SWFS - Crisis of legitimacy and challenges for food policy

2025-03-19 22:03:49 | Contributor(s): Mustafa Koç | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.108

Looking into the food system through the lens of food security, the first decade of the 21st Century was a period of broken promises, distrust, as well as fear and anxiety due to multiple crises in the financial markets—in the agri-food sector and in global politics. I will argue that this...

SWFS - Governing land and landscapes: Political ecology of enclosures and commons

2025-03-19 22:03:49 | Contributor(s): Harriet Friedmann | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.95

Most of the world’s food is still produced by small farmers, many of whom remain organized though customary land tenure. Customary tenure is a general term for specific cultural ways in which farmers embedded in ecological contexts allocate rights and obligations to use land, including...

SWFS - SYNTHESIS - Paradigm change and power in the world food system

2025-03-19 22:03:49 | Contributor(s): Matthew Gaudreau | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.114

The articles by Friedmann, Koç, and Wise draw out overarching issues in the world food system, offering complementary views of the relationship between the dominant model of the world food system and its myriad issues. This contribution uses the concept of transnational policy paradigms to...

Challenges to acquiring and utilizing food literacy: Perceptions of young Canadian adults

2025-03-19 22:03:48 | Contributor(s): Sarah Colatruglio, Joyce Slater | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.72

The purpose of this qualitative, grounded theory study was to explore the concept of food literacy from the perspective of young Canadian adults who recently transitioned to independent living. Seventeen individual, in-depth interviews were conducted with Canadian university students who...

Is it hot in here, or is it just me? On being an emotional academic

2025-03-19 22:03:47 | Contributor(s): David Andrew Szanto | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.148

In writing this, I feel as if I am somehow coming out as an “emotional academic.” As if it were a thing I have been trying to keep hidden (not very successfully, probably) over the years. Yet I also suspect this label is one with which many of us might self-identify. Moreover, I believe that...

Food studies scholars can no longer ignore the rise of big data

2025-03-19 22:03:47 | Contributor(s): Kelly Bronson, Irena Knezevic | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.138

Our essay invites food scholars to consider how the recent technological developments are making ‘big data’ increasingly relevant to our field. We offer an overview of the how big data and related crowdsourcing of information are penetrating the production and marketing of food, and reflect on...

Food discourses in Cape Breton: Community, economy, and ecological food practices

2025-03-19 22:03:47 | Contributor(s): Erna MacLeod | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.119

This project investigates ecological food practices on Cape Breton Island as legacies of traditional lifestyles and responses to the acceleration of global capitalism. I examine the multifarious discourses that frame ecological food practices such as organic gardening and farmers’ markets in...

Constituting community through food charters: A rhetorical-genre analysis

2025-03-19 22:03:47 | Contributor(s): Philippa Spoel, Colleen Derkatch | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.144

Communities across Canada are increasingly developing food charters, with at least 22 regional charters published in Ontario alone. As a rhetorical genre, food charters are persuasive actions that articulate not only the kind of food system to which a community aspires, but also the kind of...

Planning for food sovereignty in Canada? A comparative case study of two rural communities

2025-03-19 22:03:47 | Contributor(s): Virginie Lavallée-Picard | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i1.73

In Canada, most local-governance level food system planning research has been conducted in larger, often urban communities. However, producers in small rural communities conduct the majority of Canada’s agricultural activities. Using case-study research, this paper documents how the rural...

Cultivating community through gardening in Kenora, Ontario

2025-03-19 22:03:45 | Contributor(s): Rob Moquin, Alan P. Diduck, A. John Sinclair, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i2.167

Community gardens are places where people connect, share, and engage their social and ecological communities. The purpose of this research was to document and communicate participants’ experiences of community-building through community gardening in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. The primary method...

Heroes for the helpless: A critical discourse analysis of Canadian national print media’s coverage of the food insecurity crisis in Nunavut

2025-03-19 22:03:45 | Contributor(s): Bradley Hiebert, Elaine Power | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i2.149

In northern Canada, the Inuit’s transition from a culturally traditional to a Western diet has been accompanied by chronic poverty and provoked high levels of food insecurity, resulting in numerous negative health outcomes. This study examines national coverage of Nunavut food insecurity as...

Getting to the core of the matter: The rise and fall of the Nova Scotia apple industry, 1862-1980

2025-03-19 22:03:44 | Contributor(s): Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i2.165

This article will apply food regime theory to an examination of the rise and fall of the apple industry in Nova Scotia between 1862 and 1980. From the 1860s until World War II, apples were a booming cross-Atlantic export business that continued the colonial bonds to Britain. But after the war,...

Land-Based programs in the Northwest Territories: Building Indigenous food security and well-being from the ground up

2025-03-19 22:03:44 | Contributor(s): Sonia D. Wesche, Meagan Ann F. O'Hare-Gordon, Michael A. Robidoux, Courtney W. Mason | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i2.161

Food security in Canada’s North is complex, and there is no singular solution. We argue that land-based wild food programs are useful and effective in contributing to long-term food security, health and well-being for Indigenous communities in the context of changing environmental conditions....

The dilemma of scaling up local food initiatives: Is social infrastructure the essential ingredient?

2025-03-19 22:03:44 | Contributor(s): Sean Connelly, Mary Beckie | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v3i2.146

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on and compare two responses to the challenge of scaling up local food initiatives.  Comparative case studies of the Good Food Box in the City of Edmonton and the Rimbey farmers’ market are used to examine the different strategies used to scale up...

Farm Stores in agriburbia: The roles of agricultural retail on the rural-urban fringe

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Lenore Newman, Lisa Jordan Powell, Jennifer Nickel, Dylan Anderson, Lea Jovanovic, Eileen Mendez, Barbara Mitchell, Kathryn Kelly-Freiberg | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.211

This investigation highlights the role of on-farm stores on the rural/urban fringe near Vancouver, Canada. Operators achieve higher economic return by targeting populations interested in local food and in agritourism, including customers from towns in the fringe and from the larger nearby...

Petits commerces de bouche et réseaux alimentaires alternatifs: un regard montréalais

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Alexandre Maltais | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.189

Cet article aborde les réseaux de distribution alimentaire alternatifs par une de leur leurs extrémités jusqu’ici négligée dans la littérature comme dans le débat public, les petits commerces de détail urbains. Ceux-ci se multiplient sur plusieurs rues commerçantes dans les grandes villes...

Ecological food practices and identity performance on Cape Breton Island

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Erna MacLeod | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.172

As globalization disrupts traditional industries and economies, investigations of localized responses to these disruptions can offer insights to guide strategies in regions facing similar challenges. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, is one such location. Traditionally, the island’s economy was...

Organic vs. Local: Comparing individualist and collectivist motivations for “ethical” food consumption

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Shyon Baumann, Athena Engman, Emily Huddart-Kennedy, Josee Johnston | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.191

We extend prior research on “ethical” food consumption by examining how motivations can vary across demographic groups and across kinds of ethical foods simultaneously. Based on a survey of food shoppers in Toronto, we find that parents with children under the age of 5 are most likely to...

Mise en marché et certification de l’anguille argentée et de l’esturgeon noir de l’estuaire du St-Laurent: des « vendredis maigres » aux produits fins

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Sabrina Doyon | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.190

Les contours et les apports des programmes de certification ont été largement étudié dans le secteur agricole, mais demeurent à être étudiés plus en profondeur dans le secteur des pêcheries. Plus particulièrement, l’indication géographique protégée (IGP) est une certification encore peu...

GMO doublespeak: An analysis of power and discourse in Canadian debates over agricultural biotechnology

2025-03-19 22:03:43 | Contributor(s): Wesley Tourangeau | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i1.208

It has been 20 years since Canada’s first commercially grown genetically modified (GM) crops were approved and debates over these contentious products continue to gain momentum. Literature exploring Canada’s GMO debates has yet to focus specifically on the discourse of pro-biotech public...