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Scaling Of Crop Diversity And Optimal Allocation Of Foodshed Infrastructure, Michael Chang

Biology ETDs

Food hubs are organizations that manage the aggregation and distribution of local products, and are a small, but growing means to satisfy high demand for diverse, healthy diets. However, economic barriers inhibit small producers and distributors from developing mainstream, local consumer alternatives to industrial-scale products. To build foodshed, distribution hubs could help overcome these challenges by reducing costs through shared refrigeration, processing, and transportation infrastructure. However, there is no theory to help plan them. I present and test theory to allocate foodshed infrastructure based on insight by Dunn, et al. (2011) that Shannon diversity measured relative to a whole set …