Common People’s Sustainability: Connectivity within a Food System Rhizome

They say that sustainable development has been around for about 20 years and not very much progress has been achieved. However, this view may refer to difficulties in identifying sustainable developments in everyday business activities without particularly visible publicity. Currently, new serious activity towards sustainable food systems, starting from retailing, processing industries and farmers as well as other food system actors seem to strive to connect the supply chains for sustainable food. This paper makes use of the notion of ‘social rhizomes’ structured as different networks to identify sustainable developments in actors’ lived experience. Furthermore, the notion of connectivity, as the ability to activate heterogenous ideas, persons, materials and spaces for sustainability within a ’social rhizome’ is used to explain the progress towards sustainability within local, national and global food system. Empirically, the paper is based on two presentations given on the Finnish Organic Conference 2008. The presentations were analysed for the progress towards sustainability within social rhizomes structured as chanceworks, meshworks, strategic networks and socially overlaid networks. Results suggest, that connectivity between different networks leads to transformations between the networks towards more shared economic, environmental and socio-cultural benefits, which can be identified as common people’s sustainability

How to integrate sustainable consumption and healthy eating in curriculum - An in-depth probing of the concept of whole school approach

This study inquired into integration of sustainable consumption and healthy eating in curriculum of three Finnish primary case schools, and carried out a preliminary in-depth probing into the working and outcomes of the 'whole school approach' in terms of teaching and learning. The whole school approach did portray as common effort by teachers and caterers to induce sustainability concept and reflective practices for pupils, and as such it presented new cross-curricular and transformative education binding reflection with knowledge and practices for every-day sustainability behaviors. As part of education for sustainable development and food education for sustainability in particular, organic food as an illustration for sustainability was used in one case school. Even though very fragmented and small-scale, the study suggests that sustainability education and sustainable food education do have chances to challenge current societal developments by today's pupils, the future citizens and consumers

From catering organisations to environmental and health related public catering systems

Based on the political legitimacy for healthy food and environment by the citizens, the traditional public catering is suggested to be conceptualised as a public catering system. This Luhmann inspired systems notion conveys the boundary between the catering system and its environments, stressing the environmental communication and adaptation by catering systems. However, environmental communication needs more developed and particular environmental constructions to be implemented on the level of particular catering systems. Organisational and communication research on the shop floor is needed in order to solve particular tensions. The systems approach to catering discloses how profound a change is at hand when actors simply try to connect the aspects of health and environment to public catering

Poster: Organic milk as a sustainability strategy for Finnish milk system

Dairy farming in Finland is historically a mode of family farming, although modes like dairy farm companies and collaborative farms are increasing. Organic farmers are relatively young, well educated and their farms are modern and in the average, rather large. The use of automated milking systems (AMS) allows larger cattle sizes and makes work easier compared with previous methods. The organic cows’ feed is mainly grown on the farm, which makes organic milk production truly local business. The feeding is based on clover-grass silage, barley, oats, pea and rape-seed, the latter being often commercial. The organic cows produce about 8 000 kg milk yearly featuring a fairly reasonable level of intensity. The relatively small cattle sizes support disease control, and salmonella prevalence is extremely low

The meaning of living environmental knowledge in productive activities: the case of a Finnish dairy farm

Individuals and communities need 'living' environmental knowledge as their particular resource in order to develop their environmental practices and identities. Environmental knowledge can be defined as embedded explanatory, instrumental and evaluative knowledge, offering the 'why' and 'how' for the actors

Strenthening local food systems: tracing learning of knowledge and skills by content and discourse analysis

The local food systems meet the food systems of scale on the local market, where the local and regional chains are looking for ways to survive and even to strengthen. The operations of local food systems become decided by many actors embedded in a socially complex local environment. This paper discusses some approaches to learning in the food chains and some qualitative research methods to capture learning in the chains through empirical material. The main research question, the learning of the actors in the local food chain and the effects of learning on the activities of the local chain are opened as more detailed and operative questions

Organic and conventional public food procurement for youth in Finland

Public catering in Finland has strong historical roots from the 19th century, connected with the rise of the national state, industrialisation, democracy and modern times in general. The school meal system developed hand in hand with work place meal services, and inherently the aim was to offer lateral support for workers' and pupils' activities by healthy and wholesome nutrition. The public catering had initially a strong label of welfare services and implied economical use of ingredients. Later on, the character of public service of the welfare state was emphasised, as public catering was perceived as a way to promote equality between citizens. The public meal system, and school meal system as part of it, represented not a self-evident and 'natural' developmental path, but can be seen as a result of extensive political, economic and organisational efforts, even fights. Further on, the nutritional and cultural orientations were strengthened when the public school meal system was made a statutory free service for all pupils, first in basic education, and later in secondary education. Today the Finnish welfare state meets the challenge of greying societies and decreasing labour force, and the school meal system, as all public provision systems, in confronted with the trend for increased efficiency and economical operations, including food procurement. Even within these restrictive organisational environments, there is interest in environmentally friendly food and sustainable development by public caterers, municipal officials and politicians of all parties. While the conventional meal system is the prevailing one, there are also movements towards sustainable catering in hundreds of schools around Finland, connected to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) program. The report is produced within the project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth”, iPOPY, and will be updated and revised during the project period (2007-2010)

Education about organic food and sustainability in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway: Findings from the iPOPY project

This report presents results from “Work Package 4: Consumer perceptions, practices and learning” of the “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth – iPOPY” project. The report gives an overview of organic food and sustainable development within national core curriculum and examples of education about organic food and sustainability in the participating European countries: Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway

Tracing Food Education for Sustainable Development in iPOPY countries. Recommendations for learning about sustainability and organic food within educational contexts.

Food Education for Sustainable Development (FESD) is evolving into a topical entity included in education in European countries due to the growing focus on environmental and health problems, which cause a ‘sustainability deficit’ within the food system. This paper presents qualitative and exploratory research results from iPOPY project, carried out in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway regarding FESD and organic food in public food service for young people. The national core curricula in the studied countries seem to allow FESD although it is addressed in school contexts in varying ways through different school subjects; to some extent, the implementation depends on teachers’ other school activities and school food culture. There are teachers who engage in innovative FESD with students, creating new connections between conceptual, practical and experiential education by networking with other teachers and food system actors. Results suggest that pupils and students would achieve more profound learning outcomes if a whole school approach with integrative and coherent educational strategies would be applied and school food culture would be considered from the point of view of SD. The school caterers seem not to be too much involved in FESD but their and their organization’s roles are becoming more important. For successful learning about sustainability and organic food among young people, teachers, caterers, students and school administration have to be included in the process

The iPOPY project and how to communicate with the young generation

The aim of the iPOPY project (2007-2010) is to study how increased consumption of organic food may be achieved by implementation of relevant strategies and instruments linked to food serving outlets for young people in some European countries (Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway). Two cases from the iPOPY project demonstrate that when communicating with the younger generation organic food messages are competing with other messages also in protected food environments, and the sender and receiver attach different meanings to organic food. Our findings contribute to emphasizing the relevance of holistic approaches (e.g. whole school approach) and experiential activities in introducing organic food to young people