EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Building Community Food Webs

Download or read book Building Community Food Webs written by Ken Meter and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs, Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organizations in their quest to build stronger communities. Community food webs strive to build health, wealth, capacity, and connection. Their essential element is building greater respect and mutual trust, so community members can more effectively empower themselves and address local challenges. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Health clinics help clients grow food for themselves and attain better health. Food banks engage their customers to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development. Developers forge links among local businesses to strengthen economic trade. Leaders in communities marginalized by our current food system are charting a new path forward. Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, underway in diverse places including Montana, Hawai‘i, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota. Addressing challenges as well as opportunities, Meter offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders and other grassroots activists alike.

Book Community Food Systems in California

Download or read book Community Food Systems in California written by Gail Feenstra and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Cultivating Food Justice

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alison Hope Alkon
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2011
  • ISBN : 0262016265
  • Pages : 405 pages

Download or read book Cultivating Food Justice written by Alison Hope Alkon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents how racial and social inequalities are built into our food system, and how communities are creating environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives.

Book Together at the Table

Download or read book Together at the Table written by Patricia Allen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere you look people are more aware of what they eat and where their food comes from. In a cafeteria in Los Angeles, children make their lunchtime food choices at fresh-fruit and salad bars stocked with local foods. In a community garden in New York, low-income residents are producing organically grown fruits and vegetables for their own use and to sell at market. In Madison, Wisconsin, shoppers select their food from a bounty of choices at a vibrant farmers’ market. Together at the Table is about people throughout the United States who are building successful alternatives to the contemporary agrifood system and their prospects for the future. At the heart of these efforts are the movements for sustainable agriculture and community food security. Both movements seek to reconstruct the agrifood system—the food production chain, from the growing of crops to food production and distribution—to become more ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just. Allen describes the ways in which people working in these movements view the world and how they see their place in challenging and reshaping the agrifood system. She also shows how ideas and practices of sustainable agriculture and community food security have already woven their way into the dominant agrifood institutions. Allen explores the possibilities this process may hold for improving social and environmental justice in the American agrifood system. Together at the Table is an important reminder that much work still remains to be done. Now that the ideas and priorities of alternative food movements have taken hold, it is time for the next—even more challenging—step. Alternative agrifood movements must acknowledge and address the deeper structural and cultural patterns that constrain the long-term resolution of social and environmental problems in the agrifood system.

Book Local Food Systems  Concepts  Impacts  and Issues

Download or read book Local Food Systems Concepts Impacts and Issues written by Steve Martinez and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

Book Civic Agriculture

Download or read book Civic Agriculture written by Thomas A. Lyson and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A engaging analysis of food production in the United States emphasizing that sustainable agricultural development is important to community health.

Book Good Food  Strong Communities

Download or read book Good Food Strong Communities written by Steve Ventura and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans are hungry, while others struggle to find healthy foods. What are communities doing to address this problem, and what should they be doing? Good Food, Strong Communities shares ideas and stories about efforts to improve food security in large urban areas of the United States by strengthening community food systems. It draws on five years of collaboration between a research team comprised of the University of Wisconsin, Growing Power, and the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and more than thirty organizations on the front lines of this work in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Madison, and Cedar Rapids. Here, activists and scholars talk about what’s working and what still needs to be done to ensure that everyone has access to readily available, affordable, appropriate, and acceptable food. The approach begins by laying out the basic principles of food security and food justice in light of the diversity of food system practices and innovations in America’s cities. The contributing authors address land access for urban agriculture, debates over city farming, new possibilities in food processing, and the marketing of healthy food. They put these basic elements—land, production, processing, and marketing—in the context of municipal policy, education, and food justice and sovereignty, particularly for people of color. While the path of a food product from its producer to its consumer may seem straightforward on the surface, the apparent simplicity hides the complex logistical—and value-laden—factors that create and maintain a food system. This book helps readers understand how a food system functions and how individual and community initiatives can lessen the problems associated with an industrialized food system.

Book Community Food Systems

Download or read book Community Food Systems written by Gail Feenstra and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Repairing the Local Food System

Download or read book Repairing the Local Food System written by Alethea Marie Harper and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Meeting Farm and Food Security Needs Through Community Supported Agriculture and Farmers  Markets in California

Download or read book Meeting Farm and Food Security Needs Through Community Supported Agriculture and Farmers Markets in California written by Patricia Allen and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research brief examines whether alternative food initiatives (AFIs) such as community supported agriculture (CSA) and farmers' markets can meet the food security needs of low-income consumers. It is based on interviews with and surveys of farmers' market and CSA managers throughout California. The authors conclude that AFIs are not and cannot be substitutes for state entitlements in meeting the food security needs of low-income people.

Book Nourishing Communities

Download or read book Nourishing Communities written by Irena Knezevic and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume builds on existing alternative food initiatives and food movements research to explore how a systems approach can bring about health and well-being through enhanced collaboration. Chapters describe the myriad ways community-driven actors work to foster food systems that are socially just, embed food in local economies, regenerate the environment and actively engage citizens. Drawing on case studies, interviews and Participatory Action Research projects, the editors share the stories behind community-driven efforts to develop sustainable food systems, and present a critical assessment of both the tensions and the achievements of these initiatives. The volume is unique in its focus on approaches and methodologies that both support and recognize the value of community-based practices. Throughout the book the editors identify success stories, challenges and opportunities that link practitioner experience to critical debates in food studies, practice and policy. By making current practices visible to scholars, the volume speaks to people engaged in the co-creation of knowledge, and documents a crucial point in the evolution of a rapidly expanding and dynamic sustainable food systems movement. Entrenched food insecurity, climate change induced crop failures, rural-urban migration, escalating rates of malnutrition related diseases, and aging farm populations are increasingly common obstacles for communities around the world. Merging private, public and civil society spheres, the book gives voice to actors from across the sustainable food system movement including small businesses, not-for-profits, eaters, farmers and government. Insights into the potential for market restructuring, knowledge sharing, planning and bridging civic-political divides come from across Canada, the United States and Mexico, making this a key resource for policy-makers, students, citizens, and practitioners.

Book From Cows to Concrete

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rachel Surls
  • Publisher : Angel City Press
  • Release : 2016-05-14
  • ISBN : 9781626400313
  • Pages : pages

Download or read book From Cows to Concrete written by Rachel Surls and published by Angel City Press. This book was released on 2016-05-14 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What? Los Angeles was the original wine country of California, leading the state's wine production for more than a century? Los Angeles County was the agricultural center of North America until the 1950s? And where today's freeways soar, cows calmly chewed their cud? How could that be? Los Angeles, the capital of asphalt and Klieg lights, was once a paradise filled with grapevines and bovines, so abundant with Nature's gifts that no one could imagine a more pastoral place? Los Angeles County was the center of an agricultural empire. Today, it is the nation's most populous urban metropolis. What happened? Where did the green go? As Americans connect with gardens, farmers markets, and urban farms, most are unaware that each of these activities have deep roots in Los Angeles, and that the healthy food they savor literally had its roots in L.A. This book is for all who treasure the country's agrarian history.

Book The Grand Food Bargain

Download or read book The Grand Food Bargain written by Kevin D. Walker and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay. Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker’s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in “free markets” undercut opportunity in his hometown. By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn’t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.

Book More Than Just Food

    Book Details:
  • Author : Garrett Broad
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2016-02-09
  • ISBN : 0520962567
  • Pages : 297 pages

Download or read book More Than Just Food written by Garrett Broad and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The industrial food system has created a crisis in the United States that is characterized by abundant food for privileged citizens and “food deserts” for the historically marginalized. In response, food justice activists based in low-income communities of color have developed community-based solutions, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can drive systemic social change. Focusing on the work of several food justice groups—including Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles organization founded as the nonprofit arm of the Southern California Black Panther Party—More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach, offering a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the nonprofit industrial complex.

Book In the Struggle

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel J. O'Connell
  • Publisher : New Village Press
  • Release : 2021-07-13
  • ISBN : 1613321228
  • Pages : 364 pages

Download or read book In the Struggle written by Daniel J. O'Connell and published by New Village Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars working for communities' rights in California's Central Valley In the Struggle tells the story of the persistent engagement of eight public scholars spanning generations of sustained endeavor, a dogged war in which workers and scholars together repeatedly took on the powerful agricultural industry, the political machines, and even the universities. The stories begin in the 1930s with Paul Taylor, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered field research and activism as he travelled through the areas marked by the Great Depression, together with his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. Working in the heart of California's agricultural Central Valley, Taylor was the first of a succession of scholars who shared the dual commitment to research and engagement, to making problems visible and to effecting change through strategic action. Taylor and Lange intentionally wove their political engagement into their identities and work as researchers, as they conducted studies, led strikes, organized underserved communities, founded community development programs, created nonprofit institutions, and more. This book documents a tradition of politically engaged scholarship in one of the world's most dramatic contexts, full of disparities and contradictions, but also ripe with opportunities to make a difference. It covers a struggle that continues undiminished in the present.

Book Growing Livelihoods

Download or read book Growing Livelihoods written by Rhonda Phillips and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community planning is starting to include a broader food systems focus, spanning topics such as nutrition and health outcomes, sustainable farming practices, economic and social implications of local food production, distribution, and consumption. Together, these issues are a driving force for the passions of those seeking positive change in their communities through healthy food. The purpose of this book is to explore how and where local food and farms, as part of a local or regional food system, can positively impact both economic development and overall well-being of communities. Across North America, there are good examples of the ways in which innovative local food systems provide opportunities for: increasing job growth and entrepreneurship; retaining local farmers on their land while nourishing their community; and providing communities places to congregate, bond, and become closer-knit. Six such examples are highlighted, each illustrating a novel model offering unique contributions to community economic health and well-being. These important cases offer practitioners, advocates, academics, and students insight into how applications can be built or studied in their own communities.

Book Sustainable Food System Assessment

Download or read book Sustainable Food System Assessment written by Alison Blay-Palmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/Sustainable-Food-System-Assessment-Lessons-from-Global-Practice/Blay-Palmer-Conare-Meter-Battista-Johnston/p/book/9781032083933, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.