scholarly journals New farmers and food policies in Canada

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 128-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Laforge ◽  
Ayla Fenton ◽  
Virginie Lavalée-Picard ◽  
Stéphane McLachlan
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Farming System ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Ecological Farming ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Status ◽  
Food Policies ◽  
New Farmers

As the demographics of farmers are shifting, the ways agricultural and food policies affect and influence the decision-making and behaviours of new farmers is also changing. At the same time, there is growing interest in contesting and rebuilding Canadian food systems to address environmental and social injustices. Many new farmers are interested in agro-ecological approaches to agriculture, including both ecological practices and community-based economies. This paper examined the findings of a national survey of 1,326 new farmers, to explore challenges and opportunities in the Canadian food and farming system, as well as the municipal, provincial, and federal policies that they recommended. We also examined which programs are serving new farmers best, and how these successes could be translated elsewhere. We found that an increasing number of new farmers are coming from non-farming backgrounds and are women, potentially challenging the status quo. In particular, respondents reported facing difficulties in accessing agricultural knowledge, and that available institutional resources may not be appropriate to new types of ecological farming practices. The most significant barriers concerned affordable land and financing their developing farms. Nevertheless, these new farmers are finding diverse ways to develop their livelihoods, potentially transforming Canadian agriculture. A national food policy that works with local and regional partners and that recognizes the changing realities of new farmers is a necessary first step in helping build a sustainable, healthy, just, and resilient food system in Canada.

Agricultural and Food Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Abiodun Elijah Obayelu ◽  
Simeon Olusola Ayansina
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Sustainable Food Systems ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Adequate Food ◽  
System Sustainability ◽  
Sustainable Food System

Policy plays significant role in defining the food system of any country, and a sustainable food system is necessary for food security. This chapter maps out the causal interactions between food systems, food security and policy, and the challenges in transition to a sustainable food system while respecting the rights of all people to have access to adequate food in Nigeria. Explicit, rigorous, and transparent literature search was undertaken and many articles were assessed and reviewed. Although the results established a mutual relationship between food system and food security, existing literature have widely failed to take interactions between food systems, food security and policy into account. While food production is used as an entry point to improving food system sustainability, the quest for food security are undermining transition towards sustainable food systems. It was found that without right policies in place, it may be difficult to have food systems that are sustainable and ensure food security. This chapter provides a useful contribution to policy, and research on transitions towards sustainable food system. Any policy intervention to address one part of the food systems will impact on other parts and will determine whether a country is food secure or not. Enabling policy environment is therefore essential in ensuring a sustainable food system and for the attainment of food security.

scholarly journals Demand-Side Food Policies for Public and Planetary Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 5924
Author(s):  
Elisabeth H.M. Temme ◽  
Reina E. Vellinga ◽  
Henri de Ruiter ◽  
Susanna Kugelberg ◽  
Mirjam van de Kamp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
Food Policies

Background: The current food system has major consequences for the environment and for human health. Alignment of the food policy areas of mitigating climate change and public health will ensure coherent and effective policy interventions for sustaining human health and the environment. This paper explores literature on demand-side policies that aim to reduce consumption of animal-based foods, increase plant-based foods, and reduce overconsumption. Methods: We searched for publications, published between January 2000 and December 2019, considering the above policy domains. Articles were distinguished for type of policy instrument, for topic via keywords and examples were given. Results: The majority of demand-side policies focus on preventing overweight and obesity, using all types of policy instruments including more forceful market-based policies. Hardly any examples of public policies explicitly aiming to lower animal-based foods consumption were found. Policies combining health and sustainability objectives are few and mainly of the information type. Discussion: Moving towards environmentally sustainable and healthy diets is challenging as the implemented demand-side policies focus largely on human health, and not yet on environmental outcomes, or on win-wins. Policies targeting foods from the health perspective can contribute to lower environmental impacts, by indicating suitable animal-based food replacers, and aiming at avoiding overconsumption of energy dense-nutrient poor foods. Preferred policies include a variety of instruments, including strong measures. Conclusions: Working solutions are available to ensure coherent and effective demand side food policies aligning public health and environmental aims. Implementation of aligned and effective policy packages is urgent and needed.

Global Food Policies

2018 ◽  
pp. 612-630
Author(s):  
Hilal Elver
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Food Policies ◽  
Current Impact ◽  
The Right ◽  
Global Food

In this chapter, global food policy is depicted as focusing on the elimination of hunger and improvement of food security for all persons while simultaneously satisfying their dietary needs and food preferences. This chapter provides a brief history ranging from late-nineteenth-century practices to the current impact of economic globalization on food systems. This is followed by a review of the current state of hunger and malnutrition, including the persistence of these despite major increases in global food production. Emphasis is placed on the need to develop food policies, including the right to food, using an interdisciplinary approach in the context of global studies. Such an approach calls attention to ethical and legal principles that affirm the right to sufficient and nutritious food. This understanding of political, economic, ecological, social, and cultural conditions will ensure the development of critical thinking with respect to the agenda of global food politics.

scholarly journals Social justice-oriented narratives in European urban food strategies: Bringing forward redistribution, recognition and representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara A. L. Smaal ◽  
Joost Dessein ◽  
Barend J. Wind ◽  
Elke Rogge
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Theory Of Justice

Abstract More and more cities develop urban food strategies (UFSs) to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation. In this paper, we discuss the findings of an exploratory document analysis of the social justice-oriented ambitions, motivations, current practices and policy trajectories articulated in sixteen European UFSs. We reflect on the food-related resource allocations, value patterns and decision rules these cities propose to alter and the target groups they propose to support, empower or include. Overall, we find that UFSs make little explicit reference to social justice and justice-oriented food concepts, such as food security, food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty. Nevertheless, the identified resources, services and target groups indicate that the three dimensions of Fraser are at the heart of many of the measures described. We argue that implicit, fragmentary and unspecified adoption of social justice in European UFSs is problematic, as it may hold back public consciousness, debate and collective action regarding food system inequalities and may be easily disregarded in policy budgeting, implementation and evaluation trajectories. As a path forward, we present our plans for the RE-ADJUSTool that would enable UFS stakeholders to reflect on how their UFS can incorporate social justice and who to involve in this pursuit.

scholarly journals How to guarantee food supply during pandemics? Rethinking local food systems from peri-urban strategic agents’ behaviour: The case study of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sònia Callau-Berenguer ◽  
Anna Roca-Torrent ◽  
Josep Montasell-Dorda ◽  
Sandra Ricart
Keyword(s):  
Food Supply ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Strategic Agents ◽  
Agricultural Areas

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a warning for the world’s current food system, especially in urban contexts with global food dependence. This article aims to analyse the food system behaviour of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (in the northeast of Spain) during the first stage of the pandemic by deepening the behaviour of different peri-urban agricultural areas in which local food supply is promoted. Semi-structured interviews to 11 entities and institutions located in the peri-urban area of the BMR based on its productive and management profile have been carried out from March to May 2020. The results obtained highlight the socio-economic, environmental, and health perspective of food supply during the pandemic. Main results show 1) shortcomings in the operation and logistics of the metropolitan food system; 2) the complicity between the local producer and the urban consumer through new sales and distribution initiatives, 3) the role of peri-urban agricultural areas for ensuring food supply and land preservation, and 4) the need to initiate cooperation and mutual aid activities between the different agents involved in the food system. Furthermore, agents underlined the need for rethinking the agroeconomic model to strengthening the producer-consumer nexus and promoting local food policy based on food sustainability, sovereignty, and governance.

scholarly journals Paradigm change and power in the world food system—Synthesis paper

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Matthew Gaudreau
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
World Food ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
System Synthesis ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

The articles by Friedmann, Koç and Wise draw out overarching issues in the world food system, offering complementary views of the relationship between the dominant model of the world food system and its myriad issues. This contribution uses the concept of transnational policy paradigms to illustrate the key tension between the status quo of food policy and emerging alternatives.

scholarly journals Mobilizing Networks and Relationships Through Indigenous Food Sovereignty: The Indigenous Food Circle’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northwestern Ontario

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Z. Levkoe ◽  
Jessica McLaughlin ◽  
Courtney Strutt
Keyword(s):  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Emergency Situation ◽  
Indigenous Leadership ◽  
Northwestern Ontario ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Settler Population

This paper explores the Indigenous Food Circle’s (IFC) response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Established in 2016, the IFC is an informal collaborative network of Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations that aims to support and develop the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to collaboratively address challenges and opportunities facing food systems and to ensure that food-related programming and policy meets the needs of the all communities. Its primary goals are to reduce Indigenous food insecurity, increase food self-determination, and establish meaningful relationships with the settler population through food. This community case study introduces the IFC and shares the strategies and initiatives that were used during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to address immediate needs and maintain a broader focus on Indigenous food sovereignty. The food related impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indigenous People and determining solutions cannot be understood in isolation from settler colonialism and the capitalist food system. Reflecting on the scholarly literature and the experiential learnings that emerged from these efforts, we argue that meaningful and impacting initiatives that aim to address Indigenous food insecurity during an emergency situation must be rooted in a decolonizing framework that centers meaningful relationships and Indigenous leadership.

(Re)establishing the Normal

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-59
Author(s):  
Yuson Jung
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
The Status ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Alternative Practices

In the dominant American discourse, alternative practices of consuming ethical foods are often positioned against cheap, highly processed, freely traded, and poor-quality industrially produced foods. This article discusses the different forms and meanings of “alternative” food practices and asks whether consuming organically and locally produced, or fairly traded, foods are the only “alternative” food practices that can claim moral authority and assert one’s ethical adherence. By examining the discourses and practices of everyday food provisioning among resource-constrained consumers in postsocialist Bulgaria and postindustrial Detroit, the article explores the meanings of “good” food, and suggests that “alternatives” do not always translate as foods that are exceptionally moral and pure owing to intrinsic superior values. These comparative case studies complicate a familiar, stereotypical dichotomy between a morally compromised global industrialized food system and an ethical alternative to the status quo that presumes moral purity. The meanings of “good” foods vary in different social and economic contexts, and “alternative” foods therefore can be those that have the power, or promise, to (re)establish a sense of “normal” provisioning opportunities. Recognizing these different forms and meanings of “alternatives” will allow us to envision future food production and consumption practices in more nuanced ways so that an industrialized food system and “alternative” food systems are not cast in mutually exclusive terms.

scholarly journals The importance of food systems and the environment for nutrition

2020 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Jessica Fanzo ◽  
Alexandra L Bellows ◽  
Marie L Spiker ◽  
Andrew L Thorne-Lyman ◽  
Martin W Bloem
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Local Food System ◽  
Nutrition Research ◽  
Global And Local

ABSTRACT Global and local food system transformation is necessary in order to ensure the delivery of healthy, safe, and nutritious foods in both sustainable and equitable ways. Food systems are complex entities that affect diets, human health, and a range of other outcomes including economic growth, natural resource and environmental resiliency, and sociocultural factors. However, food systems contribute to and are vulnerable to ongoing climate and environmental changes that threaten their sustainability. Although there has been increased focus on this topic in recent years, many gaps in our knowledge persist on the relation between environmental factors, food systems, and nutritional outcomes. In this article, we summarize this emerging field and describe what innovative nutrition research is needed in order to bring about food policy changes in the era of climate disruption and environmental degradation.

scholarly journals Urban Food Strategy in the Making: Context, Conventions and Contestations

Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Mattia Andreola ◽  
Angelica Pianegonda ◽  
Sara Favargiotti ◽  
Francesca Forno
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
System Failures ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
Food Policy Councils ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
Depth Interviews

Contemporary food systems face several paradoxes regarding equity and sustainability. Considering food production—an issue that simultaneously affects both the supply (production) and demand (consumption) sides—several cities have begun to implement new strategies, called Urban Food Policies. These approaches aim to address the various challenges presented by food system failures, while also involving the existing network of grassroot initiatives. For this reason, these have established Food Policy Councils, arenas where institutions can engage with supply chain actors and food activists, deciding through the processes of participatory democracy their Urban Food Strategies. This article investigates the evolution of a new Urban Food Strategy in a middle-sized Italian town, Trento. Despite a growing number of case studies discussing the promises and problematic aspects of UFS, empirical research and analysis tend to overlook the role of the context in which these processes are embedded and how the system of political, economic, cultural, and environmental opportunities weigh upon the success of these policies. The paper draws upon a multi-method qualitative approach combining in-depth interviews, document analysis, and direct observations of the construction process of an Urban Food Strategy for the city of Trento.

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