Engagement for transformation: Value webs for local food system development

Engagement happens when academics and non-academics form partnerships to create mutual understanding, and then take action together. An example is the “value web” work associated with W. K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food Systems Higher Education–Community Partnership. Partners nationally work on local food systems development by building value webs. “Value chains,” a concept with considerable currency in the private sector, involves creating non-hierarchical relationships among otherwise disparate actors and entities to achieve collective common goals. The value web concept is extended herein by separating the values of the web itself, such as the value of collaboration, from values “in” the web, such as credence values associated with a product or service. By sharing and discussing case examples of work underway around the United States, the authors make a case for employing the value webs concept to represent a strategy for local food systems development, specifically, and for higher education–community partnerships, generally.

Daniel R. BlockEmail:

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Daniel R. Block   is an associate professor of geography and coordinator of the Frederick Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center at Chicago State University. His current research focuses on food access issues in urban environments, particularly in Chicago. Michael Thompson   is an assistant professor at Oregon State University, and a Seafood and Fisheries specialist for Oregon Sea Grant Extension. Primary areas of research include fisheries management, seafood quality/handling, and seafood product development. Jill Euken   is an industrial specialist for biobased products for Iowa State University Extension/CIRAS, and deputy director, ISU Bioeconomy Institute. She was part of the steering team for the Iowa Value Chain Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture and led the Bioeconomy Working Group. Toni Liquori   is a nutritionist, teacher and food activist with a long time interest in the design, implementation, and evaluation of school-based intervention programs and coalition building for activism around food related issues, as well as teaching and training in public health. Frank Fear   is senior associate dean, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; and professor, in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resources Studies; and Senior Outreach Fellow at Michigan State University. He is lead author of Coming to Critical Engagement (University Press of America, 2006), an analysis of the engagement movement in higher education; and recently completed two terms as president of the Greater Lansing Food Bank. Sherill Baldwin   is ecology director at Mercy Center at Madison, Connecticut, a spiritual retreat and conference center. She previously provided consulting services to CitySeed, Inc. in New Haven (CT) and to Frank Fear and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation for a community learning project related to sustainable food systems. She has an MS in Resource Development from Michigan State University and a BA in Solid Waste Management from the University of Massachusetts.