Strengthening the core,improving access: Bringing healthy food downtown via a farmers' market move

Diet-related diseases are a major public health concern, and food environment research explores how built environmental interventions can address nutritional inequalities. Yet other, more direct intervention approaches may also yield positive benefits for residents living in food deserts. This paper presents a case study of a farmers' market move and its effects on healthy food accessibility and customer characteristics in a community with many food deserts. 844 surveys collected in 2011 and 2015 determine customer purchasing patterns and demographics at the Flint (Michigan) Farmers' Market. The market move has meant improved healthy food accessibility for mobility-constrained and low-income residents throughout the region. Counter to past research suggesting that farmers' markets tend to serve higher income groups, socioeconomically disadvantaged people constitute a major consumer demographic at Flint's market. The results of this research have broad utility for communities seeking to ameliorate the challenges of bringing healthy food to isolated food deserts by demonstrating that positioning healthy food in a prominent, central location will attract residents from such neighborhoods while engaging a broad clientele.     

CREATIVE PRESERVATION IN CALIFORNIA'S DAIRY INDUSTRY*

ABSTRACT. Farmers in Marin and Sonoma Counties, located north of San Francisco, are experimenting with numerous alternatives to California's widely known industrial dairy style. Many analysts suggest that consumer politics, food scares, and globalization explain such shifts to organic and other types of “quality” food production. While acknowledging the importance of these factors, we argue that the alternatives in this region are best understood as an outcome of broad‐based land‐conservation efforts developed through historical and ongoing struggles over urban growth, rising concerns about environmental values, and deep regional interests in dairy preservation. Over time, preservation of this agricultural landscape has contributed to the emergence of a quality food industry historically rooted in the region's politics of place.     

TRACEABILITY: TRACKING AND PRIVACY IN THE FOOD SYSTEM*

ABSTRACT. Lapses in food safety have spurred development of governmental traceability systems to track every stage of food production as part of a standardized information base. These systems form part of national and international government efforts to reduce food‐security risks and control food‐related disease outbreaks. The European Union, the United States, Japan, and Canada have traceability requirements now in various stages of implementation, as does the Codex Alimentarius. Traceability regulations require that, from farm (plant or animal) to fork, foods have a clear, verifiable record that tracks through all stages of cultivation, production, supplying, transporting, processing, and distribution. Traceability implies complete information control over the geography of one of life's most essential acts, eating. The apparent object of traceability is food, which seems to imply that human tracking is not part of the process, but food does not move on its own. Those people responsible at each stage for food transfers and transactions may go into the traceability database, making their locations part of the record and supporting precise monitoring of labor performance, consumer buying patterns, and ownership and management strategies. Given these capabilities, the development of public‐sector traceability systems demands careful consideration. Owners, especially large exporters and importers, are likely to see their needs and fears shape the system. The food workforce may well bear tracking's brunt. Consumers, the presumed beneficiaries of the systems, will probably resist direct incorporation (and full benefit), favoring their privacy over their safety.     

Urban migrant women’s everyday food insecurity coping strategies foster alternative urban imaginaries of a more democratic food system

Urban migrant women worldwide utilize a creative combination of food insecurity coping strategies to procure food for themselves and their families. Using in-depth interviews with 72 migrant women in Medellín, Colombia, and Washington, DC, this paper argues that in low-income urban communities these everyday strategies can further their demands for autonomy in determining what foods they produce and consume. Relying on feminist geography and food sovereignty literature, this research explores how migrant women living in poverty rely on informal networks for growing and sharing food, seek out organic, fresh foods, and utilize independent survival strategies to counter exclusionary rhetoric and a food system they view as unhealthy. In doing so, they devise alternative urban imaginaries of a more democratic food system. This research contributes a more nuanced understanding of the food insecurity experiences of urban migrant women.     

中国保健食品的结构特征及其发展趋向

保健食品是具有与生物防御、生物节律调整、防止疾病、恢复健康等有关的功能因素,经设计加工,对生物体有明显调整功能的食品。我国保健食品始于1980年,20年来,随着国民经济的发展和科学技术水平的提高,保健食品的生产和消费也迅速发展。截止2002年底,全国保健食品生产企业848家,当年具有批准文号的产品共1 474种。本文对保健食品的功能、区域、产品原料、所有制、产品剂型、质量管理等方面进行了分析。分析表明:从产品功能看,主要集中于免疫调节功能、调节血脂、抗疲劳的产品,这3类产品共占全部保健食品市场的61.7%;从区域特征看,半数以上的企业仍集中在沿海地区;从保健食品原料分类看,以中草药原料为主,占44.5%;从所有制结构看,民营企业为主,已占全部保健食品企业的17.9%;从产品剂型结构看,胶囊剂(软/硬)是主打剂型,占56.4%;科技投入占当年产品销售收人的2.3%;全国仅有13.1%企业通过GMP和ISO体系认证。最后分别从中老年、中青年和青少年3个消费群提出了今后保健食品的发展方向。     

Staging the Local: rethinking scale in farmers' markets

Local food has become a significant focus of food studies analysis in recent years with much of this work identifying the potential environmental, social and economic benefits of food localisation. However, a growing body of literature destabilises these assumed benefits with research now questioning the utility of scale in assessing food system outcomes. This paper explores this destabilisation by examining how concepts associated with the ‘local’ have been deployed by the Capital Region Farmers Market (CRFM) in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). This leads to two key conclusions: firstly, the practical case study confirms theoretical insights highlighting the instability of the local, identifying how it is animated in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways often in response to conventional market forces; and secondly, we argue that the role of farmers' markets may not be best understood through the lens of the local but, rather, through their role in facilitating citizen engagement with the food system via the direct consumer–producer relationship at markets and the characteristics of the food purchased there (i.e. freshness and quality). In these ways, farmers' markets can disrupt conventional forms of engagement with the food system, creating a space that enhances social embeddedness and which may promote new forms of consumer understanding of food systems.     

Farmers’ Dual Roles in Food Safety:Perceptions and Countermeasures

Farmers are both the producers and consumers of food, and as such have a dual role in food safety: they both generate risks and are exposed to them. Based upon a survey of the food production and consumption habits of 140 farm households and long-term research in two villages in Yunnan province, this study found that rural families are highly dependent on the market for food production and consumption. In their role as consumers, farmers are aware of food safety risks and concerned about them, but their ability to protect themselves is limited. They do so primarily by avoiding certain products and growing as much of their own food as possible. At the same time, in their role as producers, farmers engage in practices, primarily the overuse and inappropriate use of fertilizer and pesticides, that are damaging to food safety and the environment. There is therefore a disconnect in their roles as consumers and producers that needs to be addressed if policy goals for improving food safety and reducing the use of agricultural chemicals are to be achieved. Farmers need more information about food safety risks related to the products they consume themselves, and technical guidance on the safe use of farm chemicals when growing food for market. However, such measures will not be effective unless the external pressures on farmers are also addressed, through consideration of market incentives to use farm chemicals and the impact of consumer demand.     

Measuring Food Deserts via GIS-Based Multicriteria Decision Making: The Case of Tehran

The purpose of this article is to identify food deserts using a geographic information system (GIS)-based multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach in the city of Tehran. We have found that, compared to technocratic methods, GIS-based MCDM and taking into account people or their agents' opinions in the food deserts analysis leads to different results. Whereas measuring food deserts based on the distance to large retail food stores indicated that a large part of the northern neighborhoods of Tehran do not have access to large food stores, identifying the food desert through the GIS-based MCDM approach revealed that northern neighborhoods of Tehran have relatively good access to healthy, affordable food. In addition, results indicated that individual factors have a more effective role than environmental factors in food accessibility. Food accessibility analysis revealed that more than 26.6 percent of Tehran's people (2,049,796) are living in very low and low food accessibility areas. Accordingly, to achieve a relatively healthy and inclusive food environment, establishment of a food council, development of mobile food markets and farmers' markets, extension of public transport, enhancement of food literacy, and community-based development of small full-service grocery stores, especially in southern and western sections of Tehran, should be pursued. In addition, addressing Tehran's food desert issues would be incomplete without due attention to the wider political and economic environment.     

FOOD CONSUMPTION AND NUTRITION IN RURAL AREAS OF MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA (WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SAGAR DIVISION)

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可持续饮食系统的研究进展与理论框架

20世纪以来,伴随农业的工业化和食物链条的“远距化”,典型食物危机事件不断涌现并沿着食物贸易网络蔓延至全球,引发了学界对饮食系统及其可持续性的持久关注。国外地理学界关于饮食系统主要有生产主义、消费主义和关系主义等认识。在梳理已有概念内涵的基础上,将这三类认识归结为不同情境下、特定形式的“身体-食物”关系,进而构建了以饮食原真、饮食安全、饮食健康为内在线索,以去地化和再地化为外在情境的分析框架,并藉此分析饮食系统的演变过程,提炼其可持续逻辑。进一步地,从“身体-食物”与“地方”的关系视角详细阐述了上述三个维度的具体内涵,并归纳了饮食原真与饮食安全、饮食原真与饮食健康以及饮食安全与饮食健康的交叉议题。     

Smell this: Singapore's curry day and visceral citizenship

In August 2011, many Singaporean citizens grabbed their cooking pots and used the city‐state's national obsession with food to express growing dissatisfaction with immigration and integration trends. The ‘cook and share a pot of curry’ event—a local response to Chinese newcomers complaining about the smell of their Indian Singaporean neighbours’ food—is significant for its use of smell to catalyse a collective citizen reaction and for its reliance on contemporary social media. By analysing this event, we intend to (1) conceptualize the role of smell and viscera in framing citizenship; (2) understand how smells shed light on the city‐state's contemporary ethnic politics and sense of national identity; and (3) reframe the significance of curry day as an expression of visceral citizenship that complements how the state frames Singaporean citizenry. We maintain that curry day sheds light on a specific dimension of Singaporean citizenship, as it uses smell, viscera and embodied activism to mobilize against rationalistic state‐defined distinctions between local and international concerns, economic objectives and social cohesion, inter‐racial harmony and national identity.     

消费升级视角下城市生活服务空间的演变及影响因素研究——以武汉菜市场为例

消费升级时代孕育了生活性服务新业态,改变了生活服务业的城市空间格局。论文以菜市场作为生活服务空间的代表,选取武汉市这一中国城市消费升级样本及城市疫后复苏“风向标”作为典型案例区,结合GIS空间计量和STATA统计分析,探讨菜市场综合体系的形成过程、类型差异和影响因素。研究发现：① 武汉市菜市场经历了传统农贸市场主导—零售新业态扩张—社区尺度回落的历程,形成以大卖场生鲜部、农贸市场、生鲜超市及社区菜场为主的复合型生活服务空间,并在疫后展现出一定韧性;② 武汉市菜市场整体上由双核心向多核心转变,由城市中心向外围延伸,且呈现出农贸市场“团簇状”、生鲜超市“条型”、大卖场“点状”、社区菜场“蝶形”的分类型差异化格局;③ 全业态菜市场布局受社会、经济、区位和发展基础影响显著,传统业态受市场和区位要素影响显著,零售新业态受经济要素和前期菜市场集聚程度的影响显著,且消费升级态势下新建菜市场选址更加偏好购物中心代表的体验式消费场所。研究结果对于丰富现代菜市场体系的类型研究,拓展城市生活服务空间研究的学科视域具有一定理论意义,同时对于优化城市生活服务空间结构以满足居民日益增长的美好生活需要和服务品质追求具有一定现实价值。     

跨地方饮食品牌重塑的理论模型与实证分析

采用结构方程模型,构建了基于原产地形象,在地消费文化,品牌知名度,感知质量,品牌忠诚度,购买意愿等6个概念的理论模型,以广州哈根达斯为例,探讨文化地理因素如何作用于哈根达斯在中国的跨地方品牌重塑.研究发现:① 哈根达斯借助品牌重塑已在中国广泛确立其高档冰激凌品牌定位,实现了品牌升级,价格成为品牌升级的表征;② 原产地形象,在地消费文化均显著正向影响品牌知名度及感知质量,进一步对品牌忠诚度及购买意愿产生积极影响;③ 哈根达斯的品牌知名度对品牌忠诚度的影响不显著,感知质量对购买意愿的影响不显著;④ 不同于购买频率低的消费者,购买频率高的消费者的感知质量不再受原产地形象和在地消费文化的影响.本研究有助于推进跨地方饮食文化生产理论的发展,也是对品牌重塑理论的补充,将促进饮食地理领域的国际对话.     

Community Development Approaches to Heart Health Promotion: A Geographical Perspective

This paper reports results of a qualitative study of community development approaches to heart health promotion in Ontario. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a substantial proportion of the burden of illness experienced by western industrialized countries. Biomedical research has implicated lifestyle choices and socioeconomic conditions as primary determinants of CVD. There has been a resultant shift from curative to preventive/health promoting strategies to reduce this burden of illness. The Canadian Heart Health Initiative-Ontario Project (CHHIOP), a two-stage (quantitative and qualitative) longitudinal study, was designed to address issues of heart health promotion through the investigation and strengthening of community-based heart health activities in both the formal and informal public health systems. The study reported on in this paper forms one part of the qualitative stage and focuses on how community relationships and community development approaches play out in local contexts to shape the reality of (heart) health promotion practice. Analysis of key informant interviews using Ethnograph illustrates the centrality of community context, the lack of a common understanding of key concepts (e.g., community development), and the emergence of a shift in health agencies' ways of doing business characterized by increased partnering and collaboration in the delivery of (heart) health promotion programs. Local perspectives and the dynamics of intra-community relations were allowed to emerge through the use of qualitative approaches implying a need for place-sensitive (heart) health promotion strategies.     

PERI‐URBAN AGROFORESTRY IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT. Together, urbanization and the search for sustainable development present a dilemma in the Brazilian Amazon: how to accommodate an expanding urban population while creating and maintaining sustainable production systems that feed the people and manage the forest. A unique peri‐urban agroforestry project, implemented by a municipal government in western Amazonia and concerned with a citywide influx of rural agriculturalists and former forest‐dwelling extractive producers, is examined as a source of food and self‐determination. Peri‐urban agroforestry seems to be a viable option for other Amazonian cities that are experiencing increasing urbanization and its associated problems.     

The Mobile Street Food Service Practice in the Urban Economy of Kumba, Cameroon

The mobile food service practice is one of multiple survival strategies adopted by poor urban households in Cameroon to maintain and expand the base of subsistence incomes, especially in the current surge of economic crisis. Though a fast-growing informal sector enterprise, it is still at an artisanal stage in urban Cameroon, creating an urgent need for a supportive policy environment that could have measurable positive impacts on improving the productivity, welfare and income levels of the micro-entrepreneurs. This study looks at the mobile food service practice in Kumba, Cameroon, in terms of its basic characteristics, the locational factors influencing its socio-spatial distribution, the critical success factors (CSFs) determining customer choices, and its impacts on the local environmental resources and quality of urban life. The mobile food service practice creates employment, generates income, and acts as a food energy-support instrument to the urban poor and local economic activities operating in Kumba. The vendors, who are mostly women, can make incomes that are 405 per cent of the national minimum wage and, thus, contribute financially towards the education, health and survival of their families. The paper provides some recommendations on ways to improve the efficiency of this sector so as to achieve sustainable economic and social development and to enhance empowerment thereof.     

Perceptions of Food Safety by Urban Consumers in Nanjing,China

The past decade has seen what could reasonably be called an explosion in the number of food-related crises in China. Food safety issues represent a national crisis threatening the physical and psychological health of Chinese citizens, despite the repeated adoption of stringent food safety laws and regulations. This project, based on a stratified random sample of 337 households in Nanjing, assesses perceptions related to different food safety concerns and issues among urban residents and explores differences in perceptions across social strata as defined by socioeconomic and demographic variables using principal component analysis and standard statistical tests.     

Registering regional speciality food and drink products in the United Kingdom: the case of PDOs and PGls

Summary Regional food products are of contemporary interest as people are increasingly concerned to know where food comes from and how it is produced. Geographers have been slow to examine the link between product and place and this paper provides initial insights into the uptake of a European regulation designed to protect and promote high quality regional food and drink products in the United Kingdom. The early adopters of EU quality marks are shown to use them to protect their names from cheaper imitations rather than as a marketing device. Bureaucracy and costs of implementation, together with a lack of consumer knowledge, are likely to prevent rapid future adoption in the UK.     

城市化背景下食物系统耦合研究的理论框架及优先方向

受城市化、地域功能分化、生产要素优化配置和交通网络快速扩展等因素影响,区域之间资源要素的流动已成为区域可持续发展的内在需求。在这种背景下,人类与地理环境互动模式的网络化就要求地理学研究采取全程耦合范式,即将区域内部、区域与周边区域、以及非邻接区域之间的人地互动同时纳入考虑。食物系统作为衔接乡村与城市、以及产地与全球消费市场的产业链和价值链,是开展人地系统近远程耦合研究的重要切入点。基于这种认识,本文在论证理论研究内在依据及外在条件的基础上,将食物系统的构成要素与远程耦合框架相结合,建立“城市化驱动下食物系统近远程耦合的理论框架”并论述该理论框架的具体内涵。以拓展理论框架中的前沿领域为基本导向并结合国家重大战略需求,本文进一步明确了食物系统耦合研究的基本问题和4个亟待突破的优先研究方向。其中,基本问题是食物域的格局特征、时空演化及其动力机制。4个优先方向则包括：耦合社会经济文化变迁与生物地球化学循环的供应链网络人地互动研究;食物系统近远程耦合效应及其调控策略研究;基于食物系统的城乡融合与长效脱贫机制研究;以及面向公共卫生安全的食物系统跨区域、多层次治理研究。本文最后设计了食物系统耦合研究的一般技术路径,研究结果可为进一步的案例实证提供理论支撑和研究思路参考。     

土地资源约束下的北京食物供给潜力与优化(英文)

全球气候变化所带来的极端天气的频繁发生,水资源短缺情况下的农业用水的不断减少和伴随着人口增长与社会经济发展所引起的耕地面积下降,正在严重影响着世界范围内的食物安全。近年来由于食品价格的迅猛增长而导致的食品危机正在引起人们对增加地方食物供应的普遍关注。城市作为对食品安全更为敏感的地区,更是首当其冲受到食品危机的影响,城市一方面由于城市化快速发展,带来城市人口膨胀和消费多样性要求,从而形成需求的大幅增加,另一方面有由于城市周边耕地面积的不断减少,农业生产空间受到压缩,农业生产能力减弱,降低了城市的自我食品供给,引起自给率明显下降。如何保持供需之间的平衡,保障城市食品安全,成为亟需研究的问题。本文提出以食物足迹的概念,来衡量城市所间接消耗的土地资源,并以此为工具,以自给率为条件,来求得满足一定自给率条件下食物供给的空间对应格局。通过分析30年来北京食物足迹以及食物自给率的年际变化,得出结论:北京食物足迹从1981年的1.18万km2增加到2010年的2.94万km2,而自给率整体下降较多,蔬菜、水果、谷物及油脂类的自给率从1981年的59.3%、35.8%、37.3% 和 13.1% 下降到2010年的39.0%、27.0%、6.7% 和2.2%,可以看出蔬菜仍能保持相当的自给率,因此提高蔬菜自给率是增强城市自给能力的最佳选择。最后,以60%的蔬菜自给率为目标,提出了两种情景,包括完全以耕地为来源的空间应对格局,以及屋顶农业参与下的空间应对格局。