The Spatial Politics and Political Economy of Alternative Food Networks in Post-Soviet Latvia and Lithuania

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.June 2014. Major: Geography. Advisors: Helga Leitner, Eric Sheppard. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 251 pages.Spurred by consumer demand and activism, local food systems are gaining increasing prominence as a policy tool to foster sustainability. This development has been buttressed by academic findings that suggest that a component of local food systems, alternative food networks (or direct-to-consumer markets), have beneficial impacts on farmer livelihoods because they provide farmers with added value and premium prices. In this dissertation, I examine alternative food networks in Latvia and Lithuania and I analyze how involvement in these networks has impacted the livelihoods of participating farmers. According to my findings, participation in alternative food networks has led to a variety of livelihood outcomes for farmers. To explain why some farmers have had successful livelihood outcomes by participating in alternative food networks and others have not, I draw upon theoretical perspectives from geography, agrarian political economy and feminist studies. I argue that farmer livelihoods must be examined as constituting and constituted by their sociospatial context. To provide a framework for this kind of examination, I modify the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach by integrating spatial concepts. This modified framework is a potential resource for scholars and policy-makers who recognize that achieving a sustainable local food system also entails ensuring a sustainable livelihood for the farmers involved.Blumberg, Renata. (2014). The Spatial Politics and Political Economy of Alternative Food Networks in Post-Soviet Latvia and Lithuania. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/200227

For food space: theorizing alternative food networks beyond alterity

In response to calls by scholars to deepen theoretical engagement in research on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), in this article we critically discuss and assess major theoretical approaches deployed in the study of AFNs. After highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theoretical approach, we provide an alternative framework – which we refer to as the Geographical Political Ecology of Food Systems – that integrates the contributions that have emerged in the study of the alternative geographies of food with an understanding of capitalist processes in the food system. We do this by bringing together literature on the political ecology of food systems and multiple spatialities, including Doreen Massey\u27s understanding of space as a heterogeneous multiplicity and Eric Sheppard\u27s conceptualization of sociospatial positionality. We utilize research on agrarian change and AFNs in Eastern Europe to elaborate this approach. We argue that this new perspective helps navigate tensions in AFN scholarship, and provides new avenues for research and action. We focus particularly on the ability of AFNs to provide a sustainable livelihood for participating farmers, thus far a neglected topic in AFN research in Europe

Beyond Europeanization: The politics of scale and positionality in Lithuania’s alternative food networks

This article brings geographical insights to understanding the Europeanization of agri-food politics in new European Union member states. Most literature on agri-food policy and law in the European Union has conceptualized policy making and implementation as an institutional process involving multiple levels of governance. In this perspective, Europeanization is understood as a process through which stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and implement legal principles and procedures across various institutions at different levels of governance. By employing the conceptual tools developed in geographical research, we contribute a spatial and historical dimension to these studies. Our analysis shows how the politics of scale and sociospatial positionality can help explain idiosyncratic shifts in food policies in new European Union member states that could not be attributed solely to institutional processes. To develop these arguments, our empirical analysis focuses on shifting agri-food regulatory frameworks for Alternative Food Networks in Lithuania. In particular, we analyze how and why Lithuanian authorities began changing and simplifying food safety and veterinary requirements for the production, processing, and distribution of small quantities of food products sold directly to consumers through Alternative Food Networks in the local market. We show how Lithuania’s positionality in regional and global markets contributed to the growth of the direct sales sector. Our analysis also reveals the agency of local producers and consumers in creating conditions for policy change. This analysis suggests that Europeanization of food politics in the new European Union member states is best understood as a spatial reordering of the region and its historical relationships

Infrastructures of Taste: Rethinking Local Food Histories in Lithuania

Lithuania hosts a diversity of places that offer consumers a taste of local food, which appear to mirror the recent popularity of local and alternative food initiatives globally. In this paper we show that the proliferation of local foods in the region is not a novel phenomenon, nor is it solely a manifestation of taste preferences or identities associated with food. Drawing on the growing scholarly work on the role of infrastructures in mediating social, economic and political relations, we conceptualize the taste for local food as embedded in broader networks and reproduced through material facilities. To advance this argument, our empirical analysis shows how the infrastructure for local food has been fostered, transformed, threatened, but never eradicated during: the Soviet policies that supported subsidiary agriculture and market infrastructures; neoliberal market reforms in the 1990s that made public markets into mainstays for farmers and consumers; and EU accession that brought more stringent regulations and subsidies. Our research demonstrates that today’s taste for local foods in Lithuania is neither a local nor global phenomenon, but an outcome of historical processes that foregrounded the formation of smallholder agriculture, direct sales, and self-provisioning practices in the region. More broadly, our research shows how local food persists as an integral part of a broader agro-food infrastructure

Validation of Deep Learning techniques for quality augmentation in diffusion MRI for clinical studies

The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of deep learning (DL) techniques in improving the quality of diffusion MRI (dMRI) data in clinical applications. The study aims to determine whether the use of artificial intelligence (AI) methods in medical images may result in the loss of critical clinical information and/or the appearance of false information. To assess this, the focus was on the angular resolution of dMRI and a clinical trial was conducted on migraine, specifically between episodic and chronic migraine patients. The number of gradient directions had an impact on white matter analysis results, with statistically significant differences between groups being drastically reduced when using 21 gradient directions instead of the original 61. Fourteen teams from different institutions were tasked to use DL to enhance three diffusion metrics (FA, AD and MD) calculated from data acquired with 21 gradient directions and a b-value of 1000 s/mm2. The goal was to produce results that were comparable to those calculated from 61 gradient directions. The results were evaluated using both standard image quality metrics and Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) to compare episodic and chronic migraine patients. The study results suggest that while most DL techniques improved the ability to detect statistical differences between groups, they also led to an increase in false positive. The results showed that there was a constant growth rate of false positives linearly proportional to the new true positives, which highlights the risk of generalization of AI-based tasks when assessing diverse clinical cohorts and training using data from a single group. The methods also showed divergent performance when replicating the original distribution of the data and some exhibited significant bias. In conclusion, extreme caution should be exercised when using AI methods for harmonization or synthesis in clinical studies when processing heterogeneous data in clinical studies, as important information may be altered, even when global metrics such as structural similarity or peak signal-to-noise ratio appear to suggest otherwise

Geographies of Reconnection at the Marketplace

Since 2009, Vilnius’ urban landscape has been transformed by the rapid growth of farmers’ markets, mirroring tendencies in other parts of Europe and Northern America. Existing research has found that farmers’ markets foster social and spatial embeddedness, meaning locally based relationships characterized by trust and reconnection. In contrast to these findings, I argue that social and spatial embeddedness are not guaranteed outcomes of market transactions in Vilnius farmers’ markets. To explain this discrepancy, I argue that farmers’ markets should be understood as unbounded places that are relationally constructed with other retail places, and produced by historical trajectories of production and consumption

A Geographical political ecology of Eastern European food systems

This chapter uses a geographical political ecology of food systems approach to question this kind of developmentalist thinking, which positions the ‘East’ as inferior to and needing to learn from the ‘West.’ It starts with an overview of the agrarian question from the early-twentieth century, wherein eastern Europe figured prominently as a locus of theoretical debate and development. The next section shows how analyses written in and on eastern Europe produced generative scholarly insights globally as academic debates were launched about agrarian change and peasant studies with the decline of the European colonies in the twentieth century. Many scholars working in this tradition, which came to be called agrarian political economy, aligned themselves with neo-Leninist Marxism (Bernstein, 2010). As Marxian approaches faced increased critique towards the end of the twentieth century, new theoretical perspectives gained prominence (Buttel, 2001), but the declining influence of Marxism brought about a similar decline in understandings of capitalism in the food system. The end of the section therefore argues for a renewed agrarian political economy approach as part of a broader geographical political ecology of food systems. Building on these insights, the penultimate section takes inspiration from early work on the agrarian question and outlines how a geographical political ecology of food systems in eastern Europe could contribute to broader debates in agrarian and food studies, but also shape geographies of hope, contestation and responsibility in the region. First, it demonstrates the significance of understanding the food system within the context of a ‘more-than-capitalist’ world. Second, it shows how a geographical political ecology of food systems approach helps explain key developments in food systems in the region. Third, it highlights how scholarly interventions in CEE are pushing theories in agri-food systems in new directions. A geographical political ecology of food systems approach offers the intellectual space for this kind of theoretical development

Solidarité, espace et « race » : vers des géographies de la justice alimentaire

International audienceLes coordinatrices de ce numéro thématique posent une question primordiale et pertinente : quelles sont les dimensions spatiales de la justice alimentaire ? On ne peut pas entièrement répondre en substance aux questions « qu'est-ce que la justice alimentaire ? » et « comment est-elle pratiquée ? » sans prendre en compte l'importance de l'espace. L'analyse radicale implicite de la justice alimentaire nécessite d'analyser les structures sociales sous-jacentes aux inégalités existant dans l'organisation socio-spatiale des systèmes alimentaires. Nous suggérons qu'il existe quatre noeuds interdépendants dans les réseaux de justice alimentaire, qui s'organisent autour du questionnement « quels changements sont en train de se produire ou doivent s'opérer ? » : le traumatisme/l'équité, l'échange, la terre et le travail. L'identification de ces noeuds provient de nos recherches ethnographiques et de la littérature critique. Comme la préoccupation majeure du food justice movement aux Etats-Unis concerne la relation entre race et subsistance, nous nous concentrons ici sur le premier noeud d'intervention (le traumatisme/l'équité). À partir d'études de cas dans le Minnesota (Etats-Unis), nous proposons des pistes pour que le food movement s'oriente vers la justice raciale. Cela suppose a) une analyse des relations de pouvoir et un débat sur ce point ; b) 9/2016 2 d'agir selon un sentiment d'appartenance progressif ou global ; c) d'utiliser les noeuds mentionnés comme points de départ pour construire la solidarité