What transforming food systems means for policy: from ideas to action

The principle of joined-up food policy has been circulating for at least twenty years, but now is the time to put it into practice, says Kelly Parsons

A Healthy Athlete is a Stronger Athlete

A cross-country runner, Kelly writes from personal experience when she advocates the benefits of a healthy body for an athlete. A psychology major interested in how the brain functions, her essay discusses the role physiology and nutrition play in fine tuning an athlete for success. Knowing what to eat and when can make all the difference for competitors at the collegiate level

Arkansas Small-Grain Cultivar Performance Tests 2004-2005

Small-grain cultivar performance tests are conducted each year in Arkansas by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences. The tests provide information to companies developing cultivars and/or marketing seed within the state and aid the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service in formulating cultivar recommendations for smallgrain producers

Policy and Governance Questions about the National Food Strategy

A new National Food Strategy for England (Part II) has just been published (following on from Part I in 2020). The team in the University of Hertfordshire’s Food Systems & Policy research group have been conducting research on food policy for more than twenty years. Their previous work on the topic has addressed: joined-up food policy ; the challenges of integrating health, environment and society in food policy ; the history of UK food policy and attempts to create a national food policy ; who makes food policy in England ; how food issues are connected across government ; the food policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic ; and policy levers for food system transformation. Here, they provide some immediate reflections on the National Food Strategy Part Two (NFS), focusing on the policy and governance measures proposed, followed by a background briefing on national food strategies

England’s Food Policy Response to Covid : Review of policy issues and intervention

This report was produced as part of a project on England's food policy and food security, funded through Research England’s Quality-related Research Strategic Priorities Fund at the University of Hertfordshire. The aim of the project is to analyse England's food policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to gain insights into the current state of its food policy processes and operations. A particular focus is the coordination of national food policy approaches, and their implications for food policy and food security going forward. This report presents a review of food-related issues and interventions related to the Covid-19 pandemic. An accompanying journal paper focuses on the role of coordination in the response. The report has two main parts, the first presents issues and interventions, using the different segments of the supply chain as an organising framework. Part II presents a timeline of interventions between March-September 2020, with a primary focus on government policy interventions

Identifying the Policy Instrument Interactions to Enable the Public Procurement of Sustainable Food

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)A public food procurement policy has been identified as having significant potential to drive food consumption and production towards greater sustainability, delivering social, economic, environmental, and health benefits to multiple beneficiaries. However, empirical research reveals that the potential of public procurement of sustainable food (PPSF) is not currently being realised, with studies from a range of different countries identifying stubborn barriers. Situating PPSF within the complex multi-instrument setting of the broader policy system, and utilising the concept of policy interactions, can help to explain, articulate, and provide pathways to address barriers identified in empirical studies on PPSF. A desk survey of PPSF in different countries identified the range of instruments which interact with procurement policy. The findings detail PPSF instruments interacting with many other policy instruments, resulting in both positive reinforcing and negative undermining effects. Taken as a whole, these interactions suggest a ‘policy package’ of instruments which should be considered in PPSF policy design to maximise effectiveness and capitalise on its transformative potential.Peer reviewe

Improving Teacher Education Programs

In this paper, the authors review current practices in pre-service teacher education. They suggest that radical improvements are possible and that, if practiced, would help mediate many of the pressures young teachers face. To do so, the authors: 1) outline the experiences of young teachers to consider how teachers might thrive in a difficult vocation; 2) share recent research in the area of in-service teacher professional learning (including their own) as a way to inform teacher education programs; and 3) to use these research findings to suggest possible changes and improvements to pre-service teacher education programs. Synthesizing the research, the authors generate a “To Do List” of activities they believe should become part of pre-service education programs. They believe such instruction can become essential career foundations for teachers that would help build Master Teachers, would help stem the exodus from teaching, and would help our teacher education programs begin to educate teachers for the wellness of long and healthy career

Identifying food policy coherence in Italian regional policies: The case of Emilia-Romagna

Achieving a coherent set of food-related policies is a challenge for policymakers worldwide, as food matters are addressed at more than one level of governance and across several policy domains. Policies in different domains can sustain each other by sharing the same objectives and actions or they can hinder each other, resulting in different levels of coherence. Focusing on the case study of the region Emilia-Romagna (Italy), the present research aims to answer the following research questions: to what extent is food mentioned in regional policies? Are the food-related objectives of Emilia-Romagna policies coherent with each other? Mixed methods were used in three subsequent research steps. Step 1 consisted of collating an inventory of regional policies where food is present. In Step 2, identified policies were analysed with quantitative content analysis, to examine their ob- jectives, degree of targeting, which food supply chain step they focus on, and which policy instrument type they plan to use. Step 3 aimed to assess the coherence of the identified food-related policies’ objectives among each other through expert interviews, analysed with thematic coding. Overall, regional policies reached a good degree of coherence around the common intention of making Emilia-Romagna thrive economically. However, some level of incoherence is present, as a systematic process that lowers incoherence in policymaking is not in place yet. Therefore, implementing the use of a Policy Coherence Matrix as a standardised practice for policy approval is recommended to coordinate food-related policies