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Expanding the Boundaries of Beginning Farmer Training and Program Development: A review of Contemporary Initiatives To Cultivate a New Generation of American Farmers
No full textBeginning farmer training and program development in United States is one of the most significant yet poorly understood areas of agriculture, food system, and community development research and practice. This article offers a review of the social context in forming recent beginning farmer educational programming in order to shed light on its development, purpose, and future trajectory. We provide several illustrations of best practices to support our main point that adult agricultural education for beginning farmers is taking on new forms and patterns to support and sustain a new generation of famers. As such it is vitalizing new opportunities to generate and exchange information and knowledge for sustainable agriculture. While these examples appear promising, the article concludes with recommendations for researchers and practitioners to expand the boundaries of what constitutes meaningful education for beginning farmers who are interested in sustainable food system models and practices
The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food
No full textFirst paragraphs:I picked up the book The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food with a healthy dose of skepticism. The title sounds like a booster for how the local food movement can bring prosperity, not to mention salvation, to a hard-scrabble town. In this case the town in question is Hardwick, a rural, working-class town in northern Vermont where the unemployment rate is high and the median income low.I recently moved to Vermont to start teaching at Bennington College, a small liberal arts college in the southern part of the state. The gossip about Hardwick was immediate. The buzz carried one message: Hardwick is a local food mecca where local agricultural development really is bringing social cohesion and economic growth to the town. Vermont in general has a very active and thoughtful local agriculture movement made up of farmers, food processors, chefs, wholesale distributors, food service directors, individual consumers, municipal and state government officials, activists, scholars…the list goes on. It would not be surprising that such a model town exists in Vermont. I had yet to see the evidence or understand what is going on in Hardwick. So along with my skepticism I started the task of reviewing this book with great curiosity...
Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
No full textFirst paragraph:Mark Winne’s book Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty comes as a welcome contrast to the volumes by intellectuals about their quests to eat locally as part of their mission to expose the industrial food system. While equally personal and situated in the structural, Mark Winne describes and analyzes his efforts to close the food gap through providing healthy food for the urban poor. As personal as the foodquest books by Kingsolver and by Pollan, Winne shares his attempts to reduce poverty by increasing access to healthy food by people who are food-insecure. He takes us through his first efforts at gardening and organizing community gardens, reminding us that the most important word in that phrase is “community.” He illustrates his premise that the best programs link members of the community to each other as well as to programs that increase access to good food. He introduces us to teenagers, parents, farmers, and organizers who are part of the food- and social-justice movement. And he demonstrates the many barriers to healthy eating in the food deserts of inner cities and the various attempts — few of which have been successful — to make healthy food available to the food-insecure people who live there...
THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Zoning Considerations for Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture
No full textFirst paragraph:
Every year, about 1.2 million acres of U.S. farmland is converted to residential and other commercial uses, according to the American Farmland Trust.[1] This includes some of the most fertile farmland in the nation, as many of our major cities were originally established in fertile farming areas. With more than 900 million acres of farmland remaining, we are not likely to run out of land for farming in the near future. However, farmland conversion is clearly putting the long-run sustainability of U.S. food production at risk.
[1] American Farmland Trust, http://www.farmland.org/program
In This Issue: Frontiers in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture
No full textFirst paragraph: Introduction to Urban AgricultureThe special topic focus of JAFSCD volume 1, issue 2, is urban and peri-urban agriculture. While urban and peri-urban agriculture are common and often traditional aspects of food systems in the Global South, they are now on the rise in industrial countries as well, especially among ethnic immigrant groups in North America and Europe. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defines urban agriculture as “an industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city, or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield a diversity of crops and livestock.”[1] The findings of national censuses, household surveys, and research projects suggest that up to two-thirds of urban and peri-urban households around the world are involved in agriculture. Much of the food produced is for their own consumption, with occasional surpluses sold to local markets.[2
Midscale Food Value Chains: An Introduction
No full textThis introductory discussion positions midscale food value chains as business models for a "third tier" in the U. S. food system, distinct from direct marketing to local consumers and global marketing of agricultural commodities. Responding to a growing demand for food that is differentiated from conventional products, midscale food value chains are developing strategic business alliances among small and medium sized farms or ranches and other agri-food enterprises. These supply chain alliances: (a) handle significant volumes of high-quality, differentiated food products; (b) operate effectively at regional, multistate levels; and (c) distribute profits equitably among the strategic partners. Value chain business models place emphasis on both the values associated with the food and the values associated with the business relationships within the food supply chain. Farmers and ranchers are treated as strategic partners, not as interchangeable input suppliers. Midscale food value chains employ two distinct, multifarm marketing strategies: direct-to-wholesale and direct-to-consumer. Both marketing strategies are based on organizational structures that achieve the necessary volumes of high-quality, differentiated food by aggregating product from multiple farms or ranches. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the challenges associated with developing successful midscale food value chains and of needed research and public policies to support the growth of this third tier
Money and Mission: Moving Food with Value and Values
No full textIn response to low margins in traditional commodity markets and consumer demand for decommodified food, food value chains have emerged in the last decade as strategies for differentiating farm products and opening new, more financially viable market channels for smaller farmers. These business networks incorporate strategic coordination between food producers, distributors, and sellers in pursuit of common financial and social goals. Our analysis of the aggregation, distribution and marketing functions of eight food value chains of diverse character across the United States reveals four summary findings that encapsulate the challenges and opportunities facing these business organizations: (1) private infrastructure investment should match the organizational stage of development and market capacities; (2) identity preservation is a critical market differentiation strategy; (3) informal networks can be highly effective tools for coordinating the marketing efforts of diverse agricultural producers; and (4) nonprofits and cooperatives both can play key roles in value chain development, but should recognize their organizational competencies and limitations
Food Value Chain Development in Central New York: CNY Bounty
No full textIn the past 10 years, demand for locally grown food has increased dramatically. Concomitantly, small, commercial farms have declined disproportionately to small and large farms. The decline may be due to the lack of appropriately scaled marketing and distribution resulting from changing markets. This article presents a case study of a component of a food value chain started in 2007, Central New York (CNY) Bounty. CNY Bounty markets and distributes products produced by 119 small, commercial farms and processors to individual households, restaurants, natural food stores, and universities. In the past four years, CNY Bounty has experienced mixed success in terms of its economic viability, which can offer some important lessons for practitioners and contributions for food value chain research
An Analysis of the Impacts of Health Insurance Rebate Initiatives on Community Supported Agriculture in Southern Wisconsin
No full textSince 2005, four insurance providers in southern Wisconsin have offered rebates to policyholders who subscribe to a local community supported agriculture (CSA) operation. Rebate program participants rely on the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC) — an organization that supports CSA farms and educates consumers about local food systems — to connect the insurance companies with CSA growers and consumers and to manage various aspects of the CSA rebate program, including vetting participating farms. The rebate makes fresh, seasonal, locally and organically grown fruits and vegetables more accessible to consumers by reducing the cost of a CSA share by up to 40%. As a result, CSA members report increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, one of the main goals of the program. With marketing overseen by MACSAC and the insurance companies, the rebate program has led to a reduction in the amount of time growers spend on advertising their operations and recruiting CSA members and has contributed to increased member retention from year to year. Additionally, both the number of MACSAC member farms and the total number of shares offered by these farms have increased substantially since the rebate program's inception. These trends reduce some of the risk growers face and allow them to expand production in order to serve a larger consumer base. These outcomes associated with the MACSAC organization and the insurance rebate program indicate the success of the program, the importance of MACSAC as an organizing body, and the potential for implementing the program among national providers and in other locations where community supported agriculture is prevalent
Kirschenmann’s Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: A Better Philosophy for the Food Movement
No full textFirst paragraph:National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program was brought to me this morning by “Monsanto: helping farmers around the world be more sustainable.” From multinational corporations like Monsanto to the vegetable farmer at my farmers’ market, everyone in the agriculture field wants to talk about sustainability. What does sustainable mean? Do humans influence the environment, or are humans and the environment constantly influencing each other? When farmers say they “know” how to farm, what kind of knowledge is that? Is that knowledge drawn from years of experience, or from scientific experiment?..