Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

IN THIS ISSUE: Righting systemic food and farming inequalities

2026-04-08T02:18:43+00:00

First paragraph:

The spring 2026 issue of the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development brings together a set of contributions that, while they are open-call and not in response to a specific call for papers, collectively examine how food systems are governed, how access and equity are structured, how agroecological transitions unfold, and how knowledge systems and cultural values shape transformation. Across its entire content, the issue reflects a strong throughline of systems thinking, place-based analysis, and an expanding recognition of the wide range of ways of knowing and acting within food systems. . . .

From geographical indication protection to food sovereignty

2026-04-07T17:48:30+00:00

Local food is the consequence of a combination of cultural and physical environment conditions. The distinctive qualities of sub-Saharan African local food are threatened by national agricultural policies that emphasize export crops. Protecting local food offers a path to food sovereignty for rural communities. Geographical indication (GI) labeling protects distinctive local food. This case study examines Gari Sohoui, a processed form of cassava, originating from Savalou District (or Commune) in central Benin. Based on fieldwork, the study explores to what extent GI protected Gari Sohoui can foster local communities’ food sovereignty. The primary actors involved in this food system, farmers and processors, were surveyed through in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews and participant observations. Interviews revealed that labor constraints for weeding present the most important challenges to production. In the absence of practical agroecological alternatives to manage weeds, growers use herbicides that are widely accessible because of the country’s agricultural development strategy. While GI protection of Gari Sohoui in central Benin promises to foster social cohesion, generate substantial economic gains, and promote transition to agroecological practices, the widespread use of herbicides in the case study villages threatens to undermine the status of Gari Sohoui. GI protection for Gari Sohoui empowers local communities to take control of their food systems, especially women, through preservation and valorization of local knowledge while contributing to their food sovereignty.

VALUE CHAIN COORDINATION COLUMN: Turning supply chains into value chains

2026-04-07T17:26:22+00:00

JAFSCD is delighted to share this inaugual column on the topic of value chain coordination. We define VCC as the development of relational infrastructure—networks, information channels, and partnerships—that support thriving and sustainable regional food economies. JAFSCD also announces a new series of program, policy, and practice briefs focused on value chain coordination This series aims to synthesize the current knowledge on coordinating values-based food supply chains into concise, high-impact, practitioner-focused briefs. The series and associated articles are being curated by a JAFSCD Value Chain Coordination Editorial Circle made up of the scholars and practitioners below, who will also jointly produce this quarterly column.

Kathryn Barr, Associate, SupplyChange
Patrick Baur, Associate Professor, University of Rhode Island
Analena Bruce, Assistant Professor, University of New Hampshire
Andrew Carberry, Project Manager, Wallace Center at Winrock International
Eric DeLuca, Consultant, Food Finance Institute
Laura Edwards-Orr, Senior Agricultural Marketing Specialist, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Local and Regional Food Division
Anaya Hall, Postdoctoral Scholar, The Food Connection at the University of Kentucky
Heather (“H”) Nieto-Friga, CEO, SupplyChange
Ashton Potter, Executive Director, The Food Connection at the University of Kentucky
Elliott Smith, Consultant, Kitchen Sync Strategies
Jodee Smith, Executive Director, FARMWISE Indiana
Ye Su, Assistant Professor, Lincoln University of Missouri
Dawn Thilmany, Professor, Colorado State University
Kamran Zendehdel, Research Branch Chief, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Local and Regional Food Division

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At a moment when food systems stakeholders are navigating supply chain disruption, market consolidation, and increasing climate-driven risk, questions of how best to retain or expand benefits for small and midsize farms and food businesses are increasingly urgent. Across various geographies and markets, value chain coordination (VCC) has emerged as a critical lever for addressing these challenges. In this inaugural column, we introduce VCC—a concept that bridges many concerns of JAFSCD readers—and suggest a few topics the series may address. We also provide some context on the first brief, which focuses on how VCC offers a pathway to address challenges associated with institutional purchasing and harness this strategic opportunity to support regional and sustainable food producers.

Impact of conflict on Lebanon’s food industry

2026-04-03T20:51:26+00:00

Against the backdrop of compounded crises, economic collapse, COVID-19, and violent conflict, Lebanon’s food system has become increasingly vulnerable. This study examines war’s impact on Lebanon’s agri-food small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the backbone of its food industry and economic resilience. This study evaluates the impact of war on operational aspects and identifies key recovery priorities by employing a quantitative survey of members of the QOOT cluster, Lebanon’s leading agri-food business network. The results show widespread disruption, with significant challenges in financial performance and market access. Other major concerns include supply chain disruptions, workforce issues, and infrastructure damage. Key business needs identified include emergency financial assistance, alternative market and supplier connections, enhanced workforce safety, and infrastructural support. The findings reveal vulnerability in Lebanon’s agricultural sector due to geopolitical shocks and the urgent need for emergency responses focusing on resilience, diversification, workforce protection, and infrastructure. This research guides humanitarian and development efforts to safeguard food security and economic sustainability.

Virginia independent food retailer perceptions of their role in planetary health promotion

2026-04-03T20:22:40+00:00

Healthy food retail initiatives have been common approaches to promote nutrition security in the U.S.; however, they have under-emphasized planetary health promotion, despite the close connections of healthy earth systems to ensuring nutrition security. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of independent food retail owners and managers about their role in planetary health promotion, identify potential planetary health promotion practices, and describe barriers and facilita tors to implementation. Twelve semi-structured interviews, informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) 2.0, were conducted with independent groceries, cooperatives, and on-farm store members of Virginia Fresh Match, a statewide fruit and vegetable incentive food retailer network. Descriptive inductive codes and a priori barrier and facilitator codes from CFIR constructs were used by two independent coders to describe and categorize the data. Results showed that retailers had a range of interest in planetary health promotion, with cooperatives including planetary health in all business decisions, farm stores primarily focusing on agricultural practices, and grocers most interested in those practices that aligned with profit potential and customer expectations. Among all retailers, amenability to planetary health practices varied by community context. Planetary health practices included: agricultural practices of suppliers, bulk offerings, energy usage, food miles, local foods, animal source protein reduction, and waste reduction. Profit potential and alignment with customer expectations were the most important consideration for retailers to implement any planetary health practice and were barriers and facilitators depending on practice and community context. Partnerships and other external supports were identified as facilitators for planetary health promotion. The results can inform future research that investigates differences in retailer-preferred practices across contexts, explorations of how to frame planetary health messages to align with customer expectations, and tailoring of implementation strategies.

Beyond the shade: Family farmers’ perceptions of silvopastoral systems in the Amazon

2026-03-30T20:00:54+00:00

This exploratory study examines the efforts of family farmers in the Brazilian Amazon to establish silvopastoral systems that integrate trees, pasture, and cattle in the same area. These systems offer an alternative to conventional livestock rearing practices that remain the primary source of income for many impoverished families, and yet are also major drivers of ecological degradation, with far-reaching regional and global climate impacts. Using a qualitative case study approach, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 smallholder families living in zones of rapid soybean expansion to identify the factors that support and constrain the adoption of silvopastoral systems. Our analysis highlights six issues that emerged from farmers’ accounts: the cultural dominance of monoculture agriculture; experiences of ecological problems associated with conventional agriculture; community-based alternatives to dominant agricultural practices; relationships between farmers and technicians involved in silvopastoral implementation; emerging farmer insights on ecological dynamics and biodiverse livestock systems; and the material limits of these innovations. Taken together, these findings advance four key arguments relevant to efforts to build alternatives to environmentally damaging food-production regimes. First, historical settlement patterns, long-standing socio-economic exclusion, and the cultural dominance of conventional agriculture continue to bind many smallholders to conventional livestock systems despite their declining ecological and economic viability. Second, community networks and nongovernmental organizational (NGO) initiatives grounded in Freirean participatory pedagogy can create openings for cooperation, dialogical learning, and the production of situated silvopastoral knowledge. Third, these socio-technical relations foster new practices through which farmers revalue biodiversity as both an ecological and economic asset. Fourth, the adoption of silvopastoral systems remains limited by labor demands, knowledge and skill requirements, and initial environmental conditions that slow system establishment.

Our Food Future: A regional food circularity case study from Canada

2026-03-27T19:48:55+00:00

In response to the socio-economic and environmental limitations of contemporary food systems, a multistakeholder group of community changemakers came together to create Our Food Future, an ambitious effort that aimed to develop a regional circular food system in the Guelph-Wellington region of Ontario, Canada. This study involved interviews with individuals (N = 35) who contributed to the development and/or implementation of Our Food Future’s programming and projects in order to identify lessons learned from this municipally led circular economy initiative. In this article, we argue that the proponents of Our Food Future worked to leverage circular economy and municipal innovation discourses and practices to catalyze a sustainability transformation based in the local food system. Perceived enablers to success include the centrality of relationships and partnerships to the project design, collaborations across traditional city/county divides, the diversity of thought embodied by the workstream model, the focus on food as a locally relevant issue, and the municipal scale of intervention into policy and practice. We also observed that the municipal governance model operationalized in the project was itself an innovation. Our analysis indicates that Our Food Future represented systemic and enabling approaches to sustainability transformations, and that structural transformation will require ongoing efforts to fundamentally change the socio-ecological context of contemporary food systems. This study functions as an early case study of regional food circularity initiatives, with the goal of enabling the project’s lessons to be applied to other locales in Canada and abroad.

Bridging Western and Indigenous epistemologies in an opaque world

2026-03-24T18:47:48+00:00

Food security and food sovereignty represent two similar but distinct pathways for community-led climate adaptation. This study examines how two North American organizations—The Kake Tribal Heritage Foundation (Alaska) and La Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica (Puerto Rico)—integrate Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and Western Science (WS) to strengthen food systems against climate-related challenges such as extreme weather, supply chain disruptions, and socio-economic inequities. Kake focuses on food security, while Organización Boricuá focuses on food sovereignty. We explore how these community organizations leverage sustainable practices, culturally rooted knowledge, and community engagement to build resilience by integrating IK and WS through these differing approaches. While both groups integrate IK and WS, tensions persist between IK’s emphasis on relational, long-term stewardship and WS’s empirical, replicable methods. However, these case studies illustrate how food systems initiatives serve as adaptable climate strategies through integrating local and Indigenous knowledge with broader Western scientific environmental frameworks.

Challenges to production agriculture in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, USA

2026-03-24T18:30:49+00:00

Pottawatomie County, Kansas, features Flint Hills prairie, Oregon Trail history, lots of livestock, and commodity crop production. In 2023, it posted the highest population growth rate in Kansas, with high rates of community well-being and exurban and suburban sprawl. For farmers who have depended on maintaining and adding contiguous farmland to their operations, it has become increasingly difficult for them to compete with the prices that residential and business developers offer for farmland. Primary-occupation farmers also feel threatened by concentrated farm sales, redistricting, and an expanded county commission. I used Flora et al.’s (2016) community capital framework to assess rising tensions between and among stakeholders with interests in farming and nonfarm stakeholders with interests in development. Social capital—which includes social trust, networks, and shared values that people can cultivate and use to improve their livelihoods—was especially germane. To better understand the nature of social capital within and between the two stakeholder groups, I integrated the eco-social symbiotic spectrum (ranging from mutualism to competition) to perform a reflexive thematic analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews. Interviewees shared their experiences with, and perceptions of, the changing county dynamics, revealing how different symbiotic relationships influenced social capital accrual. Interviewees’ perceptions largely depended on their occupation. Primary-occupation farmers viewed their relationships with development stakeholders as parasitic, with the latter benefiting from the former, and their relationships with other farmers as competitive, undermining their social capital. Conversely, secondary-occupation farmers and community leaders expressed commensalism and mutualism with their networks. To ease tensions among stakeholder groups, the county and/or certain townships could implement property tax reforms —to reduce the degree to which farmland owners subsidize exurban and suburban expansion—and invest in more locally produced specialty crop infrastructure.

Scaling up urban agriculture in Tempe, Arizona

2026-03-20T09:02:02+00:00

This paper documents an early-stage participatory planning process to scale up urban agriculture in Tempe, Arizona, an arid, land-constrained city that in four contiguous neighborhoods faces high rates of food insecurity and vulnerability. Using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, a transdisciplinary team of researchers, city staff, and community-based organizations collaborated with neighborhood residents to assess the state of urban agriculture, identify local priorities, and co-develop ten policy recommendations. The process included 86 food access surveys, mapping, practitioner interviews in Tempe and with representatives from six other cities, and community workshops. Residents emphasized the need for urban agriculture spaces that support food production, education, workforce development, and community building. Key barriers included limited funding, volunteer instability, and poor communication of existing resources. Despite water scarcity and land pressures, the study highlights how urban agriculture when water-smart and strategically located can serve as resilience infrastructure and address intersecting civic, environmental, and social goals. The case contributes to growing evidence that participatory planning supported by trusted intermediaries can shape agendas before formal food policy structures exist, and foster civic engagement, social connections, and institutional learning essential for food systems transformation. It serves as an example of pro-connection public engagement that addresses the loneliness epidemic, and proposes recommendations for transitioning from fragmented grassroots efforts to a coordinated, equity-centered urban agriculture system in Tempe. The findings offer insights for other cities exploring participatory food planning in the absence of formal food policy structures.