Category Archives: Food

Living the peasant way of life in Santa Cruz de la Colina

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After a longer posting-pause in which I finalized my first research phase, identifying supporters of rural grassroots development initiatives in the Province of Soto, here a new update of my activities in Colombia:

Time is flying and I am finalizing my second research phase, asking grassroots development initiatives to evaluate the support they are receiving to build joint capacities. To be able to speak with rural development initiatives, I was invited to spend a week with a peasant family in the vereda St. Ana of Santa Cruz de la Colina.

Santa Cruz de la Colina, Matanza, Colombia

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Request for a master student interested in product development and marketing for an organic farm and macro-distillery in Wales

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Glynhynod is an organic farm where artisan cheeses are produced, situated in west-Wales and managed by a Dutch family. The firm is highly innovative, applying sustainability guidelines to all their activities and producing food of high quality; several cheeses have received prices on national and international level. The family is now developing the first organic Welsh whisky and an orange liqueur at their newly established organic micro-distillery. They are looking for a master student- preferably one in food technology- who will be able to do an internship and/or thesis inWales. The student should be interested in organic, artisan food production. The student will be during his/her intership:.

  1. actively involved in developing, testing and trying out new liqueur and spirit recipes using organic ingredients and trial batches of different orange liqueurs using different ingredients and different amounts of ingredients. The student will be required to accurately measure the amounts of ingredients e.g. total weight, of oranges, orange peel amounts of sugar etc; ‘age’ the different liqueurs for 3 different periods e.g. 40, day, 50 day and 60 day infusions. The same method will be used to develop various recipes for spirits e.g. sloe gin and seaweed gin.
  2. Doing research on marketing aspects to try out the new recipes such as implementing a sensory evaluation in a real life situation where the public will be asked to judge the product. The student will be expected to develop a statistical sensory evaluation method that will determine which liqueur the public prefers and this liqueur will then proceed to bulk production.

 His/her master thesis can be focused on of the following themes:

  1. Marketing and/or gastronomy: how to enhance the supply of local artisan products in this rural area;
  2. Consumer demands towards locally produced speciality products in west-Wales;
  3. Develop guidelines for food quality and taste of new alcoholic local products
  4. Research on food safety of organic artisan products

 The student will start around the beginning of April 2012 and stay on the farm for 3-4 months in the beautiful setting of the Teifi Valley in Llandysul near Carmarthen, not far from the sea in west-Wales. The research will be supervised by a staff member of the relevant chair group and co-supervised by Ina Horlings (Rural Sociology Group). If you are interested please apply or ask for more information by sending a mail to (lummina.horlings@wur.nl) before the end of February, 2012.

Urban Ag – Stadslandbouw

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Grow your own is emerging as a trendy urban activity. Although allotment gardens often exists for over 50 years, their image is drastically changing. Until recently, these spaces were ignored by any city with promotional aspirations. Rather, they were tolerated at fringes or near railroad tracks. Quite different from the central place ‘community gardens’ are conquering now, increasingly heralded as ‘healthy’ spaces in and for neighborhoods. For a closer connection to nature, for the educational value of food growing, for the connection to better diets, for improvement of the social fabric of the ‘hood’.

What is policy aspiration and what is real in this? An interesting question for sociologists trying to understand contemporary society. Colleague Esther Veen is studying various forms of allotment/community gardens throughout the Netherlands. She is making her research accessible through the blog; www.onderzoekerstadslandbouw.wordpress.com. In Dutch.

Moreover, there are opportunities for students to study specific gardens in The Netherlands, recently a Master Thesis on an allotment garden in Ede was completed. A new research question comes from a garden in Sliedrecht (see blog in Dutch) and also the city of Rotterdam is interested in a city-wide study on the functioning of their community gardens.

For more information on Master Thesis possibilities in this field, please contact Els Hegger; Els.Hegger@wur.nl

WG on ‘Civic Food Networks’ at conferences ‘Ag in an Urbanizing Society’ IFSA 2012 and IRSA 2012

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As follow-up of the successful Working Group on “New Forms of Consumer Engagement in Food Networks: Diversity, Mechanisms & Dynamics” that was held at the ESRS Conference in Chania, Crete last August 2011, we will organize Working Groups on similar topics at different scientific events in the coming year. The different scientific events for which WGs are organised are the following. For specific details see links:

1. International Conference “Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society” on Multifunctional Agriculture and Urban-Rural Relations, 1-4 April 2012 in Wageningen, The Netherlands, Working Group 3 “Exploring ‘civic food networks’ and their role in enabling sustainable urban food systems”, convened by Petra Derkzen, Cornelia Flora, Markus Schermer and Henk Renting, http://www.agricultureinanurbanizingsociety.com/UK/Working+group+themes/WG3

Deadline for abstract submission extended to 20 January 2012. Deadline for paper submission 1 March 2012.

2. 10th European International Farming Systems Association (IFSA) Symposium on “Producing and reproducing farming systems: New modes of organisation for sustainable food systems of tomorrow” in Aarhus, Denmark, from 1-4 July 2012. Workshop 4.1 “‘Civic food networks’ as driver for sustainable food and farming systems”, convened by Chris Kjeldsen, Markus Schermer and Henk Renting, http://ifsa2012.dk/?page_id=341

Deadline for abstract submission extended to 3 January 2012. Deadline for paper submission 1 March 2012

3. XIII World Congress of Rural Sociology of the International Rural Sociology Association (IRSA) on “The New Rural World: From Crises to Opportunities” in Lisbon, Portugal from 29 July to 4 August 2012, Session number 64 “New Forms of Consumer-Producer Cooperation within Food Networks: Comparing Experiences in the North and the South”, convened by Henk Renting, Gianluca Brunori, Flávia Charão Marques and Claire Lamine, http://irsa2012.com/media/uploads/events/irsa2012/XIII_WCRS_sessions_description_session.pdf

Deadline for abstract submission 15 January 2012, Deadline for paper submission 15 May 2012

We propose to use the concept “Civic Food Networks” as a common denominator for the type of newly emerging food networks that we wish to explore in these different Working Group sessions. This term has several advantages compared to other commonly used concepts such as “Short Food Supply Chains”, which has mainly been used in producer-centred analysis and in relation to rural development impacts, and “Alternative Food Networks” which mainly proposes an opposition to dominant, conventional food systems and implicitly supposes that these types of networks never will become mainstream and will continue to remain marginal. Additionally, the term “Civic Food Networks” clearly expresses that the food networks we want to explore have their basis within civil society and that, rather than merely as economic actors, consumers and producers in these networks mainly cooperate as “citizens” in new forms of collective action to shape the food system. As such, they can be understood as expressions of new forms of “food citizenship” in which consumers and producers together regain control over the ways in which food is produced and relations between state, market and civil society within food governance are actively reshaped.

We have tried to ensure that the various WG meetings have a different thematic focus within the topic of Civic Food Networks so the conferences will complement each other and broaden the geographical range of our debates. We are also trying to establish a mailing list of people interested in debates around Civic Food Networks. If you want to be included in this mailing list, please contact us at rentingh@gmail.com or Markus.Schermer@uibk.ac.at

‘Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society’ Conference – new deadline for submission of abstracts

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As mentioned in previous posts, an international conference entitled ‘Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society’ will be held from 1 to 4 April 2012 in Wageningen. A whole range of different topics and research findings will be presented and discussed in 20 different working groups. The deadline for submitting abstracts was originally 20 December 2011 but the conference committees, in consultation with the working group convenors, have decided to postpone this deadline by one month. So if you are interested to present and discuss your research activities (or plans) in one of the working groups, please send your abstract to the convenor of the working group before 20 January 2012. You are kindly requested to use the abstract submission form.