Framing of Agri-food Research Affects the Analysis of Food Security: The Critical Role of the Social Sciences

In our knowledge society, science plays a key role in policy-making through the production of assessments that provide evidence-based information to decision-makers. In that manner, science has also gained significant political power. This is an enormous responsibility for scientists but also constitutes a dangerous situation, since different social discourses lead to different analyses of a given problem, and to different solutions with very different impacts. Generally, this is the case of agri-food assessments, including food security, where impacts are huge given the present situation of nearly 1,000 million people suffering from hunger. In agri-food sciences framing of the research is mainly determined by two factors: the linkages between science and the concept of development, and the role given to agriculture in society. In general, it is easy to find two different opposite types of framing, with different objects of study, methods and characteristics. One type, which I refer to as official framing, tends to separate social and natural sciences, is more simplistic in analysing the causes of hunger, of food price crises or other important issues affecting food security. This type of scientific assessment usually regards solutions as more technical rather than social and/or political, and aims to find a panacea that can provide solutions to a given problem, in this case hunger. On the other side we have scientific evaluations, here alternative framing, which tend to be inter/trans-disciplinary, with a higher participation of social sciences. In this case, analyses tend to conceive agri-food system as complex systems, problems are normally more political than technical, and solutions tend to be diverse, contextual to each social, cultural and environmental context. In this sense, to encourage a change in agri-food assessments that recognizes the role of social sciences in addressing food security, critical social scientists can facilitate the introduction of frameworks developed by sustainability scientists into agri-food science, including the study of agri-food systems as socio-ecological complex systems

Longview Homesteads [Washington]

Excerpts: One of the best demonstrations of part-time farming as a supplement to small incomes and seasonal jobs can be found at Longview, Washington. Here the Federal Government has established a subsistence homesteads project for low-income industrial families who are employed in nearby lumber mills and wood processing plants. The purpose of Longview Homesteads was to relieve the economic instability and distress caused by seasonal employment, high living costs, and a shortage of homes. Longview Homesteads provides better living conditions for its residents, and gives them a chance to lower their living costs by the production of vegetables, milk, and eggs for home use. Located in the southwest corner of the State of Washington, in Cowlitz County, the town of Longview is situated at the junction of the Cowlitz and Columbia Rivers about 50 miles north of Portland. Longview has two of the largest lumber manufacturing plants in the world. It is not only a busy lumber port of more than 10,000 population, but also supports several other industries. Longview Homesteads, located about three miles from the center of the city, was initiated by the Division-of Subsistence Homesteads of the Department of the Interior in March, 1934. The Division of Subsistence Homesteads had been set up under the authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act to plan and develop garden communities, to enable low-income industrial workers to improve their living conditions. For this purpose, about 141 acres were purchased at Longview for $28,200, and the construction of roads and houses was begun. All of the land was cleared and the soil tillable at the time of purchase. Management of the project was transferred to the Resettlement Administration in the spring of 1935; and in 1937, it was taken over by the Farm Security Administration

Attitude Towards Traditional Medicine and Utilisation of Modern Healthcare Among Crop Farmers in Saki West Local Government of Oyo State

Farmers are typically more traditional in outlook and this may impede utilisation of modern healthcare and bear negative implication for morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was therefore to examine attitude towards traditional medicine and utilisation of modern health care among crop-farmers in Saki West LGA, Oyo State. Using survey design, 200 copies of structured-questionnaire were administered via structured-interview to randomly selected respondents. Chi-square and contingency co-efficient were used to assess the significance and strength of associations between pairs of categorical variables respectively. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to assess relationship between attitude and utilisation. Univariate analysis indicates that 55% and 45% of respondents maintained maximally and minimally positive attitude towards traditional medicine respectively. Further, 2.5%, 54.0% and 43.5% of respondents were non-utilisers, low utilisers and high utilisers of modern healthcare, respectively. Sex and marital status were not significantly associated with utilisation of modern healthcare (p > 0.05) but religion and education were (p < 0.05). There was a significant, inverse and fairly strong relationship between attitude towards traditional medicine and utilisation of modern healthcare (r = -0.493, p = 0.000). Being Muslim and having increased education are significantly associated with lower and higher utilisation of modern healthcare among famers in the study area. The more positive the attitude towards traditional medicine, the less the utilisation of modern healthcare among farmers in the study area. Farmers’ patronage of modern healthcare should be improved through making modern medicine more responsive to farmers the way traditional medicine does

The Politics of the Public Plate: School Food and Sustainability

The main themes I want to address in this speech are the following: first, I start with where we began 14 years ago looking at the public plate with respect to school food, and I end up looking at cities because this is the transition that I personally did. I started with school food provisioning and ended up with urban food planning (Morgan, 2009). During this period the school food agenda has moved on and expanded, and it is now connecting with an exciting array of topics to do with urban food politics, policy and sustainability in the food system. This is what I feel is unique about food: its multifunctional capacity to link up with an array of other important issues. Clearly hunger and malnutrition are key topics in food studies around the world, but we can never reduce food studies to nutrition or, for that matter, economics. Second, I will address some of the barriers to creative public food procurement. Third, the compelling work of some school food pioneers over the last 14 years will be examined and, finally, I will show some examples of what civil-society groups are doing in several cities with pioneering municipalities, trying to promote sustainability through their food procurement policy

Practices of Food Provisioning in Alternative Food Networks: How Different Practitioners Engage in Different Practices, Depending on Their Emotional Energy

In this article we combine social practice theory and interaction ritual theory to better understand the dynamics of learning processes in alternative food networks, and how these influence levels of alternative food network engagement. We apply this combination to the study of a solidarity purchasing group in southern Italy. We show that the levels of emotional energy built up between different groups of people within this solidarity purchasing group explain the extent to which participants are willing and able to overcome the practical difficulties associated with being part of the solidarity purchasing group, and change their routines accordingly. We recognize two different groups of users, with different levels of emotional energy; they vary according to the extent to which participants share motivations and understandings. The two groups attach different meanings to their involvement and associate those meanings with different activities that solidarity purchasing group engagement entails. We conclude that the two groups engage in different social practices – even though they are part of the same solidarity purchasing group. This finding provides insights into the heterogeneity both within and between alternative food networks as described in the literature; it explains different degrees of involvement, as well as reasons not to incur the practical costs associated with solidarity purchasing group involvement by quitting. Our study applies the idea of Weenink and Spaargaren that emotional energy can function as an explanatory force regarding why people engage in certain practices, and it sheds more light on how to define a practice

Ethanol blending policies and the South African animal feed industry

Ethanol production in South Africa is on the brink of becoming a reality. Government policy is currently one of the major constraints. In 2006, a proposed industry strategy was drafted. One of the main topics in this draft is the proposed blending percentages, namely, 8 per cent for bio-diesel and 10 per cent for ethanol. This would affect the South African animal feed industry, because Dried Distillers Grain with Solubles (DDGS) is a by-product of ethanol production from maize. The effects can be seen by applying the Agricultural Products Requirement (APR) minimum feed cost formulation model. According to the APR model, the total cost of animal feeds would decline at various blending percentages. Consumption of protein-rich raw materials declined most markedly at a 10 per cent blending of ethanol. These raw materials are mostly oil cake, which is currently imported from various countries. Some animals used more DDGS than others in their diets. According to this study, broilers used the most DDGS

Post-Conflict Livelihood Change of Farmers in Ife-Modakeke Communities of Osun State, Nigeria

Livelihood Change (LC) is often the foremost priority of the individual victims, affected communities, governments and non-governmental organisations after conflicts. This study therefore assessed the post-conflict livelihood change of farmers in Ife-Modakeke communities of Osun State, Nigeria. A three-stage sampling procedure was used to select 153 respondents for this study and interview schedule was used to elicit information on respondents’ accessibility to rehabilitation support programme, livelihood outcome [during Conflict De-escalation (CD) and Post-Conflict (PC)] and livelihood change. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequencies and mean. Few farmers (19.3%) had access to rehabilitation support programme and majority (81.7%) of them at low level while, farmers ranked provision of building materials as the most important rehabilitation support item to them. Livestock production and material possession among farmers were high (72.1% and 64.7%, respectively) during post-conflict. However, crop output of farmers was low (73.7%) during post-conflict. The livelihood change was low (7.1%) as majority (57.3%) of the farmers had low livelihood change, 14.7% recorded negative change while, only 28.0% had high livelihood change. It is therefore recommended that further support and assistance in form of provision of farm inputs and credit by Osun State Government, affected Local Governments and NGOs should be rendered to farmers in the conflict areas in order to enhance post-conflict livelihoods of farmers

Simon Brand Memorial Address

Climate change continues to pose a threat to food and nutrition security for many households in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Several studies have therefore examined the challenges of climate change to agricultural productivity and poverty, and the impacts of adaptation to climate change on outcomes such as farm yields, net farm incomes, as well as food and nutrition security of households in SSA. In this paper, I review this voluminous literature on the challenges and adaption to climate change by farmers in the region. I will first provide an overview on the literature on the challenges and adaptation to climate change within the last two decades, followed by a brief discussion of the methods used in modeling the impact of adaptation to climate change on farm performance. Finally, I will present some empirical results on the impact of adoption of climate-smart techniques on crop yields by farmers in Ghana, and provide some thoughts on policy implications and future research in the area

A Training Framework for Food Handlers in the National School Nutrition Programme in Gauteng Province

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) in South Africa spearheads the National School Nutrition Program (NSNP), which is a holistic endeavour geared towards offering nourishing meals to students enrolled in public schools situated within financially disadvantaged neighborhoods. The selective responsive cluster training framework (SRCTF) aims to enhance skills development and competencies of food handlers, considering professional and ethical aspects. The key output of the NSNP is dependent on the skills competency levels of food handlers. The aim of the study was to develop a SRCTF for the NSNP for food handlers in Gauteng Province. Using mixed methods in the form of a convergent parallel design, the study includes structured questionnaires administered to NSNP food handlers, nutrition teacher coordinators, and school principals. The study identified both professional and ethical competencies as crucial factors for training through varimax rotation of a Likert scale questionnaire with 30 questions. The findings of this study highlight the lack of comprehensive training among NSNP food handlers in Gauteng Province, which is a common issue across South Africa and other countries. Pearson Chi-Square for independence confirms a significant relationship between training and skills competence levels among food handlers. For all food preparation competencies, the p-values were 0.000, indicating a significant relationship between training (independent variable) and competence levels (dependent variable). In response, a Selective Responsive Cluster Training Framework (SRCTF) is proposed specifically for NSNP food handlers in Gauteng Province. The two main competencies of the SRCTF will be the professional and ethical competencies. The main custodian of the NSNP is the DBE which should create a conducive environment for the training of food handlers within the identified clusters. Implementation of this framework would improve the overall performance and effectiveness of the NSNP. The food handlers training could lead to standard setting and certification of the NSNP food handlers on training