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

Collaboration and Research Practice in Intelligence

Close, intensive research collaboration between universities, companies, and the public sector can open up new and different opportunities for qualitative research, and provide analytic and empirical insights that otherwise might be difficult to obtain. The aim of this paper is to explore collaboration as a means of doing research with the intelligence community. Experiences from a research project concerning dilemmas the practitioners face in their organization within the Swedish Armed Forces, serve as a starting point for this reflective discussion. It is argued here that collaboration is suitable when change is required. The mutual learning between the actors feeds into change processes. However, such collaboration raises fundamental ethical issues that are complex and highlight various academic, institutional, and personal perspectives. Collaborations should not be a set of “how-to” recipes, but rather a research activity that can have substantial rewards for researchers and practitioners alike

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

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

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

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

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)

Spousal Effect and Timing of Farmers' Early Retirement Decisions

The retirement decisions of individuals are strongly influenced by spousal retirement, financial incentives and institutional constraints such as access to early retirement benefits. In the European Union (EU), farm retirement is encouraged by early retirement provisions for farmers. As exit from farming determines the characteristics of structural change in agriculture, it is important to find out how spousal retirement and economic incentives affect the timing and type of retirement decisions among elderly farmers. This paper analyses the timing of early retirement decisions of farming couples using duration analysis and different exit channels. The empirical analysis is based on Finnish farm-level panel data for the period 1993-1998. The results suggest that an expected pension particularly advances farm transfers. Farming couples are found to co-ordinate their early retirement according to spousal retirement under other pension schemes.duration, early retirement, farming couple, succession, Farm Management, Labor and Human Capital, J26, Q12, C41,