Lisa Chase - Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems

Lisa Chase & Vern Grubinger

Food, Farms, and Community

EXPLORING FOOD SYSTEMS

UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE PRESS DURHAM, NEW HAMPSHIRE

University of New Hampshire Press
www.upne.com/unh.html
2014 University of New Hampshire
All rights reserved

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chase, Lisa, author.
Food, farms, and community: exploring food systems / Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61168-421-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-61168-687-6 (ebook)
1. Food supply. 2. Food security.
I. Grubinger, Vernon P., 1957 author. II. Title.
HD9000.5.C488 2014
338.1'9dc23 2014035951

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the many people working in food systems around the country who were willing to be interviewed for this book, allowing us to share their experiences and insights. We also thank the following colleagues who reviewed chapters and provided insightful comments, guidance, and suggestions during the writing of the book: Selena Ahmed, Linda Berlin, Laura Brown, Mark Canella, Dan Chase, Kate Clancy, Doug Constance, Hans Estrin, Eric Garza, Bill Guenther, Susan Harlow, Joyce Hendley, Shoshanah Inwood, Fred Magdoff, Thomas Maloney, Tom Morris, Mary Peabody, Abbie Nelson, Londa Nwadike, Ellie Rilla, Rachel Schattman, Erin Shea, Arthur Schmidt, Bill Schmidt, Tatiana Schreiber, David Timmons, and Alex Wilson.

Special thanks to the Dean of the University of Vermont Extension, Doug Lantagne, and Associate Dean Dan Lerner, who provided support, financial and otherwise, throughout the writing of the book. In the Brattleboro Extension office we thank Carol Morrison and especially Gail Makuch, who tirelessly formatted references and kept us organized as we pulled the disparate pieces of the book together into a seamless whole. Thanks to Kristen Winstead, our graphic designer, who artfully reproduced many of the figures in the book.

Finally, we dedicate this work to our families, who supported us in so many ways and put up with the long hours we spent working on the book: Tracey Devlin, Sam and Nick Grubinger; Bob Ethier, Hazel and Iris Chase Ethier. We hope that our children, their children, and the generations that follow will be nourished by sustainable food systems.

Vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there.

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

1 Introduction to Food Systems

Food systems are extremely complex. If they were linear, at one end of the human continuum would be farmers, or producers, and at the other end would be consumers. Or food waste managers could be at the far end, and if some of them were composters, theyd connect back to the farmers, creating a circular food system. But food systems arent linear, nor are they circular. They are webs of people and the resources and behaviors they affect. Producers, consumers, processors, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers interact with people working in education, social services, research, and other areas. These people may be advocates, entrepreneurs, or employees of institutions and businesses; they function in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Some deal directly with food and some deal with infrastructure; they offer technical assistance, manage natural resources, provide inputs such as fuels and fertilizers, or develop and implement policies and regulations. Together they create a food system, which can be broken down into myriad smaller systems.

Food System Models

A food system has been defined as

an interconnected web of activities, resources and people that extends across all domains involved in providing human nourishment and sustaining health, including production, processing, packaging, distribution, marketing, consumption and disposal of food. The organization of food systems reflects and responds to social, cultural, political, economic, health and environmental conditions and can be identified at multiple scales, from a household kitchen to a city, county, state or nation.

Individual perspectives determine how that web will be envisioned and described. A relatively simple depiction, for example, considers only the various types of markets for food ().

FIGURE 1.1 Market levels of a food system. This view focuses on the different market channels for which food is produced.

FIGURE 1.2 Complex diagram of a food system. This view focuses on food, people, and the environment, as well as factors that influence their interactions in the system, which uses inputs and generates outputs.

When human and environmental interactions are included, the economic impact of a food system is much greater than the market value of the food sold. Holistic assessments of the food system may reveal many other kinds of positive economic impacts, such as improved nutrition and ecosystem services. They may also reveal negative impacts not accounted for by simple

FIGURE 1.3 Human health and food systems. This view focuses on dietary behavior and human health. Note that food production and distribution are depicted as a small part of this system, just one of many practices, whereas in they are shown as a primary part of the system.

There is widespread concern about negative externalities from the food system, in particular the impact of a poor diet on human health. Efforts are under way to understand how the food system can be changed to alleviate food-related illness. From the perspective of people for whom the effect of dietary behavior on human health is a priority, its important to describe a food system in a way that captures the ingredients they can work with to improve the situation ().

In response to concerns about human health, many initiatives have been introduced to strengthen local and regional food systems. In these cases a primary consideration is often which facets of a system can be influenced by local or regional policies. Thus the descriptions of food systems in these plans usually focus on the governing units sphere of influence, such as the activities of various industries and markets, rather than human behavior or environmental outcomes ().

Another way that food systems can be described is in terms of desired outcomes for a healthy community (). This doesnt provide details about how a system actually functions, but it articulates a set of broad, interrelated results that can then be stated as measurable goals.