What's New:
Working to Build & Understand Food System Resilience
I am very excited to be leading a SSHRC funded project on community food networks. I am also the co-applicant with Karen Landman at the University of Guelph on a related OMAFRA grant. Together these two projects bring together eight Ontario universities, nine NGOs, four government offices and one international university partner. The core research group includes nine faculty and fifteen students. The advisory group provides input throughout the project and includes twenty members (thirteen from universities, five from government and two from NGOs). We are all working to build and understand food system resilience.
Recent Publication
‘Imagining Sustainable Food Systems: Theory and Practice’ Alison Blay-Palmer (ed.) is now available through Ashgate Publishing in hardcover or as an e-book.
Content: What defines a sustainable food system? How can it be more inclusive? How do local and global scales interact and how does power flow within food systems? How to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to realizing sustainable food systems? And how to activate change?
These questions are considered by EU and North American academics and practitioners in this book. Using a wide range of case studies, it provides a critical overview, showing how and where theory and practice can converge to produce more sustainable food systems.
Review: 'This book makes an important contribution to the literature on alternative food systems. It moves beyond enumerating the problems with the current food system (including problems with “alternative” food strategies) and begins to build ideas of what a sustainable food system might include. In particular, the focus on particular strategies, policies, and business arrangements that could be part of a sustainable food system makes this book a “must-read” for those interested in developing a sustainable future.'
-- Sarah Wakefield, University of Toronto, Canada.
Featured Web Links
FoodForeThought is an information service that encourages dialogue and exploration of innovative trends in the global food system. The service is managed by James Kuhns of MetroAg Alliance for Urban Agriculture in collaboration with Wayne Roberts and the Toronto Food Policy Council. To subscribe, please contact editor@foodforethought.net.
Canadian Association for Food Studies is an association to promote critical, interdisciplinary scholarship in the broad areas of food production, distribution, and consumption.
Grad Students
Welcome to Marianne Stewart who joins Laurier from the University of Ottawa. Marianne will be pursuing her MES through work that integrates her interests in green economic development with food studies.
Nicole Holzapfel is in her second year of her PhD program and is developing her research and thinking bringing together literatures on children, therapeutic landscapes and food systems.
Paula Bryk will wrap up her Masters by the spring of 2012. Paula's work explores Community Nutrition programs in Waterloo region.
Cecilia Ip will complete her Masters degree by the spring with a paper that unpacks the opportunities for industrial ecology food projects in the Toronto region.
Jon Turner will finish his Masters work on sustainable food systems indicators in the fall of 2011. Jon's work makes an important addition to the Food Counts project by comparing sustainable food system indicators for the Region of Waterloo and Guelph-Wellington.
Congratulations to Mike Nagy for his thoughtful and in depth study of Eco-certification programs for fisheries Canada and beyond. His Masters work makes a valuable contribution to this important area of study.
