Opportunities and Challenges of Developing a Culinary Food Studies Bachelor’s Degree

Although Food Studies has been acknowledged as a distinctive field in Canada for almost two decades, until now there has not been an undergraduate degree in Food Studies in this country. This is changing with the development of Canada’s first Honours Bachelor’s Degree in Food Studies (BFS) at [Ontario College], set to launch in September 2021. This field report describes the process, opportunities, and challenges of developing a Food Studies degree at an Ontario college. It explores the unique openings at the intersection of food studies education and applied practical skills training for work in the food sector. In particular, we ask: What can food studies bring to culinary education? And, what can culinary education bring to food studies? We content that food studies can lend to a more transformative culinary education focused on social, cultural, political, and environmental influences in the food system. Simultaneously, culinary education brings distinct insights into operationalization within the food sector which provide new openings for applied research. We demonstrate the need for this new collaboration and knowledge as a necessity of a turbulent world.

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Networks, Conventions, and Regions: Theorizing ‘Worlds of Food’

Worlds of Food ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199271580.003.0009 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

Kevin Morgan ◽

Terry Marsden ◽

Jonathan Murdoch

Keyword(s):

Cultural Context ◽

Analytical Approach ◽

Food System ◽

Food Studies ◽

Actor Network Theory ◽

Food Sector ◽

System P ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Conventions Theory ◽

Global Food

Food is a long-standing productive activity which carries a number of different production and consumption attributes. However, much of the recent literature focuses on a limited number of such attributes—namely, the transformation of the food chain and, more in general, of production sites. In particular, much attention has been paid to globalization, the growing power of transnational corporations and their relentless exploitation of nature. In this chapter we argue that this kind of focus is not alone sufficient to account for the growing complexity of contemporary agri-food geography. Growing concerns about food safety and nutrition are leading many consumers in advanced capitalist countries to demand quality products that are embedded in regional ecologies and cultures. This is creating an alternative geography of food, based on ecological food chains and on a new attention to places and natures, that, as we will see in Ch. 3, reveals a very different mosaic of productivity—one that contrasts in important respects with the dominant distribution of productive activities so apparent in the global food sector (Gilg and Battershill, 1998; Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1998). Our aim is to develop an analytical approach that can aid our understanding of this new agri-food geography and can introduce a greater appreciation of the complexity of the contemporary food sector. To this end, we begin by considering work on the globalization of the food sector and by showing that recent analyses have usefully uncovered some of the key motive forces driving this process—most notably the desire by industrial capitals both to ‘outflank’ the biological systems and to disembed food from a traditional regional cultural context of production and consumption. After considering the recent assertion of regionalized quality (which can be seen as a response to the outflanking manoeuvres inherent in industrialization), we examine approaches such as political economy, actor–network theory, and conventions theory that have made significant in-roads into agri-food studies and have revealed differing aspects of the modern food system.

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Food System Resilience during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Roman Solidarity Purchasing Groups

Agriculture ◽

10.3390/agriculture11020156 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 156

Author(s):

Simona Tarra ◽

Giampiero Mazzocchi ◽

Davide Marino

Keyword(s):

Food Environment ◽

Food Production ◽

Food System ◽

Limited Extent ◽

Important Food ◽

Food Sector ◽

Supply Channel ◽

Production And Distribution ◽

System Resilience ◽

Depth Interviews

The restriction measures linked to the COVID-19 shock suddenly highlighted the vulnerability of most socioeconomic systems, including the food sector. In a context in which the limitation to the movement of people and goods has put the longer and more structured supply chains in serious difficulty, many experiences and initiatives have emerged as viable alternatives. The aim of the research was to understand if and how the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPG) of Rome have contributed to the resilience of the food system of the metropolitan city during the lockdown. The research was based on the results of a questionnaire administered to the SPGs of Rome during the first period of the pandemic (April–July 2020), enriched by some in-depth interviews carried out by the authors. What emerged was that, despite the limited extent in terms of products conveyed within the whole food system, the SPGs represented an important food supply channel during the lockdown period, for two main reasons: a greater flexibility and agility in moving and in handling goods and the possibility of remunerating local farms, contributing to the resilience of the local agri-food fabric. The analysis of the results confirms the strong vitality of such Food Movements in Rome and, at the same time, allows for the identification of a series of interventions that the institutions could adopt to favor the spread of a food environment more compatible with more sustainable and fairer forms of food production and distribution.

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Simple learning tools to improve clinical laboratory practical skills training

African Journal of Health Professions Education ◽

10.7196/ajhpe.198 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 46

Author(s):

B Taye

Keyword(s):

Clinical Laboratory ◽

Skills Training ◽

Practical Skills ◽

Learning Tools

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Corporate governance and firm performance within the Russian agri-food sector: does ownership structure matter?

International Food and Agribusiness Management Review ◽

10.22434/ifamr2019.0184 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Alisher Tleubayev ◽

Ihtiyor Bobojonov ◽

Taras Gagalyuk ◽

Emma García Meca ◽

Thomas Glauben

Keyword(s):

Firm Performance ◽

Ownership Structure ◽

Food System ◽

Vital Role ◽

Ownership Concentration ◽

Food Sector ◽

Return On Assets ◽

Peak Point ◽

Return On Sales ◽

The Impact

This article provides pioneering empirical evidence on the ownership structure and firm performance relationship for the case of corporate agri-food companies in Russia. While Russia plays a vital role in the global agri-food system, its domestic agri-food production is evidently dominated by a small number of corporate enterprises, which are in turn characterized by high ownership concentration. We employ unique panel data obtained from 203 companies for the years between 2012 and 2017. A random effects model was used to analyze the impacts of ownership concentration and ownership identity on the firms’ financial performance, measured by return on assets and return on sales. Our results indicate an inverse U-shaped association between ownership concentration and firm performance, with average level of ownership concentration found to be on the descending range of the inverse U-shaped curve. Moreover, we observe a similar quadratic relationship between ownership concentration by government and directors and firm performance. On average, ownership by directors was found to be on the ascending range and below the peak point, suggesting a potential for further performance improvement, while the impact of agroholding ownership was found to be linear and positive.

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Supply chain issues in SME food sector: a systematic review

Journal of Advances in Management Research ◽

10.1108/jamr-02-2019-0010 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 19-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Arun Jose ◽

PrasannaVenkatesan Shanmugam

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Product Quality ◽

Food Supply ◽

Food System ◽

Ghg Emission ◽

Major Research ◽

Food Sector ◽

Food Supply Chain ◽

Content Type ◽

Research Themes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant supply chain issues in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) food industry. The objectives are to identify the major themes and the dynamic evolution of SME food supply chain (FSC) issues, the current research trends, the different modelling approaches used in SME FSC, and the most addressed SME food sector. Design/methodology/approach In all, 3,733 published articles from 2002 to 2018 in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science database were collected, from which 1,091 articles were shortlisted for the review. The authors used bibliographic coupling combined with co-word analysis to identify the historical relations of the research themes that emerged during the periods 2002–2014 and 2002–2018. Findings This research identified five major research themes such as production and distribution in alternative food networks, relationship, safety and standards in the FSC, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impact of the farm food system, traceability and product quality in FSC and asymmetric price transmission in the FSC. Among the identified themes, GHG emission impact of the farm food system and traceability and product quality in the FSC have received increasing attention in recent years. The dairy sector is the most addressed sector (36 per cent), followed by fruits and vegetables (27 per cent), meat and poultry (18 per cent), seafood (10 per cent) and grains and oilseed (8 per cent). It is also identified that the dairy sector has received significant attention in the “GHG Emission impact of farm food system” theme. Similarly, meat and poultry sectors have received much attention in the “Traceability and product quality in the food supply chain” theme. Also, the authors identified that the empirical modelling approaches are the most commonly used solution methodology, followed by the conceptual/qualitative methods in the SME FSC. Originality/value This study maps and summarizes the existing knowledge base of supply chain issues in the SME food sector. The results of this review provide the major research areas, most commonly used approaches and food sectors addressed. This study also highlights the research gaps and potential future research direction.

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