Food insecurity is a growing global concern, with millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition every day. Street-connected children are disproportionately vulnerable to food insecurity ...due to their living conditions and social status. However, little is known about their food insecurity experience, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study, therefore, aims to address this gap by examining the food insecurity experiences of street-connected children in Jimma, Ethiopia. This qualitative study was conducted from July to September 2021, and involved children living on the streets in various parts of Jimma city. In this study, we utilized interviews, focus group discussions, and field observations to investigate food acquisition strategies, hunger experiences, coping mechanisms, and challenges in food access among these children. Our findings indicate that street-connected children struggle to secure adequate, safe, and stable food, encountering pervasive hunger. Their limited resources and income exacerbate their dietary challenges. Their lack of food access not only represents a major challenge in their day-to-day lives but is also central to the various vulnerabilities and adversities they face. Moreover, their persistent hunger complicates their ability to improve their living conditions and exit from the street life. In conclusion, the study underscores the urgent need for focused attention on alleviating food insecurity among street-connected children, particularly in low-income countries.
•Acquiring food is a daily struggle for street-connected children.•Hunger is the hallmark of the daily lives of street-connected children.•They encounter considerable abuse trying to earn an income and search for food.•Social exclusion and public discrimination deprive street-connected children of access to food.•Food insecurity contributes to feelings of stigma and shame among street-connected children.
Local food systems are increasingly receiving political support across the globe. As part of this trend, food policy councils (FPCs) are generally considered to be ideal governance platforms in the ...transition to just, sustainable and democratic localized food systems. However, insight into the governance processes to transform local food systems is lacking. This article analyzes the politics of localizing food systems at play in the FPCs of Ghent (Belgium) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA). The focus is on the development of urban agriculture in both cities, and includes an analysis of the politics of scale through three scalar practices of scale framing, scale negotiating, and scale matching. This analysis reveals that differences in the way in which the politics of scale are played out in both FPCs resulted in the creation of different opportunities and constraints for urban agriculture development. The article shows that attention for politics of scale in FPCs can help identify dynamics of socio-political inclusion and exclusion and power struggles in the governance of urban agriculture. The article formulates two governance principles: understanding local food systems as multi-scalar issues, and the explicit adoption of procedural justice as a core objective in governance processes.
•Food governance on the local scale is both socially and spatially constructed.•Politics of scale elucidate processes of social-political inclusion and exclusion in food policy council governance.•Analysis of scale framing, negotiating, and matching allows for a better understanding of food policy councils.•Important conclusions with regard to justice in local food systems can be made.
This article discusses the economic dimensions of agroecological farming systems in Europe. It firstly theoretically elaborates the reasons why, and under what conditions, agroecological farming ...systems have the potential to produce higher incomes than farms that follow the conventional logic. This theoretical exposition is then followed by a presentation of empirical material from a wide range of European countries that shows the extent to which this potential is being realized. The empirical data draw upon different styles of farming that can be described as ‘proto-agroecological’: approaches to farming that are agroecological by nature, but which may not necessarily explicitly define themselves as agroecological. The empirical material that we present shows the huge potential and radical opportunities that Europe's, often silent, ‘agroecological turn’ offers to farmers that could (and should) be the basis for the future transformation of European agricultural policies, since agroecology not only allows for more sustainable production of healthier food but also considerably improves farmers' incomes. It equally carries the promise of re-enlarging productive agricultural (and related) employment and increasing the total income generated by the agricultural sector, at both regional and national levels. While we recognise that agroecology is a worldwide and multidimensional phenomenon we have chosen to limit this analysis to Europe and the economic dimension. This choice is made in order to refute current discourses that represent agroecology as unproductive and unprofitable and an option that would require massive subsidies.
•Throughout Europe a range of proto-agroecological practices can be identified. .•Agroecology carries considerable economic potential: it sustains employment levels and increases incomers. .•The VA/GVP ratio helps to explain the strength of agroecological farming.•Agroecological farming is key to the much needed transformation of European agriculture.
More and more cities develop urban food strategies (UFSs) to guide their efforts and practices towards more sustainable food systems. An emerging theme shaping these food policy endeavours, ...especially prominent in North and South America, concerns the enhancement of social justice within food systems. To operationalise this theme in a European urban food governance context we adopt Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of justice: economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation. In this paper, we discuss the findings of an exploratory document analysis of the social justice-oriented ambitions, motivations, current practices and policy trajectories articulated in sixteen European UFSs. We reflect on the food-related resource allocations, value patterns and decision rules these cities propose to alter and the target groups they propose to support, empower or include. Overall, we find that UFSs make little explicit reference to social justice and justice-oriented food concepts, such as food security, food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty. Nevertheless, the identified resources, services and target groups indicate that the three dimensions of Fraser are at the heart of many of the measures described. We argue that implicit, fragmentary and unspecified adoption of social justice in European UFSs is problematic, as it may hold back public consciousness, debate and collective action regarding food system inequalities and may be easily disregarded in policy budgeting, implementation and evaluation trajectories. As a path forward, we present our plans for the RE-ADJUSTool that would enable UFS stakeholders to reflect on how their UFS can incorporate social justice and who to involve in this pursuit.
Agroecology is receiving increasing attention and recognition as a concept for transitions to more sustainable agricultural and food systems. There is however a lack of characterization of ...agroecology in agricultural and food systems, while integrated and holistic measurements of their sustainability are scarce. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is considered to be a system explicitly based on agroecological principles and practices which shows potential in the face of the sustainability challenges in agriculture and food systems, but its link with agroecology and its holistic sustainability performance have remained understudied. Therefore, we applied the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE) to 24 Community Supported Agriculture farms in the Flanders region of Belgium in order to characterize agroecology and to assess their multidimensional sustainability performance. Our results show that Community Supported Agriculture farms can be characterized as advanced agroecological systems, highlighted by their high to very high performance on many of the elements of agroecology. Moreover, our results show positive outcomes on several sustainability criteria across environmental, social and economic dimensions such as soil health, presence of natural vegetation and pollinators and ecological management of pests and diseases, as well as dietary diversity and profitability criteria like gross value, added value and net revenue. The integration and role of animals in these agroecosystems and the importance of - and dependence on - labor are however identified as two critical aspects regarding the agroecological transitions and sustainability of Community Supported Agriculture. Our findings emphasize the exemplary role Community Supported Agriculture could play in broader agroecological transitions, which, coupled with their high performance on several sustainability criteria, highlight the potential contribution of Community Supported Agriculture, and by extension of agroecology itself, to more sustainable agricultural and food systems in Flanders and beyond.
•The special issue is on dynamics of responsibility in the context of food systems.•Responsibility has growing importance in the context of sustainability transitions.•Responsibility changes and ...depends on institutional conditions.•Responsibility has three dimensions: temporal, socio-technical and relational.
Abstract
Integrated water management is complex and requires the participation of diverse actors to identify and implement transformative solutions. However, power relations can obstruct the more ...inclusive and equitable experiences of participatory approaches, hence limiting the empowerment of vulnerable groups. It is thus important to study how power relations are influenced by people's interests, socio-political structures, and knowledge in the process of (co)creation of water policies. We use a case study in a rural municipality of Bolivia to address this issue. Qualitative data were collected between 2017 and 2020 and analysed using the elements of the Power Cube of Gaventa as the analytical framework. Results confirm that different factors influence power relations in the making of a water policy such as interests, access to information, habits, and customs. Actors use different forms, spaces, and levels of power to achieve their interests. Our results show the importance and need to analyse power relations prior, during and after the (co)creation of any public policy and to step away from linear and sectoral frameworks of policy development.
Several individual scholars and international organizations have attempted to conceptualize "culture" in its different meanings in sustainability. Despite those efforts, a tangle of different ...approaches are being used, reflecting the various disciplines and policy aims. In this paper we propose an interdisciplinary framework for identifying the different roles of culture in sustainability in an attempt to guide the research and policy activities in this complex field. The framework is comprised of three representations defined by a literature review on "cultural sustainability", which are further explored through eight organizing dimensions that mark the similarities and differences between the three representations. The article reveals that the three representations are partly interlinked and that they also reveal gradients in the dynamics of the system, as well as in the human/nature interface.
Including different forms of knowledges and views in decision‐making is crucial to managing the complexity of social–ecological systems (SES) in ways that are inclusive and embrace diversity.
Sense ...of place scholarship can explain subjectivity in SES; however, it has hardly been considered together with the literature on knowledge processes, overlooking the epistemic dimension of sense of place and its potential to shed light on the roles and views of individuals in respect to natural resources and their management.
This paper explores how local knowledge and place‐belonging (as a form of sense of place) intersect, and what kinds of implications these knowledge–place connections have for the interactions between actors and their agency in the High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago UNESCO World Heritage Site (Sweden/Finland).
Drawing on participant observation in workshops and semi‐structured interviews with diverse actors in this transboundary governance context, we identify five types of knowledge–place connections, which exemplify diverse positions on local knowledge shaped by place‐belonging.
We propose a concept of place‐embedded agency to reveal how these positions shape action and interaction between people inside and outside formal decision‐making processes. We argue that recognising and taking place‐embedded agency into account can help to overcome tensions and enhance plurality in SES governance.
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Abstrakti
Erilaisten tietämisen tapojen ja näkemysten sisällyttäminen sosio‐ekologisten systeemien hallintoon on tärkeää, jotta päätöksenteko tukee näiden systeemien moninaisuutta ja monimutkaisuuden ymmärtämistä. Tutkimus koskien paikan tuntua auttaa ymmärtämään sosio‐ekologisten systeemien subjektiivisuutta. Paikan tuntua ei kuitenkaan ole käsitelty yhdessä tietoprosessien kanssa, mikä tarjoaa mahdollisuuden ymmärtää yksilön rooleja ja näkemyksiä sosio‐ekologisten systeemien hallinnossa. Tässä artikkelissa käytämme osallistuvaa havainnointia ja laadullisia haastatteluja ja tutkimme, miten paikallinen tieto ja paikkakuuluvuus (paikan tunnun muotona) risteävät, ja mitä seurauksia sillä on eri toimijoiden väliseen vuorovaikutukseen Korkearannikon ja Merenkurkun maailmanperintöalueella (Ruotsi/Suomi) ja sen hallinnossa. Ehdotamme käsitettä place‐embedded agency (paikkaan sulautettu toimijuus) tiedon ja paikan risteyskohtien huomioimiseen ja subjektiivisista lähtökodista juontavien jännitteiden ymmärtämiseen alueen hallinnossa.
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Extension professionals are expected to help disseminate agricultural technologies, information, knowledge and skills to farmers. In order to develop valuable and long-lasting extension services, it ...is essential to understand the methods of extension that farmers find most beneficial. This understanding helps adopt improved practices, overcome barriers, provide targeted interventions and continuously improve agricultural extension programs. Thus, assessing factors affecting farmers' choice of agricultural extension methods is essential for developing extension methods that comply with farmers' needs and socio-economic conditions. Therefore, we analyzed the factors affecting farmers' preferences in extension methods, using cross-sectional data collected from 300 households in two sample districts and 16 Kebelles in Ethiopia between September 2019 and March 2020. Four extension methods, including training, demonstration, office visits and phone calls were considered as outcome variables. We fitted a multivariate probit model to estimate the factors that influence farmers' choice of extension methods. The results of the study showed that the number of dependents in the household head, formal education and membership of Idir (an informal insurance program a community or group runs to meet emergencies) were negatively associated with farmers' choices to participate in different extension methods compared to no extension. On the other hand, the sex of the household head, farm experience, participation in non-farm activities, monetary loan access, owning a mobile phone, radio access and membership of cooperatives were found to have a statistically significant positive impact on farmers' choices of extension methods. Based on these findings, the government and the concerned stakeholders should take farmers' socio-economic and institutional traits into account when selecting and commissioning agricultural extension methods. This could help to develop contextually relevant extension strategies that are more likely to be chosen and appreciated by farmers. Furthermore, such strategies can aid policymakers in designing extension programs that cater to farmers' needs and concerns. In conclusion, farmers' socio-economic and institutional affiliation should be taken into consideration when selecting agricultural extension methods.
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