Abstract
Sustainable agriculture and community food security (CFS) are frameworks commonly used, but often separately, within the broader alternative food movement. Sustainable agriculture is production-centered, with a focus on environmental degradation and family farm viability, whereas CFS shifts research from household-level measures of food security to consider larger geographic areas in terms of equitable healthy food access and social justice. The challenge of both movements continues to be the intersection of these ideals to create a sustainable situation in which the needs of producers and consumers can be met simultaneously. We explored the underlying values of local, small-scale producers and consumers living within an impoverished neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, a large Midwestern city, as they related to participation in an online food hub. Twenty-one consumers participated in three focus groups, and interviews were conducted with eight producers. Our interest was primarily in whether and how these articulated values fit into sustainable agriculture and CFS frameworks, and if there was any evidence of commonalities or intersections between producers and consumers in the context of these frameworks. We hypothesized that producers would be oriented toward the economic viability of their small-scale operations, while consumers would be oriented toward improved food access that was convenient and affordable. We identified three prominent themes from both the consumers’ and producers’ articulated values. We found that an online food hub appealed to some producers and consumers, but that the barriers identified were more prominent than the benefits, and the desire for the proposed online food hub was not sufficient to pursue moving forward with a full-scale version of an online food hub at the time. Authors' Note re: COVID-19 Our research was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. An addendum at the end of the paper provides relevant updates to the research as of late April 2020. See the press release for this article.
Highlights
Over the past three decades, academics, practitioners, and activists have brought the ideals and language of sustainable agriculture and food security into the U.S vernacular through research, federally funded projects (e.g., Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, 2012; U.S Department of Agriculture [USDA] National Institute of Food and Agriculture [NIFA], 2017, 2018), Farm Bill policies (e.g., Agriculture Act of 2014), and higher education programs (USDA National Agricultural Library, n.d.).Allen’s (2004) seminal “alternative food and agriculture” research frames sustainable agriculture as more “production-centered,” and focused on issues like “environmental degradation and the viability of the family farm,” while community food security (CFS) primarily is oriented toward “distribution and consumption, such as food access and nutrition” concerns (p. 2)
Small-scale Ohio producers interviewed for this project had established relationships with Seminary Hill Farm and Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) and were located within a 150-mile (241-km) radius of Columbus, Ohio
Our research provided the opportunity to learn from the perspectives of small-scale producers and consumers who live in a low-income and low–food access neighborhood as they relate to the potential development of an online food hub
Summary
Allen’s (2004) seminal “alternative food and agriculture” research frames sustainable agriculture as more “production-centered,” and focused on issues like “environmental degradation and the viability of the family farm,” while community food security (CFS) primarily is oriented toward “distribution and consumption, such as food access and nutrition” concerns We hypothesized that producers would be oriented toward sustainable agriculture, in terms of the viability of their small-scale operations, with some level of interest in improving food access. We hypothesized that consumers who were residents of the low-income, low-access neighborhood would be oriented toward improving food access through convenience and appropriate pricing
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