Opportunities and challenges for school food programs in Canada: Lessons from the United States

2025-03-19 22:12:53 | Contributor(s): Amberley T. Ruetz, Janet Poppendieck | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.665

As Canada works towards developing a national school food program, it is timely to examine the lessons learned from the programs of other countries. Analyzing these insights can help Canada avoid key pitfalls and replicate promising practices in program design and implementation. The...

Balancing acts: : Unpacking mothers’ experiences and meanings of school lunch packing

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Contributor(s): Seri Niimi-Burch, Jennifer Black | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.651

While Canadian policy makers are considering expanding school food programs in Canada, parents remain primarily responsible for packing lunches. Although women perform disproportionate amounts of foodwork, including feeding their children on school days, little research has investigated...

A review of food asset maps in Canada

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Contributor(s): Belinda Li, Tammara Soma, Raghava Payment, Srishti Kumar, Nicole Anderson, Flora Xu, Phonpoom Piensatienkul | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.655

Food asset mapping is gaining prominence in Canada as an important planning tool for the evaluation of local food systems. In addition to being used by planners to identify opportunities for improved food security, food asset maps are also valuable references for sourcing food locally,...

Can historians order off the menu?: A method for historical menu analysis

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Contributor(s): Koby Song-Nichols | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.682

While historians have used menus to tell part of the histories of restaurants, little guidance has been provided on how we should approach these unique culinary documents. This lack of instruction becomes more apparent in light of the impressive amount of archival work and digitization of...

Negotiating farm femininity in agricultural leadership

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Contributor(s): Jennifer Braun, Ken Caine, Mary Anne Beckie | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.646

A growing number of women in the Canadian Prairie region are advancing into leadership roles in agriculture, which remains a predominantly male domain. In this research we explore how professionally and managerially employed women in agriculture in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and...

Sovereignty of and through food: A decolonial feminist political ecology of Indigenous food sovereignty in Treaty 9

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Contributor(s): Keira A. Loukes | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.660

“Food sovereignty,” a term conceived by peasant agriculturalists in South America, has become ubiquitous worldwide in academic and activist circles advocating for greater local control over local food. Its use has been adopted by various actors in North America, most notably by...

Reimagining recipes for food studies: Enriching—not spoiling—the broth

2025-03-19 22:12:49 | Contributor(s): Stephanie Chartrand, Laurence Hamel-Charest, Raihan Hassen, Anson Hunt, noura nasser, Kelsey Speakman, David Szanto | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.678

This perspective is a continuation of a conversation started during “Reimagining Food, Food Systems, and Food Studies,” a plenary session in which we, the authors, participated at the eighteenth annual assembly of the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS). Assessing current...

Urgency to secure funding for the promised national school food program amidst the rise of food costs and chronic disease

2025-03-19 22:12:49 | Contributor(s): Flora Zhang, Amberley T. Ruetz, Eric Ng | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.681

An overwhelming number of Canadians believe that a national school food program (SFP) would benefit children, but concerns around limited funding are frequently raised. SFPs across Canada are struggling to meet increasing demands due to rising food costs, meaning that food quality and quantity...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...