Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

Food Access Narratives In Southeast Portland, Oregon, Gwyneth Genevieve Mckee Manser

Dissertations and Theses

Since the late 1990's, "food deserts" have dominated the academic and policy literature on food access and food security. Food deserts are defined as areas that lack easy access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food, and are typically measured using Geographic Information Systems and spatial data sets. However, while food deserts may provide a useful measure for identifying food insecurity at a broad scale, they fail to account for individual definitions and perceptions of food access (Barnes et al. 2015; McEntee 2009). Furthermore, the food desert model assumes a lack of agency on the part of low-income populations (Alkon et …

Cultivating (A) Sustainability Capital: Urban Agriculture, Eco-Gentrification, And The Uneven Valorization Of Social Reproduction, Nathan Mcclintock

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban agriculture (UA), for many activists and scholars, plays a prominent role in food justice struggles in cities throughout the Global North, a site of conflict between use and exchange values, and rallying point for progressive claims to the right to the city. Recent critiques, however, warn of its contribution to gentrification and displacement. The use/exchange value binary no longer as useful an analytic as it once was, geographers need to better understand UA’s contradictory relations to capital, particularly in the neoliberal Sustainable City. To this end, I bring together feminist theorizations of social reproduction, Bourdieu’s “species of capital”, and …

Monthly Food Insecurity Assessment In Rural Mkushi District, Zambia: A Longitudinal Analysis, Muzi Na, Bess Caswell, Sameera A Talegawkar, Amanda C Palmer

Global Health Faculty Publications

Background

Perception-based scales are widely used for household food insecurity (HFI) assessment but were only recently added in national surveys. The frequency of assessments needed to characterize dynamics in HFI over time is largely unknown. The study aims to examine longitudinal changes in monthly reported HFI at both population- and household-level.

Methods

A total of 157 households in rural Mkushi District whose children were enrolled in the non-intervened arm of an efficacy trial of biofortified maize were included in the analysis. HFI was assessed by a validated 8-item perception-based Likert scale on a monthly basis from October 2012 to March …

Small Landholders Battle The Leaf Folder: Improving Livelihoods In The Solomon Islands, Dalia Tayseer Najjar

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

Sweet Potato is an important staple food crop grown by subsistence farmers in the Solomon Islands. It plays an important food security role and a major source of nutrition and livelihood in the rural areas as well as urban areas in the country. However, the spread of agricultural pests, in particular, the green leaf folder pest (Psara hipponalis), has significantly increased in recent years leaving many smallholder farmers with reduced yields and food insecurity. In this thesis, I reviewed the literature on the common mechanisms used to evaluate the drivers of pest presence and identified the major factors …

Perceived Threats To Food Security And Possible Responses Following An Agro-Terrorist Attack, Lamesha Lashal Craft

2017 Program & Posters

Terrorist attacks against food and water supplies (agro-terrorism) are a national security threat due to the assessed fear, economic instability, and social instability that could occur following a food shortage. Findings indicate that a comprehensive response plan does not exist and perceived fears and the lack of knowledge in a society with high social capital can still create conditions for chaos and anomie.

What Is The Relationship Between Food Insecurity And College Students Aged 18-22 And Its Effects On Academic Performance And How Can Proper Nutrition Be Promoted?, Karla Ramos, John Magbanua, Daniella Flores, Janelle De Dios, Karla Bugtong, Shannon Almonia

Student Research Posters

Food insecurity is defined as the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods. It can also be defined as the limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Previous research has observed that food insecurity can disrupt optimal development throughout the life cycle. A growing body of literature has documented the effects of food insecurity on cognitive, academic, and psychosocial development among college students. These studies consistently observed that food insecurity is associated with lower academic performance, poor health, and decreased psychosocial function. Among college students, financial hardship can translate into budget demands, …

The Role Of Snap And Habit Formation On Household Consumption Behavior, Shaheer Burney

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This collection of essays examines the impact of two antecedents of household food consumption: SNAP and habit formation to nutrients. Household food choice invariably plays a substantial role in health outcomes such as obesity. Low-income households may be especially vulnerable to obesity as they face a more restricted set of food choices due to income constraints and may have less information on healthy eating relative to high-income households. This dissertation unravels this dynamic by providing causal estimates of the effect of two major determinants of food choice.

Chapter 2 and chapter 3 test the impact of SNAP participation on consumption …

Detroit Food Metrics Report 2017, Alex B. Hill, Amy Kuras

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

This report provides a snapshot of data and information on Detroit’s food system as well as trends over time. The report includes a broad range of programs and initiatives that local organizations, the Detroit Food Policy Council, and the City of Detroit are undertaking to address food insecurity, increase healthy food access and awareness, and support a more sustainable and just food system.

Cultivating A Culture Of Food Justice: Impacts Of Community Based Economies On Farmers And Neighborhood Leaders In The Case Of Fresh Stop Markets In Kentucky, Heather Hyden

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

In this thesis, I focus on two tensions within the alternative agro-food movement. First is a question of who/what community is allowed to define food systems problems and then implement solutions. For example, food desert metaphors rely discursively on defining communities as being “without”, which perpetuates needs-based narratives, in which only professional “experts” know how to solve problems of food access. These representations ignore the creativity, agency, and resiliency of everyday food justice mobilizations happening at the grassroots level. Second, what form can solutions take within hegemonic constructions of development? I build a theoretical model based on Black geographies (McKittrick, …

Greening Us Legacy Cities: Urban Agriculture As A Strategy For Reclaiming Vacant Land, Fanny Carlet, Joseph Schilling, Megan Heckert

Geography & Planning Faculty Publications

Repurposing vacant land for food production is expanding as a response to urban blight, food insecurity and food deserts. As municipalities integrate urban agriculture in their sustainability plans and zoning regulations, scholars are beginning to take a broader look at the benefits from this and other types of greening strategies. This article investigates current state of research and practice of urban agriculture as an emerging strategy for regenerating shrinking cities. It highlights key findings while offering observations on how public officials and practitioners can leverage this research to enhance urban agriculture as a treatment for vacant land.

Risk Mitigation Through Diversified Farm Production Strategies: The Case In Northern Mozambique, Olivia C. Caillouet, Lawton L. Nalley, Amy L. Farmer

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Mozambique, like many other parts of the low-income world, faces perennial challenges with food security. With a rapidly growing population and arable land on the decline, sustainable agriculture is vital to managing the already depleted natural resources of Sub-Saharan Africa more effectively while increasing food security. Food security issues for subsistence farmers in most low-income countries are a product of endogenous (crop yields) and exogenous (currency fluctuations as many agricultural inputs are imported) factors. In Mozambique the value of the local currency, meticals, has decreased by approximately 50% since January 2015 compared to the U.S. dollar. While this makes exporting …

Urban Garden, Where Art Thou? A Study Of Urban Agriculture In The Dallas Metropolitan Area, Jaronda Williams

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Food security, the constant access to a variety of food at all times by everyone (USDA), is something not all Americans have the pleasure of experiencing. Beaulac et al. (2007) found evidence of disparities in food access by income and race. A neighborhood lacking access to food is what researchers in Scotland defined as food deserts in the 1990’s (Cummins and McIntyre 2002). Food deserts exist all across America leaving citizens with the hardship of deciding to travel for healthy food options or settle for the poor grocery option in their neighborhood. Millions of Americans are faced with this battle, …

Seed Policy In Pakistan: The Impact Of New Laws On Food Sovereignty And Sustainable Development, Amna Tanweer Yazdani, Nosheen Ali

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper highlights the challenges that genetically modified (GM) seeds pose for farmers, citizens and the land itself in Pakistan. It explores the history of agricultural policy in Pakistan from the Green Revolution to what is now being dubbed the “Gene Revolution”, and analyzes how harmful effects of both are being amplified by two recently passed laws: the Seed (Amendment) Act 2015 and the Plant Breeders' Rights Act 2016. The analysis of these laws is done from a food sovereignty perspective on sustainable development, where food sovereignty represents “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through …

Restoring And Sustaining Smallholder Kappaphycus Alvarezii Farming Post-Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda In Molocaboc, Central Philippines, David C. Fenlon

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The farming of marine seaweed has the potential to provide both nutritional and financial resources to developing communities such as the Molocaboc Islands in the Philippines. To foster this mariculture development approximately $1,000 USD in grant funds received from the US-Philippines Society was used to purchase materials needed to replace seaweed production infrastructure lost to Typhoon Haiyan (known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines). The goal was to restore and expand smallholder farming of the seaweed Kappaphycus alvarezii (locally known as ‘guso’ in the Visayan dialect) in the Molocaboc Islands, thereby increasing harvest yields as compared to those …

Nutritious Meals For The Homeless Population: Challenges And Opportunities, Kayla A. Albrecht

Masters Theses

Objective: Consuming a nutritionally adequate diet is extremely challenging for the homeless population. Though meals are available to the homeless population through soup kitchens and homeless shelters, these settings often do not serve meals that provide essential nutrients. The consumption of energy-dense, low-nutrient foods has led in part to high prevalence of obesity, heart disease, and chronic illnesses among the homeless. The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the challenges that homeless shelters face in providing nutritious meals to guests and (b) investigate the need and interest of nutrition education at homeless shelters.

Methods: Nine homeless shelter directors …

Roots Of A Movement: Community Action And The Impact Of Urban Agriculture In Chicago, Maia Welbel

Pomona Senior Theses

Efforts to maintain a relationship to food pathways have been consistent throughout U.S. history despite the general evolution towards an increasingly industrialized food system. Urban agriculture serves as a means of reclaiming and furthering knowledge of where food comes from while also addressing larger social, economic, and environmental goals. This has been demonstrated in Chicago where urban farmers have worked to improve food access, increase employment, and revitalize communities all across the city. For many years, federal policies have promoted maximum production of commodity crops and kept supermarket prices low, allowing the government to ignore the impacts these policies are …

Restoring Relationship: How The Methodologies Of Wangari Maathai And The Green Belt Movement In Post-Colonial Kenya Achieve Environmental Healing And Women's Empowerment, Casey L. Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering …

The Village Market: New Columbia Goes Shopping For Food Justice, Jane Therese Waddell

Dissertations and Theses

The Village Market is a nonprofit Healthy Corner Store that has been open since May of 2011 in the mixed-use, mixed-income New Columbia housing development in Portland, Oregon's Portsmouth neighborhood. The venture began as a "community-led" effort in partnership with Janus Youth Programs and Home Forward. The project was conceived after a private enterprise in the small grocery space designed into the development failed, leaving the neighborhood without easy access to healthy foods. This dissertation is a case study of the development process, the operation of the market, and the degree to which it addresses food justice and health equity …

Experiencing The Culture Of Cap-Haïtien: A Trip To Haiti, Alacyn Cox, Kamille Brawner, Kylie Echard

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Alacyn Cox and Kamile Brawner, third-year students, and Kylie Echard, a second-year student, are in the College of Agriculture. In this article, they provide readers with a glimpse of their first impressions on the economy, traditions, and culture they experienced during a study abroad, service-learning experience in Haiti.

How Time And Social Awareness Affect Good Policy Councils And Food Democracy In Communities, Chloe Degitz, Jill Clark

Learning Showcase 2016: A Celebration of Discovery, Transformation and Success

The data was collected via a Survey Monkey survey with a series of questions that ranged from how FPC's categorized themselves to their connection to the government to their top policy priorities. The survey also asked about what the FPC's needed assistance in in terms of funding to community engagement to being able to get from just fundraising to actual policy work. The participants were chosen for the survey using a database from the government. After the survey was closed, the data was collected into an Excel spreadsheet, The data was then collated into graphs and put in a side-by-side …

Problemas Con La Producción De Café En Los Yungas / Problems With Coffee Production In Los Yungas, Rob Hefferon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Bolivia tiene un de los mejores climas y alturas para la producción de café en el mundo pero sólo califica como el productor numero 36 del mundo con 89,000 sacos de café en los años 2015/2016.[1] Hay un grupo de problemas que afectan la producción a largo y corto plazo. Los problemas son complicados, pero no son nuevos y la comunidad de cafetaleros está introduciendo innovaciones creativas para enfrentarlos y elevar el nivel de producción de café en Bolivia. A largo plazo, los bolivianos intentan elevar el perfil y conocimientos sobre el café boliviano mundialmente y también enfrentar el …

Give A Man A Fish: A Narrative Approach To A Case Study Of Soup Kitchens In The Wentworth Community, Evelyn Shen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study uses a narrative approach to explore the role of soup kitchens in the predominantly Coloured and English-speaking Wentworth community. Many of the community’s churches1 and non-profit organizations host soup kitchens regularly, rotating so that there is a meal available each day of the week.

Qualitative data was gathered through volunteering with the soup kitchens as a participant observer and having conversations and open-ended interviews with soup kitchen guests and hosts. Institutional context was provided by interviews with the Convener of the War Room and the Ward Councillor, and representatives of three non-profits in the community. In order to …

Urban Agriculture As Embedded In The Social And Solidarity Economy Basel: Developing Sustainable Communities, Isidor Wallimann

Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration

The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is a viable strategy in dealing with some contemporary problems known both in industrial and developing countries. Addressed is how local populations could reach certain objectives and satisfy certain needs using techniques characteristic of SSE and, thus, carve out a social and economic space of their own vis-à-vis anonymous markets, global actors, local and national elites. Illustrated further is this strategy on the example of Urban Agriculture Basel, a unit of the Social Economy Basel. Within this self governed space, it is suggested, a path can be laid for the necessary transition towards local, …

Using An Equilibrium Displacement Model To Simulate The Impact Of An Environmental Meat Tax On Grain And Livestock Markets, Regan Gilmore

UCARE: Research Products

Research Question

What are the potential effects of imposing a hypothetical environmental tax on meat consumption, including beef, pork, and poultry, on the livestock and grain markets in the United States from farm to fork?

Faculty advisor: Azzeddine Azzam

This was the first half of my research project; the second half (with the results) is shown on the following poster: "Simulating the Impact of a CO2-equivalent Meat Tax on Grain and Livestock Markets" @ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ucareresearch/151/

From Milpas To The Market: A Study On The Use Of Metal Silos For Safer And Better Storage Of Guatemalan Maize, José Rodrigo Mendoza

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project aimed to implement the use of metal silos to improve quality and safety of maize consumed by inhabitants of the highlands of Guatemala. This manuscript includes a literature review of the maize production chain in Guatemala, a survey about agricultural practices used in the region of study, as well as a characterization of the analyzed maize regarding its mycoflora, nutritional composition, and insect infestation. To better understand the current situation regarding agricultural practices and maize consumption, a survey was carried out. Sample consisted of 280 families representing 14 rural communities distributed in the townships of Todos Santos and …

Behavioral Determinants Of Biofortified Food Acceptance: The Case Of Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato In Ghana, Chinonso E. Etumnu

Master's Theses

Biofortified foods are being introduced in sub-Saharan Africa as an important strategy to help address micronutrient malnutrition. However, there has been little research on factors that could play decisive roles in their successful introduction. This paper investigates the determinants of consumer acceptance of biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) using data from a choice experiment conducted in Ghana. I find that OFSP is preferred to traditional white-fleshed and yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes as indicated by consumers' marginal willingness to pay for the three varieties. I also find that respondents' socio-economic characteristics do not have a significant effect on consumer acceptance of OFSP. …

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?: Food Inequlaity And Black Americans, Christina Foster

Capstone Collection

Food insecurity is an issue that plagues many people throughout the world. It only requires a brief search on the United Nation’s (U.N.) World Hunger Map to determine that this is indeed a worldwide crisis. Conversely, within the United States, the issue of hunger is often treated as “minimal” in comparison to other countries. A deeper inquiry into hunger within the U.S. reveals an even more disturbing connection: the role of white supremacy and systemic racism in regard to hunger. Academic research pertaining to food access is quite recent. Be that as it may, it is of no surprise that …

From Empty Lot To Garden Plot: Urban Agriculture In Chula Vista, Jennifer E. Gutierrez

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project is an exploration of how agriculture can be incorporated into the fabric of the city of Chula Vista, which has both uniquely urban and suburban areas. The proposal is to integrate agriculture as a design tool to reconnect to the city’s agricultural past and as a model for cities of the future. First, I discuss Chula Vista’s history and contemporary context, including demographics. I review the existing urban agriculture policies Chula Vista has and compare them to other cities in California. The second part of the project is concerned with how to choose and develop a site for …

Determining The Most Efficient Type Of Growth Light For An Aquaponics System Using Yellow Lantern Chilies (Capsicum Chinense), Travis Mceachern

Undergraduate Theses

Abstract

Aquaponics, a type of urban agriculture, shows potential to produce large amounts of food with little water and land requirements. Thus, aquaponics could help address the issue of feeding the growing worldwide population. However, multiple challenges, both technical and economical, are associated with aquaponics, making large-scale implementation of these systems difficult – these systems can require tremendous amounts of energy. This study sought to determine the most efficient types grow lights in aquaponics systems by comparing the growth rates of yellow lantern chilies (Capsicum chinense) when grown under four different types of growth lights: light-emitting diode (LED), …

The Dispute Over Seeds: Indigenous And Peasant Struggles For Food Sovereignty In Chiapas, Mexico., Carol Hernandez-Rodriguez

Student Research Symposium

This research project explores the implications of these developments for indigenous and peasant communities in Chiapas, Mexico, whose food sovereignty depends on the conservation and reproduction of native seeds.

The research project focuses on the following questions:

1. How do neoliberal policies in the agrarian system impact the food sovereignty of indigenous and peasant communities in the Global South?

2. How are indigenous and peasant communities in Chiapas contesting neoliberal policies and strengthening their food sovereignty?