3. Revisiting Food Studies from a Political Ecology Perspective: Lessons from Mediterranean Agri-Food Systems

In the collective imagination, Mediterranean agri-food systems are based on small farms that expand through high nature value (HNV) landscapes, where farmers use traditional and culturally specific practices to produce foodstuffs that are recognized globally as part of the famous Mediterranean diet. However, the actual dynamics of the Mediterranean agri-food system reveal a much more complex and diverse reality, with distinct socionatural configurations—from highly intensive vegetable production to extensive cereal farms—which do not fit the stereotype and are seldom analysed in an integrated fashion (see Ortiz-Miranda et al. 2013). Not only are these historical socio-ecological systems being bypassed, but Mediterranean dynamics have struggled to fit into European agrarian change and rural development paradigms developed in the Anglo-Saxon tradition (which are the main influence behind European Union policies). This difficulty has prompted an image of ‘delay’ in Mediterranean countries, either in adopting productivist pathways (e.g. increasing the size of agricultural holdings) or in developing an internal market for organic products or urban food policies.