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Conventional food systems are viewed by the literature as unsustainable in that they provide consumers with convenience while disconnecting them from producers thus leading to environmental and social problems. By contrast, sustainable or "alternative" food systems are viewed as correcting such problems. Wholesale produce auctions, which are well established in the Old Order Mennonite community, are physical sites where large quantities of produce are sold through a competitive bidding process to local buyers. These are seen as a way of better connecting producers and consumers and thus realizing a more sustainable food system. However, this potential has not been tested. Therefore, this paper explores two produce auctions in southwestern Ontario, Canada, using an interview based methodology (N = 48) and demonstrates that despite wholesale produce auctions offering many opportunities to promote the benefits of alternative food systems, produce auctions are limited in that they fail to provide a practical and functional way of distributing food to individual consumers. Overall, this research highlights what appears to be a tension in the alternative food systems literature: producers and consumers may be simultaneously looking for the sustainability benefits associated with "alternative food systems" without wanting to sacrifice any of the convenience found in conventional food systems.

In recent years, interest in alternative food systems (AFS) has grown both in the popular imagination and in the academic literature. The literature is rife with justifications (or hopes) for the continued and necessary expansion of AFS in the face of unsustainable conventional food provisioning. Within the next five years it will be important to determine how to make alternatives more stable in order for them to play a more prominent role in battling the food insecurity and other social and economic challenges equated with agro-industrial foods. The goal of this commentary is to demonstrate some highly context-specific challenges and possible research trajectories in both the global South and the global North. We argue that in the global South more robust data collection can strengthen local food systems and traditional foods research, while in the global North, food skills and food literacy research may be important for scaling up and making alternative food systems more stable without compromising important social and economic ideals.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath has been conducting an undergraduate engine-related design exercise at Rolls-Royce, Bristol since 2000. Each year a team of six undergraduates complete an engine-related design project under supervision from the company between February and September. This work is coordinated and assessed at both the company and university, and counts overall as 20% of the student’s four-year degree. In addition to working at Rolls-Royce, the students submit reports and give seminars at the university. The design exercise is predominantly technical in nature but must include a significant business element. The students are paid as company employees, typically £7.2k for the six months. This paper describes the design exercise and how it is accommodated into the undergraduate programme of study at the University of Bath. The benefits to the university, the students and the company are discussed. In addition, the six students undertaking the 2005 exercise describe their projects. This year there were three projects, two of which were continuations from previous design exercises. The three projects are listed below. Aero-Engine Rotor-Dynamics (V Cheng and S Peet): An experimental and computation study of engine vibration using a rotor-dynamics rig, simulating the engine. The aim was to assess the accuracy and improve the modeling techniques used at Rolls-Royce. Implementing Design for Environment on Gas turbine engines using a Design Tool (W Mezzulo): A study to create a tool to enable the designer to evaluate the environmental aspects of the life of an engine component. Aero-thermodynamics of aero-engines (M Child, R Johnson and C Pattinson): Various design aspects of aero-engines, both computational and business. Note that M Child’s project is not discussed here for reasons of Rolls-Royce proprietary and confidentiality.

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