Toward inclusive responsibility

Abstract This chapter distills six key themes from the preceding chapters on ways forward toward a sustainable and responsible food and agriculture system. These themes reflect the need for more holistic paradigms and mindsets that can deal with complexity; narratives of abundance rather than scarcity; ecological and multifunctional paradigms of agriculture; decentralizing power in the food and economic systems; diets that promote human and planetary health; and powerful social movements and civil society. These themes then inform the elaboration of the concept of “inclusive responsibility” in relation to our food and agriculture system. Inclusive responsibility reflects a move toward an alternative ethical framework based on the core values of inclusion, interdependence, pluralism, justice, equity, and care, and encompasses the six foregoing themes. Inclusive responsibility can be integrated and applied at every level of the food and agriculture system, from local to global, from production to consumption, and from individual to community and society. The chapter concludes by offering a possible vision for an inclusively responsible food and agriculture system built on the agriculture paradigm of “Conservation Agriculture-Based Veganic Agroecology.”