Local Food Systems Research Articles

Dynamic Food Insecurity and Resilience of Smallholder Households in a Local Food System: The Pandemic Experience in Nigeria

Dynamic Food Insecurity and Resilience of Smallholder Households in a Local Food System: The Pandemic Experience in Nigeria

Building a food sovereign society through indigenous forest establishment policy

The development of multicomplex food sovereignty necessitates a multisectoral approach, which requires cross-sectoral coordination on the part of the government as the policymaker in the food sector in order to build effective food security at the national level in Indonesia. The goal of this research is to encourage the Indonesian government to build a local food system through empowering local farmers especially indigenous peoples after the establishment of customary forests. The research is doctrinal legal research with a statutory approach using the hermeneutic interpretation method. The results showed that the participation of regional food agencies remains minimal in reality. This institutional crisis within the government’s food sovereignty agencies, coupled with a lack of political commitment and political will, has implications for the failure of food security programs in Indonesia. In order to achieve food sovereignty in Indonesia, Constitutional Court Decision No. 25/PUU-X/2012 becomes the primary basis for strengthening the rights of indigenous communities over indigenous forest ownership. Food sovereignty can only be reached by mastering green technology that fits the needs of indigenous peoples and is based on their traditional ways of doing things so that a follow-up policy that favors indigenous peoples is needed.

Land-use strategies of household-based agroforestry in Pendua Village, North Lombok

Competing needs for land resources are increasing as the world’s population grows. Indonesia ranks as the fourth most populous country in the world. The population of Lombok Island has increased more than double in ten years, from around 1.5 million people in 2010 to 3.8 million people in 2020. Home garden improvement has been regarded as one of the important strategies to enhance household food security. Home gardens are also part of local food systems in Lombok. Local people of Pendua Village, North Lombok, are using their home garden for apiculture to meet their needs. This research aims to understand the horizontal land-use allocation of home gardens practicing apiculture in Pendua Village, North Lombok. The horizontal land-use allocation was analyzed using Spatially Explicit Individual-based Forest Simulator (SExI-FS) in 26 home gardens. The result shows that most home gardens allocate an average of 20% of their area for bee’s forage plants, 5% for bee hives, 30% for building, and 40% are the potential open area for plants and bee hives enrichment. The highest important value index (IVI) for the tree is Mangifera indica (163.08%), for pole is Theobroma cacao (62.54%), for sapling and seedling is Dimocarpus longan (27.66% and 37.92%, respectively), and Capsicum frutescens (36,44%) for understory.

Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live

Since 1984, the AHV journal has provided a key forum for a community of interdisciplinary, international researchers, educators, and policy makers to analyze and debate core issues, values and hopes facing the nation and the world, and to recommend strategies and actions for addressing them. This agenda includes the more specific challenges and opportunities confronting agriculture, food systems, science, and communities, as well as broader contextual issues and grand challenges. This paper draws extensively on 40 years of AHV journal articles and reviews and begins with a focus on a limited number of key grand challenges (climate change and global warming; threats to democracy and the growing neo-nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism; and increasing national and international inequality). With these challenges as the underlining context, the remainder of the paper addresses core journal themes of sustainable agriculture and local food systems, citizen and public science, and empowered communities. Highlighted are numerous important journal contributions to the analyses and recommendations to address these hopes and themes. I conclude that these themes and hopes not only deserve to live but are essential for changing and redirecting an unsustainable and destructive environmental, economic, political and social agenda to a viable, livable and just democratic society.

Organic for everyone? Access to sustainable, locally grown produce at farmers markets in New Jersey

ABSTRACT The market for local food has grown considerably over the course of thirty years. At the same time, even robust local food systems may reproduce injustices that have long marred corporatized food systems. In this paper, we explore the relationship of environmental justice to local food systems by asking two questions. First, are farmers markets (FMs) more likely to be found in wealthier, whiter communities? Second, are FMs providing people who are not members of socially privileged groups with an opportunity to buy food grown in accordance with organic principles? Drawing on survey data from FMs in New Jersey, we find that, although community demographics are strongly associated with FM location, social privilege is not associated with where organic farmers sell produce, once the lens of analysis is narrowed to just communities with an FM. But although food grown without agricultural chemicals is widely available at FMs in the study area, organic farmers who accept payment via WIC or SNAP are not more likely to sell at FMs in lower-income communities, and fewer organic farmers than non-organic farmers accept payment via WIC or SNAP. The presence of organic farmers at FMs in a wide range of communities suggests that expanding access to locally sourced fruits and vegetables may be able to play a small but not insignificant role in reducing exposure to agricultural chemicals. However, organic food would be more accessible at FMs in low-income communities if more organic farmers participated in nutrition assistance programmes like WIC and SNAP.

Narrative curation and stewardship in contested marketspaces.

We identify value narratives as stories that promote certain product or service attributes as benefits within the marketplace. We show how value narratives reflect benefit attributes that align with alternative versus mainstream market settings. Our empirical focus is local food value narratives within a common local food system with alternative settings being farmers' markets and mainstream settings being supermarkets. Farmers' market and supermarket purveyors choose which benefit characteristics to emphasize throughout narrative curation, enabling us to witness strategic narrative use, or what we term narrative stewardship. We find that multiple value narratives express an array of 'local food' benefits in ways that create a contested marketplace. Narrative deployment at farmers' markets is guided by an amalgam of institutional perspectives, while narrative use at supermarkets is dominated by a market institutional perspective. We identify a continuum of value narrative stewardship (promotion-neglect) within farmers' markets that leaves the meaning and value of 'local food' vulnerable to mainstream market appropriation via narrative voidance, dilution, and replacement. We propose strategies for better value narrative stewardship.

Integrated Multi-Level Assessment of Ecosystem Services (ES): The Case of the Casal del Marmo Agricultural Park Area in Rome (Italy)

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the ES assessment within a “place-based policy-mix model” for urban planning testing and integrating three ES assessment methodologies: (1) mapping and assessment, (2) expert-based evaluation and (3) social perception. The results indicate that (1) mapping assessment provides higher values to the regulating ecosystem services, (2) expert-based evaluation provides slightly lower values to the regulating ecosystem services and (3) social perception highlights the importance of cultural ES but tends to underestimate other ecosystem functions. These three methodologies translate into sectorial and nondialoguing policies for which decisions are made on partial and nonintegrated information. In order to design integrated policies with a view to the sustainability of the local food system, our results indicate that the planning of urban and peri-urban agricultural areas should rely on tools capable of integrating both spatial mapping methods and human-based assessment methodologies.

Happy animals at small scales: farmers’ portrayal of local food systems in New Jersey as an organic answer for farm animal welfare ethical concerns

Happy animals at small scales: farmers’ portrayal of local food systems in New Jersey as an organic answer for farm animal welfare ethical concerns

Pivoting is exhausting: A critical analysis of local food system resilience

As COVID-19 caused severe disruptions to global supply chains in March 2020, local and regional food producers were widely heralded for their flexibility in adapting and ‘pivoting’ to meet changing market demand amidst public health protocols in ways their behemothic agri-food counterparts could not. While “resilient food systems” have become both an academic buzzword and a practical goal for urban and municipal planners, there is an emergent critical literature that calls for greater attention to questions of power within discourses on resilience. This article contributes to a more critical geography of food system resilience through analyzing the experiences of local food producers and meat processors in the state of Iowa, U.S. during the early pandemic period using a moral economy framework. We argue that while the small-scale, producers who market direct-to-consumer may show resilience in their ability to cope with and adapt to system shocks due to short supply chains and social relations, their uneven experience with socio-emotional and economic ‘costs’ of resilience merits increased attention from both academics and policymakers. The ethic of ‘hustle’ within farming, along with the greater social ‘embeddedness’ of market transactions in local food, invites a certain self-exploitation that is differentially enacted and experienced based on factors such as age, gender, health status, and their level of dependence on farm income. Our conclusions suggest that any policies focused on strengthening local and regional food system resilience need to also focus on the wellbeing of local food producers and promote policies towards dignified and remunerative work.

A pilot study exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on small-scale direct marketing farmers in Northwest Arkansas and their responses to the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many disruptions and challenges in local and national food systems in America. Many farms and market gardens were forced to innovate quickly and take action to survive ongoing disruption as these businesses struggled with finances and distribution of products among other challenges. Many small-scale, local farming operations in particular were able to respond to these disruptions in unique ways, which may offer useful insight into how to better prepare small farming communities for public health and other kinds of disasters in the future. This pilot study aims to better understand how COVID-19 affected the local food system in the region of Northwest Arkansas in the mid-southern United States and how small-scale, direct-sales farmers responded to the pandemic, through a survey and interview about their experiences from 2019 to 2021. Participating farmers reported changes in farming procedures and challenges in owning or working on their farms due to ongoing climate-related environmental issues or issues specific to the pandemic, such as distributing products, utilizing financial and other resources of support, and partnering with local supply-chain partners and community members to ensure local businesses’ survival during COVID-19. This pilot study can provide insight into how local farming operations and their regional and smaller-scale supply chain partners have built and utilized community resilience strategies to survive COVID-19 challenges in the Northwest region of Arkansas. A statewide follow-up study will be conducted to observe how these producers navigated these challenges on a larger scale, including in different regions of Arkansas following the start of the pandemic.

Potential of traditional Chilean blood-fleshed peach to support livelihood opportunities in local agriculture

The blood-flesh peach or vineyard peach is an older heritage cultivar with juicy red-flesh and tart-sweet flavor. They are popular in France, where more than 200 years ago wine growers used to plant them on the vineyards as biological markers to detect the presence of powdery mildew. It is present in countries such as China, Italy, New Zealand, Australia and USA however, it remains a very rare variety worldwide. In Chile, the blood-flesh peach has a centenary presence in rural orchards where is called “Durazno Betarraga.” Reproduced by seeds, it has pass through generations of family farmers and has been adapted to local environmental conditions. This red-flesh peach is a local variety considered part of their traditional diets, however, cultural changes in food consumption, short postharvest life and water scarcity due to climate change are threatening its conservation. One of the objectives of the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, as defined by the FAO, is to integrate small holders and family farmers into value chains for sustainable production and consumption of fruits and vegetables recognizing the contributions of farmer's landraces to their food security, nutrition, livelihoods and income. To promote this objective, we present the work we have been carry out for several years with a farming community. We have conducted ethnographic research to provide a qualitative description of the agricultural value of the blood peach in a limited territory of the Maule Region defined as the study area. For the quantitative section of our research we analyzed the antioxidant capacity (ORAC) and total polyphenol content and compared them with those of other fruits. To gather information on the presence of the blood-fleshed peach in other regions of Chile, we used a citizen science approach through social networks. We propose that this local variety is an innovative raw material to develop healthy fruit-based food, thus encouraging its conservation and consumption with a positive social and economic impact for the community and the local food system.

The potential of urban family vertical farming: A pilot study of Shanghai

Sustainable cities are increasingly requiring local food systems. On the contrary, food self-sufficiency rate in many cities is continuously decreasing. In recent years, the concept of vertical farming (VF) has begun to show its advantages in providing a promising hope for alleviating this contradiction. However, there are few studies on the potential of VF on a city scale. This paper aims to assess the economic feasibility of an urban family vertical farming (UFVF) in Shanghai newly-built residential by modeling typical family planting mode, and using the evaluation software of vertical farms (VFer) software for calculation. Meanwhile, the influence of UFVF on the self-sufficiency rate of vegetables and fruits of households and the whole city is investigated. The results demonstrate that the UFVF contributes to increasing the self-sufficiency rate of vegetables and fruits by 20.68 % and 2.54 %, respectively, which could be important to enhance the resilience of local food system. Additionally, the return on investment of UFVF could achieve approximately 30 %. The proposed techno-economic model can assist to better predicting the small-scale VF on the urban scale, which provides a basis for decision-making on development of sustainable urban agriculture.

Healthy Eating Policy: Racial Liberalism, Global Connections and Contested Science

The challenges to designing and implementing ethically and politically meaningful eating policies are many and complex. This article provides a brief overview of Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti’s Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach while also critically engaging with the place of racial justice, global interconnectedness, and debates over science in thinking about ethics and politics of public health nutrition and policy. I do not aim to burden Barnhill and Bonotti with the responsibility to fully address these issues, but considering the interconnection of these issues and the ever pressing effects of climate change on local and global food systems, we collectively need to turn to these difficult and pressing questions about what a just food system looks like, what concerns are centred, and who is left out. I group these engagements with Barnhill and Bonotti under three headings: racial liberalism, global food system, and contested nutrition science. I conclude with some remarks about locality.

Secondary supermarket revolution: food sources and food security in Northern Namibia

A central feature of the transformation of urban food systems in cities of the Global South is the growing presence of supermarkets and their supply chains, often termed supermarketization or a supermarket revolution. A key issue in the African context is whether supermarkets are a threat to other sources of food including informal sector vendors. Most research on the supermarket revolution and competition with other food retailers focuses on large urban conurbations with little attention paid to the role of supermarkets in smaller urban centres. This paper aims to rectify this situation through a case study of the role of supermarkets in three small urban centres in northern Namibia. The paper uses data from a representative household food security survey in 2018 which collected detailed information on household food consumption and food purchasing patterns. We show that supermarkets have established a dominant role in the local food system and are patronized by almost all households. However, the informal food sector displays considerable resilience and is patronized on a regular basis by low-income households. Future research on the impact of the secondary supermarket revolution should examine the experience and strategies of informal food vendors and whether the relationship with supermarkets is truly symbiotic or not.

COVID-19, local food system and digitalisation of the agri-food sector

PurposeThis paper aims to evaluate the responses taken during the pandemic of COVID-19 in sustaining agricultural activities and safeguarding local food supply via digital platforms by applying the case study method.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a case study approach due to its systematic way of collecting data, analysing information and reporting results to understand the particular problem. For this study, secondary data consisting of government reports and documents are used to give a broader understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on the local food system and digital platform for agricultural produce.FindingsThe impact of COVID-19 on the agri-food sector is the move towards a more resilient and sustainable local food system, whereby nations emphasise food security by encouraging local food production. This is done by boosting micro, small and medium enterprises’ (MSME) output, “supporting local” initiatives and leveraging digital platforms and FinTech in business transactions.Research limitations/implicationsThis study highlights that MSMEs’ adoption of digital platforms, particularly in the agri-food sector, demonstrates their willingness to embrace new business models that leverage technological advancements while maintaining the personal touch that attracts customers.Practical implicationsThis study implies that although the pandemic outbreak created prolonged uncertainties with an immediate impact on the economy and ways of doing business transactions, digital platforms and FinTech ensured continuous food supply during the period.Originality/valueThis paper provides initial valuable insight to academics, practitioners and policymakers in agriculture and innovation management. It can be observed that digital platform and FinTech plays an essential role in ensuring safety and undisrupted food supply, especially in the case of fresh produce grown by local small-scale farmers and MSMEs. This creates a more resilient agri-food system and reduces the pressure from the conventional model of food purchase and social distancing requirements.

Emergent regional collaborative governance in rural local food systems development

ABSTRACT This research analyzes the emergent collaborative governance of local food systems (LFS) development in a six-county region of Michigan’s Western Upper Peninsula, a post-industrial mining region with a long history of local food provisioning. We contribute to scholarship on rural food systems by framing LFS development as a social good, benefiting placemaking and long-term economic development. We use a community-based research case study and policy analysis to identify policy-related gaps, including LFS’ low legitimacy, goal divergence among different jurisdictions, and lack of regional leadership. LFS development may present ways for rural communities to foster placemaking and economic development; however, we find that LFS are less visible and not always on the policy agenda of local governments. In this study, collaborations among grassroots actors and organizations outside of local government are leading LFS development. We conclude that collaborative governance may have a better chance to succeed when LFS have a clear public identity and legitimacy as a social good, partners reach goal consensus, and appropriate leaderships are formed.

Interventions in Small Island Developing States to improve diet, with a focus on the consumption of local, nutritious foods: a systematic review

IntroductionFood security in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) is an international policy priority. SIDS have high rates of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases, including obesity and type 2 diabetes, micronutrient deficiencies and,...

Food providers’ experiences with a central procurement school snack program

Universal, government-funded school food programs (SFPs) offer many benefits not only to the children they serve, but also to the communities that support them. To date, Canada does not have a national SFP. Thus, if one is to be considered, evaluations of current SFPs in a Canadian context are necessary. This study explored food providers’ experiences with the Centrally Procured School Food Program (CPSFP) in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Twenty interviews were conducted with individuals involved in the production, procurement, and delivery of food to schools. Successes included improved economies of scale, increased profile and awareness of local food systems, and enhanced reach into schools. Challenges included inconsistent delivery times and unexpected food volumes that placed additional burdens on program implementation. Recommendations for program sustainability included enhanced engagement of partners, sustained funding to build capacity (including paid personnel), and more learning opportunities for students. Food providers gave insights on how the CPSFP can be improved and sustained into the future, as well as its potential to provide new opportunities for all stakeholders and have a positive impact on the local food system.

From Şxex to Chorta: The Adaptation of Maronite Foraging Customs to the Greek Ones in Kormakitis, Northern Cyprus.

The traditional foraging of wild vegetables (WVs) has played an important role in the post-Neolithic development of rural local food systems of the Near East and the Mediterranean. This study assessed the WVs gathered by the ancient Maronite Arabic diaspora of Kurmajit/Kormakitis village in Northern Cyprus and compared them with those gathered by their Cypriot and Arab Levantine neighbors. An ethnobotanical field survey focusing on WVs was conducted via twenty-two semi-structured interviews among the few remaining Maronite elderly inhabitants (approximately 200); and the resulting data were compared with those described in a few field studies previously conducted in Cyprus, Lebanon, and coastal Syria. Wild vegetables in Kormakitis are grouped into a folk category expressed by the emic lexeme Şxex, which roughly corresponds to the Greek concept of Chorta (wild greens). The large majority of Şxex have Greek folk phytonyms and they overlap for the most part with the WVs previously reported to be gathered by Greek Cypriots, although a remarkable number of WVs are also shared with that of the other groups. The findings address a possible adaptation of Maronite WV foraging to the Greek one, which may be explained by the fact that the Maronite minority and the majority Greek communities lived side by side for many centuries. Additionally, after Turkish occupation in 1974, a remarkable migration/urbanization of Maronites to the main Greek centers on the southern side of the isle took place, and Kurmajit became part of Cypriot trans-border family networks.

Digital revolution for the agroecological transition of food systems: A responsible research and innovation perspective

CONTEXTSo far, digital technology development in agriculture has mainly dealt with precision agriculture, often associated with conventional large-scale systems. The emergence of digital agriculture - based on the triptych of “new data sources / new processing methods / new inter-connection capacities (internet)” - opens up prospects for mobilizing digital technologies to accelerate the deployment of other forms of agriculture, such as agroecology. A specific research agenda must therefore be built to redirect researchers specialized in digital technologies towards these new issues. This construction is significant because digital technology and agroecology are disruptive innovations that shake up the actors' practices, agricultural innovation ecosystems, and value chains. OBJECTIVEAn interdisciplinary group of INRAE researchers (covering 10 scientific departments) was mandated to carry out this reflection, with the objective of developing a research agenda to better couple digitalization and agroecology, in order to pave the way for responsible digital farming. The group used the framework of responsible research and innovation. METHODOver 18 months, the group met monthly by video-conference, to overcome the interdisciplinarity barrier, and at three face-to-face seminars, where creative design exercises were carried out (based on a world café format, and “remember the future” method). This work gave rise to three prospective lines of research aimed at putting digitalization at the service of agroecology and local food systems. These topics prioritize research that fosters innovations in digital technology, as well as organisations and policies that (1) accelerate the agroecological transition on the farm and in the territories, (2) manage the territories as commons, (3) empower farmers and consumers. Then, the group examined these three prospective lines of research from an RRI perspective as well as three current research topics on digital agriculture (digital soil mapping, precision agriculture, technologies for food wastage reduction). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSThis work allowed us to highlight the gaps between current research on digital agriculture and the RRI expectations, and the tensions (between rationalization and diversity of farming systems, between complexity of agroecological systems and the need for simplification of models, and finally between data speculation and frugality). We were also able to refine the specific scientific questions of each prospective line of research and finally to draw attention to the key levers that will have to be integrated if these research efforts are to be approached from an RRI perspective. SIGNIFICANCEThis contribution shows RRI can be used not only to reflect on research practices but also as a framework to build a research agenda paving the way for responsible digital agriculture.