@article{Meter_2012, place={Ithaca, NY, USA}, title={METRICS FROM THE FIELD: Learning Together}, volume={2}, url={https://foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/102}, DOI={10.5304/jafscd.2012.023.016}, abstractNote={<p><em>First paragraphs:</em></p><p><em>In this issue, Ken Meter looks at two contrasting models of knowledge-building. One extracts resources from communities. Another, often practiced by extension educators, builds capacity both at the university and in the community by convening people to learn together.</em></p><p>In a previous column (volume 2, issue 2), I showed how the food the economy extracts resources from communities (Meter, 2012). When this is true, the essential core of food system work is to build capacity at the grassroots — especially in those rural and inner-city areas that have been the most depleted, or most marginalized.</p><p>My basic rule is that more capacity should be built in the community that is intended to be "served" by a given project than in the partnering university or nonprofit. Furthermore, the work should leverage and add to existing assets in the community, rather than undermining them through change.</p><p>Even for those scholars who dedicate their careers to community-building, work at the grassroots is far more unkempt and unpredictable than working within the academic sphere. More-over, the official rewards are typically sparse...</p>}, number={3}, journal={Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development}, author={Meter, Ken}, year={2012}, month={Jun.}, pages={11–12} }