Audited engagement: Making agri-food community development “count” in higher education and beyond

Abstract

Community engagement is central to work in agri­culture, food systems, and community develop­ment, especially within land-grant universities and extension programs. Recently, these efforts have been communicated increasingly through annual impact reports, engagement summaries, and out­reach dashboards to demonstrate their relevance, accountability, and public value. This paper pre­sents a reflective, curiosity-driven, document-based analysis of publicly available engagement and impact reports from several universities, extension systems, and related organizations involved in agri-food and community development. It explores how these reporting practices influence what is regarded as meaningful engagement. The paper introduces the concept of “audited engagement” to describe a situation where engagement is recog­nized and valued mainly through quantifiable indi­cators such as participation, reach, and activity. These indicators serve important institutional pur­poses: they make engagement visible to funders and stakeholders, justify ongoing investment, and shield engagement from marginalization. However, they often emphasize process over transformation. While reports document efforts such as events held, partnerships formed, and people reached, they tend to fall short of capturing structural changes, long-term redistribution, or shifts in authority, which are central to justice-oriented agri-food systems work. Instead of assessing specific programs or suggesting new metrics, the paper offers a conceptual analysis of how engagement is increasingly managed through reporting. This clari­fies how evaluation practices shape what engage­ment can reasonably achieve and what remains hard to articulate.