Community food security: Practice in need of theory?

Practitioners and advocates of community food security (CFS) envision food systems that are decentralized, environmentally-sound over a long time-frame, supportive of collective rather than only individual needs, effective in assuring equitable food access, and created by democratic decision-making. These themes are loosely connected in literature about CFS, with no logical linkages among them. Clear articulation in a theoretical framework is needed for CFS to be effective as a guide for policy and action. CFS theory should delimit the level of analysis (i.e., what are the boundaries of community); show how CFS relates to individual, household, and national food security and explain emergent properties, which are important at the community level of analysis; point to the best indicators of CFS or its lack; clarify the determinants of CFS; and clarify the stages of movement toward CFS. This theoretical base would allow researchers to develop valid and reliable measures, and allow practitioners to weigh alternative options to create strategic plans. A theoretical base also would help establish common ground with potential partners by making the connections to anti-hunger work, sustainable agriculture, and community development clear.     

Eating Outside the Box: FoodShare’s Good Food Box and the Challenge of Scale

The concept of scale is useful in analyzing both the strengths and limitations of community food security programs that attempt to link issues of ecological sustainability with social justice. One scalar issue that is particularly important but under-theorized is the scale of social reproduction, which is often neglected in production-focused studies of globalization. FoodShare Toronto's good food box (GFB) program, engages people in the politics of their everyday lives, empowering them to make connections between consumption patterns and broader political-economic, cultural, and political-ecological issues. Community food security (CFS) projects such as the GFB are currently limited in their scope and reach and have been criticized for their inability to deliver food to a larger segment of marginalized, hungry people. A central dilemma for CFS projects is how to engage the majority of urban consumers who still eat “inside the box” of the industrial food system. We argue that the concept of scale helps clarify how CFS projects must “scale out” to other localities, as well as “scale up” to address structural concerns like state capacity, industrial agriculture, and unequal distribution of wealth. This requires the state and the third sector to recognize the importance of multi-scaled food politics as well as a long-term pedagogical project promoting ecological sustainability, social responsibility, and the pleasures of eating locally. Josée Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is interested in the radical potential of food politics in the context of neo-liberal globalism. Lauren Baker is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include food politics, alternative food networks, and place-based social movements. Lauren worked with FoodShare Toronto as a program coordinator for five years and continues to be active in the community food security movement.     

Feeding More People on an Increasingly Fragile Planet: China's Food and Nutrition Security in a National and Global Context

Developing and developed countries alike are increasingly facing the difficult question of how to feed more people amidst a host of emerging demographic, environmental, and health challenges. At the same time, in addition to food quantity, increased attention is being given to food quality attributes, in particular nutrition and safety. This is especially evident in China, where concerns are on the rise regarding the ability of China's food production systems to deliver nutritious and safe food to a growing, urbanizing and more affluent population. These food and nutrition concerns come at a time when China is an increasingly influential actor within the global food security network through activities such as production, consumption and trade. We argue that China has the opportunity to increase food and nutrition security both nationally and globally through a comprehensive policy agenda that focuses on institutional reforms, investments for and in agriculture, productive social safety nets, mutually beneficial trade, and the exchange of know-how and technologies among developing countries and donors. This agenda will help China adapt its food production systems to the changing face of agriculture and to play a vital role in addressing the emerging challenges facing food and nutrition security within and beyond China in the coming decades.     

Cultivating citizenship,equity, and social inclusion? Putting civic agriculture into practice through urban farming

Civic agriculture is an approach to agriculture and food production that—in contrast with the industrial food system—is embedded in local environmental, social, and economic contexts. Alongside proliferation of the alternative food projects that characterize civic agriculture, growing literature critiques how their implementation runs counter to the ideal of civic agriculture. This study assesses the relevance of three such critiques to urban farming, aiming to understand how different farming models balance civic and economic exchange, prioritize food justice, and create socially inclusive spaces. Using a case study approach that incorporated interviews, participant observation, and document review, I compare two urban farms in Baltimore, Maryland—a “community farm” that emphasizes community engagement, and a “commercial farm” that focuses on job creation. Findings reveal the community farm prioritizes civic participation and food access for low-income residents, and strives to create socially inclusive space. However, the farmers’ “outsider” status challenges community engagement efforts. The commercial farm focuses on financial sustainability rather than participatory processes or food equity, reflecting the use of food production as a means toward community development rather than propagation of a food citizenry. Both farms meet authentic needs that contribute to neighborhood improvement, though findings suggest a lack of interest by residents in obtaining urban farm food, raising concerns about its appeal and accessibility to diverse consumers. Though not equally participatory, equitable, or social inclusive, both farms exemplify projects physically and philosophically rooted in the local social context, necessary characteristics for promoting civic engagement with the food system.     

Community food security: Salience and participation at community level

Community food security (CFS) is an incipient movement based on the re-localization of many food system activities in response to values concerning the social, health, economic, and environmental consequences of the globalizing food system. This study examines the salience of these values based on the action agendas and accomplishments emerging from community planning events in six rural counties of New York, and the nature and type of participation and local support. The study finds a high level of agreement between CFS values as articulated by national leaders in this incipient movement and the action agendas. Further evidence of the salience of these themes is seen in the levels and types of activities and accomplishments taking place 8--12 months after the planning events. However, these follow-through activities appear to have been impeded by a variety of government regulations, uneven levels of support from community organizations and agencies, and a policy environment of fiscal austerity, narrow outcome-oriented accountability, and allocation of agency staff toward special-purpose grants and contracts. Many of these constraints are likely to exist in other communities and are beyond the scope of what community volunteers and practitioners can be expected to address on their own.     

食物安全测量指标比较与影响因素分析

为探究农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分2种食物安全测量指标的差异以及影响食物安全的因素,采用陕西省镇安县、洛南县,云南省武定县、会泽县和贵州省盘县、正安县2015年1 368户农户实地调研数据,并运用Logit模型进行影响因素实证分析。研究结果表明:1)农户饮食多样性得分和食物消费得分的相关性较高,但从定义、测量方法到结果都有差异,饮食多样性得分的食物消费追溯期短,获取的食物消费情况更准确,而食物消费得分设定不同的食物种类权重更能识别真正食物不安全人群;2)家里有婴幼儿、劳动力平均受教育年限、家庭人均年收入、家里养殖牲畜对农户食物安全具有显著的正向影响。基于以上分析,食物安全评估和测量指标应该根据不同的需要进行选取,且在减贫的同时应关注贫困地区农户的食物获取能力以减轻农户食物不安全的状况。     

Food sovereignty in US food movements: radical visions and neoliberal constraints

Although the concept of food sovereignty is rooted in International Peasant Movements across the global south, activists have recently called for the adoption of this framework among low-income communities of color in the urban United States. This paper investigates on-the-ground processes through which food sovereignty articulates with the work of food justice and community food security activists in Oakland, California, and Seattle, Washington. In Oakland, we analyze a farmers market that seeks to connect black farmers to low-income consumers. In Seattle, we attend to the experiences of displaced immigrant farmers from Latin America and their efforts to address their food needs following migration. In both cases, we find that US based projects were constrained by broader forces of neoliberalism that remained unrecognized by local activists. In Oakland, despite a desire to create a local food system led by marginalized African Americans, emphasis on providing green jobs in agriculture led activists to take a market-based approach that kept local food out of the economic grasp of food-insecure neighborhood residents. In Seattle, the marginalization of the immense agroecological knowledge of Latino/an immigrant farmers rendered local food projects less inclusive and capable of transformative change. Taken together, these very different cases suggest that a shift towards food sovereignty necessitates a broad acknowledgement of and resistance to neoliberalism.     

Place, work, and civic agriculture: Common fields for cultivation

``Civic agriculture' identifies adiverse and growing body of food and farmingenterprises fitted to the needs of localgrowers, consumers, rural economies, andcommunities. The term lends shape andlegitimacy to development paradigms that existin opposition to the global,corporately-dominated food system. Civicagriculture also widens the scope of ag-relatedconcerns, moving away from a strictlymechanistic focus on production and capitalefficiency, and toward the more holisticreintegration of people in place. To date,researchers and practitioners have attendedclosely to the economic benefits of newmarketing arrangements and institutions (e.g.,value-added co-ops, CSAs, and farmer'smarkets). Local food and farming has a criticalrole to play in the development of analternative commerce. At the same time, this isonly half the promise of civic agriculture.Civic agriculture can (and should) promotecitizenship and environmentalism within bothrural and urban settings not only throughmarket-based models of economic behavior, butthrough common ties to place and physicalengagement with that place.     

Contributing to food security in urban areas: differences between urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures.     

Not just what, but how: Creating agricultural sustainability and food security by changing Canada's agricultural policy making process

Agriculture has been enormously productive in recent decades. The main problem is that fragmentation of issues, knowledge, and responsibilities has hidden the costs associated with this success. These are mainly environmental, social, and health costs, which have been assigned to other ministries, with their own histories unconnected to agriculture. Now that agricultural policy has achieved its success, its costs are becoming apparent. The current system is preoccupied with traditional views of competitiveness and efficiency. Policies, programs, and regulations are organized to support specific commodities, not farming and food systems. Responsibilities are extremely fragmented and frequently uncoordinated. In this environment, the focus on nourishment, food security, and environmental sustainability is subordinated to economic issues.The future lies in reorienting agricultural policy away from maximum production and towards sustainability. We propose a major transformation of the policy making apparatus in order to shift the focus of the system towards nourishment, food security, and sustainability. A new policy making system must be built on the themes of: integrated responsibilities and activities; emphasis on macro-policy; transdisciplinary policy development; proximity of policy makers to the diverse groups affected by problems needing resolution; food systems policy.The design principles for such a new system are taken from the theory of food security and ecology. Using these principles, we design a new provincial department of food and food security, and test this design with two case studies.     

非洲农业产量对气候变化响应与适应研究进展

非洲是全世界气候变化最脆弱的地区,而非洲农业受气候变化的影响最为敏感。气候变化已经并将继续对非洲农业和粮食安全产生较大的负面影响。提高气候变化对非洲作物产量影响的理解,揭示非洲农业对气候变化的响应规律,是及时、正确和有效适应气候变化的关键。本文综述了非洲农业对气候变化的响应与适应的研究进展,总结了作物机理模型、统计模型和经济模型目前研究这一问题的三大主要方法,系统阐述了非洲农业对过去和未来气候变化的响应程度及适应措施。未来气候变化对非洲农业的可能影响,不同的研究在不同时间尺度和空间尺度上,随着气候情景、研究方法和作物种类的不同,影响程度的结论差异性较大：作物机理模型方法显示的影响范围是-84%-62%;统计方法评价的影响范围则是-57%-30%;而用计量经济学方法研究显示的影响范围是-100%-168%。随着气候变化对非洲农业的影响得到公认,非洲农业对气候变化的适应问题得到了越来越多的研究。选育抗旱品种、发展保护性农业、完善灌溉设施、调整技术管理等适应措施将有可能对粮食安全带来更大的益处。另外,加强极端气候事件的监测和预警、增强气候预报、有效结合气候变化制定农业生产种植和管理措施、调整作物布局、发挥区域和国际组织（世界气象组织WMO、联合国粮农组织FAO等）在非洲应对气候变化影响方面的合作和对非洲的援助等措施均可提高非洲农业对气候变化的适应能力。本文进一步讨论了研究中存在的不确定性因素,包括数据、方法、结果的不确定性以及气候变化的间接影响、缺乏综合研究等问题,并指出了未来的发展趋势。本文有助于更好地理解非洲农业产量对气候变化的响应与适应,为解决非洲粮食安全问题和消除非洲贫困提供科技支撑,同时也为中国农业应对气候变化提供借鉴。     

食物安全的草地农业创新模式刍议

通过分析我国食物消费趋势发现,需求增长较快的饲料用粮将占去70%的食物当量,我国现有的农业结构模式面临巨大挑战。作为构建粮食安全的思路创新,草地农业蕴含着巨大的生产潜力。我国草业工作者经过多年试验研究,提出了南方农区水稻/玉米-黑麦草轮作、南方山区和牧区多年生混播草地栽培、黄土高原粮草轮作、西北绿洲农区“公司+养殖区+农户”肉牛养畜以及农牧交错带多年生牧草栽培-“粮+草+牲畜养殖”系统等草地农业创新模式,对于食物的增产增收、节粮替粮作用明显。因此,可以通过草地农业建立持续高效的农业生态系统来保障粮食安全。     

营养导向型的中国食物安全新愿景及政策建议

经过40年显著的经济增长和发展,中国当前的目标是保持经济中高速增长,在提高可持续性和公平的基础上,更好地连接经济与市场,让市场决定最优的生产水平,农业在这一过程中将发挥重要作用。在健康中国2030、国民营养计划（2017—2030）以及乡村振兴战略等中长期战略推动下,政府及学术界对营养问题的关注持续提升,农业与营养的联系逐步增强,但“农业-食物安全-营养”的有机融合与衔接还尚未形成。在中国经济转型过程中,农业和食品行业将发挥至关重要的作用,由中国食物安全战略决定的国民食物营养与健康状况不仅影响中国的国民身体素质,还将在一定程度上影响中国能否顺利转变发展方式、能否成功跨越“中等收入陷阱”。因此,新的发展阶段,中国需要新的食物安全战略提升国民营养水平,并采取系列政策措施加强农业与食物安全和营养的联系。论文基于国际经验的食物安全战略发展思路,梳理中国食物安全面临的新旧挑战,提出食物安全新愿景以及相应政策建议,为营养导向型农业发展的顶层设计提供决策支持。中国食物安全面临的挑战诸多,与食物安全与营养高度相关的挑战主要表现为：耕地资源不足与退化、水资源紧缺与污染、气候变化与极端天气影响等自然资源和环境压力,农业生产补贴提高带来的财政支出压力,膳食能量摄入不足、微量元素缺乏以及膳食能量和营养摄入过剩的营养不良“三重负担”,食品安全问题以及食物损失与浪费问题。因此中国在经济从注重数量增长转向侧重质量增长的深化过程中,将更加重视结构调整和制度及技术创新,这意味着农业需要生产高价值、营养和安全的食物,更高效地使用水、土地和能源,保护环境和促进平等,因而需要中国食物安全战略顶层设计上的系列转变。据此,本文提出了营养导向型的中国食物安全的新愿景,即将营养指标作为中国食物安全战略的发展目标,到2025年消除饥饿和营养不足,并有效降低食品安全风险和超重率以及肥胖率。为此需要以关键领域的重大改革为基础,改进营养治理、通过市场信号传递营养导向、推动营养目标的农业生产、建立更安全的食品价值链、以政策创新促进可持续的营养饮食、加强营养教育并开展循证发展支持营养导向的食物安全新战略的实施。     

集约多熟超高产--21世纪我国粮食生产发展的重要途径

为了满足未来１６亿人口的粮食需求,并同步提高农民收入和改善农业生态环境,我国的粮食生产必须依靠高产农田,走集约化多熟超产之路。建议尽早开展不同熟制地区粮食作物超高产耕作栽培技术体系研究。     

New Vision and Policy Recommendations for Nutrition-Oriented Food Security in China

After four-decade significant economic growth and development, China sets a series of goals aiming at sustainable medium to high speed economic growth,reasonable equity, and better market oriented economy. In this pursue, agriculture will take a crucial role. Under the Health China 2030, National Nutrition Plan (2017-2030) and Rural Vitalization Strategy, more attention has been paid on nutrition both in policy and research field, meanwhile the linkage between agriculture and nutrition is enhancing, but the integration of Agriculture-Food Security-Nutrition system is not yet completed. During the economic transformation, agriculture and food industry will play a key role, especially when considering the nutrition and health status will impact the national physical fitness and therefore influence the economic transformation approach. It may also impact whether China can move out of the Middle Income Trap to some extent. In the new development era, China needs a new food security development strategy to improve the national nutrition status and sets of policies to strengthen the integration of agriculture and nutrition. This paper reviewed the major challenges about China’s food security and put forward a new vision based on international experiences, which aimed at providing recommendations for designing China’s food security strategy. The key food security challenges include natural and environmental pressure, such as insufficiency and degradation of land resources, shortage and pollution of water resources, climate change and extreme disaster, fiscal pressure caused by increasing agriculture subsidy, Triple Burden of malnutrition, food safety issues and food loss and waste. It requires institutional and technical innovations for the transformation of agriculture development which means that more value added, nutritious and healthy food should be produced, the productivity and efficiency of water, land and energy should be improved, and environmentally friendly social inclusive development should be considered. All of those call for a transformation of China’s food security strategy. This paper put forwards a new vision for China’s food security: China should set nutrition-oriented food security strategy with nutrition indicators as key targeted goals, aim to eliminate hunger and undernutrition by 2025 while effectively reducing overweight/ obesity and food safety risks. Therefore policy innovations are recommended including: Improve nutrition governance, Market motivated and nutrition oriented agriculture support system, Promote Nutrition-based Food Production, Establish efficient, safe, and inclusive food value chains, Policy innovation for sustainable nutritious diet and nutrition education, and Evidence based research to support policy making.     

建立新的食物系统观

食物的生产和消费是农业生态系统的精髓,它决定性地作用于农业生态系统的结构和功能,也作用于生存环境,农业活动主要是建造和利用食物系统.健康的食物系统,使生态系统可能持续发展,生产力成倍增长,可兼顾生态和生产双重效益,是食物安全的保证.增加动物性食物,减少对植物性食物,尤其是谷物的依赖,是我国与全球食物系统调整的方向.其中,合理利用天然草地,大力发展栽培草地或实行草田轮作,发展草食家畜,减缓对耕地资源的掠夺性利用,是完善食物系统的必然途径.     

The development of guidelines for implementing information technology to promote food security

Food insecurity, and its extreme form, hunger, occur whenever the accessibility to an adequate supply of nutritional and safe foods becomes restricted or unpredictable. They are recurring problems in certain regions of the US, as well as in many parts of the world. According to nation-wide surveys conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, between 1996 and 1998 an estimated 9.7% of US households were classified as food insecure (6.2% being food insecure without evidence of hunger, and 3.5% being food insecure with moderate to severe hunger). This means that approximately 10 million households each year did not always have access to enough food to meet basic needs. A potential tool in the fight against food insecurity and hunger is information technology (IT), since its use and range of application continue to grow at astonishing rates. The study presented here examined the question of how information technology, particularly the Internet, can be used to promote food security. The study used an action science research approach, and a case study strategy, with the food security system of Oktibbeha County, Mississippi selected as the case for study. The research design was a two-phase process. Phase one consisted of a needs assessment among food assistance organizations in Oktibbeha County, and included interviews of key food assistance personnel. Phase one also included a survey of IT subject matter experts to seek their opinions about the current state of Web-based information technology. Phase two involved an analysis of various IT implementation issues, as well as the development of a Web-based food security information system prototype tool. The needs assessment results indicated that (a) certain food security system and information needs existed among the food assistance organizations in Oktibbeha County, and (b) appropriate information technologies existed that could be applied to these needs. The food security needs related to better communication and coordination of information, such as program information, food site inventory information, client history information, food donation information, and nutrition education information. In regard to technology development, a variety of scenarios were examined. These included client-side approaches, server-side approaches, simple e-mail-based systems, Java-based systems, systems based on the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and commercial database systems. In applying the needs assessment and survey results, the researcher developed a prototype Web site (including a series of online database tools) that could be used to promote food security in counties such as Oktibbeha County. The results of this research show that appropriate, Internet-based, IT holds promise for the reduction of certain social problems, such as food insecurity and hunger.     

富硒农产品研究开发助力我国营养型农业发展

营养是保证健康的基础。2016年全球疾病负担研究结果显示,饮食因素导致的疾病负担占到15.9%,已成为影响人群健康的重要危险因素。近年来,我国居民营养健康状况明显改善,但仍面临营养不足与过剩并存、营养相关疾病多发等问题,营养与健康已经成为我国食品消费的主流需求。农业生产的根本目标是为了满足居民食物消费需求。作为食品消费最大的供给侧,我国农业现阶段的主要矛盾已经由总量不足转变为结构性矛盾,农业生产如何满足人民对优质食物消费需求的美好向往、适应营养健康需求,已成为推动农业供给侧结构性改革,实现农业现代化发展的首要问题。因此,推动营养型优质农产品生产,是实现农业供给侧改革、满足食品营养健康消费需求的重要途径。硒是机体抗氧化的重要成分,最新营养与健康状况监测显示我国居民硒实际摄入量低于推荐量,研发富硒农产品是满足我国居民食品消费营养健康需求的重要举措。本文结合前期研究基础,从我国居民硒营养基本情况、硒的剂量生物学效应关系两方面介绍了我国富硒农产品开发的依据;并针对我国居民硒摄入量普遍不足现状,概述了我国富硒农产品研发基本情况,最后对我国富硒农业发展提出了相关建议,助力我国营养型农业发展。富硒农产品作为我国营养健康食品发展的重要组成部分,其科学消费观的培养、全产业链的形成、质量监管及标准的制定,对于推动我国营养型农业发展,实现现代农业与食品产业升级,满足人民群众对营养健康的需求、对美好生活的向往具有重要意义。     

Community food security and environmental justice: Searching for a common discourse

Community food security and environmental justice are parallel social movements interested in equity and justice and system-wide factors. They share a concern for issues of daily life and the need to establish community empowerment strategies. Both movements have also begun to reshape the discourse of sustainable agriculture, environmentalism and social welfare advocacy. However, community food security and environmental justice remain separate movements, indicating an incomplete process in reshaping agendas and discourse. Joining these movements through a common language of empowerment and systems analysis would strongly enhance the development of a more powerful, integrated approach. That opportunity can be located in the efforts to incorporate community food security and environmental justice approaches in current Farm Bill legislation; in particular, provisions addressing community food production, direct marketing, community development, and community food planning.     

Food provisioning strategies,food insecurity,and stress in an economically vulnerable community: the Northern Cheyenne case

Living in poverty is associated with high levels of protracted stress associated with health problems. Economic and food insecurity are particularly poignant aspects of poverty and condition the work of securing basic daily needs of families. Recent studies suggest that levels of stress increase as family food needs rise. This paper presents new findings which clarify the relationship of food provisioning to stress levels, by examining actual food provisioning strategies and food insecurity among the Northern Cheyenne Indians of southeastern Montana. Results clearly show that stress varies by types of food acquisition strategies. Contrary to our expectations, more complex strategies, including relatively unpredictable and cumbersome food provisioning activities, are not linked to higher stress levels in our analysis. Controlling for food security levels, households using a combination of local programs and informal subsistence sources are the least stressed, despite the demands of managing a large number of food sources. Households primarily using Food Stamps are the most likely to experience high levels of stress. Interviews with Food Stamp recipients show that potential sources of stress include inadequate allocations of Food Stamps, difficulty achieving and maintaining eligibility, challenges to complying with paperwork and appointment requirements, as well as personal obstacles and community barriers to making food stamps last. Analyses indicate that contradictions between local cultural norms for food provisioning and the realities of food insecurity in this context promote strategies emphasizing greater independence from federal food programs.