Article first online: 18 July 2017, Via online journal., Farm to school programs have been positioned as interventions that can support goals of the global food sovereignty movement, including strengthening local food production systems, improving food access and food justice for urban populations, and reducing distancing between producers and consumers. However, there has been little assessment of how and to what extent farm to school programs can actually function as a mechanism leading to the achievement of food sovereignty. As implemented in North America, farm to school programs encompass activities not only related to school food procurement, but also to the development of student knowledge and skills under the framework of food literacy. Research on farm to school initiatives has largely been conducted in countries with government-supported national school feeding programs; this study examines farm to school organizing in Canada, where there is no national student nutrition program. Using qualitative fieldwork and document analysis, we investigate the farm to school movement in British Columbia, in a context where civil society concerns related to education and health have been the main vectors of farm to school mobilization. Our analysis suggests that, despite limited institutional infrastructure for school meals, the British Columbia farm to school movement has contributed toward realizing goals of food sovereignty through two main mechanisms: advocacy for institutional procurement of local and sustainable foods and mobilizing food literacy for increased public engagement with issues of social justice and equity in food systems.
6 pages., Via online journal., The study of food is crucial since food is part of daily life of people. Also, food and gastronomy are a very important leisure and travel issue. This is reflected through the huge attention that media pay to food stories. Food journalism has become a field of increasing interest, and the study of journalistic narratives allows to understand concrete cultural and social realities. Within this context, the current paper analyses food in journalistic storytelling. The objective of the research is to define a methodological proposal of topics in order to study the food-based contents found in legacy media, particularly, in daily newspapers. To achieve it, the food contents of The New York Times, the world's food journalism referent, are revisited.
Issue located in the Volume One Number One Collection., Brief report on how plants are able to see, smell, feel and remember. "But maybe the reason plants don't respond to our desperate attempts to communicate is simple: they don't need humans."
20 pages., Via open source journal., Adoption of soil conservation practices is promoted by increased engagement between researchers and stakeholders. By reporting a case study from southern Italy where farmers have been involved in research projects dealing with soil conservation over several years, we demonstrated that the rate of adoption of conservative technologies is positively linked to the degree of stakeholder participation in the project and that farmers (and other stakeholders) have been driven toward more conscious perception of the complex link between agricultural practices, environmental impacts and socioeconomic effects. The results of this study reinforce the pivotal role of effective participatory processes in soil conservation—evidencing the importance of (i) time required to build relationships and (ii) intensity (and persistence) of collaboration among similar initiatives. Empirical evidence highlights the need to combine different approaches to deal with soil degradation. As well as the participatory time length, the synergies between the methods utilized, and the range of interacting mind sets are also very important.
