Locational Advantage and the Impact of Scale: Comparing Local and Conventional Fruit and Vegetable Transportation Efficiencies

Grigsby, Chuck; Hellwinckel, Chad

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2016.063.010

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 118 publications

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“…In a review of USDA data, Bauman et al indicate that until a farm is of sufficient scale to sell into wholesale markets, their farm business is unlikely to succeed without off-farm income (Bauman et al, 2018). Some research indicates that driving produce to farmers markets further than about fifty miles is simply cost-prohibitive (Grigsby and Hellwinckel, 2016).…”

Section: Regional Food System Review and Diagnosismentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Critical Thresholds for Resilient Regional Food Flows: A Case Study From the U.S. Upper Midwest

Miller

2021

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Improving the regional organization of food flow requires an understanding of system constraints. System transformation is necessary if the system is to include regional, independent wholesale food suppliers and to distribute food in an equitable and sustainable manner. Regional suppliers play a pivotal role in overall food system resilience, an emerging issue in wake of the numerous failures in conventional food supply chains exacerbated by COVID-19-related disruptions. Yet alternative supply chains that link local producers with towns and urban centers regionally, represent a small fraction of our nation's food suppliers. They struggle to compete with larger distribution networks that can supply products in-and out-of-season by global procurement. The upper Midwest harbors numerous local and regional food supply chains consisting of farms, processors, trucking companies, wholesalers and other firms that share a commitment to sustainability and local economic development. A constellation of challenges hamper their emergence, however, even as larger scale food supply chains flounder or fail to effectively serve communities. Informed by Donella Meadows's work on leverage points for systemic change, a collaborative, transdisciplinary and systems research effort examined conventional food supply networks and identified key opportunities for shifting food supply chain relationships. System concepts such as stock and flow, leverage points, and critical thresholds helped us to frame and identify challenges and opportunities in the current system. The second and third phase of our collaborative research effort occurred over 4 years (2013–2016) and involved twenty-six people in co-generation of knowledge as a loose-knit team. The team included farmers, supply chain practitioners, students, academic staff and faculty from multiple departments and colleges. Our primary method was to host public workshops with practitioner speakers and participants to identify dominant narratives and key concepts within discourses of different participants in distribution networks. The literature review was iterative, based on challenges, ideas and specific questions discussed at workshops. Our research exposed two meta-narratives shaping the supply chain: diversity and efficiency. In addition to these high-leverage narratives, we identified and examined five key operational thresholds in the Upper Midwest regional food system that could be leveraged to improve food flow in the region. Attention to these areas makes it possible for businesses to operate within environmental limits and develop social structures that can meet scale efficiencies necessary for economic success. We iteratively shared this co-produced knowledge with decision-makers via local food policy councils, local government, and national policy circles with the goal of supplying actionable information. This phased action research project created the environment necessary for a group of food system entrepreneurs to emerge and collaborate, poised to improve system resilience in anticipation of food system disruptions. It forms the basis for on-going research on food flow, regional resilience, and supply chain policy.

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Section: Regional Food System Review and Diagnosismentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Critical Thresholds for Resilient Regional Food Flows: A Case Study From the U.S. Upper Midwest

Miller

2021

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…Appalachia continues to operate many of the nation's part-time farms with operators often retired from industry. A key challenge for local food producers is accessing new markets (Grigsby and Hellwinckel 2016). Farming households lease land to other fulltime farmers, sell hay for cattle and equestrian markets, or raise their own cattle to survive.…”

Section: Mountain Farming In a Global Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinventing Mountain Food Traditions and Small Farm Survival in Southern Appalachia

Baker

2017

Martor

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For over four decades, social scientists have addressed the relationship between development strategies and Appalachia’s highland cultural traditions. Historically, mountain foodways and diversified agricultural practices were defined as aspects of primitive folkways legitimating resource extractive industries and centralized development strategies. Today, the region contains many of the nation’s remaining family farms. The processes of globalization and growing demand for local foods are introducing highland farming traditions to new audiences. This case study looks at the emerging role family farms in the East Tennessee valley are playing in development and the social construction of the region’s foodways. Drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, I focus first on the historical roots and continuity of the region’s culinary tradition. Highland foods represent the core of mountain culture grounded in the ecological and economic experiences of its rural communities. Next the paper discusses the emergence of markets for place-based foods focusing on community development, tourism and a local foods-based culinary renaissance.

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Quantifying the foodshed: a systematic review of urban food flow and local food self-sufficiency research

Schreiber

Hickey

Metson

et al. 2021

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Cities are net consumers of food from local and global hinterlands. Urban foodshed analysis is a quantitative approach for examining links between urban consumers and rural agricultural production by mapping food flow networks or estimating the potential for local food self-sufficiency (LFS). However, at present, the lack of a coherent methodological framework and research agenda limits the potential to compare different cities and regions as well as to cumulate knowledge. We conduct a review of 42 peer-reviewed publications on foodsheds (identified from a subset of 829 publications) from 1979 to 2019 that quantify LFS, food supply, or food flows on the urban or regional scale. We define and characterize these studies into three main foodshed types: (1) agricultural capacity, which estimate LFS potential or local foodshed size required to meet food demands; (2) food flow, which trace food movements and embodied resources or emissions; and (3) hybrid, which combine both approaches and study dynamics between imports, exports, and LFS. LFS capacity studies are the most common type but the majority of cases we found in the literature were from cities or regions in the Global North with underrepresentation of rapidly urbanizing regions of the Global South. We use a synthetic framework with ten criteria to further classify foodshed studies, which illustrates the challenges of quantitatively comparing results across studies with different methodologies. Core research priorities from our review include the need to explore the interplay between LFS capacity and interregional food trade (both imports and exports) for foodsheds. Hybrid methodologies are particularly relevant to examining such dependency relationships in food systems by incorporating food flows into LFS capacity assessment. Foodshed analysis can inform policy related to multiple components of sustainable food systems, including navigating the social and environmental benefits and tradeoffs of sourcing food locally, regionally, and globally.

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Locational Advantage and the Impact of Scale: Comparing Local and Conventional Fruit and Vegetable Transportation Efficiencies

Cited by 4 publications

References 118 publications

Identifying Critical Thresholds for Resilient Regional Food Flows: A Case Study From the U.S. Upper Midwest

Identifying Critical Thresholds for Resilient Regional Food Flows: A Case Study From the U.S. Upper Midwest

Reinventing Mountain Food Traditions and Small Farm Survival in Southern Appalachia

Quantifying the foodshed: a systematic review of urban food flow and local food self-sufficiency research

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