, farmworkers, civil society and involved policy makers in the Netherlands and at EU level to understand what systemic legal changes are needed to sustain the labour transformations that are currently pursued by different farmer and farmworker collectives on the ground.

Project Background

Emerging green transition agendas addressing the future of food systems have mainly focused on ‘food security’ and environmental concerns. Given the entanglement between labour and environment, on the one hand, and the exploitative working conditions that have long characterised food systems (particularly in relation to migrant and racialised labour in food systems), on the other hand, no transition of food systems can be just without including the question of sustainable labour. Focusing on the Netherlands, the project draws attention to the variety of existing practices and political visions on the ground that already engage with various forms of sustainable labour and show alternative pathways. However the overall political economy of food production and its underlying legal frameworks often stand in the way of such practices and visions. The ambition of the project is to collectively generate knowledge that would help change this.

A crucial aspect of the project is that it brings together practices and visions of sustainable labour advanced by communities of small-scale sustainable food producers such as agroecological farmers with visions and struggles coming from traditional trade unions and food workers (migrant food workers in particular) in the food industry. The project strives to overcome the fallacy of looking at these struggles separately, but bring them together as a potential collective for joint learning and transformation, generating shared insight of how law can be used to support good labour and overall sustainable food governance from below.

1.2 Current stage

This is a socio-legal project that relies on participatory methodology consisting of two main components. First, it relies on data from participatory interviews conducted with agroecological farmers in the Netherlands, farmworkers and relevant policy makers and civil society representatives in the Netherlands and at EU level. Second, it draws on ethnographic work with agroecological farmers to identify and understand agroecological labour practices as well as issues of precariousness on selected farms and legal obstacles that such practices are currently facing. 

The current stage of the project is the preparation of field work. Most of the field work will be carried out in the course of 2025. 

1.3 Related projects

There are two additional projects related to the main NWO-funded project. 

Food System Transformation in South Africa is a PhD project conducted under the supervision of the PI by doctoral researcher Yevai Gerber 2024-2028. The project is focused on exploring the potential of private law to foster a more sustainable food system guided by principles of African philosophy, such as Ubuntu.

Transformative Food Labour Network funded through the Research Strategic Investment Fund for the period 2024-2025 is an interdisciplinary network of academics, farmers, farmworkers, civil society and policy makers that explores the role of law in food systems transformation at national and EU level, specifically focusing on the role of law in sustaining transformative labour practices in food production and distribution.

Researchers involved 

Dr Vladimir Bogoeski, Principle Investigator (PI)

I am Assistant Professor in European Private Law at the Amsterdam Law School, and the PI of the NWO-funded Veni Project “Towards just food production in the green transition: law and the making of sustainable labour relations from below”. My research has focused on studying how law structures work relations, focusing on migrant work in food systems and work in alternative food systems. I am generally interested in critical approaches to law, law and political economy, participatory action research (PAR), organising and social movements. I hold a doctorate from the Hertie School in Berlin and completed the Doctoral Programme “Unity and Difference in the European Legal Area” at the Humboldt University European Law School. Prior to my doctoral studies, I have spent three years working with the German Trade Union Confederation, counselling and assisting migrant workers with the Fair Mobility Project. 

Contact: v.bogoeski@uva.nl

Yevai Gerber, PhD Researcher

I am currently involved with a project that is exploring the role of private law in food systems transformation in South Africa. My research, under supervision by Dr Vladimir Bogoeski, is focused on exploring the potential of private law to foster a more sustainable food system guided by principles of African philosophy, such as Ubuntu. I hold a master's degree in International Business Law focused on climate change and corporations (2022). In addition, I have previously worked on various research projects that were focused on animal law in South Africa.

Simona Yordanova, Research Assistant

I am an LL.M European Private Law Candidate at the University of Amsterdam with a particular interest in European and national law-making, regulatory compliance, legal and interdisciplinary research. I hold a BA degree in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam, where I specialised in European Union law. 

Visiting Researchers affiliated with the project

Pietro Mattioli

Pietro Mattioli is a Ph.D. candidate with the ERC project EUDAIMONIA at the University of Liège, Belgium. Pietro’s PhD project focuses on food safety regulation under EU law. Pietro was previously a Blue Book trainee at the Legal Affairs Unit of DG SANTE at the European Commission and holds an LL.M. from KU Leuven.

Research interns, Academic Excellence Track: 

• Jemima Hodgson (AcET 2023/24)
• Sophie Bolger (AcET 2023/24)

• Alberto Alonso Fradejas – Assistant Professor in Rural Sociology, Wageningen University
• Alessandra Arcuri – Professor of International Economic Law, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Adam Calo – Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics, Radboud University
• Matt Canfield – Assistant Professor, Leiden University
• Lorenzo Cotula – International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
• Jessica Duncan – Associate Professor in the Politics of Food Systems Transformations, Wageningen University
• Michael Fakhri – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Associate Professor of Law, University of Oregon
• Giuseppe Feola – Associate Professor of Social Change for Sustainability, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University
• Tomaso Ferrando – Associate Research Professor, University of Antwerp
• Katie Sandwell – Transnational Institute (TNI)
• Vasanthi Venkatesh – Associate Professor in Law, Land, and Local Economies, University of Windsor
• Ania Zbyszewska – Associate Professor in Law and Work, Carleton University

Agroecology Knowledge Collective 

The PI is a member of the Agroecology Knowledge Collective which is part of the Dutch Agroecology Network. The collective of researchers is committed to strengthening agroecology in the Netherlands (and beyond) by working and learning together. It assists both the Agroecology Network as a whole and its member organizations and working groups with co-creating knowledge and resources to support their goals, ambitions and concrete actions. The importance of context-specific knowledge and knowledge from farmer practice and farmer-to-farmer exchanges are central here, as is conducting knowledge dialogues with other stakeholders to arrive at collective actions. For further information see the website

Forthcoming

Forthcoming

Forthcoming