University of Minnesota, Duluth
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THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER: Beyond Economic Growth
No full textFirst paragraphs:We need a new vision of the future of agriculture, food systems, and communities. Most Americans seem preoccupied with a vision of economic growth — restoring it, promoting it, and sustaining it. They are unwilling to accept the fact that not only is economic growth not sustainable; it also is no longer either necessary or desirable. We need a new vision that will not compel people to "sell themselves for the means of life" but instead use their time, talents, and energy to "cultivate into fuller perfection, the art of life itself" (Keynes, 1931/1962, p. 368).The consensus of research into psychological well-being or happiness indicates that beyond some modest level of economic well-being, happiness is related far more closely to the quality of social relationships and a sense of purpose in life than with additional income or wealth (Jackson, 2011; James, 2003). For example, a 2003 article in the Guardianreferences a recent British Cabinet report and concluded that "despite huge increases in affluence compared with 1950, people throughout the developed world report no greater feelings of happiness" (James, 2003, para. 4). Certainly, people in some areas of the world still need economic growth. However, the so-called developing nations need not aspire to the economies needed to support American lifestyles. A 2004 review of more than 150 scholarly studies concluded that beyond per-capita incomes of around US15,000 in developing nations, there is little if any correlation between increasing wealth and overall happiness or well-being (Diener & Seligman, 2004). There is no reason to believe this relationship has change in the past decade...
Author's Response to Letter to the Editor Regarding Meter Column
No full textFirst paragraph:I am always happy when a column I write sparks a deeper conversation, and I thank my colleagues Gutknecht and Stockinger for bringing important points into focus...
The Farm Fresh Healthcare Project: Analysis of a Hybrid Values-based Supply Chain
No full textAn emerging literature on values-based supply chains offers models for meeting both the scale-based requirements and values-based goals of farm-to-institution initiatives. These models seek to incorporate conventional supply chain norms of efficiency, standardization, and affordability while meeting the diverse social and environmental values motivating the local food movement. Values-based supply chain models to date have been derived largely from cases of farmer cooperatives and food hubs that have purposefully designed their operations to incorporate alternative agrifood movement values. A model that deserves more attention is hybrid values-based supply chains that incorporate both conventional and alternative resources, infrastructure, and markets. Of the few studies examining hybrid models, some point to benefits such as established supply chain relationships, expertise, and infrastructure that match the needs of institutional purchasers, while others argue that conventional intermediaries reproduce marginalizing structures of mainstream supply chains. This paper explores these tensions through analysis of the Farm Fresh Healthcare Project (FFHP), a farm-to-hospital initiative in the San Francisco Bay Area that engages a set of hospitals' existing regional produce distributors to supply products from local small and midscale family farmers. By engaging conventional intermediaries, the project benefited from existing supply chain infrastructure shaped by norms of efficiency, standardization, and affordability. This paper analyzes the extent to which FFHP actors succeed in embedding in their supply chains a range of non-economic values, including transparency, communication of qualities of provenance and production, decision-making equity, environmental stewardship, and social equity in the form of supporting small and midscale family farmers
More Than One Meaning of “Chain” in Food Chains, a Documentary Film
No full textFirst paragraph:On November 18, 2014, I had the opportunity to see an advance screening of Food Chains, a documentary from the producers of Fast Food Nation and Food, Inc. (It was released in the U.S. on November 21.) The film is about the long and arduous journey of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to win rights — basic rights — as farmworkers. The film was shown at the American Public Health Association (APHA) meetings in New Orleans, sponsored by the Food and Environment Working Group at APHA and hosted by Healthy Food Action. Worker rights have a lot to do with public health. But the film serves a much bigger audience. It can be used as a transdisciplinary starting point for discussion by scholars and practitioners in the food system who are interested in health, worker safety, food justice, labor laws, unlikely partners, and economic power and concentration in the food industry..
Lost in Translation: Delivering Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Interventions to Hispanic Populations
No full textHispanics became the United States' largest minority in 2012. Lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions in the Hispanic population at the health-care and community levels increases the risk of negative health outcomes, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Delivering nutrition education can modify cultural traditions associated with food and decrease diseases associated with food habits. Barriers faced by many Hispanics include, but are not limited to, limited English proficiency and/or immigration status. Developing interventions to improve Hispanics' health outcomes requires understanding of Hispanics' cultural values and diversity. Active recruitment and training of Hispanics into food system fields is crucial to developing and implementing culturally sensitive and language-oriented intervention
A Native Perspective: Food Is More Than Consumption
No full textEffectively engaging in food work with and among Native American people toward food sovereignty requires cultural competency, historical knowledge, and a more complex understanding of how food informs community well-being. Drawing on both personal and academic experience, this paper argues that Native Americans' food consumption is tied to land, place, relationships, community, and health. Native American relationships to food stand in contrast to American individualism and function as an intricate part of communities to maintain relationships, build cultural knowledge, and satisfy emotional and physical health. Food problems among Native people have developed over centuries of forced change, a history that provides insight into the way food has been utilized to colonize. As a result, many tribes and individuals have become food dependent on the U.S. government. Food systems research and outreach that focuses narrowly on consumption and access risk oversimplifying Native communities' relationship to food as well as their movement toward food sovereignty. Solutions that do not account for the cultural and historical realities of Native people are not real solutions to the problems confronting them. We must make room, therefore, in the food justice movement to envision alternative solutions that better reflect Native realities, cultures, and lives.
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Decolonizing a Food System: Freedom Farmers' Market as a Place for Resistance and Analysis
No full textOakland's Freedom Farmers' Market is more than a venue for food exchange; it is a gathering place for Black cultural expression and economics. More often than not, Black farmers are shut out and even pushed out of mainstream farmers markets. However, fresh food and Black farmers are celebrated at the Freedom Farmers' Market each week. This commentary discusses the critical ways in which this market represents a social discourse about decolonizing our food system. Embedded within this place analysis is also, necessarily, a critique of the dominant places people currently have available for food. The Freedom Farmers' Market has become a model for disenfranchised peoples to take control of their own food system.
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Local Food, Food Democracy, and Food Hubs
No full textIn western North Carolina, where we and others have been working to build local food systems for the last 15 years, food hubs are part of an expanding network of local food distribution infrastructure intended to help the region's smaller local farms access larger, more mainstream market outlets. The impact of food hubs on the region's evolving food system, however, is contradictory. At the same time that food hubs further the development of local food supply chains and create market opportunities for farms, they can also run contrary to the bigger and longer-term goals of the local food movement. In this viewpoint article, we look critically at the role of nonprofit food hubs in efforts to build local food systems. Speaking from our experiences in the local food movement in western North Carolina and drawing from social movements and food systems scholarship, we argue that food hubs, when used as primary mechanisms of local food system building, can deprive the movement of its capacity to activate broad participation in the food system. We argue that efforts to build local food systems need a foundation of work that engages people (such as farmers, citizens, people who work in the food industry) in processes that can shape the practices, values, and impacts of systems of food production and distribution. While they can mitigate the mismatch between the smaller scale typical of local food and larger mainstream markets, food hubs alone cannot challenge industry norms and practices, and they can even aid the food industry in maintaining the status quo.
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Rural School Food Service Director Perceptions on Voluntary School Meal Reforms
No full textThis mixed-method study examined rural U.S. food service directors' perceptions of and experiences with voluntary school meal programs, which have the potential to improve school nutrition but have not been widely adopted in rural areas of the United States. Little is known about how rural food service directors perceive these programs. Interview and survey instruments examined how rural food service directors characterize barriers and facilitators to participation in voluntary school meal programs like farm-to-school and school garden programs. Rural school food service directors participated in a semistructured telephone interview (n=67) and an online survey (n=57). We defined rural school districts by the most rural locale codes (as categorized by the National Center for Education Statistics) in a midsized Midwestern state. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. We analyzed qualitative responses using thematic coding. The qualitative analysis revealed that directors had little experience with these programs and perceived these programs to be very challenging to implement. Issues common to rural school districts were a very small staff, lack of concrete knowledge about how these programs work, and lack of access to local producers and chefs. These findings underscore the need to consider the unique situation of rural schools when promoting voluntary school meals reform programs. We make recommendations about adopting and adapting these voluntary programs to better fit the reality of rural areas.
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Perceptions of Local Hospitals and Food Producers on Opportunities for and Barriers to Implementing Farm-to-Hospital Programs
No full textThe farm-to-table movement has significantly increased in the United States during the last decade. More locally sourced foods are being used in meal programs on a larger, institutional scale. Farm-to-hospital initiatives have been emerging as an effort to reestablish local, healthy diets into the health care model. As a result, barriers, opportunities, and capacity-building strategies specific to farm-to-hospital initiatives are being more closely explored. The purpose of this study is to investigate perceptions and attitudes of local food producers and hospital staff towards using locally sourced foods in hospital food service programs. To identify these perceptions, in-depth interviews were conducted with staff involved with food procurement and management at two Montana hospitals and with local food producers and distributors. Barriers for hospitals to use locally sourced foods included price, product availability, and quantity, while opportunities included positive relationships, product quality, and champion leaders of the local food system movement within the hospital setting. Furthermore, capacity-building strategies suggested by the interviews included development of cooperative distribution of local foods and formalized working-relationship contracts. Most significantly, collaborative dialogue was identified as a method to further support the extent of locally sourced foods being used in hospital food service programs