scholarly journals Urban Gardening in the Crisis Conjuncture

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-172
Author(s):  
Christopher Maughan ◽  
Christopher Maughan
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Urban Community ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Current Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Urban Gardening ◽  
Alternative Food Movements

Urban gardening finds itself at a juncture – not only are crises caused and exacerbated by the industrial food system urgently demonstrating the need for more localised, sustainable, and democratically-determined food systems, but alternative food movements are increasingly negotiating crises of their own. Critical Foodscapes was a one-day conference part-funded by Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) and the Food GRP. The conference was put together with the intention of bringing a ‘critical studies’ approach to the emerging research area of urban community food growing; namely, to put critical – but constructive – pressure on some of the assumptions which underlie current theory and practice of the various forms of urban food growing. This article offers some reflections on the conference itself as well as on the prospects for urban gardening more generally.

scholarly journals Alternative Agri-Food Systems Under a Market Agencements Approach: The Case of Multifunctional Farming Activity in a Peri-Urban Area

Environments ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Maria Cecilia Mancini ◽  
Filippo Arfini ◽  
Federico Antonioli ◽  
Marianna Guareschi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Trade Offs

(1) Background: A large body of literature is available on the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of alternative food systems, but not much of it is devoted to the dynamics underlying their design and implementation, more specifically the processes that make an alternative food system successful or not in terms of its sustainability aims. This gap seems to be particularly critical in studies concerning alternative food systems in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA). This paper explores how the design and implementation of multifunctional farming activity in a peri-urban area surrounding the city of Reggio Emilia in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy impact the achievement of its sustainability aims. (2) Methods: The environmental, social, and economic components of this project are explored in light of the sociology of market agencements. This method brings up the motivations of the human entities involved in the project, the role played by nonhuman entities, and the technical devices used for the fulfillment of the project’s aims. (3) Results: The alternative food system under study lacked a robust design phase and a shared definition of the project aims among all the stakeholders involved. This ended in a substantial mismatch between project aims and consumer expectations. (4) Conclusions: When a comprehensive design stage is neglected, the threefold aim concerning sustainability might not be achievable. In particular, the design of alternative food systems must take into account the social environment where it is intended to be put in place, especially in UPA, where consumers often live in suburban neighborhoods wherein the sense of community is not strong, thus preventing them from getting involved in a community-based project. In such cases, hybridization can play a role in the sustainability of alternative food networks, provided that some trade-offs occur among the different components of sustainability—some components of sustainability will be fully achieved, while others will not.

scholarly journals The Small World of the Alternative Food Network

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Brinkley
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Small World ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Term Survival ◽  
Food Network ◽  
Robust Network Design ◽  
Alternative Food Network

This research offers the first use of graph theory mathematics in social network analysis to explore relationships built through an alternative food network. The local food system is visualized using geo-social data from 110 farms and 224 markets around Baltimore County, Maryland, with 699 connections between them. Network behavior is explored through policy document review and interviews. The findings revealed a small-world architecture, with system resiliency built-in by diversified marketing practices at central nodes. This robust network design helps to explain the long-term survival of local food systems despite the meteoric rise of global industrial food supply chains. Modern alternative food networks are an example of a movement that seeks to reorient economic power structures in response to a variety of food system-related issues not limited to consumer health but including environmental impacts. Uncovering the underlying network architecture of this sustainability-oriented social movement helps reveal how it weaves systemic change more broadly. The methods used in this study demonstrate how social values, social networks, markets, and governance systems embed to transform both physical landscapes and human bodies. Network actors crafted informal policy reports, which were directly incorporated in state and local official land-use and economic planning documents. Community governance over land-use policy suggests a powerful mechanism for further localizing food systems.

scholarly journals For food space: theorizing alternative food networks beyond alterity

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Renata Blumberg ◽  
Helga Leitner ◽  
Kirsten Valentine Cadieux
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Alternative Food Networks ◽  
Sustainable Livelihood ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Food Networks

<p>In response to calls by scholars to deepen theoretical engagement in research on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), in this article we critically discuss and assess major theoretical approaches deployed in the study of AFNs. After highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theoretical approach, we provide an alternative framework – which we refer to as the Geographical Political Ecology of Food Systems – that integrates the contributions that have emerged in the study of the alternative geographies of food with an understanding of capitalist processes in the food system. We do this by bringing together literature on the political ecology of food systems and multiple spatialities, including Doreen Massey's understanding of space as a heterogeneous multiplicity and Eric Sheppard's conceptualization of sociospatial positionality. We utilize research on agrarian change and AFNs in Eastern Europe to elaborate this approach. We argue that this new perspective helps navigate tensions in AFN scholarship, and provides new avenues for research and action. We focus particularly on the ability of AFNs to provide a sustainable livelihood for participating farmers, thus far a neglected topic in AFN research in Europe.</p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Alternative Food Networks, Eastern Europe, spatialities, positionality, livelihoods</p>

Disruptive Food Supply Chains

2018 ◽  
pp. 826-841
Author(s):  
Tony Beck
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
Social Equity ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Farmers Markets ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Food Movements ◽  
Alternative Food Movements

Alternative food movements have, from their origins, espoused values of social justice and environmental stewardship in an attempt to challenge existing economic and social norms related to food and farming. Three alternative food movements in North America exemplify the trade-offs between the three pillars of sustainable development: social equity, environment, and economy. Organic food has brought environmental benefits, but has struggled to challenge the status quo and promote the social benefits of the original movement when it goes to scale. Farmers’ markets have brought social and environmental benefits, but only in some cases reduced costs when compared to mainstream market levels. Consequently, good-quality food is often out of reach of low-income groups, as highlighted in a case study of access by underserved people in British Columbia, Canada. Regional food movements are a hybrid approach that balance some of the gains and some of the challenges of these systems. The extraordinary concentration of power in North American food systems stands in contrast to notions of social equity and undermines efforts to effect change in pursuit of sustainable alternative food systems.

scholarly journals Planning for change: Transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Pereira ◽  
Scott Drimie ◽  
Olive Zgambo ◽  
Reinette Biggs
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Transformative Change

AbstractThere has been a call for more participatory processes to feed into urban planning for more resilient food systems. This paper describes a process of knowledge co-production for transforming towards an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. A ‘transformative space’ was created though a T-Lab process involving change-agents advocating for an alternative food system, and was designed to discuss challenges in the local food system from a range of perspectives, in order to co-develop potentially transformative innovations that could feed into government planning. In this paper, we describe and reflect on the T-lab in order to consider whether its design was able to meet its objective: to initiate an experimental phase of coalition-building by diverse actors that could feed into the provincial government’s strategic focus on food and nutrition security. Our findings indicate that T-labs have the potential to be important mechanisms for initiating and sustaining transformative change. They can be complementary to urban planning processes seeking to transform complex social-ecological systems onto more sustainable development pathways. However, as with all experimental co-production processes, there is significant learning and refinement that is necessary to ensure the process can reach its full potential. A key challenge we encountered was how to foster diversity and difference in opinions in the context of significant historical legacies of inequality, whilst simultaneously acting for ‘the common good’ and seeking ways to scale impact across different contexts. The paper concludes with deliberations on the nature of planning and navigating towards systemic transformative change.

scholarly journals City-Region Food Systems and Second Tier Cities: From Garden Cities to Garden Regions

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2532
Author(s):  
Koen van der Gaast ◽  
Eveline van Leeuwen ◽  
Sigrid Wertheim-Heck
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
City Region ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Garden Cities ◽  
Contextual Elements ◽  
Second Tier

Theory and practice show that second-tier cities can play an important role in linking the urban and the rural. Second-tier cities are the middle ground of the urban system. The smaller spatial scale of second-tier cities, and their often-stronger connections with the rural hinterland can potentially enable a more sustainable food system. In this paper, we argue that the extent to which the benefits ascribed to the re-localisation of food can be achieved greatly depends on the contextual specifics of the second-tier city and the region in which it is embedded. Furthermore, we argue that to reach resilient, healthy and environmentally friendly city region food systems, three contextual elements need to be considered in their mutual coherence: (1) the historical development of the second-tier city and the region; (2) the proximity of food production to the second-tier city; (3) the scale and reach of the city region’s food system. We use the case-study of the Dutch city Almere to show how (a controlled) growth of cities can be combined with maintaining (or even increasing) the strength of adjacent rural areas. Such cities can play a role in creating Garden Regions: regions that foster healthy, sustainable and resilient food systems and that do not just connect urban and rural regions, but also connect city region food systems to national and global markets.

(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 Indigenous Meanings of Provenance in the Context of Alternative Food Movements and Supply-Chain Traceability: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Chetan Sharma ◽  
Damir D. Torrico ◽  
Lloyd Carpenter ◽  
Roland Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Alternative Food ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Consumer Activism ◽  
Comprehensive Collection ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge Systems ◽  
Alternative Food Movements ◽  
Gradual Transformation

This article reviews the concept of provenance from both contemporary and traditional aspects. The incorporation of indigenous meanings and conceptualizations of belonging into provenance are explored. First, we consider how the gradual transformation of marketplaces into market and consumer activism catalyzed the need for provenance. Guided by this, we discuss the meaning of provenance from an indigenous and non-indigenous rationale. Driven by the need for a qualitative understanding of food, the scholarship has utilized different epistemologies to demonstrate how authentic connections are cultivated and protected by animistic approaches. As a tool to mobilize place, we suggest that provenance should be embedded in the immediate local context. Historic place-based indigenous knowledge systems, values, and lifeways should be seen as a model for new projects. This review offers a comprehensive collection of research material with emphasis on a variety of fields including anthropology, economic geography, sociology, and biology, which clarifies the meaning of provenance in alternative food systems. It questions the current practices of spatial confinement by stakeholders and governments that are currently applied to the concepts of provenance in foods, and instead proposes a holistic approach to understand both indigenous and non-indigenous ideologies but with an emphasis on Maori culture and its perspectives.

scholarly journals "Grow what you eat, eat what you grow": urban agriculture as middle class intervention in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Frazier
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Food System ◽  
Farming Community ◽  
Urban Gardening ◽  
Food Quality And Safety ◽  
The City

In Bengaluru, India's "IT Capital" and one of its fastest growing cities, an increasing number of middle class residents are growing fruits and vegetables in their private spaces for home consumption. This article examines the motivations and practices of Bengaluru's organic terrace gardeners ("OTGians") in order to understand the possibilities and limitations of urban gardening as a middle class intervention into unsafe food systems and decaying urban ecologies. OTGians are driven primarily by concerns about worsening food quality and safety, and secondarily by the desire to create green spaces that counteract environmental degradation in the city. Like community gardeners in the Global North, they understand urban gardening as a way to mediate problems in the contemporary food system and the urban ecology. However, like other alternative food and environmental movements, OTGians' efforts are anchored in class-specific concerns and experiences. While they have been successful in creating a vibrant community, their efforts remain limited to the middle class. This is in large part due to the site, scale, and production practices that anchor their interventions. I briefly consider a different approach to food production in Bengaluru—that of a caste-specific farming community that has been dispossessed of much of its agricultural land in the name of urban development—to illuminate divergent histories, narratives, and practices of urban agriculture. However, I also emphasize the sites of intersection between these narratives, and suggest that OTGians can find commonalities with other food producers in the city in ways that might revolutionize Bengaluru's food future. I thus look for potential sites of collaboration and intersection in understanding the uneven power relations and politics of urban socio-natures.

scholarly journals Competitiveness of Regional Agri-Food Systems: A Theoretical Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 329-353
Author(s):  
Valentina P. Neganova ◽  
Yury F. Chistyakov, ◽  
Veniamin V. Drokin, ◽  
Aleksey S. Zhuravlev ◽  
Vladislav M. Sedelnikov
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Scientific Publication ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
Average Percentage

Numerous interpretations of the competitiveness of regional agri-food system in the scientific literature are predominantly fragmentary depending in specific goals of research. This creates problems for universalizing approaches, identifying areas of their complementarity, and integrating new definitions. To systematize existing interpretations of the competitiveness of regional agri-food systems and identify new areas of research, we carried out a structured review of the scientific publication from peer-reviewed academic journals indexed in international and Russian databases. We applied the method of content analysis to identify the definitions of the “competitiveness”, “sustainable competitiveness”, “regional agri-food systems”. Moreover, we calculated the average percentage of journal articles mentioning these categories per year. Cluster analysis of journal articles allowed identifying general concepts of the competitiveness of regional agri-food. As a result we systematized the definitions of the concept of «competitiveness of regional agri-food systems» depending on research area, actors and the level of sustainability of competitiveness. The systematization and classificatio n o f researc h investigatin g th e competitivenes s o f regiona l agri-food systems enabled determining new areas of future research. Firstly, a more detailed analysis of the factors of the sustainable competitiveness of regional agri-food systems, particularly in pandemic and post-pandemic periods is of critical importance. Secondly, searching for a comprehensive toolkit for ensuring sustainable competitiveness of regional agri-food systems, as well as cooperation and competition among the agri-food companies in the Internet can be a focus for future research.

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