YALE FOOD SYSTEMS SYMPOSIUM
urbanization & transformation OCTOBER 18-19, 2013 YALE UNIVERSITY • KROON HALL & SAGE HALL
Keynotes by JULIE GUTHMAN Selvin Chambers M. Jahi Chappell John Fischer Saru Jayarman Nathan McClintock Laurie Ristino
yalefoodsymposium.org
#YALEFOOD
Photo: Chris Rooks
Jonah Adels was a visionary thinker, a compassionate facilitator, an insightful researcher, a committed activist, and a playful, supportive friend. One of the original architects of the Yale Food Systems Symposium, Jonah’s ideas are embedded throughout the conference. Jonah integrated his many passions in a way that was nothing short of inspiring. Drawing on complex systems theory, agro- and political ecology, and climate scholarship, Jonah’s approach to the study of food systems exemplifies the objective of the Yale Food Systems Symposium: he blended academic study with effective, situated practice. He did this using a balanced array of tools drawn from natural sciences, social sciences, and social movements. In June of 2013, a car accident left Jonah in a coma from which he never recovered. He passed away on October 2. His absence is sorely felt within our community. We dedicate this conference to Jonah with the intention of inspiring all of us to continue the work of food systems transformation, to innovate, to challenge conventional boundaries, to work passionately, and to always remember the human dimensions of our work. Jonah, we love you, and we miss you terribly. 1
Yale Food Systems Symposium: Urbanization and Food System Transformation The Yale Food Systems Symposium (YFSS) is a student led, interdisciplinary conference initiated by students of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Since the conference emerges from a school that prioritizes both research and non-academic professional development, the aim of the YFSS is to provide a space where researchers, practitioners, theorists, and eaters can come together to answer the pragmatic question: how can we get from here, to a just, sustainable food system? An effort by students, for students—in a broad sense of the word— the YFSS privileges new ideas that push the conventional boundaries of food systems thinking, and as such seeks to highlight emerging researchers, innovative projects, truly interdisciplinary thinking, and non-traditional collaboration.
YFSS Organizers Samara Brock Adan Martinez Shannon Murray Maclovia Quintana Erin Schnettler Zoe VanGelder
Thanks to our volunteers Hélène Charles, Erin Beasley, Jena Clarke, Shizue Roche-Adachi, Yesenia Gallardo, Lindsay Toland, Cara Donovan, Michelle Pinon, Katrina Kazda, Holly Rippon-Butler, Talia Ralph, Kassie Urban-Mead, Zoe Lloyd, Megan Osterhout Brakeley, Kathy Tsantiris, Sophie Young, Laura Luttrell, Emily Farr, Alisa Zomer
Organized by the Coalition on Agriculture, Food Systems and the Environment (CAFÉ), a student group of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Yale Sustainable Food Project With generous support from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Office of the Dean, Yale Sustainable Food Project, Betsy & Jesse Fink Foundation, Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, and Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy
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SCHEDULE Friday, October 18 11:00 am Coffee and Sign-in
Kroon Hall
11:30 am Welcome and Opening Remarks Keynote Address by Julie Guthman, UC Santa Cruz 1:30 pm Lunch
Kroon Hall 3rd Floor
2:30 pm Concurrent Session 1
(Details: page 12)
4:15 pm
keynote panel
Kroon Hall
(Details: page 5)
From Strategic Action to Systemic Change Saru Jayarman, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United Laurie Ristino, Vermont Law School Selvin Chambers, The Food Project John Fischer, Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection
6:00 pm Dinner at the Yale Farm Saturday, October 19 8:00 am Coffee and Sign-in
Kroon Hall
8:30 am Concurrent Session 2 10:15 am Keynote Panel
Kroon Hall
(Details: page 16) (Details: page 9)
A Critical Dialogue on the Future of Food and Agriculture Studies Julie Guthman, UC Santa Cruz M. Jahi Chappell, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Nathan McClintock, Portland State University
12:00 pm Lunch
Kroon Hall
Poster Sessions 12:30-2:30 pm Kroon Hall 3rd Floor (Details: facing page) 1:15 pm
Concurrent Session 3
(Details: page 32)
3:00 pm Concurrent Session 4
(Details: page 46)
4:45 pm Closing Remarks Kroon Hall 6:00 pm Pizza party on the Yale Farm Wifi network: “Yale Guest� Click button at bottom of blue screen
POSTER SESSIONS Saturday, October 19
12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Kroon Hall, 3rd Floor
Sustainable Sourcing of Agricultural Raw Materials Christina Ingersoll, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, cingersoll@ucdavis.edu Re-conceptualizing Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climate Change through Photovoice and Community-Based Participatory Research Brian Bulla, North Carolina State Univ., Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Resources, brbulla@ncsu.edu Estimating the Contribution of Subsidized Food Commodities to the Energy Intake of US Adults Karen Siegel, Emory Univ., Dept. of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, karen.siegel@emory.edu Closing the Grocery Gap: Mapping the Link Between Transit Options and Food Access Lauren Martin, Boston Natural Areas Network Northeastern Univ., Urban & Regional Policy, martin.la@husky.neu.edu Impact of Global Climate Change on the New England Food Vision’s Food System Scenario Lauren Johnston, Clean Air Cool Planet, Food Solutions New England, lrjohnst@gmail.com Greenbrier Valley Farmers Raising Meat Sustainably: A Partnership Program in Agritourism Leah Joyner, East Carolina Univ., Center for Sustainable Tourism, joynerle12@students.ecu.edu Improving Biodiversity Conservation in Multifunctional Agroecosystems John Quinn, Furman Univ., Biology, john.quinn@furman.edu Civic Agriculture in the City: Cultivating Food, Resilience and Community in Oxford, UK Anna Mays, Univ. of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Anthropology of Food, Anna_Mays@soas.ac.uk Expanding the Community Supported Fishery Model: A Case Study of Sitka Salmon Shares Helen Schnoes, Cornell Univ., Dept. of City and Regional Planning, has236@cornell.edu Innovative Food Pantry Program in Hartford Improves Food Security, Self Sufficiency and Diet Quality Among Participants Michele Wolff, UConn, Allied Health Sciences, mwolff@uchc.edu Healthy Corner Stores: Charting a New Course for Sustainable Urban Food Systems Kenji Tabery, The Food Trust, Healthy Corner Store Initiative, ktabery@thefoodtrust.org 5
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2013 11:30 am Welcome and Opening Remarks welcome: Peter Crane, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and Professor of Botany opening remarks: Mark Bomford, Director, Yale Sustainable Food Project introduction: Karen Hébert, Assistant Professor of Environmental Anthropology keynote address: Julie Guthman, Professor of Social Sciences, University of California at Santa Cruz
4:15 pm
keynote panel: From Strategic Action to Systemic Change
panelists: Saru Jayaraman, Laurie Ristino, Selvin L. Chambers III, John Fischer moderator: Tagan Engel Just a few years ago the food movement seemed to be focused on how individual choices and market pressure could make substantive changes to the food system. Today, largely motivated by the rise of ‘Food Justice’, there is growing agreement that personal choices are only one component needed for real food system change and equity. Structural inequities in race and class for example, play a role in setting the menu of options individuals have before them. Changes are needed to policy, marketing and agribusiness, which contribute directly to the construction of our food system and impact “personal choice”. There is a sense now that to secure a just, sustainable food system, our efforts need to include, education, policy change (at multiple levels), community development, and perhaps campaign finance reform and a transformation of the role of the corporation in American politics. This broader view leads to questions about where to begin, and at what scale? Each panelist has chosen a career that exemplifies a different answer to this question. Saru Jayaraman is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley and Co-Founder of the consumer engagement campaign, The Welcome Table. She authored Behind the Kitchen Door, a groundbreaking exploration of the political, economic, 6
and moral implications of dining out (Cornell University Press, 2013). After 9/11, with displaced World Trade Center restaurant workers, she cofounded ROC in New York, which organizes restaurant workers to win workplace justice campaigns, conducts research and policy work, partners with responsible employers, and launched cooperatively-owned restaurants. Now a national organization, ROC United has 10,000 members across 26 cities and local offices in NYC, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, and Oakland. The founding of ROC has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American. Ms. Jayaraman is a frequent presenter on the low-wage workforce, specifically on the restaurant industry and raising the tipped minimum wage from the federal standard of $2.13 per hour. She has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, and PBS, among others. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She co-edited The New Urban Immigrant Workforce, (ME Sharpe, 2005). She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, and was named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008 and one of New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. Professor Laurie Ristino joined the Vermont Law School faculty in 2013. She is the first director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) and an associate professor of law. Before joining VLS, Professor Ristino was a senior counsel with the Office of the General Counsel, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. At the USDA, she advised the Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Department on environmental and natural resources legal policy issues. She is an expert on the conservation title of the farm bill, and advised on the implementation of the 2002 and 2008 farm bills, as well as the run-up to the 2013 farm bill. Professor Ristino has also served in various administrative leadership capacities, including acting director of the Easement Programs Division of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, special assistant to the deputy assistant secretary for administration of the Department of Interior, and special assistant for the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico, Office of the Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Professor Ristino serves as an editor and columnist for the ABA’s Natural Resources & Environment magazine. She is also member of the Federal Senior Executive Service and the Pennsylvania Bar. As executive director, Selvin L. Chambers III leads The Food Project in strategic planning, advocacy, organizational management and development, fundraising, community outreach, staff development, and allocation of resources. Selvin is passionate about engaging local communities, and will also focus on supporting and building community-based programs and collaborations serving a broad spectrum of youth and young adults. Selvin has been with 7
TFP since June of 2012. Prior to joining The Food Project, Selvin served as executive director of the Elizabeth Peabody House. He has also served in leadership roles for the city of Boston’s Centers for Youth & Families, the city of Cambridge Youth Programs, and City Year in several U.S. cities. Selvin is a native of Cambridge, Mass., and received a BS in sociology from Fitchburg State University and a certificate from the Institute of Nonprofit Management and Leadership at Boston University. He played point guard for the Fitchburg State University basketball team and is still an avid basketball player. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, traveling, volunteering, and playing team recreational basketball and softball. John Fischer is Branch Chief for Commercial Waste Reduction and Waste Planning at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). In this position, he coordinates MassDEP’s programs to advance waste reduction, recycling, and composting by businesses and institutions in Massachusetts. John also oversees development and implementation of Massachusetts’ Solid Waste Master Plan, solid waste and recycling data, the Solid Waste Advisory Committee, and disaster debris planning. John has worked at MassDEP since 1998, including several years managing MassDEP’s implementation of the Toxics Use Reduction Act. Prior to joining MassDEP, John worked on solid waste and recycling policy issues as Assistant Director of Waste Policy at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology from Connecticut College and a Master’s in City Planning, focusing on Environmental Policy and Planning, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tagan Engel is the Community Food Systems Coordinator at CitySeed, Inc. in New Haven, CT and a member and former Chair of the New Haven Food Policy Council. She is a leader in the food movement in New Haven who prioritizes community engagement and building strong collaborations to address issues such as cooking education, hunger, obesity, urban agriculture, farm to school initiatives and food policy. Tagan started her career in the food industry as a chef and has over 15 years of professional cooking experience in New York City, Boston, and New Haven. She transitioned into food justice and sustainability work in 2007 and has worked with a wide variety of partners including CitySeed, The City of New Haven, The Yale Sustainable Food Project, Yale Dinning Services, New Haven Public Schools, Common Ground Environmental Center, and the New Haven Land Trust. Tagan is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has partnered to develop a number of key documents on food and sustainability including the Policy Primer on School Food, The Yale Sustainable Food Purchasing Guide , New Haven Cooks/Cocina New Haven - Cookbook, and The New Haven Food Action Plan. Tagan also writes about food and food justice on her blog Tagan’s Kitchen. 8
Saturday 10:15 am keynote panel: A Critical Dialogue on the Future of Food & Agriculture Studies panelists: Julie Guthman, M. Jahi Chappell, and Nathan McClintock moderator: James Scott Climate change, rapid urbanization and processes of globalization are multiplying the challenges to producing and accessing healthy, sustainable food. But these challenges manifest themselves in starkly different and sometimes competitive ways. Contradictions arise at various points throughout the food system, pitting stakeholders against one another. Competing interests between local v.s global, urban v.s rural, wage earner v.s consumer vs. farmer are rampant and difficult to reconcile. People agree that the food system needs to change and some argue that the system has already started to; what’s unclear is whether we need reform or revolution. Where should our energies as activists, academics and eaters be focused? Where have local and global food movements been more and less successful in rendering alternative practices mainstream? Julie Guthman and Nathan Mclintock’s examinations of alternative food movements in the U.S pose interesting arguments and critiques about these movement’s attempts to change the national food system. Guthman contends that the most common forms of alternative food advocacy are limited by actors’ unexamined neoliberal subjectivities. She challenges us to see how alternative food movements often subtly recreate the problems they ostensibly solve. McClintock pushes back against this critique and suggests that despite the re-inscription of neoliberal subjectivities in advocacy efforts, these efforts are nonetheless expressions of substantive resistance. He demonstrates that there are many means to structural change. Jahi Chappell has worked for structural change by building scientific cases for policy that supports agro-ecological systems. Jahi’s research is used to mobilize local and international policy and civil society around alternative production methods, methods that will require a shift in values. Conversations at the recently held Critical Dialogue on Food Sovereignty revealed the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for understanding the contradictions and answering crucial questions about our food system. The respective scopes of peasant studies, rural sociology, agronomy, and other disciplines that have traditionally dealt with the politics and practices of food and agriculture are not broad enough to tackle emerging contradictions. To shed light on where food systems study and advocacy stands today, and where it is (or needs to be) 9
headed tomorrow, we ask our panelists the following questions: • If today’s food movement is indeed a movement (and not a disparate set of collective actions) it is a movement of many means, but what are the unified ends? What is the vision for a just, sustainable food system? • What does citizenship look like in a just, sustainable food system? Is this possible within neoliberal capitalism? What are the possibilities and limitations in Food Sovereignty? How do non-producers exercise food sovereignty?
• How do we go about identifying our disciplinary roots? What is our academic home? Is a thing that might be called “critical food system studies” developing? Or are we a simply a Political Ecology of food and agriculture? What is our canon? • If you were developing a 4-5 year program, what would that program entail? • Can research and academic study substantively support an alternative food movement? How and how not? James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is Director of the Agrarian Studies Program. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. He is currently teaching Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression. Recent publications include “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”, Yale University Press, 1997; “Geographies of Trust: Geographies of Hierarchy,” in Democracy and Trust, 1998; “State Simplifications and Practical Knowledge,” in People’s Economy, People’s Ecology, 1998 and “The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia” (Yale Press, 2009). Julie Guthman is a geographer and professor of social sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz where she teaches courses primarily in global political economy and the politics of food and agriculture. Since receiving her PhD in 2000 in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley, she 10
has published extensively on contemporary efforts to transform the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed, with a particular focus on voluntary food labels, community food security, farm-to-school programs, and the race and class politics of “alternative food.” Her first book, Agrarian Dreams: the Paradox of Organic Farming in California, (University of California, 2004), won the Frederick H. Buttel Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement from the Rural Sociological Society and the Donald Q. Innis Award from the Rural Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. Her recent book, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (University of California, 2011) was awarded the 2012 James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers and the 2012 Book Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. M. Jahi Chappell, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Justice in the School of the Environment at Washington State University. Chappell combines agroecology, conservation biology, political science, sociology, and ecological economics to create a unique understanding of the stakes and opportunities within contemporary food systems. Since 2003, he has studied the food security policies of the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which has overseen dramatic reductions in malnutrition. Chappell’s work has examined how these policies may simultaneously support small farmer livelihoods, urban food security, and biodiversity conservation. He has also contributed to research establishing the possibility of providing global food security based on organic and sustainable agriculture, and to current debates on potential trade-offs between food security and biodiversity. His work has contributed to the growing interdisciplinary field of political ecology, which maintains the importance of conducting science in cooperation with communities, and that attempts to abstract “good” science from larger societal conversations result in neither good science nor good policy. Chappell’s research has been covered in national and international media, and he has provided research and consultation for the FAO, La Vía Campesina (the International Small Farmers’ Movement), the city government of Belo Horizonte, and the World Future Policy Council. He is the current Chair of the Agroecology Section of the Ecological Society of America, and Associate Director for Research for the Washington State University Center for Social and Environmental Justice. He holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering (both from the University of Michigan), and conducted postdoctoral work in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University.
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Nathan McClintock is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies & Planning at Portland State University. A geographer focusing on urban agriculture (UA) and food systems and urban political ecology, he integrates qualitative and quantitative methods (from social theory to soil sampling and spatial analysis) to understand food systems, cities, and the environment at multiple scales. He is currently conducting research on UA in Portland (with some comparative work in Canada and the Pacific NW), and working on a book manuscript (based on his dissertation research) that explores the relationship of Oakland’s urban agriculture movement to flows of capital in and out of the city. He draws on more than fifteen years of sustainable agri-food systems work in North America and the Global South (Mali, Senegal, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Nepal, and Bangladesh), wearing a number of different hats along the way: researcher, trainer, journalist, Peace Corps volunteer, food policy council member, and farmer. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley (Geography, 2011) and his MS from NCSU (Crop Science/Agroecology, 2004) where he conducted research on compost use and nutrient cycling at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2013 CONCURRENT SESSION 1: 2:30-4:00 PM FOOD DIGNITY Kroon Hall, Room 319 panelists: Christine Porter, University of Wyoming, Assistant Professor of Public Health, christine.porter@uwyo.edu Jim Sutter, The Food Dignity Project │Jemila Sequeira, Whole Community Project, Cornell Cooperative Extension │David Vigil, East New York Farms! │Daryl Marshall, East New York Farms! Will Work for Food Dignity: A workshop on making research serve food justice The industrial food system is using up our soil, oil and water. Community organizers and organizations for food justice are seeking paths to food systems that will feed all of us today and all of our great-grandchildren tomorrow. They are making these paths by walking. What does this work teach us, what new knowledge is most needed to inform it, and how should academic researchers work with and for food justice practitioners to help document and generate that knowledge? 12
REAL FOOD, REAL JOBS Sage Hall, Room 24 panelist: Jennifer Gaddis, Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, PhD Candidate, jennifer.gaddis@yale.edu Transitioning to an Ecological Feeding Paradigm in U.S. K-12 Schools Alternative food networks struggle to gain access to the multi-billion dollar market of the National School Lunch Program, which was established in 1946 to meet the dual goals of supporting domestic agriculture and improving child nutrition. As the food industry entered the school lunchroom in the 1970s touting scientific efficiency and cost-savings, bulk commercial foods and TV-dinner style frozen meal packs replaced from-scratch cookery. Control over ingredients became centralized in manufacturing facilities and distribution centers. School feeding was ultimately disembedded from local foodsheds to the detriment of ecological health and worker livelihood. As such, this paper asks: how can schools best re-establish the culinary capacity necessary to support an ecological feeding paradigm? Drawing from a mixed-methods approach including participant observation, interviews, archival research, and content analysis of school foodservice literature, this paper reports on the experiences of school districts in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Minnesota. Each of these research sites provides insight into the diversity of school kitchen operations and how schools can shift their feeding paradigms to align with the goals of public health, sustainable agriculture, and social justice. INSTITUTIONAL PURCHASING Sage Hall, Room 32 panelists: Leila Virji, Yale University, Yale Dining, Sustainability Food Systems Coordinator, leila.virji@yale.edu and Sarah Fritschner, Food Broker; JD Kemp, FoodEx; Premier/Provista; US Foods Rep/Sysco Rep; Food Manufacturer/ Processor, Farmers Cow; Bowdoin College; Princeton Dining Institution Supply Chains: Procuring More Regional, Value-Based, and Affordable Food The session will focus on the inhibiting factors for institutional procurement of regional, value-based (food with transparent sustainability characteristics), and affordable food, including communication, coordination, volume, and aggregation. We already have an existing regional food system of producers, distributors, and operators. What actions are needed by dining institutions (hospitals, colleges, and universities) and related stakeholders to restructure the
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18 CONCURRENT SESSION 1: 2:30-4:00 PM 2
existing food system and infrastructure to acquire more regional, value-based, and affordable food for all? Discussion will center on the opportunities dining institutions have to use their collective buying power and collective network with wholesale food procurement to affect numerous links in the food supply chain. Outcomes will include establishment of actions needed to leverage the collective buying powers of dining institutions and actions needed to leverage the dependency and efficiency of broadline distributors to acquire better food. The feasibility of these plans will be debated, including discussions of alternative models (independent food-hubs and distributors) and differences in approach between dining institutions that are self-operating or not, rural or urban. FOOD POLICY COUNCILS Sage Hall, Bowers Auditorium panelists: Mark Winne (moderator), Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Center for a Livable Future, Senior Advisor, win5m@aol.com; Martha Page, Executive Director of the Hartford Food System and City of Hartford Food Policy Council; Tagan Engel, Coordinator for the New Haven Food Policy Council Food Policy Councils: A Path to a More Democratic and Sustainable Food System For the past 20 years private sector food system stakeholders have engaged municipal, county, state, provincial, and tribal governments to address food system issues more directly. While the intent has varied, the result has been to place food and food systems issues squarely on the plate of local and state policy makers. Based on a recent survey by Michigan State University of 1,941 local jurisdictions, the average number of policies per jurisdiction is 3.6. Food policy councils -- an organized group of food system stakeholders -- have been emerging as an influential food policy force. Based on surveys by the Community Food Security Coalition, there are now over 200 councils in North America compared to 111 in 201o. A survey by Johns Hopkins University found that councils influenced local and state food policies to improve access to healthy and affordable food, public procurement of locally produced food, and conditions for urban gardening and regional farming. panelist: Will Thomas, Auburn University, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Former Graduate Research Assistant, will@willcthomas.com Alabama Food Policy Council: Coalition-Building and Food Policy Activism in the Deep South The Alabama Food Policy Council, a coalition of diverse stakeholders seeking to advocate for policies that promote an accessible, Alabama based, self-reliant 14
food system, was founded in 2012. Achieving those goals, however, required wrangling stakeholders with diverse interests and goals, determining which issues united them through community-based research, coming to terms with their identity as an organization, and then facing a generally unfriendly sociopolitical environment. panelist: Julia Freedgood, American Farmland Trust, Farmland & Community Initiatives Managing Director, jfreedgood@farmland.org Growing Food Connections: Building Local Government Capacity to Support Healthier Food Systems Growing Food Connections is a five-year integrated research, education (graduate level) and policy/practice initiative to build local government capacity to improve community food security while ensuring agricultural viability and sustainable food production. This requires, in part, removing public policy barriers and deploying innovative public policy tools. The Growing Food Connections team of academics and practitioners will present what we have learned from research on innovative communities - urban and rural communities that have created networks and connections to strengthen their food systems. Growing Food Connections is supported by USDA’s Global Food Security, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. WHERE ARE THE SYSTEMS IN FOOD SYSTEMS? Sage Hall, Room 41 C panelist: Hugh Joseph, Tufts University, Friedman School of Nutrition, Assistant Professor Adjunct, hjoseph@tufts.edu Where are the Systems in Food Systems? As interest in “food systems” accelerates (exemplified by this conference), its evolution as a field of study and practice merits timely consideration. In particular, many of the contemporary approaches to food systems lack integration of systembased analyses and thinking. Sustainability, as it has evolved within ecology and even within agriculture (e.g., agrocecology), does much better incorporating systems-based conceptual and applied modeling. Meanwhile, sustainable food systems portrayals are often embedded within more linear supply chain dimensionality, unable to sufficiently infuse more complex dynamics essential to an understanding of the concept in a much fuller sense. Similarly, “food systems” models are often framed within defined geographic boundaries and infused with predictable value structures that invite charges of superficiality. These depictions struggle to integrate relationships with peripheralized, yet much broader socioeconomic, ecological, cultural, and political domains.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18
2 CONCURRENT SESSION 1: 2:30-4:00 PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2013 CONCURRENT SESSION 2: 8:30-10:00 AM WHERE’S THE BEEF IN THE SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM? Kroon Hall, Room 319 panelists: Cara Mae Cirignano, Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, cara.mae.cirignano@yale.edu Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Tool to Promote Feedlot Reform for Ammonia Emissions: Respiratory Disease vs. Cheap Hamburgers My work on beef cattle-generated ammonia emissions has shown that damages from these emissions amount to $1.4 billion in the continental U.S., with CAFOs in 100 counties causing damage (from ammonia alone) worth at least a quarter of the CAFO’s gross revenue. The next logical question is, how does the cost of abatement compare to the cost of this damage? Diet optimization, instead of waste management, is widely considered to be the most efficient option for abatement. Feeding cattle less protein lowers ammonia emissions, but it also lowers weight-gain performance of the cattle and therefore profits. In this new work, I compare the societal cost of the damage from emissions to the producer cost of reduced cattle performance. I take into consideration the variable cost of grain, the availability of cheap wet distillers grain from ethanol plants, the use of beta-agonists, and phase feeding. My research shows that a handful of municipal governments should consider supporting and/or requiring producer abatement measures. More importantly, I present this work as an example of the potential to use results of interdisciplinary modeling to strategically advocate for economically viable improvements in the food system. panelist: Ridgway Shinn, Ridge Shinn, LLC: Farmer, educator, ridgeshinn@ gmail.com Raising Beef for Human Health and the Global Environment Beef production on a 100%-grass fed diet is a sustainable and economically feasible alternative to the industrial model of corn-finished beef production on feedlots. Though 100% grass-fed-and-finished beef is currently less than 2% of the national market, consumer demand is building. Many components necessary for a national shift in production, processing, and distribution “including bovine genetics for grass finishing and proper grassland stewardship” are already being applied in parts of the U.S. To achieve consistent quality on a large scale, we can look to management models in New Zealand and in France at Label Rouge, which incentivizes production according to performance standards. Although agricultural industrialization has almost eliminated the butchering 16
trade, collaboration between producers and beef fabricators for high-end restaurants, who still have the knowledge and hand skills for utilizing whole carcasses, can bring back urban meat districts. The benefits of managed grazing for 100% grass-fed beef include not only bovine and human health and nutrient-dense food, but also significant carbon sequestration and increased soil fertility, biodiversity above and below the soil line, recycling of potassium, phosphorous, and nitrogen that is plant-available, net energy savings, strong markets, fair wages for farmers, and revival of local agricultural economies. panelist: Michael Keilty and Jean King, University of Connecticut, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dept. of Extension, Sustainable Agriculture Research Educator, michael.keilty@uconn.edu │ Jean C. King, Food Policy Consultant Grass-Fed All Year Long: A Sustainable Approach to Raising Grass-Fed Natural Beef in Southern New England This project, a partnership among three land grant universities, UCONN, URI and UMASS, provides professional development training for agricultural service providers on the issues of year round grass-fed meat production. Our initial studies indicated a lack of adequate USDA inspected slaughterprocessing capacity in Southern New England. Further analysis shows that one solution to this issue is the year round production of beef animals, thus decreasing scheduling pressures at slaughter and processing facilities. Southern New England farmers can be successful raising beef on pasture and marketing them throughout the year. Local consumers can thus have access to sustainable local meat year-round. This project supports sustainable year-round perennial agriculture versus row crop agriculture. Animals can be fed on grass either in pasture or from grass stored by various methods throughout the year. This method minimizes animal confinement focusing on humane treatment of our food animals and leads to a reduction of biocides in animal protein production. Farmers can then successfully market meat throughout the year to restaurants and individuals. panelist: Samantha Garwin, Craft Butchery, Whole Animal Butcher/ Director of Marketing, sam@craftbutchery.com Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Meat in Connecticut Connecticut has over 5,000 farms, but only two USDA certified slaughterhouses. As the demand for pasture-raised, environmentally and
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2013 CONCURRENT SESSION 2: 8:30-10:00 AM 2
socially responsible meat rises, this bottleneck in the supply chain will preclude the ability of the sustainable meat industry to grow and thrive. In this collaborative panel, representatives from each step in the local meat supply chain - farmer, abbatoir, butcher, grocer and chef - will share the challenges and opportunities they see for Connecticut, from building mobile USDA-certified slaughterhouses to creating new distribution channels for non-USDA inspected meat. FOOD CERTIFICATION AND LABELING Sage Hall, Room 24 panelist: Jennifer Jacquet, New York University, Environmental Studies, Clinical Assistant Professor, jacquet@nyu.edu Informally Regulating Food Systems: The Case of the Marine Stewardship Council Overfishing is one of many, human-caused impacts that characterize the Anthropocene. In an attempt to both change consumer demand for seafood and the way that we fish without the costs and politics of formal regulation, a series of market-based campaigns have arisen in the last decade in the U.S. and abroad. Of these campaigns, one of the most well funded and prolific is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) eco-label, now attached to just over 7% of total global catch through a third-party certification process. Some of these certifications have been highly contentious. Despite high costs and difficult procedures, conservation organizations and other groups have filed and paid for 19 formal objections to MSC certifications. Only one objection has been upheld such that the fishery was not certified. panelist: Teagan Lehrmann, Harvard University, Business and Catering Development, tmlehrmann@gmail.com Sweet as Honey: The Beekeeper’s Fight Against Corn Sugar, For Purity, 19261930 Labeling is complicated. What we know, or don’t know, about the quality and character of what we eat is rooted in a history of conflicting incentives and industrial values. This thesis examines an episode in beekeeping history, in which the trade journal, Gleanings in Bee Culture, portrayed a community of beekeepers as in the midst of an urgent “Fight Against Corn Sugar,” both in Congress and the marketplace. The beekeepers esteemed honey as a “pure” and healthful sweet, while corn sugar was accused as an adulterant. On a broader scale, this thesis examines the rhetorical and scientific implications of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, and the emergence of labeling requirements for industrial food products. What is pure? What is good? Who says? 18
panelist: Kate Fischer, University of Colorado, Anthropology Ph.D. Candidate, fischerk@colorado.edu Challenges in the Specialty Coffee Model: Case Studies from Costa Rica Since the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989, coffee farmers in Costa Rica have been forced to fit ever-narrowing quality and production profiles in the hopes of earning higher prices through differentiation and specialization. The increasingly onerous requirements “which do not always lead to higher prices“ have driven many out of farming altogether. Those who can have shifted to more comfortable and predictable indoor work in the capital region, so that coffee has remained the predominant occupation only in the most rural zones. In mid-altitude regions, the result has been more largescale, rather than family-sized, farms as absentee landlords have been buying up land and harvesting the crop with undocumented migrant labor. At lower altitudes, which equates to lower quality and prices, farmers rely heavily on certification programs such as Fair Trade to make ends meet. At higher altitudes, geographical conditions allow farmers to demand a higher starting price, but one that is still lower than the pre-1989 average. Case studies of low, medium, and high altitude coffee zones reveals the ways in which quality standards hinder environmentally and socioeconomically sustainable coffee production even as they purport to be improving coffee for farmers and consumers alike. panelist: Nicole Negowetti, Valparaiso University Law School, Assistant Professor of Law, nicole.negowetti@valpo.edu Identifying the “Naturalness” of Food: A Challenge for our Modern Food System Although both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are statutorily mandated to protect consumer interests by prohibiting false and misleading labeling, both agencies have refused to formally define the term “natural” food. As a result, food manufacturers have been free to use the term as they see fit. For consumers who are concerned by the industrial food system’s effects on our health and environment, the “natural” claim is very significant. The term’s significance in the marketplace is indicated by the premium consumers are willing to pay for “natural” foods, recent polls demonstrating consumer concern and confusion over such claims, and an influx of recent lawsuits alleging that “natural” claims do not meet consumer expectations of natural ingredients or minimum processing.
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MANAGING FOOD SYSTEMS FOR MULTIPLE OUTCOMES Sage Hall, Room 32 Facilitator: Anna Herforth, Independent Consultant, World Bank, UN FAO panelist: Prashanth Parameswaran, Tufts University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, PhD Candidate, pprashanth711@gmail.com Fishing For Solutions: Preserving Fish Biodiversity and Food Security in the Mekong River Basin The future of the Mekong, one of the world’s greatest rivers providing sustenance to over 60 million people in mainland Southeast Asia, is in peril due to large hydropower projects coupled with urbanization and climate change. Yet the dire food security aspect of the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) has not been adequately explored, despite it being the site of the world’s biggest inland fishery where communities obtain most of their protein from fish. This paper, based on field research conducted in all five LMB countries, explores the food security challenges in the system, honing in on fisheries to highlight innovative solutions actors are coming up with. After first outlining challenges for the LMB as a food system, the paper delves into three kinds of solutions crafted by actors to address them. These include: 1) university-community collaboration on the LMB with a focus on Thailand’s Mae Fah Luang University and efforts to inject a “food sovereignty” dimension to the issue; 2) community-based participatory planning in fisheries in the LMB with a successful case example from Laos; 3) regional-based initiatives incorporating food security like the U.S.-backed Lower Mekong Initiative and indigenous solutions like a research hub recently opened in Vietnam. panelist: Selena Ahmed, Montana State University Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems, Assistant Professor, selena.ahmed@tufts.edu Managing Diversified Food Systems for Crop Quality, Cultural Identity and Climate Change Resilience in the Highlands of Southwestern China This paper presents a case study on the resilience and vulnerability of smallholder food systems in the highlands of southwestern China in the context of global environmental change. Household surveys were conducted in 2008 and 2013 in order to elucidate shifting links between land-use management, perceptions of climate change, diets and health over a period corresponding to rapid market integration of natural resources in China. Findings indicate that shifting dynamics during the study period have resulted in a reorientation of traditional values, reconfiguration of land use, reorganization of labor structures and a dietary transition that have notable implications for community wellbeing.
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However, despite the exponential increase in household wealth and emerging market-based ideologies, smallholders at the study site continue to manage a diversified land-use mosaic of agro-forests, forests, home gardens, mixed crop fields, paddies and integrated crop-livestock systems to meet dietary needs. In addition, smallholders continue to experiment with multiple levels of biodiversity to optimize crop quality rather than yields. Panelist: Sisira Saddhamangala Withanachchi, The University of Kassel, Germany, Future of Food Academic Journal, Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, Managing Editor/ Researcher, sisira@fofj.org, Angelika Plรถger, the University of Kassel, Germany, a.ploeger@uni-kassel.de, Chandana Rohana Withanachchi, Rajarata University, Mihintale, Sri Lanka, Senior Lecturer (Irrigational Studies), Head of the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Management, chandanawithanachchi@gmail.com Title: Water for Agriculture - Beyond the Conventional Space of Governance; A Multi-Scales Analysis of the River Basin Management in the Mahaweli River Basin, Sri Lanka Natural resource governance is configured across biophysical nature, politicaladministrative structures and socioeconomic systems. The environmental policy-making discussion engages to construct an inclusive governance and management system which includes biophysical characteristics into the governance process due to environmental issues not corresponding with hierarchically and territorially bounded political-administrative units. In the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) model, hydrological boundaries are being recognized as an appropriate scale for water resource management. Particularly, water resource management and food system management can be analyzed as pronounced and colligated policy-setting areas with multifaceted scales such as biophysical, socioeconomic and political-admin istrative. Agricultural policies cannot be detached from dynamic and adaptive river basin management. In Sri Lanka, the Mahaweli River Basin Authority in the Mahaweli Development Program (MDP) was officiated in 1979 as a first phase multi-functional bureaucracy which follows the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the USA. Subsequently, Mahaweli Zones were demarcated as agrarian settlement areas in the basin. The main purpose of the program was to establish an integrated water management system to incorporate and enhance the agriculture, mainly paddy cultivation. This research paper addresses critical questions regarding water allocation and distribution, examining whether seasonal dynamics of flow regimes, socioeconomic diversities and local political demands in the river basin have been addressed or identified in the Mahaweli River Basin Management Program. The research study followed a mixed research methodological approach with quantitative data analysis and qualitative method with semi-structured interviews and focus group studies. Due to the lack of consideration of impact and dynamics in spatial and temporal
climatic changes in the flow regimes, demands and alternation of socioeconomic and political-administrative, the MDP exhibit failures in water allocation and distribution. It is necessary to have a holistic and integrated approach in future policy making and implementation process in Mahaweli River Basin Management as well as inclusive upstream agriculture development for future MDP adaptation. Panelist: Todd Comen, Johnson State College, Business and Tourism Management, Professor, Todd.Comen@jsc.edu Title: Rethinking Multifunctionality: Local Food System, Conservation, and Community Economy, A Case study of Burlington Vermont’s Intervale Landscape This study applies the European Union framework of multifunctionality to the 1,000 acre Intervale landscape located in Burlington, Vermont. The research results describe a modified and expanded model of multifunctionality. The paper traces a landscape scale transformation over twenty-five years; from a degraded dumping ground and chemical dependent agricultural landscape to a vibrant multifunctional landscape that includes 12 organic farms, multiple community gardens, and recreational trails. Data was gathered over a period of two years using a mix of research methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and a qualitative survey administered to 375 users of the Intervale landscape. The resultant model of multifunctionality features primary pillars of environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture which underpins the complementary pillars of cultural gathering places, and value added light manufacturing. The model depicts community partnerships between local government, leading NGOs, and the private sector. Decisionmaking is described as a dynamic synergy between the multiple organizations and user groups populating the Intervale landscape. The factors that catalyzed and sustained the Intervale landscape transformation are elucidated in the study results. This new model of multifunctionality can be applied to communities eager to foster re-localization of their food system, landscape scale stewardship, and community economies. EDUCATING PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS FOR FOOD SYSTEM CHANGE Sage Hall, Room 41C Panelist: Eva Agudelo, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, National Technical, Assistance Coordinator, eagudelo@comteam.org Title: Growing the Next Generation of Farmers This session will provide an overview of the unique challenges facing the next generation of sustainable farmers in the United States, followed by a facilitated group discussion on developing research and program-based solutions that
specifically address the needs of new growers. Experts in the field of beginning farmer training and support will share the stories of individual farmers and how their prospects are affected by larger socio-political and economic factors, as well as some of the major impediments to developing research and interventions geared towards addressing the challenges of new sustainable farmers and an overview of successful approaches from the non-profit, government, and academic realms. panelist: Victoria Montanez, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, victoria.montanez@yale.edu Food Waste: The Value of Knowledge-Based Campaigns in Environmental Protection In the United States, over 40% of the total available food is lost or wasted. Postconsumer food waste, which results from individual waste behaviors, accounts for a large proportion of this loss. Despite significant social, environmental, and economic consequences, the government and food industry have taken little action to prevent or recover food waste. Using the case of Yale University, this study seeks to address behavioral issues in an institutional cafeteria setting and determine whether a simple knowledge-based campaign, focused on the negative impacts of food waste, can effectively reduce wasteful behaviors in students. A secondary objective of this study is to determine why students waste food and provide constructive commentary for Yale Dining to promote less wasteful behaviors. panelist: Rebecca Schewe, Mississippi State University, Assistant Professor of Sociology, rebecca.schewe@msstate.edu Reducing Antibiotics in Dairy: The Role of Attitudes and Labor Management Increased use of antibiotics in livestock production presents a significant threat to environmental and human health, and mastitis infections and somatic cell count represent lower milk quality for consumers and lost revenue for producers. This study uses both survey and focus group data to examine current antibiotic use and the potential for reducing antibiotic use within the US dairy industry, focusing on two key questions: 1) What role do labor relations and the increasing role of migrant labor play in antibiotic use? and 2) What role do attitudes and sources of information play in mastitis prevention and antibiotic use? Preliminary findings suggest that attitudes toward preventive management and concern about mastitis and antibiotic use have a larger impact on mastitis and antibiotic use than specific management practices. Findings also suggest that labor management and a lack of training are key barriers to reducing antibiotic use. Together, these findings suggest the need for a dramatically different policy intervention to reduce antibiotic use in the dairy industry, one tailored towards attitudes, information, and employee management.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2013 CONCURRENT SESSION 2: 8:30-10:00 AM 2
LOCAL SUPPLY CHAINS Kroon Hall, Room 321 panelist: Jack Corbett, Portland State University, Hatfield School of Government, Associate Professor, oaxport@gmail.com Building Food Platforms for Local Sustainability: An Assessment of Mexican Experience While globalization frequently addresses food systems in terms of increasing scale, reach, centralization, and specialization other models, e.g., bioregionalism or the locavore movement, may prove more fruitful in meeting the needs of specific places and populations. Understanding how communities, local organizations, and other actors approach food systems with sustainability as the central focus offers an appreciation of local-level responses to broad challenges. In Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the poorest states in the country, an informal collaboration of non-profit organizations, educational institutions, communities, and others seek to draw on local products and processes to create “food platforms� as a means of reducing malnutrition and rural poverty. Food platforms involve a complex array of producers, processors, vendors, customers, and support services centered on food as a critical developmental mechanism. Oaxacan actors such as Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, Universidad Tecnologica de los Valles Centrales, Instituto de Naturaleza y Sociedad de Oaxaca, and others as well as communities, public agencies, and private entrepreneurs interact to foster small-scale or grassroots opportunities to improve nutrition and incomes. An emphasis on outcomes management provides a common focal point in diverse settings. The paper draws on participant observation and project involvement with a number of organizations, agencies, and communities associated with food platform development. panelist: Amit Sharma, Penn State University, Associate Professor, School of Hospitality Management, College of Health and Human Development, aus22@ psu.edu Economic Viability of Local Food System Linkages to the Food Service Industry This study presents a cost-benefit framework to assess economic viability of creating urban-rural linkages through local foods in the food service industry, particularly in schools and restaurants. Locally grown foods have the potential to create agriculturally driven urban-rural linkages. Such foods continue to be one of the leading niche trends in the food service industry, which has over $600 billion in US sales annually. However, incorporating locally grown foods
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in the food service industry remains fragmented due to feasibility and viability concerns of such linkages. Recent studies conducted by the authors suggest that transaction costs in several supply chain components could explain, and help remove bottlenecks to strengthen these linkages. How can current bottlenecks, such as information asymmetries and transportation inefficiencies, be minimized through market-based methods? Such costs could discourage food service establishments to initiate and sustain these linkages. Benefits of local foods include potential consumer surplus, healthier eating behavior, improved margins for small businesses, and economic development opportunities through small farm investments. panelist: Rebecca Dunning, North Carolina State University, Center for Environmental Farming Systems, Senior Research Scholar, rebecca_dunning@ ncsu.edu Mainstream Retail Grocers and Food Service Distributors as Active Participants in (Re)-Building Local Food Supply Chains The Center for Environmental Farming Systems at North Carolina State University was funded in 2012 by a USDA/NIFA grant to conduct applied supply chain research and development to connect small and mid-sized growers (defined by the Economic Research Service farm typology) directly to groceries and food service distributors. Lowes Foods Stores, a North-Carolina owned retail grocery chain based in Winston-Salem, NC, with 106 stores in the state; and FosterCaviness, a North-Carolina owned produce wholesaler/distributor based in Greensboro, North Carolina, are two project partners actively working with the project to build these connections. Changes in business operations have included Lowe’s corporate-supported vision and succeeding policy changes on procurement which now permit (and encourage) all store managers to source produce, meat, seafood, and dairy items directly from local producers and via food hubs; and a Foster-Caviness program to work in conjunction with small and mid-sized growers to plan for specialty crops and season extension. Panelists: Sophie Waskow, Sea to Table, Director, sophie@sea2table.com, Christopher Nicolson, Fishermen, Iliamna Fish Company, Arlin Wasserman Founder and Principal, Changing Tastes, Michael Dimin, Managing Director, Sea to Table Disrupting the Seafood Supply Chain The seafood supply chain is broken. 91% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, over half of what is caught in the U.S. is sent overseas and fish fraud is rampant. Under traditional distribution, fish travels many miles from point
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of landing before making its way to diners’ plates. This system limits the value driven to traditional fishermen and their communities as well as to chefs and diners, who lose traceability and transparency in knowing where their food came from. New models and approaches exist to “hack” big seafood industry supply chains and bring a “sea to table” approach to sourcing seafood. panelist: Simon Berge, University of Guelph, SEDRD, PhD Candidate, sberge@ uoguelph.ca Local Food Co-operatives in Ontario: Sustainable Supply Chains and Capacity for Alternative Food Networks Consolidation within the food system has created market gaps, inefficiencies and food deserts that are being addressed by community-based organizations such as co-operatives. Co-operative organizations represent dynamic business models, which seek to address issues related to social and environmental justice through stimulating community economic development processes. Local food co-operatives present a unique opportunity to establish sustainable food supply chains and the potential for creating alternative food networks. The proposed presentation will highlight key findings of a current research project at the University of Guelph, which seeks to determine the opportunities and challenges that exist for co-operatives in the current local food market. Through utilizing a mixed-method approach, including case studies and financial and mapping analysis, the ongoing research project seeks to examine the current state of local food co-operatives in Ontario and to share these findings with co-operatives, organizations, universities, and governments. The relevance of this research project and its findings to the Yale Food Systems Symposium is the use of sustainable food supply chains within local food co-operatives, their capacity to create alternative food networks, as well as an examination of the right to food, food justice and food sovereignty movements as co-operatives seek to democratize the food system. URBANIZATION AND FOOD SYSTEM CHANGE Kroon Hall, Room G01 panelist: Lua Wilkinson, Cornell University Division of Nutritional Sciences, PhD Candidate, Lw495@cornell.edu A Food Systems Perspective on Urbanization and the Coexistence of Obesity and Undernutrition in China The significance of China’s role in the global food system cannot be underestimated. China has made urbanization a priority following the 2008
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economic crisis, bringing unparalleled changes to environmental, agricultural and health sectors. Rapid urbanization has led to ecological challenges associated with food production, access and consumption. Urban and rural Chinese have differing levels of food security, and changing dietary composition from one low in dairy and meat (rural) to high (urban) is necessitating improved agricultural mechanization for cattle grain production. It is concerning that the increase in meat consumption is driving up CO2 emissions and decreasing the availability of agricultural land. Overall food security still depends on small-scale farm production, and migrants moving off farms into urban areas have expanded nonagricultural sectors crucial to maintaining food security for rural households by providing capital for the viability of farm production. Nutrition intake is an important indicator of health, yet urbanization has failed to ameliorate health inequalities in China, where rural children remain five times more likely to be underweight than their urban counterparts. This paper will examine how urbanization is changing China’s food system, and how these changes affect food security and nutritional status. panelist: Chijioke Evoh, Economic and Urban Policy Analysts (ECONUPA), Director of Research, cjevoh@econupa.com Food Security and Food Waste in Urban Africa: Policy Innovations and Sustainability in Integrated Food Supply This study examines food waste as a major component of food insecurity in urban Africa. Meeting the food demand of the increasing population of urban Africa presents significant physical, political and socio-economic challenges. Food insecurity in urban Africa is compounded by a significant shift in the diet pattern of African urban dwellers away from a predominance of grain-based diets towards substantial consumption of animal products. Much attention has been paid to the major causes of food insecurity in the region among which are climate change, poor agricultural inputs, droughts, floods, and insufficient land for small-scale farmers. However, little attention has been paid to food waste as major source of food insecurity in Africa. All African countries lose large amounts of food during post-harvesting handling, either to pests, poor storage, poor transportation infrastructure or contamination. The FAO estimates that about 6-11 kg of food is wasted per capita while 40 per cent of total food produced is wasted in Africa. In view of the economic, environmental and ethical implications of food waste, this study argues that stemming urban food waste in Africa goes beyond the unilateral actions of farmers, distributors or consumers. Rather, curbing food waste and improving food security in Africa require holistic and integrated policy initiatives, which involve the participation of all food actors.
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panelist: Craig Harris, Michigan State University, Associate Professor, harrisc@ msu.edu The Emergence of Alternative Food networks in Monterrey, Mexico The food system of Monterrey, Mexico, consists of three, partially interrelated subsystems - a traditional food system of small markets that provides staple foods to lower income households, a “modern” food system of national/transnational supermarkets/hypermarkets that sell food to the large middle class and smaller upper class in Monterrey, and an emerging alternative food system (AFS) of small shops and periodic upscale markets that sells locally organically cooperatively ecologically produced food to a growing segment of middle and upper class consumers. Primary and secondary data are used to investigate the factors driving the emergence of the AFS, the specific alternative food networks that are developing, and the apparent and foreseeable impacts of their emergence. To date the alternative food networks are unplanned and ungoverned, but AFS advocates are urging both. To date the AFS emphasizes food that is healthy and local, and that exemplifies traditional indigenous, Hispanic, and Mexican cuisines. The emergence of the AFS is fostering the development of linkages between retailers and producers in the rural hinterland of the metropolitan area, but the hot dry climate leads the producers to use more environmentally intensive forms of production (irrigation, greenhouses); this tendency will increase as anthropogenic global climate change proceeds. EVALUATING SUPPLY CHAINS Sage Hall, Bowers Auditorium panelists: Michael Conard, Urban Design Lab@The Earth Institute, Columbia University Project Director, jmc52@columbia.edu; Judith LaBelle, Esq., President Emeritus & Senior Fellow, Glynwood Revisioning the Food System: A New Way to See and Create the Future of Food The very complexity of our global food system gives its an air of inevitability and thwarts change. Revisioning the Food System is an effort to develop a more robust analytic tool that will also support strategies for change. It will explore the need to examine each of the value chains within any food system separately; probe the nature and quality of the connections between the components within each; trace the flow of resources needed to make the system strong; and examine each value chain’s geospatial grounding. A key focus will be the people, activities and impacts that are too often considered in isolation or overlooked, yet which profoundly influence the strength of a food system and are fundamental to understanding how it can be improved. The approach is being developed as the basis for a “field manual” designed to help consumers, students of food policy, and policy makers 28
identify the questions that must be asked and answered to determine the most effective ways to try to strengthen a food system. This discussion will explore application of the Revisioning approach and identify examples that illustrate its application and value. panelist: Karen Siegel, Emory University, Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Graduate Student Researcher, karen.siegel@emory.edu Estimating the Contribution of Subsidized Food Commodities to the Energy Intake of US Adults Recent increases in obesity and diabetes prevalence in the US coincide with 4 decades of agricultural policies providing subsidies for production of specific foods. No study has estimated consumption of foods derived from these subsidized commodities at the individual level. We developed a Subsidy Consumption Score (SCS) as the percentage of total daily caloric intake from foods receiving the most subsidy dollars (corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, dairy, livestock) by tracing commodities through the food system. We applied information from My Pyramid Equivalents Database, Food Intakes Converted to Retail Commodities Database, and National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference to dietary intake data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2001-2006; 25,853 participants aged 18-64 years). Among US adults, median SCS was 52.8% (Interquartile Range: 43.6-61.9). Individuals aged 18-44 years had higher mean SCS (53.7%) than adults aged 45-64 years (51.4%; p<0.001). Compared to non-Hispanic whites (52.6%), non-Hispanic blacks had lower mean SCS (50.8%; p<0.001) and Mexican Americans had higher mean SCS (55.4%, p<0.001). SCS did not significantly vary by sex. SCS methodology shows U.S. diets include high proportions of agriculturally-subsidized foods, varying by ancestry and age. Future work will investigate associations between SCS and chronic health outcomes. panelists: Clare Gupta, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, clare.gupta@yale.edu; Jia Ching Chen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Towards a Critical Industrial Ecology of Food Systems Planning and Policy As policy makers and scientists strive to plan and implement long-term sustainability for food systems at local, regional, national and global scales, the insights of industrial ecology (IE) are increasingly relevant. The evolving methods
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of conceptualizing and quantifying the “metabolism” of various human-ecological systems developed by IE have been applied, for example, to questions of resource efficiency, waste flows and life cycle accounting of energy and GHGs. Because of its predominant forms of macro data collection and analysis, IE examination of food systems has frequently focused on agro-industrial dimensions of environmental problems (e.g. the net benefit of a given agro-fuel for GHG reductions and climate change mitigation) and material flows (e.g. phosphorus sources, inputs and wastes). Generally left out of these forms of accounting are the embedded assumptions within a given regime of measurement and valuation, and the political - and oftentimes invisible - processes of constructing boundaries, sites and scales of intervention. FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND AGRARIAN POLITICS Kroon Hall, Burke Auditorium panelists: Michael Fakhri, University of Oregon, School of Law Assistant Professor, mfakhri@uoregon.edu; Nate Bellinger, University of Oregon School of Law Food Sovereignty as a Transnational Legal Concept Different terms in food politics “ food security, food justice, right to food and food sovereignty“ are difficult to precisely define. My co-author, Nate Bellinger, and I find that food sovereignty is the most interesting because it may provide an opportunity for significant socio-economic transformation. We suggest that lawyers’ task should be to support and develop laws that ensure that the food sovereignty movement remains supple to global politics and resilient to global ecology. We first map out how each term reflects a certain sense of how the production, distribution and consumption of food should be changed. This provides the ideational context that allows us to understand food sovereignty’s unique characteristics. We then look at early yet recent examples of how food sovereignty has been implemented through law. We focus on two cases studies: In Blue Hill, Maine the town adopted a food sovereignty ordinance in 2011; in Ecuador, food sovereignty was written into the constitution in 2008. Food sovereignty has largely emerged from transnational peasant movements. These cases provide early and important examples how food sovereignty is increasingly being implemented through different forms of law. They also highlight the challenges and limits of using law to create social change. panelist: T. Garrett Graddy, American University, School of International Service Global Environmental Politics program, Assistant Professor, graddy@ american.edu
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Seeds that Free the Bounty: Agricultural Biodiversity As Policy & Potential This presentation draws upon a book manuscript investigating agricultural biodiversity conservation, seed policies, and a resurgence of agrarianist politics both in the Global North and the Global South. Biodiverse agriculture is necessary for resilient, viable, and just agri-food systems - but it is declining precipitously. Conservation methods remain myopically focused on ex situ preservation of germplasm, thereby extricating crop diversity from its social, (agri)cultural, and ecological contexts. This decontextualization-through-molecularization emerges from a systematic devaluation of semi-subsistence agrarian practices (such as seed-saving). Such knowledges have been gendered, racialized, and class-ized in their delegitimation as â&#x20AC;&#x153;traditional.â&#x20AC;? How is such delegitimation rooted in the inter-related projects of coloniality and modernity? The book explores the diverse and power-laden epistemologies at work, at play, and at odds in historical and current policies governing seeds. panelist: Alexandra Toledo, Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Center on Latin American Studies, Masters student, almabuck@indiana.edu Co-optation or Transformation? The use of Food Security and Food Sovereignty Frameworks in Peru Hunger is not a failure of agriculture, but of policy. New policy frameworks to eradicate hunger like food security and food sovereignty are being integrated into Constitutions and turned into law around the world. Are these frameworks really vehicles of political will or is their institutionalization part of the neoliberal food system? My paper on food security and food sovereignty frameworks into national policies in Latin America contributes to food policy literature and practice by providing a perspective on the ideological implications of these frameworks in the highly politicized agrofood system. Taking a critical perspective, I analyze the influence of social movements in the development of policy as well as the potential for government cooptation of food security and its more contestatory alternative, food sovereignty, into the neoliberal food regime. Special focus is placed on the subject of my thesis: the Current Bill on the Right to Food, Food Sovereignty, and Food and Nutritional Security in Peru. Academics and practitioners alike can use this research to analyze and strategize food policy efforts worldwide. The Yale Food Systems Symposium is the ideal forum to share my findings and generate ideas in an interactive, action-oriented format.
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panelist: Natalie Doonan, Concordia University, PhD Candidate, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, ndoonan@gmail.com Governing Cultures: The Case of the Cloudberry on the Lower North Shore of Quebec Due to the collapse of the cod-fishing industry on the Lower North Shore of Quebec, the region is currently developing place-branding strategies to encourage wilderness tourism and e-commerce as forms of economic renewal. In this paper, I demonstrate the symbolic value of the cloudberry (a local wildberry) as a potential site of contestation around meanings of “autonomy” and “sustainability” as a result of its current uses in branding the region. Based on evidence from an unresolved comprehensive land claim by the Innu Nation in the area, I argue that use of the cloudberry in current wilderness tourism conflicts with Innu claims for control of the land and its natural resources. Scientific experiments in the domestication of cloudberries reveal potentially negative health and environmental effects associated with marketing products made from the berry on larger scales.
POSTER SESSIONS 12:30-2:30 PM Kroon Hall 3rd Floor Details: Page 4
CONCURRENT SESSION 3: 1:15-2:45 PM GOVERNANCE, SOCIAL ACTION, AND GMOS Kroon Hall, Room 319 panelist: Devparna Roy, Cornell University, Visiting Fellow, Polson Institute for Global Development, dr53@cornell.edu Farmers’ Rights to Farmed-Saved Seeds in Biotech-Adopting States: A Comparison of Six Countries In 2012, the six countries with the largest acreage of transgenic crops were the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, India, and China. In this paper, through an analysis of the UPOV Acts,TRIPS Agreement, and relevant national-level legislation, I discuss the rights that farmers have to farm-saved seeds in each of these countries. I ask how the prevalence of the neoliberal food regime and the introduction of agro-biotechnology (i.e., transgenic seeds) have impacted the rights of farmers to farm-saved seeds in these countries. Finally, I offer suggestions as to how farmers, other civil society actors, and the state can ensure the continuity of farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds.
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panelist: Bruce Pardy, Queen’s University, Law Professor, pardyb@queensu.ca Protecting Liberty by Labelling GMO Foods: A Reply to Jonathan Adler In his 2012 essay in the New Republic, Professor Jonathan Adler argued that mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods would be contrary to the interests of liberty, free markets and the constitution. In this presentation (and in an upcoming paper), I will make the opposite case: that the interests of liberty and market competition require identification of GMO foods on labels; and that such labelling is consistent with foundational legal principles and constitutional requirements. Many arguments against GMO labels, including Professor Adler’s, are based upon the assertion of unproven harm: that since genetically modified foods have not been proven to be harmful, there is no justification for labelling them differently than non-modified products. Arguments in favour of labels tend to be based on the same-but-opposite argument, emphasizing the unknown risks of a new technology. I will argue that labels are required whether modified foods are harmful or not. The most compelling case for mandatory labelling is not based upon actual (and disputed) risk, but upon consumer choice, competition in food markets and constitutional liberty. panelist: Rachael Garrett, Harvard University, Sustainability Science, Postdoctoral Fellow, rachaeldgarrett@gmail.com Impacts of Consumer Preferences and Trade on Soybean Production and Land Use in South America In recent decades, increasing demand for agricultural products in Asia and the Middle East has drastically changed land use and land cover in South America. On the one hand, growing soybean consumption in numerous countries has contributed to high soybean prices and incentives to expand the area devoted to export crops. On the other, the increased dependence of South American farmers on international consumers has created new opportunities to incentivize more environmentally responsible agricultural production in the Amazon, Chaco, and Cerrado biomes through market mechanisms. In this study we analyze how consumer preferences for non-GM soybeans in Europe and Japan influence global soybean trade and land use in South America. We show that the ability of a country to produce and export non-GM soybeans influences their competitive advantage in soybean markets in Japan, Spain, and Italy. We conclude that a country’s ability to capture non-GM soybean markets in Europe influences their ability to access additional niche markets for environmentally responsible production. In particular, Brazil’s establishment of segregated supply chains for non-GM soybeans to Europe helps them implement, certify, and export soybeans that meet additional environmental criteria.
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panelist: Bill Duesing, Organic advocate, Solar Farm Education, bduesing@ mac.com How do we get to an Ecological Food System From Farmers of Forty Centuries to Common Ground and GMO Free CT; 40 years of Advocacy and Action for an Ecological Vision of the Food System How can we more quickly make the changes that are needed for human and environmental health? Inspired by the view of food and ecosystems expressed about a century ago, Bill began a career to make food system change. The results of his collaborative work include Common Ground High School, CT NOFA, school gardens, an incubator program for organic farmers, GMO Labeling Law in CT and more. Yet the industrial approach to food speeds ahead with full support while those creating an ecological food system struggle for resources. After exploring the changes in the food system over the past four decades, we will consider what it will take to make the necessary transition to agro-ecology soon enough. PERMACULTURE AND ACADEMIA Sage Hall, Room 24 panelists: Rafter Sass Ferguson, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, PhD Candidate; Abrah Jordan Dresdale, M.A.L.D., Food Systems Planner, Permaculture Designer, Whole-Systems Educator; Connor Stedman, Carbon Farming Course; Keith Zaltzberg, Founding Partner, Regenerative Design Group, Conway School of Landscape Design, Faculty, Edible Ecosystems Teaching Garden, Wellesley College Permaculture and Academia Since its origination in Australia in the 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, permaculture has developed into an ecological design and planning framework, a theory and philosophy of human-environment relationships, a collection of regenerative land care practices, and a global network/movement. For much of its history, permaculture and the academy have had a minimal direct relationship with each other. That separation is beginning to shift, however, with courses, research, and land-based projects related to permaculture emerging at academic institutions around the US in recent years.
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Structures of Food Injustice Sage Hall, Room 32 panelist: Joshua Sbicca, University of Florida Sociology, PhD Candidate, jsbicca@ufl.edu Economic Justice as Principle, Process, and Peripheral: A Critical Appraisal of Food Movement Labor Practices Calls for greater attention to efforts aimed at creating economic justice for food and farm workers within the conventional food system have increasingly been matched by calls for ensuring that economic justice is central to all alternatives proffered by various food based movements. What can we learn from projects already underway by traditional labor unions in various food sectors? What do actually existing radical food experiments that take labor issues seriously look like? What stands in the way of alternative food organizations effectively providing a means to economic advancement? This paper addresses these questions through a comparative analysis of three California organizations enmeshed in a variety of contentious food politics. The cases include the United Food and Commercial Workers 770 (a labor union representing grocery store and meatpacking/food processing workers), Planting Justice (a food justice organization working to increase access to food and green jobs), and San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project (a sustainable (urban) farming and education organization). In short, there are three general orientations toward addressing the labor question: economic justice as the guiding organizational principle, as a process constantly in need of adjustment and refinement, and as peripheral to other organizational goals. panelist: Christine Porter, University of Wyoming, Assistant Professor of Public Health, christine.porter@uwyo.edu Labor and Leadership: Women in US Community Food Organizing The US has a food system largely built on the backs of women, enslaved Africans, Native Americans and most recently â&#x20AC;&#x153; migrant laborers. In other words, the US has never had a healthy and just food system. Fortunately, tens of thousands of Americans are working to create one that is both. That work, loosely forming the US community food movement, has increasingly if not sufficiently, tackled undoing racism and classism as inherent to creating a just food system. However, work aimed at undoing sexism has largely been missing. We aim to add gender to race and class as an anchor for achieving equality and justice through food system change.
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panelist: Andrea Freeman, William S. Richardson School of Law, Assistant Professor, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, afree@hawaii.edu The Unbearable Whiteness of Milk: Food Oppression and the USDA Food oppression is the institutional, systemic, food-related action or policy that physically debilitates a socially vulnerable group. Politically and financially weak communities absorb the external costs of food oppression, rendering these costs largely invisible to the mainstream. The effects of the oppression also exacerbate the harmed groups’ vulnerability by constraining their political voices, reducing their work capacity, and draining the energy of household and community members who care for the sick and perform their unfulfilled responsibilities. In the long term, food oppression diminishes already vulnerable populations in numbers and in power. Illness also leads to social invisibility, decreased social status, depression, and despair. This paper expands on the theory of food oppression I put forth in “Fast Food: Oppression Through Poor Nutrition” (95 California Law Review 2221 (2007)), and applies it to the problem of the United States Department of Agriculture’s dual roles of nutrition adviser and dairy promoter. It explores traditional associations between whiteness and milk, and argues that USDA-sponsored dairy consumption, particularly in partnerships with fast food companies, leads to health disparities. panelist: Justine Lindemann, Cornell University, Development Sociology, jfl93@cornell.edu Urban Food Systems in an Era of Neoliberalization: Food Justice as Part of an Anti-Racist Alternative Planning Paradigm Using Syracuse, New York as a case study, my research explores the intersection of food and race in the postindustrial city. Through a historical-geographical lens, I examine how segregation and institutionalized discrimination have shaped a food system that serves a predominantly wealthy and white population. In Syracuse, like other post-industrial cities in the rust belt, a steep decline in the population base and commercial investment alike have catalyzed major shifts in the food system. In an era of neoliberal restructuring, racialized inequalities in the food system have been compounded by the withdrawal of the State from social programs and reinforced neoliberal ideologies of market-based alternative food practices. Cities have long relied on rural areas for food provisioning, but with increasing urban poverty and the shifting geography of food retail, many urban community organizations are exploring ways to become more self-sufficient in food provisioning. While some alternative food practices reproduce neoliberalism through a reliance on market solutions and an ethic of individuality, I argue that food justice organizing offers the potential for collaborative planning inclusive of 36
both community organizers and the state apparatus. Such collaboration has the potential to create more intentional urban food system planning that is equitable and just. UNIVERSITY FOOD SYSTEM EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS Sage Hall, Bowers Auditorium panelists: Yona Sipos, University of British Columbia, Integrated Studies in Land & Food Systems, Ph.D. Candidate, ysipos@gmail.com; Eve Bratman, Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University Growing Community-University Partnerships through Food System Projects In this facilitated discussion, we will explore opportunities for communityuniversity (CU) partnerships that enhance local food systems. Drawing on our experience with CU engagement and food system research, we will frame the discussion with diverse examples from the British Columbia Food System Project, the American University Beekeeping Society, and other university sustainability initiatives. Following a brief introductory presentation, group discussion will be guided by questions such as: “Who is included in CU partnerships for food system projects, and who else should be included?” When is it appropriate to promote CU engagement in food system projects, and when is it not? “What engagement strategies are best suited for student learning in community-university food system projects? What are opportunities for faculty research within this context?” What are transferable lessons of CU engagement that enhance local food systems? What are the most significant limitations? Why do food and food systems seem to be particularly unifying for CU partnerships? How can CU engagement strengthen local food systems, especially as globalization encroaches on the academic experience? panelist: Justine Williams University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Anthropology Doctoral Candidate Justinew@live.unc.edu Walking the line between everyday improvements and paradigm-shifts in engaged food systems research: examples from a university-community and university-business partnership To understand the social complexities of food systems and expand research findings beyond the academic niche, many researchers are recognizing the importance of collaborating with communities, non-governmental organizations and businesses on research and action projects. As we forge these collaborations,
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we are faced with considering what partnerships have the most potential for knowledge-generation and social transformation. This paper proposes that successful collaborations might walk the line between critically working to shift status quo assumptions and structures, while nonetheless engaging in current opportunities to create tangible improvements in current systems. Based on a proposed set of theory-based criteria, the paper considers the respective successes a university partnership with a mainstream grocery chain and another with a rural county-wide “community” have had in increasing access to locally-produced food and improving economic opportunities. panelist: Véronik Campbell, Academic Coordinator, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm, veronik.campbell@ubc.ca UBC Farm The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm encompasses a 24-hectare mosaic of cultivated field areas, hedgerows, orchards, and successional forest stands on UBC’s Vancouver campus. In the midst of a city, this landscape offers an important bridge between the rural and the urban. Embodying UBC’s aspirations to be a “living laboratory,” the Centre offers a wide range of interdisciplinary learning, research, and community programs on the site. Innovative sustainability learning is at the heart of the Centre’s academic programming. The UBC Farm provides a unique “outdoor classroom,” where learners of all ages can immerse themselves in the stewardship of a working, productive landscape, linking society’s most pressing global challenges to relevant, practical solutions. In addition to hosting students in over 50 UBC courses, the UBC Farm features elementary school garden projects, an Aboriginal food hub, on-site and campus markets, a Community Supported Agriculture program, direct sales to UBC food outlets, an eight-month Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture, a wide array of research projects, and more. panelist: Nurcan Atalan Helicke, Assistant Professor Skidmore College Environmental Studies, natalanh@skidmore.edu Food Resilience in North America: Perspectives from Environmental Studies and Sciences. Coauthors: Gerry Marten, East-West Center and Eco-Tipping Points Project, gerrymarten@hawaii.rr.com; Kip Curtis, Eckerd College and Edible Peace Patch Project, kip.curtis@gmail.com The food system is massive and complex, and failure could take forms never seen before. The stakes are high. In 2012, scholars of the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) have started an interdisciplinary working group on “food resilience in North America” to develop a framework for 38
scholarship, teaching and action. The organizing questions for scholars are on risk analysis, scalar analysis of the problems in the food system, leverage points for reducing risks and coping with potential failures, actions by multiple actors, and contribution of environmental studies and sciences. One of the guiding principles of work so far has been the model of EcoTipping Points Project (www. ecotippingpoints.org) that gathers success stories from around the world about turning environmental and social decline into a course of restoration. SUSTAINABLE DIETS Sage Hall, Room 41C panelist: Jessica Johnston, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs, Earth Institute Department Research Assistant, jlj2149@columbia. edu Understanding Sustainable Diets: A Descriptive Analysis of the Determinants and Processes that Influence Diets and their Impact on Health, Food Security and Environmental Sustainability The confluence of population, economic development, and environmental pressures resulting from increased globalization and industrialization reveal an increasingly resource-constrained world where predictions point to the need to do more with less and in a “better” way. The concept of sustainable diets presents an opportunity to successfully advance commitments to sustainable development and the elimination of poverty, food and nutrition insecurity and poor health outcomes. This study examines the determinants of sustainable diets, offers a descriptive analysis of these areas, and presents a causal model and framework to build from. The major determinants of sustainable diets fall into five categories: Agriculture, Health, Sociocultural, Environmental, and Socio-Economic. When factors or processes are changed in one determinant category, such changes affect other determinant categories, and in turn the level of “sustainability” of a diet. The complex web of determinants of sustainable diets makes it challenging for policy makers to understand the benefits and considerations for promoting, processing and consuming such diets. To advance this work, better measurements and indicators must be developed to assess the impact of the various determinants on the sustainability of a diet, and the trade-offs associated with any recommendations aimed at increasing the “sustainability” of our food system. panelists: Jessica Hardin, Brandeis University, Anthropology PhD Candidate jahardin@brandeis.edu │ Christina Kwauk, University of Minnesota; Shawn Arita, Economic Research Service, USDA
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Producing markets, producing people: Local Food Actors Assemble Healthy Foods in Samoa In the context of rising rates of non-communicable diseases and global attention to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;obesity epidemicâ&#x20AC;? in the Pacific, the meaning of healthy food is a contested and emerging category in independent Samoa. We highlight the ways local food actors construct food environments, food consumption, and solutions to the obesity problem. More importantly, by examining how local food actors reflect upon and call into question seemingly hegemonic notions of the problem of obesity and its solutions, we also illustrate how the dominance of global public health discourses (e.g., eat more vegetables and fruits, produce more vegetables and fruits) are complicated by locally informed understandings of food, change, and globalization. In this paper, we illuminate the paradoxes that emerge in this context when the solutions to the problem of obesity and NCDs are also marked as part of the problem, namely the market and integration into the global market. We argue that the market is constructed by local food actors as both the cause of rising rates of disease but also the solution because of its special capacity to transform people. The food actors we encountered construct themselves in the role of altruistic capitalists managing global and cultural change by building agricultural opportunities and building up a healthier nation. We examine how local food actors recast neoliberal attitudes by suggesting that opening export markets will benefit the nation and in turn create a healthier Samoan population. URBAN AGRICULTURE Kroon Hall, Room 321 panelist: Kristian Saguin, Texas A&M University, Department of Geography, PhD Candidate, ksaguin@neo.tamu.edu Fish for the City: Urban Metabolism of a Periurban Lake in the Philippines In line with its post-war visions of development, the Philippine state produced Laguna Lake as a multi-use resource that would supply the expanding megacity of Manila with fish and water, and serve as a sink for urban wastes and excess floodwater. The introduction of commercial aquaculture in 1970 and subsequent infrastructure and livelihood programs formulated to realize these visions brought significant social conflicts and extensive ecological changes in the lake, which threatened sustained productivity. Using the urban metabolism concept to frame ethnographic and historical data, this paper examines the contradictions of fish production for the city as it is enrolled in the complex socionatural materiality of water-based production, and with the conflicting demands on the lake. It focuses on the creation of the lake as a resource, rise of aquaculture to address the decline in capture fisheries, and shifts in lake governance, linking these with urban actors and processes. It concludes with reflections on governing the contradictions of the lake and its implications on urban food security. 40
panelist: Elizabeth Hodges Snyder, Assistant Professor of Public Health, Soil and Water Scientist, Department of Health Sciences, University of Alaska Anchorage Sowing Seeds in the City: Developing a Comprehensive Text on Urban Agriculture A key question posed by the organizers of the 2013 Yale Food Systems Symposium on Urbanization & Food System Transformation is “How can we synchronize the efforts of research, policy, and practice?” We argue that part of the path to synchronization will be the purposeful sharing of knowledge across fields of expertise, and interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, policy makers, and those literally and figuratively getting their hands dirty within urban communities. To this end, we are developing a book with the purpose of compiling and analyzing the effects of urban agriculture related to ecosystem services and human health; collecting examples of what is happening on the ground in a diversity of urban centers; and connecting people involved to each other and to the science that supports urban agriculture as a powerful tool for moving towards sustainability. The session will explore the “what” and “how” with respect to collection, dissemination, and utilization of information on urban agriculture, including ecosystem inputs and outputs, integration with municipal infrastructure, economic implications, community needs, individual/community health, food security, formal/informal education and outreach, and research/ evaluation. Anticipated products of the session include a log of research, policy, and action needs; a teaching and research resource list; and a collaborator listserv. Opportunities for contributing authors will also be explored. panelist: Amy Coplen, Portland State University Urban Studies, PhD Student, acoplen@pdx.edu Mending the Metabolic Rift Through Food: The Role of Urban Agriculture in Re-valuing Food Production and Preparation Among American Immigrants Industrialization and urbanization have alienated humans from production and preparation processes and from the rest of nature, a phenomenon environmental sociologists and geographers have termed metabolic rift. Metabolic rift is perhaps most apparent when we examine our relationship to food, which is characterized by intensive industrial agriculture and highly mechanized production and preparation practices. At the individual and community levels, these transformations have deskilled and devalued agricultural and culinary labor and drastically changed how and what we produce, distribute, prepare, and consume. This rift is arguably felt starkly by many American immigrants who engaged in agricultural practices in their home country, lost access to the means of food
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production after immigrating the U.S., and now struggle to access affordable, healthy, and culturally appropriate food. Through the lens of metabolic rift, this research explores how community gardening affects low-income immigrants’ relationship to food production, preparation, and consumption. Participant observation and ethnographic interviews collected through a collaborative technique inform how urban agriculture utilizes and re-values existing agricultural and culinary skill-sets and contributes to shaping the identities of American immigrants. This research examines the potential for urban agriculture to mend the metabolic rift through food, and to improve urban communities and ecologies. panelist: Heather Frambach, City of Austin Sustainable Urban Agriculture & Community Garden Program, Urban Agriculture Planner, h.nietoframbach@ gmail.com Gentrification, Race and Urban Agriculture: Planning a Local Food System in a Rapidly Growing City Austin, Texas is one of the fastest growing communities in the United States. Unlike many rust belt cities using urban agriculture as a radical reclamation of underutilized urban land, Austin’s exploding housing market has left little land available for food production outside of residential neighborhoods. East Austin, a rapidly gentrifying African-American and Mexican-American area also features the City’s best farming soils and cheapest land. Recent neighborhood complaints about animal processing on a new urban farm illuminated simmering racial tensions and sparked a citywide debate about Austin’s urban farm code. MexicanAmerican environmental justice activists view urban agriculture and its primarily white practitioners as displacing an already rapidly depleting affordable housing stock. On the other side, urban farmers are committed to producing sustainable, local food, thereby carrying out their own vision of environmental justice. As planners within the City’s young urban agriculture program, we were charged with designing a public engagement process and rewriting key portions of the land use code. Our goal has been to find a common ground between the two competing versions of environmental justice. In this workshop, we will discuss the history of this charged issue and its implications for sustainable and equitable food systems planning more broadly. LINKING UNDERSERVED CONSUMERS, HEALTHFUL FOODS, AND DIRECT MARKETING OUTLETS: SCALING FEDERAL NUTRITION BENEFIT INCENTIVE PROGRAMS TO SUPPORT REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS AND THEIR FARMERS AND COMMUNITIES Kroon Hall, Room G01 panelist: Julia Pon, Wholesome Wave, Manager, Innovations Lab, julia@ wholesomewave.org, Lydia Oberholtzer, Senior Researcher, Penn State, Nicole 42
Berube, Executive Director, CitySeed, New Haven, CT Linking Underserved Consumers, Healthful Foods, and Direct Marketing Outlets: Scaling Federal Nutrition Benefit Incentive Programs to Support Regional Food Systems and their Farmers and Communities Farmers markets and other direct-to-consumer outlets have recently attracted a great deal of attention for their potential to provide consumers in rural and urban “food deserts” with access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Programs that link federal nutrition benefit consumers with these direct-to-consumer markets are expanding rapidly. These programs not only have the potential to bring healthy foods into food deserts, but to enhance the viability of small and medium sized farms and other key stakeholders in local food systems. This panel will explore the “Double Value Coupon” programs organized by Wholesome Wave, a national not-for-profit organization. In 2012, Wholesome Wave assisted over 300 sites nationally in running these programs. The panel will specifically address evaluation results of the Double Value Coupon Program from 2009-2012, with a focus on benefits for participating farmers and consumers. FEDERAL FOOD POLICY Kroon Hall, Burke Auditorium panelist: Ariane Lotti, Assistant Policy Director, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, ariane.lotti@aya.yale.edu The Politics of Sustainable Food Systems: Opportunities and Challenges for Advancing Sustainable Food System Policy at the Federal Level Over the past few decades, farmer-led and community-based organizations have led the campaign to reform federal farm and food policies, such as the farm bill, so that they support and advance sustainable food and farming systems. Success has been modest but notable, and the past couple of farm bills have included unprecedented amounts of funding for on-farm conservation, local and regional food systems, beginning farmers and ranchers, and organic production. Despite these gains, the shifting political and economic landscape has altered the farm bill process, creating a number of uncertainties for sustainable food and farming advocates. The 2013 Farm Bill process currently underway has strayed substantially from past reauthorization processes, with traditional political alliances disintegrating and new alliances beginning to form. This shifting political landscape creates a number of significant challenges and opportunities that are starting to inform new strategies aimed at advancing a more sustainable food system policy at the federal level.
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panelist: Diana Winters, Indiana University, Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Associate Professor, diwinter@iu.edu Why the Food Safety Modernization Act isn’t Enough: The Need for a New Paradigm The Food Safety Modernization Act, passed in early 2011, is the most significant overhaul of the Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety authority since 1938. It reorients FDA to a preventive rather than responsive stance toward food contamination. The Act, however, is underfunded and provides for too many exemptions. In addition, the uncertainty caused by the Act’s attempt to incorporate flexible standards for smaller producers will inhibit market entry for small producers focused on marketing their products locally. Moreover, the Food Safety Modernization Act’s narrow focus on eliminating foodborne illness cements a narrow definition of “safety.” Food-system design should incorporate attention to obesity prevention initiatives, environmental concerns, and food access issues in addition to the prevention of foodborne illness. States should have more flexibility to establish the structure of their food-system regulation, but subject to comprehensive federal oversight. Such a system would utilize resources more efficiently, improve information gathering and crisis-prevention capabilities, and serve a rationalizing function among the various spheres of regulatory authority over food. panelist: Stephanie Tai, University of Wisconsin Law School, Associate Professor, tai2@wisc.edu The Farm to Fork Transformation of Agricultural and Food Law to Food Systems Law Food law in the United States has traditionally been viewed as the area of law related to the development and marketing of food, while agricultural law has been viewed as the area of law relevant to farmers and rangers, agri-businesses, and food processing and marketing firms. But more and more, legal scholars have been discussing the transformation of these two areas - and others related to food systems such as environmental law, labor law, intellectual property, and market competition - into something perhaps even broader: an area of law that examines food systems as a whole, rather than at individual components of the farm-to-fork process. Using from empirical and case-study methods, this paper will highlight the movement in legal scholarship towards a more systems-oriented framing of food and agricultural law and explore implications for doctrinal and advocacy developments in these areas. In doing so, it will contextualize this transformation by situating these changes with more theoretical work addressing the developments of other legal doctrines and social movements. panelist: Margot Pollans, UCLA School of Law, Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, Teaching Fellow, margot.pollans@gmail.com 44
Toward a Food Secure Future: Bridging the Gap Between the Sustainable Agriculture and Hunger Elimination Despite the centrality of sustainable agriculture to long term food security, there is, in modern American politics, a deep tension between sustainable agriculture advocacy and anti-hunger advocacy. This tension follows from the history of the two movements and is exacerbated by congressional politics and funding opportunities, but it is detrimental to both movements and, in the long run, undermines the potential for creation of a just food system. This Article explores each of these causes and then offers a road map for future productive collaboration focusing on the meaning of food, the right to food, and, most importantly, the costs of food. Cost is the most significant stumbling block to successful collaboration. Any policy that increases the cost of food to consumers is anathema to those fighting for food access for all. But those with limited access to food often also bear the burden of many of the environmental, social, and health externalities of the modern food system. This article will consider how the true cost of food (including all the externalities production, processing, and distribution) should be allocated between taxpayers, consumers, distributors, and producers in a sustainable system. panelist: Shoshana Inwood, University of Vermont, Community Development and Applied Economics, Assistant Professor, Shoshanah.Inwood@uvm.edu Linking the Cost of Health Insurance and Child Care to Future U.S. Food Production The aging of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s farm sector has spurred a new generation of policy and program initiatives to support beginning farmers, local farms and create economic development through food and agriculture at the national, state and local level. However, the majority of research, resources, programs and policy are devoted to issues related to access to land, capital, credit, and market infrastructure. Both academic researchers and policy makers have grossly overlooked how farm household level issues, particularly the cost of health insurance and child care impact agriculturally based economic development, new farmer entry, and successful farm transitions to the next generation of farmers. Furthermore, there has been no discussion of how these issues uniquely effect different types of farmers (e.g. women, young farmers, beginning farmers, multi-generation, limited resource, small and medium sized farmers) and different types of production systems (direct marketing, commodity agriculture) as each are embedded in unique social and economic contexts. Qualitative and quantitative research methods are used to identify how these household level issues influence the way farm familiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; structure their enterprise, and inform food, agriculture and economic development policies.
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CONCURRENT SESSION 4: 3:00-4:30 PM FUTURE OF FOOD STUDIES Kroon Hall, Room 319 panelist: Nicholas Jordan, University of Minnesota-TC Agronomy & Plant Genetics Professor, Agroecology, jorda020@umn.edu Building the “Systems” Part of Food-Systems Education This discussion will explore undergraduate curricula on food and agriculture systems, sharing experiences, practices, visions and aspirations that are emerging in newfood-system and food-studies programs. We’ll begin with a brief look at curricula at various developmental stages at University of British Columbia, University of California, Davis, University of Minnesota-TC and Yale. We’ll then organize a brief open-space discussion on these curricula and then reconvene to identify opportunities and challenges in these curricula. EXPANDING THE HORIZONS OF FOOD JUSTICE Sage Hall, Room 24 panelist: Priscilla McCutcheon, University of Connecticut, Geography and African American Studies, Assistant Professor, priscilla.mccutcheon@uconn. edu Beulah Land Farms: A Geography of Hope and a Racial Utopia? Communities of color as active agents of change are not given adequate attention in food justice scholarship. This research draws on the case study of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC), a Black Nationalist religion farming over 4,000 acres of land in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina. At Beulah Land Farms, PAOCC members come together to grow organic produce, raise cattle, live communally and distribute food both locally and nationally. All volunteers have relocated to this small rural community from major urban cities. The PAOCC’s dream of providing food for all black people is largely informed by spirituality, religion and racial pride, three interconnected concepts in black liberation theology and the black radical tradition. To PAOCC members, God calls them to create a liberatory heaven on earth for black people; freedom from oppression should not only come in the afterlife. Volunteers adamantly believe that such freedom cannot be achieved without a safe and healthy food source. This project utilizes archival research, interviews and participant observation to conceptualize Beulah Land Farms as a geography of hope and a direct response to racial supremacy. 46
panelists: Kristin Reynolds, Faculty The New School for Public Engagement Environmental Studies/Food Studies, reynoldk@newschool.edu Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City It is often assumed that urban agriculture advances social justice by increasing food access and greening communities. Yet, despite these and other benefits, urban agriculture initiatives may fall short of challenging unjust structures, including structural racism, gender discrimination, and class privilege. In order to be truly transformative, urban agriculture must address these broad patterns. Drawing from in-depth interviews conducted for a forthcoming book on urban agriculture and social justice in New York City, this presentation discusses how farmers, gardeners, and advocacy groups have engaged in creating more socially just food and environmental systems. It specifically highlights the work of women and people of color whose efforts to disrupt dynamics of power/privilege have been underrepresented within the movement at large. The presentation also discusses roles of researchers in advancing social justice in the food system. By critically analyzing political and social dynamics of urban agriculture while highlighting initiatives led by people of color and women to advance social justice, the presentation offers insights into ways that action researchers and scholar activists might contribute to this work. panelist: Hank Herrera, General Manager Dig Deep Farms & Produce, Alameda County Deputy Sheriffsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Activities League, hank@c-prep.org Decolonizing Food Justice This presentation extends arguments for feminist leadership and decolonizing knowledge to alternative food systems and specifically food justice. Over the past fifteen years burgeoning social movements for community food security in the US, food sovereignty in the global south, and more recently food justice have recognized and addressed the failures of the multinational, industrial food system to fairly and equitably distribute healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate real food. These failures disproportionately impact poor people throughout the world, especially women and children. The consequences of these failures include poor health, the disruption of and exclusion from the social, cultural, community and economic benefits of food production and exchange. At the same time, these social movements have largely reproduced and expanded the colonizing, dominating, hegemonic propensities of white patriarchy and systems of power and privilege. We argue that in order to correct this pattern, we must relocate our social movement goals and structure within a decolonizing and feminist
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leadership framework. This framework, for example, interrogates and resists movement leadership and scholarship by white people who uncritically assume a natural order of leadership based on academic achievement. This framework also provides the basis for capacity building and leadership development for food justice practice. panelist: Christine Caruso, Touro College of Pharmacy, Master of Public Health Program, Assistant Professor of Public Health, c.c.caruso@gmail.com “Why Can’t I Get that Off a Shelf in my Neighborhood?”: Food Voice in a Lowincome Community in NYC Food Voice examines the lived experience of participants through the lens of food in everyday life. This study explores the experiences of residents living in and around the largest public housing development in North America, the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, NY. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, key informants discuss their experiences with food and their local food environment. Their narratives reveal the numerous challenges residents face as well as tactics they engage in navigating a microneighborhood food system that is largely geographically isolated from the rest of the city and faces structural problems including disenfranchisement and neglect. Participants in this project reveal salient aspects of the experience of living in such a community through the ways in which they discuss their practices of procuring and consuming foods. In discussing food practices, participants highlight struggles with socio-cultural factors including race and class that are inscribed into their food environments and are communicated through their food voices. This paper also aims to understand these food experiences in terms of a model of food motivation called the Hierarchy of Food Needs. FORECASTING AND THE FOOD SYSTEM Sage Hall, Room 32 panelist: Ethan Butler, Harvard University, Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate Student, eebutler@fas.harvard.edu Adaptation of US Maize to Future Warming It has been experimentally determined that maize is particularly sensitive to drought during the flowering period of development. However, this has not been studied across varied geographic regions growing different cultivars of maize. Furthermore, the exact pattern of sensitivity will determine how much control farmers have to avoid particularly damaging weather. We combine USDA yield data with USHCN weather data in a multiple linear regression model to study
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how sensitivity varies during five stages of development: planting, silking, doughing, dented and mature. We find highly variable sensitivity both spatially and temporally. The silking and dentings stages appear to be the most sensitive and may be as much as an order of magnitude more sensitive than the least though the significance of this result remains to be fully assessed. Furthermore, the pattern of sensitivity varies by state though several distinct patterns appear to be geographically linked. These results suggest that it may be difficult to adjust planting schedules to avoid damaging late season heat due to a broad pattern of exceptional sensitivity. Despite this, an improved quantification of developmental sensitivity may still help to produce improved management schedules and illustrate management types that will be more appropriate to a hotter environment. panelist: Marena Lin, Harvard University, Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Ph.D. student, marena.lin@gmail.com Smallholder farmer welfare in a time of changing climate: the role of cropping decisions in local food security in the Nainital District of Uttarakhand, India Smallholder farmers in the Himalayan district of Nainital in Uttarakhand, India depend on predictable weather patterns for both food and cash crop cultivation. The manifestation of climate change in changing weather patterns is expected to endanger rural food security, as many of these farmers operate at subsistencelevel. In an analysis of a 307-household survey of smallholder farmers, I find that respondents perceive changes in weather patterns and report adverse effects on their agricultural productivity. Despite describing traditional grains as crops best suited to adverse weather, respondents still choose to grow cash crops that they believe to be the most vulnerable to these weather patterns. The competing motivations of sustainability and profitability are explained by the growing prominence of the Indian Public Distribution System, which has created a buffer against drought-precipitated famine by providing heavily subsidized grain but, in turn, diminished the profitability of locally produced grain. I argue that overall food security and sustainability can be improved by reorienting the objectives of agricultural policy and welfare policy to value local preferences and to treat smallholder farmers as agents rather than welfare recipients. panelist: Nathan Mueller, University of Minnesota, Institute on the Environment, Graduate Research Fellow, muell512@umn.edu Exploring global crop yield impacts of changing climate and agricultural management Continued agricultural intensification and accelerating climate change are two
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of the most important trends determining the future of global agricultural production. Understanding the interplay between these trends is of great importance, particularly the degree to which changes in agricultural management could help overcome projected decreases in crop production from climate change. Here we present an exploratory global analysis of how the yields of maize, wheat, rice, and soybean are affected by the combination of climate change and agricultural intensification. For A1B 2050 scenarios of climate change, we find that the production gains from agricultural intensification would be much larger than the projected impacts of the new climate conditions. Under A1B 2050 climate change conditions and no intensification, we project approximately -7, 3, -1, and -3% changes to global maize, wheat, rice, and soybean production, respectively. With intensification of low-yielding areas to 75% of attainable yields (closing yield gaps) we find approximately 20, 35, 17, and 3% overall increases in production. However, the capacity for intensification to overcome climate impacts erodes considerably under uniform global temperature increases of 4-5°C, and we estimate net yield losses for maize, soybean, and rice with a 5°C increase even with yield gap closure to 75% of attainable yields. This analysis demonstrates that joint consideration of climate and agricultural management change is critically important. Increasing investment in management strategies would reduce the impact of climate change on global agricultural production. panelist: Jacob Park, Green Mountain College, Associate Professor of Business Strategy and Sustainability, parkj@greenmtn.edu │Chris Koliba, University of Vermont, Faculty; Ann Hoogenboom, University of Vermont, Graduate Student Food Systems and Climate Change in the U.S.: Meeting Global Challenges, Fostering Local Community Resilience There is a growing sense of the fragility of agricultural production in the U.S. and around the world with increasing risks to food systems from droughts, floods, unseasonal temperatures, and erratic seasonality. The critical research challenge that confronts us is how global, national, regional, and local food systems are likely to adapt to accelerating climate change stresses. Drawing on the emerging international, national, and local (Vermont) scientific research on food systems and climate change, this paper examines the likely impacts of climate change on food production as well as on the predominantly human systems that influence food security, with special focus on different policy and governance mechanisms needed to promote adaptive responses necessary to increase and sustain food security. While food systems analysis is under-examined in the U.S. climate change policy literature, there is a growing body of work on agriculture, governance, and community response that is relevant to food systems and this paper will highlight the emerging research in the local (Vermont), region, national, and the global context.
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FUTURE OF FOOD LAW AND POLICY Sage Hall, Bowers Auditorium panelists: Emily Broad Leib, Harvard; Baylen Linnekin, American University; Margaret McCabe, UNH; Laurie Ristino, Vermont Law School; Michael Roberts, UCLA; Susan Schneider, Arkansas The Future of Food Law and Policy: The Responsibility of Lawyers in the Academy and Beyond America faces widespread problems across its food system, including a range of harmful environmental, health, and economic impacts. In order to address these problems, lawyers whose work focuses on all facets of the food chain must create and use effective legal and policy tools and infrastructure. Rising numbers of law students are interested in shaping this burgeoning field. Concurrently, law schools are beginning to address these issues through launching new courses, clinics, and centers. Our panel, including key faculty members at law schools that have recently made commitments to food law and policy, will discuss these new trends in the legal academy and recommend future avenues for food law and policy work, both within the field of law and across multiple disciplines. FOOD SAFETY Sage Hall, Room 41C panelist: Alexander Belyakov, Ryerson University, G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, University Instructor, belyakov@ryerson.com Food Security Policies and Responses after Nuclear Emergencies I will present my research findings in the first panel part with Chernobyl and Fukushima as case studies. The purposes of my research were to determine: What issues have emerged with food security (first of all accessibility and adequacy) on affected areas; how the population was informed on these issues; what management decisions were made by governments to address food security after the disasters; whether these decisions were adequate in addressing food safety. I will also analyze differences and similarities between Fukushima and Chernobyl cases.
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URBAN FOOD SYSTEMS Kroon Hall, Room 321 panelist: Megan Betz, Indiana University, Dept. of Geography, PhD candidate, mebetz@umail.iu.ed Applying the Principles of the Commons to the Bloomington Community Orchard The Bloomington Community Orchard is a volunteer-led fruit orchard operating as a public-private partnership. The acre of land on which the Orchard is located has transitioned from a public resource to a common pool resource (CPR), and the organization is beginning to establish a framework that will lead to the longterm sustainability of the resource. This analysis applies Ostrom’s (1990) eight principles of the commons to the Orchard structure. The Orchard’s decisionmaking process and community engagement show that three principles of the commons are already well established: clearly defined physical and social boundaries, collective-choice arrangements, and conflict-resolution mechanisms. However, it struggles to define what it calls “the Orchard community,” those allowed to use the resource. This poses the largest threat to successful management of the Orchard as a CPR, as it prevents formalized behavioral boundaries and graduated sanctions. The analysis first provides a background of the Orchard, then places the resource within a social-ecological system framework and discusses the unique context of the Orchard as a CPR (Ostrom, 2007). The analysis then addresses each of the eight principles of the commons and provides next steps for the Orchard as it works toward clear guidelines and management practices. panelist: Kyle Clark, Lund University, Agricultural Energy Efficiency Consultant, kyle.clark.vt@gmail.com Urban Food Forestry: A Multifunctional Approach to Increase Food Security and Provide Ecosystem Services We examine the potential role of perennial woody food-producing species (“food trees”) in cities in the context of urban sustainable development and propose a multifunctional approach that combines elements of urban agriculture, urban forestry, and agroforestry into what we call “urban food forestry” (UFF). We used four approaches at different scales to gauge the potential of UFF to enhance urban sustainability and contribute to food security in the context of urbanization and climate change. First, we identified 37 current initiatives based around urban food trees, and analyzed their activities in 3 categories: planting, mapping, and harvesting. Second, we analyzed 30 urban forestry master plans to determine their inclusion of local food security concerns. Third, we used Burlington, Vermont as 52
a case study to quantify the potential fruit yield of publicly accessible open space if planted with Malus domestica (the common apple) under 9 different planting scenarios. Finally, we developed a Climate-Food-Species Matrix of potential food trees appropriate for temperate urban environments as a decision-making tool. We identified 70 species, 30 of which we deemed “highly suitable” for urban food forestry based on their cold hardiness, drought tolerance, and edibility. We conclude that substantial untapped potential exists for urban food forestry to contribute to urban sustainability via increased food security and landscape multifunctionality. panelist: Lindsey Dillon, University of California Berkeley, Geography Dept., Graduate Student, lindseydillon@berkeley.edu Cultivating the Industrial City: Environmental Sustainability, and a Right to the (Garden) City of Tomorrow Today a new urban imaginary locates gardens squarely in the heart of the formerly industrial city, a landscape of food production replacing an earlier landscape of manufacturing production. As potent terrains for the articulation of diverse and at sometimes conflicting urban interests, today gardens and gardening practices offer an important lens onto the social relations of urban development. In this paper I examine an urban gardening project in southeast San Francisco, through which growing food becomes a strategy for violence prevention in a neighborhood long neglected by city agencies, and with high rates of unemployment, health problems, and racialized populations. The gardens of Hunters Point Family continue the youth development the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) which folded in 2004. SLUG’s youth development programs had emerged in the mid-1990s in the context of radical changes in the U.S. welfare state. In a moment when San Francisco seeks to transform its industrial southeast into a landscape of green parks and new condominiums, the gardens projects “work” as sites of both social reform and economic opportunity. In this context, cultivating the industrial city articulates alternative notions of citizenship, sustainability, security and value.
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panelist: Karin Dobernig, University of Economics and Business, Institute for the Environment and Regional Development, karin. dobernig@gmail.com Capturing the “Grow-It-Yourself” Mentality: A Qualitative Study Exploring Prosumption Practices at Urban Farms in New York City Scholarly research on alternative agro-food networks still accepts the production-consumption dichotomy, although in practice this distinction is increasingly becoming obscure as individuals act in a multitude of roles as consumers, co-producers, sellers, and citizens. This paper introduces the notion of “prosumption” as a theoretical framework to address this dichotomy and acknowledge consumers as active and relational partners in the transformation of agro-food practices. Coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980 and further developed by a variety of consumer researchers, the concept delineates the consumption of self-produced goods and services driven largely by a quest for de-marketization and individuation. The lens of prosumption is applied to the practice of “growing food in the city” which has recently received heightened attention from academics, policymakers and the general public. Phenomenological research conducted on urban farms in Brooklyn, New York has generated qualitative data through participant observations and 25 semi-structured interviews. The study elucidates ascribed meanings of “urban food prosumption”, and explores the motivational mechanisms underlying people’s propensity to grow food in the city. Preliminary findings show that while often linked to post-industrial values, prosumption at urban farms also creates sociopsychological experiences that allow people to construct and maintain their self-identity and social image. panelist: Sarah Kantrowitz, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Architecture Student, sarah.e.kantrowitz@gmail.com Decentralization and the Design of Food Systems Infrastructure The design of food systems infrastructure can define the times and places where people connect, or don’t, as food moves from production to consumption. This in turn defines factors like the sensory experience, social engagement, transparency or price available with a given exchange. This collaborative session will explore the trade-offs between centralization and decentralization in food systems infrastructure in order to assemble a framework for designing improvements. The farmer’s market or the village square hold long-standing positions as relatively centralized infrastructures for producers and processors to connect with consumers. Traditional decentralized infrastructures, like cultures of small farmers 54
bartering with neighbors or the services of milkmen delivering a household’s dairy, were largely products of technological limitations. With technological innovation came the industrialization of food systems and infrastructures for centralization on unprecedented scales. Today, as we’ve realized the failings of this industrial logic, a new wave of technological innovations are enabling us to move away from the centralized world of sprawling supermarkets and cold-storage warehousing towards more decentralized options like CSA’s, food hubs, urban agriculture, or on-line shopping for local food with delivery to distributed urban pick-up points. With what framework should we assess these innovations, and what are the stakes? INNOVATION IN PRODUCTION STYLES Kroon Hall, Room G01 panelist: Amy Lerner, Rutgers University, Dept. of Geography/Human Ecology, Postdoctoral Research Associate, amy.m.lerner@gmail.com The value of hybrid agricultural landscapes for agro-biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration: Lessons from peri-urban and silvopastoral systems As the world’s population continues to grow, the increasing demand for foodstuffs may require a combination of higher yields and the expansion of land for agricultural production. Both of these options can have deleterious consequences on the environment, as clearing land for agriculture both emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well as impacts global biodiversity resources. This paper discusses the emergence of hybrid landscapes that combine several land uses and livelihoods and how they can serve as an example for future food production scenarios. Specifically, two hybrid landscape examples from Latin America will be presented: maize production in peri-urban or rural-urban landscapes from central Mexico, an important source of agro-biodiversity conservation, and silvo-pastoral landscapes from the southeastern Ecuadorian Amazon for carbon accumulation. Both of these examples highlight natural mixed landscapes that are naturally occurring and could be supported by payments for ecosystem services, such as national programs associated with Reduced Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).
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panelist: Amber Sciligo, UC Berkeley, Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, Postdoctoral Researcher, amber.sciligo@berkeley. edu Native pollinators and food security: local and landscape diversity effects on crop pollination Global food security is dependent on the preservation of critical ecosystem services including pollination. Recent declines in honeybee populations have increased food costs and compromised crop production, highlighting the importance of alternative, native pollinators whose presence has been threatened by agricultural intensification. While it is known that landscape-scale heterogeneity supports diverse pollinator communities, it is not known how local-scale crop diversity can impact the effectiveness of pollination services to crops. We aimed to determine whether crop diversity can substitute for natural habitat to enhance pollination services to organic strawberries. We correlated pollinator abundance and richness with local and landscape scale vegetative diversity, and quantified the effectiveness of pollinator diversity in improving crop yield. We found a significantly positive relationship with diversified farming and pollinator abundance. Our results suggest that increasing crop diversity results in more pollination services and greater crop yield. If diversified farming techniques can improve native pollination services, then they may also provide a practical method for farmers to secure greater and more consistent crop yields. Insights from our research may lead to improved pollination services at larger spatial scales, thus decreasing our global dependency on the honeybee and increasing food security. panelists: Rewon Child, Maura Bozeman, Ray Xiong, Yale University Organic hydroponics: preliminary trials connecting aquatic composting and hydroponic production Organic hydroponic farming combines the sustainability of composting local food or commercial wastes with the intensification and low soil requirement of hydroponics. Composting food wastes in water creates a nutrient-rich solution that can fuel plant production using hydroponic techniques and mimics the function of natural wetland ecosystems. Our method follows sewage and wastewater treatment except that our goal is to retain rather than remove inorganic nutrients from solution. Here, we discuss the microbial processes involved in composting in soil versus water and present preliminary data on the generation of macronutrient ratios in solutions. Experimental results suggest that for heterotrophic bacteria to quickly re-mineralize 56
nutrients from vegetable wastes, waste materials need to be processed to lower the carbon to nitrogen ratio. In addition, an active population of heterotrophic bacteria must be added to speed re-mineralization. Our method results in a tight cycling of nitrogen and may offer optimum nutrient ratios for leafy green production. Aquatic composting presents an alternative to composting in soil that may speed the use of local waste streams and may benefit commercial urban growing operations. panelist: Rafter Ferguson, University of Illinois in UrbanaChampaign, PhD Candidate Recovering the Future: Food System Transition Pathways On (and Around) U.S. Permaculture Farms The transition to sustainable and equitable food systems is a complex project, that requires a mixture of innovation and resuscitation of novel and traditional strategies for food production and distribution. Permaculture is an international sustainability movement with a strong focus on food issues, and a distinctive mix of new and old strategies toward food system transition. Despite an increasingly high international and domestic profile, permaculture has remained isolated from scientific research. Permaculturists face serious political-economic barriers to food system transition from the prevailing neoliberal paradigm, which promotes capital-intensive commodity production and long-distance trade over other models. This paper focuses on the ways in which permaculturists, faced with hostile market and policy forces, work to create new counter-market hybrid social contexts to shelter and support alternative forms of production - including subsistence production, direct marketing and niche marketing, the inclusion of diverse revenue streams from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;information enterprisesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; such as education and consultation, and others. The paper reports on ongoing research that deploys mixed and participatory research methods at ~50 permacultureidentified farming operations across the continental US, and offers a preliminary assessment of the role of the permaculture movement in food system transition, and broader lessons from the permaculture experience for food system transition in general.
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Yale Food Systems Symposium Organizers Samara Brock has worked in sustainable food systems for over a decade with a variety of food-focused NGOs in Canada, Cuba, and Argentina, as a food systems planner for the City of Vancouver, and as a Program Officer at the Tides Foundation (Canada) funding NGOs focused on food, fisheries, and climate change issues. She is currently completing a mid-career Masters of Environmental Management at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES). Adan Martinez studies the transformative potential of alternative food movements. His background is in food production, and he has worked both on community scale farms, and farms that wholesale across the New England region. Adan’s work is anchored in building structures that support social justice. He is a second year F&ES student. Shannon Murray is a Master of Environmental Management candidate at F&ES, where she focuses on land use policy and planning, agricultural production systems, and urbanization. She has a dual degree in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and English from the University of Connecticut, and prior to attending F&ES spent several years working as an environmental educator and farm manager in Connecticut. Maclovia Quintana is a Masters of Environmental Science candidate at F&ES. Her research focuses on small-scale agriculture in northern New Mexico, examining the discursive, political, and economic structures that affect the viability of small farms. She has worked in that region over the past several years, both directly with farmers as well as with NGOs aimed at protecting agricultural land, practices, and livelihoods. Erin Schnettler is a second year Master of Environmental Management candidate at F&ES. She studies fisheries, aquaculture, and sustainable seafood efforts at all levels. She hails from Minneapolis, Minnesota and received her BA from Colby College in 2011. Zoe VanGelder is in the Masters of Environmental Science track at F&ES. Previously she managed impact evaluations of rural development projects for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab (JPAL). She has worked closely with peasant organizations in Mexico, Philippines, and Cambodia and has advocated for small farmers internationally. Her current research uses political ecology to examine climate change and agrarian politics in Latin America.
Organized by the Coalition on Agriculture, Food Systems and the Environment (CAFÉ), a student group of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and Yale Sustainable Food Project
Ten years ago, the Yale Sustainable Food Project brought together Yale University students, faculty, staff, and the wider New Haven community, to break ground and establish the Yale Farm. The past ten seasons have seen sustained and vibrant growth on the farms窶馬ow on both Central Campus and West Campus, thriving dialogue in the classroom, and increasingly, Yale students acting as change agents around the world. The Yale Sustainable Food Project is honored to co-host the Yale Food Systems Symposium as a part of our celebrations. In our second decade, we look forward to furthering discourse around food systems study and transformation, both here at Yale and beyond.
SYMPOSIUM SPONSORS
Hixon Center for Urban Ecology
LOCATION
Kroon Hall, 195 Prospect Street
Sign-in tables and lunches Opening and closing remarks, keynote panels SAGE HALL
Sage Hall, 205 Prospect Street & Kroon Hall, 195 Prospect Street Panel sessions
INGALLS RINK
KROON HALL
Yale Farm, 345 Edwards Street Dinner on Friday and Saturday nights
Prospect Str eet
Sachem
Street
Transportation Yale Shuttle: http://to.yale.edu/shuttle Taxi: Call (203) 777-7777 Parking: Street meters run till 9 pm. Most Yale parking lots are free and open to the public after 4 pm weekdays, and all day on Saturday and Sunday