I explore how adult educators can contribute to food system justice through the lens of action research. The Applachian Foodshed Project provides a contemporary illustration of action research focusing on community food security. Implications emphasize food system movements as legitimate spaces for adult educational inquiry

Niewolny, Kim L.

English

Kansas State University

Kansas State University Libraries New Prairie Press Adult Education Research Conference 2013 Conference Proceedings (St. Louis, MO) Learning for Food System Justice: Exploring Action Research and Knowledge Production in the Local Food Movement Kim L. Niewolny Virginia Tech Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/aerc  Part of the Adult and Continuing Education Administration Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Recommended Citation Niewolny, Kim L. (2013). "Learning for Food System Justice: Exploring Action Research and Knowledge Production in the Local Food Movement," Adult Education Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2013/roundtables/26 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Adult Education Research Conference by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact cads@k-state.edu.  380  Learning for Food System Justice: Exploring Action Research and Knowledge Production in the Local Food Movement  Kim L. Niewolny, Virginia Tech, USA  Abstract: I explore how adult educators can contribute to food system justice through the lens of action research. The Applachian Foodshed Project provides a contemporary illustration of action research focusing on community food security. Implications emphasize food system movements as legitimate spaces for adult educational inquiry.     Introduction Adult education is a collaborative praxis often described as a participatory-based experience where learners and adult educators negotiate socially-constructed knowledge, ideologies, and practices (Cevaro & Wilson, 2001). While the concept of participation might be seen as on overused cliché in the education of adults, educators have historically utilized popular education and critical pedagogy as powerful means for transformative action within development agendas for the purpose of engendering cultural and social equity (Freire, 1970). Participatory adult education takes on an explicitly critical position that is focused on the nature of social action, on the way knowledge is produced and controlled, and the ways in which social actors learn for or about social resistance and change. According to Campbell and Burnaby (2001), adult learners and educators are seen as equal participants with educators resigning and learners assuming positions of power and control. In community development circles, this process has been variously partnered with such discourses as participatory learning (Rogers, 2004) and action research (Greenwood & Levin, 2007; Reason & Bradbury, 2008). Although these discourses may represent different traditions, the common thread across each is the ways in which educational practices are tied to democratic processes of social change and justice.  Food System Justice and Action Research The tradition of participatory adult education has been a major contributor to formation of food system discourses worldwide (Pretty, 1995; Röling & Wagemakers, 1998). Publically and privately funded initiatives have burgeoned since the 1990s to address the complex issues of food access and availability with/in limited resource and marginalized communities under the umbrella of sustainable agriculture and community food security (Allen, 2004). Following the emergence of the local food movement in North America, we specifically see how action research and participatory learning frameworks are starting to serve as a seedbed for place-based social action and food system justice associated with sustainability and community food systems (Feenstra, 2002; Hassanein, 2003; Porter et al., 2012). These initiatives often comprise stakeholder groups that not only reflect a wide range of professional disciplines and social agendas but emphasize a diversity of racial, gender, and economic relationships that illustrate the complexity of food system politics that stretch across time and space.   The Applachian Foodshed Project (AFP) is recent multi-site action research project that aims to address issues of community food security in West Virginia and the Appalachian regions of North Carolina and Virginia. Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2011, the AFP creatively works with communities, farmers, policymakers, non-profits, and institutions to better understand the food system and implement changes that have long term benefits for all people in the region. At the heart of this project is the development of a regional coalition to guide and implement strategies to enhance community food security—a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice (Hamm & Bellows, 2003).  Implications for adult education theory/practice  381  Given the elaborate knowledge and power dynamics within the AFP, food system action research surfaces pertinent questions that bring the purview of the adult educator to the forefront. For example, how are food system actors developing and using place-based, participatory learning approaches and action research models? What do these models look like in practice? How are adult and community-based educators engendering these experiences?  How can we ensure social justice outcomes have long-term and collective impact (Kania, & Kramer, 2011) across food system? What conceptual orientations are needed to assess these outcomes and impacts?  Drawing upon these and other questions, I aim to generate dialogue about the ways in which adult educators can contribute to food system justice through the lens of action research. Theoretical and programmatic perspectives are both warranted. Such dialogue emphasizes food system movements as legitimate spaces for adult educational inquiry.   References Allen, P. (2004). Together at the table: Sustainability and sustenance in the American Agrifood system.  University Park, Pennsylvania:  Pennsylvania University Press. Campbell, P., & Burnaby, B. (eds.) (2001). Participatory practices in adult education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cervero, R. M., & Wilson, A. L. (eds.) (2001). Power in practice: Adult education and the struggle for knowledge and power in society.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.  Feenstra, G. (2002).  Creating space for sustainable food systems: Lessons from the field.  Agriculture and Human Values 19, 99–106.  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Greenwood, D., & Levin, M. (2007). Introduction to action research: Social research for social change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.  Hamm, M. W., & Bellows, A. C. (2003). Community food security and nutrition educators. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 35(1), 37-43. Hassanein, N. (2003). Practicing food democracy:  A pragmatic politics of transformation. Journal of Rural Studies, 19, 77-86.  Kania, J., & Kramer, M. (2011). Collective impact. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Winter: 36-41. Porter, C.M., Daftary, S., Herrera, H., Marshall, D., McCrackin, P., Neideffer, M., Sequeira, E.J., Sutter, V., & Woodsum, G.M. (2012). Food dignity: Successes and struggles in community food system action research. APHA Annual meeting. October. San Francisco, CA. Pretty, J. N. (1995). Participatory learning for sustainable agriculture. World Development, 23(8), 1247-1263. Röling, N., & Wagemakers, A. M. M.  (1998). Facilitating sustainable agriculture: Participatory learning and adaptive management in times of environmental uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2008). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice, 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. Rogers, A. (2004).  Non-Formal education:  Flexible schooling or participatory education?  New York:  Springer.    

Learning for Food System Justice: Exploring Action Research and Knowledge Production in the Local Food Movement

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Learning for Food System Justice: Exploring Action Research and Knowledge Production in the Local Food Movement

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