Proceedings dec2015 part 2 [pp 440-635]

TRACK 4. TRAINING AND JOBS The track focuses on the various ways through which educational and training programmes deal with sustainable food planning, and how they provide a specific know‐how for for future professional in this field.

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Charles Taze Fulford III, Sadik Artunc , “Service‐learning and Urban Agriculture in Design Studios”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. th Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 441‐452. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

SERVICE‐LEARNING AND URBAN AGRICULTURE IN DESIGN STUDIOS C. Taze Fulford III1, Sadik Artunc2

Keywords: Service‐Learning, Design, Studio, Urban, Agriculture Abstract: A design studio in a department of Landscape Architecture in the rural South Eastern portion of the United States of America set out to collaborate with community non‐profits, policy makers, and design professionals to provide students opportunities to work with clients in the field.

Students were asked to inventory and analyze conditions of multiple sites in multiple rural communities to assess possible sites for community markets and shared public spaces. From these early studies, students went through the design process to develop strategies for communities to develop sites and provide marketing drawings. Discussions from local historians, economic developers, politicians, and citizens helped form a more integrated view of how these conditions could exist within traditional agricultural regions. Real sites with real clients motivated students to find innovative solutions to issues such as obesity, heat island mortality, passive and active recreation, and bridging the gap between groups with cultural, economic, and societal differences.

This study focuses on identifying local opportunities for service learning projects and the opportunities to lessen the effects of food deserts in rural areas. A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the process, place creation, and health benefits is developed for those wanting to utilize a service‐learning pedagogy in the classroom for planning and designing ecologically sensitive sites. Community, student, and team reflection on the projects will also be discussed giving insight to the process from multiple points of view.

1.

Introduction

Service‐learning is one of the pedagogical vehicles that offer one of the best opportunities to accomplish both ‘service’ and ‘learning’ objectives without compromising the primary objectives of either goal. It offers the opportunity for today's young people and tomorrow's leaders to learn, while addressing local and regional needs. Today, the term "service‐learning" has been used to characterize a wide array of experiential education endeavors, from volunteer and community service projects to field studies. Service‐learning is not a new concept and there are an accumulating number of scholarly endeavors studying its uses, pedagogical and community benefits, but there seems to be fewer scholarly endeavors studying its applications in landscape architectural curricula (Artunç & Sabaz, 2009; Artunç & Kurtaslan, 2011; Artunç, Fulford, Gallo & Hesielt, 2014).

Since the mid‐1990’s, service‐learning has spread rapidly throughout communities, K‐12 institutions, and colleges and universities in the U.S.A (The National Service‐Learning Clearinghouse, 1994 & NCSL, 2002). A report, entitled "Learning in Deed" from the National Commission on Service‐Learning (Fiske, 2001) quoted National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates that in the 2000‐2001 academic year, more than 13 million school students were involved in service and service‐learning.

NCES also found that between 1984 and 1997, the number of K‐12 students involved in service‐ learning programs rose from 900,000 to over 12.6 million while the proportion of high school students participating in service‐learning grew from 2 percent to 25 percent during the same time

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Mississippi State University, tfulford@lalc.msstate.edu Mississippi State University, sartunc@lalc.msstate.edu

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period. A similar increase has also been observed with the service‐learning in the colleges and universities in the U.S.A.

Although the curricula in landscape architecture programs have always had projects and case studies in their communities, the most of these studies were not organized and/or recognized as service‐ learning efforts both for pedagogical and organizational reasons. Lack of an organized public participation though identification of a community partner, and service‐learning pedagogy oriented course syllabus and requirements of project statements including but not limited to not having a reflective component as a part of course or project were among some of the reasons for not earning the recognition of service and outreach efforts as service‐learning contributions. However, more landscape architecture programs taking advantage of the service‐learning opportunities and support provided by their universities as service‐learning has become an important factor in assessment of academic and scholarly productivity and effectiveness of the programs as well as faculty in the U.S.A.

Service‐learning in developing countries has another important dimension. Especially in countries where landscape architectural education is relatively new, and therefore; there are not sufficient numbers of professionals to contribute utilizing students in landscape architecture to provide community service for their communities (and nations) can contribute greatly toward protection of public safety, health, and welfare and thus provide a positive example of environmental stewardship.

Service‐learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities (Eyler and Giles, 1999; Stanton, 1990). It is generally combined with project based learning. Even though there are many different interpretations of service‐learning as well as different objectives and contexts, we can say that there is a core concept upon which all seem to agree:

Service‐learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity changes both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self‐reflection, self‐discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) content.

Service‐learning may also reflect on participants’ personal and career interests in science, the environment, public policy or other related areas. Thus, we see that service‐learning combines SERVICE with LEARNING in intentional ways. There are many illustrations of how the combination is transforming to both community and students. This is not to say that volunteer activities without a learning component are less important than service‐learning, but that the two approaches are fundamentally different activities with different objectives. Both are valued components of a national effort to increase citizen involvement in community service, and at every age (NCSL, 2002).

Service‐learning achieves a higher degree of learning because it successfully employs more effective parameters of learning. The following diagram illustrates why service‐learning is more successful in teaching and learning according to the U.S. National Training Laboratory research data on “Average Learning Retention Rates” with the Learning Pyramid:

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Figure 1. Service‐learning vs. Learning Pyramid and Retention Rates of the Knowledge

EDUCATING

Learning about profession

More transmissive pedagogy

ENABLING

Learning for profession

More adaptive pedagogy

EXPLORING

Learning as professional

More transformative pedagogy

Figure 2. Three models of learning: (1) Educating, (2) Enabling, (3) Exploring

While traditional teaching theories emphasize “educating” model, the emerging theories seek to provide a better balance between these three models. As an critical facilitator of emerging theories, service‐learning not only allows more retention of the knowledge but also facilitates a better balance of teaching outcomes among educating, enabling, and exploring and thus rebalancing the focus of learning as illustrated in Figure 3 Traditional vs. Emerging Emphasis:

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TRADITIONAL EMPHASIS

EMERGING EMPHASIS

EDUCATING

ENABLING

ENABLING

EDUCATING

EXPLORING

EXPLORING

Figure 3. Traditional Emphasis vs. Emerging Emphasis

As a result, learners are better prepared for the challenges of the future. Service‐learning serves as a platform to blend disciplinary knowledge, civic knowledge, academic engagement and civic engagement as illustrated in the following diagram:

Figure 3. Service‐learning platform

Service‐learning achieves its objective when the focus between ‘learning’ and ‘service’ is balanced.

Figure 4. Balanced service and learning

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In Figure 5, Service‐learning accomplishes goals of both curricula and a meaningful service. Service‐ learning employs (1) active learning, (2) discovery (research) learning, and (3) professional learning simultaneously.

Figure 5. Balanced service and learning

Service‐learning instills theory and practice of service, values of empathy and reciprocity through critical reflection, integration, insight and identity formation. Process of research and professional education through inquiry, analysis, synthesis advances knowledge. Research in service‐learning disseminates the knowledge through field research, civic engagement and community benefit.

Observed outcomes of service‐learning are socially responsible daily behavior, advocacy through community education, community building, community economic development, political awareness and activism, direct action strategies and direct service. Service‐learning is an experiential education approach based on “reciprocal learning”. Service‐learning occurs when there is a balance between the learning goals and service outcomes. Therefore, service‐learning really occurs only if “both the providers and recipients of service benefit from these activities” (Furco, 1996). Furco presents five types of service programs distinguished by (1) primary purpose and focus, (2) defined by primary beneficiary:

Table 1. Type of Service Program, Focus, and Beneficiary Type of Service Program

Primary Focus

Primary Beneficiary

1 ‐ Volunteerism

Service

Recipient

2 ‐ Community Service

Service

Recipient & Provider

3 ‐ Internship

Learning

Provider

4 ‐ Field Education

Learning & Service

Provider

5 ‐ Service‐learning

Learning & Service

Provider & Recipient

It is important to further note the difference between community service and service‐learning beyond their primary focus. Service‐learning targets development of cognitive skills, has more

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rigorous assessment and selection criteria, it is a work‐based or project‐based learning for the student, and enhances academic development (Furco and Billing, 2002).

Benefits of service‐learning may be easily observed in all six of the educational domains: (1) Academic, (2) Vocational, (3) Personal, (4) Civic/Cultural, (5) Ethical, (6) Social. Providing students with service‐learning experiences generate a cycle of change as they progress through their curriculum thus become both a better learner and a better citizen.

Service‐learning may be conceptualized in the following four categories (Butin, 2003): Technical: Focuses on the innovation (advancing the knowledge) itself. Attempts to create best practices and their principles.

Cultural: Emphasizes individual meaning within the context of innovation (acculturation, understanding and appropriation of innovation).

Political: Concerned with issues of competing constituencies and their manifestation through power imbalances.

Post‐structural: Concerned with how an innovation constructs, reinforces, or disrupts social norms.

Service‐learning often simultaneously utilize these categories and thus have a multiple‐perspective focus to lead conceptualization of a diverse set of goals and enactments. Service‐learning endeavors in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Mississippi State University often have multiple‐ perspective focus such as small town planning and design in rural communities in Mississippi. These projects often involve mixed land uses including but not limited to agriculture, urban agriculture, urban homesteading, et.al. as a part of providing better food security and healthy living as well as improved quality of life.

2.

Service‐Learning in Landscape Architecture Studios at Mississippi State University

2.1

Background

Mississippi State University is located in the East‐Central part of the state of Mississippi in the South Eastern portion of the United States of America. With a population of under three million people on 47,000 square miles, it is highly rural in character with a relatively low density of people across the state. Mississippi State University is a Land Grant Institution with land provided by the Morrill Acts.

The definition of a land‐grant institution is “an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The original mission of these institutions, as set forth in the first Morrill Act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education” (http://ext.wsu.edu/documents/landgrant.pdf). Through this designation the university has agents in each county to aid with community development, policy, and other issues that pertain to the wellbeing of the community. The vision of the university is not only about teaching and learning, but also service. As part of the design studio sequence the faculty of the Department of Landscape Architecture began to collaborate on ways to utilize this method of thinking to get our students into the field to work with communities that wanted design intervention but did not have the funding to hire a landscape architect to do the work. Our department did not want to compete with professional landscape architect but rather produce conceptual ideas that could then be turned over to a Landscape Architect for massaging and construction documents.

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2.2

Demographics

Mississippi is a place that in 2015 had a child poverty rate of 35%, a senior poverty rate 0f 18%, and has 25.9 %of women in the state in poverty. Single parent families with related children that are below poverty is at 47%. The number of black children below 200% poverty is 253,000 (http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/map‐detail.aspx?state=Mississippi). Its these types of numbers that have given the importance to going out into the field to help the people of Mississippi. Along with poverty comes food deserts. “Food deserts are defined as urban neighbourhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy, affordable food options. The lack of access contributes to a poor diet and can lead to higher levels of obesity and other diet‐related diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease” (http://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/fooddeserts.aspx). Many counties in the agriculturally rich Mississippi Delta Region contain food deserts. Poverty and the conversion of food crops to biofuels have created the issues surrounding fresh foods.

2.3

Opportunities

2.3.1 Henson Creative Park At Mississippi State University there are many avenues to explore in terms of team building for projects. The department of Landscape Architecture had the opportunity to begin building a relationship with the John C. Stennis Institute of Government. This group had been developed from a past team with the title of the Mississippi Community Action Team which went into communities to facilitate visual preference studies. Dr. Joseph Fratesi and Jeremy Murdock managed small grants from groups such as the Appalachian Regional Commission to help develop opportunities for design intervention. The group had approached the department concerning a team effort for a design studio beginning in Leland, Mississippi located in the Delta Region. The collaboration was not only limited to the resources already in place at the Stennis institute but also by building a team on the ground in Leland composed of local politicians and citizens to help get input for design solutions. The team grew to include members of the chamber of commerce, local artist, the local school board and teachers, as well as an environmental engineering group that heard of the project and offered their services to relocate an existing weir on a proposed park site. The service‐learning worked both ways as the students walked the city, the citizens interacted with them answering questions our students had while they were inventorying the sites to be conceptually developed. Local service groups prepared and gave us meals in return for a brief talk about our hopes for the city (Figure 6). A local citizen that had a large unoccupied home allowed the students to stay the night at the house so we didn’t need to find more money for the stay over. This house was one of the jewels for the project as some of the members of the city team eventually bought the property and turned it into an award winning bed and breakfast that caters to weddings and guests from the region bringing tax dollars to a town that needed economic development drastically (Figure 7). The city engineer donated survey work. In the early days of the project many people and groups came together to get ideas generated.

Our students spent two nights and three days on in the city sketching, meeting with citizens, and trying to find the soul of the place. We met with local historians, the mayor, and everyone that stopped students to find out why they were in their town. Our students had the opportunity to speak with the media, sketch multiple sites around the town, and finally present finding to the city (Fig. 8, Fig. 9, and Fig. 10) th

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Figure 6. Dr. Joe Fratesi Speaking with Rotary Club Members

Figure 7. Home for the site visit, later later turned into Bed and Breakfast

Figure 8. Student speaking with Figure 9. Students Sketching Figure 10. Students Presenting local media along Deer Creek conceptual ideas to community

This process led to the development of a team of players from the city, the Stennis Institute, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and Landscape Architect Robert Poore of Native Habitats to apply for a National Endowment of the Arts Grant to develop design drawings for the Henson Creative Park along the banks of Deer Creek adjacent to a museum for Jim Henson, creator of Kermit the Frog and the Muppets. Background information from the students work on the site were used to show the committee that work had been done on the site and that the city was serious about developing the park. The grant was awarded to the team and over the next year design work was completed for the park. Students also took part at this time by building three‐dimensional models and producing marketing images for the city to use to raise funds (Fig. 11). These images all received feedback from the Landscape Architect and the city fostering more learning opportunities for students.

Figure 10. Student Renderings for Marketing Purposes

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Students in the Cost Estimating class in our Landscape Contracting and Management major developed a rough estimate for the project based on plans by the landscape architect and will be providing the City of Leland with a yearly management estimate in the Spring of 2016. The partnership with the people of Leland gave rise to many learning opportunities and developed a pride in the students as they worked on what is becoming a real project. The value of developing open recreation space for people to gather in a town that needs to work more closely together was something sensed early by the students as they walked the streets and spoke with the people that will be utilizing these spaces over time. The full value of the park as a market is yet to be seen, but if the bringing together of farmers, artists, and the local citizens can begin to develop dialog about local food, obesity, sustainability, and the arts, then it is already a success. Students gained a valuable insight to working with communities and that they have power to make change in the places they choose to live and work.

2.3.2 Arkwings

Our department became involved with a service‐learning opportunity with the Arkwings Foundation as the founder was the father of one of our departments graduate students. Dr. John McCall contacted us and asked if a class would be interested in coming to Memphis, Tennessee to help with master planning of his foundation. “Arkwings Foundation is a multi‐ministry wellness organization incorporated as a 501 (c) 3 not‐for‐profit public charity founded in 1991. It mission is to promote spiritual, emotional, and physical health for individuals, organizations, and communities through innovative, hands‐on programs, with a focus on inner‐city youth. Arkwings under the direction of Dr. John McCall and a 20‐member board of directors also organizes and leads groups of individuals desiring to participate in wellness retreats and to serve in national and international locations. The Arkwings motto is “Taking Care of Self in order to Care for Others” (God, Neighbor, Self). The Arkwings Foundation headquarters is located on a 17 acre multi‐facility retreat conference center surrounded by old growth forest in the community of Frayser just north of downtown Memphis.

Volunteers are needed to mentor youth through urban gardening programs, to participate in facility improvement projects, and serve in its various ministries” ‐ John McCall. When visiting the site with students Dr. McCall explained the purpose of the foundation and talked at length about teaching inner city children about gardening, nutrition, and how to turn that knowledge base into a career.

Our students spent three days at the site, first hearing about the history of the site and the local canoe/kayaking ports. We take the students each year we do the project on a canoe trip down the river so that they can see some of the issues with pollution in our waterways Fig. 11. Members from

Figure 11. Students canoeing and Picking up Trash along the Wolf River

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the Wolf River Conservancy donate the boats and discuss the issues in the watershed with the students. The end result is that the students haul trash out of the environment that would have eventually made it to the Mississippi River and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. Each year there is a charrette focusing on different aspect of the property. The first year focused on a Master Plan (Fig. 12) and subsequent years have focused on housing, community agriculture, and small markets for selling produce grown by the children. The participants in the gardening effort all are asked to take part in the design development to help students understand the needs of the user. Each year we have local landscape architects help with critiques while developers and engineers give background information etc. Students have been hired by the foundation to make models and create digital images of the site and the department of Landscape Architecture has been an ongoing supporter of the project. The site is one of the last stands of old growth forest in the region with open space along a major thoroughfare in the city of Memphis, allowing for good access to the market and agricultural fields. A recent venture is also growing honey on the site and selling locally.

Figure 12. Early Conceptual Design for the Arkwings site

Student learning included interaction with local environmentalist, food and nutrition specialist, housing developers, and a non‐profit that actively worked in the community to raise awareness about local food in and underserved area. The discussions with students taking part in the urban gardens project were eye‐opening to our students as issues such as poverty, homelessness, broken families due to drug addiction or jail time were on the fore front. The majority of our students had not experienced those issues first hand and had empathy for those children, making the work they were doing that more important to them.

2.3.3 Water Valley Another project that was a collaboration with the Stennis Institute was in Water Valley, Mississippi.

The Stennis Institute was approached about the possibility of developing conceptual plans for a temporary park on the site of a burned down structure on the town’s main street. We worked alongside with a retired botanist from the University of Mississippi, the President of the locally owned bank, and two local entrepreneurs. In a two‐week project the students created a Master Plan, perspectives, sections, and details and took these back to the community for input. This project provided a wonderful opportunity for our students to work with a main street association and multiple members of the community that wanted to see positive change. We were also able to

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educate the citizens about what it is that landscape architects are capable of as the initial reaction was that our students were there to plant trees. The relationship was wonderful for both sides of the collaboration. The team chose the work of a student that decided to develop the temporary park as a

Figure 13. Members of the Water Valley teams discuss student work

local food market on the weekend and passive recreation area during the week. The project that was selected was then put together in a marketing flyer to help recruit new clients to the Stennis Center and design studio. The project gained community support and is under construction. Another collaborator on the project was Mississippi State University’s public relations department that put out the story state wide about the project. The students were rewarded not only by knowing that they had helped work on a project that would be built and provide an opportunity for people in the town to get fresh local food, but also with a feel good story about their hard work. Our department received good feedback from parents, administrators, and citizens alike about the work we are doing.

3.

Conclusions

The use of service‐learning in the landscape architecture studio has been mutually beneficial to students, faculty, and local groups whether they are private or public entities. The ability for design students to meet with real clients and have real world sites with real world problems provides an ownership of the project for the students. Students gain real experience with communicating conceptual ideas to communities that otherwise would not be able to afford consultation. The students have an opportunity to learn about the place they are working with and the people that make it home. These are not simple technical solutions derived at a desk far away from ground zero, but in the trenches with citizens that want to make their community better. Students take away from the experience not only pride in providing a design that may be part of a solution for the community, but also new friendships, contacts, and an appreciation for work in less glamorous places around the world, places where people need and appreciate the ideas and effort provided by these students.

The partnership between multiple departments on campus and the communities also are mutually beneficial in that new relationships are being made with each project. Each group brings something important to the table in the collaboration that makes the whole project work. One group may find funding while another locates a place to stay in the community or locations to be examined. The community comes away with a product that can be shown to the greater citizenry to solve whatever th

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topic was important to the project. Issues such as food deserts, public markets, housing, recreation, or any multitude of others are common to explore in the design studio and give an opportunity to be flexible over time with many types of projects to explore. The work of the students in the department of landscape architecture at Mississippi State University has developed an empathy for communities that do not have the resources to develop plans or need leadership to help shape the direction of the community. The issues surrounding food in Mississippi are ongoing. Students were asked to inventory and analyze conditions of multiple sites in multiple rural communities to assess possible sites for community markets and shared public spaces. From these early studies, students went through the design process to develop strategies for communities to develop sites and provide marketing drawings. The sites provided allowed for students to explore the interconnectivity between place and cultural context and the issues of food deserts and other design issues related to food such as land planning. From the educator and administrative points of view the projects were highly successful as the students participated in hands on learning with real clients. Positive feedback was given from the communities with one community’s Chamber of Commerce giving the team a Community Service Award for the work completed. Student feedback was positive as well with students giving written testament to how proud they were of the work they completed and how they felt it was important to have real world projects with real clients giving feedback. While money and resources can be an issue when utilizing service‐learning in the classroom, there is always a way to find help in these arenas. We weren’t afraid to ask what we could do in the community to find accommodations or meals, spreading the word of what we were trying to accomplish.

4.

References

Artunç, S. C., Fulford, C. T., Gallo, W. C. & Heiselt, A. 2014. Restoring, Invigorating and Transforming Small Towns Through Community‐University Partnerships – A Panel Discussion. In the Proceedings of the annual CELA Meeting. Hosted by Morgan State University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD. Artunç, S. C. & Kurtaslan, B. 2011. Promoting Leadership Through Service‐Learning in Landscape Architecture Education. In the proceedings of the annual EFLA Congress “Mind the Gap: Landscapes for a New Era” hosted by the Estonian Landscape Architects and the European Federation of Landscape Architects, Tallinn, Estonia.

Artunç, S. C. & Sabaz, M. 2009. Leadership in Environmental Stewardship Through Service‐Learning. In the Proceedings of the annual CELA Meeting. Hosted by the University of Arizona, The University of New Mexico and Arizona State University, Tucson, AZ. Butin, Dan. 2015. Service‐Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of community Engagement in Higher Education. Palgrave MacMillan.

Eyler, J., & D. E. Giles, J. 1999 Where's the Learning in Service‐Learning? San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass.

Fiske, E. B. 2001. Learning in Deed. The Power of Service‐Learning for American Schools. Battle Creek, MI: W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Furco, Andrew. 1996. "Service‐Learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Education." Expanding Boundaries: Service and Learning. Washington DC: Corporation for National Service, pp. 2‐6.

Furco A. and Billing SH. (eds.) 2002. Service‐Learning. The Essence of the Pedagogy, Information Age Publishing, Greenwich.

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity – Mississippi, http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/map‐ detail.aspx?state=Mississippi United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, http://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/fooddeserts.aspx.

What is a Land‐Grant College? http.://ext.wsu.edu/documents/landgrant.pdf

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Anna Grichting, “A productive permaculture campus in the desert. Visions for Qatar University”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. th Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 453‐462. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

A PRODUCTIVE PERMACULTURE CAMPUS IN THE DESERT. VISIONS FOR QATAR UNIVERSITY Anna Grichting1

Keywords): Productive Landscapes, Edible Campus, Urban Permaculture, Urban Oasis, Drylands Abstract: In Qatar food and water security are high on the agenda of safe and sustainable development. At the same time, rapid urbanisation which is not integrated with ecological landscape design is contributing urban sprawl, fragmented landscapes and to the loss of biodiversity. At Qatar University, the architecture department has been working for several years on the concept of regenerative cities to develop an integrated approach to planning and design and to increase resource efficiency and quality of life. This has led to research and projects on edible landscapes at the campus to contribute to food supply to the University, while at the same time promoting biodiversity on the campus. Using examples from Edible Campuses worldwide, as well as literature on Permaculture, Food Urbanism and Edible landscapes, students and faculty identified strategies and best practices for implementing this vision for Qatar University. An analysis of the campus and existing and future buildings and landscapes was undertaken, to identify the types of interventions – retrofitting of existing buildings with green roofs and green walls and biodiversity habitats, transformation of existing landscapes, use of empty lands for food production, and modification of the urban design of future buildings with integrated food gardens. The Permaculture approach includes the concept of systems thinking and maximum resource efficiency and is used as the philosophy and framework for all the interventions proposed. This includes water recycling and treatment, organic waste recycling, clean and renewable energy producing. The project also includes awareness campaigns, citizen participation and the collection of quantitative data on the concept of Food Miles,that is the amount of miles food travels until it reaches our plate.

1.

Introduction

Qatar imports over 90% of its food and obtains 99% of fresh water from desalination. This implies that food and water security are high on the agenda of sustainable development. Organic waste is not recycled systematically at a large or individual scale, resulting in wasted resources. Rapid urbanisation which is not integrated with ecological landscape design is contributing to the loss of biodiversity. As University Campuses worldwide are striving to become more sustainable and resource efficient, some are beginning to also develop the concept of the Edible Campus, which includes implementing spaces to grow food within the University Grounds. These initiatives are first and foremost to provide the users with healthy and sustainable food, but also to educate the University population about the production of food and the resources involved. Producing food on a campus not only reduces the food print, that is the energy that is required to bring the food from distant fields to the plate, but also allows more efficient resource use and recycling, for example the recycling of organic waste as compost and the use of grey water in irrigation. Dormant lands – green fields – can be used to produce crops, and decorative landscapes can be converted into productive landscapes with food and medicinal plants. Edible boulevards are constructed with fruit bearing trees, and can still have urban and climatic functions of providing shade. A permaculture approach to food production can also contribute to increasing biodiversity on the campus, with careful combinations of plants that repel harmful insects but attracts multiple species. (Grichting & Awwad, 2015)

1

Qatar University, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning. Anna.grichting@qu.edu.qa

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1.1

Research Questions

Universities, being key institutions in processes of social change and development, play explicit role in spreading knowledge and producing highly skilled personnel to meet perceived economic needs (Brennan, King, and Lebeau, 2004). This role helps in encouraging and facilitating new social and cultural values supported by the students who assume the major change of their societies. That is why, the issue of food and water security can be addressed though universities, with the aim to encourage students to grow their food in campus. At Qatar University, the architecture department has been working for several years on researching and implementing edible landscapes in the campus to contribute to food supply to the University, which at the same time promoting biodiversity on the campus. This research looks at how can the concept of Edible Campus can be applied in Qatar and the Gulf Region, in a dry land climate? How does this project relate to other Master Plans for University Campus’ and initiatives for Edible Campus Designs and Master Plans worldwide ? What is Urban Permaculture and how can it contribute to a Sustainable Campus and City? This research looks at the different practices and modes of producing food in dry lands and proposes an application at Qatar University campus. It builds on previous research on Food Urbanism in Doha, and on a prototype Edible Boulevard and Edible Rooftop Garden being implemented at the College of Engineering.

1.2

Purpose

The purpose of this work and research is to create an overall vision of an edible and biodiverse campus in the form of a Master Plan, as well as to implement experimental permaculture gardens on the campus This paper presents the work with students to envision an overall master plan for the campus.

As architects and planners of urban landscapes, we hold a vital tool in the growth of a sustainable community. Food is both a local and global issue. The lack of productive urban land, food insecurity, uncontrolled urban growth, and a general lack of societal knowledge of food growing and preparation are the main drivers to conduct this research and implement its prototype at Qatar University campus.

2.

Approach and Methods

This research was carried out as part of an undergraduate course in Urban Planning and Design, building on the student work of the previous year and also projects produced by graduate students in Urban Planning and Design. The work also integrates projects and research carried out on an Edible Garden at the Female College of Engineering and workshops and exhibitions on Landscapes for Food Security Biodiversity and a student workshop on Green Roofs held in the department design studios.

2.1

Approach to the Research

An analysis of the campus and existing and future buildings and landscapes was undertaken, to identify the types of interventions – retrofitting of existing buildings with green roofs and green walls and biodiversity habitats, transformation of existing landscapes, use of empty lands for food production, and modification of the urban design of future buildings with integrated food gardens.

The Permaculture approach includes the concept of systems thinking and maximum resource efficiency and is used as the philosophy and framework for all the interventions proposed.

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The Permaculture approach was introduced to the students as an efficient way to address the questions of growing healthy food with scarce resources at the same time promoting biodiversity.

Permaculture is a sustainable and a conscious approach to agriculture, and a creative design system based on ecology for designing integrated systems of food production, housing appropriate technology and community development. Permanent agriculture offers many solutions for the problems of dimensioning resources in a campus or in a city. It providse space with shelters, food and water, income, community and aesthetic and spiritual fulfillment, and other material and non‐ material needs in a sustainable way. It works with (not against) nature, so, permaculture can be more concern about the neglected parts in cities and campuses. Permaculture contributes in making them sustainable by providing them with clean and safe air and water, clean and renewable energy, healthy biodiversity, healthy and accessible food, and an access by proximity.

From the previous research undertaken by students and faculty on Food Urbanism in Qatar (Grichting, Ball, Awwaad, 2014), and in particular the study of Paige Tantillo’s permaculture laboratory garden, we can confirm that permaculture can and is being implemented in Qatar, and can have significant benefits to both food security and biodiversity, as well as consuming less scarce resources (water, soil) and recycling organic waste and water. We can make the following assumptions: Permaculture techniques can help increase food security in Qatar The implementation of Permaculture practices helps to increase and benefit soil structure by use of compost, manure, straw, diversity of plants Natural pest management practices can be used instead of harsh chemicals Bio‐ diversity can be increased with a mix of vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, and beneficial plants – which can also decrease pests and bring beneficial insects to site The basic elements of the Permaculture approach are : Soil building (compost and manure) Trees for wind breaks Companion planting Grey water recycling Crop rotation Composting Chickens for soil turning Planting nitrogen‐fixing trees Creating a food forest Mulching with straw to decrease water usage and add nutrients to soil Test beds are prepared to ensures a full utilization of the organic wastes

2.2

Methodologies of the Research

Case studies of Edible Campuses worldwide were studied, as well as literature on Permaculture, Food Urbanism and Edible landscapes, to identify strategies and best practices for implementing the plan.

The research also looked at systems to maximise resource efficiency, including water recycling and treatment, organic waste recycling, clean and renewable energy producing. The project also includes awareness campaigns, citizen participation and the collection of quantitative data on the concept of Food Miles, that is the amount of miles food travels until it reaches our plate. The aim of the students research was to produce an Edible Campus Master Plan. To achieve this, students worked in groups to address specific components and themes or layers of the Master Plan including

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Productive Landscapes in Green Fields, Productive Green Roofs, Transforming Decorative Landscapes into Edible Landscapes, and a Central Park and Biodiversity Reserve. (See Table 1.)

Table 1. Outline of the Framework for the Edible Campus Project 1. Master Plan

• • • •

Work on master plan, land use, functions and future scenarios.

Integrating the other projects into one vision and master plan.

Look at the overall network of green and productive spaces created by the Food Urbanism Master Plan.

Study other Master Plans for Edible Campus’ worldwide.

2. Productive landscapes in • green field.

• •

How to use and propose planting food in the undeveloped land within the University campus.

Can be temporary – for sites with future projects, or permanent.

Can include greenhouses or open crop as well as livestock and fruit trees, dates, etc.

3. Productive Green roofs. •

• •

Mapping the potential for Green Roofs at Qatar University.

Identifying different Land Uses – Crops – for the roofs.

Explaining the systems – Water recycling, organic waste recycling, etc

4. Transforming Decorative • Landscapes into Edible Landscapes.

•

•

Divide the campus into sectors and work on transforming Existing Landscapes into Edible Landscapes. See the example of the CENG Edible Garden by the UREP team.

Identify areas and landscapes that can be transformed from decorative landscapes to Edible Landscapes and propose plantings.

Develop the concept of the Central Park Develop the Wadi as the backbone of a biodiversity corridor Connect these Green Spaces as a network of green spaces with the surrounding areas.

5. Central Park and Biodiversity Reserve

• • •

Students were asked to respond to a series of questions in order to verify that they could integrate the concept of the edible permaculture campus into larger idea of sustainable urbanism(s) and food urbanism and also relate it to similar projects worldwide.

How does this project relate to other Master Plans for University Campus’ and initiatives for Edible Campus Designs and Master Plans?

What is Urban Permaculture and how can it contribute to a Sustainable Campus and City?

Which types of Urbanisms / Urban Design Principles did you integrate into your design Outline the main steps you went through in your research and design process?

3.

Results

The result of the research and the student work was a proposal for a Master Plan for an Edible Campus at Qatar University. It is intended as a tool and vision to initiate interdisciplinary and multi‐ stakeholder involvement in a strategy and plan to promote food production and biodiversity on the campus. It also includes the optimal use of scarce resources such as water and energy, and recycling of waste, in particular organic waste.

The students produced a series of posters and an integrated Master Plan containing all the parts of the projects.

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3.1

Master Plan

The first step in our part (The Master Plan) was to have a clear vision and mission for QU edible campus, and relate it to Qatar National Vision 2030. The second step was to analyze the food cycle process and show its aim in addressing local food security. The third step was studying a case ‐ McGill University's School of Architecture, to understand and see what strategies and methods it has implemented to have an edible campus. The result was master plan of Qatar University campus showing the land uses and functions, supported by different types of charts showing the existing and the proposed design for the future.

The last and the most important step was to compile and arrange all the layers of the other students into one master plan to produce the overall vision. The final master plan combines the existing plan in addition to the future plans, covering all types of buildings, roof tops, productive and edible landscapes and the central park.

Figure 1. The Master Plan for the Edible Campus at Qatar University

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3.2

Transforming Decorative Landscapes into Edible Landscapes.

The main steps of the design process to transform the existing landscapes at Qatar University into Edible Landscapes are listed below.

Identifying the areas where the existing landscapes were located: Studying the existing landscapes and the surrounding public spaces (if any) Studying the existing landscapes and the surrounding buildings and facilities Categorizing existing landscapes into similar surrounding facilities (zoning phase 1) Generating a strategy that will help identify the types of edible landscape that will be incorporated into the campus Identifying the edible landscape typologies from the strategy that will be used for each category of existing landscape (final zoning phase) Selecting one area within each typology to be transformed and be used as an example for each typology Generating plans, sections and photo montages for each area to visualize the proposal

Figure 1. Transforming Decorative Lansdcapes into Edible Landscapes

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3.3

Productive Green roofs

Students started researching about green roofs, how they could be applied on different types of buildings, what systems could be implemented and what types of crops could be grown, or biodiversity encouraged.

The students visited existing buildings on the campus, and also looked at the designs of new buildings to see where Green roofs could be implemented. They then mapped the green roofs that were identified as suitable on the master plan layer, as well as those that were accessible to the public and/or to different users.

The student attended a seminar on Green roofs and biodiversity and learned about different systems for green roofs and how to encourage biodiversity.

Figure 2. Productive Green Roofs

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Productive landscapes in Green Field

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The approach for the Green Fields included identifying the reserve land in the University campus that was not yet developed – to proposed temporary agricultural uses that would also create a green infrastructure for the future urban and landscape designs for the campus development.

First, students located the unused and unproductive fields on the master plan of the campus. They also located the new metro station and incorporated it into their design with a building that can grow food inside. So when the people arrive at the station they will have a new kind of experience inside the station where they can select fresh fruits and vegetables to consume.

Subsequently, students started to locate the different typologies of food production into the new gardens and fields (green house, fruits garden, medicinal garden, crop fields, etc.) and categorized the different kinds of fruits and vegetables that can be grown in the different types of structures and landscapes.

Figure 3. Productive Landscapes in Green Fields

3.5

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Central Park and Biodiversity Reserve

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The design process focused on the Qatar University central park, where it should be located, and how it could be developed within the framework of edible campus, permaculture and biodiversity.

The existing Wadi conservation was chosen as the backbone of a new green network at Qatar University.

The areas surrounding Qatar University were also studied to connect the new green spaces to a larger green network. An important step was to obtain the topographic information for the site, in order to maximize the water efficiency in the landscape. The students worked on the biodiversity of our campus and identified species, including herbs, plants, and birds that are existing.

Figure 4. Eco‐Wadi, Central Park and Green Network

4.

Conclusions

Edible campus projects are very effective way to show how sustainability, environmental quality and food security and can be linked through a creative design which produces food. In this project, some design strategies are taken from other case studies such McGill University edible campus and Cornell

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University edible campus. In case of Qatar University campus, there might be challenging urban and climatic settings. This project successfully shows ways and offers solutions for how to weave productive planting in urban spaces without diminishing their utility or functionality. The master plan of this project can be also a leading step to more future edible campuses in the country and in the region.

It takes into consideration the needs of the campus in terms of food security and biodiversity. In addition to this, it acknowledges the importance of the social and community aspect within the campus. Also, it looks at different ways to integrate edible landscaping in both the existent and the non‐existent landscapes. Finally, it uses ways such as permaculture to create a sustainable edible landscape for the campus which will be beneficial not only for the occupants of the campus but also to nature as it follows natural processes.

This research and design project developed with architecture and urban design students shows how they envision the future of their campus ‐ one where the students, faculty and all the workers will be proud of a sustainable and green environment and they will all benefit from it. The green roofs will create a place for informal recreations and provide less crowded, less polluted and less noisy spaces.

Therefore, it will increase the interactions in the community and the activities in the campus.

Moreover, it will improve the air quality by filtering airborne particles in the leaves and branches.

Through all the case studies students learned many things to apply to apply to their campus and they worked on landscaping the whole master plan to include edible areas, green roofs, a central park, green network connections and biodiversity corridors, as well as social spaces with informative digital hubs to educate the campus users on the systems, foods and species of the campus.

Next steps include brining the vision to the University Presidency and creating an interdisciplinary and inter‐departmental group to develop the project and implement it with the Building Services and University Administration. A research grant has been submitted to further the research and project work and the researchers, faculty and students are all convinced that this idea needs to be pursued at Qatar University and in the Gulf Region.

5.

References

Grichting, A. and Awwaad, R. Sustainable Urbanism: Towards Edible Campuses In Qatar And The Gulf Region.

True Smart and Green City? 8th Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism. Conference Proceedings. 20‐22 June 2015, Seoul, Korea.

Grichting, A., Ball, L., Awwaad, R. Food Flows & Food Systems In Desert Landscapes. Edible Landscapes In Qatar & The Arabian Gulf. Proceedings of the 6th International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference.University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden, Netherlands. November 5‐7th October 2014. To be published by Cambridge Scholars in Spring 2015. http://hort.cals.cornell.edu/extension‐outreach/distance‐learning/ http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/food http://sustainable.stanford.edu/food http://www.aaanet.org/sections/ae/index.php/campus‐food‐projects/ http://www.foodurbanism.org/eatable‐campuses/ http://cargocollective.com/search/food‐urbanism great site ☺ Urban Permaculture. http://www.urbanpermacultureguild.org/ Permaculture in the Desert. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk&mode=related&search=

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Jan Richtr, Matthew Potteiger, “Farming as a Tool of urban rebirth? Urban agriculture in Detroit 2015: A Case Study”, In: Localizing urban th food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 463‐477. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

FARMING AS A TOOL OF URBAN REBIRTH? URBAN AGRICULTURE IN DETROIT 2015: A CASE STUDY Jan Richtr1, Matthew Potteiger2

Keywords: Detroit; case study; urban agriculture; shrinking cities; planning Abstract: While a very complex urban system of Detroit crumbled and the city shrunk in capital, human resources, businesses and structures, new urban niches have reopened. The most noticeable changes in Detroit's landscape are urban agriculture projects that have been spread all around the countless vacant lots and a new urban morphology and metabolism are emerging. Urban agriculture can be seen as the major driver of change. One would say that transformation into a rural‐like agricultural landscape with small urban islands could be the Detroit's future. The paper explores the contemporary urban agriculture scene in Detroit analyzing the range of urban agriculture projects and organizations. Detroit demonstrates the important role of grassroots, NGO’s, entrepreneurs and also government planning and policy. The case study reveals the value of urban agriculture in reimagining urban landscapes and food systems of shrinking cities and the importance of a systemic network in this process. This kind of approach could be transferable to the European cities rather than individual projects and strategies that have to be always carefully contextualized.

1.

Introduction

"Detroit is the next Detroit" is often quoted by Detroiters when discussing the city’s future.

Redevelopment of the Motor City is sometimes compared to Silicon Valley or Brooklyn, but people of Detroit see their city as a unique place. Indeed, Detroit is unparalleled in many ways. The city has given to the world the automobile, assembly line, civil rights movement and black power or the rich music cultures ranging from Motown to Electronica. In many ways it could be seen as the pure expression of Corporate America. For most of the twentieth century Detroit was the model for the world of modernism in terms of a belief in technological advances and optimizing profit from speculative capital through industrialized production – economic monoculture of automobile production (Daskalakis, Waldheim, Young, Stalking Detroit. p. 10). While other cities have experienced post‐industrial decline, the dramatic scale of transformation of Detroit renders these changes particularly legible. Americans are aware of what Detroit represents and that's why many thought that the destiny of the United States in 2008 was foreshadowed by the massive economic decline of Detroit. But Detroit of 2015 is a different city. It still attracts attention, not for its crime, bankruptcy, ruins or urban prairies, but for new possibilities that have opened after the unprecedented fall.

Many Detroiters feel that Detroit bankruptcy filing in 2013 was actually the best thing that could happen to the city at that moment. "This is actually an opportunity to stop, hit ground zero and start to build from here," says one interviewed person in our study. The change that many feel could be characterized as a change of paradigm in what urban renewal means in case of Detroit. People have started to see more opportunities in all the urban blight that can go many ways ‐ affordable living for students, young people or artists, new artistic scenes created by newcomers or entrepreneurial opportunities and revitalizing local communities through urban agriculture (UA). While there is going

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Jan Richtr, Faculty of Architecture, Czech Technical University in Prague, richtr.jan@gmail.com Matthew Potteiger College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, mpotteig@syr.edu

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to be still a lot of negative issues because of great inertia of the economic decline and Detroit will be still the icon of urban decay in the US, the empty urban and cultural space can be filled in again and the city transformed. The question is, in what way Motor City is going to transform.

2.

Problem Recognition

The urban agriculture initiatives in Detroit are recognized as the ones most advanced (Viljoen and Bohn 2014) in the North America. However the picture of urban agriculture in Detroit from other places in the World can be a little bit exaggerated by relying only on a view based on media coverage and popular Internet sources like Facebook or Youtube that can European and other urban gardeners use as available reference and inspiration. The perpetuation of images of the ruins of Detroit juxtaposed with urban agriculture as a narrative of resurgence tends obscure the complexity of stakeholders and range of interests and values at play. This paper aims to gather more specific descriptions of activities of major urban agriculture organizations in Detroit as part of Detroit's transformation and missions of four selected organizations active in urban agriculture movement in Detroit and tries to critically answer the question what kind of practice and strategies could be transferable to European cities.

2.1

Research Questions

1. What is the current situation of urban agriculture in Detroit?

2. How is urban farming recognized as relevant strategy for transformation of post‐industrial landscapes in Detroit?

3. Is Detroit's urban agriculture model applicable in European context?

2.2

Goals

1. To explore and describe the contemporary urban agriculture scene in Detroit; 2. to assess their activities and related them to each other and city policies; 3. to discuss the present four cases of urban agriculture organizations and discuss applicability of the Detroit UA model in European context.

3.

Methodology

This research involves semi‐structured interviews with individuals representing selected urban agriculture organizations in Detroit, conversations with Detroit community members, relevant literature and policy documents reviews, site visits and basic spatial analysis to spatially describe the urban agriculture sites and activities. The interviews were conducted over a time span starting first in the summer and fall of 2008, and again during the fall of 2014 and spring of 2015 varying in length from 30 to 60 minutes. We examined in each interview the key statements, important concepts and processes of how the organizations work and developed. Common patterns and themes were identified a cross the individual interviews. Results of the interviews were related to relevant literature and policy documents reviews.

We used publicly accessible Detroit municipality map to show individual urban agriculture sites in a map with adequate relation to each other using a vector editor.

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4.

Case Study of Major Urban Agriculture Organizations in Detroit

In the following stories we profile several major urban agriculture organizations in Detroit. The stories focus on development of these organizations and their activities, programs and missions in Detroit, as well as the level of collaboration with other organizations, communities and municipality.

We introduce and describe Greening of Detroit, Earthworks, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and Michigan Urban Farming Initiative. The information sources are our own interviews with organizations representatives, personal site visits, conversations and official websites.

4.1

Greening of Detroit

Greening of Detroit (GoD) started twenty‐five years ago in 1989 for the purpose to plant trees to replace those lost to Dutch elm disease which killed half a million trees in Detroit area during the second half of the 20th century. The organization planted 85,000 trees since then. GoD is a nonprofit resource agency with board of directors and 25 fulltime employees. From this perspective, it is the largest investigated urban agriculture organization in Detroit. Experts like landscape architects, foresters or professionals with degree in environmental sciences are employed there. The mission of the organization is to build a sustainable community through planting trees, creating green spaces, urban agriculture and jobs. The organization expanded its scope and began to incorporated urban agriculture activities and programs after 2003 when the city’s “farm a‐lot” program ended. At that time GoD had “never planted a vegetable”, but there was no other group with the capacity or mission to develop a comprehensive urban agriculture program (Atkinson, 2008) the Detroit Agriculture Network (DAN) had no infrastructure to support a coordinated UA program and Michigan State University had not developed capacity to work with neighborhoods. In the first year of what became the Garden Resources Program, GoD worked with 42 families and 39 community and school gardens (Atkinson, 2008).

4.1.1 Programs and Activities The GoD has currently four main programs: the Garden Resource program, Build a Garden program and Urban Agriculture Adult Apprenticeship program as well as several other activities as part of other partnerships. The Garden Resource Program once supported the majority of gardens in Detroit (over 1500), providing seeds, soil testing, transplants, organization and training classes. However, they do not participate in this anymore. The reason why they stopped doing this was because some of the people who worked in urban agriculture department of the organization spun off and started their own organizations and GoD did not want to compete with these other organizations and therefore GoD focused on other activities and services, school programs, nutrition education, and market gardening as described further.

The current organization's activities include job training such as Landscape technician program for Detroiters who are unemployed or have social barriers to get an employment. Next is Build a Garden program, where they support Detroit residents to set up an urban garden. GoD helps to deliver highly subsidized raised beds, their own compost and instructions how to garden. Through this program they have supported 63 new urban gardens. GoD has also partnership program Urban Agriculture Adult Apprenticeship program for teaching people how to run small production farm. The organization also cooperates with local schools. In 2014 they built six school gardens along with outdoor classrooms, a nutrition education curriculum, and the gardening curriculum.

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Another program is Green Corps Youth Employment program mainly for managing trees planted in prior years by GoD. GoD hires between 80‐200 Detroit's high school students to help with watering the trees planted during the summer. The students also help to maintain greenways in parks and are taught about urban agriculture as well. Therefore the seasonal staff can grow up to several hundred people, although most of this work force is composted from volunteers.

Vacant lot treatments is another important activity, when the organization works with local community groups on various strategies for revitalizing abandoned lots (e.g. trees, community garden, park or pocket park). This treatment program was also the original reason for the organization getting into job training.

The goal of all these programs is to teach people how to grow food, eat healthy, and support their families and neighborhoods as well as their own partial self‐sufficiency. Other activities include educational workshops on the three farm gardens that are owned and managed by the organization itself.

4.1.2 Farm Sites The Market Garden is one‐hectare urban garden founded on a former industrial site on Orleans St. in a vicinity of the Detroit's Eastern Market. This garden has a fulltime farm manager and also works as demonstration site for training programs, classes and workshops. The produce from the Market Garden is primarily sold through GoD's Community supported Agriculture program.

Figure 1. Market Garden. Photo Jan Richtr.

Lafayette Greens community Garden on 132 W Lafayette Blvd is the only urban agriculture project in Detroit located in the downtown area. Prior to the garden an abandoned art‐deco building existed on the site, which was torn down in 2010. Kenneth Weikal Landscape Architecture firm designed in 2012 the garden for the Compuware Corporation, which ran the community garden for 2 years and then donated the project to Greening of Detroit in March 2014, although the City of Detroit owns the land.

The garden has an onsite coordinator employed by GoD and volunteers help maintain the space. All production from this garden is donated to food banks and other social enterprises. Part of the production is given to the volunteers themselves. Because the site is open to the public during the daytime from March until October, the priority is put on aesthetics, rather than education and production. Due to this reason the garden does not have a compost operation on site and ornamental flowers are grown together with herbs, vegetables and fruits. The garden was also part of a research on pollinators in urban areas conducted by the University of Michigan in 2014. The garden hosts various artistic, cultural, social and wellness events throughout the season.

Romanowski Park is located in southwest Detroit and has a farm garden in its center managed also

by GoD. The orchard, berry shrubs and vegetable plots are in open space. The organization cooperated with local school on this garden in the past, but the school was closed recently and local th

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community involvement is not as good as the organization would like, so they are in an interim phase now trying to figure out what direction this garden will take.

Figure 2. Lafayette Greens community Garden. Photo Jan Richtr.

Figure 3. Public garden and orchard in Romanowski Park. Photo Jan Richtr.

4.1.3 Food production The produce from GoD gardens is not sold at the Eastern Market like in case of other UA farmers, but through different channels to not compete with small farmers .

4.1.4 Financing GoD is financed mostly by foundations, state grants, corporate funding and small donations with an annual budged just under 4 million USD. Part of those finances is also received by small contracts for services. They are trying to appeal to local citizens to contribute small donations with the goal to get more Detroiters involved. According to the interview, funding is still the biggest issue, because demand for activities and services is higher than their financial capabilities.

GoD also contracts some services. For instance tree planting for Detroit Water and Sewage services within projects to decrease negative impact of storm waters on sewers.

4.1.5 Relationships with Other Entities in the City The organization is trying to build various relationships with the city and district managers. They have a community engagement team, which is specifically tasked to build those relationships. Currently

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the organization is also looking for opportunities to partner with other teams around the Detroit Future City framework, as well as build other relationships on the city level. GoD has a seat on food policy council or Green task force.

4.2

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and D‐Town Farm

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) was established in 2006 to address issues with food quality, availability and security especially for Detroit's African American community, while realizing that better local food system can benefit to all Detroit residents.

Another significant reason for the formation of DBCFSN was a perceived disproportion between urban agriculture endeavors run by mostly white citizens and majority of African Americans in Detroit community.

"We observed that many of the key players in the local urban agriculture movement were young whites, who while well‐intentioned, never‐the‐less, exerted a degree of control inordinate to their numbers in Detroit’s population. Many of those individuals moved to Detroit from other places specifically to engage in agricultural or other food security work. It was and is our view that the most effective movements grow organically from the people whom they are designed to serve.

Representatives of Detroit’s majority African American population must be in the leadership of efforts to foster food justice and food security in Detroit." (detroitblackfoodsecurity.org) DBCFSN is primarily focused on creating project towards to community self‐sufficiency and healthy food awareness. The organization is oriented especially to urban agriculture, policy development and co‐operative buying.

4.2.1 Farm Sites DBCFSN currently runs one production site, but had several more in the past that had to be discontinued due to other intended use by the property owners. In 2008 DBCFSN acquired 0,8‐ hectare site in the City of Detroit’s Meyers’ Tree Nursery in Rouge Park for its D‐Town Farm. Farm is the largest DBCFSN operation so far established. DBCFSN leases the property for one dollar annually for ten years from the City of Detroit. The farm has several hoop houses, in ground vegetable plots, composting site and apple orchard. Since 2008, they acquired an additional 2 hectares. It is currently probably the largest single farm site for urban agriculture in Detroit. The farm has one fulltime employee, five part‐time farmers and around ten internships annually.

The farm produces various vegetables and the food production is connected with extensive compost operation. They compost also materials like expired foodstuff from local supermarket or Forgotten Harvest ‐ an organization focused on collecting unused food and food waste have been added. Also, several members of the DBCFSN bring in kitchen waste and other household organic material. Avalon bakery from Detroit and one other restaurant used to bring food scraps and coffee grounds in the past as well. Even though they still use city water supply to irrigate drops, the farm is moving toward more self‐sufficiency and an irrigation pond and small solar project is being constructed this year.

4.2.2 Programs and Activities DBCFSN has a youth program called Food Warriors Youth Development Program and they have location in various schools in Detroit. Summer Urban Agriculture Internship Program helps to bring

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interns on farm. They also have Volunteer incentive program, where people volunteer in exchange for so‐called D‐Town dollars that can be used to purchase produce from the farm.

Amongst other activities belong Annual Harvest Festival, What's for Dinner? Lecture Series they also organize a co‐op called Ujamaa Food Buying Club (detroitblackfoodsecurity.org).

4.2.3 Financing DBCFSN and its farm are financed through several grants and donations. The major grant is a three‐ year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation with amount of 750 000 USD. They also have smaller grants and donations for farming tools and structures. Selling produce at local farmers markets and Eastern Market also contributes a small amount of income to the farm.

4.2.4 Relationships with Other Entities in the City Relationships with the neighborhood around the farm are not on the level that would be considered

by DBCFSN as satisfactory, although the community’s knowledge of the farm is increasing.

The Greening of Detroit resource organization manages the area around D‐Town farm as tree nursery and they share with them some resources on site. D‐Town farm also collaborates with Keep growing Detroit on workshops, community training activities and moving produce.

Due to DBCFSN advocacy for creating Food security policy, the organization was appointed to develop this policy for the city of Detroit in 2006. They had been working on the policy draft also in collaboration with professor Kami Pothukuchi from Wayne State University. The city council passed the resolution adopting this policy in March 2008. DBCFSN worked further with members of city council and in October 2008 the City Council passed the resolution on the development of Detroit Food Policy Council.

4.3

Earthworks Urban Farm

Earthworks urban farm (Earthworks) is one of the most well‐established urban agriculture projects in Detroit located on 1264 Meldrum St. It is an integral part of the Capuchin's Soup Kitchen since 1998.

The soup kitchen has been in operation since 1929 as a part of the Capuchin order monastery across the street from the farm. Capuchins traditionally work with people in need including youth, therefore Earthworks continues in this mission and works with local community and the neighborhood and address issues related to the lack of full service grocery stores in the neighborhood.

4.3.1 Programs and Activities Earthworks has 6 fulltime employees. Two of them do youth programming five days a week. They teach environmental awareness, growing food and healthy nutrition and cooking. One employee works on outreach and another person runs adult programming. Earthworks also has a lot of university students who can have practice at the farm. They also cooperate with journalist and researchers. Next is Adult program ‐ people work four days a week to get experience and learn farm skills for their own UA projects. This program is also used for people who need to do community service ordered by a court. Earthworks also run a 9 month more intensive UA program that is much more intensive. People in the program work 24 hours a week starting at the beginning of the season

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until its end. They leave the program with a certification that says they have safe food handling practices, so if they will want to work in a restaurant, food processing facility or food whole selling.

Earthworks also has a market stand on site and people from the neighborhood can access fresh fruits and vegetables. Their prices are set very low and residents can use electronic benefits card (EBT) to acquire produce from the farm. This card works like a normal credit card, but provides public benefits to qualified individual below a certain income threshold. Other public program called WIC is mostly for the needs of women and their young children.

Figure 4. Public garden and orchard in Romanowski Park. Photo Jan Richtr.

4.3.2 Food Production Earthworks has about one‐hectare of land dedicated to food production. The plots are spread out throughout the neighborhood within 2 block of the soup kitchen. Around 95% of the produce goes into the soup kitchen itself. They also send food home with volunteers who help at the farm.

They use one heated greenhouse especially for transplant production at the beginning of the season.

They also have one unheated greenhouse used for growing produce in ground. They use their own compost from all available organic material from the city and food waste from the soup kitchen.

It is also one of few farming sites in Detroit, where they have substantial infrastructure for rainwater harvesting. The greenhouses have gutters for rainwater collection and several water tanks equipped with pumps and irrigation systems. However most of the irrigation water still comes from the city water supply.

Interestingly, Earthworks is organic certified that is quite unusual for UA operation in the US.

4.3.3 Financing Earthworks is organized under the Capuchin's Soup Kitchen and creates relatively small part of their budget. Like some other UA organizations they sell produce under the retail price, therefore it makes very small part of their income. They receive private and corporate donations as well and apply for grants especially for acquiring new equipment and structures.

4.3.4 Relationships With Other Entities Earthworks as a contracted grower grows transplants for Keep Growing Detroit who distributes them to thousands of backyard and community gardeners in the city. Compared to other organizations that farm on leased land, Earthworks own the land where the greenhouses are located. Other land for production is used in partnership with other organizations.

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In the future, they want to use their capacities and non‐profit status for small infrastructural projects like community greenhouse or cold storage and cellars for small local growers.

4.4

Michigan Urban Farming Initiative

Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) on 7432 Brush St. is a non‐profit organization established in 2011 by several students, who moved to Detroit. MUFI is run only by volunteers with a core team of 10 young, mostly white and educated people. They grew food on 0,8‐hectare in 2014 and describe MUFI as "a very comprehensive organization" that focuses mainly on innovations in urban infrastructure through research supported onsite projects.

4.4.1 Current Activities and Planned Projects The mission is primarily to "challenge assumptions held about how blight and urban infrastructure can be used". Therefore they create cost comparative models for blight deconstruction and scalable models for blue and green infrastructure as part of various research projects. These projects are based primarily around new uses of abandoned properties that MUFI purchases in Wayne County Tax Auctions or from Detroit Land Bank Authority. The first purchased building is being reconstructed into a future community resource centre with a multipurpose space including a commercial kitchen for educational programming such as agricultural skills, nutritional literacy, and food preparation.

Another abandoned house is going to be reconstructed into farm internship housing. Another purchased structure is planned to be a place for a veteran cooperative housing program. They are deconstructing one of the structures down to the foundations for a shipping container type of housing. Another project is creation of a retention pond from an uncovered basement by installing a water resistant membrane. All this with the goal to research and prove a concept of functional use of the urban infrastructure for less than the City of Detroit is currently spending on turning it into the vacant land by demolition, which is relatively expensive (around 15,000 USD according to the interviewed individual). They are also working on projects to develop a pocket vineyard and a farm to table restaurant.

MUFI's activities related to social justice issues and social inequality in the food system are organized especially through selling produce in local community for prices under retail value and through food donations.

4.4.2 Food Production The first year of MUFI operation was oriented almost exclusively to site clean‐up, landscaping work and "building presence in the neighbourhood". Food production on site followed in the second year, when MUFI produced 12,000 pounds of food. MUFI distributes its production to four main ways.

First, there are individual households purchases where people come to the site, harvest with MUFI volunteers who weight the harvested produce and suggest donation based on their market guide.

The second path of their produce goes to local markets like Oakland avenue farmers market, Wayne state farmers market and Eastern Market. The last channel for their produce are grocery stores and restaurants. The unsold remainders of production goes as donation to Coalition on Temporary Shelter and Forgotten Harvest.

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Figure 5. Michigan Urban Farming Initiative farm site. Photo Jan Richtr.

4.4.3 Resourcing Selling produce is not the main financial source. The main financing are research grants that acquire data from MUFI's projects, but 90% of the total budget comes from winning social media contests.

"Corporations used to have these community grant things that you apply for and then they've realized they will get more publicity if they open it up to any non‐profit and make then compete against each other in a public voting on social media and as organization run by people around 20+ we have a lot of Facebook leverage," describes MUFI representative and explains another reason for specific way of funding: "The grant industry is really difficult to break into. You need to be a veteran non‐profit with a demonstrated history of success. ... It is fairly a political process and if the leadership is half young white people, nobody wants to fund that in Detroit." Other donations include for instance a greenhouse from National Resource Conservation Service.

They were able to have 4 500 volunteers working on the site since its establishment in 2011, with over 50 000 volunteer hours. Those volunteers were equally from the Detroit community and southeast parts of Michigan area. "We are also, in a sense, acting as a platform to get people from around into the city often under the pretence of saving Detroit through volunteering, but it gets them in the door and what turns out to be the case is, they end up loving and buying property and moving into the city."

5.

Spatial Analysis

We have located major urban agriculture sites within the Detroit city borders and related them to the main urban typology of the city. It is important to point out there are substantially more smaller urban agriculture sites in Detroit that are not projected on the map. The total number of backyard gardens, school gardens, small farms and community gardens in Detroit is estimated to be over 1500 (Economic Analysis of Detroit's Food System, 2014; Greening of Detroit ‐ interview).

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Figure 6. Map of the urban agriculture sites presented in the paper in relation to downtown, high‐vacancy areas and proposed productive and ecological areas by Detroit Future City (2012).

6.

Discussion

The presented cases of UA organizations, their missions, programs, other activities and sets of issues show extensive and complex UA scene in Detroit. First we summarize and further discuss five characteristics we have identified as most relevant for Detroit case study and also discussed them in context of European Urban Agriculture.

6.1

Detroit as Unique Laboratory of Urban Agriculture

Detroit's 103 square kilometers of vacant land, extensive historical footprint of automotive industry, profound social inequality and the largest municipality with bankruptcy filing in the US history makes from this city a truly extraordinary place. It highlights two things that we consider if Detroit is going to be used as a model city for urban agriculture efforts in other parts of the world. Firstly, as other authors pointed out (e.g. Viljoen and Bohn 2014), this extreme urban environment provides countless places, opportunities and diverse social environments to develop and test new models of urban agriculture. This aspect makes Detroit one of the few places in the world, where urban agriculture can become a significant tool for city transformation. The second important aspect is the scale of this transformation. If the City of Detroit is going to redevelop according to the Detroit Future City strategic framework plan, a groundbreaking UA policy will need to be adopted. Such policy will require careful adaptation in different urban environments because of different social and urban assets.

The asset of a great amount of vacant land also influences the character of UA typologies of Detroit gardens and farms. As the UA cases show, vertical types of food production are not present in Detroit. Detroit does not grow vertically. There are no rooftop farms, vertical farming or farming

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integrated into buildings as in case of several projects in New York City, Toronto or Chicago. The vastness of vacant land has also determined the way in which urban farming is established within the legal framework of property rights. Many Detroit gardens are located on land without tackling the legal relationship with the plots under the gardens due to massive disorder in ownership of Detroit's vacant lots. This results in a situation that would be generally different in dense urban areas of European cities with relative scarcity of available land.

6.2

Diversity of Endeavours, Cooperation and Competition

Continuous growth in size and number of UA endeavors in the City of Detroit in combination with current population of six hundred thousands people can create a "tension" or competition amongst the individual organizations. As one interviewed person said "There is a lot of competition in the urban agriculture space here ... People tend to collaborate, but they also tend to compete." The gradual development of the individual endeavors in the last couple of years has created diversity and new partnerships for cooperation, but also leads to competition over resources and ideas on how urban agriculture in Detroit should look like. By resources we mean especially financial resources in particular, in the form of grants and donations. This kind of resource is fairly limited and organizations have to compete to get it. Other resources like available land and workforce are practically limitless in Detroit. Natural resources and other physical elements can be relatively easily accessible through the systemic network of resource organizations. The major UA organizations actively cooperate in terms of participation on creating food system and food security policies in Detroit and bring into the process priceless experiences and knowledge. Therefore, Detroit provides great example of coordinating the diversity of these efforts and accepting the differences, although it could be said that there is still present a political realm connected to social inequalities and race issues (see next chapter), and missions or practices of UA endeavors are perceived by some through these lens. We can assume that the number of UA endeavors is going to further increase due to more agriculture friendly policies in Detroit and those will need to search for new financial resources and market niches.

The lesson that could be learned from this for UA projects in Europe is that the value of networking and creating partnerships in urban environment is highly beneficial and most probably also a successful long‐term strategy and that such partnerships and cooperation can overcome political differences as we can seen in Detroit, where these "tensions" are still present, but do not limit the beneficial cooperation amongst most of the endeavors.

6.3

Social Justice and Race Issues

Due to history of social disparities amongst the white and black population in Detroit and the fight for social justice by the African American community, these issues are also an integral part of the UA scene in Detroit. That is also the central narrative of DBCFSN, which addresses these issues through urban agriculture, food related education and increasing self‐sufficiency of particularly black communities. Therefore land cultivation and food production has become a tool to work with these issues.

Such socially oriented grass‐roots movements creates a counterweight for endeavours that seek different goals while using urban agriculture as a mean how to achieved such goals. The classical example in Detroit is Hantz Farm project, which applies a capitalistic approach in urban agriculture.

Hantz Farm stated strategy is to use urban agriculture as a means to create scarcity of real estate, which will increase land values. Meanwhile the vacant land that was acquired at a low rate will be th

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used for timber production by creating forested areas. Although we did not include Hantz Farm project in our case study, there are other authors who describes some concerns shared by local communities about this project (Giorda 2012; Viljoen and Bohn, 2014, Cohen 2014).

This provides a cautionary narrative about the disparities in political and economic power and how can they impact land tenure and social justice values of urban agriculture.

Giorda (2012) identified two basic narratives for UA in the Detroit's future development. The first one is based on very strong social movement dated back to the 1960s, when Detroit's black community started to fight for its rights and against the city that was building its "apple with a hollow core" on exploitation of African Americans. "As many Detroit gardeners are the heirs of the activists who fought in the past for social justice and equal rights, their quest for locally produced food is informed by the concept of food justice" (Giorda, 2012). The second narrative is the capitalistic one.

The Detroit's tradition of entrepreneurial spirit and use of technologies along with "big money" creates a conflict with the food justice approach as in case of Hantz farms, and partly also in the case of Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, where the historical perspective of racial issues in Detroit is exposed. It is still not clear yet, which one of these two narratives will prevail in following Detroit transformation.

The historical and social framework, as well as those two competing approaches in UA are not so familiar and hard to recognize from the European perspective. We could say Detroit is still perceived here as the city in unprecedented decline, and because of the lack of knowledge about more fine scale relationships between individual organizations and UA projects, the picture of urban agriculture in Detroit can be easily fetishized, especially if seen on the stage with such fascinating scenery of industrial ruins.

6.4

Addressing Educational, Economic and Environmental Aspects of Urban Agriculture

All of the organizations presented have programing for youth and adult education (MUFI is constructing community resource centre also for education programing). The education of Detroiters in farming techniques and creating knowledge and skills about urban agriculture is an integral part of UA in Detroit.

The financial feasibility of UA endeavours in Detroit is strongly supported by the work of volunteers.

Some of the events like tree planting or site clean‐ups were attended by hundreds of volunteers.

Many of described endeavours could not be possible without unpaid hard work of those individuals.

Another interesting fact is that selling produce does not create substantial income for the investigated organizations.

Environmental aspects are evident, especially in the form of self‐reliance of urban communities, which is, again, connected to social issues and strengthening independence on capitalistic agro‐food system. We have also found that the term "climate change" is not present in the Detroit's UA narrative. We think that it is because UA endeavours deal with a more immediate set of locally based, and more pressing environmental and social issues in Detroit. We also argue that it is the main difference between Detroit's narrative of urban agriculture and narrative that we can find in contrast to Europe.

In the European context sustainable development managing climate change, short supply chains and food security are one of the key arguments for current Urban Agriculture efforts (e.g. COST UAE ‐ www.urbanagricultureeurope.la.rwth‐aachen.de).

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6.5

Missing Progressive Policy for Urban Agriculture in Detroit

The history of urban agriculture in Detroit dates back to the late 19th Century, when Mayor Hanzen Pingree sponsored potato patches for Detroiters to overcome the economic crisis and to Liberty and Victory gardens in World War I and II (Giorda 2012) as well as to vegetable backyard gardens of African Americans who came to Detroit after the war to work in the auto industries (Treuhaft et al.

2009). All the UA organizations studied here have been in Detroit long before the recent bankruptcy filling, and UA present in Detroit today has been slowly gaining momentum at least for the last ten years. Because most of the literature sources and studies are dated prior the bankruptcy filing, we have tried to outline and discuss more tangible changes that came after this event. For most of this time, UA, as a legitimate land use, was not recognized by the City of Detroit in zoning codes. It changed in April 2013 when the City of Detroit passed the code for urban agriculture, but still prohibits all farm animals (Cohen 2014) including bees.

Detroit Future City (DFC) strategic framework is a multi‐year comprehensive planning process that resulted in long‐range plan to articulate a vision for the future of Detroit's urban realm (Cohen 2014).

The way DFC incorporates urban agriculture into the future redefinition of Detroit land use is unprecedented and unique due to the size of areas that are proposed to be transformed into rural like productive and innovative landscapes accommodating diverse types of farming practices such as urban forests, aquaculture facilities and testing plots of innovative farming practices (Detroit Future City 2012). Although, today none of the presented farm sites studies here are located in one of the areas with the highest vacancy (see figure 6). A substantial program for large‐scale urban agriculture will be required to transform these rural‐like spaces and introduce urban agriculture into these areas.

Urban agriculture as a legitimate and even important part of Detroit renewal is also a political issue, and UA organizations in Detroit play a key role in adopting the UA policy. The combined efforts with other UA organizations is one of the few things that European counterparts should pay attention to, because these strategies for cooperating and communicating together are more transferable than the particular goals and missions of the individual urban agriculture organizations in Detroit.

7.

Conclusions

The case study reveals the large diversity of projects, actors and approaches that are linked into a networked system that coordinates various resources across multiple sites and scales. The case study reveals the value of urban agriculture in reimagining urban landscapes and food systems of shrinking cities and the importance of a systemic network in this process. This kind of systemic approach could be transferable to the European cities rather than individual projects and strategies that have to be always carefully contextualized. Urban agriculture in Detroit is not yet a fully sustainable enterprise from the economic point of view, but the UA activities have their values in other metrics.

8.

References

Cohen, N. 2012. Planning for urban agriculture: problem recognition, policy formation, and politics. In: A. Viljoen and J.S.C. Wiskerkeeds, eds. Sustainable food planning; evolving theory and practice. Wageningen Academic Publishers.

Cohen, N. 2014. Policies to support Urban Agriculture: Lessons from New York and Detroit. In: A. Viljoen and K. Bohn, eds. Second Nature Urban Agriculture. Routledge, 300 pp.

Daskalakis, G., Waldheim, C., Young, J. eds, 2001. Stalking Detroit.

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Detroit Future City, 2012. Detroit Strategic Framework Plan.

Economic Analysis of Detroit's Food System, 2014. A report commissioned by the Detroit Food & Fitness Collaborative, and produced by Econsult Solutions, Inc. and Urbane Development, LLC. Available at: <http://www.gcfb.org/site/DocServer/DETROIT_book_r6_8_29_14_lowres.pdf?docID=9962> [Accessed 20 September 2015].

Giorda, E. 2012. Farming in Motown: competing narratives for urban development and urban agriculture in Detroit. In: A. Viljoen and J.S.C. Wiskerkeeds, eds. Sustainable food planning; evolving theory and practice.

Wageningen Academic Publishers.

Treuhaft, S., Hamm, M.J. and Litjiens, C. 2009. Healthy food for all. Building a sustainable Food System in Detroit and Oakland. PolicyLink and Michigan State University, USA, 64 pp. at:<http://www.fairfoodnetwork.org/sites/default/files/HealthyFoodForAll_FullReport.pdf> Accessed 20 September 2015].

Viljoen, A. and Bohn, K. 2014. Laboratories for Urban Agriculture: The USA ‐ Detroit. In: A. Viljoen and K. Bohn, eds. Second Nature Urban Agriculture. Routledge, 300 pp.

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TRACK 5. FLOWS AND NETWORKS The track focuses on relationship among cities, food production and environmental implications and how food, crossing flows and networks, can contribute to define the wealth of society and the quality of urban space

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Simon Maurano, Francesca Forno, “Food, territory and sustainability: alternative food networks. Development opportunities between th economic crisis and new consumption practices”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 479‐489. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

FOOD, TERRITORY AND SUSTAINABILITY: ALTERNATIVE FOOD NETWORKS. DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES BETWEEN ECONOMIC CRISIS AND NEW CONSUMPTION PRACTICES Simon Maurano1, Francesca Forno2

Keywords: Critical consumption, social movements, local agro‐food, social innovation, AFNs Abstract: The ongoing economic crisis and the growing concerns about food quality and safety are leading to an increasing awareness of consumption habits. Critical consumption is defining an alternative geography of consumption, distribution and production. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) are expanding market niches based on the commitment and involvement of local actors. They add value to the relations between producers and consumers (Forno et al., 2013) by sharing a portion of their resources in order to obtain a greater mutual benefit (Sage, 2003; Graziano and Forno, 2012).

By bridging the gap between producers and consumers, AFNs promote endogenous development, production relocalization and food system reterritorialization.

AFNs represent new forms of sustainable self‐organized collective action (Migliore et al. 2014). In recent years, they have developed under the influence of (I) an increasing attention towards sustainability (II) the economic crisis (III) a more general loss of meaning due to consumerism and to the deterioration of relations (Castells et al. 2013). Moving from these assumptions, the paper reflects on the actual relevance of these economic practices and on their capability of resilience and resistance, while taking into account the main constraints and opportunities that foster/limit their spread. Data for the analysis came from several sources of information, such as interviews with key actors, participant observation, and an extensive mapping and in‐depth analysis of key projects involved in the construction of the food supply chain systems in a medium sized town in northern Italy.

1.

Introduction

The rise of Neoliberal economic systems meant a perspective shift from citizens perceived as producers (in the era of modernity) to citizen perceived as consumers (in the post‐modernity age) (Harvey 1989; Clarke et al. 2007; Bauman 2007). Along with a change in social practices, social movements have also changed their priorities and methods of action, as they moved from class struggle to rights struggles. This led to the establishment of new rights in the environment and welfare domain. With the advent of large anti/alter‐globalization mobilizations, the action repertoire of social movements has expanded: in the late Nineties and the early years of the new millennium, for example, boycott campaigns were quite effective along with a new focus on so‐called "critical consumption" (Forno & Graziano 2014; Forno, Grasseni, Signori, 2013; Grasseni 2013; 2014).

Since the 90s the phenomenon of political consumption has become increasingly widespread, thus strengthening and consolidating experiences such as fair trade, responsible tourism and ethical finance. These practices are playing in the same arena as neoliberal globalization and market by using political consumerism as a tool to contrast its negative consequences (Micheletti, 2003). These practices allowed a certain level of stability over time in debates and practices, even when the no/new global mobilization lost intensity and newsworthiness.

1 2

University of Bergamo, simon.maurano@gmail.com University of Bergamo, francesca.forno@unibg.it

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These trends show how citizens’ mobilization today seems to be fuelled by critical consumption, thus making it possible for new cooperation and co‐production experiences to grow and consolidate.

In the recent years, the central theme of political consumerism has been represented by mobilizations around the food. Growing concerns about products impact, both on consumers’ health and the exploitation of workers and natural resources, are in fact encouraging a growing number of citizens to a greater awareness in their consumption habits (Nygård and Storstad, 1998; Murdoch et al, 2000). The choice for food from alternative supply chains is often influenced by personal requirements (i.e., access to food considered to be healthier and, in the case of “industrial” organic products, more convenient) and collective requirements (i.e., the rediscovery of conviviality and relations).

Often, these collective requirements lead to grassroots actions promoting a new integrated development of the territory arising from local problems and also aimed at having a global impact.

These growing responsible consumers niches and experiences appear to facilitate various forms of socio‐territorial (re)connection: as we shall see, they are characterized for 1) their social innovation potential; 2) their potential to produce spaces in which the relationships between economy and territory are redesigned. By so doing, they stimulate and reinforce the relations among people who reside and operate in the same territory, thus increasing what has also been called the "spatial capital" (Soja 2010).

Within this changing context, we intend to analyse changes that seem to cross the varied range of movement defined "new economy".

In the research we present here, we postulated this changing context to depend on the tensions caused by the loss of purchasing power of a large part of the middle class. We also expected this to be linked to growing unemployment, as a result of the economic crisis of 2007‐2008. Finally, we expected this changing context to depend on a growing “research of sense” (Castells, Caraça, Cardoso, 2012) that appears as a new angst of the "consumer society" (Bauman, 2010).

The paper is based on a mapping of grassroots organizations promoting "sustainable practices" (elsewhere identified as the acronym for SCMOs3 ‐ see Forno and Graziano, 2014) in the Bergamo area4. We analysed these through a series of in‐depth interviews with the coordinators of some of the groups that are contriving an alternative food system.

The investigation focused on organization dynamic, internal and external governance dynamic, projects and what these groups expect from the "new economy". The local scale, which today seems to be basic for organizations of "critical consumption", imposes a research approach closer to the territory. In that context characterized by high contamination problems, high level of urbanization and huge loss of agricultural land and negative economic trend (de‐industrialization and young unemployment), these new economies seem, the contrary to expectations, to sow the seeds for a territorial reconnection (reterritorialization) based on a more virtuous relationship between the economy and the environment, in which economic activities respecting environment and society can be a driving force for a new form of territorial development.

2.

Between CFNs and AFNs. From deterritorialization to reterritorialization

In the scientific literature, the new economic arena growing around sustainable and quality food is referred to as Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). These are considered to be able to re‐create

3

Sustainable Community Movement Organizations.

That includes Bergamo city and its surroundings, and that could (or not) coincide with the Province of Bergamo.

4

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networks as well as social and spatial relations, to relocalize productions and reduce distances between producers and consumers, and to promote the endogenous development (Morgan et al., 2009).

These emerging experiences seem to be a possible answer to the sense of anomie generated by the processes of deterritorialization of the "Conventional Food Networks" (CFNs), which, in turn, are modern systems of production and distribution where often production costs are externalized into the territories in which it is practiced. This model has become dominant on a global scale and has driven farms to introduce capital‐intensive technologies in order to intensify production. This involves a heavy capital investment in machinery, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crop varieties (Johnson, 1975 and 1993).

Currently, AFNs represent a smaller emerging market. The companies involved are described as marginal but high quality producers, typical of Western countries. AFNs bring together different critical points in a production and consumption network, by creating alternative systems of food production, distribution and consumption both in a social and geographical sense (Maye, D., Holloway, L., Kneafsey, 2007).

Often AFNs reconstruct ideal spaces (opportunities) for the rights of those who, in our affluent society, are pushed to the margins. An example of this would be a cooperative of citrus fruits producers from southern Italy selling their produce to Solidarity purchase groups of northern Italy or, on a global scale, the alternative supply chains of the fair trade: in both cases, the emphasis is on fair working conditions. In these networks, the idea is to share a portion of resources in order to achieve mutual benefits, which are greater than those that the conventional systems is able to guarantee (Sage, 2003; Schifani and Migliore, 2011; Graziano and Forno, 2012). Among the benefits found in most short supply chains are, for example, the promotion of bio‐cultural diversity, the reduction of transaction costs, transportation and energy consumption, the reduction in consumer prices (compared to organic products sold in traditional commerce) and the enhancement of local and traditional quality products.

In short, these practices have a strong "embeddedness" within the social and territorial system, and can foster a process of reterritorialization of the food system.

3.

AFN in a typical context of the Italian province of the North

3.1

Research design

Restricting the area of analysis to the province of Bergamo enabled us to capitalise on the knowledge accumulated through previous research on the same territory and connect it with research aimed to investigate the mechanisms of internal organizational and strategic decisions implemented by each organization.

Following a series of quantitative studies of specific groups within the "new economy" (Forno, Grasseni and Signori, 2013), this search analysed those grassroots organizations that promote sustainable practices with particular attention to the “meso level” (i.e. on associations or networks).

This was achieved through research tools that allowed to investigate more deeply the dynamics intra and inter‐organizational.

After a mapping of these experiences in the area, which took place during the first half of 2014, we carried out a series of interviews and focus groups based on a methodology inspired by the Participatory Action Research (PAR). This methodology is used to reveal opinions and difficulties perceived and experienced by the different actors, with the aim of understanding potentiality and limitations through a dialogic interview method (Forno and Maurano, 2014).

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The mapping exercise revealed the existence of several organizations implementing "sustainability practices", also categorized as SCMOs. On the one hand, these experiences are oriented to increase citizens’ awareness of the negative externalities of individual and collective consumption and production. On the other, these experiences provide opportunities for actors to rebuild relations in order to influence the model of community development, where local development is the starting point. Examples can be found in groups and organizations promoting fair trade, ethical finance, critical consumption and new forms of swap and alternative food supply chains. The actors promoting these experience are both the so‐called consum‐actors and new organizations (networks and formal or informal associations) of "local" (usually small/medium sized) producers. Within these organizations, AFNs play an important role, acting as cultural facilitators and bringing the alternative food vision into the urban and the local space.

We carried out thirty‐one in‐depth interviews with representatives of the main organizations involved in the movement of creation of AFNs. These allowed us to look deeper into commonalities and differences between the organizations of the new economy and the “old” social movements, as well as to reflect on what lies behind these differences. In general, it emerged that some differences depend on the historical context in which these organisations were founded. The organizational characteristics of each company and its actors appear to depend very much on the historical period, or the mobilization cycle, within which these experiences are born and developed.

3.2

The local context

The province of Bergamo is traditionally a rich area. Like many other provinces in northern Italy, it has recently experienced deep processes of de‐industrialization. Despite this, the province has high levels of per capita wealth, also thanks to a strong work and saving culture. Although agriculture only accounts for a small percentage of the province employment rate (as is often the case of industrialized Italian regions), the primary sector in the Bergamo area has several local specialties and high quality products to offer. This is thanks to the region’s unique geographical morphology, which is characterized by a great variety of landscapes: the territory is formed by plains (24.7%), hills (11.8%) and mountains (63.5%).

Plains are characterised by conventional monoculture, while hills and mountain areas are characterised by a tendency to multifunctional agriculture, where farmers integrate production with other services, such as wine tourism, cultural events and education. If on the one hand this multifunctionality is a necessity in such a terrain specific context, on the other hand it has brought along some interesting employment and tourism prospects in rural areas.

Politically speaking, Bergamo belongs to that political area defined as "white" (an area of Italy where Catholic parties were very strong). In the 80s and 90s Bergamo experienced an increase in per capita wealth thanks to an economy characterized by a strong presence of small and medium‐sized enterprises. Interesting is also the fact that rising income levels in those years was not followed by an increase in the level of education. Below the national average is also the female employment rate.

These factors reflect a somewhat novelty adverse culture that is typical of the area. The area is in fact historically considered "closed" at the cultural level but also "generous". It is traditionally characterized by a rich social fabric of voluntary associations and social realities of cooperation especially of Catholic footprint.

Like many realities in northern Italy, the city of Bergamo has also been undergoing important demographic changes. Since 2004, the population has grown. This is mainly due to the growth of the foreign population. In 2004 the proportion of foreigners was 5.3%, in 2013 it increased to 13.8%. This value is higher than its province (10.9%) and than the Italian average (7.4%).

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On average, the city population is older than in the province: people over 65 account for 24.6% of the population in Bergamo city against 18.7% in its province. The composition families has also greatly changed in recent years: from 2001 to 2011 the rate of single‐person households has increased from 34% to 41.6%. This is mainly due to the aging population (however, this percentage is lower, 22%, if we consider residents only). In 2013 the percentage of over 65 living alone is 33% of the Bergamo population.

It is clear how this social, cultural and economic fabric entails limits as well as opportunities for the development of organizations and experiences of the new economy.

4.

Main results

4.1

AFNs in Bergamo: mapping and field analysis

In the area of Bergamo the (re) construction of community networks of production and consumption has recently become a matter of growing interest. As in other contexts, many different resources are at play, here. For example, we can count 70 farm parks with teaching activities for kids, 144 agritourisms, more than 350 farms with direct sell or “pick your own“ initiatives and over 260 farms that work in the short supply chain. Furthermore, 243 companies are present on the territory that process milk directly, and 34 that have a vending machine (Provincia di Bergamo, 2004 and 2013).

Bergamo is the second province in the Lombardy region for number of GAS, with its current 70 groups (Forno, Grasseni and Signori, 2013). There are a dozen urban garden initiatives, including interesting collaborations between schools and the municipal Botanical gardens.

However, these resources are often not connected to each other, which is why for a long time they remained outside the attention of both citizens and administrators. In Bergamo, however, the economic crisis that began in the years 2007‐2008 seems to have imposed a different approach both by citizens and by the local political class, which has manifested growing sensitivity to these issues in the latest years.

The interviews have shown that behind the process of reconnection and territorial development of AFNs, a major role was played by some movement organizations that developed around the 90s and reached a point of relevant success from the late 90s. This is the case of organizations like Fair Trade (1990) and Banca Etica, which have been active in the territory since 2003. Time Banks (1997) and the Slow Food organisation (1987) are also important actors on the territory.

These early organizations have somehow created the social fabric within which the new organizations are born. However, the latter seem to have a different form of organization, which is less structured and more horizontal. This is especially true for the case of Solidarity Purchase Groups, but also for urban gardens (especially those driven by young people, such as the association Quarto Paesaggio [Fourth landscape]), the Movimento per la Decrescita Felice [Movement for Happy Degrowth], Gli Armadilli, Pedalopolis, and Regalo e Presto [Gift and Barter] and Mercato&Cittadinanza [Market & Citizenship].

Unlike the older organizations, which generally have a more defined structure, with a national and various local level, the organization of the new economy operate especially at the local level, with a structure generally consisting of a rather limited core of people which are the real driving force for the group. However, in some instances these organisations can include several hundreds of people, particularly ‐ although not exclusively ‐ through the web.

This is the case of "Regalo e Presto", a “P2P” organisation which was founded on the idea of “barter and reuse but [with] the idea that this could also help the relationship, [and] also create a network into the territory" [Regalo e Presto. Date of the interview 01/23/2014]”. The organisation was

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founded by two people, but quickly expanded to include hundreds of people, with the current network involving over 500 people across the Bergamo province. The network consists of six groups based on geographical proximity, some of which are active in the different Bergamo neighbourhoods, and others in the surrounding province. The socio‐economic profile of its participants are also relevant: although young people are not entirely absent from these groups, our interviews outline a type of participation which is mainly by older, the middle class and educated people. Many associations, including those initiated by young people, also rely heavily on retired people.

Interestingly as one of our interviewees says,: "You will have noticed that we put great emphasis on older people ... The elderly are our greatest resource... They have much more time for us" Il Quarto Paesaggio [The Fourth landscape]. Interview with a founder of a community garden, Date of the interview 07/02/2014].

As stated above, the social context we are researching here is characterised by widespread prosperity and wealth often related to family savings, so those young people who are involved in setting up these practices are often few and supported by elderly people with greater economic stability. This is also a possible explanation for the mainly voluntary nature of these groups. These forms of new economy are in fact only rarely able to create new jobs, even in the cases of larger groups (as in the case of markets, groups of barter, solidarity purchase groups etc.).

In fact, these young “social innovators” are only rarely trying to develop these activities as a possible form of subsistence, often in the hope to find an alternative to traditional labour market employment. Labour market is, indeed, a critical issue that is becoming increasingly central into the debate within SCMOs and especially with the intensification of the crisis.

The situation is different in the case of small production companies (often with social cooperative status) which operate mainly in response to the new economy emerging demands of social inclusion.

The research also confirms that in northern Italy, new economy experiences are activated in most cases by the demand of pro‐active, responsible consumers. In less affluent areas such as southern Italy, producers usually have a more proactive approach (Andretta and Guidi, 2014).

A very good example of this is the experience of “Mercato agricolo e non solo” [Farmers market and beyond], a space promoted by a network of associations (Mercato e Cittadinanza [Market & Citizenship] ‐ M&C) with the aim of bringing together small enterprises and sustainable producers with consumers in order to promote mutual acquaintance, information exchange and sharing of the values of sustainability and solidarity, as is evidenced by this piece of interview: "When we organize the markets, we always try to make it clear what sits behind the event" [...] "giving the opportunity to support them [the producers] also economically. They have a place where they can sell, where they are expected to be fair, transparent, In their transactions etc. "[...]" Many consumers ask for information on the products, and they know that the producers only sell the stuff that they make” [Mercato & Cittadinanza. Date of the interview 02/14/2014 – translation by the authors].

The use of shared, recurrent spaces (like in the case of markets always taking place in the same neighbourhood venue) is important for these organizations as a form of collective action providing opportunities for new, fertile connections. In Bergamo, for example, two informal networks of small organic producers originated (Orobiebio and Agrimagna) thanks to the experience of M&C. Both organisations aim to create new markets as arenas for better relationship among society, economy and environment.

The analysis of Solidarity purchase groups in Lombardy (Forno, Grasseni and Signori 2013) confirms the trends recorded in the areas of northern Italy in relation to socio‐economic and demographic status of those who are active in these experiences: (a) there is a low presence of young people, which is explained by the fact that Bergamo remains a relatively rich area where the family

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institution still represents a social safety network, and (b) there is a high representation of middle class members. This also means that young people rarely try to turn these initiatives into a proper job, as their perception is that these activities would be too risky to be their only source of income.

Overall, the picture emerging from our research confirms that, at least in this area of Italy, these forms of self‐organization do not tend to arise from lower socio‐economic contexts or profit oriented cultures. Indeed, these initiatives tend to thrive through the action of people who are already active (or with previous experience) within social organizations and associations (Carfagna et al. 2014).

The current situation still presents several limitations: in particular, although these good practices often entail a social aspect aimed at helping people deal with the economic crisis, they rarely organize themselves into a “system", and this fragmentation reduces their impact on a political level.

They do not manage to build practices of resistance against the cause of that crisis, which is not only economical, but also ecological, political and a crisis of care/meaning. In brief, this is a civilization crisis (see D’Alisa, Forno and Maurano, 2015)

4.2

AFNs and crisis: the relationship with the state and competing with the market

In the current economic recession of Western society, social movements are facing two different challenges: on the one hand, they must deal with institutions that are often unable or unwilling to meet new demands of environmental demands and social justice. On the other hand, they have to rebuild bonds of solidarity and cooperation within a highly individualized social context, where individual identities consolidate around consumption. This is in opposition to the past, where collective identities have been very important for the emergence of new initiatives.

Compared to the past, these new initiatives are more pragmatic. Their action is not only aimed towards the promotion of more sustainable consumption, but also to the creation of "spaces" where people can find information and also concrete answers to the daily problems (such as the supply of healthy food or "ethical" clothing). Within these experiences, active participation often takes the form of exchange, “downshifting”, or more conscious and responsible consumption. The main result is the creation of new relations and a new, shared sense of collective identity.

Generally, it seems clear from the interviews that the protagonists of the new economy think that the crisis led to a re‐conceptualisation of the environmental and social conditions generated by consumerism and by the economy of unlimited growth. The crisis has also encouraged the emergence and proliferation of some new, context specific experiences.

All groups analysed reported an increase in sensitivity to the issues of environmental and social sustainability. However, only some of the initiatives reviewed were successful. Others suffered from the negative effect of the crisis. The most negative case is that of fair trade: "[...] While the crisis was an eye‐opener for many people [...] a downside is that there is less money around, so our cooperative has not been able to employ people in the last two years."[Il Seme.

Interview Date 12.12.2014].

However, it is interesting to note that some groups recognize the positive influence of the crisis. For example, for the representative of Banca Etica representative we interviewed, the crisis seems to have fostered a new awareness, driven by the need to reduce expenses. Indeed, some Solidarity purchase group members have increasingly been turning to Banca Etica.

The same positive trend is can be seen in the case of collective gardens, the Farmers' Market and the new circuits of barter.

In fact, all these groups consider the crisis as the main driving force to the success of these initiatives groups. As in the case of Regalo e Presto, these times of recession led to people generally overcoming some of their prejudice about second hand items:

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"I think it was also favoured precisely by the difficult economic situation. Because if I am the only person that gets used clothes for my children, I feel a little '... I don’t want to say like a beggar, but like someone who does not want to ... Instead, if you know others who do it, it becomes more... normal. Everyone else does it, or at least some people, so you can do that, too. The crisis, from this point of view, is a facilitating factor. Someone does it out of necessity, others do it by choice [...]

[Regalo e Presto. Date of interview 23/1/14].

The crisis has in some cases required a realignment of the goals of some organizations such as Time Banks, which now seem much more interested in the issues of inclusion and poverty than in the past. "[...] We can say that there has been some sort of evolution: perhaps the bank is more open, now. For example, we have opened up to the territory. Now, the relationship with institutions has become one of our top priorities. In response to the current economic recession, our national association is now involved in a one year project aimed at social inclusion [...]" [Officina del tempo. Date of interview 09:02:14] The development of the Orobiebio and Agrimagna organic farmers networks is an interesting case.

These networks share many goals with work cooperatives. In times of economic crisis, where citizens’ trust in traditional forms of market tends to falter, cooperatives offer a valid alternative to future uncertainty and long‐term investment.

According to the coordinator of Orobiebio, the crisis "has not affected us. Personally, I think this is because we meet people’s needs by keeping our prices competitive with those of the conventional market. Through participatory involvement, people come and collect produce directly from the farmers (or they even pick the product themselves), and this enables us to keep our prices competitive.

So, overall, we have not suffered from the recession" [Orobiebio, interview 07/04/2014].

As the coordinator of Agrimagna reports, their business has been thriving and expanding, and they even struggled to meet demand at times. The crisis, for him... "became a driving force for resuming agricultural activities. People are experimenting and building...

In these 2‐3 years I have seen the growing trend. [...] The number opportunities has actually increased. This is not to say that things are simple or easy. Far from it, but this is a real fact: our brand, “Il tesoro della Bruna” [...] our salves have increased by 20% over the last two years. And the demand was even greater than we could provide for" [Agrimagna, interview 08/04/2014].

The company is currently hoping to collaborate with the public administration, and they have already had a promising response in terms of key aspects such as organization, promotion and education.

"I think one of the main weaknesses in the system is that our industry is quite young. This means that we are not yet organised into a systemic structure like big industrial districts do. We are still such a new reality that we cannot reply on the same level of organization. And there are no organisations that could support us. In our Country, such systems do not exist, and we are not yet strong enough, economically, to be able to create this structure by ourselves. "[Orobiebio ‐ Focus group 19.05.2014].

One risk is that, after an initial phase of enthusiasm and participation, many of these alternative, volunteer based practices will fade away due to lack of human and economic resources.

Alternatively, some of these initiatives lose sight of their initial mission and end up conforming to the laws of conventional market.

As is the case of other experiences (Bresnihan and Byrne, 2014), the difficulties relating to the sustainability of the new economic practices reflects an inequitable distribution of power, where private interests are favoured over public ones. Therefore, the fundamental problems of the contemporary economic, social and environmental crisis cannot be simply managed by creating alternatives within the current market system. Useful and necessary as they are, these practices need to be supported by a political action on public policies and government plans. Unfortunately,

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this seems impossible until the general public attitude towards politics moves from a sense of indifference to a greater involvement.

The members of these groups often prefer to focus on small, concrete objectives, rather than trying to influence public policy: "We act as a local group with concrete objectives. These objectives may be perceived to be small, but they are not, if you think that last year we started out with a hundred seeds of Wipper Snapper tomatoes, and we now have a whopping hundred thousand!"[Civiltà contadina, interview of 24/01/2014].

"We have small goals [...] Active citizenship, responsible citizenship, lifestyle ... [...] An idea, a lifestyle linked to something else ..." [Circolo della Decrescita Felice di Bergamo, interview of 04/02/2014].

A pragmatic approach appears to be the only way to achieve results in the short term. This is definitely a step forward, and might pave the way to other types of action.

"Some political representatives will approach us, but I don’t want to have anything to do with them.

They are looking for votes, obviously. And we don’t trust them” [Il Seme, Fair Trade, interview of 12/12/13].

Even when other groups have been open to collaborating with national institutions (such as Banca Popolare Etica) or local institutions(such as Banche del Tempo, Civiltà contadina, Il Quarto Paesaggio, MDF), these collaborations have always been aimed at reaching small concrete objectives: “We pursue an idea, in the sense of a philosophy linked to lifestyle, self‐production, culture, and you cannot address a single political party: that does not make sense. It has to be a project bringing a broader message, and that goes beyond political orientation. Moreover, you have to be open to working with local administrations, whichever their political orientation might be” [MDF, interview of 02/04/14].

5.

Conclusions

This article proposes a first reflection on the changes brought along by the current recession on the new economy organization.

As it emerged from the interviews, the development these forms of collective action have undergone in recent years appears to be driven by three main factors: ‐ the growing public attention to environmental, social and economic sustainability; ‐ the economic crisis and its negative impact on society, including members of the middle‐class; ‐ a more general loss of meaning due to consumerism and degradation of social relations, together with the misalignment between happiness and GDP growth (as observed in the Easterlin paradox, 1974).

In this sense, our research confirmed what was already highlighted in other studies, namely that these forms of action create some interesting "spaces" of experimentation and social innovation where individual consumption is replaced by collective identity.

Among the main issues emerged, there is a new emphasis on production in times of crisis. While the emphasis on consumption is a product of consumer society and welfare, production is now becoming more central to the current debate.

The new emphasis on creating partnerships between producers and consumers within a local context also seems to bring these experiences to forms of commoning, already present in urban areas, as described by Bresnihan and Byrne (Antipode, 2014). At the core of these initiatives is a shared vision about environmental, social and economic sustainability. The experiences of Banche del Tempo, Civiltà contadina, Il Quarto Paesaggio and MDF reflect the core values of prosumption, but they add a

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collective dimension to it, where collaboration is realized through a shared sense of product, service and experience design. Another central issue is the emphasis on the territory and reterritorialization of production, through exploitation of local resources at an integrated level, recruiting agriculture as a driving factor for strengthening the local economy.

Finally, it is also worth mentioning that some have criticised these emerging groups for their niche quality, as only middle and upper class citizens are able to afford involvement with these groups, and therefore also have access to healthier food (Goodman et al., 2012).

It is possible that these collective actions will continue to be just a symbol of an alternative way of life, operating only at the fringe of the market arena. The general attitude seems to be one of holding back until new generations will take over and develop a fairer society. Probably, this lack of participation in the political arena is due to a lack of trust in existing political parties and think that it is almost impossible to change the socio‐economic context: at present, they prefer to achieve small, practical objectives than pursue greater political changes.

However, it is also possible (and indeed desirable), that this model will act as a driving force for a broader perspective shift on mass consumption and social innovation, and possibly lay the foundations for a more structured political action.

6.

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Jean‐Baptiste Geissler, “Short food supply chain and environmental “foodprint”: why consumption pattern changes could matter more than production and distribution and why it is relevant for planning”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing th rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 490‐500. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

SHORT FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN AND ENVIRONMENTAL “FOODPRINT”: WHY CONSUMPTION PATTERN CHANGES COULD MATTER MORE THAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION AND WHY IT IS RELEVANT FOR PLANNING Jean‐Baptiste Geissler1

Keywords: Foodprint, Green Eating, Sustainability Policy, Consumption Shifts Abstract: Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs), as defined by Kneafsey et al. (2013) have been presented by many regional and urban planning works as a major potential contributor to food’s environmental footprint (“foodprint”) reduction and natural allies to local sustainability policies. Yet, these positive impacts have not always been assessed systematically and part of the enthusiasm among scholars and practitioners seem to rely on untested assumptions, bearing important risks for planning and policy elaboration (Edward‐Jones, 2010). This knowledge gap is therefore to be bridged.

After having tackled definition issues in the introduction, the first part explores the potential opportunities (in production, distribution and consumption) of foodprint reduction, trying to single out the most promising ones. The second part of the review is dedicated to studying more in depth how consumption shifts are influenced by SFSC. In the final part, potential implications for planning and sustainability policies. Paths for future research are also exposed.

The literature reviewed seems to indicate that, contrary to what is commonly emphasized in planning literature, the change of consumption patterns (i.e. reducing meat intake) might be the greatest “foodprint” reduction contributor (Garnett, 2011) and that SFSCs greatly contribute to them through the reconnection to the agricultural territory, the routinization of sustainable behaviors and educational processes.

1.

Introduction

Major European metropolis such as Paris and Milan already engaged in paths of environmental reduction of their environmental impact, driven by political will and strong external pressures such as: growing interest from citizens with both individual (quality of living environment) and social (overcoming the environmental crisis) driving forces; pressure coming from states and EU, who committed to reduce emission (Kyoto) and reduce water pollution (EU framework directive) and likely to increase with decentralization of environment related competences to regions.

Their objectives are often translated into quantified indicator reduction targets. The use of indicators of major environmental indicators is not straightforward and their role in local sustainability policy has been criticized.

However, reviewing the existing literature on local sustainability indicators and their relationship with governance, Holman (2009) noticed that indicators could facilitate the dialogue between central and local government, help picturing concretely what sustainability means and offer learning opportunities to stakeholders.

1

DAStU (Politecnico di Milano), jeanbaptiste.geissler@polimi.it

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The choice of indicators remains debatable and some authors argue for the co‐construction of local indicators, enabling stakeholder engagement. However, relying on major –internationally recognized – such as GreenHouse Gases emissions (GHGe) and Water Footprint could prove more efficient for dialoguing with upper levels (national and international) and setting up international comparisons.

Besides, the vast literature and databases available on such indicators would make it easier to assess precisely the environmental impact of human activities.

The food system, understood as the production (including processing), distribution and consumption (including waste) of Food is responsible for a considerable share of human activities’ impact on environment. For instance, roughly 25% of total Green House Gas emissions (Vermeulen et al., 2012) come from it and agriculture accounts for about 70% of total water withdrawals worldwide2. Food became an object of interest at the city/regional level and a relevant topic for planning to address, both at the theoretical and practical level (Ilieva, 2013). It has already been identified by many major cities as a promising field for acting on GHGe3.

The expression “foodprint”, has gained popularity in the literature of the past few years. The term however encompasses a variety of realities and is often used as replacement for “footprint” when talking about food, without being defined more precisely (such as in Stoessel et al., 2012 or Billien et al., 2009 – where it is wrote “food‐print”). For the sake of clarity, the present article considers “foodprint” as the impact of food system over major environmental indicators, mainly GHGe and Water Footprint. Other secondary indicators, such as energy use and nitrate release will also be mentioned, as they have a direct influence on the formers.

Among other solutions for reducing foodprint, the shortening of supply chain, or reconnection between production and consumption sites, have gained considerable momentum both in the scientific literature and in the media (Edward‐Jones et al., 2008).

Academic interest on the topic has also experienced a tremendous development in the past two decades, some authors even talking about a “disproportionate interest” of the literature when compared to the actual size of the phenomenon (Deverre & Lamine, 2010). It therefore seems relevant to dedicate particular attention to them when considering the phenomenon as a whole.

Besides its media and academic visibility, local food movement’s intrinsic diversity is an excellent illustration of how hard it is to delimitate precisely these object, being for policy or research purposes. As a matter of fact: “Local food systems”, “locavorism”, “short food supply chain”, “city farms”, “urban farming”, “alternative food systems”, “community supported agriculture” (and many others), have all raised interest, support and critiques in recent debates.

Heated debates are still taking place: some argue not to focus only on niche initiatives and to “move beyond the alternative” (Franklin et al., 2011), others claim that loose definitions could lead to nonsenses (such as considering Wal‐Mart as a local food actor, see Delind, 2011). We will retain the quite ample, but functional, notion of “Short Food Supply Chains” (SFSCs) and the definition proposed by Kneafsey et al. (2013) “The foods involved are identified by, and traceable to a farmer.

The number of intermediaries between farmer and consumer should be ‘minimal’ or ideally nil.”

2

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/water_use/ See for instance Paris’ “Plan Alimentation Durable”, supporting the “Plan Climat Energie” and focusing on collective restauration. http://observatoire.pcet‐ademe.fr/action/fiche/154/le‐plan‐d‐alimentation‐durable‐de‐ paris

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The first part of the paper (section 2) will be dedicated to exploring, building on the available literature, opportunities for foodprint reduction within the food system. The following section (3) will then, based on these conclusions, see how SFSCs could contribute to tapping these opportunities.

Section 4 will be dedicated, in an exploratory effort, to envision more broadly the potential implications of such a relationship for sustainability planning.

2.

Foodprint reduction opportunities

Given the importance of the food system in the total footprint of human activities over the environment, many authors have tried and identify the most promising fields for effective and achievable foodprint reduction. One of the most remarkable efforts of gathering the existing evidence has been achieved by Tara Garnett in her 2011 article.

Building on her analysis, and for the sake of analytical purposes, the available evidence on foodprint reduction opportunities will be considered in each of the different components of food systems: production (including processing), distribution and consumption (including waste). These distinctions should not be taken as a clear‐cut separation, for the items presented separately are often overlapping (especially for consumption), but rather as a lens‐shifting exercise, putting the focus on different sides of the issue.

2.1

Distribution

When dealing with foodprint, the questions of scale and distance between producer and consumer (also called “food miles”) are the ones that immediately come to mind. A widespread idea in the local food literature is that reduced food miles lead to reduced energy consumption and C02 emission, for they would involve less transportation. Yet, authors such as Avetisyan et al. (2014), point out that food miles are an “over‐simplified way to address the environmental problem of carbon emissions associated with food consumption”(p.418).

It is first important to notice that in most cases, even for conventional food, the last miles of transportation are the ones having the greatest greenhouse gas emission and energy consumption impact, and that distribution accounts for roughly 5% of the food sector total energy consumption (Avetisyan et al., 2014) and 10% of the total carbon foodprint (Brodt et al., 2013). Therefore, interstate or international transportation can be found as being negligible (ibid). Studying the carbon footprint of common groceries in a Swiss retailer, Stoessel et al. (2012) reached the conclusion that: “it is necessary to reexamine the supposed energy advantages of ‘localism’ in the food sector”. Coley et al. (2009) also showed the relevance of distribution format, proving that if buying organic required the customer to drive an extra 6.7 kilometers, it would annihilate any potential greenhouse gas emission benefit.

In an effort of summing up the available literature on the topic, Mundler & Rumpus (2012) gathered articles both relying on theoretical links and case studies. They reached the conclusion that “all this research converges to challenge the presumed advantages of geographical proximity in terms of food distribution energy efficiency” (p.610). Although they also underline several limitations resulting from methodological differences and the considerable margin for improvement many authors mentioned, these quite counterintuitive findings could prove insightful for the planning literature. To

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put it in Coley et al.’s (2009) words, “some of the ideas behind localism in the food sector may need to be revisited”.

2.2

Production

Production modes of foods may vary considerably between places and types of productions, therefore the results are likely to change drastically from one case to another. Yet, for illustrative purposes, we took the example of organic production, which has been studied more extensively, with varied conclusion. Including carbon sequestration in the equation and building on the existing literature, Lynch et al. (2011) found that organic (vs conventional) production had a positive impact on energy consumption but nuanced their conclusions by stating that the effect on Green House Gas emission was not necessarily favorable.

Moreover, the particularities –especially climatic ones ‐ of each locality have a considerable impact on production foodprint, blurring the picture even more. Brodt et al. (2013) for instance demonstrated that processed tomatoes were more energy and GHGe efficient in California, but much more water efficient in Michigan.

Beyond these illustrative examples, presenting only particular cases, authors such as Edward‐Jones (2008) put forward and Garnett (2011) put forward mitigation techniques carrying potential for meaningful foodprint reduction. Garnett also mentions “non‐conventional” tools, such as agro‐ forestry. Yet, in the same article, she stressed the fact that, instead of allowing the food production system to shifting to a more sustainable organization, it might increase its reliance over technology and energy intakes (p.S29). More importantly, both authors underline that the effects would probably not be sufficient to achieve foodprint reduction at levels that would match what is demanded to cope with the current ecological crisis.

2.3

Consumption

Consumption patterns evolution has direct (waste reduction) and indirect (effect on production and distribution) effects. Waste reduction has been identified has capable of bringing forward a potential reduction of 10% of GreenHouse Gases emissions (Berners‐Lee et al., 2012). But greater impacts are to be found in the evolution of diets and eating habits.

It is actually in meat, and especially red meat consumption reduction (reducing total calorie input or substituting with other meats, dairies or plants – also called “protein transition”) that the greatest environmental impact could be achieved. Vanham et al. (2013) for instance found that, in Europe, a 23% water‐footprint reduction could be achieved only from reducing meat consumption to “healthy” levels.

Reviewing the available literature, Garnett (2011) indicated that, contrary to what is commonly emphasized, the change of consumption patterns might be the greatest “foodprint” reduction contributor. Those findings have since been confirmed by separate evaluations pointing out the great footprint reduction potential of reducing meat intake – also called “protein transition” (Vanham et al., 2013), eating seasonal products (Stoessel et al., 2012) and reducing waste (Berners‐Lee et al., 2012).

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In order to compare this impact with the ones evoked previously, we can quote Weber & Matthew (2008) who demonstrated, thanks to an input‐output model that a (roughly) 20 % red meat consumption reduction in the US would be equivalent to total re‐localization (that is cancelling transportation) regarding GHG emission reduction.

A positive correlation between eating seasonal products and reducing foodprint has also been found, especially in terms of carbon and water consumption, both in production and distribution steps (Stoessel et al., 2011).

The picture here appears as more straightforward than for distribution (2.1) and production (2.2), with more consistent and significant impact of identified actions. Moreover, contrary to production and distribution, the conclusions for consumption seem to be less sensitive to local variation and valid at the global level (Tilman & Clark, 2014).

3.

SFSCs and consumption shifts

The literature reviewed in the previous section therefore seems to indicate that, contrary to what is commonly emphasized, the change of consumption patterns (i.e. reducing meat intake) might be the greatest “foodprint” reduction contributor (see Garnett, 2011 and 2014; Bajželj et al., 2014).

However, the consumption side seems to have been relatively less exploited than other. This is even more perceptible when dealing with SFSCs. Actually, if the positive environmental impact of SFSCs has often been put forward, authors have mainly insisted on food miles reduction or the potential benefits of non‐conventional cropping techniques, leading authors like Edward‐Jones (2010) to seriously question the environmental benefit of such schemes.

That relative negligence of the consumption side might be rooted in the quite complex and indirect way SFSCs influence consumption shifts, which does not appear as straightforward as others (in particular food miles reduction), with causalities sometimes hard to determine.

In order to address that point, the present section will be dedicated, relying on theoretical works and case studies, to bringing evidence on how participation in SFSCs and sustainable consumption practices are linked.

3.1

Consumption shifts / Green Eating

Weller et al. (2014) defined Green Eating as follows: ‘‘eating locally grown foods, produce that is in season and limited intake of processed foods, consuming foods and beverages that are labeled fair trade certified or certified organic and consuming meatless meals weekly and (if consuming animal products) selecting meats, poultry, and dairy that do not contain hormones or antibiotics.’’ A comparable definition is proposed by The Food Climate Research network and its “Sustainable Healthy Diets (Food Climate Research Network, 2015).

This definition seems too wide for the scope of the present work, as it refers to sustainability in general and not environmental sustainability in particular. A narrower definition of “Green Eating”, focusing on environmental impact would concentrate on factors affecting directly the foodprint of individuals and chiefly protein transition, seasonal eating and waste reduction. We therefore define

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“Green Eating” as the set of behaviors contributing the reduction of foodprint through the evolution of consumption practices.

In the figure below (fig. 1), Garnett (2011), building up on Garnett (2008) gives a more precise idea of what is included in that notion by summing up links between eating behaviors and the reduction of major environmental indicators.

Figure 1. Green Eating behaviors, from Garnett (2011:S30)

3.2

How SFSCs favour Green Eating

Links between SFSCs and consumption shifts might not appear obvious at a glance, and so is the sense of causality between the two. One might actually argue that people participating in SFSCs already have adopted Green Eating behaviors and that the effect is therefore marginal.

We can however gather scattered yet persuasive evidence, coming from different literature bodies, and make a quite solid case pleading for a strong effect of participation in a SFSCs and greener eating practices for the consumer.

The major issues here are: being able to understand what is influencing attitudes, and what is allowing attitudes to be translated into behaviours (Annunziata & Scarpato, 2014).

SFSC schemes, such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) seem to offer the possibility to their participants to develop, implement and maintain green eating behavior over time. There is strong evidence in the literature correlating positive appreciation of local foods and healthier/greener eating behaviors (Pelletier et al., 2013), and some clues of a direct correlation between participation in such schemes and greener food consumption practices (Russell & Zepeda, 2008).

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Studying a collective purchase group (GAS) in Rome, Fonte et al. (2013) reached the conclusion that the participation in such a local food scheme lead to the development of a “conscious reflexivity” among members. Not only did this allow them to adopt greener eating behaviors, it also triggered interrogations and change on non‐food‐related habits. The authors also reckon that participation in such a scheme had a particular importance in the routinization of behaviors, that is a crucial component of their sustainability overtime (Hormes et al., 2013). Connelly et al. (2011) also found “structural change” happening in individual behaviors thanks to the feeling of belonging in a community, in a study of two Canadian cases.

Interestingly enough, the behavior change noticed among participants to CSA does not necessarily come only, or even principally, from the establishment and enforcement of social norm but also – maybe mainly‐ from “structural elements” such as exposure to farm works, exchanges with producers, etc. (Russell & Zepeda, 2007). If these results were to be confirmed, it would suggest innovative paths for policy, differing substantially from the traditional communication campaigns and allowing to engaging with a wider array of consumers, which will be tentatively explored below (section 4.2).

4.

Potential implications for local sustainability policy and planning

This section will tentatively aim at developing some potential implications of the observations realized in sections 2 and 3.

4.1

Detaching “local foods” from the local understood as geographical proximity

A first consequence of shifting could be to unburden the existing debate of scale questions that would become secondary, which might have some positive effects. Actually, a stream in planning literature has seen authors being quite critical what they saw as an excessive confidence in the virtues of the local (Clancy & Rhuf, 2010), arguing that there was “nothing inherent to scale” (Born & Purcell, 2006) and that the alleged benefits of local foods should be tested case by case (Edwards‐ Jones et al., 2008). Other authors even went further in their critique of the benevolent approach of their colleagues, warning that our understanding and judgment could be blurred by “conflation of observation with desired outcomes” and “inconsistent use of concepts” (Tregear, 2011).

Focusing on consumption rather than on production or distribution (or, as often, both), The notion of “Short Food Supply Chains” proposed in the introduction could therefore appear as one carrying less positive and negative a priori than the one of “local food”, allowing for a more detached analysis.

Noticeably, this could feed in not only reflections on local foods, but also on the wider movement of “localism”. A recent book edited by Madanipour & Davoudi (2015) precisely aim at triggering the debate by interrogating systematically the current trend for preferring smaller scale. In a chapter of that work, Cowell (2015) developed quite critical thoughts on the idea (for instance defended by Rees, 2015) that small scale necessarily equated increased environmental sustainability, concluding that “we need[ed] to be more modest and nuanced about the connections [between the two]” (232).

In that configuration, however, local continues to matter at least in two dimensions. The first one being the cultural aspect, for it carries an emotional load that is likely to influence the behavior of consumers. Mount (2012) for instance underlined the importance of “reconnecting consumer and place” in SFSCs. The second one probably is the spatial side, since, were such changes to happen

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beyond the marginal scale, they would have important spatial consequences (Edward‐Jones et al., 2008, p.272). If not only local, that impact would nevertheless be localized and should be taken into account (and even forecasted), as much as it is possible.

4.2

Citizens and consumers

Another potential implication of shifting the focus towards consumption lies in the change of perception of who might be the primary interlocutor of sustainability policies.

Traditional communication – persuasion – campaigns based on information, encouragement of positive behaviors and stigmatization of undesirable ones only have effects on a very limited audience and that are hard to maintain overtime (Hormes et al., 2013). One of the explanations of such a limited impact could stem from the fact that such awareness raising campaigns are primarily addressed to citizens, not consumers. De Bakker & Dagevos (2012) emphasized that if any meaningful –beyond niche evolution ‐ shift towards green eating behaviors were to be achieved, it would imply “a broad view on alliances with consumers that surely must not be restricted to consumers as responsible and engaged ‘‘food citizens’’ (882). They went on by suggesting a typology of consumers and potential strategies for “protein transition” (replacement of meat by other protein sources) summed up in the table below:

Figure 2. Consumer typology for protein transition, from De Bakker & Dagevos (2012:886)

Fig. 2 allows us to understand the practical implications such a focus change could have on the elaboration on sustainability policies tackling food. It could be matched with the list of sustainable eating behaviors presented in Fig. 1 in order to get a more precise understanding of what kind of behaviors could be promoted to the different audiences targeted.

5.

Conclusions

The literature reviewed in the present paper seems to indicate that consumption shifts are a very promising field as far as foodprint reduction is concerned, that has not yet been fully explored. This is particularly valid in the case of SFSCs, where distribution (especially through food miles reduction) and production have received much more attention than consumption. That fact of the matter is hardly surprising, if we are to take into account two essential elements: 1) That the planning literature on SFSCs has been widely focusing on physical proximity (sometimes excessively, as Born & Purcell already pointed out in 2006) and on alternative production; 2) That relationships between SFSCs and consumption does not appear straightforward at first sight, and that causality is

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sometimes hard to determine. That field therefore appears to be to some extent under‐researched, especially given its demonstrated high potential for environmental footprint reduction (see section 2.3 above).

Yet, there are convincing clues of that participation in SFSCs positively influences green eating behaviors. Beyond the recognized correlation between the two, some studies single out potential causality mechanisms. The first one would be the traditional “awareness raising” function that is not to be either over or under‐estimated. In addition to this, SFSCs seem to enable a significant part of their participants to turn pre‐existing attitudes into actual behaviors; that they could or would not have previously adopted. By offering concrete solutions (availability of the product, information on recipes/diets, etc.), such schemes seem to unlock sustainable behaviors; Participation in SFSCs could also be a way to maintain these behaviors, that often are quite volatile and following trends (see Hormes et al., 2013).

Potential implications for planning and local sustainability policies are still unclear at this point of the exploration of the topic. On the one hand, shifting the focus on the consumer could lead us to pay less attention to questions of scale, to put more emphasis on debates such as the “citizen – consumer” dichotomy . However, were such consumption shifts to happen beyond a marginal scale, they would have important impacts on the production and distribution systems, carrying a bundle of spatial consequences that are not to be neglected. Scholars should therefore beware, as much as the “local trap”, the “disconnection trap”, which would lead them to consider only the consumer, without paying attention to consequences on distribution, production and their spatial implications.

Further research therefore appears as particularly needed in the following fields:

1. Evaluate more precisely the relationship between SFSCs and consumption shifts, paying careful attention to what elements of SFSCs positively influence the adoption or maintenance over time of green eating behaviors.

2. Try and quantify this relationship, to have a more precise understanding of the potential impact of such evolutions.

3. Investigate, on the basis of these results, what could be potential policy implications for SFSCs support, if these policies were to aim at maximizing environmental footprint reduction.

4. Exploring case studies try and anticipate the potential structural (including spatial) consequences of significant consumption shifts towards green eating behaviors.

6.

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Rosanne Wielemaker, Ingo Leusbrock, Jan Weijma and Grietje Zeeman, “Harvest to harvest: recovering nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter via new sanitation systems for reuse in urban agriculture”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing th rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 501‐516. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

HARVEST TO HARVEST: RECOVERING NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND ORGANIC MATTER VIA NEW SANITATION SYSTEMS FOR REUSE IN URBAN AGRICULTURE Rosanne Wielemaker*1, Ingo Leusbrock1, Jan Weijma1,2, Grietje Zeeman1,2

Keywords: Urban Agriculture, New Sanitation, Urban metabolism, Urban Harvest Approach, Nutrients Abstract: To maintain the city as a viable concept for human dwelling on the long term, a circular metabolism needs to be adopted which relies on recovering, reusing and recycling resources, in which output (‘waste’) from one metabolic urban conversions equals input for another. Urban Agriculture (UA) and source‐separation‐based New Sanitation (NS) are gaining momentum as measures for urban resource management. UA aims to localize food provisioning while NS aims to reorganize wastewater and organic waste management to recover valuable and crucial resources. The objective of this research is to assess the match between the supply by NS systems and the demand from UA for nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter, in terms of quantity and quality, to foster a circular metabolism. The research is contextualized in the city of Rotterdam. The methodology used is based on the Urban Harvest Approach (UHA), developed previously for the urban water cycle. Novel to this research is adapting the UHA to nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter loads for two practiced UA typologies (ground‐based and rooftop) and four NS concepts for the treatment of domestic urine, feces and kitchen waste. Results show that demand for nutrients and organic matter from UA can be minimized by 65‐85% and a self‐sufficiency of 100% for phosphorus can be achieved, while partial self‐sufficiency for nitrogen and organic matter. This research reveals that integration of NS and UA maximizes urban self‐sufficiency.

1.

Introduction

Cities depend on regional and global hinterlands for the supply of water, energy, nutrients and materials and for the disposal of wastes (Brunner, 2007, Kennedy et al., 2007, Agudelo‐Vera, 2012, Hodson et al., 2012), deeming cities hotspots for resource conversion. This conversion follows a linear chain of high quality resource inputs and low quality waste outputs (Figure 1a.). Few resources are currently recovered for reuse. This linear chain leads to two major challenges: first, cities’ high rate of consumption puts stress on resource availability (e.g. phosphorus, fossil fuels), and second, the disposal of vast amounts of waste causes pollution (e.g. water and resource contamination, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and pollution in air, water and land). For example, cities currently import large quantities of food not only from their hinterlands, but also from locations across the globe. At the same time, they produce low or even negative value waste loads containing disposed and excreted nutrients. These are often mixed and collected via large‐scale engineered infrastructures that endorse this linear tendency and make it difficult to effectively recover resources (Balkema et al., 2002, Hodson et al., 2012). With more than half of the world’s population currently residing in cities, this linear tendency is further intensified (United Nations, 2014).

*

Corresponding author, rosanne.wielemaker@wur.nl

Sub‐department of Environmental Technology (Wageningen UR), rosanne.wielemaker@wur.nl, ingo.leusbrock@wur.nl 2 LeAF, an independent research and consultancy organization focused on the development and implementation of knowledge, expertise and technologies in treatment and valorization of organic residues. grietje.zeeman@wur.nl, jan.weijma@wur.nl 1

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Rosanne Wielemaker, Ingo Leusbrock, Jan Weijma and Grietje Zeeman, “Harvest to harvest: recovering nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter via new sanitation systems for reuse in urban agriculture”

As hot‐spots of resource conversion, however, cities also present an excellent opportunity to adopt a circular metabolism for these resources, in which output (‘waste’) from one process equals input for another. As opposed to the current linear urban metabolism, a circular urban metabolism aims to recover and reuse (recycle) resources within or between urban functions to reduce the external input of virgin resources and the output of waste (Agudelo‐Vera et al., 2012) (Figure 1b). To move towards a circular urban metabolism, resource input‐output flows of urban functions need to be identified, described and matched in terms of quantity and quality. New Sanitation and Urban Agriculture are currently gaining global interest individually as measures to improve urban resource management (Mougeot, 2006, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2014). Two urban functions that could be matched for mutual benefit. a) INPUTS

organic resources

b)

CITY

OUTPUTS

INPUTS

CITY

OUTPUTS inorganic resources

Figure 1. a) A linear metabolism of inputs and outputs. b) A circular metabolism reuses, recycles and recovers resources from urban waste streams, reducing resource inputs and outputs.

Urban agriculture (UA) is the local production of food within (peri‐)urban areas, which in addition fosters education, employment, place‐making, community building and/or closing organic resource cycles (Mougeot, 2000, Smit et al., 2001). UA assimilates a wide variety of activities, locations, scales, purposes and engagement (e.g. community gardens, roof‐top farming, commercial farming and animal husbandry). UA involves intensive cultivation/breeding methods that yield a diverse selection of flora and fauna, and integrates it with the local urban economic, social and ecological systems.

New sanitation (NS) systems manage the collection, transport, treatment, and recovery of solid waste and wastewater streams (e.g. urine deviated vacuum toilets, anaerobic digesters, struvite precipitation) with the aim to recover resources at local scales (i.e. water, nutrients, organic matter, energy), increasing efficiency, reducing energy costs, and/or offering local solutions to waste management (Lens et al., 2001, Kujawa‐Roeleveld and Zeeman, 2006, Zeeman, 2012). NS systems often include source separation of waste and wastewater streams (e.g. black water (urine and feces) and grey water (shower, sink, laundry)).

Re‐establishing a partnership between agriculture and sanitation is not a new phenomenon. Various studies have looked at the possible connection between sanitation and crop production including: wastewater reuse/irrigation for crop production (Smit and Nasr, 1992, Strauss, 2001, Beuchler et al., 2006), treatment, recovery and reuse of fertilizers from wastewater (Lens et al., 2001, Jenkins, 2005, Mihelcic et al., 2011, Tervahauta et al., 2013), reuse of urine (Maurer et al., 2003, Maurer et al., 2006), bioavailability of recovered products to crops (Jönsson et al., 2004, Oenema et al., 2012), guidelines on urine and feces reuse in agriculture to ensure safe handling (Jönsson et al., 2004, Heinonen‐Tanski and van Wijk‐Sijbesma, 2005), risks of micro‐pollutants, pathogens and heavy metals (Heinonen‐Tanski and van Wijk‐Sijbesma, 2005, Winker et al., 2009, Tervahauta, 2014), and the link between urban agriculture and sanitation systems as an economic and food security measure in developing countries (Streiffeler, 2001, Kone, 2010, Cofie et al., 2013).

However, the feasibility to match input and output flows between UA and NS systems should not be overlooked. To start, data on the quantity and quality of the input demands from UA systems is lacking, as UA is for the most part unregulated. Second, data on the quantity and quality of the products produced by NS systems has, and continues to be, researched (Lens et al., 2001, Zeeman th

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and Kujawa‐Roeleveld, 2011, Tervahauta et al., 2013). However, the extent of their reuse in UA is uncertain (e.g. fertilizer quantity in terms of slow release vs quick release, or contaminants). To match resource flows and fine‐tune both UA and NS systems, these values need to be uncovered.

1.1

Scope of Research and Research Objectives

The scope of this research focuses on the recovery of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and organic matter (OM) from domestic wastewater and kitchen waste to determine the extent to which these resources can cover the demand from UA, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The reason for this focus is three‐fold. First, the global concern regarding resource depletion and environmental pollution due to current consumption and disposal of nutrients, N and P, and OM. Second is the increased regional interest in the Netherlands for the professionalization of UA and the recovery of resources from waste streams. Third is Rotterdam’s interest in improving local resource management and implementing UA. The overall goal of this paper is to model combined UA and NS systems to evaluate the degree to which N, P and OM input‐output flows can be matched and quantify the degree of self‐sufficiency.

This will be done in three steps: a) select and characterize relevant UA typologies and quantify the demand of nutrients and organic matter for each selected typology, b) select the NS technologies (proven at lab and pilot scale) most appropriate for the recovery nutrients from residual waste streams and quantify the harvested nutrients and organic matter, c) quantify the extent to which the demand for nutrients from UA can be met by recovered nutrients from the selected NS systems.

1.2

Methodological Framework: Urban Harvest Approach

The methodology used in this research is an adaptation of the Urban Harvest Approach (UHA) developed at the Sub‐department of Environmental Technology (ETE) at Wageningen UR. It has been most extensively applied to the urban water cycle to improve urban resource management towards self‐sufficiency by applying three management strategies: demand minimization, output minimization (by resource cascading, recycling and recovery), and multi‐sourcing (Agudelo‐Vera et al., 2012, Agudelo‐Vera, 2012). In this research, these strategies are shown in Figure 2 and are defined as follows: − Step 0: Baseline Assessment: This describes the existing situation, including demand inventory and current technologies. Here the baseline identifies the quantity and type of nutrient input demand for each UA typology, and the output of nutrient flows from domestic sanitation waste flows. − Step 1: Demand minimization: This strategy reduces the demand for nutrients via the implementation of new technologies or via changes in human behavior. Here the demand for N, P and OM fertilizer can be reduced by using different farming technologies or by reducing fertilizer application or patterns. − Step 2: Output minimization: This strategy minimizes outputs via three strategies: cascading (direct use of outputs for a purpose with lower quality demand), recycling (the reuse of a resource flow after a quality upgrade, which generally costs energy) and/or recovery (the extraction of valuable resources from waste streams) from the outputs. Cascading will not be used because primary and/or secondary treatment of human excreta is needed to secure the removal of pathogens (Jönsson et al., 2004).

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−

Step 3: Multi‐sourcing: Satisfying the remaining demand by harvesting local, renewable resources. Multi‐sourcing will not be included in this research as there are few renewable sources of N, P and OM.

Figure 2. Schematic of the UHA adapted to flows between urban agriculture and new sanitation. Ei= External input, Wo= Waste agriculture exported, Le= Losses environment, Cf= Consumed food, We=Waste exported via sanitation, t/b= technology and behavioural changes, CRR= Cascading, recycling and recovery (harvesting strategies), M= Multi‐sourcing

This research uses the UHA to match N, P and OM flows between selected UA typologies and NS concepts for the treatment of domestic urine, feces and kitchen waste (described later). The designed systems are evaluated using the indices developed by Agudelo‐Vera et al. (2012), including: Demand Minimization Index (DMI and Self‐Sufficiency Index (SSI).

Demand Minimization Index (DMI): The DMI describes the change in demand in reference to the baseline demand. Baseline demand (Do) reflects the current resource demand (status quo) from UA and the minimized demand (D) describes the demand adjusted to reflect equilibrium fertilization values. A DMI of 0 indicates that no demand minimization has taken place. The DMI is calculated using Equation 1.

Self‐Sufficiency Index (SSI): The SSI is a measure of the self‐sufficiency of a system: in this case, to what extent can nutrients from NS systems provide sufficient nutrients to fulfill the demand from UA. The SSI is measured by the resources harvested and reused (Rr) against the minimized demand (D). The SSI is calculated using Equation 2.

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2.

Urban Agriculture Typologies and New Sanitation Concepts

2.1

Urban Agriculture and the Selected Typologies

UA is diverse in form and purpose, which for this study requires that UA typologies be clearly defined to identify respective input and output flows. The nutrient demand for each typology is dependent on various factors including nutrient retention, nutrient extraction, precipitation, individual plant demand, and soil type. In addition, different plants have varying demands. For example, lettuce may require 165‐180kg/ha of nitrogen, while chicory may only need 100kgN/ha, and cauliflower up to 210‐230kgN/ha (Rijksoverheid, 2014a). The soil pH also influences the availability of nutrients to plants, for example, the maximum availability of phosphorus occurs in the 6.0‐7.0 pH range (College of Agricultural Sciences, 2014).

Two UA typologies were selected and defined, namely, ground‐based urban agriculture (ground‐ based UA) and rooftop urban agriculture (rooftop UA). These were selected because both ground‐ based and rooftop UA initiatives can be found in Rotterdam, which could serve as reference case‐ studies for this research. Ground‐based UA grows edible plants at ground level in soil (e.g. Small Plot Intensive (SPIN) farming, community gardens/farms, permaculture farms and forest gardening) Rooftop UA involves cultivating crops on the rooftops of urban buildings, usually flat roofs that are most suited to carry additional weight. This typology can cultivate plants in soil or in a soil‐like substrate. The benefit of this typology is similar to that of green roofs: building insulation, urban cooling effect, water retention, etc. A rooftop’s appropriateness for urban farming depends on the height and capacity to sustain weight. High rooftops are exposed to strong winds and may be limited in the kinds of crop varieties, while the building needs to be strong and be able to hold between 60‐ 150kg/m2 of additional weight. (Dumitrescu, 2013).

2.2

New Sanitation and the Selected Concepts

Sanitation is the promotion of hygiene via the management and treatment of wastes, including the physical and organizational structure (Brikké and Bredero, 2003, Mihelcic et al., 2011). Sanitation systems in developed countries are mostly centralized: extensive networks for the collection and transport of mixed and diluted waste streams, treated at one central point, with little intention to recover valuable resources (Wilderer and Schreff, 2000). These are contrasted with decentralized systems: stand‐alone systems used for treating more concentrated waste streams sourced from smaller areas either on‐site or close to the point of generation (Wilderer and Schreff, 2000, Tchobanoglous and Leverenz, 2013).

NS is a new paradigm for the collection, transport, treatment, and recovery of solid waste and wastewater that aims to reconfigure waste management at local scales: recovering resources, increasing efficiency, reducing energy consumption and improving health and environmental protection (Lens et al., 2001, Kujawa‐Roeleveld and Zeeman, 2006, Zeeman, 2012, Tervahauta et al., 2013). NS systems are local systems (source, recovery and reuse are in close proximity) and the technical design completely serves the above aim. The design often includes source separation of waste and wastewater streams, collecting black water (urine and feces), grey water (shower/bath, sink, laundry, dish washer) and/or urine separately. The different types of streams are outlined in Table 1. Depending on the types of streams separated and the local context, NS concepts can be configured for treatment and recovery to achieve reuse or discharge parameters.

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Table 1. Wastewater sub‐streams and their sources Stream

Sub‐stream

Source

Black water

Yellow water

Urine, with or without water

Brown water

Feces and toilet paper, with or without water

Light grey water

Shower, bathtub, bathroom basin

Dark grey water

Kitchen sink, dishwasher, washing machine

Greywater

For the recovery of nutrients, urine, feces and kitchen waste are the most promising streams for this research since they have the highest load of N, P, and OM (measured as COD), as shown in Figure 3.

It is noted that urine contains most N and P, followed by feces. Feces and kitchen waste contain most organic matter, suitable for making compost and soil conditioners. Therefore, urine, feces, black water (BW) and kitchen waste (KW) were used in this research, while greywater (GW) was not considered.

Figure 3. Distribution of nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter (COD) across domestic waste and wastewater streams (Refer to Table 4 for numbered values)

New Sanitation systems can be divided into subsequent sub‐systems, from collection to reuse/disposal/discharge. These sub‐systems are described below, specifically with reference to NS (Maurer et al., 2012): User interface/collection: the user access to the sanitation system, usually via the toilet. For example, low flush and vacuum toilets, urine‐diverting toilet and composting toilets.

Conveyance and transportation: the transport of the waste streams from one sub‐system to the other, for example via human powered or motorized pathways.

Storage and treatment: the collected waste streams are stored and/or treated, requiring appropriate technologies and facilities. For example, urine storage, composting kitchen waste, anaerobic treatment (ie. up‐flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor), nitrification and denitrification (ie. oxygen limited anaerobic nitrification denitrification (OLAND) and disinfection.

Recovery: the harvesting of resources from waste streams such as water, metals or nutrients.

Struvite recovery, using a struvite precipitation reactor, from urine and black water is used for the recovery of P and N. Reuse/disposal: the use of recovered and treated products from prior sub‐processes in which resources are returned to the ecological or anthropogenic environment.

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The configuration of technologies across the sub‐processes determines the extent to which resources can be recovered, in terms of quantity and quality. For example, removal efficiencies, methanization levels, and precipitation efficiencies influence the amount of nutrients that can be harvested and the quality of the product for human and environmental hygiene.

3.

Results

3.1

Baseline Nutrient and Organic Matter Demand, and Demand Minimization

The nutrient demand was calculated for each typology (kg/ha) by comparing data from primary and secondary sources, including interviews with present urban farmers in Rotterdam, ‐ the actual amount of fertilizer applied‐ as well as fertilizer regulations for conventional agriculture in the Netherlands, and values for equilibrium fertilization – the advised amount of fertilizers ‐, as further described in the following sections.

3.1.1 Ground‐based Urban Agriculture The baseline demand for ground‐based UA was gathered from interviews with an UA farm in Rotterdam and the fertilization regime they follow. This fertilization regime included the use of both slow release and quick release fertilizers distributed in a compost mixture, chicken manure, and a liquid fertilizer. Table 2 compares the baseline demand with conventional norms and regulations for N and P use in the Netherlands and with equilibrium fertilization values. The conventional norms and the equilibrium fertilization values were averaged from 22 different types of horticultural crops (Fink et al., 1999, Rijksoverheid, 2014b, Rijksoverheid, 2014a). Equilibrium fertilization reflects the nutrients contained in the total harvested fresh matter (harvest residues and marketable yield) assuming an optimal yield per hectare (Fink et al., 1999). These values were used because it reflects what a plant actually takes up, as opposed to the conventional regulations for fertilization in the Netherlands.

Table 2. Annual Nutrient Demand Ground‐Based Urban Agriculture Source

N available* (kg/ha)

P2O5 available* (kg/ha)

Organic matter4 (kg/ha)

Baseline Demand1 (Do)

109.3

217.3

7861

Conventional norms2

178.3

65

‐

Equilibrium fertilization3

202.7

32.2

‐

Minimized Demand (D)

109

32.2

2685

1

Table on fertilizer advice (Van Ierssel, 2013) Averages calculated from nitrogen and phosphorus use norms and regulations (Rijksoverheid, 2014a, Rijksoverheid, 2014b).

3 Averages calculated from data on fertilizer recommendations and nutrient balances (Fink et al., 1999) 4 OM=32% of dry matter. From: Samenstelling en werking van organische meststoffen (de Haan and van Geel, 2013). * Nutrient values for nitrogen and phosphorus are usually expressed by weight of N and P2O5. The actual phosphorus content, however, is then 44% of the P2O5 value. Nitrogen is simply expressed as elemental N or mineral nitrogen, Nmin. Both N and P2O5 are calculated using the “werkings coefficient” for compost and animal manure. N available is 10% in compost and 55% from chicken manure. P available is 50% in compost with a maximum of 3.5g P2O5/kg dry matter of compost 2

Noticeable from Table 2 is that for P the baseline demand exceeds the conventional norms by a factor 3 and the equilibrium fertilization values by even a factor 7, meaning strong over fertilization is taking place. The equilibrium values were used as the minimized demand assuming an ideal scenario

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in which the fertilization regime could reflect the amount of nutrients that crops take up, and not more. Over fertilizing results in either increased nutrients in the soil or their release to the environment. The baseline demand was used when it was below the equilibrium fertilization value, as is the case with N for ground‐based UA. OM was minimized to reflect that contained in 15,000 kg of compost as suggested in literature (Goed boeren in kleinschalig landschap, 2011).

The DMI is then calculated using Equation 1. For ground‐based UA the DMI for N is 0, for P is 85% and for OM is 66%. The N demand does not need to be minimized because it lies well below the equilibrium fertilization value. The amount of P and OM minimized for this typology is significant and highlights the degree of over‐fertilization, especially of P, a finite resource (Cordell et al., 2009).

3.1.2 Rooftop Urban Agriculture The baseline demand for rooftop UA was gathered from a rooftop UA farm in Rotterdam that used a growing substrate and drainage system that is light in weight to adhere to the 180kg/m2 capacity of the roof. The substrate is low in organic matter to make it as light as possible, and therefore no compost is added in their fertilization regime, but rather slow release granulates. No quick release fertilizers are used. The N, P and OM values for the baseline demand are shown in Table 3, in comparison to the conventional norms and the equilibrium fertilization values. Again, the equilibrium fertilization values were assumed for the minimized demand, except in the instances that the baseline demand was below these values.

For rooftop UA the N demand is below the equilibrium fertilization value, meaning that minimization is not needed. OM is kept as the baseline demand. For P, however, the DMI (Equation 1) is 65%, meaning that the demand is minimized significantly.

Table 3. Nutrient Demand rooftop Urban Agriculture Source

N available* (kg/ha)

P2O5 available* (kg/ha)

Organic matter (kg/ha)

Baseline Demand1 (Do)

112.5

92.3

1742.5

178.3

65

‐

Equilibrium fertilization

202.7

32.2

‐

Minimized Demand (D)

112

32.2

1742.5

Conventional norms2 3

1

Calculated from: Technische Fiche ECO‐MIX 1 (DCM Nederland BV, 2014) and Organische Gedroogde Koemest (Humuforte, 2014)

Same as in Table 2 * calculated using the “werkingscoefficient” for compost and animal manure. N available is 40% in purchased grass‐fed animal‐derived fertilizers 2, 3, 4

3.2

Baseline Nutrient and Organic Matter Supply from Waste and Wastewater

Rotterdam, with an area of 319.35 km2, has a population of approximately 620,000 people (Gemeente Rotterdam, 2013). There are a total of 317,549 households in the city housing approximately 1.94 individuals per household (Gemeente Rotterdam, 2013). The city produces a total of 76,000 tons of household organic solid waste. However, most of this organic solid waste is collected together with municipal solid waste and incinerated for the generation of energy. A smaller fraction, 1% of household organic solid waste, called “groente, fruit en tuin (GFT) afval” is collected separately at source, composted and sold via a third party to the agricultural sector.

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The city’s wastewater is managed and treated by the Waterschap Hollandse Delta and Hoogheemraadschap Schielanden en Krimpenerwaard. Using Table 4, the loads of the nutrients can be calculated for the whole population of Rotterdam. Household black water and kitchen waste generated daily represent a load of 1,356 kg of P and 316,850 kg of N. OM is 32% of the total dry matter, which is 88,764 kg per day. Using NS systems, these nutrients and OM are recovered with a respective efficiencies.

Table 4. Mean compositions of urine, feces, black water and kitchen waste calculated based on European data as reported in literature, including respective standard deviations (Kujawa‐Roeleveld and Zeeman, 2006, Magid et al., 2006, Daigger, 2009, Friedler et al., 2013, Tervahauta et al., 2013) Parameter

unit

Urine

s.d.

Feces

s.d.

Kitchen waste

s.d.

total

Volume

L/p/d

1.3

0.12

0.13

0.06

0.2

0.00

86.83

COD

g/p/d

12.5

1.91

47.9

12.23

59

0.00

171.10

Dry matter

g/p/d

46.5

16.26

35.5

7.78

75

211.80

TN

g/p/d

10.2

1.10

1.4

0.38

1.4

0.52

14.10

TP

g/p/d

1.1

0.34

0.5

0.05

0.2

0.06

2.20

K

g/p/d

2.6

0.15

1

0.09

0.3

0.12

4.50

3.3

Output Minimization

3.3.1 New Sanitation Concepts 1‐4 In Rotterdam the collection sub‐system widely used for urine and feces is still the standard flush toilet. The low flush, vacuum toilet and urine‐diverting toilet are currently the only proven technologies for the collection of concentrated black water. The collection system, or rather the composition(s) of the stream(s) collected, then influences the proceeding treatment steps possible.

The recovery/reuse sub‐systems need to provide at least similar comfort compared to current sanitation systems, produce little nuisance (odors), and have to be included into the current urban fabric taking up relatively little space. This study is concerned with the recovery of resources, and therefore, post‐recovery treatment steps are not further outlined or quantified. The source separated streams of interest include urine, feces, and kitchen waste, and the combination of these.

Four NS concepts (Figure 4) were selected based on systems demonstrated on lab and pilot scale, separating urine, feces, black water and/or kitchen waste with respective treatment systems.

Concept 1 includes source‐separation of black water combined with kitchen waste and is based on the system in place in Sneek, the Netherlands separating GW from BW and KW (grinded), (Waterschoon, 2011, Tervahauta et al., 2013). The BW and KW are treated anaerobically in an UASB reactor, followed by an OLAND reactor and struvite precipitation. Concept 2 includes the same treatment steps as Concept 1 with the exception of KW, which is collected separately for composting (Fricke and Vogtmann, 1994, Eklind and Kirchmann, 2000, Hargreaves et al., 2008, Dekker et al., 2010). Concept 3 is similar to Concept 1 with the exception of urine, which is collected separately and stored (Jönsson et al., 1998, Jönsson et al., 2004, Maurer et al., 2006). Concept 4 separates KW for compost and urine for storage (a) or struvite precipitation (b). Feces join the GW.

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Concept 1 DISCHARGE

TREATMENT

UASB

OLAND

SLUDGE

STRUVITE

DISINFECTION

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

GREY WATER BLACK WATER+ KITCHEN WASTE

Concept 2 DISCHARGE

TREATMENT

COMPOST

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

UASB

OLAND

SLUDGE

STRUVITE

DISINFECTION

GREY WATER

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

KITCHEN + GARDEN BLACK WATER

Concept 3

DISCHARGE

TREATMENT

UASB

OLAND

SLUDGE

STORAGE

STRUVITE

DISINFECTION

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

QUICK RELEASE FERTILIZER

GREY WATER FECES+KITCHEN WASTE

URINE

Concept 4 DISCHARGE

TREATMENT

COMPOST

a GREY WATER + FECES

b

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

STORAGE

QUICK RELEASE FERTILIZER

STRUVITE

SLOW RELEASE FERTILIZER

KITCHEN + GARDEN

URINE

Figure 4. New Sanitation concepts, including sub‐streams and recovery technologies

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In Concepts 3 and 4, urine is separated at source via a urine‐diverting toilet using 0.2L of water per flush. This concentrated stream is stored in Concept 3 and 4a and undergoes struvite precipitation in Concept 4b. The separated urine in Concept 3 does not undergo struvite precipitation because the treatment of the feces and KW stream already includes a struvite precipitation step.

3.3.2 Combined Urban Agriculture and New Sanitation The demand for N, P and OM from each UA typology was compared with the supply generated by each NS concept. In total eight combinations were evaluated for the degree of self‐sufficiency.

However, for the evaluation of possible UA and NS combinations, both self‐sufficiency (SSI) and the number of persons needed to provide that SSI is relevant. While a high SSI is preferable for the sourcing of local resources, the efficiency of the NS concept also reflects the potential to implement the NS concepts requiring the least amount of individuals. Figure 5 show the SSI for each combination.

The scenarios coupling ground‐based UA with NS concept 3 and 4a provide 100% self‐sufficiency of P. System 4a, however requires 10 times as many persons/ha, meaning that to fertilize the available 2363 ha almost the entire city of Rotterdam (94%) would need to be connected to NS systems.

Moreover, due to the topography of the city (high rises), the collection of GFT from 94% of the city’s inhabitants is not realistic. The other scenarios fail to supply the quick release demand for P and N. Therefore, ground‐based UA and concept 3 provides the best combination.

Figure 5. Self‐Sufficiency in N, P and OM for Ground‐based UA and NS concepts

Rooftop UA, as identified in section 3.1.2 Noticeable from Table 2 is that for P the baseline demand exceeds the conventional norms by a factor 3 and the equilibrium fertilization values by even a factor 7, meaning strong over fertilization is taking place. The equilibrium values were used as the minimized demand assuming an ideal scenario in which the fertilization regime could reflect the amount of nutrients that crops take up, and not more. Over fertilizing results in either increased nutrients in the soil or their release to the environment. The baseline demand was used when it was below the equilibrium fertilization value,

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as is the case with N for ground‐based UA. OM was minimized to reflect that contained in 15,000 kg of compost as suggested in literature (Goed boeren in kleinschalig landschap, 2011).

The DMI is then calculated using Equation 1. For ground‐based UA the DMI for N is 0, for P is 85% and for OM is 66%. The N demand does not need to be minimized because it lies well below the equilibrium fertilization value. The amount of P and OM minimized for this typology is significant and highlights the degree of over‐fertilization, especially of P, a finite resource (Cordell et al., 2009).

Rooftop Urban Agriculture, does not have a demand for quick release fertilizer. Therefore the SSI for both quick release N and P is not applicable, even though Concepts 3 and 4a produce quick release N and P from urine. The SSI for scenarios coupling rooftop UA with the NS concepts are low for slow release N and OM. The scenario combining rooftop UA with Concept 4b is the most self‐sufficient for N and P, although Concept 4a is most self‐sufficient for OM, compared to the other combinations.

To produce enough compost for the 906ha of rooftop area appropriate for UA, household organic solid waste needs to be collected from 40,500 inhabitants, a mere 6.5% of the population of Rotterdam. This is realistic considering that Rotterdam is striving to collect 6% by 2018 anyway.

Following Concept 4b, Concept 2 would best be combined with rooftop UA of slightly lower SSI but requiring only 26.8 p/ha (less intervention than Concept 4a).

Figure 6. Self‐Sufficiency in N, P and OM for Rooftop UA and NS concepts

4.

Discussion and Conclusion

The UHA offers a step‐by‐step methodology to gain insight into the opportunities that lie in integrating urban agriculture and new sanitation. However, its application to N, P and OM input‐ output flows presented challenges at each step of the methodology.

4.1

Baseline Demand

The baseline N, P and OM demand from urban agriculture was based on two existing urban agriculture initiatives in Rotterdam. While their demand was actual, they are not telling for fertilizer regimes of all UA initiatives within those typologies. Different reference studies would

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have provided different data on baseline demand, in terms of quantity but also fertilizer type (ie. slow release vs quick release).

In this research, both fertilization regimes showed over‐fertilization of P. Considering that conventional agriculture in the Netherlands is heavily regulated in their N and P use to reduce pollution of water resources, and that P is a finite resource of increasing scarcity, urban agriculture fertilization regimes should also take measures to prevent over‐fertilization and the mismanagement of N, P and OM. For instance, regulations could be formulated for UA, although the range of UA typologies requires a more context specific tool to help initiatives make substance flow analyses. In addition, UA also changes the nutrient loads discharged to the urban water cycle, such as the increase of nutrient loads to the sewer system via rooftop UA. Therefore, expanding urban agriculture across cities has various implications for urban resource cycles.

4.2

Demand Minimization

Minimizing the demand for N, P and OM from urban agriculture is achieved by behavioral changes, simply by administering less of these resources to equilibrium fertilization values. While this is a novel point of departure for the application of nutrients, further research is needed to identify the optimal fertilization regime for each UA typology, considering that nutrients mineralize in the soil and runoff may occur. Here UA pilot studies should be open to monitoring, collecting and sharing data. In addition, technological options for the administration of fertilizers that minimize the demand (ie. injection fertilization at the plant base as opposed to sprinkler systems) were not considered in this research. These technological changes could administer fertilizers where and when the plant needs it, and thereby minimize the demand.

4.3

Output Minimization

The harvested N, P and OM from the new sanitation concepts were found in stored urine, GFT compost, struvite and disinfected sludge. The selection of the concepts was based on lab and pilot scale technologies and data. For ground‐based UA, Concept 3 and 4a provided a SSI for P of 100% with both slow and quick release fertilizers. For rooftop UA, most concepts could provide a SSI for P of 100% because the typology only had a demand for slow release fertilizer. Again, this reflected the reference case study selected and not a definitive fertilization regime for these UA typologies.

Moreover, the ratios of N:P:OM in the demand did not match the ratios in the harvested products from NS systems. The matching of these ratios is another topic for future research.

This research concludes that combining UA and NS offers the possibility to increase urban self‐ sufficiency, and that the city of Rotterdam can fertilize the number of ha of available arable land (2363 ha) and rooftop area (906 ha) with the current population in terms of P and partly in terms of N and OM. However, many uncertainties still remain when determining the extent to which UA and NS can be integrated, including risk analysis for pathogens and micro‐pollutants, spatial requirements, effectiveness of recovered fertilizer products in agriculture, and social acceptance.

5.

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ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

SYSTEMIC DESIGN GOES BETWEEN DISCIPLINES FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY IN FOOD PROCESSES AND CULTURES Silvia Barbero1, Paolo Tamborrini2

Keywords: Systemic Design, sustainability, food processes Abstract: An healthy and safe feeding is the key element to ensure a sustainable development for the entire planet. The theme of food is one of the major challenges for the near future, indeed it involves every aspect of our lives. The paper investigates how the Systemic Design approach applied to the food sectors can contribute to decent life and, better, well‐being for all, maintaining the planets ecological capacity for future generations.

This research shows the social, economical and environmental benefits generated to real cases that apply the Systemic Design methodology in different food sectors and in different local context. One case is “EN.FA.SI.”, in which the value chain related to one PGI bean endorses the entire area involving the small family producers and the local SMEs. The other one is “Fondo Noir”, in which the spent coffee ground from the coffee bars in the metropolitan city centre are collected in order to generate many new businesses.

The purpose is to give empirical and theoretical contributions, arising how the complexity of food systems impacts the simplicity of the everyday life solutions. The complexity involved in that kind of design processes interested a wide range of players and it aims to contribute the scientific debate on the role of design as mediator and facilitator among different specific disciplines. The polytechnic culture, at the base of design disciplines, guarantees a model for the eco‐innovation also in food sector, with strong and solid approach.

1.

Introduction

An healthy and safe feeding is the key element to ensure a sustainable development for the entire planet. The theme of food is one of the major challenges for the near future, indeed it involves every aspect of our lives: a correct behaviour in relation with the territory means respect for ourselves and our health.

The environmental sustainability related to the complex system of food involves the entire food’s life cycle and every stakeholders who takes part in it. That includes food’s production, transformation, conservation, transport, direct sell to the final consumer, consumption habits and disposal (Figure 1).

In food production phase, the hegemony of intensive farming and livestock have caused huge social, ethic and environmental debates (Shiva, 1993), like the consideration for animals and ecosystem exploitation, workers’ rights defence and care of consumers health. These needs of huge amount of food force some risky adulteration in production, like the massive use of chemical pesticides or the use of organisms genetically modified, with the consequences related to the food security.

The market request for ready‐to‐eat, long‐lasting meals has determined the actual food processing system. Frozen, long‐lasting and freeze‐dried meals are worldwide sold in supermarkets, one of the social consequences is the lost of cultural and geographic peculiarities. The transformation fakes and flattens out the appearance of the food that everybody eats. Food’s flaws disappear and it’s not that rare to get to the phenomena of sophistication and food fraud. Other aspects to be considered in the

1 2

Department of Architecture and Design (Politecnico di Torino), silvia.barbero@polito.it Department of Architecture and Design (Politecnico di Torino), paolo.tamborrini@polito.it

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transformation phase are the high level of industrialization in all the processes, with great attention in the sanitation of food (Collins, 2010), that is not bad from itself but should be managed in a sensitive way in case of high migration fluxes like nowadays.

Processed foods are moved among the five continents following fixed roads defined by a highly vertical distribution system. In order to assure to the food a fictitious freshness and a good shape despite the long time and space transportation, sophisticated systems are required. In that situation, the large‐scale distribution has a big power.

For sure, the consumer has a crucial role because decides what to eat and consequently what the food system should produce. The main problems related to the consumption phase of food are the loss in the perception of food seasonality, and in the culinary traditions, furthermore people are asking more and more for low‐cost food. At global level the contradiction between obesity and malnutrition should be faced in a long term and serious programme for the health and wellbeing of local communities.

Last, but not least, is the disposal phase: every year one third of the food intended for human consumption is thrown away. The struggle against food waste and losses is one of the challenges of this century.

The change in human diet habits can have the power and the responsibility to modify the entire system. The increase of awareness in the personal food and nutritive choice will lead that change. A great possibility consists in the promotion of new behaviours and new model of consumption: re‐ discovery the culinary practices of waste reuse, well known to the previous generations, it becomes essential to create new ethical systems to share the nourishment in excess as well as to avoid upstream the food over‐production.

The paper investigates how the Systemic Design approach applied to the food sectors can contribute to decent life and, better, well‐being for all, maintaining the planets ecological capacity for future generations (L. Bistagnino, 2009).

Figure 1. The main problems related to the life cycle of food system.

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2.

Justification

The problems expressed in the introduction are interrelated each others in a complex network of relations and implications, hence, it is needed a new way facing the food productive processes in order to obtain multi‐benefits for the environment, the society and the economy.

The theories about complexity help the management of the entirely food systems and the design approaches help the planning of different divergent elements.

The complexity theories evolved on the basis that living systems continually draw upon external sources of energy and maintain a stable state of low entropy, as the physicist Erwin Schrödinger asserted after the WWII, on the basis of the General Systems Theory by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

Some of the next rationales applied those theories also on artificial systems: complexity models of living systems address also productive models with their organizations and management, where the relationships between parts are more important than the parts themselves. Treating productive organizations as complex adaptive systems allows a new management model to emerge in economical, social and environmental benefits (Pisek & Wilson, 2001). In that field, Cluster Theory (Porter, 1990) evolved in more environmental sensitive theories, like Industrial Ecology (Frosh & Gallopoulos, 1989) and Industrial Symbiosis (Chertow, 2000).

The design thinking, as Buchanan said in 1992, means the way to creatively and strategically reconfigure a design concept on a situation with systemic integration. This needs a strong inter‐ and trans‐disciplinarity during the design phase (Fuller, 1981), with the increasing involvement of different disciplines including urban planning, public policy, business management and environmental sciences (Chertow, Ashton, & Kuppali, 2004). However, the design thinking doesn’t explicitly include the social aspects, so new evolution in the discipline is needed: the Systemic Design (Jones, 2009). Food is an overarching social phenomenon that incorporates the very essence of the humanity (Maffei, 2015).

The Systemic Design is planning the flows of matter and energy that flow from a system to another one towards zero emissions, creating a new economic‐productive model, a community of strongly related people and a conscious connection with the territory. According to comprehensive approaches, as Systemic Design and Blue Economy (G. Pauli, 2010), they define many eco‐guidelines, based on different practices and systems of goods production, transformation and consumption. This would allow defining new food systems, promoting social and environmental development.

The purpose of this paper is to give empirical and theoretical contributions with developed, developing and transition perspectives. From two of the case studies, directly developed by the authors in the last five years, arise how the complexity of food systems impacts the simplicity of the everyday life solutions. Its role is crucial in the environmental context and in the development of the local territory.

3.

Methodology

Before dealing with the projects, it is necessary to clarify the applied methodology: Systemic Design.

The first step in planning with that methodology is the holistic survey of the current state of affairs: it clearly outlines all the steps and actions undertaken and/or undergone by the context in question. In order to do so, the description of what enters the system (input), its origins, what happens inside it and, finally, what comes out of it, its destination and its possible use (output) is done. The analysis of these inputs and outputs will have to be of two different kinds: quantitative, so as to know the quantities that are moved around; qualitative, to know exactly what can be fully used.

In addition, the identification the players involved in the system, their nature, their know‐how and their reciprocal relations is crucial. th

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These actions help to understand the relationship occurring between the parties and the context, as well as the communication they have, one with the others and with the production, transformation and marketing sites.

These steps enable to have a clear idea of: the needed resources, their features and origins; processing waste, their specific qualities and their final destination; what occurs throughout the processes, comparing the specific differences of inputs and outputs.

The result is a chart with the global vision of the process and of the overall relationships that characterize and make the system work. At this point one can notice how useless and contradictory it is to focus merely on the individual parts, ignoring the links with the elements existing inside, outside and all around the process. Moreover, an approach by single parts has proved to be in contrast with the dynamism of the whole and with the "traditional" efficiency of the natural systems.

At the state of affairs, one can ascertain that, within the current intensive productions, many choices are made uncritically, sometimes according to maintain a linear‐oriented tradition which has proved, at present, to be rather defective.

The safeguard of this global vision, beneficial to the sustainable transformation of the processes, can be attained by drawing a graphic chart, allowing us to retrace both with eyes and mind, the flows of matter and energy, their use, the knowledge capitals, the relationships between the actors, and the contextualization of the system in analysis. These graphic schemes allow simultaneous synoptic views of the values at stake, and for the overall number of criticalities to be faced and solved.

Particularly the latter are represented within a process and are to be taken into account in comparison with it. The causes of problems can be ascertained when they occur, or in the light of previous choices or phases, or because of their misinterpretation, or even within the value generated in the course of the following steps. Every problem is assessed according to different parameters, such as advantages and economic value, environmental sustainability, correlation with the territory and production flexibility. Each of these parameters is evaluated both from a quality and quantity point of view. In turn, the study of the quantity allows to outline an economic scheme of the whole, giving conclusive evidence of the fact that the entire process, besides being based only on the production focus, can only be improved by increasing the number of products considerably.

This peculiarity of the present economic/productive system, and the consequential on‐going increase in the quantity of waste, are real issues to be dealt with in the forthcoming future, if we wish to develop our society in a positive and satisfactory way (Campagnaro, 2011).

Identifying the problems and trying to understand them leads to a clearer perception of the phenomena they have arisen from. Physics, biology, chemistry, mathematical sciences, history and economy, are the indispensable tools for this analysis. A designer is asked to coordinate, enhance and harmonize their contributions and to change the faults in the dynamic flow of the production.

Nature is the system par excellence, following nature‘s footsteps the designer reorganize the starting point of the current situation, to identify less energy‐consuming processes and productions, and to emphasize the neglected qualities of the outputs as much as possible. By doing so, all kinds of matter may be turned into input for other productions or systems, via connections that may be entwined with the productive realities carried out on the territory.

A systemic project prevents focalisation only on one product and tends to privilege complexity, local dimension and flexibility. This enables to revitalize and resume the normal links between each firm and its own context, based on the outputs it has produced, and to prioritise the decrease in the number of items that have not been adequately enhanced (waste).

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Thinking by connections is the only applicable solution when attempting to solve the problem of the environmental impact, a burden placed on the territory, on account of intensive productions. In conformity with the consistency between outputs available and required inputs, a designer may conceive useful connections and interactions, and think of more innovative ways to employ matter.

This will enable one to arrive at new productions and forms of energy generation, and will commit the many players of a territory to modern, flexible and multipolar economic models.

The heart of the project is set on very specific assumptions. The presence of pollution and disposable waste, implies that human and material resources are being misused. A more adequate employ of the same may result in new production processes, new opportunities to make profits and new forms of coexistence between production and reproduction activities, in compliance with the new parameters for a modern and sustainable balance within the ecosystem.

A new graphic table can be done with the systemic view, so it shows a remarkable increase both in the flows of the energy production and metabolized materials.

This designing methodology has different types of positive outcomes: a decrease in the number of individual products, focussing on building a balanced relationship with the resources of the territory; an exponential growth of production capacity of the territory; new and more useful material assets; better quality services, administered to the community; increased productivity; more job opportunities. These outcomes, which are not detrimental to the quality of life, should also prove that, a positive dialogue with the territory, involves taking notice of the material culture and enhancing knowledge that one needs to place within the historical context of reference.

The field of research regards multidisciplinarity, which provides the foundation for the systemic approach, as the only way to go for future development. The possibility of observing real examples of systemic integration on the ground, starting new scientific, economic, sociologic and politic research partnerships with the other actors from the territory, leads towards an open dialogue among the players, a strong sense of collective sharing and triggers a highly innovative territorial development that takes its components into account.

Systemic design opens up the possibility of innovative and virtuous business models in which the waste, that is today a burden, tomorrow can become a resource for new industrial systems offering numerous opportunities of development in the region, in productive areas and in connected services.

4.

Analysis and discussion of findings

This paper shows the social, economical and environmental benefits generated to real cases that apply the Systemic Design approach in different food sectors and in different local context, in order to enforce the potentialities of the application of this methodology.

The first one is “EN.FA.SI.” (co‐funded by the Piedmont Region) in which the value chain related to the PGI bean, Fagiolo Cuneo, endorses the entire area involving the small family producers and the local SMEs. The second one is “Fondo Noir” (funded by Lavazza company) in which the spent coffee ground from the coffee bars in the metropolitan city centre are collected by cargo‐bike in order to generate many new businesses.

Thinking about a food territorial system means the guidance of politic, scientific, organisational, designing processes, based on the generation of increased relationships, shared visions and strategies (cross, pervasive, and fundamental ones).

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4.1

EN.FA.SI

The agri‐food sector is proving to have particularly high impact because of the use of pesticides and fertilizers, the consumption of energy and natural resources, the emissions of greenhouse gases and the large amount of waste produced.

Recently, Politecnico di Torino has engaged in research activities in the agro‐food industry, using the Systemic Design methodology, especially in the Cuneo Bean cultivation because it showed several conceptual criticalities and a production system which required redesigning, initially employing an excessive use of natural and artificial resources, such as synthetic products, energy, as well as waste of secondary raw materials (Fiore & Tamborrini, 2014). The project included a feasibility study, followed by the industrial testing of each stage of production. This involved many local SMEs (in some cases family‐owned businesses).

The design of a complex system in which outputs are valued as input of other production sectors, ensures environmental benefits such as the reducing of wastes. It evolved also economic benefits, such as the development of several new economies in the area. A graphical view of the system complexity with all the interconnected activities helps to underline material and energy flows, inputs and outputs (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The complex system designed for the EN.FA.SI project.

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4.2

Fondo Noir

Annual generation of Spent Coffee Grounds (SCG) is estimated around six million tonnes per year.

They currently do not have a commercial value and are disposed of in landfills or as compost. The Systemic Design project provides a holistic vision in which these production are linked together through relationships, output and input, flows of energy and materials, in order to make the SCG recovery activity complex, with almost no waste.

Nowadays, SCG need to be disposed of in a controlled way, because the residual caffeine, tannins and polyphenols could have negative effects on the environment (Panusa et al., 2013). In addition to the elements listed, SCG contain also other elements such as minerals, melanoidins, lipids and waxes, lignin, proteins, ashes and polysaccharides (cellulose and hemicellulose are a little less than 50% in the anhydrous SCG). These components have high quality and physical characteristics that can be exploited.

The objectives of the work are not only the creation of a system that gives new life to the SCG but also the educational and social aspects related to the valorisation of waste. The project is carried out by Politecnico di Torino (Department of Architecture and Design), in collaboration with the biggest Italian coffee roasted company (Lavazza SpA) (Barbero, Fiore, 2014).

SCG should be split into their two constituent elements: the oils and the exhausted coffee grounds, each of which finds different application sectors. The first one can be used in cosmetics, energy and cleaning sectors; the second one in agronomy, print, energy, plastics and building sectors. It is necessary to systematize the activities, to understand what should be done first, the necessary working operations and the characteristics of the material after such operations (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The complex system designed for Fondo Noir project.

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5.

Conclusions

Data show that major levels of overproduction, waste, surplus and underutilization are consequential to intensive productions, in addition to its core business. Turning these features into resources for the territory means giving new opportunities to all those who are more likely to incur the costs of their disposal. If we exploit the sense of territorial belonging of the resources we may boost a type of development that favours the local dimension and allows the sprouting of self‐sufficient realities, able to produce, supply and generate energy autonomously, and there will be a dramatic decrease in the number of long haul transportation.

The complexity involved in that kind of design processes interested a wide range of players and it aims to contribute the scientific debate on the role of design as mediator and facilitator among different specific disciplines (Germak, 2009). The polytechnic culture, at the base of design disciplines, guarantee a model for the eco‐innovation also in food sector, with strong and solid approach.

This methodology can be fostered because it is proven and gives answer to the problems listed in the introduction. It has the promising ability to deliver new diplomas in this field.

6.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Prof. Luigi Bistagnino, who is the theorist of the Systemic Design, for his passionate encouragements. Special thank goes to the whole Systemic Innovation Design research group at Politecnico di Torino for the many projects done together in the last decade.

7.

References

Shiva, V., 1993. Monocultures of the Mind. Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. London, UK: Zed Books Ltd. Collins, D.A., 2010. Heading for a World Apocalypse? The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, 35 (2),pp.296‐302.

Bistagnino L. 2009. Systemic Design: Designing the productive and environmental sustainability. Bra, Italy: Slow Food.

Pisek, P.E., and Wilson, T., 2001. Complexity, Leadership, and Management in Healthcare Organizations. British Medical Journal, 323, pp.746‐749.

Porter, M.E., 1990. Competitive Advantage of Nations. New York City, NY: Free Press.

Frosh, R.A., and Gallopoulos, N.E., 1989. Strategies for Manufacturing. Scientific American, 3 (189), pp. 94‐102.

Chertow, M.R., 2000. Industrial Symbiosis: Literature and Taxonomy. Annual Review of Energy and Environment, 25, pp.313‐337.

Fuller, R.B., 1981. Critical path. Ney York City, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Chertow, M. R., Ashton, W., and Kuppali, R., 2004. The Industrial Symbiosis Research Symposium at Yale: Advancing the Study of Industry and Environment. New Haven, CT: Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Jones, P.H., 2009. Learning the lessons of systems thinking: Exploring the gap between Thinking and Leadership. Integral Leadership Review, 9(4), pp.1‐30.

Maffei, S., 2015. Foodplexity and Design. Planning the Food Experience. In: G. Celant, ed. Arts&Foods. Rituals since 1851. Milano, Italy: Electa.

Pauli, G., 2010. The Blue Economy: 10 years, 100 innovations, 100 million jobs. Taos, New Mexico, USA: Paradigm Pubblications.

Campagnaro, C., 2011. Methodology. In: L. Bistagnino, ed. Systemic Design: Designing the productive and environmental sustainability. Bra, Italy: Slow Food.

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Fiore, E., and Tamborrini, P., 2014. Open System in bean cultivation for Local Economical Development.

Scientific Conference proceedings, Zilina (Slovakia), 9‐13 June, 2014, pp.359‐364.

Panusa, A., Zuorro, A., Lavecchia ,R., Marrosu, G., and Petrucci ,R., 2013. Eecovery of natural antioxidants from spent coffee grounds. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 61(17), pp.4162‐4168.

Barbero, S., and Fiore, E., 2014. The flavour of coffee ground. The coffee waste as accelerator for new local businesses. MOTSP proceedings, Bol, Brac (Croatia) 11‐13 June 2014, pp.1‐7.

Germak C. 2009. Man at the centre of project. Design for a new Humanism. Torino, Italy: Allemandi

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Gianni Scudo, Matteo Clementi, “Local productive systems planning tools for bioregional development”, In: Localizing urban food th strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 526‐539. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

LOCAL PRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS PLANNING TOOLS FOR BIOREGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Gianni Scudo1, Matteo Clementi2

Keywords: bioregion, food and energy integrated planning, renewable energies, energy efficiency.

Abstract: The paper introduces to bioregion concept and describes territorial metabolic flows tools usefull to identify and evaluate strategies and appropriate actions to increase the eco‐efficiency of local productive systems. Bioregion concept recently re‐emerged involves also better eco‐efficiency conditions by directing production and consumption flows towards locally available resources use and therefore contributing to basic resources cycles closure. Tools presented support the application of the methodology Elar (Ecodynamic Land Register). In accordance with the bioregional paradigm, this methodology is used to assess the self‐sufficiency achievement of trans scalar territorial systems.

This approach requires integrated measures effectiveness assessment, particularly with regard to energy use and food consumption categories. Therefore Elar can be considered one of the effective tools to support Food and Energy Integrated Plans (FEIP) development. Energy and material flows related to residential sector, food consumption, and private transport are considered.

The method uses open‐source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and is articulated in the following processing phases: 1) Locally defined territorial boundaries identification.

2) Renewable Local Energy Potential assessment ‐ Analysis of contextual conditions and local renewable energy potential.

3) Local Energy‐Matter Demand and Supply assessment for residential, agricultural, food and private transport activities. Aggregated impacts evaluation with environmental impact indicators ( NRE non‐renewable primary energy, Local Productive Land).

4) Local self‐sufficiency scenarios assessment based on best practices transfer, filtered on the basis of local factors mapped on the GIS (climate, use, existing buildings shape and technology).

1.

Introduction

Global agro‐food system contributes to about 30% of GHG ‐ Global Heating Gasses‐ emission (Tim Lang 2009), due mainly to long distance transport and detail purchasing by car. Bioregional approach (Sale K. 1985; Fanfani D. e Saragosa C. 2011), promotes transcalar Regional supply and demand chains where food and energy are grown, produced, sold and consumed within a certain territorial unit.

In this paper we define a “bioregion” as the land required to achieve food and energy supply self‐ sufficiency over the long term and we describe how to use support tools to plan locally appropriate self –sufficiency strategies.

The intensive use of locally available renewable resources reduces drastically the use of non renewable resources increasing eco efficiency of local systems in term of Non Renewable primary Energy/Renewable primary Energy ratio ( NRE/RE in MJ) and reducing environmental impact (for instance CO2eq emissions).

The tools presented here promote an experimental tool for territorial metabolism planning called FEIP, (Food and Energy Integrated Plan).

1 2

Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, gianni.scudo@polimi.it Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, matteo.clementi@polimi.it

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2.

FEIP ‐ Food and Energy Integrated Plans

FEIP is an experimental (“ad hoc” defined) planning tool. The aim of FEIP is to promote integrated local agro‐food and energy systems able to give self sufficiency in food and a contribution to meet the energy demand for housing, transport and services, while providing anyway an adequate income from agriculture practices.

FEIP stands for Food and Energy Integrated Plan. The fact that the term Food precedes that of Energy, has a specific meaning. It means that in self‐sufficiency scenarios, food sovereignty has to be guaranteed; namely strategies are oriented primarily to cover the local demand for food, the rest of the territory and wastes from agricultural production are used to cover the demand of the other categories, in particular housing and transport.

FEIP is proposed as a tool which complements food planning in the energy oriented planning tools developed by Covenant of Mayors.

The massive participation in the Covenant of Mayors has encouraged the development of initiatives towards energy efficiency and use of local renewable resources, directly involving individual mimunicipalities. The tools adopted in the covenant such as SEAP ‐ Sustainable Energy Action Plan ‐ are promoting GHG (Global Heating Gasses) emissions reductions activities in housing, transportation, and public facilities (at least 20%) (www.covenantofmayors.eu).

The FEIP is proposed as a possible planning tool based on the data collected and the strategies adopted in the SEAP, that aims to achieve higher targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, integrating food consumption in the considered categories. It allows an integrated assessment of adoptable solutions starting from the need to ensure local self‐sufficiency for food and housing. It offers solutions to increase energy efficiency and the use of local renewables resources to achieve high levels of environmental sustainability and to increase the use of local workforce.

In this experimental phase, which focuses on territory analysis and scenarios development tools implementation, a small territorial system has been chosen: the Albairate municipality in Milan County, within the South Milan Agricultural Park (PASM).

Nevertheless the optimum scale for local self‐sufficiency effective strategies is generally more extensive, (Metropolitan Area, County, Region).

FEIP is supported by the methodology Elar (Ecodynamic Land Register) (Clementi 2008) (Clementi, Scudo, 2009) (Scudo et al. 2014).

2.1

ELaR – Ecodynamic Land Register

In accordance with the bioregional paradigm, this methodology is used to assess the self‐sufficiency achievement of trans scalar territorial systems ‐ from the municipal to larger areas scales.

This approach requires measures effectiveness integrated assessment, particularly with regard to energy use and food consumption categories. Therefore Elar can be considered one of the effective tools to support integrated food and energy plans development.

Energy and material flows related to residential sector, food consumption, and private transport are considered.

ELaR aims to highlight and rethink energy and materials flows which feed people activities through analysis carried out by open‐source Geographic Information Systems. It highlights the dynamic relations between energy and matter demand and local renewable potential which, in a self‐sufficient system, should necessarily be maintained in equilibrium. The local demand for energy and materials analyzes the consumption categories of housing, food and marginally of private transport; data are expressed in terms of general amount referred to the local context or in terms of per capita data.

As already mentioned in the abstract the method is articulated in the following processing phases: th

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1) 2) 3)

4)

locally defined territorial boundaries identification.

Renewable Local Energy Potential assessment ‐ Analysis of contextual conditions and local renewable energy potential.

Local Energy‐Matter Demand for residential, agricultural/food consumption and private transport activities assessment. Aggregated impacts quantification through environmental impact indicators (Local productive land, NRE MJ non‐renewable primary energy).

Local self‐sufficiency scenarios assessment based on best practices transfer, filtered on the basis of local factors mapped on the GIS (climate, use, existing buildings shape and technology, and local agriculture practices).

Good practices effectiveness evaluation of is carried out through specific tools, (resources / impact geographies and “user histograms”). They are used to verify the proposed choices by calculating the local energy and materials demands through two specific indicators and related reference thresholds: Productive land demand compared with the locally available land.

Primary renewable and non‐renewable energy consumption, compared with threshold values, borrowed from the 2000Watt‐Society program (1500W from renewable sources and 500W from not renewable ones).

The Elar methodology is currently being applied in two specific cases study.

The first one is the research "Bioregione" funded by Fondazione Cariplo, which proposes different scenarios to match public procurement local catering demand (school and hospitals ect..) with potential Lombardy region agricultural production supply (Caputo et al. 2014).

The second is the application of the Elar methodology in Albairate a small settlement nearby Milano (Scudo et al. 2014). The aim is to draw up an initial prototype of “Food and Energy Integrated plan” (FEIP) starting from the formulation of self‐sufficiency scenarios. The data presented briefly in the text show a possible example of local food and energy supply self‐sufficiency.

The elaboration and communication of the results are provided by two basic tools: " Resources / impacts geographies." " User histograms"

2.2

Resources / impacts geographies

Resources and impacts geographies are obtained by collecting on the same territorial support information on Local Demand of Energy and Matter (LDEM), and on the Renewable Energy Technical Potential (RETP).

Information on Local Demand of Energy and Matter (LDEM) are collected in the form of impact geographies, while information on Renewable Energy Technical Potential (RETP) are collected as resources geographies related to local supply.

2.3

Impact geographies

The first tool (impacts geographies), represent the supply chains of production and consumption through geo‐referenced vectors which locate supply chain different nodes. Two different indicators quantify the environmental impacts associated to the different nodes of the supply chain, the use of primary non‐renewable and renewable energy sources, expressed in MJ equivalent;

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Figure 1. Impact Geographies associated with the consumption of primary energy, concerning the Local Demand of Energy and Matter (LDEM) in Albairate. Mapped supply chains are representative of the scenario 1 presented in the results of this paper.

As example the following text presents the data associated with the supply chain of the bread , including the related accounting of non‐renewable energy sources.

Description of the supply chain Here is the brief description of the supply chain of bread. The mode for cultivation of wheat for flour is conventional (non‐organic). The territorial reference is international (intercontinental supply chains were not taken into account).

The main steps of the supply chain can be summarized as follows: 1. wheat production in field ; 2. wheat transport to the mill; 3. flour grinded from wheat; 4. flour transport to the bakery ; 5. bread production; 6. bread transport to store or canteen.

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Figure 2. Impact Geography concerning the consumption of non‐renewable primary energy for the production of 1 kg of bread from wheat conventional agriculture.

Figure 3. Extract of the Impact Geography concerning the consumption of non‐renewable primary energy for the production of 1 kg of bread from wheat conventional agriculture.

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2.4

Resources Geographies

The second tool (resources geographies) is obtained by collecting in specific thematic maps quantitative data related to the locally available renewable resources. Once defined the boundaries of the local context, this phase of the methodology processes and stores in the same Geographic Information System data on local physical and biological/agricultural environment. This data‐base provides descriptive information on the climatic conditions (solar potential mapping at different scales, pluviometric conditions, windiness, humidity and air temperature throughout the year), on actual land uses, on geo morphological aspects etc. (Fig. 4). The main goal of such a data archive is to provide useful information to identify the current local renewable potential supply and develop possible local sustainable scenarios for good practices transferability.

Good practices transferability depends on the assessment of similarity between territories under analysis and good practices territories. This information, as part of one single Geographic Information System (GIS) can be associated to different portions of land, as example a cadastral land or urban parcel.

Figure 4. Some maps that make up the resources geographies of Albairate (Lombardy region), to the left a land use map, to the right a solar radiation map.

The association of such information to geometric particles using GIS, enables identifying the vocational characteristics of local territory portions.

Geo‐referenced information allows to use Geographic Information Systems to carry out assessments at different scales, from the whole local context, to portions of it or to individual particles (buildings or land parcel).

The minimum reference unit to assess supply and demand balance is the census units, adopting datamaps from Istat ‐ Italian Institute of Statistics ( ISTAT, 2012).

2.5

User histograms

The user histograms build the connecting structure between the information collected in the geographies, in order to check different design choices. They report in terms of per‐capita flows local energy and matter demand and relate them with the extension of productive land per‐capita.

Histogram general structure can be easily understood looking at the following diagrams (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6).

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Figure 5. General synthetic structure of a user histogram.

As shown by the arrows, the histogram describes energy and matter flows direction from the right to the left. Consequently, the right side of the histogram contains information on the resources supply (RETP Renewable Technical Potential, locally available), where information on local renewable supplies are given.

The left side shows information about Local Demand of Energy and Matter (LDEM).

The central part houses strategies as possible design choices in between local renewable energy/matter supply and demand (LSS Local Self‐sufficiency Scenario). They perform the main function to connect local demand and supply.

The image below shows an example of user histogram describing the main components.

Figure 6. Example of user histogram describing the main components

The extreme left of the graph shows data of energy and matter demand expressed in terms of the adopted indicators, in this case the CO2 equivalent emissions. The quantities of energy and materials are aggregated into the consumption categories of housing, food and, marginally, of private transport, to compose the total amount of energy and impact per person (on the extreme left) (Fig. 6). Such option gives the possibility to compare the data with reference threshold values per person (15800MJ of primary non‐renewable energy ‐ NRE per year as sustainability goal suggested by the 2000W Society program (www.2000watt.ch), and between 1000 and 2000 kg of CO2 per year ).

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The right part of the graph represents the local renewable supply; it shows the extension of the productive surfaces in the local context, expressed in square meters per person . The productive surfaces are intended to be the productive portions of land for agriculture and forestry, as well as the built‐up portions showing relevant features such as high solar vocation surfaces.

The far right part of the histogram brings together the extensions of productive land per capita identifying the amount of productive land available. The different colors refer to the extension of productive land available per person (darker color) and the extension of the available productive land interested by the application of good practices assumed in the scenario (Fig. 6).

The structure of information allows in the design phase to operate a useful and immediate comparison between productive land necessary for local self‐sufficiency and land actually available.

Such condition of immediate comparison drives the design choices among the good practices, in order to find out the ones more suitable to the real conditions of the territory.

3.

Scenarios

In this part the data for the entire municipal area are briefly reported; they are related to housing, food and private transport. The structure of the information in Elar enable further scaling. Indeed evaluation can be made for each census section, so as to take better account of buildings geometry and age.

The cost of reducing the energy in existing buildings may vary depending on the geometry and age of the buildings (this information is mapped in the resources geographies database).

To assess food requirements, age and number of persons per census section are considered. (ISTAT, 2012).

To assess different inhabitants mobility attitudes Istat data on daily moves inside and outside the municipal boundaries are used.

The results proposed in this text refer to the following scenarios: 1.

Current status, no use of local renewable sources, full import of all resources.

2.

Current demand of energy and materials, exclusive use of local resources.

3.

Strategies for energy and material efficiency and exclusive use of locally available resources.

3.1

Scenario 1: Current state

The histogram presented in the diagram shows the non‐renewable primary energy concerning the main items considered by the user‐histogram. The graph shows from top to bottom the categories of private transport, food and housing.

When the data in the user histogram are associated with a single indicator, (as in fig.7 the primary non‐renewable energy) the values of different items can be added up for each category (middle graph), and then aggregated to constitute the total value per person. This option allows to check how much the values emerged in the case study differ from the bench mark sustainability values.

In this case, the total amount of non‐renewable primary energy consumed per person annually measures 52129MJeq, more than five times the sustainability value proposed by the Swiss community research project 2000 Watt‐Society. In particular, housing is the mainly responsible of this very high value by weighing 61.2% of the total, followed by private transport (22.1%) and food consumption (16.7%).

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Figure 7. Non‐renewable primary energy used in items of the Scenario1 user histogram (on the left values are aggregated by category of consumption: transport, food, housing).

3.2

Scenario 2‐ Current demand of energy and materials, exclusive use of local resources.

This scenario assumes that the energy and food resources currently consumed by the inhabitants of Albairate are available in the local area. In this case the quantities consumed are the same as the current state (Scenario 1) . Efficiency strategies in matter and energy use have not been adopted.

From top to bottom, the principal items which characterize the categories of transport, food and housing are listed (fig.8).

The transport report a single figure, kilometres travelled by private car per person per year. They amount to about 6322 km, the renewable strategy adopted as example is the use of bio‐diesel from sunflower oil. In this case the amount of productive land for the cultivation of sunflowers amount to 3027 square meters.

Regarding food supply the amount of productive land was assessed using characteristics yield of the Milano county reported in the ISTAT database (ISTAT 2012). Non‐renewable energy sources are used for in field activities, transport and processing.

Regarding the housing category it is assumed that all the activities which involved the direct consumption of fossil fuels could be replaced by local vegetal biomass, while the electrical consumption could be covered by the production of photovoltaic systems integrated in the existing buildings. Sizing photovoltaic systems has been done bearing in mind that this is not the case of an isolated system but a system connected to the national grid, aiming at achieving an annual neutral balance between input and output.

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In this case the total extent of productive land would amount to 8852m2, of which 3624 m2 relative to housing (41%), 3027m2 to transport (34%) and 2200 m2 to food supply (25%). In the standpoint of a possible Food and Energy Integrated Plan the productive land locally available, (3047 m2/per person) would be able to cover the total food requirements and a part of the energy needs of dwellings.

The amount of the productive land required exceed about 2.5 times the extension of the available land.

Taking as bioregional area of reference the Lombardy region, the extension of productive land per capita would amount to 1243 m2 of productive land / person. In this case the amount of needed productive land in Scenario 2 would exceed 7.12 times the size of the available land per person.

In Italy the amount of productive land per person amounts to 2810 m2 (ISTAT, 2012).

Figure 8. Extension of productive land per person (in orange) associated with the various items in the user histogram of Scenario2 (on the right values are aggregated by consumption category : transport, food and housing).

3.3

Scenarios 3 ‐ Strategies for energy and material efficiency and exclusive use of locally available resources.

This paragraph on efficiency strategies lists strategies for each groups. It shows the impact on the extension of the productive land needed for each set of solutions ( house, feeding and transport).

Housing The solutions concerning the heating item include strategies related to the energy upgrading of the existing buildings get an average consumption for heating around 30kwh /m². Whereas the per th

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capita housing area amounts to 37,66m², consumption per square meter would amount to 5082KWh / 37,66 = 135kWh / m², the reduction scenario to 30 kWh per m² would involve a consumption per capita of 30 * 37, 66 = 1130kWh, less than four times the actual consumption.

The use of water flow reducers would lead to a reduction of 10% of the amount of energy for hot water. The amount of energy for cooking is left unchanged.

Concerning electricity a consumption reduction by about 40% is assumed, due to the use of more efficient appliances and artificial LED Lighting. The electricity consumption per capita would decrease from 1,120 kWh to 672kWh / person.

The amount of productive needed land would be reduced in total by 29.3% (6258mq) and considering the housing category by 71.57% (1030mq). The extension of the land needed would exceed 2,05 times the productive land actually available.

Figure 9. Annual energy consumption per person and the relative amount of productive land associated with the housing category in Scenario 3 – housing.

Private Transportation The second most impacting category is the private mobility. Incentives for carpooling have been chosen to reduce fuel consumption, a reduction by about 30% of equivalent kilometres per person has been assumed. A value of 6322km / person*year has decreased to 4425km. In the case of productive land accounting, using the same technology assumed in scenario 2 (biodiesel from sunflower oil), the total value relative to productive land needed exceeds 1.75 times the amount of land available.

Figure 10. Kilometers traveled annually per person and relative amount of productive land associated with the category of private transport in Scenario 3.

Feeding 1 th

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This strategy assumes a change in meat diet with exclusive use of poultry meat.

Elimination of bottled water consumption (recording a reduction of 5.99% of the primary non‐ renewable energy related to feeding), this strategy does not affect on the amount of productive land.

Changing the amount of red meat (beef and pork) with a similar amount of legumes in terms of protein content. This contribution, combined with the previous strategy, leads to a reduction of productive land of 17.42% on the total extent and 42.38% on the extension related to food; the amount of productive land is reduced from 2200 m2 per person to 1268 m2.

Halving protein intake by dairy products, and compensating with legumes , leads to a reduction of primary energy use of feeding equal to 49.63%. As it regards the productive land, the total extent is reduced by 21.09%, equal to 4221 m2 / person. The productive land useful to produce the food consumed in a year amounts to 1,072 square meters against the previous 2200, leading to a partial reduction of 51.27%. In this case, the distance from the reference edge or 3047 m2 is reduced , the value exceeds 1.39 times the amount of available productive land.

Figure 11. Annual food consumption per person and the relative amount of productive land associated with the category of feeding in Scenario 3 – Feeding 1.

Feeding 2. Nearly Vegan diet In case of nearly vegan diet, the replacement of all protein intake from animal‐derived foods with vegetable derived foods (legumes) is assumed, while maintaining the same protein intake. To compensate the caloric intake the amount of cereal products was increased (the consumption of fish has remained unchanged, it involves 3.4% of primary energy consumption).

Compared to the previous scenario, the partial reduction of primary non‐renewable energy on the single category of Food amounts to 24.72% (from 4388 to 3303MJeq / person). The area of productive land is further reduced by 4.94% from 4221 m2 to 4013 m2 , (the productive land related to food category decreases from 1072 m2 to 864 m2 , 19.45% reduction of productive land). In this th

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last case, the distance from the reference limit value is reduced to 131.7%. The amount of land associated with each category is 1031 m2 for housing, 864 for food and 2119 for transport.

Figure 12. Annual food consumption per person and the relative amount of productive land associated with the category of feeding in Scenario 3 ‐ Feeding 2.

4.

Conclusions

The results presented in this paper as an example, demonstrates the suitability of the methodology for the integrated assessment of the main consumption categories (housing, feeding and transport) in a limited area, a small sample of territory. Future developments of the work will include the application of Elar in wider areas, and the integration of new categories such as public services. It will be necessary to expand the set of best practices, enriching it with various case studies related to different climatic conditions and to refine the procedure of the mobility assessment. Further investigation will concern the integration of economic indicators such as local workforce to compare the amount of productive land and use of non‐renewable energy sources with the amount of man‐ hours locally activated.

5.

References

Caputo P., Ducoli C., Clementi M., 2014. Strategies and Tools for Eco‐Efficient Local Food Supply Scenarios. In: Sustainability 6, pp 631‐651, MDPI. Clementi M. , 2008. ELaR, Ecodynamic Land Register. A proposal to assess the “strong sustainability” of design alternatives according to the local context condition. In: World Renewable Energy Congress X and Exhibition ‐ Conference, Proceeding, pp. 861/866, Glasgow.

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Clementi M., Scudo G., 2009. Ecodynamic Land Register ‐ Current development level of the tool in Renewables in a changing climate. From nano to urban scale. CISBAT 2009‐ Conference Proceedings, Editor EPFL, 2009, pp. 415/420, Lausanne.

Fanfani D., Saragosa C., 2011. Il bioregionalismo nelle esperienze italiane ed europee. In: Il Progetto Sostenibile, n.29, September.

ISTAT, Italian National Institute of Statistics, 2012. Data warehouse del 6° Censimento generale dell’agricoltura.

Available at <http://dati‐censimentoagricoltura.istat.it>.

Lang T., Barling D., Caraher M., 2009. Food Policy – Integrating Health, Environment & Society. Oxford Univ.

Press.

Scudo G., Caputo P, Clementi M., 2014. Metodi e strumenti per l'elaborazione di scenari di autosostenibilità nel progetto locale. In: Il progetto di territorio, oltre la città diffusa verso la bioregione, edited by Giorgio Ferraresi, Maggioli Editore.

Sale K., 1985. Dwellers in the Land. The Bioregional Vision. Sierra Club Books.

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Fanqi Liu, “Eating as a planned activity: an ongoing study of food choice and the built environment in Sydney”, In: Localizing urban food th strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 540‐551. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

EATING AS A PLANNED ACTIVITY: AN ONGOING STUDY OF FOOD CHOICE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN SYDNEY Fanqi Liu1

Keywords: food choice, food systems, healthy built environment, Sydney Abstract: As more people move into cities, the world is embracing an ‘urban‐style’ diet associated with multiple harms such as the spread of lifestyle diseases, including diabetes and obesity. Food choice is a multi‐determined, situation‐dependent phenomenon. Despite individuals' food choice is often seen as a result of different psychological and socioeconomic backgrounds, evidence suggests that the built environment influences people’s lifestyle preferences including food choices. Although the number of publications regarding food issues has grown rapidly, it remains unclear how the built environment influences residents’ food choice. A deeper understanding of this behaviour could reveal under‐researched aspects of a healthy built environment. In this paper, the significance of new insights in the built‐environment perspective in food choice research is addressed. This on‐going study contributes to the understanding of the availability and accessibility of healthy food in cities. It focuses on how the urban form influences people’s food choice in metropolitan Sydney. A mix of quantitative, qualitative and spatial research methods is applied to identify urban form barriers to the utilisation of healthy food in urban settings. This includes spatial statistical analysis to sample study areas, and in‐depth interviews to explore participants’ food choices and the influence of the built environment. This analysis has implications for urban planning and policy making for healthy cities.

1.

Introduction

Public knowledge of and interest in food has never been greater. Topics related to food are being discussed in multiple disciplines such as public health, cultural studies, economics and history on different occasions. At the same time, our current food systems, most prominently in urban areas, are associated with multiple harms such as the spread of food‐related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity (Wallinga, 2009). In Australia, for example, around 90 percent of the total population lives in urban areas, with 63 percent of the adults and 25 percent of children overweight or obese (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2012). If current trends continue, over two‐thirds of Australians would be overweight or obese by 2025 (Walls et al., 2012). Although the public is constantly being educated to eat ‘wisely’ through Australian national diet campaigns like ‘Go for 2 & 5’, the food choice behaviour along with food preferences is still rather unhealthy for most Australian urban and suburban dwellers.

Despite that the individual’s food choice is often seen as a result of different interrelating factors, evidence suggests that the built environment influences people’s lifestyle preferences including their diet choices (Booth et al., 2001; Popkin et al., 2005; Walker et al., 2010; Kent and Thompson, 2014).

These studies, however, tend to focus on the extreme situations whereby infrastructure and services supporting healthy lifestyle choices are largely inadequate and scarce; from a food perspective, for example, ‘food deserts’ (neighbourhoods with limited access to healthy food) are often reported.

Previous studies have missed out on a variety of other ways in which the built environment shapes

1

Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, 2052, Australia. fanqi.liu@student.unsw.edu.au

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food choices. That being so, there is currently very little known about food choice in the built environment where multiple food options are available.

In recent years, the growing interest in food systems in planning profession highlights the need for understanding food behaviour in the built environment. The concept of food systems in communities and metropolitan areas, being absent for many years in the planning field, has notably emerged since 2000 (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000). Along with the goal of promoting sustainable urban development, the re‐localisation of production‐consumption chain in food systems was ‘led by disparate groups… into a broad‐based multidisciplinary movement’ (Pothukuchi, 2009, p.349). As individual food choices determine the food consumption patterns, it is clear that a deeper understanding of food choice can reveal a significant aspect of a healthy built environment and planning strategies for food systems.

The current limitations in understanding how the built environment influences people’s food choice is the fault line I address in this paper. This on‐going study focuses on how the urban and suburban built environment affects residents’ food choices in metropolitan Sydney, where a fifth of the Australian population lives. Understanding the link between the built environment and our choices begins with building the framework about our food choice behaviours.

2.

Conventional answers of the food choice determinants

What we know about food choice behaviours is based on different separate research domains such as food chemistry, nutrition science, sociology, psychology and public health studies during the last century. The issue has grown in importance in light of the priority for the population dietary change in the recent years with multiple physical and social harms, and the understanding of the determinants that affect our choices has been identified for interventions considering health issues.

Since the food choices are multi‐determined, situation‐dependent phenomenon (Rozin, 2005) influenced by a broad range of interrelating factors, both socially and physically, none of the determinants we know currently is intended to explain what we choose to feed ourselves.

An initial study by Lewin (1943), a pioneer of social psychology, suggests that taste, health, social status and cost may be involved in food choice. Each factor along with its related values was examined in later studies in different research domains, and since then, the drivers for what we choose to eat are developed in various disciplines.

Biologists and physiologists investigate food choice determinants by tracking physiological processes (e.g. energy balance, gastrointestinal and brain mechanisms) and specific signals or needs (e.g. hunger, thirst) (Köster, 2009). Even though these factors respond the question ‘why do we eat’, the answer is in itself not exhaustive, as food is not only a basic need for people (Mela, 1999).

Researchers in psychology develop more sensible and detailed models and theories to describe food choice, yet ‘some often encountered fallacies’ (Köster, 2003, p.359). Theory in regards to motivation‐ and decision‐making for food, for example, recognises the search for stimulation as a central driver of food choice. Although positive findings were found when testing the theory, not all stimuli show such results (Pliner, 1982). To fix the model or theory, attempts for more comprehensive portraits of food choice process have been made by adding influences from other factors into frameworks, however, without empirical investigation or practical application, food choice remains not well

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understood (Shepherd, 1999). Besides that, as Köster (2003) indicates that since sensory food consumer science is a young research domain of less than fifty years, the psychological analysis of food choice may often be trapped in some fallacies.

Like any other complex behaviour with both individual and social factors, public health and food science researchers tend to focus on factors related to health and nutrition status. As studies show the inequalities among the population with food‐related chronic diseases among different socioeconomic position backgrounds (Paeratakul et al., 2002), most of these studies focus on the socioeconomic gradient to poor health. In the Australian context, for example, the low‐income groups and aboriginal Australians are highly targeted. Turrell et al. (2002) interviewed residents in Brisbane, Australia, of various socioeconomic levels, and found that people from socioeconomic disadvantage groups tend not to purchase foods high in fibre and low in fat, salt and sugar, while higher status groups were more likely to shop according to nutrition recommendations.

Brimblecombe et al. (2014) explored the social context of food choice (e.g. knowledge, health and resources) and the factors perceived to shape it with Aboriginal adults in Northern Australia. A study with middle‐income Caucasian Americans, however, shows more complicated process other than cost and nutrition knowledge (Furst et al., 1996). Likewise, using grocery receipts to avoid self‐report errors, Cullen et al. (2007) reports differences in food purchasing based on socioeconomic status.

Although quantitative and qualitative methods have been adopted for investigating the factors for food choice related to poor health, it remains unclear.

Researchers in other domains and disciplines, such as sociology and economics, also try to solve the puzzle by providing evidence from their aspects such as culture, tradition and marketing stratagies.

However, as these factors belong to different research traditions and disciplines, ‘each of these disciplines claims to have at least a partial answer’ (Köster, 2009, p.70). As a result of the mono‐ disciplinary nature, ‘although admittedly it is slightly modulated by influences from the other factors’ (Köster, 2009, p.70), most of these studies have failed to demonstrate the interactions between different determinants. Additionally, because different individuals develop different strategies to resolve the frequently shown conflict among these factors (Connors et al., 2001), the determinants may also vary in different life stages and the weight of each may differ from one individual or group to the next.

3.

The need for the built environment research

Prior literature has emphasised that food choice is a multi‐faceted process. The central question of food choice research, as discussed in almost all related studies in different degrees, concerns ‘why does who eat what, when, and where’ (Köster, 2009, p.70), yet the answer to the ‘where’ question is not well developed. This is perhaps due to the lack of interdisciplinary research; researchers outside of the geographical research society, being trained in general scientific research techniques, usually have little knowledge in spatial reasoning (Goodchild and Janelle, 2010). This led to a methodological deficiency in previous studies: some did not consider the spatial factors, and some failed to demonstrate the environment‐individual bond.

In recent years, further recognition of the importance of the environment in shaping lifestyles has been reported, whereby academics have just begun to understand how the environment influences individuals (Booth et al., 2001). Given the fact that the majority of the population are living in urban settings, the influence of the built environment is often discussed. On one hand, the built

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environment characteristics are commonly defined as ‘situational context within which behaviour takes place’ in their frameworks, independently of other factors including sociodemographic, cultural and social characteristics (see e.g. Furst et al., 1996; Booth et al., 2001; Brimblecombe et al., 2014).

Although, geography and planning texts after World War II have provided comprehensive portraits of the links, visible and invisible, between environmental characteristics and others such as socio‐ demography, cultural factors and social status (see e.g. Taylor, 1998; Hall, 2002; Thompson and Maginn, 2012; Tuan, 2012). Thus, the current food choice studies may undervalue the influence of the built environment. For example, research of socioeconomic disadvantage and the poor health suggests that the ‘epidemic’ of diet‐related chronic diseases may be partly caused by environment‐ related characteristics in socioeconomic disadvantage neighbourhoods (see e.g. Inagami et al., 2006; Jetter and Cassady, 2006; Daniel et al., 2009). On the other hand, as our connections with the built environment are mostly invisible and implicit, it is difficult to admit and trace in food choice studies.

The lack of discussion on food choice from the built environment’s point of view has significant implications not only for the food choice research but also for the planning research and practice.

Although urban food system is becoming one of the central topics to be considered on the planning agenda in the last fifty years (Pothukuchi, 2009), the food choice in the urban area remains unclear.

Studies of food systems starts with the metaphor of ‘food deserts’, where access to fresh food is limited; the experience of food deserts can be driven by the limited availability to fresh food and limited access to transport (Shaw, 2006; Walker et al., 2010). For example, about two million American households were reported living over a mile from a supermarket and having limited access to automobiles (United States Department of Agriculture, 2009), and similar outcomes were also found in other anglophone countries including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (Whelan et al., 2002; Smith et al., 2004; Lu and Qiu, 2015). Although not all research has found a link between healthy food access, diet and obesity (Jeffery et al., 2006; Li et al., 2009), living in food deserts often comes with unhealthy diet (Morland et al., 2002; Rose and Richards, 2004) and may lead to an increase in obesity risks (Morland et al., 2006; Powell et al., 2007).

In recent years, attempts to target advocacy efforts for food deserts predominantly include the provision of a range of alternative healthy food options such as wholesale groceries, community gardens, farmers’ markets and urban farms, along with the goal of promoting sustainable urban development, and the re‐localisation of production‐consumption chain. These attempts have optimised our food system by providing the potential for food production, increasing the accessibility and availability for healthy food in urban area and improving the economic and energetic efficiency (see e.g. American Planning Association, 2007; Ericksen, 2008; Ackerman et al., 2014). As these studies were mostly focusing on extreme cases with limited choices where healthy food was neither sufficient nor accessable, the understanding of food choice in the majority of urban built environments, where plentiful food options are available, is still unclear.

A similar situation may also be found in healthy built environment studies. As the key built environment characteristic supporting human health in regards to food is distinguished as providing healthy food options, the main discussion on this topic is to make environments welcoming healthy eating options, which focuses on achieving the accessibility to healthy food on a community scale (Kent and Thompson, 2014). While food consumption is one of the key activities in food systems and a healthy built environment, the research needs to go a step further, looking not only at the availability of food options, but other built environment factors that shape food choice.

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Given these points, my attempt is to theorise the relationship between the built environment and food choice. The proposed aim of this on‐going study is to present a theory ‘about’ food choice in the built environment rather than a theory ‘of’.

4.

A roadmap for food choice study in the planning field

As proposed above, my endeavour is to address a theory about food choice in the built environment by recognising that food choice is a multi‐determined, situation‐dependent phenomenon, influenced by a range of interrelating factors. While the planning research and practice is normally public‐ interest driven and aims at creating liveability, it can play a larger role in modifying everyday routines and regular behaviour by understanding how we behave in the built environment and developing a spatial consciousness in the context of day‐to‐day matters for both professionals and the people without built‐environment academic training (by which I mean all of us).

We live in a city‐centric culture where a lot of the time we assume that food is everywhere to be found in variety and convenience: from markets, cafés, restaurants, and even cinemas. On one hand, we take food for granted and the planning professionals tend to ignore the food system. As the nature of the planning practice, starting with perceived market failure (e.g. affordable housing, effective transport) (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000), if the problem is not clearly stated, it is hard to integrate food‐related issues into planning practice. On the other hand, no other public issue is as essential to every individual as food systems. In the event where food systems were broken, communities regardless of gender, age, cultural background, or cultural level would be significantly affected; this makes food systems fit for understanding how the urban surroundings involve and implicate in our everyday activities. As noted by Casey (2001, p.684), ‘In effect, there is no place without self and no self without place’ (Casey, 2001, p.684).

Planning studies have a traditional focus on observing behaviour, which is assumed to reflect the environment; and analysing the environment, which work by enabling or limiting choices. By applying the system thinking into planning, cities are being evaluated as systems consisted of different elements including individuals and infrastructures that work together to make cities ‘cities’. The concepts of the systems theory can help find the explanation: the explanation of a certain problem or elements is from the understanding of the parts in relation to the whole (Chadwick, 1978). In this case, due to the complex and conflicting nature of all food choice determinants, the food choice behaviour is the problem in the system (i.e. the built environment) that could be best understood in the context of diversity in urban settings rather than in isolation (i.e. a linear cause‐effect explanation). In addition, to solve the tensions in current literature, I employ grounded theory methodology to address my attempt to generate new theoretical frameworks, reason being it operates in exposing existing theoretical tensions and thus aims to build theoretical suggestions grounded in the context of new data and based on the observation (Strauss, 1998; Bryant and Charmaz, 2007; Aldiabat and Le Navenec, 2011).

Under the guide of systems theory and grounded theory, it is clear that food choice, the behaviour itself, is the centre of the study rather than the individuals who make the food choice, or the built environment where choices occur. Therefore, neither the individual itself, along with the individual characteristics such as cultural background and socioeconomic position nor the difference in urban settings is intended to explain the central question ‘why does who eat what, when, and where’. As

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the strong critiques are drawn from practice theory, individual attitudes in decision‐making cannot solely explain the behaviour as it is not a simple linear process (Urry, 2012).

In brief, I propose that food choice is a product of practices that is shaped by the individual, the built environment and multiple other factors. Instead of investigating isolated single factor, I propose a framework that helps understand the complex food choice in the real world. As previously discussed, four main problems ought to be resolved: There are insufficient cases outside of food deserts, where food options are plentiful; There is not enough interdisciplinary research; There is a lack of spatial thinking and spatial reasoning techniques; There is an inadequacy in methods to collect data on perceptions influenced by the built environment.

Based on the problems above, the proposed framework in this study should be interactive in the way that the influences of the built environment can be perceived, described and documented for analysis. The framework and the research plan should be made in accordance with the complexity of the food choice that no such thing can solely explain or determine the behaviour. Furthermore, two main features should be recognised in the framework: the dynamic nature of the choice behaviour; the implicit nature of the built environment influences.

Collectively, four major aspects help to shape my framework in this study. First concerns the availability, types and perceptions of food outlets in an area. The built environment contexts (e.g. zoning, building types, infrastructure and urban facilities) provide various opportunities and constraints to food activities such as providing physical spaces for food supply, distributing and purchasing (American Planning Association, 2007). One type of food outlet may be fixed as one setting while another may not, such as a fast food outlet without table service would normally be considered more flexible than restaurants (Stewart et al., 2004); likewise convenience stores are small as compared to fresh food grocers which consume a larger capacity for chillers/freezers. Apart from that, the perception related to the availability issue is also important as the error and bias often occurs in spatial behaviour (Golledge, 1997).

Secondly this paper will explore the accessibility to food and how it works in shaping choice. As largely discussed in food desert and food insecurity research, the limitation to fresh food is often associated with limited access to transport (Walker et al., 2010). In an area with multiple food options, however, the question of accessibility is largely ignored in current research. While there is currently no direct evidence to support the relationship, studies on automobility demonstrate that built environment factors such as topography, traffic situations, parking systems and pedestrian conditions have impacts on the method people choose to travel (Kent, 2013), which may also have impacts on food choice behaviour.

Another aspect is how built environment factors (other than above) attract or repel consumers. As we attach meaning to particular places and spaces, certain urban settings and moments may generate specific knowledge and experiences which affect the behaviour (Lynch, 1960). Lastly, this study also aims to investigate how food activities are integrated into other daily routines. Since daily routines are often shaped by built environment factors such as job/housing balance and street

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layout, it is worth exploring the food choice as part of daily routines in urban settings. In this study, the four aspects will be tested.

5.

Research design

5.1

Study Area

The Sydney metropolitan area is considered as the study area to explore the relationship. Sydney is the capital city of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. It is home to 4,627,345 people or about 20 percent of the Australian population. Sydney is rather a low‐ density city in comparison to other major cities worldwide, with approximately 40 local government areas consisted into six subregions that ‘tend to share similar characteristics (economic, transport, infrastructure linkages etc.)’ (Department of Planning and Environment, 2014, p.139).

The Greater Sydney boundaries, along with the Satistic Area Level 1 as the cadastre, in ABS' geographical framework was selected for analysis. Since the Greater Sydney region also includes large tracts of the rural hinterland and do not define the built up edge of cities (ABS, 2011), I arbitrarily apply the threshold of 150 inhabitants per square kilometre adopt from Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development method (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, 1994) to define urban areas using the latest 2011 cuenes. Figure 1. shows the population density of selected study area using ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced Version 10.3.

Figure 1. Population density in study area. Source: ABS, 2011

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5.2

Research process

The study will conduct in two phases: The first phase of testing the hypothesis that the food choices can be explained by the characteristics of the built environment, using spatial statistical analysis technique; A second phase of purpose sampling and collecting data using in‐depth interviews.

In this study, the built environment characteristics are hypothesised to influence residents’ food choice. The first phase is to verify if the two variables, the built environment and food choice, are related or not. It aims to find out how ‘likely’ our food choices are related to the built environment.

Many geographers have utilised spatial autocorrelation to measure the degree to which one characteristic is similar to others nearby, in order to understand the likelihood that if it is a result of a random process. This method, however, needs analysable values. Thus, an indicator to measure food choice is required. The indicator selection is based on the criteria that it should provide evidence to assess the outcomes of food choice and it should be numeric and access for public; the spatial incidence of T2D is selected as the indicator for food choice. This data is sourced from the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS) (NDSS, nd). The technique in this study to testing the hypothesis is to generate Moran’s I score using ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced Version 10.3. figure 2. demostrates the difference in the spatial incidence of T2D.

Figure 2. spatial incidence of T2D. Source: NDSS

The reliability and rationality of using T2D incidence as the food choice indicator are drawn from the literature to date in diabetes research. The linkage between food choice and T2D is proved and accepted. Low fibre and high fat sugar/protein food choices, such as high in red and processed meat; fried foods, beverages in high sugar, and fibre depleted wheat flour, all generate a delay in satiation

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promoting excessive intakes of energy, saturated fats, sodium and simple carbohydrates or sugars (Gulliford and Ukoumunne, 2001; Psaltopoulou et al., 2010). These unhealthy food choices are linked to poor insulin sensitivity and glucose homeostasis, intra‐abdominal fat deposition and high body mass index (BMI), which are all risk factors for T2D (Wolfram and Ismail‐Beigi, 2011). In contrast, food consumption of non‐starchy vegetables and whole grains on a regular basis decreases fasting blood glucose and improves glucose metabolism, which significantly reduces the risk of T2D (Carter et al., 2010; Psaltopoulou et al., 2010; Wolfram and Ismail‐Beigi, 2011). Despite the fact that T2D has genetic and family‐related risk factors, lifestyle modification and healthy diet behaviour can overwhelm biologic risk by preventing or delaying its incidence (Chaturvedi, 2007). Hence, the T2D incidence can indicate the utilisation of healthy food and the food choices.

The second phase is to select locations of purposive sampling to recruit participants for qualitative research. The criteria for purposive sampling are based on the difference in the measure for food choice (spatial incidence of T2D) and the similarity in socio‐demographic characteristics. The selection here is pure to provide a source of participants to the following interview, not to make statistical inferences; starting from here I turn to use the qualitative research methods. A flyer about this study will deliver to mailboxes in selected locations for recruiting participants.

The primary method followed by for data collection is semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. I aim to focus on understanding the food choice in the context of built environment settings. With this in mind, a neighbourhood auditing will perform in order to discuss in details in interviews. I can describe, for example, the topography of streets, the condition of traffic and the location of food outlets. An interview guide is developed after pilot interviews which aim to identify key concepts for the main data collection. Interviews will be recorded with a digital voice recorder, and then transcribed. Once finished, I will use the computer‐aided qualitative data analysis software program QSE NVivo 10 for data analysis.

6.

Conclusions

Addressing food choice issues needs the insight of the built environment. With the goal of promoting liveable cities, researchers in planning society should contribute to food choice studies. This study will attempt to give a real world understanding of how the food choice is being influenced by the built environment. It will also identify urban form barriers to the utilisation of healthy food in urban settings in Sydney.

The mixed methods proposed in this study could be applied to a range of behaviours to understand how the built environment works on them. In this study, the methods give a new way of thinking about food choice, as the decision is made in the built environment, and factors affecting the choice may also imply in and affect by it.

On the other hand, the principal limitation of this study is that the linkage and associations may be insufficient to establish causality due to the nature of built environment research. Another limitation is that using the spatial incidence of type 2 diabetes as the indicator for food choice may conceal other food choice characteristics. Moreover, since the research is conducting in Sydney, the incoming results may not be applicable to the wider population and all urban settings.

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Nevertheless, this study will highlight the relationship between the built environment and food choice to help built environment professionals to unravel the complexity and to encourage a healthy lifestyle in the future policy‐making process.

7.

Acknowledgments

I thank my supervisors Dr Ilan Wiesel and Associate Professor Linda Corkery for their constructive support and their critical reading of the text.

8.

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ALTERNATIVE FOOD NETWORKS AS SPACES FOR THE RE‐TERRITORIALISATION OF FOOD. THE CASE OF TURIN Egidio Dansero1, Giacomo Pettenati2

Abstract: Alternative Food Networks (AFN) can be variously defined and can assume very different forms, according to the degree and the focus of their "alternativeness", which can be identified in issues like the relationships between actors, the connections between places, the processes of production, and so on.

However, what characterizes most of the practices which can be defined as AFN is the definition of a new relationship between places of consumption (mostly cities) and places of production (mostly productive rural areas), based on the relocalization of a part of the food system, which can be explicitly stated as aim of the AFN, or just observed as the product of practices of short food supply chain.

The aim of this contribution is to explore the role of AFNs in reconnecting cities and rural areas ‐ as well as producers and consumers – starting from the results of an empirical study developed in two rural areas (Collina Torinese and Roero) surrounding the city of Turin.

This specific study is part of a wider interdisciplinary research (AFNIA – Alternative Food Networks an Interdisciplinary Research) aiming at the analysis and the interpretation of the role and the characteristics of Alternative Food Networks in Piedmont, integrating geographical, economic, sociological and environmental perspectives.

The starting point of this part of the research is the analysis of the localization of more than 600 producers involved in different typologies of AFNs in Turin (farmers' market, solidarity purchasing groups, other forms of direct sale).

Crossing the data about the localization of these producers with the rate of direct sale among local producers, it was possible to identify some areas which seems to be particularly involved in "feeding the city" through AFNs. The two analyzed in the research are the Collina Torinese and the Roero, two hilly rural regions, the first contiguous to the urban area of Turin and the second about 40 km south‐east from the city.

The research presented in this contribution investigates in depth, with an eminently qualitative methodology based on interviews, how AFNs develop in these territories, mostly from the producers side, analyzing local projects and policies aiming at supporting short food supply chains; the motivations of producers in participating at AFNs; the territorial effects of the involvement of a considerable number of farmers in this networks.

The objective is to understand whether the reconnections between the city – as space of consumption – and this rural areas – as spaces of production – can be considered as more or less explicitly pursued step toward the partial ri‐territorialization of the food system.

1.

Alternative Food Networks: a territorial perspective

The current dominant globalized food system can be represented as characterized at any scale by a widespread productivistic approach, market oriented, ruled by few large‐scale powerful economic actors, usually transnational corporations (Morgan et al. 2006).

1 2

Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, egidio.dansero@unito.it.

Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, giacomo.pettenati@unito.it.

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This scenario brought to what Morgan et al. (ibid.) define as de‐territorialisation of food, which can be declined into the disconnection between production and consumption of food, the disembedding of food from its places of production, the disentwining between the phases of the food chain and the dimensions of food (Wiskerke, 2009).

The notion of deterritorialization harks back to the rich debate on territoriality, coming from Deleuze and Guattari (1991) and used in the geography and spatial planning debate to describe the cycles of productions and reproduction of territory through the action of the networks of actors operating in it (Raffestin, 1980).

Magnaghi (2010) considers the deterritorialization as a structural factor of the present economic system, based on efficiency, driving to a sprawled urbanization and the weakening of the relations between societies and places, territories, landscapes, environment (and food).

The relations of power that sustain this system are considerably unbalanced, as most of the decisions affecting the system are taken by few very powerful political and economic actors, while there is a significant loss of power both of producers and consumers.

Despite the still important role that rural areas play as spaces of production, they have been affected by a devaluation, both cultural and economic, as they are mostly considered not as places, but as neutral supports for industrial agriculture.

This system produces “placeless foodscapes” (Ilbery and Kneafsey, 2000), where the relationships between food and the place where it is produced are broken and what most of people eat are homogeneous and standardized products, which come from a globalized non place‐based value chain.

Such a system optimizes the efficiency of the food chain and production costs, but it has several negative externalities, such as: downward pressure on farm incomes and consequent loss of jobs , skills, expertise and knowledge in the agricultural sector; increase in environmental pollution, in the form of waste, dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of water resources for production; loss of agricultural biodiversity and natural ; decline of the organoleptic quality and the diversity of products; increased competition for land, land grabbing and new forms of food colonialism; increase of diseases related to obesity and wrong eating habits, especially in the population groups with the lowest incomes (Wiskerke, 2009).

In this context, the heterogeneous landscape of alternative agro‐food networks (or Alternative Food Networks ‐ AFN), is one of the main dimensions (the other two are public procurement and urban food planning) of what is commonly called “alternative food geography” (ibid).

With the definition of AFN we mean those networks of production, distribution and consumption of food which propose and practice models that can be considered as alternative to the ones of the conventional food system, based on agro‐food industry and large‐scale retail trade. The alternativeness of these networks can be based on a very different range of factors, such as the relationships between the actors of the network, the relations that are produced between the places of the network, the distribution of power, the environmental sustainability of the production and distribution processes, the social justice of the network, and so on. (Goodman et al, 2004, Goodman et al, 2012).

Notwithstanding the vagueness of the definition, according to Jarosz (2008), we can identify AFNs in four major ways: (1) shorter distances between producers and consumers; (2) small farm size and scale or environmentally sustainable farming methods; (3) the existence of “alternative” food purchasing models and venues, usually based on human relationships and proximity between consumers, producers and/or retailers; (4) a commitment to the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable food production, distribution and consumption.

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Within this variety, we can identify several different examples of AFNs (such as farmers’ markets, Solidarity Purchasing Groups, Community Supported Agriculture, urban collective gardens, local food cooperatives, etc.), which assume different meanings, according to the geographical context and social milieu in which they emerge.

The focus of the alternativeness of these heterogeneous practices could be on the food which is produced, distributed and consumed within or through them (e.g. organic productions, traditional recipes, ancient cultivars, quality food specialties, etc.), or on the relational model of the networks which bring food from farm to fork (e.g. community supported agriculture, direct sale, fair trade, consumers‐producers pacts, etc.) (Watts et al, 2005; Wiskerke, 2009).

Another well‐known and useful classification of AFNs, both on the food and the network side, is proposed by Marsden et al. (2000), which distinguish between face to face AFNs (based on the direct relationships between the actors of the food chain), spatial proximity based (basing their alternativeness on the relocalization of the food chain) and spatially extended (where the alternativeness is embodied by food, even if travelling worldwide).

Obviously, it would be a mistake the attempt to strictly classify these various and changing practices and to define a neat division between AFNs and the so‐called conventional food system. Frequently, in fact, we assist to blurring relationships between alternative and conventional practices, which coexist in the same places, and sometimes mix in the same networks and practices (Sonnino e Marsden, 2006).

A critical perspective is also demanded for what concerns the relationships between AFNs and the relocalization of the food system. Falling in the so‐called “local trap” (Born and Purcell, 2006) or “unreflexive localism” (DuPuis and Goodman, 2005), often the debate evokes a coincidence between local food and alternative food. Actually, at the local scale – however understood – the inequalities and distortions of the conventional food system are often reproduced, even if with a minor spatial extension.

Supporters of the relationship between an increase in proximity and fairer and more sustainable food systems, either locally or globally, are aware that even localized systems can reproduce the dynamics of spatial and social injustice unsustainability (ibid.) and that it is necessary to define precisely which negative aspects of the conventional system can be at least partially solved by small scale alternative models (Allen, 2010).

The risk of uncritically assigning positive value at the local scale is also to deny the political dimension of the local, denying the multidimensionality of the scale and sub estimating both the role of powerful supra‐local actors in addressing local dynamics and practices (Dupuis and Goodman, 2005) and the presence of localist reactionary and defensive attitudes of some local actors (Hinrichs, 2003).

Most scholars working on this themes agree that it is not enough (and in some cases not even necessary) to increase the physical proximity between producers and consumers and between stages of the supply chain, instead we must seek to build a new relationship between food and places, weakened by agribusiness (Casey, 2001; Feagan, 2007).

AFNs often – explicitly or implicitly – aim to a spatial reorganization of the food systems, moving from a dominant globalized food geography, uninterested to the specificities of places, to the construction of a new relationship between food and places. Trying to summarize the rich debate on these issues, we can identify four different aims, declared or practiced by AFNs. The first is the relocalization of the food system (Hendrickson and Heffernan, 2002), often considered as a reduction of the food miles and a growth of the market share of local food. The relocalization of food can be imagined starting from an idea of “local” based on extension, with the identification of an

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optimal circular area within which food can be considered as “local”, or with a more complex understanding of “local”, as a variable scale, produced by relationships between people, places and resources (Sonnino et Marsden, 2006; De Kremer et De Liberty, 2011).

A second spatial shift of the food system, often mentioned in the debate is the re‐regionalization (Kneafsey, 2010). One of the key dimensions of the spatial perspective in studying food systems is the analysis of the foodshed of a city or an area (Kremer and De Liberty, 2011), that is the set of (usually not contiguous) areas where the food consume in a place comes from. If the analysis of the foodshed can be seen as the assessment of existing dynamics, the idea of regionalization (or re‐regionalization) is usually used with a regulatory meaning, trying to define which should be the areas from where (not only local) food should mostly come from, in order to achieve more sustainable or just food systems.

As the difference between re‐localization and regionalization is decidedly nuanced, regionalization can be considered an upper scale process that connects different "locals" in a complex and open food territorial system (Clancy and Ruhf, 2010).

Another concept often mentioned in the debate , which supports and enriches ones of relocalization and re‐ regionalization is the one of the re‐embeddedness of food in places (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006), local ecologies ( Murdoch et al, 2000 ) and social networks (Sage , 2003). This is a potentially very useful analytical category because it includes the spheres of the cultural, social and political environment (horizontal dimension) and the institutional sphere (vertical dimension) of food systems (Sonnino and Marsden , 2006).

According to the territorial point of view guiding this contribution, however, a concept that better than others can synthesize the characteristics of alternative geographies of food and AFNs is reterritorialization, understood as opposed to the deterritorialization which characterizes practices attributable to the conventional system (Morgan et al , 2006).

As suggested by Dansero and Puttilli (2013), this territorial approach – related to a wider field of research3 ‐ is particularly valuable for studying the AFNs for two reasons. First, because these practices can be seen as a redefinition of the relationship between food and territory, the reaffirmation of social relationships, a new economic and cultural relation between places, producers and consumers. In addition, the concepts of territory and territoriality (for a recent overview, see Raffestin, 2012) – mostly used in the Italian and French contexts (Saquet, 2012) ‐ may offer a new analytical perspective for what concerns, food networks, with particular reference to their spatial configurations.

This approach it can be considered fruitful to investigate the already mentioned riterritorialisation of food through AFNs, which can follow the deterritorialization deriving from the weakening of the relationships between food networks and places characterizing the conventional industrialized and globalized food system.

According to this approach, the territory is not only considered as a delimited area, but also as the result of the action of multiple networks of actors operating in a particular place, compared to other places and with existing resources (Raffestin 1980; Dematteis 1985, Turco 1988).

From a territorial approach, Dansero and Puttilli (2013) propose to consider AFNs starting from three complementary dimensions: − spaces: the organization of AFNs in space, specifically the physical and functional distance between the actors participating in the network. The focus is on both the spaces of production ‐ from where a new urban‐rural linkage can be developed ‐ and the spaces of sell and consumption, which often become new spaces of socialization.

3

See, among the many references, the conference organized by FAO in 2013, named “A Territorial Approach to Food Security and Nutrition and Rural Poverty Reduction”. th

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−

resources: the type of resources used in AFNs. These resources can be very varied: at one extreme, they can be highly locally specific, unavailable or unreproducible elsewhere, while at the other extreme, they can be standardized resources, reproducible anywhere. Is the food sold in the AFN the expression of a specific place or a specific network of actors? At which extent the relational, cultural and material resources mobilized through the network come from the milieu of specific places? − relationships: the type of social relations between the actors who belong to the AFN. At one side, we can find experiences with an explicit community dimension, based on face‐to‐face relations and trust, on the other side more structured, market oriented, organizational models. Which is the main aim of the AFN? A new space of market for economic activities? A new space of social relationships? The support to the development of a weak area? How do these different aims mix together in each practice?

In the next paragraph, we will analyze the role of alternative food networks in the food system of Turin, trying to underline their territorial configuration, referring to the conceptual framework described above, even if a more detailed analysis will be developed in the next months of researching.

2.

Turin: a case study

2.1. The local context In the Northwest of the country, between Milan and the French borders, with a population of 900.000 (almost 2.3 million if we consider the città metropolitana), Turin is the fourth biggest Italian city for population. After centuries as capital of the Duchy and then of the Kingdom of Savoy and few years as first Italian capital (1861‐1865), in the XX century the city grew as a company‐town, around the huge automobiles plants of FIAT, in the Southern neighborhoods of Lingotto and Mirafiori and the flourishing satellite activities.

In the last decades, the city has been the location of one of a dramatic transformation both physical and symbolical. Many factories closed and has been substituted by brand new portions of city. This material change went with a remarkable process of re‐invention of the city's image, which had its turning point in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games (Dansero and Puttilli 2009). In about fifteen years, the city shifted in the collective imagination of Italians from a grey industrial city to a vibrant city and a tourist destination, based on creativity, cultural heritage, cinema, museums, innovation and food (Vanolo 2008).

Turin belongs to a territorial system where food is a mature economic, social and cultural asset, which contributes to a regional development increasingly based on high‐quality food production (wine, chocolate, nuts, cheese, etc.) and food and wine tourism, which – as mentioned above ‐ are gradually taking the place of heavy industries in the economic system and in the discursive representations of the area.

The acknowledgment of this assets, stimulated by some strong and very active stakeholders (e.g.

Slow Food, Eataly), brought to the organization of several initiatives and events aiming at promoting and protecting typical food products (e.g. Salone del Gusto, Terra Madre, Cioccolatò, etc), which made of Turin one of the recognized national “capitals of food” (Torino Strategica, 2013).

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2.2. Alternative Food Networks in Turin In a city where food plays such an important role in economic, cultural and political life, there are many examples of practices that can be defined as alternative food networks, according to the very inclusive definitions proposed above.

Before enumerating the main AFNs identified in the urban area and interpret some of them at the light of the territorial approach proposed, it is necessary, to make an briefly introduce some specificities of AFNs in the Italian food system. As already highlighted, one of the most debated issues in this field is the presumed (declared and practiced) alternativeness of the different forms of food networks (Jones et al, 2010; Watts et al, 2005).

In the Italian context, though, the deterritorialization of food practices is still only partial, albeit threatened by different cultural and economic models (Helstosky , 2004) . People still use to cook fresh food at home daily (only 20% of the Italians use to buy pre‐cooked food4), to buy it at food markets (80% of the Italians buys part of their food at local markets5), sometimes directly from producers.

Obviously, this does not mean that Italy and Italians are not a node of the globalized agroindustrial driven food system, for what concerns flows of goods, flows of workers and the concentration of power.

In a food system of this kind, common in many countries of southern Europe, it is still more difficult to define the boundary between traditional habits, “conventional” food practices and alternative food networks (Dansero and Puttilli, 2013).

In this paper, the focus will be on two typologies of AFNs, well represented in Turin: farmers’ markets and Solidarity Purchasing Groups (GAS – Gruppi d’Acquisto Solidale).

2.1.1 Farmers’ markets The growth of farmers market in the more economically developed countries is one of the main evidences of the renewed interest of consumers for fresh and local food, with clear information about its provenance (Govindasamy et al., 2002) In Italy, there are about 1000 FMs, mostly concentrated in the Centre and North of the country, mostly organized and managed by professional agricultural organizations, notably Coldiretti6 (Marino and Cicatiello, 2012).

In some cities, including Turin, however, there are two types of markets where farmers can sell directly .

The first are the municipal markets that take generally every day in different parts of the city. There, a specific sector of the market is reserved to producers. Among the about 45 daily food markets of Turin, 38 are those that host agricultural producers, mainly selling seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables (but also cheese, meat, honey, eggs, and so on).

In most of them, however, it is very difficult to distinguish the stands of local producers from those of vendors who sell products coming from conventional channels (such as the wholesale market). Here, the identification of local producers comes from the direct relations between producers/sellers and

4

Coldiretti, 2012.

Nielsen, 2015.

6 Coldiretti is the main agricultural organization in Italy. Founded in 1944, has now 1.9 million members all around Italy (70 % of all Italian farmers) (www.coldiretti.it).

5

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consumers7. Only in a few cases, the area reserved for producers is clearly identifiable (through descriptive panels), usually where it has been the object of specific development projects. The most striking example in this sense is the Porta Palazzo market , where every day a variable number of farmers (over 90 stalls on Saturdays), sell their products under a metal roof in Art Nouveau style , which is a historical place of socialization for the people of this popular neighborhood of Turin ( Black, 2012).

The second type of farmers markets in Turin are the periodic markets organized by various organizations. The main role, in this sense, is played by the farmers’ organizations, notably Coldiretti, which through the program Campagna Amica organizes more than 600 markets throughout Italy. In Turin, there are around 15 farmers markets, most of which (8) organized by Coldiretti under the initiative Campagna Amica. Other organizers are Slow Food (with two “Mercati della Terra”), the CIA – Confederazione Italiana dell’Agricoltura and other associations and networks like ASCI ‐ Associazione Solidarietà Campagna Italiana or Genuino Clandestino .

If municipal markets are spread throughout the city, with at least one market in each of the 23 historical neighborhoods of Turin, the farmers markets belonging to this second typology are mainly concentrated in the historic center of the city, with a particular concentration on the square in front of the City Hall (Piazza Palazzo di Città), where almost every weekend there is a farmers' markets, organized by one of the actors mentioned above.

The degree of declared opposition of these practices to the conventional system is much variable. It is low in the case of the markets organized by organizations of farmers such as Coldiretti or CIA; while on the other extreme it is much more explicit for what concerns markets like the ones organized by the network Genuino Clandestino (that uses the spaces of the Autonomous Social center Askatasuna) .

Figure 1. Distribution of farmers’ markets in Turin

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Each producer, actually, have to show visibly on his/her stand a certificate, attesting the main characteristics and the localization of its farm. th

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Figure 2. The distribution of producers in municipal markets in Turin

At the provincial scale (Città Metropolitana) the number of farmers’ markets grows to around 70, mostly concentrated in the periurban area of Turin. The density of this kind of AFNs decreases in rural areas and around smaller towns. Their total number in Piedmont is of about 1508, mostly concentrated around the main urban areas of the region.

Figure 3. The distribution of GASs in Piedmont

The panorama of the farmers’ markets of Turin is characterized by a big variety of organizers, aims and political engagement of the farmers’ market in Turin and in Piedmont, which would make useless an analysis of these practices as a whole.

A common trait is the local provenance of producers, mostly concentrated from few areas of Piedmont, notably the hilly regions of Roero and Collina Torinese and the foothills areas between Turin and the Alps.

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A big variety concerns the characteristics of the products sold in the markets, strictly related to the mission of each market. Most of them are populated by conventionally produced local products, while some exceptions can be found in the few organic food markets or in more explicitly political markets, such as the ones organized by Slow Food, selling mostly products coming from the Slow Food Presidia, or the ones organized by Genuino Clandestino, where most of the products are not‐ certificated organic and come from small size alternative family farming.

2.1.2 The GASs (Solidarity Purchasing Groups) The Gruppi d’Acquisto Solidale (GAS) or Solidarity Purchasing Groups are a form of organized critical consumption, which emerged in Italy since the 90's, structured around the collective purchase of products (not just food), whose suppliers (often producers) are usually selected according to criteria of environmental sustainability and social and economic justice. If in the case of farmers' markets, consumer choices are only partly guided by explicitly political reasons related to the support of an alternative food system (Marin and Cicatiello , 2012) , for the member of GASs, the support and the definition of alternative models of consumption and production are almost always the core of the activity of the organizations (Graziano et Forno, 2012; Grasseni, 2013).

The extreme organizational variety of the GASs and their different levels of formalization (from totally informal group to formal associations) makes it very difficult to make an exhaustive census. The national network Rete GAS has about 1.000 self‐reported groups throughout Italy, even if they represent only a part of the total number of these groups of consumers.

In the municipality of Turin there are about 70 self‐reported purchasing groups and their number increases to 120 across the whole Città Metropolitana, with a strong concentration in the urban area of Turin.

The number of the members of each GAS can considerably vary, from few families, to more than 100 families for the biggest ones.

The choice of the products bought by the members of the GASs depends on the mission of the GAS itself. Some of them are focused on local food, some others buy only organic food, with no care of its geographical origin, while others are more focused on social justice and fair trade. It is very difficult though an exhaustive analysis of the characteristics of these AFNs, due to their mainly informal nature.

For what concerns relationships, a relevant topic is the networking of many GAS at the metropolitan scale, in order to make big orders of specific products, usually not locally produced: in particular, oranges (as well as lemons and tangerines) coming from Southern Italy. The choice of big collective purchases for some specific products is related to one of the most problematic issues related to GASs, that is logistic. The informal and voluntary based nature of these groups makes them often inefficient, for what concerns deliveries and purchases. For this reason the network GAS Torino, with other networks of Northern Italy, launched small‐scale projects of Small Organized Distribution (PDO) in opposition to the Great Organized Distribution of large scale retail (AA.VV. , 2013). These projects are expression of the network of actors working together through and for a more aware and environmentally and socially sustainable consumption of food (social cooperatives, local produce stores, etc. ).

Moving from the relationships between GASs to the relationships between each of them, it should be noticed how most of them emerge from already existing networks, with different degrees of formal organizational structure, such as cultural, religious, political or sport associations, groups of workers, neighbors, and so on.

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2.1.3 The provenance of producers Some key issues to be investigated in order to understand the “territoriality” of AFNs are the provenance and the characteristics of producers participating to them, in terms of farm size and structure, production processes, multi‐functionality, promotion of alternative visions of the rural.

At the current progress of the research here presented, it is possible to propose some reflections about the geographical localization of producers participating to AFNs in Turin.

The map of Figure 5 shows the localization of more than 600 producers involved in farmers’ markets, GASs or other typologies of AFNs not presented in this paper.

Most of them comes from an area within 50 km from Turin, witnessing the importance given to the local provenance of products sold through the AFNs, beyond their processes of production. A specific concentration of producers can be noticed in three areas: ‐ The hills surrounding Turin on the eastern and southeastern side of the metropolitan area. ‐ The Roero hilly region, about 40‐50 km south of Turin ‐ The foothills areas between the urban area of Turin and the Alpine valleys of Susa, Chisone and Pellice.

Figure 4. The social networks of GASs in Turin

These three sub‐regions are very different for what concerns their agricultural and economic structure and their relationships with Turin. It would be then very useful to analyze more in depth the reasons of the concentration of producers participating to alternative food networks in this areas, in order to understand if it can be related to the development of a new relationships between urban and rural, possibly through the reterritorialization of food practices and networks.

The foodshed of GASs is broader than the one of farmers’ market, as it is most common to find in the “basket” of the consumers participating to collective purchases products coming from other regions and other countries. The main motivation of the purchase of some products is not in this case their

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local provenance, but their being representative of an alternative model of food production and distribution. Figure 6 shows the main clusters of producers providing food to the GASs of Turin from outside Piedmont, usually with the intermediation of Rete GAS. With the exception of olive oil, mostly coming from Liguria, the closest region to Piedmont where it is produced, the choice of the other products and producers is mostly related to ethical or environmental issues, such as: sustainable fishing practices (fish coming from Mar Tirreno), support to populations of Emilia‐ Romagna after the 2012 earthquake (purchasing the Parmigiano Reggiano produced in the areas devastated by the event), support to organizations (namely Libera) fighting mafia in Southern Italy, by cultivating lands confiscated to mafia.

Figure 5. The provenance of local producers participating to AFNs in Turin

Figure 6. Some clusters of Italian producers involved in Solidarity Purchasing Groups in Turin

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3.

Conclusions

Figure 7 tries to relate different kinds of AFNs existing in Turin to different dimensions of the spatial reconfiguration of food systems described above. Even if such systematization could be useful, it does not represent the heterogeneous complexity of the many different kinds of AFNs existing in a city like Turin.

From a methodological point of view, it will be necessary, for the continuation of this research, to analyze each AFNs separately, using general conclusions on for a final summary.

Figure 7. Spatial reconfigurations of the food system according to the different typologies of AFNs

Some of the already mentioned main topics common in the debate about AFN clearly emerge even from this still general overview on these practices in Turin such as: The need of a critical gaze, trying to understand how the “alternativeness” of these practices relates to the conventional system to whom they are anyway strictly related too The need of avoiding an unreflexive understanding of the local scale, as panacea of the negative aspects of the food system.

The idea of the niche. Are AFNs niche practices? How do they relate with other practices which are common in Italy (e.g. buying fresh food at the market), which are not explicitly alternative, but which cannot be considered only as a part of the conventional system?

At which scale AFNs maintain their “alternativeness”? Which can be the balance between small scale, place based practices and wider practices, able to effectively affect the food system at a regional, national or even broader scale?

For what concerns the territorial approach proposed in this paper, it is possible to summarize here some main topics.

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Spaces AFNs emerge from and produce specific relationships between the places of production and the places of consumption. A main point is that they are generally considered, by most of the consumers participating to these networks, as places in their complexity, wherever they are, and not simply as economic spaces of production. It has already been discussed how the localization of producers involved in AFNs can be used as an evidence of their strategies and aims. Another relevant issue is the role of the places where producers (or their products) and consumers get in contact, which sometimes become places where the often hidden food system (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 1999) emerge and become evident. It is the case of markets, here notably the market of Porta Palazzo, which is one of the main places of sociality in the city.

Relationships The reflections about the relationships which characterizes AFNs can be consumers‐consumers; consumers‐producers; producers‐producers.

This overview on AFNs in Turin shows a big variety of relations, which extend from mostly market‐ oriented corporatist relationships, like those of markets organized by farmers associations, to purely community‐oriented ones, represented for example by the more “alternative” markets.

Many AFNs, emerge from and reproduce existing relationships, both in a positive and negative sense.

It would be useful to better understand which new relationships emerge through AFNs, both from the consumers and the producers side, as they can be the starting point of new, more equal relations between places.

Resources Exploring the resources that AFNs mobilize means more than considering the type of food produced, sold and consumed through them. Considering food, however, could be a useful starting point, as it allows to observe how some of them considers it merely as an economic good, even if high quality, fair, sustainable, and so on. In other cases, though, food is the vehicle for the development of new social, environmental and economic models at any scale, starting from the valorization of the local unreproducible material and symbolic resources, with new cultural and economic framework coming from outside. In this sense, one of the aims of the further steps of the research is to understand if and how in those areas where producers participating to AFNs in Turin are localized, their participation is part of a project (not only institutional) of local development through the reterritorialization of food.

4.

References

Allen P., 2010, Realizing justice in local food systems, In: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 3, pp. 295–308 Black R., 2012, Porta Palazzo. The Anthropology of an Italian Market, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press Born B. e Purcell M., 2006, Avoiding the Local Trap: Scale and Food Systems in Planning Research, In: Journal of Planning Education and Research, 26, pp. 195–207 Casey, E.S., 2001, Between Geography and philosophy: what does it mean to be in the place‐world?, In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91, pp. 683–93 Clancy K. and Ruhf K., 2010, Is local enough? Some arguments for regional food systems, In: Choices, 25(1), Available at: http://www.choicesmagazine.org/magazine/article.php?article=114 (Accessed: 2nd October 2015) Dansero, E. and Puttilli, M., 2009, Turismo e grandi eventi. Torino e le prospettive post‐olimpiche: da città fabbrica a meta turistica?, Rivista Geografica Italiana, 116(2), pp. 225‐251

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Dansero E. and Puttilli M., 2013, Multiple territorialities of alternative food networks: six cases from Piedmont, Italy, In: Local Environment, Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2013.836163 (Accessed: 1st October 2015) Deleuze G. and Guattari F., 1991, Qu’est‐ce que la philosophie?, Paris : Minuit Dematteis G., 1985, Le metafore della Terra, Milano: Feltrinelli DuPuis M. e Goodman D., 2005, Should we go ‘‘home’’ to eat?: toward a reflexive politics of localism, In: Journal of Rural Studies, 21, pp. 359‐371 Feagan R., 2007, The place of food: mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems, In: Progress in Human Geography, 31(1), pp. 23–42 Goodman D., 2004, Rural Europe Redux? Reflections on Alternative Agro‐Food Networks and Paradigm Change”, In: Sociologia Ruralis, 44(1), pp. 3‐16 Goodman, D., Du Puis, M. e Goodman, M., 2012, Alternative Food Networks, Milton Park: Routledge Helstosky C., 2004, Garlic and Oil. Politics and Food in Italy, Oxford e New York, Berg Hendrickson M. e Heffernan W., 2002, Opening Spaces through Relocalization: Locating Potential Resistance in the Weaknesses of the Global Food System, Sociologia Ruralis, 42 (4), pp. 347‐369 Hinrichs C., 2003, The practice and politics of food system localization, In: Journal of Rural Studies, 19, pp. 33– 45 Ilbery B. and Kneafsey M., 2000, Registering regional specialty food and drink products in the United Kingdom: the case of PDOs and PGls, Area, 32(3), pp. 317‐325 Jarosz. L., 2008, The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in Metropolitan areas, In: Journal of Rural Studies, 24, pp. 231–244 Jones, O., Kirwan, J., Morris, C., Buller, H., Dunn, R., Hopkins A., Whittington F., Wood J., 2010, On the Alternativeness of Alternative Food Networks: sustainability and the co‐production of social and ecological wealth”, in Fuller et al., Interrogating alterity : alternative economic and political spaces, pp. 95‐109 Kneafsey M., 2010, The region in food—important or irrelevant?, In: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 3, pp. 177–190 Kremer P. and De Liberty T., 2011, Local food practices and growing potential: Mapping the case of Philadelphia, Applied Geography, 31, pp. 1252‐1261 Marino D. e Cicatiello C. (2012), I farmers' market: la mano visibile del mercato, Milano, Franco Angeli Morgan K., Marsden T., Murdoch J., 2006, Worlds of Food, Oxford: Oxford University Press Mougeot L., 2000, Urban agriculture: definition, presence, potentials and risks, Available at: https://idl‐ bnc.idrc.ca/dspace/.../12/117785.pdf (Accessed: 4th October 2015) Murdoch J., Marsden T., Banks, J., 2000, Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector, In: Economic Geography, 76(2), pp. 107‐125 Raffestin, C., 1980, Pour une geographie du pouvoir, Paris : Litec Raffestin C., 2012, “Space, territory and territoriality”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 30, pp. 121‐141 Sage C., 2003, Social embeddedness and relations of regard: alternative ‘good food’ networks in south‐west Ireland, In: Journal of Rural Studies, 19, pp. 47–60 Saquet M.A., 2012, Il territorio della geografia. Approcci a confronto tra Brasile e Italia, Milano: Franco Angeli Sonnino R. e Marsden T., 2006, Beyond the divide: rethinking relationships between alternative and conventional food networks in Europe, In: Journal of Economic Geography, 6, pp. 181–199 Turco A., 1988, Verso una teoria geografica della complessità, Milano: Unicopli Vanolo, A., 2008, The image of the creative city: Some reflections on urban branding in Turin, In: Cities, 25, 370‐ 382 Watts D., Ilbery B. e Maye D., 2005, Making reconnections in agro‐food geography: alternative systems of food provision, In: Progress in Human Geography, 29(1), pp. 22–40 Wiskerke J., 2009, On Places Lost and Places Regained: Reflections on the Alternative Food Geography and Sustainable Regional Development, International Planning Studies, 14(4), pp. 369‐387

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Franco Fassio, “Cultural events as “complex system” in their territorial relationships: the case study of the Salone Internazionale del Gusto th and Terra Madre”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 566‐573. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

CULTURAL EVENTS AS “COMPLEX SYSTEMS”: THE CASE STUDY OF THE SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL GUSTO AND TERRA MADRE Franco Fassio1

Keywords: flows and networks, cultural and food events, systemic design, environmental impact, “good clean and fair” Abstract: Gastronomic and cultural events or festivals, though of great scope and complexity despite being limited in time, have a significant effect on the level of ‘stress’ of human activities and on the delicate balance between the territory and the community.

Starting from the analysis of the case study of the Salone Internazionale del Gusto and Terra Madre, an international event, based in Turin, for the exhibition and sale of high quality food and wine, the purpose of the paper is to offer some insights about the dynamics triggered by a "system event" in its material and immaterial flows and how the design of concrete actions to make it more sustainable can generate a new system of shared and enduring values among the involved stakeholders.

The methodology used belong to the theoretical framework of the systemic design, which has been integrated with the requirements of a sustainable fair manifestation according to the Slow Food philosophy of the “Good, Clean and Fair”. Stand construction, waste production, energy, packaging, materials for onsite food consumption, the logistics for transporting goods, CO2 emissions, the mobility of persons and goods, water resources are some of the design areas considered for the improvement of the event environmental side. The result for the 2014 edition, was the creation of a system made of more than one hundred of concrete actions, which have significantly reduced the environmental impact of the event, and have increased its social, cultural and economic value, thanks to a active participation of more than 60 stakeholders too. This new system beyond reducing the environmental impact of the event, favoured the creation of a territorial network of relationships that become a sounding of its contents and keep them live once it ends.

1.

Research question and aim of the paper

The boundaries of an event, such those one of a city, change over time and according to the problems that we aim to face, new structures of open relationships are able to change the territorial linkages that have been previously created (Bagnasco, 1986). This assumption, takes on a particular meaning when we face the issue of food‐town and we are dealing with gastronomic events that have a strong educational value and aim to make us reflect on what are our practices and daily food choices. The following paper aims to analyze how the rethinking of some design aspects of an event in order to make it more sustainable from the environmental perspective through the adoption of the Systemic Design method, can change its boundaries, its matter and energy flows creating as a consequence a new system of relationships. The case study analyzed is the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre, promoted by the International Slow Food Association.

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Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Gastronomic Sciences and National Counsellor of the Slow Food Association, f.fassio@unisg.it

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2.

The case study

Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. It coordinates projects that defend local food traditions, protects food communities, preserves food biodiversity and promotes quality artisanal products. Since its beginnings, Slow Food has grown into a global movement involving millions of people, in over one hundred fifty countries, working to ensure everyone has access to good, clean and fair food.

Slow Food believes food is tied to many other aspects of life, including culture, politics, agriculture and the environment. Through food choices people can collectively influence how food is cultivated, produced and distributed, and as a result bring about great change. Salone Internazionale del Gusto and Terra Madre are two of the several events organised by the organisation. They represent, in the food fair field the answer to the homologation determined by a globalized market that penalize the small production of quality. It represents the idea that the safeguard of all cultural and environmental heritages linked to the gastronomy can revitalize the micro‐economical level. Terra Madre is the international meeting of the Slow Food Communities, born to defend the fundamental right to share daily happiness offered by food and as a consequence to promote the collective duty of protecting the heritage of alimentary cultures that allows these pleasures. For five days every two years, the fair pole, puts up about 220,000, visitors in 75,800 squared metre, 125 institutional stands, 1,000 exhibitors, 300 stalls, 4,500 people belonging to the food communities from all the world and also spaces of restoration, sample, rooms for didactic, laboratories of taste and more else.

In 2005, Carlo Petrini, the International President of the Slow Food2 Association states a new definition of food quality with the manifesto of “Good, Clean and Fair” (Petrini, 2005) where he outlines the criteria for a new quality that the food products should fulfil across the whole life cycle: a new holistic vision of the gastronomy that it has been further investigated by the University of Gastronomic Sciences3.

From the combination of the Slow Food manifesto, Good, Clean and Fair, with the principles of Systemic Design, was born the idea of developing a systemic event, with the purpose of associating quality content to a more sustainable “container” and with the ambition to educated the consumer to recognize a new concept of Systemic Quality about food production, distribution and communication.

3.

Methodology: the systemic design approach

Food events can be considered as complex systems for several reasons: the dynamics of their continuous evolution position them at the cross‐roads of the latest phenomena in the internationalization of the cities‐countries system; they create a localized network oriented to territorial development; they provide an opportunity for dialogue with and education of visitors.

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Gastronomy is defined as an in‐depth understanding of the entire web of food production, from agriculture to processing to distribution, the knowledge about the material and immaterial relationship between man and food. th

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Acknowledging these reasons and with the intention of designing an event that will be less wasteful by harmonizing the content and making it conform to its container, the research was moved to adopt the systemic design methodology of investigation.

Systemic Design is a network of interdisciplinary knowledge that takes into account different design areas. It seeks to promote new, sustainable consumption and management of output (i.e. waste), making it usable for other processes and giving it a new economic value. The starting point of systemic design is, therefore, the knowledge of the principles of organization and efficiency that ecosystems have developed to survive for millions of years (Benyus, 1997). Each organism, animal, plant, microorganism or human being is a complex system made up of parts that are themselves smaller living systems, but not the less important for being so. In the living world we have systems within systems. They are related not only as a static configuration of elements, they share common properties and organizational principles created by the interactions between the different parts (Capra; 2002, Capra and Luisi, 2014). The whole is more than the sum of the individual elements (Forrester, 1974; Emery, 1989; Bistagnino, 2011). For this reason, nature does not know the meaning of the word ‘waste’ because each surplus is metabolized by the system, through the dynamics of the five natural kingdoms. By considering the event itself as a complex and living organism the research adopted the principles of systemic design to rethink and to shape the event according the mechanisms of a functioning ecosystem.

4.

The applied research

From 2006 Slow Food, the Piedmont Region and the City of Turin, under the coordination of the University of Gastronomic Sciences and the Polytechnic of Turin, took up a road toward the progressive abatement of the environmental impact of the event in question (at first) with the aim of creating an exportable design model, through the application of the methodology of Systemic Design.

Figure 1. In this image, a part of the Holistic Survey developed for the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre 2006.

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The first steps moved from the analysis of the life cycle of the event “Salone Internazionale del Gusto and Terra Madre 2006” considering the status quo relative to the incoming and outgoing flows of the trade fair system (Figure 1): stand construction, waste production, energy, packaging, materials for onsite food consumption, logistics for transporting the goods, CO2 emissions, the mobility of persons and goods, water resources were considered as the main design scenarios that determine the environmental sustainability of an event.

By the "holistic relief" of the initial state (2006), the project outlined the first scenarios and the first concrete actions. The organizers of the event collect the data to promote a new model of “Systemic Exhibition” which considers all the incoming and outgoing flows of the trade fair system.

Several design experiments considered as intermediate stages of research were developed during the exhibitions of Slow Fish 2007 (Genoa) and Cheese 2007 (Bra), to identify innovative strategies with a direct involvement of the companies/expositors.

For each scenario a technical partner has been identified. Starting from the first edition of the project, we have begun to build a network of collaboration between companies of the territory and others at the national and international level for some specific products or services (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Highlighted in blue, the relationships built among the partner companies of the project in 2008, whereas in grey, the possible increase of the system. In the edition of 2014, the companies involved have become 60.

The choice of partners was based on their actual involvement in the status quo of the system or according to the contribution they could generate for the system. A memorandum of understanding has been signed with each partner to share the path of research to be implemented. Through the development of these partnerships the event was born and has grown as a system characterized by relationships built among the partner companies of the project. Today, we can say that the value of

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these partnerships is more than the sum of each individual one (Fassio 2008b; Fassio and Balbo 2008).

5.

Results

From 2006 to 2012, the environmental sustainability of the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre has grown by over 65% compared to the starting data. In 2012 the project areas considered were: equipment: selection of eco‐materials/ or systemic solution for valorisation; real and virtual communication; waste and by‐product collection and valorisation; eco‐packaging; logistics of goods and people; energy supply and reduction; water management; emission reduction and compensation.

From 2006 we state that an event can be defined an event of quality, only if takes action into the direction of the environmental sustainability.

In the edition of 2014, the project enlarged a wider and more holistic definition of the event sustainability, considering beyond the environmental dimension also the social, sensorial and economical ones, according these definitions.

Social Sustainability: the development and implementation of new ideas (products, services and models) to meet social needs, creating new relationships and partnerships. Social innovation brings new answers to pressing needs that involve processes of social interaction.

Social actions add value to society by increasing the capacity of individual action and community (according to the definition of Social Sustainability in the “Guide to Social Innovation”, European Commission, February 2013).

Sensorial Sustainability: it is determined by all those actions, design choices, which guarantee the functionality of the event and its perception through the five senses. What is being investigated is the attractiveness of the event or the "pleasure" caused by the use and perception of space, determined by factors such as aesthetic as functional, the arrangement of the areas, the choice of materials used, the functionality of the spaces and the 'ergonomics of the instruments, the clarity of communications and their educational potential (reproducibility of the messages in daily life), the presence or absence of "anthropological places" as opposed to increasing development in our cities of "non‐places".

Economical sustainability: is the economic impact generated on the territory by the event and its degree of accessibility for people and companies. It allow to consider the permanent income and work for the livelihood of the people belonging to the territory in which the event takes place and for companies that are involved. Definitely it is a key‐factor in the spread of a new culture of production and consumption that transforms all the actors of the event in "co‐ organizers" (through their choices can determine the sustainability of the event), and in everyday life in "co‐producers" (through their choices may be subject influencing the market both locally and globally).

The quantitative and qualitative factors identified in 2014, beyond determining a new concept of holistic sustainability of a cultural event, will contribute to develop new design strategies for the future editions.

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102 concrete actions have been put in place for the year 2014, thanks to the involvement of more than 60 companies and finally, the project was funded by the Italian Ministry of Environment, since recognized as innovative and bearer of benefits in the territory. New activities and services dedicated to the family, baby pit‐stop for mothers and their children during the age of breastfeeding, special itinerary for deaf people, laboratory based on all senses in order to overpass the linguistic barriers, are some exemplifying actions toward the social sustainability of the event. For example, to increase the sensorial sustainability of the cultural experience, all directional panels of the event are written with the font EasyReading which is a compensatory instrument for readers with the dyslexia; the conferences are translated in 7 languages; we use soundproof and sound insulating materials to improve the general acoustics of the event by preferring those which are of natural origins.

For what concern the economical sustainability, discounts of 20% on the entry price, for those who came with sustainable means of transport or the creation of a series of free events in the City of Turin because everyone has the right to live the event. The whole project was finally explained in a stand of over 200 square meters, where with daily animations we have increased the awareness about the project action and their educational values.

After five editions of the project, the applied research has profoundly changed the event.

Considering matter, energy and emissions, people and territory, we have totally changed our concept of the quality of an event. The projectual content becomes a best practice, a replicable model for the design of other national and international events.

Figure 3. Iconographic schema of the system of the waste collection where are localized the place of collection respecting the logistic of the event, are identify the final destination of each waste and its final valorisation through the generation of a new product.

6.

A focus on the waste scenario

One of the best design and cooperation practices among stakeholders is that one, relative to the waste management project scenario. In 2006 in an equal number of days the event has influenced the waste production of Turin and its suburbs of about 3%. It’s important to consider that the inhabitants of the area are about two millions and the visitor of the event are only one hundred and th

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eighty thousand in 2006. This meant that if a due attention to the production of waste and then to their final use is not paid, the system of waste disposal of Turin with a pair of similar events within a restricted period, would risk to collapse.

A meticulous, constant and ever‐more detailed waste collection, starting in 2006 with about 16,2% of separate waste collection, reaching a decrease of about 59,11% in 2012 with 92% of purity of separated waste. In this activity the role of participant has been crucial. The participants involved in the waste collect, transformed themselves in a co‐organizer because they directly contributes to reach the goal of a good differentiated collect of waste. The amount of waste per capita has decreased from 1.1 kg in 2006 to 0.75 kg in 2012 as well as the associated CO2 moved from 0.47 kg to 0.15 kg. The waste reduction and the increase of their value at the end of life, it is one of the factors that allow the decrease of CO2 emission of a percentage of 60% compared to 2006.

7.

Awards

The combined efforts for reducing the environmental impact of the event, led the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre in 2008 to be mentioned by the Jury of the Prize Biennale Italy for the innovation brought to the "Design of Events" among other 50 events for “the capacity of the event to plan cultural activities for a site or a territory able to realize a direct, cognitive and emotional experience for the visitor”.

In 2009, international experts that were working to the update and second edition of the standard BS 8901 selected the systemic design approach applied to the Slow Food events as a best practice and a case study. From the lesson learned thanks to the experiences and practices adopted during the first two editions, the standard has been integrated with elements regarding the sustainable management of the events according the perspective of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

In 2015 the project has been inserted in the ADI Design Index, the publication of the Italian Association for Industrial Design (ADI), as one of the best Italian design product4.

8.

Conclusions

Cultural events can be sees as the mirror of the continuous stream of changes that characterize the human reality and as a complex system, it is results of the interaction from many variables, that can hardly be inserted in a check list.

At the international level the mainstream approach regard the design of sustainable events is mainly oriented toward the creation of a scientific model, characterized by a monitoring period and then a series of verification experiments, which are designed, as they would be free from internal contradictions. When it is possible it is functional to formulate our model according a codified language. However in many cases, especially when it has to do with the dynamics of human society, this kind of approach is likely to be incomplete.

As Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi state in “Life and Nature, a systemic vision” (2014), “to understand contemporary science is crucial to realize that all scientific theories and models are limited and approximate. The twentieth‐century science has shown repeatedly that ultimately all natural phenomena are interconnected and their basic properties, in fact, derived from relations with other things. So to be able to explain each of them, you need to understand all the others and this, of course, is impossible".

4

http://www.adidesignindex.com/en/ricerca‐per‐l‐impresa/systemic‐event‐design th

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In our case the design of a sustainable event is therefore always been characterized by a series of design choices, valid case by case, with the aspiration of approaching an infinite network of interconnected phenomena. As said by the biochemist Louis Pasteur "Science advances through tentative answers that go down deeper and deeper in the essence of phenomena". This kind of approach even it is not totally complete in its results, has led all the actors involved in the “"system event" to reflect about its sustainability in its lifecycle.

This passage has been able to trigger a process of social innovation, to give people "new eyes" that observing the problem and not sacrificing the characterizing components, are able to optimize the event material and immaterial flows related to the promotion, organization, exhibition and dismantling, adapting them to the local quality of the territory.

The most striking result was to educate, protect and promote a new culture of environmental, social, sensory and economic, applied to the design of cultural events. A culture of project based in brief on the analysis and re‐design of the relationships activated and that can be further activate by the event and on the ability to simplify this message to make it understandable and achievable for the most.

The event will therefore be well designed if the designer will be able to deepen the activated relationships until to imagine a replicable actions and gestures in the daily life of each of us, as to assume also an educational function.

By the attempt of creating more awareness and responsibility, it is thus possible to design actions for an event involving the co‐evolution of a sustainable network of actors who cooperate for a common and shared welfare.

9.

References

Bagnasco, A. 1986. Torino: un profilo sociologico, Einaudi, Torino.

Benyus, J. 1997. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York: William Morrow.

Bistagnino, L. 2011. Systemic design. Designing the productive and environmental sustainability, Ed.Slow Food Editore, Bra. Capra, F. 2002. The Hidden Connection: a Science for Sustainable Living, Random House, New York.

Capra, F. and Luisi, L. 2014. The Systems Views of Life, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Emery, F.E. 1989. La teoria dei sistemi, Franco Angeli, Milano.

Fassio, F. 2008a. Un Nuovo Modello di Evento a Ridotto Impatto Ambientale. PhD dissertation, Politecnico di Torino.

Fassio, F. 2008b. Un modello esportabile di manifestazione fieristica, Slow Food n°35, pag.46‐51, Torino.

Fassio, F., Balbo A. 2008. Systemic Design. Salone del Gusto e Terra Madre 2008. Una Nuova Cultura Progettuale, Quaderni di Design, Time&Mind Press, Torino.

Forrester, J. W. 1974. Principi dei sistemi, ETAS Libri Milano.

Petrini, C. 2005, Buono, pulito e giusto,Gli struzzi Einaudi, Torino.

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Michael Andrew Robinson Clark, Jason Gilliland, “Mapping and analyzing the connections and supply chains of an Alternative Food th Network in London, Canada”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 574‐590. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

MAPPING AND ANALYZING THE NETWORKS AND SUPPLY CHAINS FEEDING A FOOD DISTRICT IN LONDON, CANADA Michael A. R. Clark1, Jason Gilliland2

Keywords: Foodshed, Food Supply Chain, Local Food, Network Analysis, Small Food Businesses Abstract: In a world where the food we eat is often grown half way around the world, what does it mean when a vendor at the neighbourhood farmers’ market says that they use local food? Small businesses are important actors in the food industry, since they are small enough to quickly respond to changing consumer demands and market trends. However, often in order to meet customer demands, they need to challenge and work around the conventional system of food provision.

Primary data was gathered using semi‐structured interviews with small food business owners.

Foodshed analysis was used to describe and analyse the alternative and conventional food supply chains and networks of a food district in a midsized Canadian city. The small businesses interviewed source food from a large number of local farmers; however, the foodshed is largely dominated by the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. A limited number of regional distributors provide small businesses with access to locally grown food and an alternative to the produce terminal. This research reveals the distances and suppliers to which the supply chain extends, as well as complex ways in which supply chains of different businesses overlap. The diverse, interconnected and relational nature of the food system has important implications for food and local economic development policies for both urban and rural regions.

1.

Introduction

Local food has experienced a resurgence in recent years with the proliferation of farmers’ markets and artisanal food producers who are competing in an industry dominated by large multinational agri‐businesses and retailers. Small businesses are important actors, since they are small enough to quickly respond to changing consumer demands and market trends (Donald 2008). In order to meet these customer demands, however, small businesses often need to challenge and work around the conventional food system. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the food supply chains of a local food district in London, Ontario, a midsized Canadian city. The paper begins with a review of the literature on conventional and alternative food networks, and the analysis of foodsheds, food networks and supply chains, which provides the basis for our study objectives.

Following an outline of the study area and methods, results of our analyses are presented and a discussion of the findings. The diverse interconnected and relational nature of the food system has important implications for the development of food and local economic development policy for both urban and rural regions.

1 2

Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, mclar4@uwo.ca Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, jgillila@uwo.ca

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2.

Review of Literature

2.1.1 Globalization of Food Systems The ‘conventional’ food system today is characterised by large scale, industrial farming and agricultural practices, complex global supply chains dominated by a few multinational agri‐business companies and retailers (Hendrickson & Heffernan 2002; Winter 2003). As seed and chemical companies and food retailers have gained oligopolistic power in the food supply chain, they have used this power to force shrinking margins on agricultural producers (Hendrickson & Heffernan 2002). This pressure has led producers to increase production in order to compensate for shrinking margins as farmers were encouraged to ‘get big or get out’. Consolidation has occurred at all stages of the supply chain as the number of small and midsized farms continue to decline (Statistics Canada 2012), and local abattoirs and other small scale producers are going out of business or being bought up (Carter‐Whitney 2008). Large agri‐businesses and retailers are based on complex, globalised distribution systems which are inaccessible for small and medium sized farmers and producers.

2.1.2 Local / Alternative Food Systems The term alternative food networks is problematic since it is defined by what they are not and “tend[s] to be employed as a universal term, to denote food systems that are somehow different from the mainstream” (Tregear 2011, p.423). This is problematic since it creates an ambiguous term which is then applied to a wide range of food systems, with a wide range of objectives, including: reducing the number of intermediaries by encouraging direct farmer‐consumer relationships, organic or ecologically grown food, food grown and consumed locally, food grown in socially just ways, or food grown in specific localities using traditional farming techniques. Each of these food systems have different values, priorities and motivations that underpin them, and as a result have very different impacts and outcomes. Often these food systems are positioned along three dimensions of alternativeness: the qualities of the food (Goodman 2004), the characteristics of the networks through which the food moves (Renting et al. 2003; Watts et al. 2005) and the locality where the food was produced.

Food systems based on providing high quality food, such as the organic industry, have been criticised for being susceptible to being co‐opted by the industrial food system (Watts et al. 2005). In response a greater focus developing stronger networks through which food is transported has been proposed as a ‘stronger’ alternative which can resist being co‐opted. These networks are typically exemplified by bringing farmers and consumers closer together with fewer intermediaries (Feenstra 1997). These direct relationships are argued to allow, among other things, for beneficial social relationships and trust to develop between consumers and farmers, and improved economic viability of farming and small food businesses (Holloway & Kneafsey 2000; Jarosz 2008; Sadler et al. 2013). Value based supply chains and short food supply chains are two more concepts which have been proposed to differ from conventional supply chains based on a number of dimensions, including degree of cooperation, trust, transparency, and a commitment to the welfare of all participants in the supply chain (Marsden et al. 2000; Renting et al. 2003; Sevenson & Pirog 2008; Bloom & Hinrichs 2010). It is suggested that if relationships and networks are based upon these values they will be harder to co‐ opt and will be able to drive significant change and retain their alternativeness.

The ‘local’ has long been a scale that was considered to challenge the conventional food system by bringing farmers and consumers together and providing social, economic and environmental benefits th

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(Feenstra 1997). However, the tendency to romanticize the local or use it in an exclusionary and discriminatory way has been criticized since it is false to assume that any scale is by default more socially, environmentally or economically just (Hinrichs 2003; DuPuis & Goodman 2005; Born & Purcell 2006). The push towards localization may even exacerbate local and regional inequalities between localities (DuPuis & Goodman 2005; Feagan 2007; Tregear 2011).

The universal criticism of these attempts to define the ‘alternative’ is that there is a tendency to dichotomize the food system into two opposing options, an alternative and a conventional system.

Instead, there is a need to better understand the complexities of the food system and the ways in which the alternative and conventional overlap and intertwine (Sonnino & Marsden 2006; Bloom & Hinrichs 2010; Tregear 2011).

2.1.3 Analysing Foodsheds, Networks and Supply Chains The concept of a foodshed was first proposed by Walter Hedden in his book How Great Cities are Fed (1929). Hedden first conceived of the term foodshed while considering where all the food eaten in New York City came from. A key component was the network of terminal markets which aggregated and moved food around the continent. It was not until Author Gertz (1991) reintroduced the concept to describe regional food systems that the term became commonly used. Since then, foodshed analysis has tended to: (1) determine the potential for supplying an urban area from the local foodshed by measuring net consumption and production (Peters et al. 2008; Kremer & DeLiberty 2011); (2) study large scale international trade (Billen et al. 2011); or (3) focus exclusively on the local food system (Kremer & DeLiberty 2011). It is argued here that foodshed analysis techniques which incorporate spatial analysis and network analysis can offer valuable insights into how the current alternative and conventional food systems interact, as well as showing the potential for growing the alternative.

While foodshed analysis inherently implies a spatial component there are parallels with studies of food supply chains and food networks. Ilbery and Maye (2005) note the interaction between local and global supply chains in their investigation of specialist livestock products. Ter Wal and Boschma (2008) argue for the potential of social network analysis to contribute to economic geography and gain a better understanding of clusters, regions and formal networks. Consequently, social network analysis has recently been applied to studies of food systems where there is an easily defined and contained population of actors (Chiffoleau & Touzard 2013; Christensen & O’Sullivan 2015). These types of networks, however, are limited in their applicability, since most food systems are not closed and are always influenced by outside actors. Network analysis and supply chain analysis have been criticised for solely focussing on either horizontal or vertical connections respectively, while ignoring the other (Lazzarini et al. 2008). This paper will use foodshed analysis combining spatial and network analysis of alternative and conventional supply chains used by small businesses.

2.2

Relevance and Objectives

2.2.1 Objectives The objective of this study is to demonstrate the use of foodshed analysis techniques to investigate the supply chains and networks used by small businesses in a food district. This aims to incorporate

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the experiences of small food business owners, typically a difficult to access group of actors, into a fuller understanding of the open and diverse food systems used by businesses.

Analysis will focus on a case study of a food district in the city of London, Canada to determine where the food comes from that is used by small businesses and how networks vary between businesses within the food district. Businesses in the food district exhibit varying degrees of ‘alternativeness’, however they are all independently owned, small businesses which differentiate themselves by offering ‘quality food’.

2.2.2 Impact and Relevance It is argued that the foodshed analysis techniques described below are valuable for academics, planners, and policy makers to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges in growing local food networks. This has important implications for local economic development initiatives in both urban and rural contexts. In particular, these techniques can provide new methods of evaluating policy changes and local economic development initiatives in the food system.

Additionally, the case study provides further evidence of the misconception of distinct ‘local’ or ‘alternative’ food systems, as well as the need to think regionally, across local and regional political boundaries when considering the implications of food system policies and initiatives.

3.

Study Area & Background

3.1.1 City of London, Canada in South Western Ontario (SWO) This study was conducted in London, Ontario, a mid‐sized Canadian city (population 366,151 in 2011), located approximately halfway between the major urban centres of Toronto and Detroit.

London is also the largest municipality in the agriculturally fertile SWO region. The region’s farms produce $6.1 billion of farm outputs, which accounts for over half of Ontario’s farm outputs, and including related industries, represents 11.4% of Ontario’s GDP (Econometric Research Limited et al.

2015). The food and beverage manufacturing sector in the is comprised of large multi‐national firms such as Cargill Canada, McCormick Canada, Labatt Breweries of Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, among others (Ontario Food Cluster 2015). Prominence of the food sector has increased recently with the decline of the North American auto manufacturing sector.

Agriculture in the SWO region is heavily focused on the global commodity crops of Corn, Soybeans and Wheat. Table 1 shows the breakdown of major crops in the region. Corn, soybeans and wheat account for 80% of total agricultural land. In contrast, field vegetables account for 2% of SWO’s agricultural land, while fruits, berries and nuts account for just 0.4% (Econometric Research Limited & Harry Cummings & Associates 2014). Despite all this food production, Ontario is a net food importer. The only crops that Ontario is a net exporter of are Grain Products and Oilseeds, while Ontario net imports $1.0B worth of vegetables (Econometric Research Limited et al. 2015).

A discussion of the SWO food system is not complete without mentioning the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto. The food terminal brings together farmers, brokers, importers, exporters, restaurants, institutions and other buyers to exchange food. Collectively, the buyers at the food terminal are the largest buyer of Ontario produce in the province, and ranked in the top four terminal markets in North America with 2 billion pounds of produce distributed annually (Ontario Food Terminal Board 2015). The food terminal fulfils an essential role for the produce industry, making it easy and

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convenient for sellers and purchasers to meet in the largest urban centre in the country. Many products grown in SWO are shipped to the terminal, sold there, and then shipped back to the region to be consumed. In this context the local food movement in the region has largely focussed on cutting out that step of distribution system by either sourcing directly from farmers or through local distributors.

Table 1. Selected crops produced in SWO. Source: (Econometric Research Limited & Harry Cummings & Associates 2014) Crop

Hectares

% of SWO Agricultural Land

% of Ontario’s Production

Soybeans

608,793

32.9%

61.0%

Total Corn

544,023

29.4%

58.3%

Total Wheat

327,807

17.7%

66.5%

Total field vegetables

36,254

2.0%

69.1%

Total area of fruits, berries and nuts

6,570

0.4%

30.8%

3.1.2 The Old East Village Food District

Figure 1: Food businesses in The Old East Village Food District, by business type

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The Old East Village is an inner city neighbourhood located immediately to the east of downtown London (see Figure 1). Like many North American inner city neighbourhoods it underwent a period of decline in the 1980s and 1990s, due in part to the growth of the suburbs and the decline of the North American manufacturing sector. This left the neighbourhood suffering from neglect with a lack of investment in properties and a struggling businesses district. The Old East Village and Downtown London were both identified as food deserts due to their low socio‐economic status and lack of access to healthy and affordable food (Larsen & Gilliland 2008). The food desert began its rebirth as a food district in 2006 with the opening of the Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market at the Western Fair (Larsen & Gilliland 2009). The market itself brought approximately 47 new food vendors into the neighbourhood. The market not only provided access to healthy and affordable food to the neighbourhood, but also created opportunities for food businesses to grow and develop and is now a regional attraction which stimulates the local economy (Sadler et al. 2013). Since the market opened, 5 food businesses from the market have expanded to open stores and restaurants in the neighbourhood. In addition, 6 other new food businesses have opened or relocated to the Old East Village (see Table 2 for a summary of the food businesses located in the Old East Village Food District).

Table 2. Summary of businesses located in the Old East Village Food District by type of business, and by location inside or outside the farmers’ market Number of…

Inside Farmers’ Market Outside Farmers’ Market

Total

Produce Retailers

10

3

13

Meat / Dairy Retailers

11

3

14

Prepared Food Retailers

18

5

23

Restaurants and Cafes

8

17

25

Total

47

28

75

As a result of this growth, the Old East Village Business Improvement Area (OEVBIA) has identified food as an economic driver for the local economy. Initiatives are under way to encourage the continued growth of food businesses. This research project aims to assist these initiatives by helping to understand the regional food system which the food district is linked to, as well as the opportunities and challenges facing small businesses in the food industry.

4.

Methods

This study used semi‐structured interviews with small business owners located in the Old East Village food district to develop a fuller understanding of the food district’s foodshed.

4.1

Recruitment strategy

Interview participants were recruited using emails, phone calls and in‐person visits to local food businesses. As part of a larger research project, businesses and farmers across SWO were sent emails which asked if they would fill out a survey and if they would be willing to participate in interviews for the research project. Businesses located in the food district who indicated a willingness to participate were approached in person or contacted via phone to schedule an interview. In addition, businesses

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located in the food district who had not replied via email were contacted and asked if they would participate in an interview. The relationships identified by each interviewee helped identify additional key businesses in the food district. These businesses were then contacted to participate in an interview and further expand the map of the network. Interviews continued until there was a strong representation of different types of food businesses in the food district including: raw food retailers (produce, meat and dairy), prepared food retailers (bakeries), and restaurants and cafes.

In total, 24 food district businesses were approached to be interviewed. Interviews were held with 21 businesses and three declined to be interviewed due to time constraints. Table 3 below provides some basic descriptive features of the interviewee businesses.

Table 3. Description of businesses interviewed by business type, business age and primary business location in the food district

By Primary Business Type # Interviewed

By Business Age # Interviewed

By Primary Location

Raw Food Retailer

Prepared Food Retailer

Restaurant / Café

8

7

6

0‐5 Years

5‐10 Years

11+ Years

7

9

5

Inside Farmers’ Market

Outside Farmers’ Market

12

9

# Interviewed

By Market Niche

Artisanal / Higher Quality

Local

Healthy

21

10

5

# Interviewed

4.2

Semi‐structured interviews

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with owners of small food businesses based on a series of open‐ended questions. The interviews were comprised of two main sections, the first discussed the history, market niche and experience of the business in the food industry, and the second section involved describing the supply chains and partnerships used by the business. This paper focuses on the second section of the interview.

The aim of the interviews was to discover all supply relationships used by businesses, including local and non‐local, and alternative and conventional. To ensure this, the terms ‘local’ and ‘alternative’ were avoided during interviews. Instead, the research project was described to interviewees as an investigation of supply chains used by small businesses. Interviewees were asked to identify all food supply, partnership and other relationships used by their business. Prompting questions were used to ask how relationships were developed, or why a particular supplier was chosen. When a distributor was identified, interviewees were asked if they knew where distributors sourced the food they supplied to the interviewee. If part of a network was unclear then follow up interviews were conducted with interviewees to clarify the names, locations, or the type of relationship with a supplier. In addition, interviewees were asked to identify businesses that they supplied food products to, and other businesses with whom they had partnered or turned to for advice.

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4.3

Methods of Data Analysis

4.3.1 Foodshed Analysis and Visualization Using the transcripts of each interview a list of suppliers (including where possible the suppliers of the suppliers), partners and customers were created for each business. These relationships were inputted into the social network analysis software NodeXL (Smith et al. 2010). Additional descriptive information for each relationship (“edge”) was recorded, including: the type of relationship (partnership or supply) and, in the case of a supply relationship, the types of food products supplied and the importance and status of the relationship to the interviewee. In this way the network recorded both the horizontal ties between like‐firms and vertical ties between producers and businesses at different stages of the supply chain (Lazzarini et al. 2008). Additional information for each business (“node”) was also added, including: type of business, business age, address and coordinates of their primary location.

Descriptive statistics for businesses in the network were calculated including the numbers and types of suppliers and customers (“out‐degree”) as well as the number of farmers and distributors supplying a business. Visualizations are used to depict the network and allow for visual analysis of the organisations of the relationships. Visualizations of the network were also used to identify additional businesses that could be interviewed, as well as identify clusters or groups of businesses within the network.

4.3.2 Spatial Analysis and Mapping The nodes and edges from the network were also imported into a Geographic Information System (ArcGIS 10.3, ESRI) and mapped to provide a clearer understanding of geographic clusters, groups and gaps in the network. In addition, the length of the edges was calculated to provide a proximate measure of the “food miles” that food travelled through the supply chain to reach a business or consumer.

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5.

Analysis and Results

5.1

Supply Chain and Network Analysis

Figure 2. Food supply chain connections to the Old East Village Food District

The 21 businesses interviewed collectively identified 303 supply chain relationships with 221 businesses, farmers, businesses and locations (see Figure 2). The food network visualization was created in NodeXL (Smith et al. 2010) and groups connected points together, and pushes unrelated ones apart. Colours of the points relate to the region in which the business is located. The symbols refer to the different primary food system activities that a business was engaged in, and the darkness and thickness of the lines indicate the importance of the relationship. Based on the interviewees description of their supply relationships, the most important or critical relationship(s) were coded.

Figure 2 illustrates the differences in information availability and transparency of different food supply chains. In a perfectly transparent food system all supply chains would originate on a farm (indicated by arrows pointing out from a circle). However, it is the nature of our food system that businesses need year round consistent supply and rely on distributors who can import food from all over the world. In these supply chains, typically the only information about the food that is passed on to the consumer is the country or state of origin of the food. Supply chains that originate in a diamond or square, or any other shape indicate an instance where the interviewee only knew the distributor, processor or other type of business which directly supplied them with the food.

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Table 4. Descriptive statistics of supply chain relationships for interviewees All Direct Suppliers

All (n=21)

Raw Food Retailer Prepared Food Retailer Restaurant / Café (n=8) (n=7) (n=6)

Mean # of Direct Suppliers

10

14

7

8

Median # of Direct Suppliers

8

12

7

8

Minimum # of Direct Suppliers

2

3

2

5

Maximum # of Direct Suppliers

27

27

11

12

4

7

3

2

33%

46%

30%

20%

5

1

3

1

Mean # of Direct Distributors

3

4

2

4

Distributors as % of Suppliers

39%

34%

39%

45%

1

0

1

0

Direct Farm Suppliers Mean # of Direct Farmer Suppliers Farmers as % of Suppliers Businesses with No Farm Suppliers Direct Distributor Suppliers

Businesses with No Distributors

On average, businesses had 10 direct suppliers, 4 of which were farmers and 3 were distributors (see Table 4). In addition, 5 businesses interviewed did not source directly from any farms. Raw food retailers had the highest average number of suppliers (14), and one raw food retailer had the maximum number of suppliers (27) of any interviewee. These raw food retailers also had the highest average number of direct farm supplier relationships (7), and on average, farmers represented the largest percentage of their suppliers (46%). Raw food retailers also tied for the highest average number of distributors with restaurants and cafes (4). On average, businesses in the categories of restaurants and cafes and prepared food retailers had fewer suppliers, and also proportionally worked with more distributors and fewer farmers. Only 20% of the suppliers listed by interviewees from restaurants and cafes’ were farmers, and 45% were distributors.

Table 5. Numbers of ‘important’ supplier relationships for interviewees with different types of suppliers Number of ‘important’…

All (n=21)

Raw Food Retailer Prepared Food Retailer (n=8) (n=7)

Restaurant / Café (n=6)

Farm Suppliers

8

5

3

0

Distributors

25

11

4

9

Others (processors, retailers, etc.)

11

3

4

4

Total Important Suppliers

44

19

11

13

Interviewees tended to identify their most important relationships by either their largest food expense, most frequent delivery, or oldest relationship. Typically these relationships are the first ones that were mentioned, and only after prompting questions about other products were other relationships revealed. Distributors were much more frequently identified as important suppliers than farmers, and this was true across all business types (see Table 5). Food retailers identified 5 important farmers that they work closely with, however they also work with a large number of

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distributors (11). Restaurants and cafes did not identify any farmers that were important suppliers and instead relied on 9 distributors.

5.2

Spatial Analysis

The businesses and relationships identified in the interviews were mapped and analysed using ArcGIS. If a business had multiple locations, then the primary location typically where production occurs, was used for the map. This spatial analysis deals only with the inter‐firm relationships between two businesses, whereas the intra‐firm supply chains between a business’ multiple locations are not considered.

Figure 3 depicts the supply chains that bring food to the Old East Village Food District in London, Ontario. As is expected, many of the businesses are located nearby in London and surrounding Middlesex County. A large number of farms suppling businesses are located in the counties immediately adjacent to Middlesex, including Elgin (South), Oxford (East), Huron and Perth (North).

There is relatively little food from counties southwest of London (Lambton, Chatham‐Kent, and Essex). A large number of distributors from the west end of Toronto (Central Ontario) were identified near the Ontario Food Terminal, with others further north near the airport and the #401 highway.

About halfway between London and Toronto, distributors and food processors and other businesses from the cities of Kitchener‐Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph (Central Ontario) had numerous connections to businesses in the food district. Businesses in the Old East Village Food District source food from as far away as California, South America and Europe.

Table 6 indicates where suppliers of the businesses interviewed were located. Among all interviewees, 22% of suppliers were other businesses located in the Food District, ranging from a high of 37% for restaurants/cafés to a low of 14% for raw food retailers. Further, 46% of direct suppliers were located within London‐Middlesex, another 28% were from the rest of SWO, and 22% from the Central Ontario region around Toronto. This indicates where the businesses providing the food are located, not necessarily where the food itself was grown or raised, since many suppliers are distributors and processors.

Table 7 indicates the differences in the businesses in the three major regions which were represented in the network, highlighting the role that each region plays in the food network. A total of 74.5% of the businesses identified in the interviewee’s supply network from surrounding London‐ Middlesex (LM) were ‘other’ food businesses such as small food processors, retailers and restaurants. Nevertheless, a considerable proportion of suppliers from LM were farmers (21.4%).

Businesses identified in the rest of SWO (outside LM) were primarily farmers (67.7%), with a quarter being other food businesses. In contrast, 50% of businesses identified in the Central Ontario region (home to the Ontario Food Terminal) were distributors, and another third were processors.

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Figure 3. Food supply chains in South Western Ontario of businesses in the Old East Village Food District

Table 6. Locations of direct suppliers, by interviewee business type

All Interviewees

Raw Food Retailer Prepared Food Retailer

Restaurant / Café

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Old East Village Food District

46

22%

15

14%

13

27%

18

37%

London‐Middlesex

95

46%

43

40%

21

43%

31

63%

South Western Ontario

58

28%

39

36%

14

29%

5

10%

Central Ontario

47

23%

24

22%

12

24%

11

22%

Eastern Ontario

1

0%

0

0%

1

2%

0

0%

Canada

2

1%

0

0%

0

0%

2

4%

Table 7. Types of businesses in the supply network, by selected regions

Farm

Distributor

Other Business

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

London‐Middlesex

21

21.4%

4

4.1%

73

74.5%

98

100

South Western Ontario

42

67.7%

5

8.1%

15

24.2%

62

100

Central Ontario

6

12.5%

24

50.0%

18

37.5%

48

100

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Table 8. Average distance (KMs) between an interviewee and direct farms suppliers

All Interviewees

Food Retailer

Prepared Food Retailer

Restaurant / Café

Mean

48

47

45

66

Median

35

33

44

41

Min

3

3

10

28

Max

170

170

102

153

Most of the farms identified as suppliers were located in or immediately around the City of London.

On average, direct farm suppliers were located only 48km away from the businesses interviewed, while the median distance was 35km (Table 8). The furthest direct farm supplier was 170km from the interviewees; however, 65% of direct farm suppliers were within 50km of the interviewee.

6.

Discussion

The discussion section will first outline some of the key characteristics of the food district, and then follow with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology.

6.1

Breaking Assumptions of Food Systems

6.1.1 Availability of Local Food London is located in South Western Ontario, a region which specializes in the production of the global cash crops of corn, soybeans and wheat; however, there is also produce, fruit and meat that is grown/raised in the region. The 21 interviewees in this study identified 63 farms from Middlesex County and South Western Ontario which supplied food to their businesses in the Old East Village Food District, either directly or through a distributor. This demonstrates that small food businesses can be leaders in establishing direct or short food supply chains between local farmers and businesses. Nearly half (10) of the interviewees mentioned that they offer local food as a selling feature of their business. Businesses had different definitions of local; however, the longest direct farm relationship was only 170km, which is consistent with boundary of the ‘100 mile diet’, while 65% of direct farm relationships were within 50km of the business.

6.1.2 Role of Distributors Interviewees identified a surprisingly large number of food distributors. Aside from the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto, the most commonly used distributors only supplied a maximum of 3 of the businesses interviewed (14%). The food industry is highly competitive and a total of 24 different distributors were identified. These ranged in business size and coverage area from London‐based businesses that only served the city to Canada‐wide distributors. Some distributors specialize in specific products such as grains and spices, while others offer a wide range of products.

Large distributors were typically located in the Greater Toronto Area, possibly with a regional office in London or nearby. These distributors were not feasible for many businesses since the minimum order size was too high for the size of the businesses interviewed. In addition, very little information about the food provenance, such as where and how it was produced was provided. In contrast, a th

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number of the smaller local distributors located in or around London specialised in offering local or organic food sourced directly from farmers. The counties South West of London account for 30% of Ontario’s field vegetable agricultural land, however only a few farms were identified as suppliers.

This may be partially explained by a lack of established distributors in the region. The only two distributors in the region are a food retailer who has recently expanded to undertake some small scale distribution and a specialty food distributor. The term ‘distributor’ is often given a negative connotation as a middleman that increases the price consumers pay for food, however they also provide a very valuable service. This is seen in the recent trend calling for regional food hubs to help aggregate and distribute local food (Blay‐Palmer et al. 2013).

6.1.3 Horizontal Linkages Many of the businesses interviewed worked with neighbouring businesses in the Food District, often selling each other’s products, or purchasing together. However, many others worked more closely with businesses in other non‐geographic ‘clusters’ such as industry specific networks, or political / social / environmental networks and ethnic communities. The informal nature of the cluster enabled new businesses to enter the food district and establish their own support networks, rather than having to comply with existing hierarchies.

6.2

Value of Methodology

6.2.1 Foodshed Analysis This research used interviews with business owners to map the foodshed, including the supply chains and partnerships, of businesses in a food district. This approach provides a number of benefits to studying food districts and developing public policy to support local food systems. It allows for the identification of existing successful supply chains as well as gaps in the distribution system that limit businesses from sourcing local food.

The food system offers challenges for social network analysis, since it is not a closed system, and it is therefore not possible for researchers to interview every business in a food network. This study included interviews with a sample of businesses in a food district; however, even if all businesses within the food district were interviewed, the district boundary is irrelevant to the businesses when they are determining who to work with. This limitation in the use of social network analysis illustrates the fact that food systems cannot be assumed to be constrained or limited by municipal, regional or provincial political boundaries. In today’s globalised world, food from all over the world is consumed all over the world. Despite all of the local supply connections identified, the majority of food consumed in the food district, especially in the winter, is likely produced in California and South America and brought to Canada via distributors through the Ontario Food Terminal.

6.2.2 Semi‐Structured Interviews Using interviews to build the networks allows for a rich understanding of the importance and strength of each relationship. The perspectives of small business owners are often neglected in food system research since they have limited time to participate in research studies. Interviews were used instead of surveys since it was found that surveys were often ignored or only partially completed.

Interviews require active face‐to‐face recruitment and the building of mutual trust between the th

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interviewer and the interviewee that proprietary supplier information will remain confidential. Using interviews was useful for prompting interviewees to list all of their suppliers for all the food products they use, rather than just the largest ones. Due to the complexity of our global food system, many businesses only knew their direct suppliers and did not know where exactly the food was grown.

Interviews allow not only for the identification of suppliers, but also for understanding when and why other suppliers are not mentioned.

7.

Conclusions and Areas of Further Study

It is recommended that the foodshed analysis techniques used in this study are incorporated into more food system research. This can be of great benefit to policy makers and planners when considering policy changes and investments in infrastructure. Small businesses need to be recognised as important actors in ‘alternative’ and ‘local’ food systems since they are well positioned to take advantage of new and niche opportunities which large agri‐food businesses cannot respond to. The research shows that the regional implication of local food policy needs to be considered, since the food system crosses local, regional and even international boundaries.

Further research using foodshed, network and supply chain analysis is needed to study the evolution of a food system over a period of time, to provide valuable insight into how food systems grow, develop and adapt to policy and other changes. Foodshed analysis could also be used to compare different communities within a food system. This study focussed on small food retailer and processors; however, a similar study with farmers would improve the understanding of the other side of the food system and the opportunities and challenges for supplying food to the food district.

8.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by two grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the business owners interviewed for this study.

9.

References

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Salvatore Pinna, “Agricultural landscape protection and organic farming ethics: the role of Alternative Food Networks in spatial planning. A th case study from Spain”, In: Localizing urban food strategies. Farming cities and performing rurality. 7 International Aesop Sustainable Food Planning Conference Proceedings, Torino, 7‐9 October 2015, edited by Giuseppe Cinà and Egidio Dansero, Torino, Politecnico di Torino, 2015, pp 591‐603. ISBN 978‐88‐8202‐060‐6

AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE PROTECTION AND ORGANIC FARMING ETHICS: THE ROLE OF ALTERNATIVE FOOD NETWORKS IN SPATIAL PLANNING. A CASE STUDY FROM SPAIN Salvatore Pinna1

Keywords: AFNs, landscape preservation, spatial planning, quality of food, Spain Abstract: Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) represent a change in food production and consumption practices. Their importance has increased among consumers wishing healthier nutrition, farmers’ support, and sustainable agriculture. Drawing upon the concept of landscape as expressed in the European Landscape Convention, the paper aims to study if, and to what extent, ethics of organic farmers being part of AFNs could be used as theoretical framework to boost spatial planning for agricultural landscape conservation. The paper analyses the case study of the Soto del Grillo Agro‐ ecological Park in Spain. In‐depth interviews have been used in order to get spontaneous and complete information by farmers. In order to schematise the information, the theoretical categories described by Morris & Kirwan (2011) were considered: i) understanding relationships between production methods and ecological benefits, ii) realising methods, and iii) utilising the information provided by the previous dimensions to communicate with customers. Texts and images of farms websites have also been analysed, in order to see how traditional landscapes questions and ecological values such as biodiversity are associated with food quality. Results are discussed in the light of the park regulation and future development projects, especially focusing on the connection between food, territory and traditional landscape, in order to see whether the driving forces highlighted by farmers are taken into account in the practice. This relationship could open a new season in spatial planning processes, taking into account cultural and social aspects of food production and consumption, encouraging sustainable tourism and reinforcing the relationship between rural and urban spaces.

1.

Introduction

This paper aims to discuss the role of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as example of traditional agricultural landscapes preservation through multifunctional agriculture. In fact, since the establishment of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), cultural and historical values have been included in the notion of landscape, along with the scope of its sustainable exploitation instead of a mere conservation. Europe has a big tradition in agricultural production, and today almost the half of European land is dedicated to food production (Eurostat, 2010). For this reason, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has always been one of the most supported policies, and now it absorbs the 45% of the total European budget (European Union, 2012). The CAP has been changing since its establishment in the Sixties, passing from being a simple support to production to concern environmental issues with the Fischler reform in 2003. The new CAP 2014‐2020 includes new environmental measures and food chains themes (European Union, 2015).

In the paper of Lefebvre et al. (2014), some reflections on the landscape management scales and the role of the CAP are presented. The authors identify three landscape governance scales: i) the farm level, where farmers’ decisions shape the single parcels; ii) the landscape level, where landscapes recognisable for their homogeneous characteristics results from the aggregation of parcels; and iii)

1

Università degli studi di Cagliari, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Architettura (DICAAR), pinna.salvatore@unica.it

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the global level, i.e. the whole EU landscape. Lefebvre and colleagues argue that the CAP until now has been targeted to the first level. Drawing on these reflections, the paper aims to show how spatial planning for multifunctional agriculture ‐in particular through rural parks‐ can coordinate farms actions in order to get results at the landscape level. Socio‐economic concepts of ecological, spatial, and social embeddedness (Penker, 2006) are useful instruments and fundamental behaviours in farms activities in order to create effective synergies between land use management and economic activity of food chains.

After a brief literature review, the paper presents the case study description and the methodology used for the analysis of in‐depth interviews and websites. Then, results are presented and discussed.

Finally, some conclusions and for future research aims, are exposed.

2.

Literature review

Scientific research about Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) has started in the late Nineties, with the scope of understanding the development of “newly emerging networks of producers, consumers, and other actors that embody alternatives to the more standardised industrial mode of food supply” (Renting, et al., 2003, p. 394). Until now, a unique and broadly accepted definition does not exists, and ‘AFNs’ is used as an umbrella term (Forssell & Lankoski, 2015) comprising different types of production, distribution, selling, and even consumption methods (Sánchez Hernández, 2009).

Notwithstanding, some common characteristics have been well described (Forssell & Lankoski, 2015).

AFNs have been studied according to different schools of thought (Tregear, 2011): i) political economy. These studies are based on Marxism theories in order to see how AFNs develop and change under economy and politics influence. This approach has highlighted many problematics regarding social injustice and inequality within AFNs; ii) rural sociology, which describe AFNs contribution to the establishment of social values in food networks, contrasting the capitalist market de‐humanisation. Micro‐level focus and sociological approach are typical of this field; iii) modes of governance and Actor‐Network Theory. Here, the focus is on vast geographical areas (regions or even countries), with the scope of describing AFNs relationships with regulations and institutions.

However, it has been only in recent times that AFNs role in biodiversity conservation has been recognised (Brunori & Di Iacovo, 2014), focusing for example on the interest in conserving traditional and local varieties that have been abandoned by conventional agriculture (Simoncini, 2015). Thus, their potential influence on landscape preservation remains today an underexplored field.

3.

The Soto del Grillo agro‐ecological park in Rivas‐Vaciamadrid

The Soto del Grillo Agro‐ecological Park (in Spanish: Parque Agroecológico Soto del Grillo) is located within the Community of Madrid, Spain. Its territory falls under the zone D of the South East Regional Park (a protected space established in 1994), dedicated to the regulated exploitation of natural resources (Romea Rodriguez, 2013). Established in 2013, the Park aims to promote fresh, local and seasonal food consumption, boost new jobs position, and improve short food supply chains, in accordance to sustainable development and to the conservation of typical landscape and natural resources (Ayuntamiento de Rivas Vaciamadrid, 2015). It extends for 85 ha, which have been divided into five zones: a) environmental protection; b) agricultural production; c) other agricultural uses; d) formation and community gardens, and e) equipment and services. At the park borders, some interventions for environmental protection and biodiversity improvement have been realised: reforestation, riparian forest, and delimitation of farms with live fences. The b) zone is partitioned

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into 17 parcels, which are managed by farmers through a scoring based on different parameters provided that they enrol in the register of organic certification: i) project developer skills (experience and formation); ii) innovative aspects of the production process; iii) marketing strategies (distribution channels and promotion); iv) economic and financial viability; and v) other criteria (job creation and social and local initiatives).

The park is linked to the twice‐monthly farmers’ market, which takes place in a peripheral municipal space (Campelo & Piedrabuena, 2013). In April 2015, the project has been enriched with the creation of a quality label named “fresh product from Soto del Grillo Agroecological Park” (in Spanish: producto fresco del Parque Agroecológico Soto del Grillo). The label was created in order to boost the commercialisation of food produced within the park, through four objectives: i) promotion of agro‐ ecological practices: this includes food quality, economic viability, and water and soil protection; ii) origin and proximity, for the awareness of consumers about the origin of products and food miles; iii) quality: the cultivation practices guarantee people health, environmental protection, and assure that the product has been harvested at its best maturation point; iv) seasonality, which promotes good food consumption habits and varied nutrition.

4.

Methodology

Seven of the 17 producers enrolled in the municipal project have been interviewed. Interviews have been structured in three sections: general data of the farm, questions about production methods, and selling methods. The reason of the division into two separate sections, one related to cultivation practices and the other to business aspects, is justified by the theoretical framework used for the analysis. The concept of embeddedness (Polanyi, 1944; Granovetter, 1985) has been chosen in order to see how the economy of food production is influenced by non‐economic factors. Moreover, as described by Penker (2006) three dimensions where embeddedness works can be identified: ecology, space, and society. The first refers to ideas related to environmental practices, the benefits they produce, and to the quality of food. Spatial embeddedness is linked to the concept of food re‐ localisation (Sonnino & Marsden, 2006), meaning all the measures (above all the form of distribution, but also promotional and educational initiatives) that contribute to re‐connect people to the place of origin of food. In such way, consumers are aware of the origin of the food they eat and in how its quality is related to the place of production. Finally, social embeddedness encloses those factors that, determines the ‘socio‐economic alternativeness’ of AFNs: influence of ideas about collective benefits, generation of trust between producers and consumers, and contrast to capitalist economy in the business activity.

In order to better divide farmers’ insights into these three dimensions, the study draws upon the paper of Morris & Kirwan (2011b), who describe three steps that link ecology and food: i) understanding, meaning how farmers relate their production methods to ecological benefits; ii) realising, that is how farmers apply the previous concept to realise benefits, which could not necessarily be akin with food production (as for example particular land or water managements); iii) utilising, that is the information exchange with customers about the previous two dimensions. It has been chosen to extend this division even to the social and spatial dimensions, in order to discover how embeddedness influence farmers’ behaviours within each step and to report results organised according to them.

Interviews contents have been analysed through the codification method (Burnard, 1991; Marshall, 1996; MacQueen, 1998), assigning a code to every smallest piece of information within the texts.

This operation helps to schematise contents and to find recurring themes, according to the three types of embeddedness described before.

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For the websites analysis, textual and visual contents have been analysed in the light of three ‘geographical lores’ or ‘tales’ as firstly described by Crang (1996) and modified by Morris & Kirwan (2010): i) geo‐historical knowledge, where images and stories about history and geography are used to create a strong link between the products and their origin; ii) naturalistic knowledge, which contains the description of the whole production process, highlighting the environmental‐friendly methods and practices, and iii) association between products and ideas. The category iii) has been modified in order to adapt it to the case of AFNs and their social embeddedness, thus it has been renamed ‘socio‐economic purposes and compromises’, that include every references to the social embeddedness defined by Penker.

5.

Results

Table 1 shows schematically the values expressed by farmers during the interviews (labelled as “ix”, where x is a progressive number) and in the websites (labelled as “wx”, where x is a number). Each theme (space, ecology and society) is presented alternating interviews and websites analysis, in order to compare how they are treated for the promotion of the business.

Socio‐economic

Naturalistic

Geo‐historical

Table 1. Comparison of expressed values within the interviews and the websites

i1

i2

i3

i4

History

x

Family

Heritage/Trad.

Territory

x

x

Tourism

x

Landscape

Climate

x

Natural methods

x

Water

x

x

x

Soil

x

x

Energy

x

Biodiversity

x

Landscape

x

Certification

Education

x

x

x

Diversity

x

x

x

Health

x

x

x

Economic

Social Goals

x

x

x

x

Cooperation

x

x

x

i5

i6

i7

w1

w2

w3

w4 w5 w6 w7

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

x x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

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5.1

Space

5.1.1 Spatial Embeddedness In this category are enclosed all the ideas and actions that try to “re‐embed food systems” (Penker, 2006, p. 369) generating trust through personal relation between producers and consumers, and concepts like ‘zero miles’ and localness. In this study, the following codes have been established for the definition of spatial embeddedness: references to history, familiar dimension of the business, heritage and recovering of traditional methods, place characteristics that determine the peculiarity of the cultivation, landscape as distinctive trait of the region, touristic attractiveness, and climate.

Territory is the most frequent mentioned theme (including climate references), together with heritage from ancient generations. For the former, producers point strongly to the importance of eating local and to lost varieties restoration as a form to maintain the environmental conditions that make every place unique and different from others. This issue is a problem for some producers, because they perceive as a limitation the obligation to use certified seeds:

It has no sense to use a seed produced by the multinational Battle, […] and we cannot use it… that seed from Battle will produce more, but as we use it, someone from China can use the same… and we cannot use a typical seed from this territory. The INIA, the Institute of Agrarian Research… sells plants suitable to this region, the Jarama Valley, that is where we are right now, but again we cannot use it. So, we do not understand this obligation, and we do not agree with it. (i6)

Seasonality is another recurring theme regarding localness; among other characteristics, organic farming is considered a way to appreciate differences among places, each of them with their seasonality:

My project [for the assignation of the parcel within the park] is dedicated to seasonal vegetables, because here the weather, the climatology is very specific (i1)

The theme of local production [is important], I mean trying to make people accustomed to eat seasonal products, in order to avoid bringing products from far away. This happens very often, even though these products are organic, they are brought from far away. (i3)

For the latter, it is interesting to note that diversity is both an environmental and a cultural fact.

Recovering antique varieties of vegetables from the region of Madrid, in form of seeds which are suitable to the specific climate, has a big relevance for biodiversity improvement, and it also stimulates the curiosity of that consumers who remember when families use to have gardens and food tasted differently:

This richness you are introducing in the kitchen of people, suddenly becomes something… again, something cultural (i4)

There are four kind of tomatoes and pears, which people usually eat. But there are many others that maybe are autochthonous or with different flavour and colour. Producing these new varieties, flavours that in some ways were lost, varieties that were no longer cultivated; evoking all these things, pushes people to look for lost things, tomatoes that taste as tomatoes! So, we try to recover lost things (i7).

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The other categories are only touched; a farmer spoke about people biking and riding in the paths around the cultivated field, and now he thinks to start a pick‐your‐own selling method for people who go into the park for field trips. He also cited Romans as the ones who started olive tree cultivation in Spain, while he was mentioning typical national cultivations. Another reference to history was done by a farmer (i4) in order to explain how organic farming is a traditional cultivation method from the prehistory, more respectful to nature. During the interviews there was no reference to Soto del Grillo landscape as historical heritage from the past, nor as a space traditionally dedicated to agriculture. This can be explained by the fact that the park is established in a zone formerly abandoned, as highlighted in the case study presentation.

5.1.2 Geo‐historical Knowledge References to space are very scarce in the websites; questions about local varieties and climate are absent. However, it is interesting to note that two websites mention the park and its surroundings, which in the interviews are not treated. One (w6) just dedicates few lines to this description, even though in a quite evocative way:

The farm is located in Soto del Grillo, a kitchen garden blooming within the boundaries of Rivas, to the edge of the Jarama river. It is a natural setting extending in the shade of Piul cliffs, embedded in the South‐East Regional Park.

The other website, instead, allots a large space to the description of the landscape where the farm is located, also through panoramic images (Figure 1); the beauty of landscape is used to promote field activities as riding, biking and walking tours, with the possibility to know better the flora and fauna of the South East regional Park:

The whole region belongs to the natural protected space “South‐East Regional park”, which is characteristic for being a place of shelter and reproduction for protected avifauna in its many lagoons, as for some botanical peculiarity vegetal species existing in the zone.

The website also explains the project for the creation of a ‘Madrid kitchen garden route’, going over the municipalities belonging to the zone. Finally, there is a little reference about how the region has been historically suitable to agricultural uses:

Region of agricultural beauty and richness, shaped as a big valley with fertile irrigated plains embedded among gypsum hills and cliffs. In the past it formed the ‘Madrid kitchen garden’, whereas nowadays fodder and cereals (corn) cultivations predominate.

Unlike the interviews, websites do not mention specific climate characteristics of the zone influencing cultivation; history is absent, too.

There are some references to familiar dimension, in the form of tales about how the farm was founded and the reason of the farm ideology (w6), and as a justification for the product quality due to the avoiding of external people in the whole process of production and distribution (w1).

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Figure 1. A lagoon within the South‐East Regional park (from: www.vegafertil.es)

5.2

Ecology

5.2.1 Ecological Embeddedness In this category, farmers express ecological values and ideas about environmental practices that distinguish business distinct from conventional channels; according to Morris & Kirwan (2011, p.

326), is the communication of the ecological methods of production to customers that can “contribute to on‐farm environmental management”, giving products an added value.

The codes included in this section are the following: explanations of how farmers replace chemical products with natural methods for illnesses prevention and fertilisation, soil and water protection, energetic issues, biodiversity improvement and shaping of agricultural landscapes.

As it can be seen in the table 1, references to ecology are more than space and history; protection of soil and water, and biodiversity improvement are the most named questions. At a first look, the reason could be the fact that all the interviewees are certified as organic; however, some of them go beyond the mandatory measures imposed by UE. For example, some farmers complain about the scarce attention to water contamination and a lack of the control bodies in analysing the soil:

[There is] a tremendous bureaucracy; it would be better that an inspector came here in order to… I mean, what’s the advantage in knowing what I put in the soil? I could invent! I mean… the regulation only produce problems to me. An inspector should come here in order to analyse the soil, the leafs, the water (i3)

The cultivation methods could be more exhaustive, for example issues like CO2 emissions or water usage could be taken into account; it is not the same having a well to irrigate, which is a natural aquifer of alluvial waters, than a water supply from Murcia, through a diversion from Trajo Segura that dries headwaters (i4)

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Another farmer (i5) expresses the importance of some measures that are not related to production but are fundamental for biodiversity improvement, and in his opinion it is maybe for this reason that they are not included in the organic regulation. He said he wants to put live fences in his farm, because they improve biodiversity and, as a side effect, his parcel has a highest ecological value than one without them.

Biodiversity is also related to landscape:

As we are within the Regional park, garden diversity can also be part of the landscape diversity; I mean, having a diverse garden allows protecting the landscape (i6)

The vision of producers as ‘nature protector’ (Home, et al., 2014) is clear in a statement of one farmer, where he explains his personal vision of what is environmental protection; beyond the mandatory actions, he said that being ecologic consists in paying attention to many aspects related to farm activity. For example, caring the environment for example through a rational water usage, respecting bugs as important component of the ecosystem:

Protecting the environment consists in being polite; don’t do to the land what you wouldn’t like to be done in your house. No more. If your home is dirty, your garden will be the same (i1)

5.2.1 Naturalistic knowledge Being a way to promote commodities, websites point quite enough to the whole process of production explanation and to what make the difference in respect to conventional farms. The treated themes are quite the same of the interviews, with the exception of water management, which is not mentioned. On the contrary, energy is a highlighted question; three websites report the advantages of cultivating seasonal, local vegetables and fruit. This choice allows spending less energy than the conventional chains, in addition to the fact that products are fresh and tasty.

Biodiversity is a recurring theme but, in opposition to interviews, is always in general terms and in association with the explanation of what is organic farming. However, some implicit references to landscape shaping through cultivations association could be find in the field images (Figure 2).

One website dedicates a quite long explanation for the utility of cultivation rotation, above all its effects on the maintenance of soil fertility.

All the websites declare their enrolment in organic certification. This observation confirms what farmers said during the interviews, that is, if certification is not useful in order to generate trust with customers in direct selling, it is an essential instrument to guarantee quality and freshness in distance sales.

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Figure 2. Association of vegetable evoking agricultural landscape improvement

5.3

Society

5.2.1 Social embeddedness In this study, all those ideas related to social benefits, alternative economy to the capitalist system, and relationships among actors of food networks are enclosed into the concept of social embeddedness. Unlike the previous two cases, there is not direct link with agro‐food production.

However, these aspects play a big role in the otherness of AFNs (Renting, et al., 2003; Venn, et al., 2006; Higgins, et al., 2008) and their importance in the ‘new rural paradigm’ (Goodman, 2004).

This is the category about which farmers expressed more ideas, as it can be seen from the table 1.

References are about education in consumption, supply diversity, attention to consumers’ choices and habits, health, economic advantages for farmers, changes in society structure, and cooperation with other realities.

Producers recognise that educating people to organic consumption not to only would make them aware of the natural cycles and seasonality of food, but is also a way to develop an environmental sensibility:

People who buy organic are very interested in health, but not in where the product has been cultivated nor if it has environmental impacts. […] They have not clear what environmental damage is (i3)

On the contrary, according to another farmer (i4), people are very interested in questions not directly related to the product quality, for example the business structure and its social characteristics. Indeed, she works in a cooperative; after having joined it for two years, workers become members and have vote right, which is independent from the time they have spent within the business. She considers that consumers choose to buy food produced by the cooperative also for this reason.

Eventually, education and generation of trust are strictly connected, due to the way of working of AFNs:

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For consumers [our selling methods] are better [then the conventional ones] because they know at first hand where the product comes from, whom is cultivated by, how is produced. They came here to visit the farm, they can see how we work. […] This generates a strong, mutual trust (i6)

Another social advantage is the diversity of the products supply within AFNs, which is strictly connected to themes like economic benefits, education in consumption, and cooperation. For example, a farmer complains about the fact that almost every producers belonging to the park sell the same products. For him, this causes an economic damage, and suggests a way to avoid the problem, and even improving the commercialisation:

In winter, all of us bring the same to the market: cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. Nobody has carrots, nor leek, nor any other product, because we use to cultivate the same products in the same times. Logically, the market cannot absorb this supply. This even causes aversion between us: “if you sell the cabbage for 1,90 €, I’ll sell it for 1,85”. This is a nonsense. The best option would be that we brought our products below a brand, for example “Soto del Grillo Producers’ Cooperative”, bringing twenty winter varieties (i1)

Cooperation reaches its top in one of the two cooperatives (i7), where members are not only producers, and consumers are strongly invited to join the cooperative. This, beyond giving more economic stability to the business, helps the generation of trust. The same cooperative wants to establish in Madrid a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), where themes that are not included in the UE organic certification can help to develop a change in the society; PGSs take into account aspects like women conditions, workers’ rights, food sovereignty, etc.

Social goals are mentioned by the majority of farmers, in different forms and degrees according to the structure and the philosophy of the farm. For example, one of the interviewees is part of an association, whose main scope is the working placement of people with disabilities, and the organic farm has been opened in order to offer a different type of employment for them.

5.2.1 Socio‐economic purposes This category encloses all the elements within the websites that are related to social embeddedness.

As it can be seen in the table, websites do a large use of these values, in order to highlight the ‘alterity’ of the business respect to the capitalist market rules (Goodman, et al., 2011). Very few differences have been found between interviews and online contents; the only category not mentioned is the diversification of the supply respect to other producers, which is understandable in for the fact that each website promote its own business. The same reason could be applied to the less presence of references to cooperation among farmers.

It is interesting, on the other hand, to see how some websites mention issues related to economic advantages for organic farmers; the choice of eating organic food boosts little and familiar businesses, toward a society change that could contrast the effects of the green revolution, which gave power to big corporations:

During the green revolution, hordes of farmers all over the world emigrated to cities, depopulating fields, expelled by big combine harvesters and immense tractors that make people unnecessary.

Land consolidation, introduction of hybrid seeds and rise of supplies (fertilisers, fungicides) brought farmers to multinationals. This has created a society that is distant from the productive dimension, depending on big enterprises for food provision (w3) th

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Finally, websites promote visits to farms in order to re‐connect people with the agrarian world, and sometimes this mixes up with tourism and business promotion (w3). One farm (w6) offers periodically workshops in school and hospitals about organic farming.

6.

Discussion

The analysis division in categories referencing to space, ecology, and society helps to well understand if and to what extent synergies between park and label objectives and farmers’ practices exist.

Results show that interviews and websites contents match very well the heterogeneity of the park goals; the influence of cultural and socio‐economic factors in agricultural production is important for biodiversity conservation (Simoncini, 2015). Furthermore, taking into account the considerations of Primdahl (1999), the case study goes beyond the problems generated by the separation between land owner and farmer. Although farmers cultivate parcels of municipal land, they do not show strong productivist behaviours, instead expressing the willing of putting in practice measures for environmental protection and landscape improvement. In this context, it is not important to know whether the Park principles influence farmers’ behaviour or, perhaps, there is evidence of an influence of the socio‐economic context in farm design (Lovell, et al., 2010). What is interesting for the scope of the study is to recognise the importance of the synergy among actors, and the potential role of the park in managing recreational and touristic aspects for farms.

This, in fact, can influence tourist experiences in the dimensions that are out of single farmers’ control (Brunori & Rossi, 2000), for example by improving the knowledge about the territory the farms is located in, and promoting single businesses.

The park, in these cases, plays the same role of the so‐called collective actions: “the capacity to create alliances beyond the locality” that “enables small entrepreneurs to mobilize social relations to improve their economic performances” (Simoncini, 2015, p.409).

Some problems have also emerged, for example the lack of cultivated vegetable variety. This could be a hindrance for biodiversity improvement, beyond the excess of concurrency among farmers who produce the same crops. A possible solution could be a stronger planning action by the park administration, for example through dedicating some parcels to specific cultivations.

On the other hand, the link between the park and the monthly farmers’ market is an example of coaction; the market is an indirect promotion of the park and its label quality, helping in reaching goals of health, nutrition, and localness. It is a way to make people conscious about food provenance, and a place where relationships with farmers are established. Said that, from the analysis emerges a guarantee system in which landscape and environment protection are strongly taken into account. This system can be considered a pioneer example of what multifunctional agriculture is able to become, also considering that some aspects highlighted here are contained in the Green Direct Payment of the new CAP, aiming at making the CAP a more environmentally focused policy (Erjavec & Erjavec, 2015).

7.

Conclusions

The paper shows that scientific research about embeddedness in agro‐food system is far from being complete; the role of AFNs actors in landscape conservation, which until now has been scarcely analysed (Simoncini, 2015), in the case study appears essential for the achievement of the multifunctional goals of the Soto del Grillo Agro‐ecological Park.

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AFNs practices are not limited to cultivation methods, instead embracing different approaches within the distribution and selling phases, that influence directly or indirectly (through affecting the production phase) the environment. This, beyond being characteristic of alternative food supply, shows how valid could be the association of a farmers’ market (or any communal selling method) to a structured space of production; in fact, in the case study the cycle of producing, distributing and selling is closed within the local boundaries. This association is considered fundamental in order to better promote the park and its multifunctionality, also considering the relevance of the territorial identity that the park can help developing (Simoncini, 2015). With no desire of falling into the ‘local trap’ (Born & Purcell, 2006), the case study highlights a big potential for the park in order to improve consumers’ knowledge of the environmental impacts of their diet. Moreover, it is highlighted how a multifunctional park could forge people’s imagination, knowledge, and practices of supporting traditional landscapes, responding to the need for cities of “changing attitudes of customers into reasons for changing landscape plans” (Brunori & Di Iacovo, 2014, p. 142). In this sense, the potential of the park is realised in shaping and modifying the conceived, perceived, and lived food, which need to be changed together in order to have a real effect (Brunori & Di Iacovo, 2014).

Further studies are needed for a better understanding of how food networks can interact with planning, including all the actors belonging to the network (Lamine, 2014) in order to consider as many aspect as possible of their complexity (Santhanam‐Martin, et al., 2015). Moreover, as the Soto del Grillo Park works at a local (municipal) scale, studies at different scales could reveal if and to what extent the geographic dimension influences effectiveness and failures of such realities. This could respond to the question posed by Lefebvre et al. (2014) about the role of policies (and, in particular, of the CAP) in managing the different agricultural landscape scales. Such additional research should be conducted also through the theoretical framework of the Ecosystem Services, which are strictly related to agricultural landscape multifunctionality (Lovell, et al., 2010).

8.

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UNESCO CHAIRS SPECIAL SESSION YOUNG RESEARCHERS AND PHD WORKSHOP POSTER SESSION

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UNESCO CHAIRS SPECIAL SESSION Seminar Food dynamics. Climate change, environmental migration and food security

Organizd by UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development and Territory Management, University of Turin UNESCO Chair on World Food Systems SuprAgro, University of Montpellier UNESCO Chair in Population, Migrations and Development, Sapienza University of Rome

Introduction Dario Padovan, Unesco Chair Torino

Climate change: the phenomenon of forced migration Maurizio Gubiotti, Legambiente

Climate Change, Human Livelihoods and Migration Etienne Piguet, Institut de Géographie Universitè de Neuchatel

Discussion with Damien Conarè, UNESCO Chair on World Food Systems SuprAgro, University of Montpellier Enza Roberta Petrillo, UNESCO Chair in Population, Migrations and Development, Sapienza University of Rome Dario Padovan, UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development and Territory Management, University of Turin

People migrate for many different reasons: the causes include social, political, economical and environmental aspects.

The numbers of the humanitarian emergency of environmental refugees are alarming: according to the most widely used estimate, about 200‐ 250 million environmental refugee will be forced to leave their homes by 2050, this means about 6 million of environmental refugees every year.

Rising sea levels, desertification, risks of drought and severe floods, resource scarcity and loss of soil productivity are the main factors that cause refugees and population displacements. Migrations caused by an increase in sea level is the most considerable and, contrarily to displacements caused by hurricanes and droughts, is an irreversible phenomenon.

However the problem is not confined to climate change: industrial and political decision, such as construction of dams, caused equally a large number of migrants due to destruction of living and working environment.

To tackle the problem of population displacement it is very important to consider the link between climate change, migration and international security. Climate change and environmental destruction can lead to violent conflicts around the world especially in vulnerable and poor countries. The Darfur war in 2007, the Arab Spring in 2011, and nowadays the Siria war are examples that show how political tensions mixed with environmental degradation can generate conflicts.

If war was the principal cause for masses immigration until some years ago, today global warming represents the leading element for population displacement. But up to now there is no legal recognition for climate refugees.

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Environmental migrants needs to be protect by international law as victims of climate change that is due also to human activities which have been carried out in countries others than those of origin of refugee. Currently existing EU humanitarian strategy are not adequate to respond to the challenges of environmental migrants. It is requested an effective EU common climate foreign policy to identify the structural causes of environmental migrations in terms of social, economic and political exclusion, as well as grievances and inequalities

The identification of an official recognition for climate refugees is an immediate necessity; but understanding that many of the issue linked with hospitality and reception in our countries need to be faced up to a serious collective commitment against climate change, is the first step. These measures are much more necessary thinking that the effects of global warming and climate change are already a dramatic reality in many countries that have been paying a very high price for victims and displaced people. Moreover since environmental disasters cause economic loss the cost for adaptation to climate change should be integrated in the disaster risk management of each country.

It is interesting to observe that only few migrants decided to cross the borders of their country: in fact 80% of climate refugees stays in developing countries, moving inside their owns country and crowding megalopolis attracted by apparent easy gains. Therefore, the urban issue would be a primary topic in international political agendas: it is important to analyse how to face up to the oncoming urbanization process, especially referred to social services, efficiency and energy conservation, water resources, waste management, land consumption. Measures in support of the degraded suburbs regeneration in developed and developing countries supplying them of standard urban services levels (health care, education, transports, waste management) are fundamental.

Finally, a breaf note about the relation between climate change, environmental migration and the impact on agriculture and food security.

The risks of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems are directly linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes, particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings. To deal with these issues it is necessary a change in cultural systems: reducing use of fertilizers, diversification, more CO2 capture in soils and biomass, fostering the roles of forests, developing alternatives to animal proteins, reducing losses and wastes, relocalising, recycling, a transition toward agroecology, circular economy and bioeconomy.

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YOUNG RESEARCHERS AND PHD WORKSHOP

WORKSHOP 1: MAKING EFFECTIVE AN AGRICULTURAL PARK IN TURIN/VILLARETTO: PRESENT CONDITIONS AND MEASURES TO BE PROVIDED Organizer: Giuseppe Cinà (Politecnico di Torino)

Invited experts and representatives Camilla Casati (Planning Department, Comune di Torino), Nadia Conticelli (6th District, Comune di Torino), Ezio De Magistris (Green areas Department, Comune di Torino), Stefano Fioravanzo (IFLA‐AIAPP, Italian Association af Landscape Architecture), Paolo Lana (Farmer), Federica Larcher (University of Turin), Gianluigi Surra (Coldiretti, Provincia di Torino).

Students A. Allizond, S. Baccaro, F. Bolognesi, L. Bottiglieri, M. Bregliano, L. Canfora, B. Gamba, R. Garnerone, A. Sini, A. Ventura.

The workshop was aiming to foster a reflection about how consolidating and developing the present farming system of Villaretto agricultural Park in a multifunctional perspective. To this end the workshop focused on the way in which a multifunctional agriculture shall be fostered, according to the other issues of surrounding peripheral areas.

The work has been developed in five phases: (i) a set of documents was given to students in order to approach a previous knowledge of the problem to deal with; (ii) a meeting among students and local experts and stakeholders was held in order to help a direct discussion about the main issues of the Villaretto agricultural park; (iii) a presentation of a collective report elaborated by the students was presented at the end of the Conference; (iv) a personal Report and a poster, focused on a specific topic, were elaborated by each student during the following month; the topics were: Park’s opportunities and strengths, Building decay and degradation, Slow mobility, Environment.

In conclusion, the overall result of the work has led to a reflection on the actual conditions and the prospects for action to be envisaged, taking into account that the Villaretto Park responds to a land use already envisaged in the formal planning but never implemented. Therefore, it is time to introduce new elements of assessment and scenario in order to support a specific agri‐urban detailed plan.

The works are expected to be presented and discussed to the local stakeholders, and to the various representatives of the involved institutions during an Exhibition that will be held in the 6th District, Comune di Torino, scheduled at the beginning of 2016.

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WORKSHOP 2: FEEDING THE CITY LOCALLY: FARMERS’ MARKETS, PERIURBAN AGRICULTURE AND SHORT SUPPLY CHAINS, PLACES OF PRODUCTION, NETWORKS OF ACTION. Organizers: Giacomo Pettenati (University of Turin), Angioletta Voghera (Politecnico di Torino); Coline Perrin (INRA, Montpellier); Aurora Cavallo (CURSA, Università del Molise)

The workshop was organized with a focus on the relationships between periurban and urban agriculture and local market, considering farmers’ markets, projects of Community Supported Agriculture, solidarity purchase groups and other experiences of alternative food networks in the framework of metropolitan territorial and landscape governance.

The participants was 15, mostly PhD students and early career researchers, coming from eleven countries, all over the world: Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, USA, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, UK. The program of the workshop was divided in three parts: fieldworks, presentation of practices and discussion between the participants.

The first part of the workshop was a visit at the Porta Palazzo market. It is believed to be one of the biggest food markets in Europe, where everyday thousands of vendors sell any kind of food (fruit and vegetables, cheese, fish, meat, etc.). One section of the market is reserved to local producers. This place can be considered the symbol of short food supply chains in Turin. In 2010, the farmers’ market has been renewed and revitalized by the project RURURBAL, led by the Province of Turin.

The participants was guided around the stalls of the Porta Palazzo market by a Elena Di Bella, responsible in chief for rural development and mountain policies of the Città Metropolitana of Turin, who lead many projects of support to the local food supply chain in Turin and by Umberto Tresso, of Coldiretti, the association that represents most of local farmers. Some farmers have been involved in the workshop, discussing with the participants about the opportunities and the critical issues of short food supply chain in a big city like Turin.

The second part of the workshop was held at the Castello del Valentino (Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning of the Polytechnic of Turin), where two invited speakers presented two of the most interesting projects and practices about local food in Turin.

The first is the local networks of Solidarity Purchasing Groups (Rete GAS), presented by Andrea Saroldi, putting together dozens of formal and informal groups and networks of consumers purchasing local food or other goods selected according to criteria of environmental, social and cultural sustainability. The second is the project VOV102, presented by Stefano Bernardi, an interesting example of an innovative organizational model for local food, trying to overcome some of the most important weaknesses of farmers’ markets (e.g. the amount of time that farmers have to use to sell directly their products).

Finally, during the third part of the workshop, the participants discussed about the main topics of the day: the relationships between local production and local demand, the environmental impact of short food supply chain and the social dimension of local food systems, starting from their research experience.

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WORKSHOP 3 URBAN GARDENS, BETWEEN PUBLIC POLICIES AND INFORMAL PRACTICES. PRODUCTION OF FOOD, SPACES AND SOCIALITY Organizers: Egidio Dansero, Nadia Tecco, Alessia Toldo, Stefania Mancuso (University of Turin), Emanuela Saporito (Politecnico di Torino)

Participants: Magda Rich (University of Brighton), Esther Sanyé Mengual (Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, CTA‐UAB); Giulia Giacché (Università degli Studi di Perugia); Specht Kathrin (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research); Jacques Abelman (Amsterdam Academy of Architecture), Lisa Betty (New York University); Radu Mircea Giurgiu (University of Applied Science, Dresden)

The workshop was structured in four parts, starting from the fact that urban gardens are involving more and more people and spaces in Turin, and often are laboratories of social innovation, facing problems of soil pollution, informal and formal regulation of land access.

Firstly we had the opportunity to visit the experience of MiraOrti with public and spontaneous gardens in the Southern part of Turin (thanks to Isabella De Vecchi, MiraOrti, http://miraorti.com).

Miraorti (inspired by the name of the neighborhood in which it was developed, Mira‐orti signifies “look at the gardens”) is a planning project promoted by Mirafiori Foundation in participation with the local community with the goal of understanding if, and in what measure, the maintenance of the spontaneous gardens could represent a resource for the city. The quarter of Mirafiori, in the south periphery of Turin, is a working‐class neighborhood famous for the presence of the main FIAT industrial plant. It contains 34,000 inhabitants. Up until this day, in the quarter of Mirafiori alone there are still many spontaneous gardens ‐ approximately 1,000. In 2009, the Province of Turin proposed a preliminary project for the requalification of an area containing 220 spontaneous gardens through their demolition and removal.

Secondly we listened to short presentations of other experiences of urban garden in Turin:

Case study: Orti Alti (Emanuela Saporito) (http://www.ortialti.com/en/) OrtiAlti is a social innovation project aimed to transform flat roofs of urban buildings into vegetable gardens, managed by communities of inhabitants and users and put in a supportive and sharing network. In the city of Turin, almost the 10% of the urban area is made up of unused flat roofs – from garages, to supermarkets and industrial sheds‐. To convert these parts of the city in community roof orchards, represents a powerful tool for urban transformation and renewal, and cities environmental and social regeneration. From the urban environment approach OrtiAlti seeks to revitalize the building and improves its environmental performance thanks to the green roofing technology used.

From the social innovation approach, OrtiAlti aims at the active participation of the citizens in urban regeneration and critical consumption, seeking to generate a collaborative process between public institutions, citizens, social enterprises and private actors.

Case study: Gabrio occupied social centre: L’orto di Walter (http://gabrio.noblogs.org/orto/) Gabrio is a social centre auto‐organized occupied in September 1994. The Social Centre goes on with activities attracting hundreds of people every year. Gabrio is a place where people organize themselves to respond to real social needs, but also a place for counter‐culture.

Among the different activities Gabrio started in 2011 a project of social gardening “L’orto di Walter”.

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Case study: Garden Chef (Davide Almondo) (http://www.gardenchef.it) Gardenchef is an agricultural cooperative that through agreements with public and private organizations have set up more than 600 urban gardens in Venaria, near Turin Municipality.

Gardenchef’s proposal is oriented to restaurants too, offering them a private urban garden, led by Gardenchef farmers, for a direct supply of fresh and quality organic vegetables and fruits.

Finally Nadia Tecco (University of Turin) presented the final results of a research on “Adaptive governance or adjustment for the urban green spaces planning and management? The case of communal and community gardens in Turin”.

In the third part of the workshop an opening discussion focused on the following topics: 1.

Many of the urban gardens are located illegally on public or private land. The regulation of these situations poses many conflicting issues concerning the land rights of those who cultivate perhaps for many years, the mechanisms of regulation of land use in informal situations.

2.

As in other cities, the phenomenon of urban gardens shared by very different people with different motivations as: the retired, the unemployed, the young student, the activist environmental movement or the food, the children of a school. It may make sense and how to stimulate a community of urban gardens, united by the act of nurture?

3.

Most experiences are oriented consumption, but those who think they are increasing to provide economies of proximity based on short chain. What are the strengths and limitations of these strategies? What international experience can provide guidance in this regard?

4.

The cultivation of urban gardens, beyond the social consequences, has to deal with the problem of the quality of the urban environment, both about potential contamination of soils, and for the presence of widespread pollutants in the urban atmosphere.

5.

Alongside the more traditional experience, at least from the point of view of the management of soils and growing, even in Turin are spreading in different ways experiences and practices such as rooftop gardens while at present there aren’t yet experiences of vertical farms or hydroponic agriculture. From international experience which it is the potential and critical of these innovations in urban agriculture? Are there other interesting innovations to consider and what are the possibilities to replicate good practices in other contexts.

In the fourth and final part of the workshop, participants worked towards two goals: ‐ the creation of a thematic map of urban gardens in Turin, on the base of the information collected and of the census made by Stefania Mancuso, defining the legend with 4 different criteria: Business/Non business (economic purpose); Private/public (who owns the land); Official/unofficial (what kind of regulation); Allotments/collective (type of garden) ‐ identify and discuss weakness and possibilities of each case study presented during the workshop.

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POSTER SESSION

FAO. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. RUAF Foundation City region food system. Building sustainable and resilient city regions Città di Torino (edited by Maria Bottiglieriet al.)

Città di Torino. 4 good practices 4 one urban food policy right to food oriented.

School canteens / Soup kitchens / Farmer stands in the city markets / Social gardens Eva Liliana Ardila Cortés, Miguel Angel Vasquez Educating Teachers for Agricultural Production Training, an Experience of Universidad de Los Llanos and Its Impact on Colombian Orinoquia Francesca Basile Project proposals for the enhancement of the landscape in Corona Verde. The strategy of urban edges in the town of Venaria Reale Jeroen de Vries, Mihaela Harmanescu Strategies for local food production in the rural fringe in Bucharest Jason Gilliland SmartAPPetite: Using Innovative Technology to Promote Healthy Eating and Strengthen the Local Food Economy R. M. Giurgiu, Schroder N. Domurath, D. Brohm Brickborn farming. Indoor food production in urban area. A case study Marlène Leroux Modernising rural China: alternative urban scenarios for Chengdu Plain Fanqi Liu Eating as a Planned Activity: Food Preference and the Built Environment in Sydney Chiara Lucchini Deindustrialization and urban agriculture. A new economy for Detroit's vacant lands Alessandra Manganelli Exploring governance tensions in the Brussels’alternative foodscapes Céline Massal, Lulie Le Gall, Elisa Maraccini From città diffusa to campagna diffusa: city‐countryside relationships and representations in the corridor between Pisa and Empoli Christian H. Meyer Citizen Science for sustainable development: Knowledge co‐creation in urban food systems – A conceptual framework Cristiana Peano, Nadia Tecco Who can cultivate a communal urban garden? A cross‐analysis about methods and criteria for the users‐identification in the Metropolitan area of Turin Esther Sanyé‐Mengual Deepening in the socio‐environmental motivations behind public and private urban gardening experiences in Barcelona Esther Sanyé‐Mengual, Pablo Knobel, Joan Rieradevall A growing urban gardening Kathrin Specht Future|Food|Commons: A framework to investigate trends and impacts of “sharing” in new producer‐ consumer relationships Roxana Maria Triboi Urban pastoralism Burcu Yaslak Promoting peri‐urban agriculture and entrepreneurship in Istanbul Gianni Scudo, Matteo Clementi Local productive systems planning tools for bioregional development

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