Tag Archives: local food

Food citizenship and the market, IRSA (2)

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It was very stimulating the hear the speech of Boaventura de Sousa Santos last Monday also because we use his theories in some courses. He pointed to the hegemonic epistemologies of the West which render other knowledges invisible and/or insignificant. However, the current economic/financial crisis in Europe creates turbulence in conceived concepts. Who knows the West can learn from other epistemologies such as from indigenous people in the South to overcome the theoretical exhaustion, he provoked. Also Patricia Allen challenged us to “illuminate our epistemological frameworks and interrogate our ideology constructions” (such as ideas on the free market).

But what if concepts have such hegemonic power that they disappear into the background as taken for granted stepping stones in conversations, writings and analysis? While many of us are aware of and very critical about particular neo-liberal frameworks of the free market, the concept of ‘market’ itself is something we seldom think we can do without. The logic of our everyday lived experience of capitalist market relations is silently inside our analysis, even if we are talking about civic food networks where citizens take initiatives to form new food networks. Continue reading →

Traditional foods at IP in Romania (7) Student reflection

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Four previous blogs reported on the Intensive Program on Traditional Foods in Romania which took place during the first weeks of February. Students who participated were asked to reflect on their experiences.

Written by Rineke Boonen.

Saturday the 28th of January the time was come. Four students from Wageningen University replaced Wageneningen for two weeks Cluj-Napoca in Romania. We went to the cold Romania (-20C!) to take part at the Intensive Programme (IP) with the subject:”Microbes and traditional Foods: Competitors or allies”. Continue reading →

New book – Sustainable Food Planning: Evolving Theory and Practice

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Half the world’s population is now urbanised and cities are assuming a larger role in debates about the security and sustainability of the global food system. Hence, planning for sustainable food production and consumption is becoming an increasingly important issue for planners, policymakers, designers, farmers, suppliers, activists, business and scientists alike. The rapid growth of the food planning movement owes much to the unique multi-functional character of food systems. In the wider contexts of global climate change, resource depletion, a burgeoning world population, competing food production systems and diet-related public health concerns, new paradigms for urban and regional planning capable of supporting sustainable and equitable food systems are urgently needed. This book addresses this urgent need. By working at a range of scales and with a variety of practical and theoretical models, this book reviews and elaborates definitions of sustainable food systems, and begins to define ways of achieving them. Four different themes have been defined as entry-points into the discussion of ‘sustainable food planning’. These are (1) urban food governance, (2) integrating health, environment and society, (3) urban agriculture (4) planning and design. Continue reading →

‘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.

A school meal in Dois Irmáos (2)

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Municipal garden farmer explains

The Brazilian School Food Program underwent a lot of changes and, as posted earlier, the biggest change is related to localisation of the school meals. Previously, national menu’s with national tendering contract for enormous quantities to which only big companies were able to bid competitively were what the program was about. To give an idea, for 2010 the estimation was a total school food procurement market of 3 billion dollar providing food for 47 million students. Now cities and municipalities are responsible for contract tendering and supply selection. This has created opportunities to shorten the food chain although many municipalities still follow the logic of mass production and long supply chains (Triches and Schneider 2010). Therefore, additional Law 11947 created the rule that 30% of fresh produce has to come from the ‘family farm’.

Opportunities, but it has also created challenges. At municipal level, capacity is now assumed for things like the nutritional balance of menu’s based on local products, the legal process of tendering and supplier selection with many more suppliers and overseeing the many other issues such as logistics. Not all municipalities do have this capacity yet. Equally, not all ‘family farmers’ are equipped to supply particular quantities and collaborate with colleague farmers to meet demand.

However, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul many good examples can be found too. One of these is the school food program in the city of Dois Irmáos (see also Triches and Schneider 2010 in Portuguese). The municipality created a municipal ‘huerta’, a vegetable production garden which produces almost all greens for the school meals. Furthermore in collaboration with Rural Extension a pool of 160 family farmers is working with the program. Every 6 months, the municipality calls a tender to buy its supply for the coming half a year. Each time, 10 to 15 farmers of this pool are selected to supply foods like potatoes, onions, milk and meat. Although the bureaucracy involved in this tendering process is one of the biggest problems, the family farmers are not subject to the same legal scrutiny as is normal for other products. Buying from family farmers is done through a separate program PAA (Food acquisition program) where a certificate is needed which proves that the farmer can be classified as a ‘family farmer’ but where the language is different and the product descriptions simpler such as ‘salad’ or ‘potato’ rather than a legal description. The after-school which we visited invested in its own meat-cutting room in response to buying fresh meat from local farmers. Local nutritional studies show that the children like the meat and other food better.