AFHVS / ASFS 2018: THE AGROECOLOGICAL PROSPECT: THE POLITICS OF INTEGRATING VALUES, FOOD, AND FARMING
PROGRAM FOR SATURDAY, JUNE 16TH
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08:30-10:10 Session 01I: Boots on the Ground: A Roundtable about Community Engagement and Impact

The politics of integrating values, food, and farming

Location: Pyle Center, Room 121
08:30
Boots on the Ground: A Roundtable about Community Engagement and Impact
SPEAKER: Polly Adema

ABSTRACT. This roundtable brings together practitioners working in community organizations and other creative initiatives whose focus is on food issues ranging from farm advocacy and foodways documentation to policy work and food system sustainability. Food-centered initiatives have in common a foundational concern with food, with emphases varying from farm to fork to foodways. Expanding on this shared concern, we will explore creative approaches to, successful models for, and practical strategies for improving community engagement and impact as they relate to each organization’s mission and the larger agenda of increasing appreciation of and respect for food and farmers. Roundtable participants will share best practices for effectively establishing relationships within their communities and among their constituencies. We will specifically consider how to address often uncomfortable or potentially divisive issues. Additional considerations might include Must we incorporate global awareness when working locally, and if so, how? How can we, as practitioners, be most impactful? What can we learn from challenges that threaten to impede our organizations’ work? What inputs can we share with others just starting their careers in the public sector or with nascent food organizations? This panel is ideal for ‘boots on the ground’ practitioners, for academics working with or interested in working with community organizations, and for neophytes and specialists in community engagement. Audience participation will be encouraged; bring questions and ideas, and join the facilitated discussion. It is our hope that we will benefit from each other’s experience; we have much to learn and much to contribute toward enriching community conversations about food and foodways within local communities and to the larger study of food-related issues. Polly Adema, Moderator/Facilitator; Presenters: Dawnie Andrak, Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF); Michael Bell, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems; Laura Beth Clark & Michael Peterson, Foodways Madison/Spatula & Barcode; Julie Dawson, Horticulture Dept/ Seed to Kitchen Collaborative; Margaret Krome, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute; Ava Lowrey, Southern Foodways Alliance

08:30-10:10 Session 02I: How are Food Hubs and Values-based Supply Chains Working for Farmers?

Agroecology: Challenges in contemporary agriculture

Location: Pyle Center, Room 111
08:30
How are Food Hubs and Values-based Supply Chains Working for Farmers?
SPEAKER: Gail Feenstra

ABSTRACT. Small and mid-scale farms continue to seek alternative markets and distribution strategies in order to remain viable in a competitive marketplace. To distinguish their products, farmers, ranchers, processors, distributors, and retailers are forging strategic alliances in the form of values-based supply chains (VBSCs) and food hubs. VBSCs are defined as business alliances among small and medium-sized farms/ranches and other agrifood enterprises that: (a) handle significant volumes of high-quality, differentiated food products, (b) operate effectively at multi-state, regional levels, and (c) distribute profits equitably among the strategic partners. Values-based food supply chain business models place emphasis on both the values associated with the food and on the values associated with the business relationships within the food supply chain. Food hubs, defined as enterprises that aggregate, market and regionally distribute source-identified agricultural products, have received significant attention for their potential to link small and mid-sized farmers to higher volume sales channels than these farmers could access individually. VBSCs and food hubs can also become vehicles for communicating non-economic values that participating farmers and other actors along the supply chain may share, including environmental stewardship, food quality, and fair trade. This panel session will explore the benefits and challenges farmers have experienced working with VBSCs and food hubs, nationally. We will share results from a national survey of almost 2,000 farmers who participate in “values-based supply chains” and food hub businesses. Farmer respondents sold products through 19 VBSC businesses. Best practices about how farmers can work with VBSCs and food hubs most effectively will be shared by a local food hub manager at Fifth Season Food Coop, a food hub near Madison, WI and an organic vegetable farmer who works with this food hub.

Panel presentation Gail Feenstra, UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, UC Davis gwfeenstra@ucdavis.edu

Marcia Ostrom, WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources mrostrom@wsu.edu

Jennifer Rengert, Fifth Season Food Coop, food hub manager, Viroqua, Wisconsin jrengert@fifthseasoncoop.com

Justin Trussoni, organic vegetable farmer, Vernon County, Wisconsin [being confirmed]

08:30-10:10 Session 03I: Community Gardens: Extending food security

Alternative agriculture

Location: Pyle Center, Room 232
08:30
Farmers’ perception on level of participation in agricultural projects: the case of a community garden project in Impendle Municipality of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
SPEAKER: Jorine Ndoro

ABSTRACT. The participation of smallholder farmers in agricultural projects has taken a key role in development initiatives. Farmers’ participation in agricultural initiatives is crucial towards poverty alleviation and food security, contributing towards rural livelihoods. This study focuses on investigating the perceptions of farmers’ participation in a community garden project. The study involved 8 farmers belonging to a community garden project in Impendle municipality in uMgungundlvu district of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. A qualitative research design using an interpretivist research paradigm was followed. Data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion. The findings show that the farmers were not involved in the decision making of the project. The farmers were passive participants. Participation of the farmers was mainly to carry out the activities instructed by the extension officers. Smallholder farmers’ involvement in developmental projects and programmes through active participation contributes to the sustainability of the projects through a sense of ownership.

08:45
Rural Community Gardens as Catalysts of Community Invigoration, New Socio-economic Pathways, and Reclamation of Tradition and Food Sovereignty

ABSTRACT. Introduction: With the foundational aim of improving nutrition and individual health outcomes, The UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention has supported 18 community gardens in 6 low-income rural counties in NC over the past 5 years. As the projects have become more established and grown in scope, we have discovered positive impacts on community connections, resiliency of the projects through broad partnership development, and an interest to grow the projects into small-scale economic engines.

Methods: Our team employs a concurrent mixed methodological design to examine the narrative of these marginalized rural communities, and to more effectively shape programs with and for these communities. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups with participants were conducted, transcribed, and thematically coded. Quantitative data is collected through monthly reporting from garden managers, and pre and post-surveys administered to garden participants and analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. In an effort to ensure that our program is ultimately effective and sustainable, our team is increasingly employing utilization-focused evaluation -- ensuring that our community stakeholders can effectively access and apply the lessons learned through our data.

Results: Results from our quantitative data show a general increase in the community gardens’ harvest, as well as an increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables among participants. Qualitative data show that participants report improvements in community-building and engagement, comprehensive improvements to individual health, and increased community cohesion (including institutional partnerships and individual networking), among other impacts. Community members -- particularly the garden managers -- have grown into their leadership roles, to become agents of change for their communities. The gardens are seen as financially beneficial to community members who save money on produce they would otherwise purchase at the store.

Conclusion: Our program has yielded direct and indirect outcomes with participants and their communities becoming energized about growing food, improving dietary choices, reinvigorating cultural traditions, and reuniting disparate fragments of their communities. This progressive change is in part a result of an intentional effort to build partnerships between the university (representing scientific inquiry) and the communities (representing practical art of gardening and other food-based traditions). Community members have exercised localized experience, connections, and ways, combined with the university’s access to academic and fiduciary resources, and clout, to build toward and inspire transformative changes in their communities. We are now building on these successes through coaching partners on ways to turn components of their projects into economic generators.

09:00
The Chicago Harvest Study: Exploring the Citywide Impact of Community Gardens on Fresh Food Access
SPEAKER: Howard Rosing

ABSTRACT. The paper reports on the yield, distribution, nutritional quality, and context of community gardens across Chicago. The goal of the study was to influence policies that promote healthy eating and active lifestyles. Researchers collected baseline data on community gardens across Chicago to create a sustainable measurement system that can be used in the future. The study, which took place in 2013 and 2014 included one entire Chicago growing season consisted of three components: a Broad Survey that measured food production by crop in more than 200 gardens based on land yield estimates and inventoried garden resources and assets in each of the gardens; an All Harvest Study where selected sites representing a cross-section of Chicago’s community garden kept detailed crop plans and weighed produce yields using a hybrid selection of tools; and participant observation and interviews with 53 gardeners at 32 gardens to better understand how and to whom food was distributed once harvested. The large data set was given meaning through gardener narratives of how and why they garden, reasons behind what they produce, and the diversity of ways food is distributed in the city. Beyond enhancing food access, especially in neighborhoods with limited fresh produce, the study highlighted the intrinsic value of gardens in healing communities and creating safe, educational spaces for children and adults alike. Drawing on the case of Chicago and the voices of gardeners themselves, the presenters argue there are a variety of ways that cities can support community gardens system including improved access to land and water and support for community-based composting. The recommendations primarily seek to ease the financial burden and remove barriers to entry for creating gardens to both feed residents and support community building and cohesion.

09:15
Changing Food Systems: The Impact of Community Gardens on Senior Food Security
SPEAKER: Mark Haggerty

ABSTRACT. Food access and food security is an concern for seniors in America. Nationally, one in six seniors struggle with hunger (Meals on Wheels, 2017). In Maine, the location of this study, approximately 23% of seniors are food insecure (Hunger in Maine, 2015). The combination of a large senior population along with a 50% increase in the amount of senior hunger between 2008 and 2013 has raised awareness and increased concern on this issue. (Senior Hunger, 2013).

Community gardens have historically been used during times of community distress to influence the food system and increasing food security. They have been used as a tool to increase food supply, decrease food insecurity and food deserts, enhance nutrition and mental health, facilitate education and the building of community (Okvat &. Zautra, 2011, Guitart et al. 2012).

This study focuses on a community garden in Maine that serves three low-income senior housing units. Seniors face a number of barriers when attempting to access food. Limited incomes, lack of transportation, and disabilities all contribute to the increased risk for malnutrition and food insecurity. The garden project was initiated as a community project to address these concerns.

Semi-structured interviews of approximately twenty-five seniors provide insights into the effectiveness of the community garden at addressing these issues. Qualitative data analysis surfaces the seniors’ perceptions of the impact of the garden on the quantity and nutritional value of the food they received during summer and fall harvest season. Interviews with senior non-garden participants categorize obstacles to participation. Additional insights are garnered about the potential for community gardens to initiate change in the food system.

Hunger in Maine. 2015. “Good Shepherd Food Bank. Good Shepherd Food Bank

Gualtieri, M. C., & Donley, A. M. (2016). Senior Hunger: The Importance of Quality Assessment Tools in Determining Need. Journal of Applied Social Science,10(1), 8-21.

Guitart, D., Pickering, C., Byrne, J. “Past results and future directions in urban community gardens research. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.” Volume 11, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 364–373.

Meals on Wheels. (2017). 2017 Factsheet Maine. Retrieved August 4, 2017, from http://www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/docs/default-source/fact-sheets/2017/2017-factsheet-maine.pdf?sfvrsn=4

Okvat, H. & Zautra, A., “Community Gardening: A Parsimonious Path to Individual, Community, and Environmental Resilience”, American Journal of Community Psychology(2011) 47:374–387.

"Senior Hunger: AARP Combats Elder Hunger - Maine Senior Guide."2013Maine Senior Guide. AARP.

08:30-10:10 Session 04I: Methodologies of food systems research

Food governance and access: Methodologies

Location: Pyle Center, Room 235
08:30
Commodifying Fairtrade: An Evaluative Framework

ABSTRACT. The development of bringing fairtrade products into the mainstream has induced various authors in the fairtrade literature to argue that fairtrade commodifies and has ambiguous consequences. However, both the idea of commodification and the consequences for fairtrade are often not elaborated upon. By developing an evaluative framework for fairtrade markets, we combine the insights of various research disciplines on commodification and the subsequent effects this process is alleged to have. This evaluative framework enables scholars and policy makers to assess the consequences and functioning of the fairtrade pricing system using insights from an interdisciplinary point of view, which is typically lacking in the fairtrade literature. We illustrate the applicability of the framework by means of bringing the Dutch cocoa sector to the fore. Our analysis shows that the fairtrade cocoa pricing system is highly depending on the world market prices. Given the recent increase in cocoa prices, it is to be expected that the relative benefits fairtrade offers will be offset. Furthermore, the demand for fairtrade cocoa in Western countries is crucial for higher benefits – making the higher demand for fairtrade certified cocoa higher. An increase in the fairtrade price is suggested. In addition, both the roles of firms and consumers as crucial factors in the fairtrade market are discussed. For both parties it remains unclear to which degree they should be held responsible for the increase in welfare at a producer level. Firms could cooperate more on prices.We discuss the ambiguous effects for all parties involved in the fairtrade value chain. This further raises questions on the effectiveness of making fairtrade a commodity.

08:45
Urban gardens, agroecology, and resilience in Querétaro City, México

ABSTRACT. This report on urban gardens in the mid-sized city of Querétaro, Mexico, contributes to the nascent literature linking urban agriculture to agrobiodiversity. Based on an in-depth study of 28 urban gardens in Querétaro, it analyzes farming practices in the city. It also explains linkages among food agrobiodiversity and resilience. Using socioecological resilience methodologies and the Diagnostic Survey of Agroecological Practices (Altieri et al., 2015), we found that agroecological management of urban gardens provides significantly more species richness than conventionally managed plots. Our results also indicate that garden plots of approximately 200 m2 harbor highest levels of agrobiodiversity. This size of home vegetable production appears optimal for user-friendly practices in urban areas, and could represent a benchmark for agroecological practices and policy recommendations. Considering that urban gardens contribute to the adaptive capacities of city dwellers for food security and sovereignty, and for social inclusion and landscape ecology for a long-term socioecological resilience, the empirical findings and insights from this study can inform land use policies for urban agriculture in especially middle-sized cities.

09:00
Metrics for agroecosystem and food system transformation in Ohio

ABSTRACT. The Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation at Ohio State is addressing the challenge of food security. The initiative has been developed by a broad coalition of faculty from across the University. Although global in scope, the initiative has been planned with a clear intent to focus on our campuses, within our communities, within Ohio and to work outwards to the rest of the world, although simultaneously seeking innovation from anywhere that could be applied anywhere. This presentation will focus on the metrics we are exploring to benchmark and track transformation in food and agricultural systems. Five key areas of impact are of interest: Food and nutritional security in Ohio; race, gender, and age disparities in Ohio household food insecurity rates; diet related public health statistics for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity; food system business startups across the food supply chain, and the livelihoods for those working in this sector; agroecosystem health. Metrics are being evaluated based on the extent to which the data is publicly available, their value to Ohio stakeholders, and the extent to which they can be related to action taken by Ohio State towards food and agri/cultural transformation.

09:15
Agrihoods and Metrics of Success- Using Resilience as Guiding Determinant

ABSTRACT. Can we use historical and personal perspectives to predict future problem areas today’s farm entrepreneurs need to address? Capitalism rewards efficiency resulting in “bigger and better” machines, more fertilizer and chemical inputs. The methods of food production changes the fundamental personal visions the farmer had of his or her profession when he or she decided upon this career. Those same expensive technologies require larger farm acreage, herd or flock sizes, raising the management demands and placing more stress on personal relationships in the farm’s family or families. How do we avoid that problem? We keep hearing of the exploding world populations. Will a plant-based diet satisfy more people’s food’s needs? Is that going to happen more quickly if we grow more of our salad greens during the winter months in the northern winter climates? Looking at the definition of agroecology and the powerful examples of how the knowledge of the detrimental effects of industrial agriculture changed farming in some South American countries and seeing how those changes benefited a larger group of producers, opening opportunities; gives us hope. We are seeing more and more whole heads of lettuces grown in hydroponics and or aquaponics. Those same producers are seeking “organic certification.” Transparency sometimes seems evasive in our food supply. What other shifting paradigms are yet to be discovered? Does a carefully crafted collaboration between an existing small town’s organizations and schools, a food business incubator and an agrihood that promotes transfer of skills to the next generation create more resilience?

08:30-10:10 Session 05I: Spice Up Your Life: Biodiversity and taste in the production of spices and hot sauce

Challenging boundaries through eating

Location: Pyle Center, Room 327
08:30
Is the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative a Sustainable Solution?

ABSTRACT. Vanilla: the flavoring that is typically seen as boring or mundane, yet it dominates our food and beverage products, cosmetics, and more. Through a commodity chain analysis, I use historical, cultural, and economic lenses to trace how vanilla became engrained in global cuisine and how sustainable practices may or may not be the resolution to growing market demand.

Today, the world's second most expensive flavoring cannot keep up with consumer demands for "real vanilla," produced through agricultural practices rather than in a lab, due to political, economic and climate complications. These external influences continue to place stress on vanilla as a crop, which also affects the people whose livelihoods depend on its cultivation. Uncertainty regarding the future of the market continues to heighten and global brands depending on vanilla for their products are realizing just how much they need production to not only continue, but improve and increase to better support a growing demand.

As large corporations take a bigger stake in vanilla production, improvements have been promised to the poorest yet largest exporter of vanilla in the world, Madagascar. In 2015, the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative was created to expand sustainable production, improve incomes and overall lives of vanilla farmers and improve quality of the beans. As vanilla prices have continued to rise over the last several years due political turmoil and worsening climate change, an inevitable market crash is looming.

08:45
The Hot Sauce Resistance: How Capsicum Ensures Culture and Crop Diversity

ABSTRACT. Although critiques of contemporary food systems often focus on the monolithic production of corn, wheat, soy, and rice, it is worth exploring solutions to the problem of biodiversity loss and cultural homogenization through condiments, specifically hot sauce. While most analyses of agricultural production emphasizes staple starches, meat, and other nutritional necessities, historical analyses of colonial and post-colonial food systems show that spices, peppers, and other “flavorings” of diet are, in fact, equally central to economic and cultural continuity. Capsicum peppers, and their journey from place of origin in South America and the Caribbean to the world then to the Americas again, serve as one of the greatest examples of how cultural and agricultural conservation can be both situated in the geography of origin and transplanted into a new space, with equal emphasis on localized heritage (Sethi, 2016). Histories of both the plant and product show how hot sauce acts as a vessel of culture: indeed, this paper situates localized conservation through the global support and cultivation of differences through varietals in peppers, sauces and their relevant cultures. This example is an exploration of resistance to loss of taste and biodiversity through the upholding of cultural and crop diversity.

Analysis of the relationship between hot sauce and culture in the case of Cholula Hot Sauce, allows us to examine how identity and culture are affirmed and maintained, in spite of, and in part, through globalization. Through this lens, I explore how this commodity’s cultural identity also promotes crop diversity, as demand for Cholula ensures the cultivation of the peppers for which it is famous. While Cholula is definitely Mexican in origin and identification, it is also a global commodity. The relationship between culturally specific agricultural products and their adoption and use across other spaces is a critical factor in the quest for increased biodiversity. Other hot sauces, such as Tabasco, Sriracha and iterations of Trinidad’s Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce have similar stories, suggesting that products from capsicum peppers could fill a unique and vital role in a more robust and diverse food system. Using both ethnographic and market-based data on consumer taste, I argue that this product has an under-examined role in cultural as well as agricultural diversity.

09:00
Terroir of Turmeric

ABSTRACT. Despite its long history in India and Asia, turmeric has recently evoked a gastronomic interest in the golden spice in the United States and other Western countries. But this age-old spice is what makes mustard yellow, so it is not new to Americans; it has been in their diet since French’s mustard was first introduced in the early 1900s. Americans have used turmeric even decades before that, since it is what makes the famous curry powder, a Western invention, yellow. In 1840, it was used as an ingredient in a recipe for chicken curry by an American cookbook writer, Eliza Leslie. Today it is commercialized in new ways: Starbucks has added a brand-new latte with turmeric and turmeric tea is now available everywhere in the United States. But, with an increase in global use, where is all this turmeric produced? More importantly, does its origin influence the taste, similar to “terroir”? This paper explores these questions. Historically, turmeric was a tropical crop, produced mostly in South East Asia. India has always been the leading producer and exporter, with more than 80 percent of total global output and 60 percent of global trade. Despite the contribution to the international market, only 10 percent of the turmeric grown in India is exported. Partly for this reason and the recent world-wide demand for turmeric, consumers, producers, and regulators have begun rethinking of the way turmeric is grown and produced in India. Within India the method of growing turmeric varies from region to region and domestically, people are becoming cautious about their turmeric source. As the health and culinary uses of turmeric spread, production in the US and other countries has increased. My goal is to explore what analysis has been done on agricultural production methods of turmeric and its use as a viable global product with a focus on how growing location affects its taste and flavor.

08:30-10:10 Session 06I: Wasted Food: Research In and For Education

Food in education

Chair:
Location: Pyle Center, Room 332
08:30
An Evaluation of Current Lunchroom Food Waste and Food Rescue Programs in a Washington State School District

ABSTRACT. Public schools waste approximately 30-50% of edible food and thus provide opportunities to study the problem of food waste and explore food rescue initiatives. This case study evaluates lunchroom waste sorting and food waste diversion practices in a Washington State school district. It provides a comprehensive analysis including descriptive characteristics and comparative statistical analyses to determine the types and amount of edible, wasted food and the potential to reduce or recover this wasted food. Waste audits were performed at 18 schools to quantify each school’s amount and type of waste generated. Audits consisted of weighing, sorting, and recording pre- and post-sort weights of all lunchroom compost, recycling, and trash. Edible, rescuable food items were removed from bags and counted separately. Lunchroom-specific observational data, including lunchroom layout and implementation of food rescue programs, were also recorded. Statistical analysis evaluated the effect of these programs on lunchroom waste sorting. Data revealed significantly higher post-sort compost rates than pre-sort rates, and significantly lower post-sort trash rates than pre-sort rates. Pre- and post-sort recycling rates were not significantly different. This suggests that a significant amount of trash could be diverted from landfills with implementation of a lunchroom composting system. Additionally, participation in sustainability initiatives, such as a county-wide resource conservation program and use of lunchroom monitors affected waste sorting. Further, audits uncovered a large amount of wasted, edible pre-end state food, which could potentially be diverted to feeding students or community members experiencing food insecurity by means of food rescue programs, such as lunchroom food share program or school-to-food-bank donation service. Overall, this study identified potential points for food waste reduction strategies in public school lunchrooms.

08:45
New state nutrition policy for early care and education: Effect on food waste
SPEAKER: Daniel Zaltz

ABSTRACT. Background: Efforts to promote healthy diets may yield important synergies when combined with efforts to address wasted food. Research is needed to evaluate how healthy eating policies targeting early care and education (ECE) settings affect food waste.

Methods: We collected dietary data including foods and beverages served to and consumed by children ages three to five years. We measured dietary intake in a sample of 102 children from 34 ECE centers in South Carolina, a state that implemented a healthy food policy, and 90 children from 30 centers in North Carolina, a comparison state that did not implement a new policy. We collected data before and after the healthy eating policy was implemented. We will conduct a multilevel regression analysis to examine the impact of the new standards on children’s total food waste, focusing on total grams, nutrients, and food groups.

Results: Our results will be the first to examine the effects of a healthy food policy on food waste in ECE. Our preliminary analyses indicate that at baseline, the most wasted foods (mean percent wasted [standard deviation]) were vegetables excluding fries (47.0% [31.36] in South Carolina and fat (servings) (34.45% [31.97]) in North Carolina. At follow up, the most wasted foods were vegetables (excluding french fries) (52.14% [25.46]) in South Carolina and vegetables (excluding french fries) (49.52% [36.79]) in North Carolina.

Conclusions: Our findings will provide evidence of the effect of a state healthy eating policy on preschoolers’ food waste. The United States wastes great quantities of food, and state healthy eating policies could have the unintended consequence of exacerbating the problem.

09:00
A GWP20/100 Analysis of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Wasted Food: Educating about Methane
SPEAKER: Roni Neff

ABSTRACT. The global warming potential (GWP) of a greenhouse gas (GHG) reflects the amount of heat it traps in the atmosphere compared to CO2. Conventionally, GWP is calculated on a 100-year timespan (GWP100), but there is no scientific reason to do so. Given the urgency of rapid emissions reductions, it is critical to also focus on shorter term impacts. Some advocates recommend routinely reporting GWP for both 20-year and 100-year timespans (GWP20/100), similar to the necessity of reporting both highway and city gasoline mileage. Shifting to GWP20/100 reporting is important for the food system because methane, one of the main food-related GHGs, is relatively short-lived but is potent while it lasts. Methane has a 20-year GWP of 86, meaning it is 86 times as powerful as CO2, while its 100-year GWP is 34. We used data on waste of food from our 140-country diet-climate model, combined with data on emissions from food disposal, to model the difference in impact from reporting GWP100 versus GWP20. Findings were compared with data on emissions from motor vehicle use. The modeling illustrates the dramatically higher climate impact of wasted food in the short versus longterm, demonstrating the loss of critical information from reporting GWP100 estimates alone. By making these short-term impacts visible to decision-makers, the research supports the case for prioritizing short-lived GHGs such as methane, and accordingly for taking priority action on GHG emissions sources in food and agriculture.

08:30-10:10 Session 07I: Reaping What You Sow: Aligning Food and Values in Literary Food Depictions

Identities of food and farming

Location: Pyle Center, Room 335
08:30
You Are What You Cook: Nation Building and Identity Formation in Carlos Balmaceda's novel Manual del canibal

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I analyze the role of food in Carlos Balmaceda's 2005 novel, Manual del canibal (The Cannibal's Cookbook). The novel centers on both a building in Mar del Plata, Argentina that has served as a restaurant for over a century, and a cookbook that holds the secret of its successes. At the end of the 19th century, twin brothers, Luciano and Ludovico Cagliostro immigrate from Italy and settle in the cosmopolitan city of Mar del Plata. After working as head chefs in the city's well-known Bristol Hotel, the brothers open their own restaurant, which they named Almacén Buenos Aires. During their tenure at the Bristol Hotel, Luciano and Ludovico are influenced by fellow immigrant and master chef Massimo Lombroso. As an avid collector of recipes from around the world, Lombroso shares his culinary library with the twins. Together they author a cookbook, Manual de los mares del sur. Over the next hundred years, the novel makes this restaurant space and cookbook its centerpiece in order to chronicle the changing sociopolitical climate that surrounds them. As the restaurant is opened, closed, and reopened several times throughout numerous generations of family members and friends, the recipes are, in turn, reinterpreted constantly. In other words, the sociopolitical transformations in Argentina and around the world influence the restaurant's operation and the way it is socially perceived, as well as the manner in which the cookbook's recipes are interpreted, prepared, and consumed. This paper investigates the literary use of the restaurant and cookbook as a metonym of the nation. When the novel is analyzed from this perspective, both the restaurant and the cookbook appear to function as an archival inheritance that showcases the traumatic historical, societal, and political transformations that defined Argentina during the 20th century. To that end, I argue that the novel problematizes the use of legacy recipes and cuisine as a romanticized metaphor for cultural contact and nation building projects.

08:45
Re-collecting Memories, Re-collecting Recipes: Recovering Cuban Culinary Culture in Exile and Scarcity

ABSTRACT. Tastes Like Cuba, a memoir by playwright, Eduardo Machado takes its name from his grandfather's quest to perfect his "legendary" (8) arroz con pollo, getting it to "taste like Cuba" (172), despite living in exile in the US without access to "real" (173), specifically Cuban, chicken. Machado uses this traditional and relatively simple dish to illustrate how exile transforms things that were once easy, even taken for granted, into all but impossible tasks. The same is true for Cuca, the protagonist of Zoé Valdés' novel, I Gave You All I Had. Cuca's narrative voice recounts family recipes like "black beans à la Valdés Fauly" as the "easiest thing in the world" (17) against the backdrop of food shortages during Cuba's Período especial en tiempo de paz (Special Period in Times of Peace) in the 1990s. The text relays recipes for "cuisine typique like roast pork al mojo" (16), "plain rice" (17), and "split peas à l'anglaise" (232) while the protagonist regularly ingests inedible versions of steak, chicken, and meatballs made from a floor mop, kitchen sponge, and shoe sole, respectively. Eduardo Machado, as well as other nonfiction authors, Viviana Carballo, Mary Urrutia Randelman, and María Josefa Lluriá de O'Higgins use recipes to structure their memoirs and return to a remembered and idealized pre-revolutionary Havana. Similarly, the narrative voice in Zoé Valdés' novel describes family recipes as she reminisces about life just before the fall of the USSR. These Cuban diasporic authors re-collect family recipes in order to reconnect with the culture they have lost. In each of these cases, the fond dishes of their memories are just out of reach. While physical distance from La Habana prohibits the memoirist from fully reconnecting, a lack of access to food prohibits the protagonist of the novel from returning to her former life despite still residing in Havana. I argue that in both genres, remembered recipes are the closest proximity to the notion of home. This presentation investigates the use of recipes in Cuban diasporic works of fiction and nonfiction published during the 1990s, contending that their recording designs the text as a manual to return to a lost home.

09:00
After the Cafecito’s Done: Julia Alvarez and the Failure of Altagracia Coffee

ABSTRACT. Dominican American writer, Julia Alvarez, and her partner, Bill Eichner, have a farm in Vermont, where they live. In 2001, Alvarez published the short book, A Cafecito Story, which she describes as a “green fable and love story,” to highlight the “project” she and Eichner began in 1996 in the Dominican Republic. Part coffee plantation, part social justice educational center, the Altagracia Coffee venture lasted for about 16 years before the couple handed off ownership. This presentation takes as its primary object of analysis the two public narratives which bookend the Altagracia project—A Cafecito Story and the lecture “Lessons Learned for Café Alta Gracia,” delivered in 2011 to the Middlebury College Center for Social Entrepreneurship. I contend that despite their different genres and modalities—the former a fictionalized fable, and the latter a first-person account of a social entrepreneur--function as didactic showcases through which Alvarez shares with her audience first, her aspirations and, later, her hard-won wisdom about the cost of aligning her values and her agricultural venture in her family’s homeland. In light of the Altagracia Coffee’s closing, how should literary critics address the book about it? And, what lessons are there in the business post-mortem that might inform literary analyses of the symbolic value of the venue?

09:15
“Luxurious by Restraint”: Liberty, Ethics, and Fruitfulness in Leopold and Milton

ABSTRACT. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (225). According to Leopold, “an ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence” (202). Perhaps it is simply that the limitation of personal liberty still clashes with current (American) definitions of liberty writ large. Do we cry for liberty? Or license? This paper will propose that in order to integrate Leopold’s land ethic with American cultural values on consumption, we should reassess our cultural definition of liberty; to do so, we must look back to John Milton. Milton’s political treatise The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and his epic poem Paradise Lost in several ways anticipate Leopold’s “land ethic.” Both Leopold and Milton write about the liberty of the individual who is also obligated to the care of her community. Milton’s distinction between liberty and license in The Tenure and Leopold’s land ethic reconcile the American celebration of freedom and the individual with the ecological necessity of ethical land and food use. The land ethic is not a restriction on personal liberty; rather, it offers a greater expression of liberty, because the land ethic preserves liberty for everyone by placing restrictions on license. Paradise Lost is perhaps even more important in redefining liberty in the context of stewardship of land, food, and animals, offering Adam and Eve as Leopold’s ideal stewards; they tend Eden lovingly, finding it “pleasant labor, to reform / Yon flow’ry arbors, yonder allies green” (4.625-626). Their labor provides them an Edenic lunch of “Nectarine fruits” yielded by the “compliant boughs” (4.332). Elements from The Tenure find their way into Paradise Lost as Adam and Eve exercise their liberty within Milton’s fluid hierarchy, nurturing the Edenic gardens and sustaining themselves with its literal fruits. Conversely, Satan cries for license, couching it in language of freedom and equality and then uses the forbidden fruit to enact the greatest license – humanity’s fall. Adam and Eve exercise their liberty consciously and carefully and thus are exemplary stewards; Satan uses his surrounding environment only to advance himself. This paper will thus argue that both Leopold and Milton suggest that because we live on an earth with limited resources, it is irresponsible and unsustainable to endorse a liberty without limitations.

08:30-10:10 Session 08I: Food on the move

Challenging boundaries through eating

Location: Pyle Center, Room 313
08:30
The arrival or Refugee Cuisine or Culinary tourism?

ABSTRACT. The arrival or Refugee Cuisine or Culinary tourism?

This paper explores the construction of refugee cuisine beyond ethnic, exotic or immigrant cuisine in the United States. In this project I define refugee cuisine as post 1980 foodways from immigrant groups who have left their homelands for political reasons. In particular, my research explores how the food of Nepal, Afghanistan and Syria have become constructed as refugee cuisine. In the past year, Our Syria (2017) documented recipes and stories of Syrian American refugees. Last year, Eat Offbeat in NYC used Kickstarter to fund a cookbook including a variety of refugee cuisines. Through an examination of magazines, cookbooks and social media covering refugee cuisine, I am able to trace the development of refugee cuisine but also explore how ethnic and racial hierarchies shape the success or failures of these endeavors. This paper leaves us questioning how hegemonic structures create refugee cuisine and how community groups can push refugee cuisine beyond food adventuring or culinary tourism. “This/my paper is part of the “Food on the Move” panel, which explores the conditions under which foods and cuisines travel (across both geopolitical and cultural borders) and the ecological, political, and cultural consequences of mobile foods.”

08:45
Public Provisions: Race and the Public Culture of Street Food in Antebellum New Orleans

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the street food economy of antebellum New Orleans, focusing on the paramount role that people of color played in creating a public culture through food distribution that aligned with their needs. In this conference paper, public culture is defined by the development of social relationships and cultural norms through the daily act of provisioning. Despite legal and social disenfranchisement, Africans and African Americans exercised considerable mobility through their food labor. They worked in the city streets, at informal and open-air markets, and in the central public market, navigating the miles that stretched between plantation and city center. Because they were often barred from renting or owning a storefront, they set up itinerant food stalls and restaurants on public lands, displaying brimming baskets of seasonal fruits and offering steaming bowls of gumbo to passersby. As people of color, they were subject to major structural inequalities, yet within those constraints found ways to defy said restrictions to integrate themselves into the public culture and, ultimately, shape it to their advantage. This paper is part of the “Food on the Move” panel, which explores the conditions under which foods and cuisines travel (across both geopolitical and cultural borders) and the ecological, political, and cultural consequences of mobile foods.

09:00
Recipes on the move: Competing for Canadian culinary identity

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the recipe competition as a site of exchange and mobility. More specifically, the paper uses recipe competitions from Chatelaine – Canada’s most popular lifestyle magazine – and other Canadian lifestyle magazine from the 1900 until the 1960s to explore the “chaotic” forming of Canadian culinary culture through the circulation of recipes from all regions of Canada. Many of these recipes are mobile in the sense that they incorporate “foreign” ingredients which, through the process of circulation, become (or are naturalized as) Canadian. Likewise, these recipes in movement suggest the lack of agreement as to what constitutes Canadian culinary culture. The recipe competition articulates the process of negotiation as central to the formation of cuisines.

Homemakers from all over Canada participated in these competitions, negotiating their agency in the process, and forging a network of communication, using the recipe as the main tool. This paper argues that the recipe is an ideal communicative site for exploration of the inconsistencies, changes and forms of exclusion which make up a national culinary culture. The construction of audiences by Chatelaine magazine in the first half of the twentieth century suggests that many women, who did not identify with the image of the Canadian homemaker constructed by the publication, might be missing from the story of Canadian culinary culture. Nonetheless, their voices can be found through ingredients and recipes which demonstrate the commonality of cultural encounters in Canadian history.

This paper is part of the “Food on the Move” panel, which explores the conditions under which foods and cuisines travel (across both geopolitical and cultural borders) and the ecological, political, and cultural consequences of mobile foods.

09:15
Flight Fuel: Pan Am and the Creation of In-flight Cuisines

ABSTRACT. This paper uses menus, cookbooks, and recipes produced by and for Pan American World Airways from the 1950s through the 1980s to explore the history of airplane cuisine, a cuisine that is seemingly from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Appearing almost by magic on passengers’ laps, meals eaten at 40,000 feet exemplify the physical and metaphorical distancing between production and consumption that characterizes modern food systems. This project begins to ground this lofty cuisine by focusing specifically on Pan Am, the U.S.’s first international passenger airline. Archival documents from the University of Miami’s Pan American World collection reveal the airline’s pioneering role in developing inflight food technologies, in deterritorializing national cuisines, and in shaping the consumer practices and expectations of both passengers and non-passengers alike. This paper is part of the “Food on the Move” panel, which explores the conditions under which foods and cuisines travel (across both geopolitical and cultural borders) and the ecological, political, and cultural consequences of mobile foods.”

08:30-10:10 Session 09I: Food policy: Health and access in the US

Conflict and change: Reimagining policy

Location: Pyle Center, Room 309
08:30
The possibilities of engagement: Seeing hope in the private food assistance system
SPEAKER: Amy Rosenthal

ABSTRACT. The public-private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address “emergency” food needs and now regularly feeds millions of people through the collective efforts of nonprofit organizations, businesses, government, and individuals. This system has been (rightly) criticized on several fronts, particularly for its insensitivity to the needs of its clients; reliance on businesses for monetary and food donations; and offering insufficient solutions to the underlying causes of hunger. In this paper, we suggest a way to see the PPFAS with hope. Using New Brunswick, NJ as a starting point, we characterize the PPFAS as a multi-nodal, non-hierarchical system which incorporates a vast array of actors and resources. As a result, embedded in the system are opportunities for flexibility, learning and experimentation. We consider how this space and its widespread, collective participation in the work of providing food to others can offer opportunities for political and social engagement that improves not only the PPFAS itself but also supports socially just outcomes more broadly.

08:45
FDR's Vision realized: U.S. Food Policy comes full circle providing incentives to purchase fresh, healthy foods directly from local farmers

ABSTRACT. This literature review evaluates studies of farmers' markets that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or other federally funded nutrition benefits and monetary incentives to purchase fresh produce. The subject markets in these studies provide matching funds through programs such as Philly Fresh Bucks, Healthy Bucks in NYC, or other programs funded through local or federal government efforts. These programs provide the foundation later mirrored in farm and nutrition legislation. The 2008 Farm Bill includes two important provisions: 1) farmers' markets were included as a retail food outlet allowed to accept SNAP / EBT benefits and 2) a pilot study testing the use of incentives at farmers' markets to encourage the purchase and consumption of fresh produce (Food, Conservation, and Energy Act 2008, 2012). The pilot study provisions are codified in the 2014 Farm Bill as the Financial Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) (Agricultural Act of 2014, 2018). This paper starts with a history of farm and nutrition legislation dating from the 1930s that is now promulgated under the recurring farm bill process (Obenchain & Spark, 2016). Darcy A. Freedman et al (2013)'s Nutritious Food Access conceptual framework is used to evaluate barriers and facilitators to nutritious food access indicated by the results of the studies reviewed ( Freedman, Blake, & Liese, 2013; Freedman Vaudrin, Schneider, Trapl, Ohri-Vachaspati, Taggart, Ariel, Walsh, & Flocke, 2016). Considering the studies in this literature review, it is clear that farm bill legislation should continue to include SNAP and incentive funding as the funds go right back to the farmer. SNAP and FINI programs mirror President F. D. Roosevelt's vision, i.e. supporting farm income and at the same time assuring adequate food supplies to consumers (Obenchain & Spark, 2016).

Agricultural Act of 2014, Pub. L. No. 128 Stat. 649 (2018). Food, Conservation, and Energy Act 2008 (2012). Government Publishing Office. Freedman, D. A., Blake, C. E., & Liese, A. D. (2013). Developing a Multicomponent Model of Nutritious Food Access and Related Implications for Community and Policy Practice. Journal of Community Practice, 21(4), 379-409. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2013.842197 Freedman, D. A., Vaudrin, N., Schneider, C., Trapl, E., Ohri-Vachaspati, P., Taggart, M., … Flocke, S. (2016). Systematic Review of Factors Influencing Farmers' Market Use Overall and among Low-Income Populations. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(7). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2016.02.010 Obenchain, J., & Spark, A. (2016). Food Policy: Looking Forward to the Past. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis.

09:00
Innovation in US food policy implementation: A new model for a new agenda
SPEAKER: Jill Clark

ABSTRACT. Interest in and demand for locally grown food has expanded significantly in the United States (US). At the start of the Obama Administration, leadership at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) aimed to become central to local and regional food system (LRFS) thinking and movement, a topic outside of traditional USDA programming. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan built the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF) initiative in 2009 to move the USDA towards a more central role in local food system action, but had to do so within the bounds of existing authority and resources. The USDA had to simultaneously organize human, social, and financial capital while fostering a culture change to develop “One USDA” to work in an area previously considered niche. At the heart of the initiative was an interagency task force charged with shepherding the transformation within the USDA and marking the “start of a new way of doing things at USDA.” To describe and evaluate this transformation, we use the boundary object as our conceptual framework. Our study approach had two distinct phases. First, using document analysis of USDA files, internal objectives of KYF were identified in order to develop the evaluation framework. Second, a survey was developed to gather data from KYF Task Force members to evaluate program objectives. We used descriptive statistics of survey results and network analysis to develop network statistics using Gephi to examine the extent to which KYF: 1) legitimizes local and regional food system work within USDA agencies; 2) supports work on new topics and knowledge exchanges; 3) changes the allocation of public dollars or the ways in which participants do daily business; and, 4) elicits new collaboration, particularly across agencies.

09:15
The (Agri)Business of the Farm Regulatory Certainty Act: A case study of campaign contribution influence on agricultural and health policy

ABSTRACT. Introduction: House Resolution (HR) 848, the Farm Regulatory Certainty Act, was recently introduced to the United States House of Representatives. It seeks to amend the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 to exclude agricultural animal waste, manure, and fertilizer from the Act’s requirements and prevent citizens from bringing legal suits against agricultural operations under the Act. HR 848 would eliminate one of the only remaining methods for public defense against the pollution of groundwater by agricultural activities and has serious implications for the health of rural citizens, many of whom rely on private wells for drinking water and household use.

Methods: This analysis examines agribusiness sector campaign contributions to members of the House of Representatives to investigate the influence wielded by the agribusiness industry on congressional members on food systems and public health issues. Specifically, this analysis focuses on differences in total campaign contributions, agribusiness sector contributions, percentage of campaign funds from the agribusiness sector, and sector ranking between cosponsors and non-sponsors stratified by party and committee assignment.

Results: The results demonstrate that the agribusiness sector is a significant and disproportionately large contributor to the political campaigns of the HR 848 cosponsors, having contributed close to $10 million to the bill’s cosponsors and ranking in the top five of 13 contributing sectors for more than 60% of the cosponsors in the 2016 election cycle. In addition, agribusiness contributions were 3.6 times higher for cosponsors relative to non-sponsors in both dollar amount and as percentage of total sector contributions. The relationships between HR 848 sponsorship and agribusiness sector campaign contributions remained consistent even when party affiliation and House Committee on Agriculture assignment were considered.

Discussion: The results suggest that the agribusiness sector’s targeted financing of specific congressional election campaigns may be effectively influencing legislative decision-making and leading to the prioritization of industry interests over the health and safety of communities.

08:30-10:10 Session 10I: Is There Such a Thing as a Free Lunch? School Meals in the Long 20th Century

School food programs

Location: Pyle Center, Room 209
08:30
Predicting the Extinction of the Lunchbox, or, When School Lunch Was Modern

ABSTRACT. For Americans of a certain age, the term “school lunch” evokes the worst elements of institutional dining: soggy pizza, canned vegetables, plastic sporks. Or perhaps it is the nutritional inadequacies that are most salient in our collective imagination. Passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 and the numerous efforts to make school meals fresher, healthier, and tastier notwithstanding, many Americans continue to think of school food as little better than prison food.

So it is perhaps difficult to conceive of a time—that time being about 100 years ago—when school lunches were a symbol of modernity, an elegant mechanism by which governments ensured the health and welfare of future citizens by assuming from parents the burdensome task of feeding children during the school day. School lunches, in other words, were revolutionary.

In this presentation, I explore the origins of U.S. school meal programs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, arguing that they are best understood as a public health nutrition program. Though widely supported, I argue that there were three key challenges that kept school meals from becoming the revolutionary force that so many envisioned. First, it was difficult for medical experts to specify the extent and health impacts of malnourishment, undercutting the argument from necessity; second, pro-capitalist and anti-socialist rhetoric elevated individual choice and a fee-for-service model, preventing widespread adoption of free meals; and third, school meal programs were never fully integrated with the educational missions of schools.

08:45
The Logistics, Labor, and Lore of School Lunch in Postwar New York City

ABSTRACT. “The Logistics, Labor, and Lore of School Lunch in Postwar New York City” traces the impact and evolution of the institutional food service program on its employees and consumers, offering introductory interrogations of midcentury educational design trends, women in the labor hierarchy, and the culinary assimilation experience of first- and second-generation children in the postwar urban setting. New York City served as both an exception to the national school lunch experiences and a guidepost for them. The incorporation of the midday meal into the educational realm created both opportunity and challenges for everyone involved. Because the bulk of city schools predated school lunch programs and had no cooking or dining facilities, education administrators utilized a Central Kitchen distribution system for the production and delivery of healthy, palate-neutral foods to a growing student population. The mechanics and manpower were as immense as any other postwar industrial success story, and follow a unique declension narrative as the quality and popularity of the product fell while the need for it increased. School cafeterias offered women an opportunity to perform gender-appropriate work outside of the home, yet these women were also complicit in their own subjugation within the patriarchal structure of municipal unions. Finally, through oral history interviews the perspective and memories of the children that consumed the meals is added to the official record. This paper highlights the social and cultural importance of school food during the child-centric postwar period.

09:00
Ketchup As A Vegetable: Condiments, Culture, and the Politics of School Lunch in Reagan’s America

ABSTRACT. As part of the Reagan Administration’s 1981 attempt to slash $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding, budget reduction recommendations were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable for its school lunch programs. If it was not deliberate, then naming pickle relish as a vegetable certainly opened the door to claiming “condiments” as a category to be the equivalent of vegetables. Ketchup’s distinct, democratic yet exalted place in the landscape of American food is important to understanding the power of the 1981 Ketchup as a Vegetable debacle--how ketchup came to symbolize the malevolence of the economic policy of the Ronald Reagan presidency. This paper illuminates this moment as it was framed through the media, then delves more deeply into the original recommendations themselves, and finally revisits the iconic power of ketchup unmoored from its American roots and extending a global reach.

09:15
A Collective Investment? Toward a New Economics of Care in the US National School Lunch Program

ABSTRACT. Despite recent improvements in nutritional standards and the growth of farm-to-school programs, the majority of foods served in the US National School Lunch Program (NSLP) flow through the “heat-and-serve” economy, which relies on a complex mixture of synthetic additives, plastic packaging, energy-intensive transportation, and degraded labor to function. Drawing on two years of participatory research with frontline school kitchen and cafeteria workers and over forty one-on-one interviews with workers in five states, this paper disrupts the economic logic of the “heat-and-serve” economy. By bringing the voices and perspectives of a part-time, low-wage, feminized, and increasingly racialized labor force to contemporary debates about the future of school lunch, this paper outlines a vision for redesigning the NSLP to advance both feminist and ecological goals in tandem. With roots in the Progressive Era, the NSLP has evolved into one of the most culturally and economically significant sites to renegotiate the politics of care for the twenty-first century. At present, thirty million children participate in the NSLP’s stratified economy of care, eating free, reduced-price, or full-price lunches depending on their family income. Another twenty million children, mostly from more affluent, disproportionately white families exercise the privilege of choice, but in so doing shift the labor of lunch away from cafeteria workers onto a different set of unpaid and low-paid women: their mothers, nannies, and fast food workers. By rethinking the NSLP through the lens of care, the paper brings philosophical and practical questions sharply into focus: Is caring for children a private or public responsibility? What (or whom) should be cared for collectively? How much is care worth and who decides? Why, in this political and environmental moment, is a new economy of care necessary and how can it be achieved? The political climate of austerity that pervades the NSLP limits the power and potential of nonprofit school lunch programs as sites of “living environmentalism” (Di Chiro 2008). Only by recognizing care as an intergenerational and inherently ecological activity, the paper argues, can we begin dismantling the intersecting forms of injustice the NSLP currently reproduces.

08:30-10:10 Session 13I: The State of the Field

The politics of integrating values, food, and farming

Location: Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium
08:30
Understanding Farm Politics through Political Ontology

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on one aspect of a long-term intellectual project on the ‘new politics of farming in NZ’. While political economy-inflected accounts of change and conflict in New Zealand farming have provided partial narratives explaining some dynamics around the political power of different agricultural institutions, I want to use theoretical idea of ‘political ontology’ - drawn from ANT - as means to re-frame the politics of farming. This paper introduces the 'anti-politics' of farming as an ontological demarcation in the colonial landscape of New Zealand that rendered farms and farmers invulnerable to wider critique. I then explore the way in which the ontological boundary around farms and farming systems in New Zealand became progressively punctured and undermined through a series of political conflicts and crises in the mid-1990s and early-2000s. This political project of ontological re-integration of farming within wider systems, flows and political critiques became the essential precursor to the emergence of both a more 'contested countryside' in New Zealand as well as the emergence of sustainability and 'greening' initiatives in food export sectors.

08:45
Why Social Practice Theory Isn’t Social and How It Can Be Fixed: Making This Theory More Useful for the Study of Food

ABSTRACT. A great literature regarding social practice has appeared since the 1900s and has been used to examine everyday life. While some describe this theory as ‘practice theory’ others refer to it as social practice theory. Turner (1991) titles his book “The Social Theory of Practices” but is honest enough to indicate that practices are not “transmitted from person to person.” Warde (2016) is careful to avoid using the word ‘social’ when discussing the “practice of eating.” As a sociologist, I find that while practice theory is a useful tool for studying food in everyday life, without a social component it is less useful. Using data from time diaries from two to three family members, I will provide examples of how their daily practices are mutually intertwined. Simmel (1910) pointed out that while eating is ultimately a solitary act of ingesting of into one’s body, the need for food is met through eating with others.

09:00
Time will sell. But whose time are we selling? Exploring the connection between Time and Food within Convention Theory..

ABSTRACT. Do we need to accept the idea that time is money when referring to food? In many cases this seems obviously the case, as the development of the fast food industry shows. Likewise, when selling aged foods, or food that is prepared following traditional recipes, we are monetizing the passing of time and making it a marker for quality. Time affects food in many ways. We value food that is fresh and just picked but go to extreme length to minimize the effects of time and conserve food as long as possible. We want to be able to eat healthy food without spending too much time to prepare it yet we do spend a lot of time to prepare special foods for special occasions. The relationship between food and time changes according to frames that are frequently contradictory and are deeply influenced by the social, economic and cultural standing of the people doing the framing. Spending time on and with food can be framed on a scale that goes from a complete waste (of time, and money), to a valued and coveted status symbol, to a way to disengage from the money economy. After exploring the ways times plays a role in food production and consumption, this paper deploys convention theory to highlight the connections between different sets of values and the role of time in food production and consumption. Drawing from my ethnographic research, current literature, and textual analysis, I connect different approaches to food and time to the worlds of values analyze by Boltanski and Thevenot, and highlight how food can be the meaningful object that roots figures of compromise between different worlds.

09:15
Politics of Consumption vs. Politics of Production: A Dialectic Analysis of Food Access Organizing

ABSTRACT. The American food justice movement has endured tremendous growth in the past half century. Hand in hand with that growth is a significant amount of critical scholarship that has examined the successes of these movements as well as their immanent shortfalls. The newness of this critical scholarship has left room for elaboration, which is where this article embarks. Up to this point, we are well aware of the potentiality for food justice movements to replicate systemic inequalities and extend the neoliberalizing process. However, we have yet to examine the comparative relationship between food justice movements and food sovereignty movements, and how this comparison might provide a deeper theoretical underpinning to situate the food justice movement's deficiencies, specifically as a mechanism to reproduce capitalism and inequality. Transcending the confines of the American-centric analysis of food justice movements, this article expands the frame of reference to conduct a global comparison. Incorporating a comparative analysis of food justice movements with food sovereignty movements, this article will demonstrate the importance of political framing to the overall success or hindrance of a food movement. By analyzing the dialectic between the politics of consumption versus the politics of production as manifest in American food justice movements as compared to food sovereignty movements, this article demonstrates the practical implications of a consumer-centric and ultimately, capitalistic movement. Through this analysis, this article argues that American food justice movements need to incorporate a politics of production and specifically confront the neoliberalizing and capitalistic process.

10:10-10:30Morning Break

Pyle Center, ATT Lounge

10:30-12:10 Session 03J: Community Gardens: Building Community

Alternative agriculture

Location: Pyle Center, Room 232
10:30
"Together we can grow community": Community Gardening in North Central Regina

ABSTRACT. Urban agriculture has emerged as a global movement to actively challenge the industrial food system. Community gardens, in particular, have been applauded for fostering improved food access, community building, and educational opportunities. While many of these projects share similar goals, each exists within a unique climate of local political, economic, and social paradigms. In the summer of 2016, I worked as the Community Gardens Coordinator for the North Central Community Association (NCCA) in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. In my role as participant observer in both the NCCA and the gardening community, I explored the ways in which the Association strives to develop a space of inclusive food work, and how this initiative impacts residents’ relationships with food.

Established in 2008 to promote increased food security, community involvement, and neighborhood beautification, the North Central Community Gardens (the Gardens) are located in an inner-city neighborhood that has been dubbed “Canada’s worst” by popular national media. North Central is a concentrated site of the ongoing impacts of colonization and the displacement of Indigenous peoples, including alienation from historic lands, traditional food sources, and ancestral knowledge. Expanding on the literature of the politics of urban agriculture in communities of color, I observed distinct acts of resistance in the ways Indigenous children and elders reconnected to food work in the Gardens. Participation in the Gardens facilitates fundamental reformations in the connection between production and consumption, embodying radical principles of civic agriculture, food citizenship, and consumer reskilling. By providing space for residents to engage in community building, knowledge sharing, and inclusive food production, the Gardens become a powerful tool to rewrite the dominant narrative of the neighborhood and of the colonized.

10:45
Assessing the impacts of Project Breaking Ground (a sustainable jail garden and food justice service-learning project)

ABSTRACT. In January of 2016, Western Kentucky University – Glasgow began a partnership with the Barren County Detention Center and area farmers to construct a jail garden using sustainable agriculture techniques. This service-learning project, known as Project Breaking Ground (PBG), was integrated into several classes, including three sociology courses. During the Spring semester, Sociology of Agriculture & Food was taught at the facility and 15 undergraduates and five incarcerated women took the class together. Students learned about the challenges of the contemporary food system and discussed emerging alternatives. They then learned about the principles of permaculture and together installed a ¾ acre garden next to the facility using these techniques. A follow-up course was taught in the Fall, entitled “Food, Community, & Social Change,” which introduced "inside" and "outside" students to theories of social change and led to a soup kitchen organizing project. After a year, Project Breaking Ground was handed over to the jail and has continued. WKU-Glasgow students enrolled in Strategies of Social Research in 2016 conducted an evaluation of the impacts of this service-learning project on the wider community, the jail staff, the inmates, and the social relations between various groups. Students used a mixed-methods approach. They surveyed jail staff and all the WKU classes involved in the project, conducted a dozen key stakeholder interviews, and analyzed media reports and the project’s Facebook page. No inmates were included in this study, although we did interview a few of the "inside" students after they had been released. This presentation responds to the work of Randy Stoecker (2016) to take seriously the impacts of our service-learning projects beyond student learning. Thus, it describes and analyzes five broader impacts of the project and the extent to which PBG made a noteworthy contribution to sustained social change.

11:00
Sowing the Seeds: Intersections of Faith, Celebrity Philanthropy, and Neoliberalism in an Orlando Community Garden
SPEAKER: Ty Matejowsky

ABSTRACT. Experiential learning gardens serve as viable tools for putting Slow Food ideologies into practice. Widely touted as community spaces, these initiatives play a vital role in shaping the lived experiences of individuals and households at the grassroots level by introducing and reinforcing healthy eating and lifestyle choices among underserved populations. Across urban America, various factors inform the trajectory and niche these ventures eventually assume within local foodscapes. Their success typically rests on the coordinated efforts of highly motivated individuals and groups who utilize available material and social capital over both the short- and long-term to effectively implement project objectives. Within Central Florida, previous research details the sort of social and economic hurdles community gardeners confront in launching these types of ventures. This paper focuses on the Edible Education Experience (EEE), a non-profit headquartered in Orlando’s gentrifying College Park neighborhood whose identity is uniquely enmeshed within various school, faith-based, and residential communities. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork at EEE’s Emeril Lagasse Foundation Kitchen House & Culinary Garden, we examine perspectives on the moral epistemology and neoliberal approaches that both inform the program and have gained local acclaim and continued support. Data collected throughout 2017 add anthropological granularity and theoretical depth to current food studies literature by situating our research findings within wider discourses on neoliberalism’s hegemonic influence amid diminishing state engagement and support. Focusing on the development, launch, and continued refinement of the EEE, we highlight how this enterprise adapts to challenges and integrate their passion for local food into their garden and kitchen programming. Our findings help elucidate new directions in urban/community gardening, nutrition education, and food outreach among under-resourced populations.

11:15
Ending hunger and food insecurity through community based learning

ABSTRACT. This paper outlines the implementation and results of a Community Based Learning class on the topic of food insecurity. I designed the entire semester of my fall 2016 Sociological Research Methods class at Centre College to collect data for a local café, Grace Café, to help them assess the progress they were making toward achieving their mission of ending hunger & food insecurity in Danville, K.Y. Grace Café is like any other café, except that they are a pay-what-you-can café and their primary goal is to welcome and serve their patrons in a respectful and dignified manner regardless of their ability to pay. Grace Café had applied for city funding to support the café in 2015 but were turned down because the restaurant could not provide adequate proof that it was helping the people in the city who most needed food assistance. Grace Café partnered with my research methods class because they wanted us to collect data that they could use to make another appeal to the City of Danville’s Commissioners for funding for the café. Students were able to conduct research in a “real-life” setting and were able to do so in a way that was helpful to our community partner. Grace Café applied for funding again from the city of Danville in 2016 and was granted funding for the first time, in part we believe, because of the data that our research methods class was able to help them collect and analyze. I will present the rationale and design of the class as well as some of our class findings.

10:30-12:10 Session 05J: Forging the future, marketing the past: fermented foods in a new food economy

Challenging boundaries through eating

Chair:
Location: Pyle Center, Room 327
10:30
The Skyr's the Limit: Commodity Chain Analysis of Icelandic Skyr
DISCUSSANT: Sally Frey

ABSTRACT. Since the turn of the century and the rise of mass marketing, the American yogurt industry has gone through countless changes, from fruited sweet varieties to, most recently, the emergence of Greek yogurts. As more and more Americans are consuming yogurt, the market keeps diversifying, reaching globally for traditional styles from other countries, such as Icelandic skyr. Skyr, like Greek yogurt, is thick and high in protein and appeals to consumers interested in combatting appetite. Icelandic skyr was introduced to the U.S. yogurt market through companies such as Siggi's and Smari Organics, with each co-founder originally from Iceland.

The emergence of Icelandic skyr on the American yogurt market by the above listed companies could lead to the potential Americanization of skyr, with a variety of new flavors and textures not found in Iceland. Though skyr is not as popular as other "traditional" yogurts on the American yogurt market, it has the potential to gain popularity as more people are becoming aware of what they are consuming.

As these new yogurt brands emerge on the already competitive yogurt market, drawing on different traditions and styles, the question emerges as to how these companies navigate between offering a true-to-origin product and the constant need to have different flavors, tastes, and textures that people have come to expect from yogurt. In this paper, the history of commercialized yogurt provides insight into how a product new to the market can gain popularity through appealing to consumers from all walks of life looking for a new product that is higher in protein, lower in sugar, and lower in fat compared to other yogurts.

10:45
Sake: How a New Global Commodity Can Preserve an Ancient Japanese Product
DISCUSSANT: Sally Frey

ABSTRACT. Sake, a fermented beverage with a long history, has been tied to the cultural and social identity of Japan. Made with a molded grain unique to Japan, called koji, and a special fermentation process unlike other alcoholic beverages, sake once played a significant role in Buddhist monasteries, Shinto rituals, and daily consumption. Despite its cultural heritage and economic significance, sake’s place in Japanese culture shifted in the last 40 years. After reaching its peak in the mid 1970’s, sake’s popularity has been declining at home. There are numerous reasons for this decline, from the increasing popularity of other alcoholic drinks, both imported and produced in Japan, to the higher cost of sake compared to other alcohol. Despite the decrease in sales in Japan, sake exports to countries like the United States, China, South Korea, and Taiwan have greatly increased throughout the 21st century.

Using marketing history, data on consumption trends and taste of place, and an analysis of production methods and scale, I explore the potential shifts from a product that represents national identity to a global commodity. I propose that the momentum of the global market will continue to support the sake market in Japan to the point where national production and consumption will increase, therefore preserving sake and its heritage status.

11:00
From Fermented Fruit Juice to Magical Cure-All: Bragg's in the Apple Cider Vinegar Market
DISCUSSANT: Sally Frey

ABSTRACT. In the United States, there is widely accepted lore that touts apple cider vinegar as a veritable cure-all. Food and health are intertwined historically, and cider vinegar straddles the line between a magical cure-all and a kitchen staple. These historical contexts provide evidence that apple cider vinegar was not a product that needed much consumer convincing. In the United States, this was due to the early use of apples and apple by-products as household food and a long trail of medical literature (dating back to Hippocrates) utilizing vinegar as remedy. Apple cider vinegar was inexpensive and multifunctional long before commercial marketing used those qualities to promote products. This history makes the commercial context of Bragg Apple Cider vinegar all the more interesting. Bragg rose to prominence in the cider vinegar market over the last century. This paper examines the historic use of apple cider vinegar, as a context for exploring the success and market dominance of Bragg cider vinegar. Bragg’s major differentiation and positioning strategies showcase them as a health brand. By exploring the background of the product proliferation, the company’s rise to success, and the trends that influenced apple cider vinegar consumption, this paper offers insights into how other “universal” household remedy products on the market may or may not benefit from the same kinds of food/health discourses, marketing, and corporate narrative. It raises questions for food products positioned as both alternative and mainstream.

10:30-12:10 Session 06J: Studying, teaching and doing research on food studies abroad: A Roundtable

Food in education

Location: Pyle Center, Room 332
10:30
Studying, Teaching and Doing Research on Food Studies Abroad: A Roundtable

ABSTRACT. Last year I've proposed a light.speech presentation on "Studying, Teaching and Doing Research on Food Studies Abroad". This session was very successful and many professors contacted me to find out what teaching/learning methodologies can be used in a study abroad program. This year I would like to create a creative session in which I help professors and scholars interested in doing research and / or bringing students abroad, to design their curricular paths. Studying and working in a foreign context is not easy. There are risks, challenges and even opportunities. But you have to find the right tools. Experiential learning knowledge and practices are not enough. In particular, the objective of this meeting / creative workshop / informal discussion is to share and discuss opportunities for study and research in the food and wine field with professors, students, researchers, or independent scholars who are interested in learning about study programs or doing research abroad. We will explore topics such as study abroad programs, culinary schools, master programs and internship programs. Through an experiential workshop, different solutions and proposals will be presented. The material will range from social sciences to human, technological, biological, and agro-ecology sciences.

10:30-12:10 Session 07J: Design, from technological innovation to consumption

Identities of food and farming

Location: Pyle Center, Room 335
10:30
Exploring the Global Brooklyn: Design, Senses, and the Experience Economy in the Cosmopolitan Foodscape

ABSTRACT. We refer to the "Global Brooklyn" as a set of recurring, almost codified design components that reflect a preference for repurposed material like reclaimed wood and iron; a certain idiosyncrasy of service; stripped down, often retrofitted architecture with heavy post-industrial accents; references to manual labor elevated into higher status professional activities enriched by new meaning and cultural capital values; constant allusions to a pre-mass-production past that highlight the uniqueness and originality of the food offering, at times with a tinge of nostalgia. By paying attention to the affective, sensory, and aesthetic elements of constructed environments, material objects, and practices taking place in bars, stores, and restaurants reflecting the design elements of the Global Brooklyn, this talk aims to explore the cultural and social identification processes of the actors involved within the framework of the experience economy in post-industrial societies.

10:45
Emerging Farmscapes: Designing Agroecologies

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the intersection of the discourse of agroecology with that of landscape architecture design. While the objective of integrating ecological and cultural systems lies at the core of Landscape Architectural discourse, only recently have landscape architects begun to address agricultural landscapes. Emerging design approaches such as conservation agriculture or productive ecologies align with new paradigms of sustainable, ecologically based agricultural production. Based on a set of key projects as well as examples of student work from a food system design studio, this paper outlines the role of design in addressing critical agroecological issues. It emphasizes design as a synthesizing practice that provides ways of integrating diverse disciplines and knowledge sources, as well as tools for visualizing and shaping complex systems. It also seeks to expand the approach to the design and management of agroecologies to include working across multiple scales from farm site to regional systems, and negotiating new forms of social relationships, land tenure and public space.

11:00
Technology Transfer as Agricultural Transfer: Wisconsin Farmers and the History of Academic Patenting

ABSTRACT. Social scientists who study academic patenting have most often focused their attention on the biotechnology boom of the 1980s, the rise in university patenting offices that accompanied that boom, and the concurrent re-branding of those offices as the "technology transfer" industry. Proponents of the industry maintain that the patenting and licensing of university research benefits the public by offering the most efficient means to transfer the technology devised by academic researchers into the marketplace. Critics argue that technology transfer has been a problematic component of a recent reformulation of higher education as an increasingly corporate, capitalistic enterprise.

This paper will argue that the history of technology transfer, and the implications of academic capitalism, have much deeper roots - both literal and figurative - within agricultural systems. The academic patenting office at the University of Wisconsin, one of the oldest in the world, was founded in 1925, not with the science of biotechnology, or in biochemistry, but at the Department of Agricultural Chemistry within the College of Agriculture. Its founding inventor, Harry Steenbock, worried that his research on vitamins, which began with an investigation into the optimal composition of cattle feeds, would be used to improve the nutrition of margarine and other butter alternatives. Allowing that to happen could undermine Wisconsin dairy farmers and their industry, damage the agricultural economy of his home state, and threaten the political support for his public university. So he filed for a patent to monopolize the commercialization of his research.

Understanding the origins of technology transfer as an attempt to protect a regional agricultural industry proves how technology and society, and the academy and the economy, have been intertwined for at least a century. Indeed, instead of being corrupted by academic capitalism since the 1980s, the values of American universities were forged by economic, ethnocentric, and patriarchal systems of thinking from the beginning. The history of technology transfer must be understood within that historical context.

10:30-12:10 Session 09J: Food policy: Regulating sustainable

Conflict and change: Reimagining policy

Location: Pyle Center, Room 309
10:30
The Progressive Agriculture Index: Assessing and Advancing Agri-food Systems
SPEAKER: Rick Welsh

ABSTRACT. Indicators and metric systems are helpful tools in efforts to reach societal objectives, and these systems are being employed increasingly in initiatives to improve the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of agri-food systems. Indicators can help clarify values and objectives, providing assessment criteria useful for tracking movement towards or away from targets. Thus, effective indicator systems are useful in assessing and guiding efforts to bring agricultural systems into alignment with the limits of nature and the needs of all humans. Unfortunately, the application of indicators and metrics to agricultural systems has been hindered by conflicting definitions of sustainability and progress, leading to the production of metrics that lack a holistic consideration of social, economic, and environmental factors. To address this shortcoming, we argue for a definition of progressive agriculture that includes all three of the abovementioned factors, stressing the need for multidimensional improvements in the impact of agri-food systems on the environment, society, and the economy. Based on the input of several counties in New York State, we have assembled a collection of metrics intended to provide a balanced perspective on the range of variables facilitating the development of agri-food systems with positive impacts on farm-level workers, the environment and the farm economy, and other areas of interest. Our index integrates data from the United States Census of Agriculture, the U.S. Census and other databases to assess 9 variables at the county scale for the contiguous United States. The inclusion of data from both 2007 and 2012 permits an analysis of temporal patterns along with regional and county-level trends in individual and aggregate measures of progressivity. By ranking counties within their Farm Resource Regions as defined by the USDA’s Economic Research Service, as well as within their Urban Influence Categories, we also facilitate comparison between counties with similar socio-economic and environmental contexts. We believe our index represents a step toward the development of more integrated, participatory approaches to measuring progress in agri-food systems; furthermore, we hope our findings will facilitate dialogue and inspire the development of initiatives for improving the social, economic, and environmental impacts of agri-food systems.

10:45
Understanding Public Perceptions of Food System Issues: Polling on the Farm Bill and Sustainable Agriculture

ABSTRACT. Introduction: The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future’s Food Citizen Project is an ongoing public opinion research project that gathers important information about public perceptions and attitudes on food system issues. To facilitate change and move toward a healthy, equitable and more sustainable food system, it is essential to understand what people know about the food system and how they perceive key issues.

Approach: This project generates reliable information free from industry-backed lobbying interests to inform policy and the media with the goal of strengthening food system policy dialogue and decision-making, and better understanding food system trends. This presentation will focus on the findings of a 20-minute telephone survey of 1,000 randomly selected registered nationwide voters and 500 randomly selected registered voters in Iowa conducted in March 2018. The poll will target national public perceptions of key Farm Bill and state level agriculture issues in Iowa.

Results: The survey will provide insight on voter understanding and perceptions of Farm Bill topics, from commodity, conservation, and beginning and socially disadvantaged farmer programs to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and local and regional food system supports.

Discussion: In addition to communicating the results of the survey, the presentation will describe how polling enhances knowledge of trends in the food system arena and will provide context for understanding how it can influence food and farm policy debates. Examples from previous polls will be provided to illuminate how polling can influence policy-makers on issues at the core of public health and food systems.

11:00
Understanding the increasing private ordering of sustainability in US agriculture through a study of multi-stakeholder initiatives
SPEAKER: Johann Strube

ABSTRACT. In the past, public research institutes and the US Department of Agriculture were at the forefront of setting the standards of what farming practices qualify as sustainable. However, now private entities are positioning themselves to define sustainability for themselves.

This research probes into the ways in which Field to Market, Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, and LEO-4000 - multi-stakeholder initiatives of agribusiness corporations, grower organizations, and non-government organizations - are establishing their own standards and metrics, and possible implications for sustainability in US agriculture. Through a content analysis of press releases, media articles, and organization websites, our preliminary findings suggest that economic sustainability – interpreted as continued profit – is emphasized over social and environmental dimensions in at least two of these three initiatives. Agri-businesses and grower organizations use multi-stakeholder initiatives to get the jump on framing of sustainable agriculture before government agencies are able to set stricter legal regulations, and to legitimize their sustainability claims, which they leverage to gain competitive advantages in markets. Civil society organizations, for their part, recognize these business-led initiatives as an important playing field to make sure environmental and social concerns are represented in public understandings of sustainability. Although different and often competing actors within the agri-food sector participate in these multi-stakeholder initiatives, not everyone has equal representation. While civil society organizations ostensibly represent citizens, the entire process operates independent of the legislative and regulatory state processes. This raises important questions as to the broader trend toward the private ordering of public affairs in the neoliberal state. Specifically, what does this shift from public to private governance means for sustainability in US agriculture? Are the current private multi-stakeholder initiatives capable of advancing sustainability as a public good? And if not, what stands in the way? This paper begins to address these questions.

11:15
Contested Agrifood Futures: Agroecology and Sustainable Intensification within the CGIAR

ABSTRACT. The food, energy and financial crises of 2007-2008 triggered a re-evaluation of the sustainabilities of the global agrifood system. The growing realizations of (1) the need to intensify food production to feed a predicted 9 billion people by 2050 but (2) that industrial agriculture is the major contributor to climate change accelerated the discourse on agrifood transitions. Two alternative visions have emerged as the preferred path forward to feed the world while reducing environmental degradation: sustainable intensification and agroecology. The term sustainable intensification was first used in 1997 in reference to modernizing agriculture in Africa to generate local and regional foods to meet growing population pressures and support rural development. At that time the discourse and practice on sustainable intensification was strongly informed by agroecology; it was to be based on appropriate technologies and sensitive to cultural norms. In 2006 the UNFAO announced that sustainable intensification was the new paradigm that would feed the world sustainably. It was defined as marshalling all available technologies to grow more food on the same amount of land with less environmental externalities. Since then sustainable intensification has been embraced by most of the major development organizations worldwide. It is also increasingly criticized as an oxymoron whereby the interests of industrial agriculture try to sustain the unsustainable through a repackaging of Green Revolution technologies. This paper employs the case of CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) to investigate the tension between sustainable intensification and agroecology and thereby inform discussions on contested agrifood transitions.

10:30-12:10 Session 10J: Seeing Invisible Labor: Centering Work and Workers in K-12 School Food Programs, Policies, and Advocacy Efforts

School food programs

Location: Pyle Center, Room 209
10:30
No Rest for the Weary: Integrating Healthy and Local Foods into K-12 Food Service

ABSTRACT. Initiatives such as the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA), along with growing concern over food production and consumption among both the general population and health and social policy stakeholders, has catalyzed a variety of changes in K-12 procurement and menuing practices. Few researchers have focused on the impacts on the daily experiences and responsibilities of the front-line workers tasked with preparing foods purchased to be more healthful, sustainable, etc. This presentation highlights impacts of such purchasing initiatives on institutional food workers in the context of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The School Food Focus Making It Healthier, Making It Regional project has examined meal program operations in six school districts across the Southeastern and Midwestern United States that prioritize serving local foods, including interviewing 19 cafeteria managers and 21 district-level meal program staff, and surveying 147 cafeteria employees. We use this data to explore what integration of healthy and local purchases entails for the day-to-day activities of school cafeteria employees, as well as their reactions to and opinions of these initiatives. Findings from this study provide much needed insight into the often overlooked experiences of front-line food service staff in the NSLP and institutional food service more generally. In addition, these insights will be useful to school food authority administrators struggling with implementation of these associated initiatives by bringing attention to this key component of implementation. Finally, advocates working to transform school food will be better equipped to support these initiatives by having a broader perspective of the resources, including human resources, required to make these changes to more healthful and sustainable food systems successful.

10:45
The View From Behind the Lunch Line: K-12 Kitchen and Cafeteria Workers’ Experiences of and Engagement with the Real Food Movement
SPEAKER: Alan Talaga

ABSTRACT. This presentation will frame and compliment the papers presented in this session by providing space for K-12 kitchen and cafeteria workers to tell their own stories through short video testimonials. Filmed in the spring of 2016, this video series reflects kitchen and cafeteria workers’ experiences of and engagement with transitions to serving more clean, local, and scratch-prepared foods in three urban school districts in the upper Midwest (Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Des Moines). The film producers will play selections from the video series and provide conference attendees with a link to the full collection, which is clustered around five themes: (1) Scratch cooking: Taking pride in the labor of lunch, (2) Caring for students, (3) The struggles of part-time work and the need for “high road” strategies that position good food and good jobs as mutually constitutive, (4) What a food service union does and how unions can support workers and communities in reclaiming the public value of the National School Lunch Program, and (5) Using district-owned central kitchens in support of farm-to-school procurement and ingredient control. By featuring school foodservice directors, farm-to-school coordinators, and central kitchen chefs and managers alongside frontline workers in a range of positions, this video series provides a comprehensive portrait of change in action that will be instructional for academics, activists, and practitioners alike.

11:00
Gendered, Neoliberal Narratives of School Food Service Labor: What’s the Story?

ABSTRACT. Typically, school food system studies are quantitative and food-centric. These studies are important for improving students’ nutritional outcomes, sustainability efforts, and other school food system issues. (Tsui, Deutsch, Patinella, and Freudenberg 2013) However, there are few studies that take a qualitative approach to school food systems from the perspective of food service workers. There is little information concerning school food service workers’ experiences, or their needs as food system laborers. Utilizing data from an ethnographic study of Oregon school food service workers, this paper takes a qualitative, worker-centric approach to school food systems, exploring narratives of labor and gender. The study took place in a suburban Northwest Oregon school district. For participant observation, I prepared and served food as a food service volunteer. Ten workers participated in interviews, and more than twenty were observed or interacted with on the job. All but two of the workers in this study were women.

Historically, U.S. school lunch programs have been implemented by women. Until Ellen Richards’s creation of a science-based institutional school food program, women volunteers, mothers, and female students ran local programs. In 1935 the Works Progress Administration had a surplus of unemployed women who were sent to work in school feeding programs; as women, it was taken for granted that they knew how to cook (Poppendieck 2010). Contemporary food service work occupies a precarious place in a neoliberal labor economy as it is still done in the home without pay, or outside of the home by volunteers, but it is also an occupation undertaken by women who are at risk of poverty. A report from the Rutgers Center for Women and Work found that New Jersey school food workers were underpaid, and had little to no benefits (McCain 2009).

Narratives of labor and gender can preserve the status quo, or serve as a catalyst for change (Latour 2005; Ortner 1989). Latour’s actor-network theory offers a method for tracing narratives, and collapsing the temporal and spatial distance between them. Tracing narratives creates a network which increases workers’ visibly in the labor economy (Latour 2005). As the network grows, a picture emerges of both the worker and the work. This paper asks: What school food system narratives are available? What types of data are needed to reveal existing, new, or underutilized narratives? In what ways can proponents of food system labor leverage narratives to advocate for change?

11:15
Making “Farm to School” Work: An Examination of the Labor Behind Local Lunch

ABSTRACT. In school cafeterias, Farm to School (F2S) initiatives aim to improve the quality and reputation of school lunch while supporting local farmers and the local economy. In 2013-2014, 42% of US school districts reported participating in F2S activities, with three-quarters serving local foods in their schools (USDA, 2015). These efforts are nested within the National School Lunch Program, a welfare initiative restricted by tight budgets and, increasingly, by regulatory constraints designed to expand social equity (through increased access to nutrition) and ensure fiscal “responsibility”. F2S programs in many states do not receive any additional funding earmarked for the purchase or preparation of local food, which is often more expensive and labor-intensive. Thus, armed with limited resources, it is typically district-level school nutrition program operators (POs) who must manage the extensive effort and secure the funding to implement F2S in the cafeteria.

We draw upon interviews and four years of ethnographic fieldwork with school nutrition POs in Georgia to make visible the work of bringing the farm to school. We find that successful F2S initiatives require school food service workers (as well as farmers) to re-conceptualize their labor as actors within a values-based supply chain (Stevenson and Pirog, 2008). Yet, at the level of POs, this entails the continuous work of building and sustaining relationships with farmers and distributors, motivating cafeteria staff to develop new skills and work harder for low pay, and often recruiting volunteer labor and donations to keep these programs running (Allen and Guthman, 2006).

Although these networks are clearly at the foundation of effective F2S programs, our research indicates that the unpaid labor requirements of F2S programs can undermine the very relationships that facilitate its success. POs, cafeteria workers, small farmers, local distributors, and community members must enact the goals and values of F2S through volunteer and unpaid additional work: an unsustainable strategy. Over time, we see POs shifting their F2S purchasing away from small, local growers and toward nominally local products procured through standard supply chains, which ultimately limits the positive impact of F2S for kids, farmers, and communities.

We argue that to truly enact the goals and values of F2S, it is time to make the work of F2S visible to policy-makers and advocate for greater state and local investment in reskilling and compensating school food service workers on the front line of these initiatives.

10:30-12:10 Session 13J: Poke and Provoke: Special Invited Session

The politics of integrating values, food, and farming

Location: Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium
12:30-14:00Lunch/Presidential Addresses and Awards Presentation

Alumni Lounge, Pyle Center