Alison Blay-Palmer

The Canadian Pioneer: The Genesis of Urban Food Policy in Toronto

This paper details the foundational history and the present dynamics of the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) as an example of successful food planning and policy in motion. The TFPC connects food issues with a suite of agendas to make the food lens more visible and relevant to policymakers, businesses, citizens/eaters, chefs, farmers, food processors and activists, among others. Since the inception of the TFPC, advocacy, enabling and mediation have been essential tools to keep food in the spotlight. As an agile and resourceful organization, the TFPC multiplies its modest resources to make a remarkable contribution to the Toronto food landscape. Key ingredients in achieving this success are the ‘can do’ attitude of the staff and volunteer board, the use of multifunctionality principles and skilful issue management. Notable TFPC contributions include: seminal food policy reports and processes; the celebration of local food communities and their champions; the on-going integration of rural and urban issues; shifting the discussion from food security to food sovereignty; and, the recent launch of the Toronto Food Strategy. By acting as a positive force for social change in Toronto, the TFPC is able to activate transformations that results in a more ‘just city’.

Constructing resilient, transformative communities through sustainable “food hubs”

The papers in this special issue describe a research project in Ontario, Canada, that drew on the expertise and embedded connections of faculty/activists and student/activists within their “communities of food” (Fridman and Lenters 2013, Campbell and MacRae 2013; Waddell 2005, Friedmann 2007). The rapid data gathering as well as the depth and highquality information and insights reported here reflect the trust and commitment placed in these researchers as integral members of their food communities. In the following sections we describe the research project goals and methods. Using this project as a test ground we then propose a working definition for food hubs. Following a comparison of findings from the papers, we conclude with a discussion of theoretical approaches that shed light on how to move food systems in a more transformative direction.

Sustainable communities, an introduction

This themed issue brings together a selection of papers presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in Washington, DC, in 2010 as part of sessions on “Sustainable communities”. These sessions added to the 2009 AAG panel and sessions by the same title in Las Vegas. All were inspired by Marsden’s (2008) edited volume “Sustainable communities: new spaces for planning, participation and engagement”. This themed issue reflects the long-term nature of this intellectual endeavour and its importance in fields including human geography and sociology and more broadly interdisciplinary studies such as environmental policy studies. Building from Marsden and others’ works, we begin this introduction to the special issue by defining the terms communities and sustainability and explore how these two points of reference intersect. In the rest of the paper, we use these ideas to frame tensions facing academics and practitioners working in this important area. Communities can be defined by shared space or interest. In the case of distance, this includes spatially bounded relationships such as a town or region. In considering communities that emerge from common interest, we refer to groups bounded together through common perspectives that may or may not be formalised through an association or online community (Marsden and Hines 2008, p. 27). Sustainability can be defined as, “. . .the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems” (Agyeman and Evans 2004). Unlike earlier definitions of sustainability (e.g. United Nations 1987), this conceptualisation uses principles of quality of life as the starting point and then references social justice and ecological considerations directly and economic considerations more obliquely. This is an important qualification since the practice of sustainability tends to manifest itself so that economic considerations are placed in the foreground and privileged over other concerns (Callenbach 1975, Agyeman and Evans 2004, Keil 2007, Roseland 2005, Krueger and Gibbs 2007, Marsden and Hines 2008, Dale and Newman 2009, Pearsall and Pearce 2010). Sustainability is also about process. When we merge these concepts, a sustainable community is one that unites people in a place or through space and is, “based on ecological balance, community self-reliance, and participatory democracy” (Bookchin in Roseland 2005, location 504). These communities are negotiated within and are largely contingent upon the state and its priorities (Marsden and Hines 2008). All this said, “sustainable communities” still remains a contested term, and it is difficult to come up with a succinct definition (e.g. Wilson 2010). Difficulties in definitions translate into difficulties in identifying what a sustainable community looks like in practice. As a result, “sustainable communities” are not readily codified in practice. Examples of attempts at sustainable communities abound in the popular press. Transition towns launch themselves in response to the pressures of peak oil, food hubs and farmers’ markets create new opportunities for eaters and producers, eco-tourism breathes life into rural communities, while green technology provides renewed economic development

Seeking common ground for food system transformation

While theoretically the terms food sovereignty and food security are often very differently nuanced, in practice they commonly provide valuable and complementary foundations for food system transformation. Our goal is to illuminate spaces where food is/has been a lever for change through a combination of food security and food sovereignty initiatives that resulted in shifts with the potential for structural transformation. We provide examples from municipal, regional, national and global scales that illuminate synergistic and fluid relationships between the two concepts and how they are/can be used to activate change. These spaces reveal that the two terms complement, rather than undermine each other, as they often (though not always) represent similar rather than competing values.

Comparison of Methods to Assess Agricultural Sustainability

Methods for agricultural sustainability assessment require the management of a wide variety of information types, parameters and uncertainties. Nevertheless, many methodologies have been developed and applied for agricultural sustainability assessment. Here the following holistic methods were compared: the Response-Inducing Sustainability Evaluation model (RISE), Sustainability Assessment of Farming and the Environment (SAFE), the IDEA method (Indicateurs de Durabilite des Exploitations Agricoles or Farm Sustainability Indicators), Monitoring Tool for Integrated Farm Sustainability (MOTIFS), Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Integrated assessment of agricultural systems, a component-based framework for the European Union (SEAMLESS), the MESMIS program, and acronym for Indicator-based Sustainability Assessment Framework, and Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA). The effectiveness of the methodologies was compared in terms of scientific soundness, feasibility, utility, influence, spatial applicability and adaptability. In terms of effectiveness, the performance of RISE is the best, but when scientific soundness issues are considered, MCDA-based assessment is the preferred choice. All the methodologies have some specificity based on how they were created and their spatial applicability.

Power Imbalances, Food Insecurity, and Children’s Rights in Canada

Increasingly, food is provided through an industrial food system that separates people from the source of their food and results in high rates of food insecurity, particularly for the most vulnerable in society. A lack of food is a symptom of a lack of power in a system that privileges free market principles over social justice and the protection of human rights. In Canada, the high rates of food insecurity among Canadian children is a reflection of their lack of power and the disregard of their human rights, despite the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and ratification of the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights in 1976, which established the right to food for all Canadians. Dueling tensions between human rights and market forces underpin this unacceptable state of affairs in Canada. Gaventa’s “power cube” that describes different facets of power – including spaces, levels, and forms – is used to help understand the power imbalances that underlie this injustice. The analysis considers the impact of neoliberal free market principles on the realization of human rights, and the negative impacts this can have on health and well-being for the most vulnerable in society. Canadian case studies from both community organizations provide examples of how power can be shifted to achieve more inclusive, rights-based policy and action. Given increased global pressures toward more open trade markets and national austerity measures that hollow out social supports, Canada provides a cautionary tale for countries in the EU and the US, and for overall approaches to protect the most vulnerable in society.

Building sustainable communities through alternative food systems

Food provides a meaningful lens to create and build more sustainable communities. Given the challenges currently facing humanity it offers a shared basis for transformation. It can act as a platform for social equity, personal well-being, ecological resilience and robust economies. Through food, we have the capacity to tackle climate change, water quality and quantity degradation, the global diabetes crisis, and gross social inequity. While acknowledging that each community food system is as unique as the space/place where it emerges, there are some factors that seem to increase levels of sustainability. The proposed chapter will extend earlier theoretical work on sustainable food systems and assess existing frameworks in light of empirical work through a selection of case studies in Ontario, Canada. These case studies are grounded in work from six universities and represent a scan of over 200 projects in the province. Each case study will be assessed through the lens of complex adaptive systems theory with a view to understanding more about the role of the principles derived from chaos and complexity theory including diversity, connectivity, self-organization, nested hierarchies and iterative feedback loops.

Book Review: The Meat Crisis: Developing More Sustainable Production and Consumption:

critique or disagreement. In the long run, this could be a positive for Jacobs and his readers. His essay on Cleveland, for example, and what led to the increasing outward migration of whites who lived in the central city could benefit from a more complex understanding of how central city white flight, in addition to a racial and economically-motivated maneuver, was also influenced by subversive forms of white power at a time in American history when hundreds of former black Southerners moved north and west (Foner 1970). It is no accident that many rust belt cities, like Cleveland and Kansas City, began to lose economic and residential bases in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather, the preoccupation with suburban life in the United States was (1) an Anglo-American phenomenon (Fishman [1987] 2002), (2) antiurban, and (3) a function of white resistance to black social and spatial progress, which was also systemically and structurally tied to federally sponsored local planning practices, which has left many cities socially and spatially divided along racial lines (Silver 1984, 1991; Thomas 1997; Thompson Fullilove 2001). On the other hand, readers who prefer a straight, linear, or positivist approach to planning subjects might perceive this book as much too subjective to be useful in the classroom. But, overall, The Good City will be very beneficial to planning educators as they prepare themselves and their students for twenty-first-century planning initiatives, especially those that occur in or are related to developing countries. A group of PhD students might read and discuss this book in a seminar setting before departing for a visit to such a country. Those interested in planning history might propose a panel discussion or symposium and debate Jacobs’s claim that Cleveland ceased to be a real city sometime after 1960, that is, whether urban renewal left behind too much vacant and underdeveloped land. In response to this claim, a group of urban designers might find Jacobs’s narratives on previous planning activities in Cleveland and San Francisco useful in developing a solution, such as an urban tree-planting program to address blight or derelict buildings. Jacobs suggests this remedy in the essay on Cleveland. In summary, through The Good City, Jacobs has presented planning academicians with a creative platform to critically explore discussions on the interconnectedness of planning history, theory, and practice, which often have important social and ethical implications. This collection of Jacobs’s essays and stories illustrate precisely that it is fundamentally important for the thoughtful planner or designer to engage in critical filtering, which, according to British planning theorist Patsy Healey, is an internal process by which planners struggle with the complexity (Healey 2007). In The Good City, Jacobs demonstrates that there are new and critical issues yet to be imagined when it comes to urban design and planning for the world-class city. Furthermore, this is a book that will prompt planners and designers to think personally, deeply, and critically about the sociospatial and political economy of the city. Are good cities “great people watching environments” as Jacobs asserts (p. 8)? And how does one plan with others across language barriers and cultural assumptions for the sustainability and progress of world cities like New York City, Mexico City, or Pudong in an age when global markets and computer technologies make it possible to communicate within nanoseconds? In conclusion, the possibilities for this book’s future contribution to knowledge and planning scholarship are quite interdisciplinary, which underscore that the power of story and professional risk-taking are making a difference to urban planners. Although Jacobs claims that he wrote this book in “a light hearted tone” (p. 9), this reviewer finds that he has written a very unique and challenging text that has the potential to bring academicians, students, and practitioners to the table to talk very seriously about urban processes and what it takes, in theory and in practice, to make or break the good city.