Sustainable Food System AssessmentSustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence.Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The fi nal part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives.The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government offi cials and those working within NGOs.

As co-authors of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service's (AMS) Economics of Local Food Systems Toolkit featured in this special issue, we pose the question of whether standard input-output (I-O) modeling approaches are appropriate for use in community foods work. In this reflective essay, we discuss the underlying data used in the most common assessment tools and suggest that they are not precise enough for estimating the impacts of emergent small local food firms amid rapidly changing contexts, even when modified following generally accepted methodologies. Since the basis of I-O modeling is the understanding that the various sectors of an economy are linked-an output from one sector may be an input to another-we are proposing approaches that make these community linkages more visible to food system practitioners. We wish to advance the idea that placing the focus on how communities build robust multipliers may be a better use of resources than generating multiplier calculations that hold questionable value. We suggest that methodologies derived from social network analysis (SNA) will prove increasingly useful in the impact(s) discussion.

Sustainable Food System AssessmentSustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence.Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The fi nal part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives.The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government offi cials and those working within NGOs.

What if we assessed food systems as systems that are adapting, and not simply as static objects of research? What if we examined their underlying dynamics, rather than limiting ourselves to measuring only performance or impact? What if we embraced the complexity of the moment, and moved beyond linear models? These questions are gaining primacy as the global food movement both grows in complexity and gains momentum.Consider what is taking place in the U.S. this summer of 2010: urban dwellers till vacant lots, lay irrigation pipes, swap seeds, challenge each other to exercise and eat better, and aggregate fresh produce to sell at commercial scale; immigrant farmers adapt seasoned skills and intensely effective work habits to their new homelands, creating highly productive farms; twentysomething, college-educated urban young adults start farms on rooftops; farm commodity groups try to define their stance on local foods; year-round greenhouses move off the fossil fuel grid; urban, suburban, and rural regions launch local foods coalitions; and farm and food businesses explore ways to collaborate with each other to reduce costs and expand market opportunities.

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