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Nora Manon Müller
  • Paris, France
The mainstream food system in the industrialized world is dominated by large, private corporations, and is highly concentrated spatially and structurally, resulting in high levels of production, but also many negative environmental and... more
The mainstream food system in the industrialized world is dominated by large, private corporations, and is highly concentrated spatially and structurally, resulting in high levels of production, but also many negative environmental and social externalities. There is growing interest in alternative food systems as a way to reduce these externalities and increase food system sustainability. Localization has become a favoured strategy of advocates for alternatives, and ranges from incremental changes from within the mainstream system to challenging that system by creating grassroots alternatives that prioritize social and environmental goals over economic ones. A major obstacle to localization is the lack of economic, organizational and physical structures of the appropriate scale for local aggregation and distribution of food. Local food hubs are emerging as an important tool for overcoming that obstacle by pooling food products from a number of smaller farms and delivering them to grocery stores, schools, hospitals and restaurants. The fundamental challenge of local hubs as grassroots alternatives to the mainstream is how to be economically viable within a system dominated by the goal of economic profit, while working for social and environmental goals that the mainstream doesn't value, or even works against. We first provide an overview of how hubs have been theorized, in terms of 'mainstream' vs. 'alternative' and large- vs. small-scale, and how in practice they are often hybrids. Our case study of the creation of a successful local food hub in Santa Barbara County, California, USA, includes the perspectives of key food service staff in a large institutional buyer (The University of California, Santa Barbara's Residential Dining Services) that played a key role in the growth of the hub, the owners of the local hub, and some of the small-scale farmers the hub purchased from. We conclude that keys for success included scaling up from direct marketing rather than scaling down from mainstream distribution, and the actors motivations to prioritize social and environmental over economic goals.
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This article addresses the interplay between the constructed knowledge of water and the knowledge and use of water techniques in Jordanian agriculture. Knowledge of water was at the heart of Jordan’s greatest ancient civilizations. Today,... more
This article addresses the interplay between the constructed knowledge of water and the knowledge and use of water techniques in Jordanian agriculture. Knowledge of water was at the heart of Jordan’s greatest ancient civilizations. Today, it is a generally accepted fact, as far as agricultural policies are concerned, that water scarcity inhibits the country’s economic growth. A finger is now being pointed at agriculture after measurements based on its GDP showed that agriculture uses 60 per cent of the country’s water resources while only contributing to 3 per cent of the GDP. Historically, the setting up of an irrigation system controlled by the central government has laid the foundations for a system where knowledge is transmitted vertically. Meanwhile, farmers today face a difficult economic situation. With regard to water management techniques and marketing, agricultural advisory units have been given prominence as bearers of knowledge, but the question remains as to the nature of this knowledge. The power of GDP as a measuring tool seems to be essential in explaining the little attention that has been paid to rainfed agriculture and to low-technology water management techniques.
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The US agrifood system is very productive, but highly centralized and resource intensive with very weak links between production and consumption. This contributes to high levels of malnutrition and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). A... more
The US agrifood system is very productive, but highly centralized and resource intensive with very weak links between production and consumption. This contributes to high levels of malnutrition and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). A popular approach to improvement is localization—reducing direct transport (farm to retail distance, or “food miles”). We examined Santa Barbara County (SBC) California, which mirrors the high production, nutritional and environmental problems, and growing localization movement of California. SBC ranks in the top 1% of US counties in value of agricultural products, and >80% of this value is produce (fruits and vegetables). We calculated the amount of produce grown in and consumed in SBC and estimated that >99% of produce grown in SBC is exported from the county, and >95% of produce consumed in SBC is imported. If all produce consumed in SBC was grown in the county (100% localization), it would reduce GHGE from the agrifood system <1%, and not necessarily affect nutrition. While food miles capture only a portion of the environmental impact of agrifood systems, localization could be done in ways that promote synergies between improving nutrition and reducing GHGE, and many such efforts exist in SBC.
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