Erin Nelson

Putting the culture back into agriculture: civic engagement, community and the celebration of local food

This paper reports on the case study of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm in south-western Ontario, Canada. As an exemplar of urban agriculture, Fourfold Farm CSA operates from an alternative agriculture paradigm and is built upon the socio-ecological practices of civic engagement, community and the celebration of local food. Analysis of in-depth, key informant interviews with members of the CSA as well as the co-founders reveals the extent to which the farm is much more than a source of healthy, organic food. The paper outlines the ways the CSA operators and their members articulate a deeper endeavour to link urban food consumers with food producers through cultural activities. The discussion concludes with a call for more social research in agriculture as well as a broader effort to articulate the ways urban agriculture can contribute to putting the culture back into agriculture and creating sustainable systems of farming.

Barriers to the local food movement: Ontario's community food projects and the capacity for convergence

This article presents results from a survey of community food projects, and explores the relationships between organisational type, rationales and the barriers that prevent each from increasing the scale of their operations. Organisations were divided according to their primary rationale (e.g. rural economic development and distribution), and then subdivided – by form – as a non-profit, private business, governmental agency or cooperative. Data from the interviews and surveys were coded using a qualitative grounded theory approach, to reveal the barriers experienced by each. Overall, access to long-term stable income is a recurrent theme across all types of projects, but income sources dramatically change how these organisations prioritise barriers. Similarly, the organisations primary rationale and experiences influence the interpretation and approach to collaboration and education. Despite these differences, our results suggest a large degree of convergence that cuts across organisational forms and rationales, and offers a base for broader regional food system conversations.

Challenges and Opportunities in Cross-cultural Geographic Inquiry

While qualitative fieldwork in cross-cultural settings is central to human geography, there has been limited focus in the literature on the expectations and skills required to succeed as a field researcher in this area. Some practical advice is available for researchers who are new to cross-cultural fieldwork (e.g. graduate students, junior faculty members) and for advisers preparing young academics for such endeavours; however, themes are often treated individually rather than as a collective whole. This paper provides suggestions for novice field researchers by drawing on the experiences of four female graduate students engaged in qualitative geographic research. It identifies some major issues that influence the feasibility and efficacy of cross-cultural fieldwork, and provides practical suggestions to help prospective researchers plan for and implement field-based research projects in these contexts.

The uneven geographies of community food initiatives in southwestern Ontario

Data collected in 14 southwestern Ontario counties and regional municipalities demonstrated that the development of community food initiatives is not happening uniformly across the region. Rather, some areas (notably Wellington and Norfolk counties and Waterloo Region) are home to a wide variety of projects that, in many cases, are woven together into networks and enjoy relatively broad-based support from local communities. In contrast, in other places (for example, Dufferin, Elgin, and Kent counties), efforts to foster the development of alternative food systems are fewer and farther between, more fledgling in nature, and appear subject to more constraints than their counterparts in neighbouring parts of the region. This paper will explore the uneven geography of community food projects in southwestern Ontario, and discuss how the presence of social capital structured around an alternative food system vision can help expand the realm of possibility for such initiatives.

Nourishing Learning Environments: School Food Gardens and Sustainable Food Systems

School Food Gardens are experiencing resurgence across North America and Europe. Through a review of the literature, we outline various iterations of school garden movements and present some of their philosophical and theoretical underpinnings. There have been inter-related and overlapping motivations for the establishment of these gardens over the past 120 years. With an understanding of these motivations, we conducted Canada-wide interviews with 18 school garden leaders. Analysis and synthesis of the results confirm that these school gardens use food as a connecting theme to provide community building and engagement, social development, curriculum and learning opportunities, a sense of place and connection to the environment, increased food literacy and health, and an effective link to local food and sustainable agriculture.

Navigating Spaces for Political Action: Victories and Compromises for Mexico’s Local Organic Movement

In recent years, a plethora of spaces have been created that allow citizens and civil society organizations to participate in governance processes at local, regional, national and international levels. This chapter tells the story of one civil society organization’s efforts to navigate such newly opened space in an effort to facilitate transformations aligned with its alternative agri-food system agenda. Specifically, it is the story of the Mexican Network of Local Organic Markets and its work to influence the national policy governing Mexico’s organic sector. The case study highlights how the development of a network structure helped build the kind of social capital necessary for the country’s relatively small-scale local organic movement to engage in effective collective action, and how that action was translated into political support for its work. However, this story is also one of compromises, limitations and frustrations that raises questions regarding the implications of acting within spaces that may be new but still subject to old power dynamics.