Citizens as Partners in Food System Transformation: Scaling Deliberative Democracy for Sustainable Food Systems
Published in DEMETRA (Horizon Europe), Policy Brief No. 1, 2026
Recommended citation: Hofer, C. (2026). Citizens as Partners in Food System Transformation: Scaling Deliberative Democracy for Sustainable Food Systems. DEMETRA Policy Brief No. 1. Horizon Europe DEMETRA project (Grant Agreement No. 101132286). https://www.qmul.ac.uk/demetra/media/demetra/outputs/DEMETRA-Policy-brief-No1.pdf
Sole-authored policy brief for the Horizon Europe project DEMETRA, addressed to policymakers, public administrations, and practitioners.
The brief sets out six priority actions for embedding deliberative participatory processes in food and sustainability policy, from integrating deliberation into existing public programmes and protecting small producers, to establishing permanent deliberative structures and closing the gaps in the evidence base. It distils DEMETRA’s conceptual, empirical, and organisational research strands, which include a review of 189 existing surveys covering 1,476 question items on sustainability topics, and more than 100 organisational interviews across the project’s seven European cities.