Understanding social economy through a complexity lens: Four case studies in Northwestern Ontario: Four Case Studies

2025-03-19 22:03:28 | Contributor(s): Connie Nelson, Mirella L. Stroink, Charles Z. Levkoe, Rachel Kakegamic, Esther McKay, William Stolz, Allison Streutker | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v6i3.357

Broadly described, the social economy refers to a series of initiatives with common values representing explicit social objectives. The roots of social economy organizations predate the neoliberal economy and are integral to the human condition of coming together in mutual support to address...

Community financing for sustainable food systems: The case of FarmWorks Investment Co-operative

2025-03-19 22:03:28 | Contributor(s): Phoebe Stephens, Irena Knezevic, Linda Best | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v6i3.353

Since 2011, FarmWorks Investment Co-operative Limited (FarmWorks) has been boosting Nova Scotia’s farm and food economy through small loans to local food businesses. The fund relies on community investments and relationship-based lending, markers of the provincial government’s Community...

A perspective on social economy and food systems: Key insights and thoughts on future research

2025-03-19 22:03:27 | Contributor(s): Phoebe Stephens, Connie Nelson, Charles Levkoe, Phil Mount, Irena Knezevic, Alison Blay-Palmer, Mary Anne Martin | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v6i3.355

For a concept that was largely outside of the public gaze a decade ago, “social economy” has, in a short time, captured the attention and imaginations of civil society organizations, mainstream institutions, and funders. Local and national governments, international agencies and foundations...

A Participatory Study of the Health and Social Impact of a Community Food Centre in Ottawa, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:26 | Contributor(s): Aganeta Enns, Myddryn Ellis, Tracey O’Sullivan, Peter Milley, Elizabeth Kristjansson | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.366

Food insecurity is a pervasive and persistent issue across Canada, where a growing number of people are accessing food banks. Conventional food banks may offer relief for immediate needs but typically have limited capacity to address longer-term food insecurity. This paper focuses on the...

Starving to be a student: The experiences of food insecurity among undergraduate students in Nova Scotia, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:26 | Contributor(s): Meredith Bessey, Lesley Frank, Patricia L. Williams | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.375

Household food insecurity (HFI) exists when access to food is inadequate or insecure due to financial constraints, and is an issue of increasing concern among postsecondary students who face barriers to food access due to precarious finances. The goal of the current study was to explore the...

Obscuring the Veil: Food Advertising as Public Pedagogy

2025-03-19 22:03:26 | Contributor(s): Ellyse Winter | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.377

Working with Karl Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, the purpose of this paper is to argue that food advertisements and packaging work to further obfuscate the social, economic, and environmental relations behind the animal products and by-products consumed in Canada and the United States....

Examining Local Food Procurement, Adaptive Capacities and Resilience to Environmental Change in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories

2025-03-19 22:03:25 | Contributor(s): Paulina Paige Ross, Courtney W Mason | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.373

By exploring localized adaptation strategies for climate change, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of local perspectives and efforts regarding food procurement in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories (NT). The benefits and risks associated with engaging in local food...

“They hold on tight to the healthy eating, we hold on tight to our food safety, and how do we bridge that?”: determinants of successful collaboration between food safety and food security practitioners in British Columbia, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:25 | Contributor(s): Kelsey A Speed, Samantha B Meyer, Rhona M Hanning, Karen Rideout, Melanie Kurrein, Shannon E Majowicz | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.384

Food safety and food security are two important public health sectors within Canada, which aim to address foodborne disease and food insecurity, respectively.  While these sectors are often siloed within public health organizations, the actions of the two sectors often interact and...

What Makes a CSA a CSA? A Framework for Comparing Community Supported Agriculture with Cases of Canada and China

2025-03-19 22:03:25 | Contributor(s): Zhenzhong Si, Theresa Schumilas, Weiping Chen, Tony Fuller, Steffanie Scott | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.390

In different parts of the world, community supported agriculture (CSA) has taken a variety of organizational forms, drawn on different ideologies, used a variety of land tenure arrangements, and taken on varied types of market relations in terms of how they arrange sales and memberships....

Next Year, Together: Covid-19 Rewrites a Ritual Meal

2025-03-19 22:03:24 | Contributor(s): Emily Reisman | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.415

This commentary describes a virtual seder (the ceremonial Passover meal) as it is reformatted by Covid-19. Dwelling on a shift in the closing lines of the socially-distanced digital dinner from “next year in Jerusalem” to “next year, together,” the essay explores the politics of place in...

Student food literacy, critical food systems pedagogy, and the responsibility of postsecondary institutions

2025-03-19 22:03:24 | Contributor(s): Michael Classens, Emily Sytsma | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i1.370

The recent “pedagogical turn” (Flowers and Swan 2012, p. 424) in food studies has productively focused attention on how to teach for a more just and sustainable food system. So far, however, the question of the place for food literacy in food systems pedagogy has received relatively little...

Beyond Health & Nutrition: Re-framing school food programs through integrated food pedagogies

2025-03-19 22:03:23 | Contributor(s): Barbara Parker, Mario Koeppel | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i2.371

In this paper, we present findings from a community-based research project on school food environments in 50 elementary and high schools in a mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Our findings highlight that schools' privilege five intersecting domains in the school food environment: 1) health...

Growing Food, Sharing Culture at the Rainbow Community Garden in Winnipeg, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:23 | Contributor(s): Laura Lucas, Fabiana Li | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i2.439

The Rainbow Community Gardens in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a community project that supports immigrant and refugee families and helps them to grow their own food. The photos and accompanying text that make up this photo essay examine the role of food and community gardens as a means of expressing...

“Ditch red meat and dairy, and don’t bother with local food”: The problem with universal dietary advice aiming to save the planet (and your health)

2025-03-19 22:03:22 | Contributor(s): Ryan M Katz-Rosene | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i2.413

In recent years there have been increasing calls for “global dietary transition” in order to save the planet and improve human health. One troubling development associated with this is the attempt to delineate in universal terms what constitutes a sustainable and healthy diet. This perspective...

A Spatial analysis of population at risk of food insecurity using the voices from a Photovoice study: An exploratory mixed-methods approach

2025-03-19 22:03:22 | Contributor(s): Mikiko Terashima, Catherine Hart, Patricia Williams | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v7i2.365

To better understand community-level impacts of the built environmental quality on residents with less economic resources to acquire food, it is fruitful to combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the investigation. We explored how the level of spatial accessibility in communities...

Une approche territorialisée du système alimentaire: : le cas de la région de Québec

2025-03-19 22:03:20 | Contributor(s): Manon Boulianne, Carole Després, Patrick Mundler, Geneviève Parent, Véronique Provencher | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v8i1.453

De 2016 à 2019, une recherche collaborative impliquant des universitaires et des organisations partenaires a permis de caractériser le système alimentaire de la région de Québec. Cet article propose une analyse qui rend compte de la complexité de ce dernier. L’étude repose sur une approche...

“I don’t want to say I’m broke”: Student experiences of food insecurity at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:20 | Contributor(s): Elaine Power, Julie Dietrich, Zoe Walter, Susan Belyea | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v8i1.423

Food insecurity, the inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints, is an important public health concern, associated with poor physical and mental health. Recent research among post-secondary students shows that it also has consequences for academic performance; food...

Food marketing and the regulation of children’s taste: On packaged foods, paratexts, and prohibitions

2025-03-19 22:03:19 | Contributor(s): Charlene Elliott | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v8i1.448

Playing with food has long been understood as a part of childhood, with adults placing rules around children’s eating. Over the past few decades, children’s imaginative food play has been commodified by the food industry—the play has been packaged and sold back to children, with fun appeals,...

Is the ‘obesity crisis’ really the health crisis of the food system? The ecological determinants of health for food system change

2025-03-19 22:03:19 | Contributor(s): Sarah Elton | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v8i1.447

Multilateral organizations and research institutions are increasingly calling for transformation of the industrial food system due to its negative health impacts, its contribution to climate change and the fact that the system fails to provide adequate food to more than 800 million people. A...

Working for Justice in Food Systems on Stolen Land? Interrogating Food Movements Confronting Settler Colonialism

2025-03-19 22:03:18 | Contributor(s): Michaela Bohunicky, Charles Levkoe, Nick Rose | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v8i2.452

The evolving practice and scholarship surrounding food movements aim to address social, political, economic and ecological crises in food systems. However, limited interrogation of settler colonialism remains a crucial gap. Settler colonialism is the ongoing process of invasion that works to...