The climate system is also adversely impacting the food system as warming temperatures drive changes in rainfall patterns, exacerbate droughts, disrupt food distribution channels, and create extremes to which current farming practices are not adapted to coping with . However, there is potential for the food system to have a more positive set of impacts on the climate system through regenerative agricultural production systems governed by principles of agroecology. The food system has potential to re-store atmospheric carbon and rehabilitate beneficial ecological functions through re-localization and appropriate management, eventually driving more positive climate impacts back to the food system. Temporally, there is a substantial “lag time” in realizing positive climate impacts due to the 100-year residence time of atmospheric CO2;however, additional motivators for shifting towards an agroecological food system exist in the shorter-term including advancement of social, economic, health, and food justice goals.More complex representations of the food climate nexus exist showing cascading interactions between the food system, climate system, and potential adaptation/mitigation measures. The IPCC Land Use report includes a figure showing complex interlinkages between the climate system, food system, ecosystem , cannabis vertical farming and socio-economic system, operating at multiple scales, from global to regional .
Ultimately both complex and more simple diagrams are pointing towards opportunities for food systems actions to reduce and remove atmospheric GHG concentrations. However, doing so without compromising important social justice goals requires coordination and inclusive local food system planning. Debates in the agroecological food system research center around how best to achieve food systems and related social change and are discussed further in section 1.2.1 below. Emissions inventories quantify the greenhouse gas impact of food systems using various assumptions and “boundaries” between food and other sectors, such as transportation, buildings, and electricity generation. Estimates range from 8-9% of total greenhouse gas emissions attributable to “agriculture” in California and the United States , to 33% of total emissions attributable to the “global food system,” including fertilizer manufacture, food storage, and packaging . As Niles et al. state in a recent paper, “It is estimated that agriculture and associated land use change account for 24% of total global emissions , while the global food system may contribute up to 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions . As a result, food systems—not just agricultural production—should be a critical focus for GHG mitigation and adaptation strategies” . And yet, current research on climate change mitigation in the food sector focuses on the production element, without fully exploring other system elements in terms of leverage points, synergies, and tradeoffs in mitigation and adaptation efforts. It is important to consider a holistic accounting of greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial food system, including the manufacturing of nitrogen fertilizers and herbicide/pesticide chemicals; fuel for powering farm equipment; dietary preferences; and processing, packaging, and refrigeration processes, in order to optimize emissions reductions and carbon removal and maximize adaptation co-benefits of mitigating the climate crisis through transforming the food system .
Critical food systems scholars and organizations aligning with the agroecology paradigm point out several dimensions of necessary action-research to build towards a climate friendly food system, including regenerative food production, minimizing corporate influence, preventing further consolidation of corporations, promoting re-localization of food systems activities, and rebuilding a policy climate with accountable elected officials acting in the best interest of society, environment and democracy . Relocalizing food systems is credited by scholars of agroecology as “an important factor in seeking solutions to the multiple crises” that cities are currently facing, including “environment, climate change, health, social inclusion and waste management” . Agroecology scholarship spans governance scales and nations, the urban and the rural, and is best understood through the lens of the food system , weaving together production and other system elements . The agroecological food system paradigm is framed by some scholar-activists as standing in direct contrast to the dominant industrial paradigm and the Law of Exploitation; it is “centered on the Earth and small-scale farmers, and especially women farmers… ecological food systems are local food systems. The resources of the Earth… are managed as a ‘commons,’ or shared spaces for communities” . Other scholars such as Elinor Ostrom and David Bollier employ different philosophical and epistemological approaches to suggest management approaches grounded in cooperation and the commons. Ostrom famously posited eight principles for managing a commons, in direct response to Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her efforts.
Bollier’s book “Think Like a Commoner” frames an alternative political economy, a paradigm of “working, evolving models of self-provisioning and stewardship that combine the economic and the social, the collective and the personal. It is humanistic at its core but also richly political in implication, because to honor the commons can risk unpleasant encounters with the power of the Market/State duopoly” . Bollier goes on to use words and phrases such as “bottomup, do-it-yourself styles of emancipation,” “new forms of production,” “open and accountable forms of governance,” “healthy, appealing ways to live,” and “pragmatic yet idealistic” to describe the paradigm of the commons. Inherent in both agroecology and the commons literature is the goal of returning to producers and individuals the power to self-determine systems of production and governance. Agroecological scholars increasingly engage in articulations of a vision for food system transformation, ranging from a radical overthrow of the status quo to more gradual shifts to current practices . Agroecological research is described as “transdisciplinary, participatory, and change-oriented” , and agroecology is commonly defined as a “science, practice and movement” . However, there is debate among food system scholars around how change is enacted. Some argue that agroecology is the best way to “feed the world,” and in fact, small agroecological farmers are already producing the majority of food consumed by the growing human population on a small percentage of total agricultural lands . Others argue that theland requirements of feeding a growing population through agroecological, regenerative1, and/or organic farming practices would be so large that land use change would exacerbate rather than ameliorate negative climate impacts associated with food production. These “land sparing vs. land sharing” and “feed the world debates” co-exist with debates around how to enact local food system reforms. I engage primarily with the local food system reform; my findings and contributions do not speak directly to the larger global land use and world hunger debates. Rather than arguing for radical and immediate food system revolution, the three cases presented in this dissertation illuminate opportunities for the current food system to improve along dimensions of sustainability, climate resilience, and education, presenting social and ecological benefits of local food system shifts. The cases advance an argument justifying and valorizing the existence of small farms, more easily able to provide social, ecological, cannabis drying rack and educational benefits to communities than environmentally destructive industrial farms. These benefits are not guaranteed or inevitable, however, when food systems relocalize or small farms focus on regenerative practices; they require public investment, civic engagement, and participatory action-research to sustain, safeguard, and enable their existence.Local food systems are inherently complex, social-ecological systems . Food systems researchers bring to the fore “questions such as food…nourishing bodies, soils as living organisms, urban gardens as life-sustaining infrastructure… while taking issues as money, location, skin colour, gender, and social status seriously… Food issues cannot be treated as purely socio-political, neither as mere ecological or agronomic… They are co-constructions of water, people, investment flows, soil organisms, and more. Agroecology captures this co-construction” . This excerpt nicely unites the theoretical frames of agroecology and SES, which both endeavor to explain and characterize human-nature interactions. Building a local food system requires an understanding of interdisciplinary topics and collaboration with diverse stakeholders , implicating systems of education in developing personal as well as institutional capacity for working in interdisciplinary, highly collaborative, environmentally literate teams.Piso et al.’s typology of urban agriculture distinguishes between those who are, respectively, urban agricultural stewards, risk managers, food desert irrigators, and urban agricultural contextualists. This typology can be applied to urban farms in the East Bay and has implications for how appropriate local policies might be implemented considering the local mix of farmer typologies in the East Bay agroecosystem. Overall, SES scholarship offers the reminder that “sustainability” of resource management is a collective and shifting concept, meaning different things to different stakeholders in different moments.
Therefore, the work that follows presents multiple meanings of achieving sustainability in local food systems: economic sustainability of small farming operations, social sustainability of farming as a lifestyle, and ecological sustainability of the soil resource.Environmental literacy focuses on capacity building and empowering responsible action of young people and the broader public when it comes to human-nature interactions. It is not a traditional form of “literacy,” measured by knowledge and mental aptitude alone. There is a behavioral, affective element. When facing important social-ecological challenges such as those posed by climate change and the industrial food system, environmental education and literacy offer opportunities to confront challenges through grounded knowledge of local environments complemented by awareness of global environmental realities. Knowledge alone does not inherently lead to behavior change , as climate education scholars have repeatedly shown. Pedagogies such as experiential learning are especially well suited to develop knowledge, agency, and engagement with topics in order to increase the likelihood of desired action and behavior changes. Environmental education “is set to become the largest, most effective tool in combating environmental damage and promoting sustainable development. With the planet facing the dire consequences of climate change and a global effort underway to reduce emissions…the question must be asked: How do we include the environment and sustainable development in our education system?” . Integrating environmental literacy throughout the education system is a working goal of many researchers, educators, and climate activists. Food literacy and climate literacy fall under the environmental literacy umbrella: both are more specific forms of environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that deal with human relationships to the natural world, in the arenas of food production/consumption and overall planetary well being. Climate literacy is a complex and evolving topic in the literature, which simultaneously seeks to better measure it and expand the theorization of “literacy” to include informed and effective action to match the scale of the climate crisis.Within food literacy research and practice, much work has focused on the sourcing and use of local foods in school cafeterias and classrooms. The National Farm to School Network has grown in the past decade into a major driver for incorporating local and healthy foods into K-12 education. NFSN now includes 42,587 schools representing all 50 states . The Farm to School “program model” comprises three elements: school gardens, cafeteria procurement, and education, offering curriculum modules for school garden teachers to reference. Other sub-national efforts to define “Food Education Standards” for K-12 schools have more recently emerged from nonprofit organizations such as PilotLight in Chicago, IL and the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, CA. Despite the importance of the foodclimate nexus noted above, few of these food literacy efforts deal explicitly with climate change, missing an opportunity to build forms of environmental literacy synergistically. In the PilotLight Food Education Standards, produced with collaborators from Columbia’s Teacher’s College and University of Chicago, there are seven simple standards broken down into grade-specific expectations for each standard. The only mention of climate change comes under Standard 3: “Food and the environment are interconnected,” in the Grade 9-12 expectation that students “Assess the impact of climate change on food availability” . There is a gap in food and farm-based K-12 education when it comes to addressing climate change as an integral challenge and impetus for building a better food system. The gap reflects the difficulty felt by many in the K-12 education sector around teaching the topic of climate change with confidence and without controversy. The research of this dissertation fills this gap by developing and evaluating an integrated effort to build food, climate, and overall environmental literacy. Farmer-educator professional development comprises an important component of this overall process. What strategies and best practices exist for developing multiple forms of environmental literacy synergistically? Can food security and climate education challenges be resolved together?