As local food activities expand and grow, an important question to answer is how various participants contribute to a local food system’s overall vitality and strength. This paper does so by focusing on the relationships between locally-oriented farm and retail actors and assessing what the configuration of these relationships tells us about the workings of the broader local food system. Such an analysis reveals two things. Empirically, it shows the important role food retailers play in the overall vibrancy of local (...) food exchanges: food retailers form crucial links holding the broader system together and significantly expanding consumer access to local foods. Further, different retailer types have distinct impacts on network configurations, each serving particular roles in the development and maintenance of local food systems. Methodologically, this paper shows the value of applying social network analysis techniques to the study of local food systems: such an approach yields insights that may not be as readily assessable from other strategies. In this paper, I overview common network analysis techniques and apply them to a case study of local food activities in New England, suggesting how such an approach might be applied to local food systems in other places. (shrink)

More and more cities develop urban food strategies to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation. In this paper, we discuss the findings of an exploratory document analysis (...) of the social justice-oriented ambitions, motivations, current practices and policy trajectories articulated in sixteen European UFSs. We reflect on the food-related resource allocations, value patterns and decision rules these cities propose to alter and the target groups they propose to support, empower or include. Overall, we find that UFSs make little explicit reference to social justice and justice-oriented food concepts, such as food security, food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty. Nevertheless, the identified resources, services and target groups indicate that the three dimensions of Fraser are at the heart of many of the measures described. We argue that implicit, fragmentary and unspecified adoption of social justice in European UFSs is problematic, as it may hold back public consciousness, debate and collective action regarding food system inequalities and may be easily disregarded in policy budgeting, implementation and evaluation trajectories. As a path forward, we present our plans for the RE-ADJUSTool that would enable UFS stakeholders to reflect on how their UFS can incorporate social justice and who to involve in this pursuit. (shrink)

Advocates for re-localizing food systems often encourage consumers to support local farmers and strengthen local food economies. Yet, local food systems hinge not only on consumers’ willingness to buy local food but also on whether farmers have the social support networks to address diverse challenges during food production and distribution. This study characterizes the challenges and support systems of farmers selling to local markets in Québec, Canada, across multiple growing seasons using a mixed-methods research design. We sent an online questionnaire (...) to 1046 farmers and conducted follow-up interviews with 15 of the 133 respondents. Our findings show that farmers relied on an average of four support actor groups, particularly employees, customers, and other farmers. Actors played distinct roles in terms of the importance, frequency, and formality of interactions, providing immediate and long-term support through formal and informal relationships across multiple spatial scales (farm, local community, and regional/international). Our thematic analysis showed that support actors helped farmers in four key domains: (1) Knowledge sharing and emotional support; (2) Labour and workforce; (3) Material and financial aid; and (4) Consumer education and business promotion. Farmer associations provided resources to tackle various challenges, acting as bridges across multiple support actor groups. Yet, our results suggest that political desires to encourage local food systems are in some cases poorly matched with resources to address specific types of challenges farmers face. Specifically, overlooking the role of diverse social support actors in helping farmers build food production and distribution capacity could undermine efforts to foster localization. (shrink)

While the agricultural knowledges and practices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and women have shaped agriculture in the US, these knowledges have been colonized, exploited, and appropriated, cleaving space for the presently dominant white male agricultural narrative. Simultaneously, these knowledges and practices have been transformed to fit within a society that values individualism, production, efficiency, and profit. The authors use a decolonial Feminist Political Ecology framework to highlight the ways in which the knowledges of Indigenous, Black, and women (...) farmers have been and are being colonized; a tradition that makes alternative agriculture a predominantly white space. The authors interviewed 10 BIPOC and women farmers in Colorado to understand what values and knowledges were shaping their often-appropriated agricultural practices. Three themes emerged: people, place, and patterns. By centering these values, farmers create relational agricultural practices that support the well-being of human and more-than-human beings. To support the widespread implementation of these practices, food systems practitioners must elevate the voices and knowledges of historically excluded farmers. Only then can truly just and equitable alternative agricultural practices be realized in the US. (shrink)

Questions of value are central to understanding alternative practices of food exchange. This study introduces a practice-based approach to value that challenges the dominant views, which capture value as either an input for or an outcome of practices of exchange. Building on a longitudinal ethnographic study on food collectives, I show how value, rather than residing in something that people share, or in something that objects have, is an ideal target that continuously unfolds and evolves in action. I found that (...) people organized their food collectives around pursuing three kinds of value-ideals, namely good food, good price and good community. These value-ideals became reproduced in food collectives through what I identified as valuing modes, by which people evaluated the goodness of food, prices and community. My analysis revealed that, while participating in food collectives in order to pursue their value-ideals, people were likely to have differing reasons for pursuing them and tended to attach different meanings to the same value-ideal. I argue that understanding how value as an ideal target is reproduced through assessing and assigning value is essential in further explorations of the formation of value and in better understanding the dynamics of organizing alternative practices of food exchange. (shrink)