scholarly journals Food System Study of Martin County, Florida

EDIS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
William A Messina ◽  
Lisa House ◽  
Yvette Goodiel ◽  
Carol Alberts

Martin County, Florida has a rich agricultural history with farming and cattle ranching being important economic drivers since the early 1930s. Nevertheless, the county struggles to meet the balance between food supply and demand. Farmers often face challenges finding sizable, secure, well-paying markets, and the most consumers do not participate in local food transactions. This 4-page fact sheet written by William A. Messina, Jr., Lisa House, Yvette Goodiel, and Carol Albertsand published by the UF/IFAS summarizes two studies conducted to examine agricultural production in Martin County and its food processing, distribution and marketing systems and infrastructure to better identify potential constraints and opportunities for the local food system.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe1071

Author(s):  
Sònia Callau-Berenguer ◽  
Anna Roca-Torrent ◽  
Josep Montasell-Dorda ◽  
Sandra Ricart

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 496-508
Author(s):  
Dele Raheem

AbstractThe positive adoption of digital technology within the food sector can boost sustainable development in Finnish Lapland. There is a need for a food system in the region to respond to current trends from consumers and ensure a better supply of local foods that are processed efficiently with minimal waste. In this article, a review of the literature on the benefits of digitalisation as a tool amongst food processors was carried out. The opportunities offered by digital technology are expected to make local food business operators more transparent, efficient and sustainable. Digitalisation can help to minimise the environmental impacts of food processing and ultimately improve sustainability. In meeting the demand of local consumers, distributed and localised manufacturing will help to add value to local food crops, lower transportation and storage costs. The adoption of food digitalisation will open up market accessibility for the locally produced food products in local communities. In the future, digitalisation is likely to have major impacts in the local food system of the Lapland region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 124021
Author(s):  
Thomas Chatzopoulos ◽  
Ignacio Pérez Domínguez ◽  
Andrea Toreti ◽  
Marcel Adenäuer ◽  
Matteo Zampieri

Abstract The risk of food-supply instability is expected to increase along with the frequency and intensity of extreme agro-climatic events in many regions. Assessing the sensitivity of the global agricultural system to evolving extremes requires the probability of occurrence of such events to be estimated and their links with potential food supply and demand culminations to be established. From this perspective, in this article we implement a novel approach that can be used as a tool to inform decision-makers about the resilience of agricultural markets to climate extremes. By incorporating simulated climate-stress events into a partial-equilibrium model of interconnected agricultural commodity markets, we examine the complex manifestations of grain supply, demand and prices attributable to hazardous extremes. Market outcomes are further synthesized into coherently defined vulnerability and risk indicators. The proposed framework currently covers compound heat and water anomalies at the country level, potentially concurrent and recurrent, that impact annual crop yields and market balances in a recursive-dynamic manner until 2030. Our findings indicate that extreme-climate anomalies significantly distort expected market equilibria in the medium term. Moreover, extreme global prices may result either from climate anomalies in single key countries or from simultaneous events in many regions. Last but not least, trade and storage come forth as important alleviative mechanisms of the market uncertainty provoked by recurrent extremes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 10471
Author(s):  
Axel Gruvaeus ◽  
Johanna Dahlin

Can parts of the future food system include bi-weekly opportunities to purchase uneven stocks of produce at semi-remote locations? Current development in the Swedish food system suggests so. In the last few years, the Swedish Alternative Food Network ‘REKO’ has grown at an explosive pace. This anthropological article describes and discusses the organizational structure and motivations of the network, as well as discusses it from a revitalization perspective. From a netnographical and policy analysis perspective it is shown how the network uses social media and policy to convey a low bureaucracy, end to end, commercial space for local food—understood as a more “simple” way to achieve direct relationships in the food supply chain and thus create opportunities for local food networks. By adopting a view of the conventions and values of this Alternative Food Network as representing a parallel system aiming at facilitating direct relationships between ends in the food supply chain, the REKO initiative can be understood as a feasible model for a more satisfactory culture without needing to replace the mainstream food supply. The findings of the research deepen the understanding of REKO in Sweden by pointing towards how it can be understood as a sign of change of consumer preference and of prioritization of official policy concerns. The article also points towards how grass root movements can replicate success rapidly using policy documents capturing experiences and best practices spread online through social media.


Author(s):  
Lori Stahlbrand

This paper traces the partnership between the University of Toronto and the non-profit Local Food Plus (LFP) to bring local sustainable food to its St. George campus. At its launch, the partnership represented the largest purchase of local sustainable food at a Canadian university, as well as LFP’s first foray into supporting institutional procurement of local sustainable food. LFP was founded in 2005 with a vision to foster sustainable local food economies. To this end, LFP developed a certification system and a marketing program that matched certified farmers and processors to buyers. LFP emphasized large-scale purchases by public institutions. Using information from in-depth semi-structured key informant interviews, this paper argues that the LFP project was a disruptive innovation that posed a challenge to many dimensions of the established food system. The LFP case study reveals structural obstacles to operationalizing a local and sustainable food system. These include a lack of mid-sized infrastructure serving local farmers, the domination of a rebate system of purchasing controlled by an oligopolistic foodservice sector, and embedded government support of export agriculture. This case study is an example of praxis, as the author was the founder of LFP, as well as an academic researcher and analyst.


Author(s):  
Mary Anne Beckie ◽  
Leanne Hedberg ◽  
Jessie Radies

In order for local food initiatives (LFIs) to have a transformative effect on the larger food system, greater levels of economic, organizational and physical scale are needed. One way for LFIs to reach the scale necessary to generate a more significant impact is through increased institutional procurement of local foods. But how do people and organizations come together to generate the social infrastructure required to shift food purchasing practices and processes? This field report shares the story of an innovative community of practice consisting of institutional food buyers, large-scale distributors, regional retailers, processors, producers, researchers, municipal and provincial government representatives within the Edmonton city-region that formed for the express purpose of “creating a positive community impact by getting more local foods on more local plates”. In describing the formation and first three years of the Alberta Flavour Learning Lab we examine the unique characteristics of this community of practice that has aided the development of a common framework for learning, understanding and joint action. In addition to the accomplishments to date, we also discuss the challenges faced by the Learning Lab and the strategies used to overcome them.  


The shorter food supply chains were the emerging trend in the agro-food system. The characteristic of local food supply chains are regional, freshness, quality products, and health benefits to the consumers. The present study explores the existing local dairy supply chains in the Haryana state. The local dairy supply chains were analysed and found that the shorter milk supply chains were more profitable with reduced intermediaries and higher producer shares in consumer rupees for all dairy products. The supply chains which involved intermediaries had lesser cost per unit of operation in dairy processing but fetched lower prices due to the quality issues and more distance travelled by dairy products. The economic viability and financial position of the processing units exhibited favourable results for both supply chains but it was higher for Supply Chain-I.


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