The spaces for farmers in the city: A case study comparison of Direct Selling Alternative Food Networks in Toronto, Canada and Belo Horizonte, Brazil

2025-03-19 22:04:01 | Contributor(s): Erin Maureen Pratley, Belinda Dodson | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.22

The current focus of Alternative Food Network (AFN) literature in the global North overlooks the reality of Southern AFNs and the potential contributions from studying Southern case studies. In this research, we used interviews and observation to determine how the differing valuations of...

Transitions Stream: Do trade agreements substantially limit development of local / sustainable food systems in Canada?

2025-03-19 22:04:01 | Contributor(s): Rod MacRae | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.25

A common view in policy and business circles is that certain elements of trade agreements (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade rules, the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture, and the North American Free Trade Agreement) and the Canadian Agreement on Internal Trade significantly...

"As we fish and farm"

2025-03-19 22:04:01 | Contributor(s): Kristen Lowitt | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.12

"As we fish and farm" is a short radio documentary that explores a changing food and fishing system in the Bonne Bay region on Newfoundland's west coast. It was developed as part of the interdisicplinary Community-University Research for Recovery Alliance (CURRA) project at Memorial University...

Notes from the Nanaimo bar trail

2025-03-19 22:04:00 | Contributor(s): Lenore Lauri Newman | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.11

Archival work suggests that the Nanaimo bar is based on a recipe for unbaked chocolate cake published in the Vancouver Sun in 1947 and republished in 1948. The bar itself was likely developed by a member or members of the Nanaimo Hospital Auxiliary, and the first known recipe was published in...

Life of Bryan: Working the magic of sustainable food's sweet spot

2025-03-19 22:04:00 | Contributor(s): Wayne Roberts | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.39

Bryan Gilvesy is one of Canada’s most-recognized farm innovators, as well as one of the country’s best-known leaders of the food movement. That combination is unusual in any region or country—one of the ways that Gilvesy exemplifies both the hallmarks of the food movement in Canada, as well as...

Building Effective Relationships for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Canadian Food Studies

2025-03-19 22:04:00 | Contributor(s): Peter Andrée, Dayna Chapman, Louisa Hawkins, Cathleen Kneen, Wanda Martin, Christina Muehlberger, Connie Nelson, Katherine Pigott, Wajma Qaderi-Attayi, Steffanie Scott, Mirella Stroink | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.19

How can community-engaged scholars best undertake grounded, policy-relevant, food systems research and teaching in ways that support the capacity of—and meaningfully build on—the experiences of civil society organizations working on these issues in Canada? This paper analyzes four case studies...

Against the Odds: The Survival of Traditional Food Knowledge in a Rural Alberta Community

2025-03-19 22:04:00 | Contributor(s): Jennifer Braun, Mary Beckie | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.21

The globalization and industrialization of the agri-food system has been linked to declining knowledge and skills in the general population related to growing, preserving and cooking food. In rural communities, loss of this knowledge and associated culture and traditions has been further...

Reflections on Foodsheds in Three Continents

2025-03-19 22:03:59 | Contributor(s): Harriet Friedmann | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v1i1.35

I have been thinking for a while now about the intriguing concept of foodshed in changing urban food regions. As the world becomes more urban, North and South, new fora, such as the International Urban Food Network—with the Toronto Food Policy Council as partner—reflect this shift of...

Campus gardens: Food production or sense of place?

2025-03-19 22:03:57 | Contributor(s): Natalee Ridgeway, June Matthews | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.23

Campus gardens can provide opportunities for experiential learning and enhanced physical and mental health; however, they require substantial commitments of time, money, and effort. This formative evaluation explored the perspectives of a university population on the establishment of a campus...

GFG - SYNTHESIS - Thinking forward in global food governance

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Michelle Metzger | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.120

Global food governance is ever evolving as political leaders become increasingly aware of the complexity and dynamic nature of managing the global food system in a sustainable manner. Calls for reform of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the early 2000s...

Borders, boundaries, and becoming food studies: Looking back, pushing forward

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Jennifer Brady, Charles Z Levkoe, David Szanto | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.56

On May 25, 2014, at the ninth annual assembly of the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS), we (the authors) organized a plenary panel that assembled a number of leading food scholars from across North America to reflect on the current state of food studies. This commentary brings...

Life of Bryan: Working the magic of sustainable food's sweet spot, Part 2

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Wayne Roberts | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.69

Bryan Gilvesy is one of Canada’s most-recognized farm innovators, as well as one of the country’s best-known leaders of the food movement. That combination is unusual in any region or country—one of the ways that Gilvesy exemplifies both the hallmarks of the food movement in Canada, as well as...

Land grabbing and land concentration: Mapping changing patterns of farmland ownership in three rural municipalities in Saskatchewan, Canada

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Annette Aurélie Desmarais, Darrin Qualman, André Magnan, Nettie Wiebe | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.52

Since the 2007-2008 global food crisis there is growing interest in changing patterns of farmland ownership. Utilizing a dataset of the names of all farmland titleholders along with GIS data mapping software, this article demonstrates changes in patterns of land ownership in three rural...

Local food, farmland, and urban development: A case of land grabbing North American style

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Elizabeth Ann Smythe | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.29

This article examines emerging forms of investment and land speculation and their implications for local food movements in urban areas. These investment involve  purchases of large tracts of land in growing urban areas with a view to profiting from re-zoning and exiting the market well...

“Eating isn’t just swallowing food”: Food practices in the context of social class trajectory

2025-03-19 22:03:56 | Contributor(s): Brenda L. Beagan, Elaine M. Power, Gwen E. Chapman | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.50

Drawing from a qualitative study with 105 families across Canada, this paper focuses on 16 households in which one or more adults experienced significant social class trajectories in their lifetimes. Using semi-structured interviews and two photo-elicitation techniques, adults and teens...

SFSGEC - Sustainable food systems and global environmental change

2025-03-19 22:03:55 | Contributor(s): Jennifer Clapp, Annette Desmarais, Matias Margulis | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.127

There is growing evidence and concern of the role of mainstream industrial agriculture in contributing to environmental degradation and global climate change. In this section we examine three different aspects of the relationship between agriculture, nature, and society.

SFSGEC - Meatification and the madness of the doubling narrative

2025-03-19 22:03:55 | Contributor(s): Tony Weis | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.105

Since 2008, there has been an increasingly influential narrative that world crop production must (“sustainably”) double from current levels in order to feed over nine billion people by 2050 (FAO, 2009; Ray, Mueller, West, & Foley, 2013; Soil Association, 2010; Tilman, Balzer, Hill &...

SFSGEC - Learning from the failures of biofuels governance

2025-03-19 22:03:55 | Contributor(s): Carol Hunsberger | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.102

While many policies designed to increase the use of biofuels were promoted at least in part as a climate change solution, biofuels made from agricultural crops are increasingly seen as part of the problem when considering global environmental change. Research on the greenhouse gas emissions...

SFSGEC - Peasant agriculture, seeds, and biodiversity

2025-03-19 22:03:55 | Contributor(s): Faris Ahmed | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.106

Farmers and food providers have created and maintained the knowledge and biodiversity that is the basis for the planet’s food supply for thousands of years. Yet seeds and biodiversity have been at the margins of the mainstream discourses on food security. New thinking and global events are...

SFSGEC - SYNTHESIS - Sustainable food systems and global environmental change

2025-03-19 22:03:55 | Contributor(s): Helena Shilomboleni | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.110

This article responds to the debates surrounding how best to merge sustainable food systems and sustainability goals in the context of biofuel production, industrial livestock operations, and peasant agriculture. Various new initiatives meant to improve the “sustainability” of agricultural...