scholarly journals Effectiveness of urban farming program in providing multiple benefits to the urban community in Malaysia

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazanin Nafisi ◽  
Osman Mohd Tahir ◽  
Sara Nafisi ◽  
Nazri Ishak
Keyword(s):  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
Food Prices ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Urban Farming ◽  
Urban Regions ◽  
Food Imports

Residents have chosen to be living in urban regions in recent years largely due to the accessibility of job opportunities and public services. These led to a fast increase in the amount of people live in urban regions and cities. As a result, a large amount of the property used for agricultural activities was transformed into factories, housing units, and highways. This also resulted in a decrease in food production, growth in food prices and food import bills as the country now relies on food imports especially rice, fruits and vegetables, that can prevent the fostering of urban farming activities and then provide beneficial information essential to form it into a more consumer friendly program. Moreover, studies on urban farming are somewhat few in Malaysia and this study can become helpful for future research. The study focused on small-scale agriculture projects, such as community gardens, and community-level programs such as community supported agriculture and farmers markets. The study found that how urban agriculture enhances community resilience and wellbeing. This is the necessity for the Malaysian urban authorities to give more appropriate identification and support to city dwellers and promote them to develop the practice of urban farming.

scholarly journals Agriculture Supported Communities: Connecting Low-income Communities with Small-scale Vegetable and Fruit Producing Farms (P04-128-19)

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renate Winkels ◽  
Susan Veldheer ◽  
Andrew Smith
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Direct Marketing ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Fresh Vegetables

Abstract Objectives Barriers regarding affordability of and access to fresh vegetables and fruit pose low-income families at increased risk of diet-related diseases. Small farms can play a key role in providing local communities with fresh produce, through farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and other direct marketing strategies. Nevertheless, these farms face specific challenges related to payment terms and conditions and delivery when aiming to connect with low-income communities. Rodale Institute's Agriculture Supported Communities (ASC) program aims to connect small-scale fruit and vegetable farms with low-income communities. This farm-share program sells weekly food boxes with organic fruits and vegetables in cities with major food insecurity problems in Pennsylvania (Allentown and Reading). ASC allows members to pay week-to-week, rather than upfront as in a traditional CSA. ASC shareholders can use federal SNAP dollars to pay for discounted shares or apply for subsidized shares. ASC pick-up sites are located in the targeted communities. Our objective is to evaluate the ASC program and its ability to reach the intended low-income communities. Methods In 2016 and 2017, surveys were distributed among ASC shareholders to collect socio-economic data and program satisfaction. In addition, we evaluated how many participants used SNAP to pay for the shares. Results ASC had 150 shareholders in 2016 and 151 in 2017. In 2016, 89 shareholders (59%) were living in low-income areas in Allentown or Reading, in 2017 this was 76 (50%). In 2016, 43% of the shareholders reported an income < 50k$, in 2017 this was 25%. In 2016, 11 members (7%) paid with SNAP, in 2017 15 members (10%). Conclusions ASC reached low-income community members; however, the program also reached a population at the other end of the economic spectrum. This poses challenges for the farmer regarding production and distribution. The farmers within ASC are using these data to optimize production and methods of delivery to meet the needs of low-income communities. In a future project, we hope to evaluate the effect of ASC membership on dietary intake and other health indicators, and measure the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the model. Funding Sources For a list of funders see rodaleinstitute.org/asc.

Indigenous Food Systems: Battling Whiteness through Decolonization

1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie King
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The North

Shaw (2006) argues that “the rubrics of difference against which Whiteness is commonly juxtaposed rarely includes Indigeneity, or the experiences of Indigenous peoples regardless of the North American domination of the field, and its settler context” (853). Viewing Canada and the United States as post-colonial nations, this paper seeks to broaden understandings of Indigenous food production, distribution, and consumption practices and/or projects and how they work to resist colonial histories of oppression. hooks (1992) defines decolonization as “a process of cultural and historical liberation; an act of confrontation with a dominant system of thought” (1). Using the concept of “Whiteness”, this research attempts to prove how small-scale Indigenous food systems located in North America decolonize dominant ways of seeing alternative food systems as white food spaces. To present this research to an interdisciplinary audience I will first attend to defining key concepts informing this research including: post-colonial nation, decolonization, Whiteness, and Indigeneity. I will then spend some time exploring what Sarah Whatmore describes as “Alternative Food Networks” (AFNs) and claims as “white food spaces”. Finally, in an attempt to decolonize alternative food systems as white spaces, I will share various forms of present-day, small-scale Indigenous food systems such as Wild Rice production by The White Earth Anishinaabe, the ‘Food from the Land’ program in the O-pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, and various Indigenous farmers markets and community gardens.  

scholarly journals An examination of adaptations of direct marketing channels and practices by Maryland fruit and vegetable farmers during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Grace Bachman ◽  
Sara Lupolt ◽  
Mariya Strauss ◽  
Ryan Kennedy ◽  
Keeve Nachman
Keyword(s):  
Driving Forces ◽  
Direct Marketing ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Food Prices ◽  
Marketing Channels ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Grocery Stores ◽  
Fruit And Vegetable ◽  
Vegetable Farmers

This study explores the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Maryland stay-at-home order on fruit and vegetable farmers in Maryland. Focusing on farms’ direct-to-consumer marketing channels, we aim to characterize the diversity of farm responses and identify practices that facilitated adaptation. This research is grounded in the socio-ecological systems framework, which emphasizes the interconnection between social and ecological systems and characterizes the dual-driving forces that impact food producers and their livelihood. The study team conducted interviews with 20 Maryland farm owners/managers who grow and sell produce. The semistructured interviews includ­ed questions relating to production practices, sales and marketing, and resilience. The interviewer fol­lowed up with probes to understand the dimen­sions of response diversity and adaptive capacity. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and responses were analyzed using the framework approach. In the context of a global pandemic, community supported agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, and pick-your-own channels provided a high degree of stability and financial security. No farmer reported relying solely on intermediated markets (e.g., restaurants, grocery stores, institu­tions). Distribution channels that incorporated an online marketplace offering prepacked pre-orders were a notable strength of highly adaptive Mary­land produce farmers. Farmers reported that expanding established CSAs was an important method for reallocating produce originally intended to be sold to reduced/terminated marketing chan­nels. Common challenges among farmers included increased administrative workload, concerns asso­ciated with raising food prices during a crisis, and environmental concerns about the use of additional packaging. We describe a range of adaptive behav­iors that aided farmers in withstanding shocks.

The importance of stories in understanding people’s relationship to food: narrative inquiry methodology has much to offer the public health nutrition researcher and practitioner

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle O’Kane ◽  
Barbara Pamphilon
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Food System ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Public Health Nutrition ◽  
Important Place

AbstractObjectiveDespite the usefulness of quantitative research, qualitative research methodologies are equally needed to allow researchers to better understand the important social and environmental factors affecting food choice and eating habits. The present paper contributes insights from narrative inquiry, a well-established qualitative methodology, to a food-related doctoral research study. The connections between food shoppers and the producer, family, friends and others in the food system, between eaters and the earth, and how these connections affect people’s meaning-making of food and pathways to food citizenship, were explored in the research.DesignThe research used narrative inquiry methodology and focus groups for data collection.SettingFive different food-ways in the Canberra region of Australia were selected for the present research; that is, community gardens, community-supported agriculture, farmers’ markets, fresh food markets and supermarkets.SubjectsFifty-two people voluntarily attended eight focus groups with four to nine participants in each.ResultsFrom a practical perspective, the present paper offers a guide to the way in which narrative inquiry has been applied to one research project. The paper describes the application of narrative inquiry methodology, revealing the important place of narratives in generating new knowledge. The paper further outlines how phased narrative analysis can lead to a defensible and rigorous interpretive framework grounded in the data generated from people’s stories and meaning-making.ConclusionsWe argue that individual, social and system change will not be possible without further rigorous qualitative studies to inform and complement the empirical basis of public health nutrition practice.

scholarly journals Farm Type and High Tunnel Management: Connections between Farm Characteristics and High Tunnel Outcomes in Indiana

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 566-576
Author(s):  
Analena B. Bruce ◽  
Elizabeth T. Maynard ◽  
Julia C.D. Valliant ◽  
James R. Farmer
Keyword(s):  
High Capacity ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Financial Return ◽  
Specialty Crops ◽  
High Tunnel ◽  
Farm Type ◽  
High Tunnels

High tunnels are a low-cost technology that can strengthen local and regional food systems and have been shown to help farmers extend the growing season and increase the yield and shelf life, and improve the quality of their crops. This study addresses a need for a better understanding of farmers’ experience with integrating high tunnels into their operations, to understand the human dimensions of high tunnel management. We present an analysis of survey and interview data to examine how farm characteristics affect the outcomes of growing specialty crops in high tunnels. Our findings show that farmers managing different types of farms have taken distinct approaches to integrating and managing high tunnels on their farms, with important implications for farm-level outcomes. We identify three types of farms commonly adopting high tunnels in Indiana: 1) alternative food and agriculture enterprises (AFAEs) are consumer-oriented, small-scale farms that sell their products directly to their customers in relationship-based market networks such as farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture; 2) mixed enterprise farmers have larger operations and sell into both conventional commodity markets and direct markets; and 3) side enterprise farmers operate small-scale enterprises and their primary household income comes from off-farm employment or another business. Farm type is associated with divergent levels of time and labor investment, resulting in higher capacity use of high tunnels and greater financial return for AFAE farmers who make high tunnels central to their business, compared with mixed and side enterprise farmers who invest less time and labor into their high tunnels. We explain how farm characteristics and approaches to adopting the infrastructure shape farmers’ success and high-capacity use of high tunnels.

Don’t Mono-crop the Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. R. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Community Gardens ◽  
Cultural Ecology ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Food Hubs ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Spatial Configurations ◽  
Good Food

Over the past generation, advocates for healthier food and agriculture have drawn on the farm-to-fork trope to define spatial arrangements in the foodshed. Consider farmers' markets, food hubs, community supported agriculture (CSA), co-ops, rooftop, community, and schoolyard gardens, 100-Mile Diets, and urban farms: the architecture of reform is endless, but every part seeks to reduce the distance between food producers (farms) and consumers (forks). For all the intuitive appeal of the farm-to-fork trope, however, there are other ways to think about the local food movement's spatial configurations that could be more inclusive, multidimensional, and politically potent. This article argues that instead of a distance versus proximity orientation, good-food advocates might envision a kind of cultural ecology of various efforts toward healthier food and agriculture. This perspective shows the various organizational efforts of a region interacting like species in a healthy ecosystem. Where farmers' markets might be gentrified, for example, community gardens and urban farms might not; where urban farms might be labor intensive, food hubs might not and could offer healthier food in urban spaces; where food hubs might not be convenient enough, virtual marketplaces might. The downsides of one part are carried by the advantages of another; the limitations of the first are helped by the strengths of the next. What matters here are not just the particular individual innovations—farmers' markets, CSAs, food hubs, etc.—but the ways in which they overlap to build an interdependent whole. No longer one-dimensional, this cultural ecology adds political and organizational integrity to the physical integrity of food.

scholarly journals Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviors Regarding Fruits and Vegetables among Cost-Offset Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Applicants, Purchasers, and a Comparison Sample

Nutrients ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1320
Author(s):  
Karla L. Hanson ◽  
Leah C. Volpe ◽  
Jane Kolodinsky ◽  
Grace Hwang ◽  
Weiwei Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Poverty Level ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Cost Offset ◽  
Comparison Sample ◽  
Chi Square Analysis

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) participation has been associated with high fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption, which may be due to better access to FV for CSA purchasers, or to positive knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KAB) regarding healthy eating among CSA applicants. The objective of this study was to examine KAB and consumption, in association with application to a cost-offset CSA (CO-CSA) program, and with CO-CSA purchase among applicants. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of CO-CSA applicants and a comparison sample in August 2017. All respondents were English-reading adults with a child 2–12 years old and household income of ≤185% of the federal poverty level. Among CO-CSA applicants, some were CO-CSA purchasers (n = 46) and some were not (n = 18). An online comparison sample met equivalent eligibility criteria, but had not participated in CSA for three years (n = 105). We compared CO-CSA applicants to the comparison sample, and compared purchasers and non-purchaser sub-groups, using Mann-Whitney U tests and chi-square analysis. CO-CSA applicants reported better knowledge, self-efficacy, home habits, and diet than the comparison sample. Among applicants, CO-CSA purchasers and non-purchasers had equivalent KAB, but children in purchaser households had higher FV consumption than in non-purchaser households (4.14 vs. 1.83 cups, p = 0.001). Future research should explore associations between CO-CSA participation and diet using experimental methods.

scholarly journals The perceived influence of cost-offset community-supported agriculture on food access among low-income families

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 2866-2874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle J White ◽  
Stephanie B Jilcott Pitts ◽  
Jared T McGuirt ◽  
Karla L Hanson ◽  
Emily H Morgan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Food Access ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Community Supported Agriculture ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Diet Change ◽  
Cost Offset ◽  
Low Income Families ◽  
Meal Planning

AbstractObjectiveTo examine perspectives on food access among low-income families participating in a cost-offset community-supported agriculture (CO-CSA) programme.DesignFarm Fresh Foods for Healthy Kids (F3HK) is a multicentre randomized intervention trial assessing the effect of CO-CSA on dietary intake and quality among children from low-income families. Focus groups were conducted at the end of the first CO-CSA season. Participants were interviewed about programme experiences, framed by five dimensions of food access: availability, accessibility, affordability, acceptability and accommodation. Transcribed data were coded on these dimensions plus emergent themes.SettingNine communities in the US states of New York, North Carolina, Washington and Vermont.SubjectsFifty-three F3HK adults with children.ResultsCSA models were structured by partner farms. Produce quantity was abundant; however, availability was enhanced for participants who were able to select their own produce items. Flexible CSA pick-up times and locations made produce pick-up more accessible. Despite being affordable to most, payment timing was a barrier for some. Unfamiliar foods and quick spoilage hindered acceptability through challenging meal planning, despite accommodations that included preparation advice.ConclusionsAlthough CO-CSA may facilitate increased access to fruits and vegetables for low-income families, perceptions of positive diet change may be limited by the ability to incorporate share pick-up into regular travel patterns and meal planning. Food waste concerns may be particularly acute for families with constrained resources. Future research should examine whether CO-CSA with flexible logistics and produce self-selection are sustainable for low-income families and CSA farms.

scholarly journals The Economic, Social, and Environmental Impacts of Farmers Markets: Recent Evidence from the US

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3423
Author(s):  
Phillip Warsaw ◽  
Steven Archambault ◽  
Arden He ◽  
Stacy Miller
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Regional Food ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Fresh Food

Farmers markets are regular, recurring gatherings at a common facility or area where farmers and ranchers directly sell a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other locally grown farm products to consumers. Markets rebuild and maintain local and regional food systems, leading to an outsized impact on the food system relative to their share of produce sales. Previous research has demonstrated the multifaceted impacts that farmers markets have on the communities, particularly economically. Recent scholarship in the United States has expanded inquiry into social impacts that markets have on communities, including improving access to fresh food products and increasing awareness of the sustainable agricultural practices adopted by producers, as well developing tools for producers and market stakeholders to measure their impact on both producers and communities. This paper reviews the recent scholarship on farmers markets to identify recent trends and synthesizes the current evidence describing the ways in which farmers markets contribute to the wellbeing of their communities, as well as identifying areas for additional future research.

Small-Scale Deliberation and Mass Democracy: A Systematic Review of the Spillover Effects of Deliberative Minipublics

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110072
Author(s):  
Ramon van der Does ◽  
Vincent Jacquet
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Mass Democracy

Deliberative minipublics are popular tools to address the current crisis in democracy. However, it remains ambiguous to what degree these small-scale forums matter for mass democracy. In this study, we ask the question to what extent minipublics have “spillover effects” on lay citizens—that is, long-term effects on participating citizens and effects on non-participating citizens. We answer this question by means of a systematic review of the empirical research on minipublics’ spillover effects published before 2019. We identify 60 eligible studies published between 1999 and 2018 and provide a synthesis of the empirical results. We show that the evidence for most spillover effects remains tentative because the relevant body of empirical evidence is still small. Based on the review, we discuss the implications for democratic theory and outline several trajectories for future research.

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