Dans un contexte de foisonnement des circuits courts de proximité, les enjeux de qualité invitent à déplacer la focale géographique, de produits spécifiques caractérisés par leur origine vers des produits ordinaires caractérisés par leur provenance. Se pose alors la question des modalités d’attachement de ces produits ordinaires aux milieux géographiques. À la fois aliments du quotidien et éléments de matériel végétal communs, les pommes et les pommes de terre permettent d’aborder les enjeux de reconnexion entre agriculture et alimentation autour de la notion de système agri-alimentaire territorial. Sur trois espaces de moyenne montagne – en France (Ardèche, Bauges) et en Italie (Ligurie) – cette thèse propose une analyse des trajectoires de dix collectifs passant par des phases de controverses qui les conduisent à se tourner vers des dispositifs de qualification plus souples que les indications géographiques. Conservant des logiques d’enracinement inspirées d’une rhétorique du terroir, ils ne versent pas pour autant dans le modèle des circuits courts de proximité, et maintiennent pour la plupart la question variétale au cœur de leurs préoccupations. La thèse montre que cette dernière ne peut être traitée à l’échelle des territoires qu’à condition d’envisager la production alimentaire de manière intégrée, c’est-à-dire en impliquant une diversité d’acteurs, capables de concevoir dans un même mouvement différentes étapes de qualification, de la gestion du matériel végétal à la consommation des aliments. L’émergence et la viabilisation de tels systèmes agri-alimentaires territoriaux ouvrent des débats politiques, et posent la question des modalités de l’action publique pour favoriser de tels dispositifs, dont on observe qu’ils tiennent principalement à des figures individuelles et à des lieux de médiation. / In a context of proliferation of short supply chains, issues of quality invite a shift in geographical focus, moving from specific products characterized by their origin to ordinary products characterized by their provenance. This shift raises the question of the modalities of attachment that these common products have to geographical areas. Everyday foods and common plant materials such as apples and potatoes allow for particular discussion around the issues concerning the reconnection of agriculture and food, specifically around the concept of territorial agri-food systems. Looking at three medium mountain areas - in France (Ardèche, Bauges) and Italy (Liguria) - this thesis proposes an analysis of the trajectories of ten different food collectives through the varying phases of controversy that are driving them towards qualification devices which are more flexible than purely geographical indications. Maintaining the logic of 'rooting', inspired by a territorial rhetoric, the collectives do not fall into the short supply chains model, and maintain, for the most part, the varietal question at the heart of their concerns. This thesis shows that this varietal question can only be treated at the territorial level if we consider the production of food as integrated. That is to say, involving a variety of stakeholders, capable of designing various stages of qualification in the same movement, from plant material management to food consumption. The emergence and realizable qualities of these territorial agri-food systems incite political debate, and raise the question of the public action modalities to promote these devices, which we notice are mainly due to individuals and places of mediation.

Urban and peri-urban agriculture is a strategy that can be adapted by low income households in Orange Farm to meet their food and nutritional requirements. The practice is a basis upon which poor families can enhance their incomes by producing part of their food needs, hence saving money for use on other livelihood obligations. This dissertation discusses the importance of urban and peri-urban agriculture as a method easily available to low income families residing in informal settlements to access food and incomes. Urban agriculture is examined in the context of poverty alleviation. A descriptive and quantitative assessment of the salient variables of the practice in the area is attempted in order to give an insight of the potential role the sector can play in eliminating poverty, enhancing incomes and creating employment. The study shows that participation in urban farming can impact significantly on poverty conditions and improve livelihoods. / MA (Development Studies)

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<p>STEM education is a top priority in the educational development of youth across the United States as the country tries to address the need of having a more well equipped, prepared, and educated workforce. Agriculture, food, and natural resources (AFNR) has the ability to provide a relevant context for engaging students in STEM education through experiential learning. Tragically, both STEM and AFNR struggle to reach and engage more diversified audiences, especially students of color. AFNR education provides an authentic avenue to center STEM engagement around addressing societal grand challenges like food and nutritional security, childhood-obesity, and climate change; issues faced by all communities. The approaches and steps taken to address these AFNR related grand challenges can all be explored through the lens of food systems. Food systems is a concept within AFNR that encompasses the interdisciplinary components of AFNR, STEM, and social sciences that provides a breakdown for the process and system involved in getting food from farm to fork. In an era where youth are more disconnected from understanding where their food comes from, food systems education has the ability to reconnect youth to the root of this issue and the potential to lead them to explore finding solutions to the grand challenges facing their generation. Furthermore, food systems education provides a context to engage youth in authentic learning experiences in nonformal and formal classroom settings around relevant issues with the potential to enhance their interests and concerns around these topics.</p> <p><a>The purpose of this study was to explore and describe elementary school students’ interests and concerns about the food system, and their overall engagement in the learning experience after participating in an authentic learning based Virtual Agri+STEM Camp focused on food systems education, AFNR, and STEM activities. The convenience sample for this study was made up of elementary school students between grades 3^rd and 8^th grade (<i>N</i> = 99) who were either in the classroom or participating in an at-home Agri+STEM session. The majority of these students were from rural communities and most of them were African Americans. Quantitative data was collected before and after participation in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp experience that using the research developed Food System Interest and Food System Concern instrument. Previous AFNR related experiences were also reported by students. The researcher also used an adapted version of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) and STEM Semantics survey to measure student engagement and attitudes after participating in the experience. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, which included means, standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages. To explore the relationships between each of the variables, correlations were also computed. </a></p> <p>There were four conclusions for this study. First, students that participated in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp were motivated and engaged in the learning process while doing the Agri+STEM Camp activities. Second, students that participated in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp were interested and concerned about the food system before and after participating in the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp. Third, African American student participants reported less previous AFNR experiences, yet they reported more interests and concerns in the food system than Caucasian American participants before and after completing the Virtual Agri+STEM Camp. Lastly, Students that felt more competent, saw the value, and were interested/enjoyed the Agri+STEM experience were more likely to be interested and concerned about the food system. Recommendations for future research and implications for practice and policy were discussed.</p>

<p>  </p> <p>Food system STEM projects have the capacity to motivate high school students in urban schools. This study explored food as a context to engage students because everyone interacts with food on a daily basis and has had cultural experiences related to food. An integrated STEM approach in combination with a systems thinking approach challenged students to make transdisciplinary connections, view problems from different perspectives, analyze complex relationships, and develop 21st-century and career skills (Hilimire et al., 2014; Nanayakkara et al., 2017). The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the relevance students perceive in Ag+STEM content by measuring high school students' self-efficacy, intrinsic value, attainment value, cost value, and utility value after participating in a food system STEM project. The study was informed by Eccles and Wigfield’s (2020) Situated Expectancy Value Theory. The convenience sample of this study was comprised of high school students from metropolitan area schools. High school students completed a food system STEM project with a food system context. Quantitative data was collected using the developed Food System Motivation questionnaire. Data were collected through a retrospective pre-test and a post-test. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data including means and standard deviations. Relationships were explored by calculating correlations.</p> <p>There were four conclusions from this study. First, high school students were somewhat interested, felt it was important to do well, and agreed there were costs regarding participation in the food system STEM project. Second, high school students reported higher personal and local utility value motivation after completing the food system STEM project. Third, high school students were somewhat self-efficacious in completing the project tasks and completing the project tasks informed by their cultural identity and experiences. Fourth, intrinsic value and attainment value motivation (independent variables) were related to personal and local utility value motivation and project and cultural self-efficacy motivation (dependent variables). Implications for practice and recommendations for future research were discussed.</p>

À l’extrémité Est des Caraïbes, la Barbade importe quelques 90% de ses aliments. Les menaces croissantes liées aux changements climatiques, aux maladies non-transmissibles, à la réduction des mobilités due à la pandémie de COVID-19 et aux prix éternellement en hausse ont remis en évidence la vulnérabilité de ce territoire insulaire exigu et l’importance de la souveraineté alimentaire. L’autosuffisance alimentaire est toutefois un projet ambitieux à la Barbade vu la petite taille de l'île, ses sols et sa biodiversité appauvris par trois siècles de monoculture de canne à sucre, et une pression déjà lourde sur ses ressources limitées en eau douce. En plus des contraintes environnementales de l'île, des enjeux sociaux et économiques freinent également la transition vers un système alimentaire autonome. Par exemple, le travail agricole, stigmatisé par l'histoire coloniale, l’esclavage et la mondialisation, est souvent peu attractif pour de nombreux habitants. Puis, l’économie barbadienne, toujours basée sur le tourisme, les imports et une agriculture destinée aux exports, présente des barrières structurelles importantes empêchant son indépendance vis-à-vis du marché global. Cette étude cherche à comprendre les défis socio-environnementaux qui freinent les changements positifs dans le système alimentaire de la Barbade et à stimuler la discussion dans la communauté pour identifier des pistes de solutions assurant à la fois la réalisation de la sécurité alimentaire, soit l’accès aux aliments, et de la souveraineté alimentaire, soit le droit du peuple à définir ses propres politiques agricoles et alimentaires. Cette recherche a deux buts principaux : d’abord, d’offrir une réflexion critique sur l’héritage colonial de la Barbade et ses implications en agriculture; puis, d’identifier des avenues agraires qui respectent les limites socio-environnementales de l’île, à travers l’évaluation de modèles utilisés localement et dans des environnements semblables dans le monde. L’étude de 26 entretiens semi-dirigés et de l’observation participante effectués dans les champs, marchés et cuisines de la Barbade d’août 2021 à avril 2022 met en lumière les habitudes, perceptions et ambitions des Barbadiens et Barbadiennes en termes d’alimentation, d’agriculture et de système alimentaire. En plus d’observations plus larges sur les phénomènes sociaux et politiques barbadiens, permises par une longue immersion sur l’île débutant en 2020, ces méthodes identifient les causes sous-jacentes et les processus persistants qui maintiennent le système alimentaire barbadien dans la vulnérabilité. À travers un partenariat avec des organismes agro-alimentaires locaux et la réalisation d’un film documentaire et de contenu vidéo pour les médias sociaux, ce projet célèbre les solutions au niveau local et régional et offre l’opportunités d’amener plus loin la discussion entre les différents acteurs à la Barbade, mais aussi avec d’autres communautés confrontées à des défis similaires. / It is estimated that Barbados imports nearly 90% of its food. Growing threats of climate change, non-communicable diseases, reduced mobilities due to COVID-19 and the ever-rising prices highlighted the vulnerability of the island and the importance of food sovereignty. However, aiming towards food self-sufficiency is an ambitious project in Barbados, considering the island’s small size, an already heavily used limited freshwater resource, and impoverished soils and biodiversity due to three centuries of sugar cane monoculture. In addition to those environmental constraints, social and economic issues also hinder change. For example, agricultural work, stigmatized by colonial history, slavery and globalization, is often unattractive to the locals. Furthermore, the Barbadian tourism-based economy and export-oriented agriculture present significant structural barriers to building independence from the global market. This research project seeks to build an understanding of and stimulate the discussion on the socio-environmental challenges that prevent positive changes in Barbados’ food system to overcome them, to ensure that both food security, or access to food, and food sovereignty, or the right of the people to define their own agricultural and food policies, are fulfilled. The project has two main goals. First, to bring a critical perspective on the colonial heritage of Barbados and its implications in agriculture. Second, to identify agrarian avenues that respect the socio-environmental limits by evaluating the models used locally and in similar environments around the world. A study of 26 semi-directed interviews and participant observation in the fields, markets and kitchens of Barbados from August 2021 to April 2022 provides insights into the habits, perceptions and aspirations of Barbadians in terms of food, agriculture and the food system. Together with wider observations of the Barbadian society and politics, allowed by a long-term immersion on the island starting in 2020, these methods identify some of the underlying causes and perpetuating processes at play in the unsustainable food system. Through a partnership with local agri-food organizations and the production of a documentary film and video content for social media, this research project celebrates the solutions found at the local and regional level and offers opportunities for further discussion with stakeholders in Barbados, but also in other communities facing similar challenges.

<p>  </p> <p>Food systems are facing unprecedented challenges and need reforms to be more efficient and provide safe and nutritious food from farm to fork. In this dissertation, I present new empirical evidence on different strategies to tackle two critical problems of food systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): food contamination and the inefficient delivery and use of subsidized agricultural inputs. The first essay measures demand and network effects for a newly available technology called Aflasafe that delivers credence attributes (i.e., benefits difficult or impossible to observe and measure even after frequent use of the technology). The second essay exploits a policy change in Malawi to estimate the efficiency of public and private channels at distributing inputs to smallholder farmers. I use a panel dataset covering the period from 2010 to 2016 and a difference-in-differences (DID) framework to estimate the impact of the policy change on procurement of subsidized fertilizer, efficiency and service quality, agricultural productivity, and the household’s decision to purchase commercial fertilizer. The third essay identifies a series of constraints faced by smallholder farmers in Senegal and assesses which ones are associated with chemical and microbial contaminants in groundnut (peanut).</p>

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Au Québec, la pandémie de la COVID-19 a entrainé de nombreux questionnements face au système alimentaire, sa durabilité et sa résilience. Cette crise sanitaire a révélé les multiples dépendances de la province, notamment aux importations et à une main- d’œuvre étrangère bon marché, tout en exacerbant les problématiques liées à la distance entre le champ et notre assiette. D’autre part, celle-ci a souligné la fragilité socio- écologique du modèle agricole en place. L’agriculture industrielle met de l’avant plusieurs pratiques aux conséquences destructrices si néfastes pour l’environnement et l’Homme. Devant de tels enjeux, des pratiques alternatives en agriculture ont émergé au Québec dans les dernières décennies, telles que des coopératives agricoles, micro-fermes, l’agriculture urbaine, etc., ainsi que le souhait d’une plus grande autonomie alimentaire pour la province. Seulement, en dépit d’une volonté de limiter l’impact environnemental de l’agriculture sur le territoire québécois, la présence de verrouillages juridico-politiques et socio-économiques limitent le développement de ces alternatives. La présente recherche a déterminé, documenté et analysé la nature de ces verrouillages freinant ou empêchant une transition agroécologique du système alimentaire du Québec. En ayant recours à une revue de la littérature, dix entretiens semi-dirigés avec des acteurs clés du secteur agricole et de l’observation sur le terrain, nous avons documenté et analysé les changements, les réalités et les besoins en agriculture en 2022-2023. Cette étude a contribué à l’évaluation des besoins en agriculture et à l’établissement de stratégies de transformation du système alimentaire du Québec, afin qu’il fasse preuve de durabilité, d’autonomie et de résilience. / In Quebec, the COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness about the food system, its sustainability, and resilience. This health crisis revealed the province's multiple dependencies, notably on imports and cheap foreign labor, while exacerbating issues linked to the distance between the field and our plates. It also highlighted the socioecological fragility of the current agricultural model. Industrial agriculture puts forward several practices with destructive consequences that are harmful to the environment and mankind. Faced with such challenges, alternative agricultural practices have emerged in Quebec in recent decades, such as agricultural cooperatives, micro-farms, urban agriculture, etc., as well as the desire for greater food autonomy for the province. However, despite the desire to limit the environmental impact of agriculture in Quebec, the development of these alternatives is hampered by legal, political, and socio-economic lock-ins. This research has determined, documented, and analyzed the nature of these locks hindering or preventing the agroecological transition of Quebec's food system. Using a literature review, ten semi-structured interviews with key actors in the agricultural sector, and field observation, we documented and analyzed the changes, realities, and needs in agriculture in 2022-2023. This study contributed to the assessment of agricultural needs and the establishment of strategies for transforming Quebec's food system so that it demonstrates sustainability, autonomy, and resilience.