Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe

Evaluating public participation in Denmark’s water councils: How policy design and boundary judgements affect water governance!

Under the Water Framework Directive, public participation was identified as a key part of water planning. This caused a paradigm shift in Danish water planning. Water councils in River Basin Districts were established to provide public input on how to improve the physical conditions in streams. A study of the water councils found that Denmark has complied with the requirements of making background information available to the public and ensuring consultation. The facilitation of the councils’ processes has worked well. However, while they are presented as the ‘new governance option’ in Danish water planning, this does not accord with reality. The water council processes are limited in scope and controlled by the central government. Their process can be better characterized as expanded stakeholder consultation, officially part of the policy process but involving very little active public involvement. The article concludes by indicating the consequences for participation and collaborative innovation.

“‘Organics’ are good, but we don’t know exactly what the term means!” Trust and Knowledge in Organic Consumption

This article explores consumer trust in organics and investigates the relationship between credibility, trust, and knowledge in a mixed-method study incorporating a survey, a focus group, and individual interviews. Danish consumers show a high level of systemic trust in the organic label, which can be trumped by personal trust. Consumers wanting to know more about organics are mainly those who already know a lot, while others show a deliberate lack of knowledge. Furthermore, it is argued that knowledge does not lead to trust—trust replaces knowledge, and consumers largely seek confirmation of their views when they have already made up their minds about organics.

It’s never too late to join the revolution! – Enabling new modes of production in the contemporary Danish food system

ABSTRACT The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.