Progress 08/01/14 to 07/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience:The 2014 workshop brought together researchers engaged in a 12-state integrated AFRI project with students and community members and retail food-store owners from project-related sites. Similarly, the community events brought together EFSNE team members, community residents, and representatives from community organizations, markets, schools, businesses, agencies, as well as Extension staff and producers. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The follow-up community events provided another opportunity for team members to learn from community leaders and citizens, and to improve their skills in engaging community partners. Team members joined with community representatives to organize and conduct events, thereby getting more familiar with each community's needs and interests. Researchers and community leaders referred to the Community Readiness Assessments which were done as another part of the project when deciding what kinds of activities would be most appropriate for that particular community. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As described above, community-based participants and project researchers conducted site-based activities aimed at furthering the sharing and learning about food system activities in each location. Team members also shared the process and results of the workshop at our annual project workshop at the NESAWG conference. We also presented about the 2014 workshop, and had several community members and store owners who participated in that workshop attend and present at the project's national conference in December 2015. A reporter from AmericanFarm.com covered the Delaware event and published a story about it on April 12, 2016, thus reaching an unknown number of producers and agricultural professionals as well. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In collaboration with community leaders, project team members organized community events in five project locations. In the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Beechview, the team and community leader engaged residents around food access and development issues at a ½ day community celebration at which they distributed a redesigned community cookbook to reflect shifting demographics, distributed a modified intercept survey on food shopping and eating habits, and collected oral histories on Beechview residents' connection to food, including social aspects of consumption, personal gardening and preservation practices, and questions of what is healthy and what is regional vs. local food. The Syracuse Food Justice Symposium brought together 240 participants over 1.5 days from community organizations, markets, schools, businesses and agency officials to learn about opportunities to increase access to locally (community gardens and urban farms) and regionally sourced foods, and better integrate different aspects of the food system to support health and well-being of community residents. Over $10K was raised outside of AFRI funds to support the symposium. Presentations included the future of food access in a changing climate, youth health and nutrition, a regional food system diet, and others. A half-day conference in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom brought 75 participants to discuss food access. Following presentations on EFSNE, groups discussed steps to improve access, stimulating ongoing work on this issue in Northern VT. In Baltimore, a half-day workshop, Think Regional, Act Local: A Workshop Exploring Our Regional Food System was held for 65 participants from the Baltimore region who work on food system issues. They learned Baltimore's historical connections to the region's food system. EFSNE team members spoke about the project. The participants broke into groups to discuss the results from consumption, urban ag, distribution, community readiness and mapping. At a community gathering in Delaware, EFSNE team members sought input from fruit and vegetable growers and other interested parties about the project. Together, they discussed the capacity of the Northeast to produce Market Basket items and the changing situations caused by various stressors to the system. This was followed by a panel of professionals with a variety of perspectives on regional food production discussed the impacts of their work on regional food security.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Press release: "Syracuse Food Justice Symposium to Be Held Oct. 2-3," published online on September 30, 2015: http://news.syr.edu/syracuse-food-justice-symposium-to-be-held-oct-2-3-98664/
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
https://syracusefoodjustice.wordpress.com/
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Progress 08/01/14 to 07/31/15
Outputs
Target Audience:The workshop brought together researchers engaged in a 12-state integrated AFRI project with students and community members and retail food-store owners from project-related sites. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The structure of the event allowed for rich information exchange between each of the groups (store owners, community liaisons, researchers, and graduate students), thus enhancing each group's knowledge of the others' contexts. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Several presentations were developed for sharing at the workshop. An evaluation was conducted via a survey distributed at the end of the workshop. Results from the survey are available upon request. Two newsletter stories, which were distributed to stakeholders and are archived on the project website, were developed to describe and summarize the event: Voices of independent store owners add context to EFSNE research http://agsci.psu.edu/research/food-security/news/2015/store-owners-voices Workshop amplifies EFSNE engagement with project communities http://agsci.psu.edu/research/food-security/news/2015/community-researcher-workshop-summary Community-based participants and project researchers are conducting site-based activities aimed at furthering the sharing and learning about food system activities in each location. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For two reasons, we requested (and were granted) a no-cost extension for this funding. The first reason is to allow the site leaders to accomplish the plans they made at the November workshop, which is a workshop grant deliverable. These include a variety of different community-level activities now being planned and implemented such as store owner/community "town hall" meetings, and a workshop which brings together leaders to discuss the history of the city's regional food supply, and progress on food access to date. Six sites have been or will be conducting activities. The second purpose is to utilize funds from the workshop grant to bring site leaders, store owners, and other workshop attendees to our end-of-project conference in December for them to report to a larger audience their engagement with the project over five years, as well as the success of these year five activities in their locations. This would be another way to augment the workshop goals of deepening the project participants' knowledge and relationships, and of continuing our efforts to help the community leaders who have been an essential link in the project and integral to the success of the research objectives to share and learn about food system activities in each location. Another objective of the November 2014 workshop was to provide the foundation for the communities to pursue their own food systems actions in the future. At the upcoming conference, they will meet and hear from other NIFA global food security projects and benefit from the learnings of those colleagues to take back to their communities.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our conference objectives were carried out during the event which was held on November 5-6, 2014 at the Pearlstone Center in Reisterstown, MD, with 26 people participating. Approximately 25% of the project's collaborating retailers (five in all) and 50% of the site-based community liaisons (six in all) were able to attend the workshop. Also in attendance were 10 project researchers, four graduate students, and one staff member. The structure of the event allowed for much dialogue between the retailers, community liaisons, project researchers, and graduate students. Specifically, presentations were given by each project research team to familiarize the group with the multidisciplinary investigation of the food system being carried out, and were followed by group discussions. A panel comprising the attending retailers allowed for a rich dialogue about the nature of operating independent food stores in low-income communities. Finally, community liaisons presented a case study of two low-income communities in Baltimore, MD, providing researchers and retailers an illustrative depiction of the food environment and some of the challenges facing consumers in these low-income locales. In the post-workshop evaluation, the researchers and graduate students who attended ranked their interactions with store owners very favorably. It was evident from these discussions that, although each of the stores represented at the workshop is quite different, they face similar challenges as small, independent retailers operating in low-income communities. Project personnel and community liaisons learned that accessing the distribution networks of suppliers is difficult for store owners, especially for rural stores; most wholesalers are reluctant to send delivery trucks to remote locations for relatively small sales. Another learning was that while the idea of stocking more regional foods may appeal to store owners, they're most limited by how the distributors operate. While the retailers' insights were immensely valuable to the project team, retailers also reported valuing the opportunity to learn from each other and from the project team at large during the two-day dialogue. Some reported that it was useful to get insights into challenges faced by other retailers in the region, and others appreciated learning about the distribution and production side of their industry. The event provided space for brainstorming among community liaisons and the project team about project-related activities that will be implemented by our partner communities, some of which will be carried out in 2015-2016.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
"Voices of independent store owners add context to EFSNE research." EFSNE News, Winter 2015, http://agsci.psu.edu/research/food-security/news/2015/store-owners-voices.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
"Workshop amplifies EFSNE engagement with project communities." EFSNE News, Winter 2015, http://agsci.psu.edu/research/food-security/news/2015/community-researcher-workshop-summary.
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