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The local food movement has been offered as an alternative to the conventional food system. This thesis identifies the barriers that are constraining the local food movement using the case study of Ontario, Canada, by performing qualitative analysis of informal interview responses. In addition to generating a comprehensive account of the barriers constraining local food, barriers to local food procurement in the institutional context are also identified. Findings suggest that the barriers to the local food movement can be related to a lack of access, lack of resources, poor governance structures, poor information sharing and uncooperative relationships between local food actors. I argue that these barriers are reflective of the broader challenges associated with attempting to create food systems change from within the dominant system. Daunting as they may be, they can be overcome in an incremental, pragmatic way. Nineteen recommendations are made to this end.

The local food movement has been offered as an alternative to the conventional food system. This thesis identifies the barriers that are constraining the local food movement using the case study of Ontario, Canada, by performing qualitative analysis of informal interview responses. In addition to generating a comprehensive account of the barriers constraining local food, barriers to local food procurement in the institutional context are also identified. Findings suggest that the barriers to the local food movement can be related to a lack of access, lack of resources, poor governance structures, poor information sharing and uncooperative relationships between local food actors. I argue that these barriers are reflective of the broader challenges associated with attempting to create food systems change from within the dominant system. Daunting as they may be, they can be overcome in an incremental, pragmatic way. Nineteen recommendations are made to this end.

Urban agriculture has been a recognized component of functioning urban landscapes since the beginning of civilization. Starting in the 20th century, formally recognized urban agriculture movements emerged in the form of victory gardens during both World Wars, and then again in the late 1970s through the creation of community gardens as a facet of social activism (Hodgson, 3). By the year 2000, urban agriculture was predominantly sponsored by local, mission-driven organizations created to promote social equity and provide economic opportunity for members of their respective communities (Hodgson, 3). The ongoing decrease in urban populations in de-industrialized cities, coupled with alarming rates of obesity, obesity related disease, malnutrition and a burgeoning awareness of food insecurity in distressed urban areas has sparked a growing interest in existing urban agricultural movements and their potential to serve as engines for economic and social revitalization. I intend to explore the implications of the popular urban agriculture revival in distressed communities and the role of urban agriculture organizations in ongoing economic and social revitalization efforts. My research will focus on established urban agriculture organizations and their role in revitalization of distressed communities. Specifically, I will explore how urban agriculture organizations drive revitalization in distressed urban areas and how their impact on revitalization efforts are measured. Given the potential economic and social benefits of urban agriculture, it is important to look towards organizations utilizing successful models for implementation and how they are impacting broader revitalization efforts within their respective communities. As part of my research, I will evaluate three well-established urban agriculture organizations, with track records of success across 4 differing dimensions: economic, social, environmental, and systemic. The goal of my research is to identify and measure the impacts urban agriculture organizations in relation to a set of broader outcomes associated with revitalization efforts. / text

Faced with increasing risks from climate change, food systems will need to transition away from dominant industrial paradigms and move towards a more sustainable way of producing, distributing, and consuming food. One solution or one side alone though might not have the desired systemic change or might not capture the full complexity of food systems. To go beyond two known criticisms of local food sustainable initiatives, i.e., to be rather small and to be developed outside policy frameworks and/or in stark opposition to current food systems, in this thesis I argue to look at governance spaces of transformation at local level where community members, professionals, and governments get together to share knowledge, deliberate, and collectively devise place-based strategies to address complex food systems issues. The thesis is divided into three chapters. To completely understand spaces of transformation, the first chapter provides a conceptual framework of analysis combining ideas from sustainability transitions, environmental governance and sustainable food communities’ approaches. With the first chapter laying out the theoretical framework, chapter 2 and 3 will rely on the empirical analysis of data gathered through interviews and surveys. The conceptualization of territorial spaces of transformation and the analysis of whether biodistricts can be considered such spaces of transformation for food systems, will be laid out in chapter 2. Chapter 3 will consider two additional research questions, namely how territorial characteristics influence the emergence of a biodistrict, and what role the biodistricts have in territorial transformations towards agroecology. The aim of the thesis is to generate solid and harmonized evidence on the impact of biodistricts on key sustainability characteristics, such as a biodiverse environment, inclusive societal and cultural values, sustainable economic development, sound governance systems and organic, regenerative agricultural practices. The results allow to develop a blueprint for biodistricts as meso-spaces, showing how the presence of actors, the objectives, activities, and governance structure should evolve according to the maturity phases. Moreover, the application of the CAET-TAPE assessment shows that the biodistricts are performing solidly on agroecological transitions.

Research specific to the agriculture literacy of adult learners and, more specifically, college students, is warranted (Kovar & Ball, 2013). In the current study, I analyze the sources of knowledge that are dispersed across formal, non-formal, and informal learning settings that college students rely on to understand the various components of food systems. More specifically, I ask here, "How do college students learn about food systems?" Data were collected using a convenience sample of undergraduate students at a large research-intensive university who responded to an authentic questionnaire developed specifically for this study. Findings indicate that there is little variation between the three learning settings with respect to food system knowledge. This indicates that education with respect to food system knowledge is lacking. Implications of the study include recommendations for the development and refinement of formal and non-formal food systems curricula specific to the needs, backgrounds, and experiences of undergraduate college students.

The biocultural heritage and diversity of localised food systems are resources that some communities, governments and other actors are mobilising to pursue their development objectives. However, further understanding is needed to determine how regimes of access and benefit surrounding this collectively held heritage are affected by its use in development projects. This dissertation examines rural development involving interventions in the food systems of the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia, and the ripple effects on the people who depend on these systems for their survival as producers, intermediaries and consumers. Core themes relate to personal histories and experiences of change and continuity in household economies and diet, and the role of biocultural heritage within localised food systems. These are examined in relation to processes of territorial construction and ordering through development programs and less planned processes of global and environmental change. Data were gathered through a food systems methodology, acknowledging the complex, interdependent relationships among production, transformation, exchange and consumption. The primary methods used were semi-structured interviews with local producers, intermediaries, consumers and government and non-governmental organisation key informants, complemented by participant observation, surveys, and document review. I found edible biocultural heritage to be a key resource in territorial projects seeking to alter current and future conditions of the Central Valley territory. From the 1970s onward, agricultural production possibilities available to research participant households have narrowed because of land enclosures, market integration, and other intersecting factors ultimately favouring transition towards commodity production (Chapter 2). Some smallholder viticulturalists, however, have incorporated grape production within multi-species agroecosystems to balance the risks and benefits of participation in the expanding commercial sector (Chapter 3). Edible biocultural heritage is being mobilised within multiple territorial projects in the Central Valley, including a gourmet project (Chapter 4) and an alternative food network around campesino gastronomic heritage (Chapter 5), with distinct ecological, economic and sociocultural implications. Whose heritage (or aspects of heritage) is carried forward and given precedence within development processes, and whose is rendered less viable and visible, has significant impacts on food systems’ form and function, the representations of local identity they manifest and the livelihood possibilities they entail. / February 2017

The U.S. food system is afflicted by a variety of social, ecological, and economic predicaments including hunger, food access inequalities, soil and water degradation, and lack of community control over food. Scholars and activists agree that in order for U.S. food movement actors to affect significant system-wide change, players must bridge a multitude of issue areas and ideological differences. Despite thorough analyses of local and regional food systems, little research has been conducted on either national level advocacy perspectives or the ties that bind and divide food advocacy coalitions. This dissertation's central research question examines how the U.S food advocacy movement works to resist the hegemonic domination of the national food system by state and corporate actors. To answer this question, this project develops a social network analysis of 71 national-level food advocacy actors, compiles web-based issue and tax data, and conducts 36 semi-structured interviews with senior food activist staff. Social movement literature and Antonio Gramsci's concepts of counter-hegemonic movements and wars of position inform the findings and reveal the national food movement's nascent propensity to unite cultural and class struggles to create significant pressure for systematic change in the U.S. food system. Additionally, this research tests existing theoretical work related to the food advocacy network and distinctions between interest group and social movement type organizations. This dissertation reveals that despite most activists' conviction that a constellation of agri-business and state policies dominate the U.S. food system, significant network rifts, framing dilemmas, strategic conflicts, and resource complexities prevent national food activists from generating a robust challenge to hegemonic food system actors.

Ecological Economics has emerged across disciplines, and has begun to disentangle, not only the relationship between biophysical earth systems and economic activity, but also, fundamental relationships between objectivity, power, value, ethics, perspective and purpose. In part, this thesis represents an effort to illustrate basic transdisciplinary concepts necessary for understanding the project of Ecological Economics. At present, Ecological Economics is challenged by a seemingly infinite number of available considerations, with a relatively narrow repertoire of impactful mechanisms of control. Given this, it is apparent that the application of Cybernetics to Ecological Economics might provide insights. Cybernetics can help to lend concise language to manners for implementing control and also help to navigate the paradoxes which arise for self- regulating systems. While Cybernetics played an early role in the formulation of the relationship between the economy and an environment with available energy, second- order cybernetics can help to formulate the autonomy of Ecological Economics as a self-regulating system and shed light on the epistemology and ethics of circularity. The first article of this thesis identifies occasions when Ecological Economics has confronted circularity, and explores options moving forward. Ultimately, confronting paradox and circularity provide the means for the substantiation of Ecological Economics. The food system is prominent within Ecological Economics discourse. It serves as a good example of the ‘emergence’ of coordinated activity. In Cybernetics jargon, we can think of the ‘Food System’ as a symbol for the redundancy found in linked characteristics of particular Ecological-Economic inquiry. For instance, when we consider the food system we can be sure that we are dealing with resources that are essential, both rival and non-rival, excludable and non-excludable, and also highly sensitive to boundaries in scope, and scale, and thus highly sensitive to political and social change. In this sense, the food system acts as a symbol for the coordination of activity, and produces an output which is an input to the Ecological Economic ‘boundary’ between the Economy and the Ecosystem. The second article of this thesis provides an analysis of GHG emissions within the Chittenden County Foodshed. We conclude that urban agriculture, dietary change and agro-ecological production in concert, provide emission reductions which are not achieved when these options are considered separately. Given these conditions, we see mitigation beyond 90% of current emissions.

This dissertation examined the relationship between food security status and cultural congruence and indicators of child growth and development in a rural mountain town in Costa Rica. Results show that children from food secure households are significantly shorter and shorter-legged than their food insecure counterparts. It is theorized that these findings correspond to low quality diets associated with increasing commodification of food systems in rural Costa Rica. Identity-based mechanisms are discussed as potential factors contributing to the increasing commodification of life through the encroachment of the global market economy.