The Good Food Box (GFB) program holds a great deal of promise to expand our understanding of Community Food Security (CFS). CFS represents a vision for solving hunger and other problems with the food system through an integrated approach that improves access to good and appropriate food for all while at the same time building community, strengthening local agricultural economies, and maximizing social justice. The GFB, one type of CFS program, is a community-based initiative found across Canada that provides a box of healthy food to customers at near wholesale prices; it has the potential to increase access to healthy food, develop alternative distribution channels, link producers more closely with consumers, build community connections, and more. Yet despite the fact that over 50 unique GFB programs exist across Canada, little research has been done on how these myriad programs are structured and function, how this program model has spread to and been adapted by communities across Canada, and how individual programs operate while balancing multiple goals and priorities.
This paper, based on qualitative interviews with managers at 21 GFB programs across Canada, explores the diversity of GFB programs in Canada, and how these programs balance multiple priorities along with day-to-day logistical constraints. GFB programs functioning across Canada have diverse goals, tensions sometimes arise when balancing multiple goals, and programs have found various ways to resolve these tensions. Moreover, GFB programs are educating and empowering people in their communities, as well as networking and learning among themselves. This is one of the first studies describing the breadth of GFB programs across Canada, and some of the findings have not been identified in previous scholarship. I describe the variety of program structures, the main priorities and goals that the programs identify, and some of the tensions and innovations that arise when working to balance the multiple goals and dimensions of CFS. I also discuss how programs communicate and learn from each other, and how the GFB in Canada can help us understand the CFS movement more generally.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-01162014-150044 |
| Date | 07 February 2014 |
| Creators | Laporte Potts, Stephanie Lentz |
| Contributors | Blakely Brown, Josh Slotnick, Neva Hassanein |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-01162014-150044/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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