Fostering Formal Learning in the Food Dignity Project

Abstract

First paragraph: This short essay summarizes our formal higher education work in the Food Dignity project, with some initial reflections and questions that this work raised for me, and for many of our collaborators.[1] Food Dignity was a five-year action research collaboration dedicated to building community food systems that provide food security, sustainability, and equity. It was proposed and funded as an integrated program of research, extension, and education, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (USDA NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grant program for food security. Five food justice community-based organizations (CBOs) and four institutions of higher education collaborated on this project in California, Wyoming, and New York (see, for example, Porter, 2018, this issue). We had nearly US$5 million over five years, which we extended to seven (2011–2018), to complete our proposed blend of action research. We used about 17–20% of our total effort and budget to invest in higher education programs centered around sustainable food systems (Porter & Wechsler, 2018, this issue). [1] Unless otherwise specified, the “we” in this essay is collaborators in the Food Dignity project and the “I” is myself, the author of the essay and the Food Dignity principal investigator and project director.