Sustaining Local Food Systems in a Globalizing Environment: Forces, Responses, Impacts

1
Sustaining Local Food Systemsin a Globalizing
EnvironmentForces, Responses, Impacts

• A presentation on USDA
• Multi-State Research Project
• NE-1012
• 16 May 2005
• St. Louis, Missouri

2
Background

• Unfinished NE-185 business
• Evolving issues, continued interest
• NE-1012 proposed as next generation project
• USDA authorizes project Oct. 2002-Sept. 2007

3
Growing media attention tolocal food systems

• In our familys garden, each year weve grown
  more of what weve eaten and have looked for the
  rest at farmers markets. Its a useful exercise
  to sit down to a meal and take inventory, asking
  how each item came to us Who worked where, for
  poor wages or with toxic pesticides? What forests
  were cleared or creatures driven into extinction
  for anothers unthinking consumption? It gives
  me a sense of security and humility to forgo
  those costs in favor of whats closer at hand.
• Barbara Kingsolver, Local Foods that Please the
  Soul, The New York Times, 2001

4
Core questions of project

• Given strong trends toward industrialization and
  globalization, how do sustainable, local food
  systems emerge and endure in different places?
• What are the key challenges, the diverse
  community responses and the social, economic and
  environmental impacts of those responses?

5
Project context and priorities

• Multi-institutional
• Multi-disciplinary
• Academic-practitioner dialogue and collaboration
• Conceptual rigor and creativity
• Applied and policy relevance

6
Objective 1

• Collaborate with local food system stakeholders
  and food citizens to identify high priority
  information needs and the form in which
  information should be shared.

7
Farm Fresh Atlas in Dane County, Wisconsin

• Lists 100 sustainable farms and food businesses
  in 10 county region
• Now in 4th year
• NGO partners, citizen feedback

8
Iowa Community Food System Atlas Project

• Inventory and analysis of conventional and
  alternative food system in 4 rural counties
• Learning circles with county stakeholders

9
Missouri Regional Cuisines Project

• Ecological region identification and label of
  origin development
• Diverse business agency participants in pilot
  region
• Diverse state-level partners

10
Objective 2

• Identify and analyze ongoing and potential forces
  that are maintaining and transforming
  relationships between localities and their food
  systems.

11
Historical and structural trends

• Trends and shifts, such as.
• Changing transportation technologies
• Urban sprawl
• Demographic shifts
• Changing gender roles
• Rising cost of health care
• Retail concentration

12
Events and turning points

• Factory closing or opening
• Extreme weather (flood or drought)
• War
• Change in local leadership

13
Federal, state, local policies

• Federal commodity subsidy payments
• New environmental regulations
• HACCP (food safety) regulations
• Farmland protection programs
• Labor legislation

14
Objective 3

• Examine the diverse strategies local food system
  stakeholders and food citizens are currently
  using or might use to create and manage ongoing
  or potential change in the food system.

15
Case studies of alternative food system
initiatives

• How begun?
• What vision and goals?
• Resources and constraints?
• Market and non-market connections?
• Geographic scale?

16
Enhancing farmers markets

• Participatory farmers market assessments Oregon
  and West Virginia
• Farmers market vendor and manager surveys
  Michigan, Iowa, California, New York

17
Farm-to-School Projects

• Constraints and concerns of school food service
  managers NY
• School salad bars affect (local) fruit
  vegetable consumption CA

18
Buy Fresh-Buy Local Campaigns
19
Objective 4

• Document and assess key economic, environmental
  and social impacts of current or potential
  efforts to create and manage change in the food
  system.

20
The challenge of identifying and measuring
outcomes

• Going beyond pretty pictures and happy stories
• Finding common metrics
• Yet respecting regional differences

21
Sustaining economically

• Jobs created
• Quality of jobs created (wages, benefits)
• Reduced social inequality and social exclusion

22
Sustaining landscapes

• Preservation of farmland
• Increase of wild and agro- biodiversity
• Enhanced soil and water resources

23
Building community

• Increased public awareness knowledge about food
  system
• Greater citizen participation in agricultural and
  food issues
• Enhanced cultures of personal and community
  health

24
Forthcoming book collecting the work of NE-1012
participants

• Remaking the North American Food System, edited
  volume, University of Nebraska Press.

25
Photo Credit USDA NRCS