Category Archives: News and Events

Critical Food Policy Literacy by Carol E. Ramos-Gerena

Food policies should be informed by those who they intend to serve, but policy-making processes remain exclusive to privileged voices, knowledge, and experiences.

In this article, Carol E. Ramos-Gerena asks: What do people know by becoming food policy literate? And who benefits or loses when a particular definition of food policy literacy becomes the norm? This paper conceptualizes critical food policy literacy for municipal food policy transformations. Click here to read the full article: https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/1135/1106

https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2023.122.008

Kashmir’s Women Scientists

Kashmir’s Women Scientists

Historically, the women in Kashmir have remained empowered enough to be part of every sphere of life. Though they have traditionally picked a set of jobs as their careers in education, governance, business and medical science to suit their homemaking role, some of them have opted for challenging careers. Humaira Nabi talks to a number of Kashmir women scientists detailing their journeys in the challenging field and their core research focus

By Kashmir Life – 8:53 pm February 11, 2023

“A Darker Wilderness” , a Book Talk by Erin Sharkey

Erin Sharkey will speak about her incredible book A Darker Wilderness at 6:00 PM on Tuesday May 23, 2023 in 403 Hayes Hall, UB South Campus.

“What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of [the] essays [in the book] engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.”

About Erin Sharkey

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the cofounder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt and is the producer of film projects including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film project, and Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Jerome Foundation. Sharkey was recently awarded the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. Erin is a cofounding coop member and steward of Rootsprings, a rest and respite retreat center in central MN. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Join UB Food Lab in welcoming Erin Sharkey to Buffalo to read and reflect on this remarkable project.

UB alumna leads Buffalo Freedom Gardens

UB alumna leads Buffalo Freedom Gardens.

If you listen to the people and use your education, you can make change happen. You can be a community asset. ” Gail V. Wells, founder Freedom Gardens

By CHARLOTTE HSU Published July 13, 2022

Summer is here, and with the arrival of the growing season, an initiative called Buffalo Freedom Gardens has given dozens of residents of Buffalo’s East Side neighborhoods a free raised bed garden.

On a Saturday in June, volunteers including UB Food Lab members joined Freedom Gardens founder Gail V. Wells to make the last of this year’s deliveries.

The team packed cedar wood planters, each expected to last at least a decade, into a U-Haul truck, along with bags of soil. Freedom Gardens recipients also get seeds and vegetable seedlings, garden gloves, a bright green watering can, and instructions on caring for the plants.

Each garden is a thing of joy — and an act of liberation, says Wells, a UB alumna who remains connected to the university community.

She points out that food has long been central to movements for freedom: “For Black people who are descendants of kidnapped and enslaved Africans, the way we could secure our safety and our families and build an economy for ourselves was first based on us being able to feed ourselves,” she says.

The Idea That A (urban) Planner Is A Genius With Grand Ideas Is Bogus

By Masood Hussain 12:33 pm January 28, 2023

Dr Samina Raja plans cities, towns, and regions to promote health and food equity. An award-winning professor and founder of a globally recognized Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities laboratory, operating from the University of Buffalo, she and her team conduct research on how to develop equitable, sustainable, and healthy cities. Her research has been used to advise local and national governments within and outside the US, and international organizations like the UN’s FAO. In a freewheeling interview with Masood Hussain, she offers her ideas about Kashmir of her imagination.

Andrew Galarneau: Grassroots efforts help water seeds of food security on East Side

June 5, 2022 | Buffalo News, The: Web Edition Articles (NY)

Author/Byline: Andrew Galarneau | Section: Local

Samina Raja, an internationally known University at Buffalo expert on building sustainable food systems and healthy communities, has spent more than 20 years studying how to help feed people living in neighborhoods without groceries, concentrating on Buffalo’s East Side.

The solution, in her estimation, is a classic case of something being simple, but not easy.

“The city’s Black neighborhoods need sustained structural investments, not fly-in, fly-out charity,” she and other UB Food Lab researchers said in an op-ed published at CivilEats.com.

“We are unlikely to remedy food inequities” without a greater understanding of what causes poor food environments, says Samina Raja, associate dean for research and inclusive excellence, and principal investigator of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo.

Allison DeHonney is shown making a food delivery in August 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Buffalo News file photo

What do people need to know before they can transform municipal food policies?

New research by UB Food Lab member Carol E Ramos-Gerena in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2023.122.008

INTRODUCTION

Food policies should be informed by those who they intend to serve, but policy-making processes remain exclusive to privileged voices, knowledge, and experiences. This article bridges food and policy scholarship with the critical literacy work of Paulo Freire to answer: how do we understand literacies tied to food policy? What does (or, what could) it mean to be food policy literate? In a new JAFSCD article, Carol E. Ramos-Gerena proposes five principles for conceptualizing critical food policy literacy that support food system transformations.

KEY FINDINGS

The paper suggests that efforts to promote critical food policy literacy must facilitate communities to (a) “read the world,” (b) “read the word,” (c) be critically aware of food policy processes and systems, (d) learn contextually and through authentic practice, and (e) enable people to negotiate and transform the world (their context) collectively.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH

Possessing knowledge on engaging with food policy processes is not commensurate with actual engagement. Thus, structural barriers to community participation must also be addressed. Food system planners and educators, particularly at the municipal level, should support locally-based citizen food organizations to engage in food policy. This support must go beyond assessing communities’ food policy literacy. Instead, it must intend to bridge the gap to ensure critical readiness for food policy engagement.

For questions and suggestions, contact us at foodsystems@ap.buffalo.edu.

Building Capacity for Food Equity Research in Crisis Settings

How do scholars co-produce knowledge with community partners and early career researchers? How can this work happen in an equitable way in cities and regions that are in the throes of conflict? A panel from the UB Food lab tackles this question drawing on their collaborative research in Jammu and Kashmir. Speakers Insha Akram (Fellow and Trainee), Athar Parvaiz (Research Affiliate), and Samina Raja (Director, Food Lab) will share insights from their collaboration as part of the Building Blocks of Equity Series hosted by the Community for Global Health Equity.

The aim of the larger series is to encourage participants to:

discover how co-produced knowledge can promote health equity for individuals;
understand the importance of training students to ethically and responsibly work with community partners;
learn how to develop reciprocal partnerships early on in academic careers;
discuss barriers to educating students on how to co-produce knowledge.

The event will be held on May 5, 2022 at 3:00 PM via Zoom.

For more information and registration click here.

Latest Podcast | Food equity in cities with Leslie Knox, Rose Luciano, and Samina Raja | Connections with Evan Dawson

How can Rochester rebuild its food infrastructure to make the system more equitable? Cities around the country are asking this question. The answers often include community gardens, urban farms, fresh food cooperatives, and more.

University at Buffalo urban planning professor, Samina Raja, will be in Rochester next week to discuss the issue as part of the Reshaping Rochester series. The podcast preview her talk on food equity by design.

Food Equity by Design

Speaker: Samina Raja, PhD
Wed, April 27, 2022 | 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST via ZOOM

17^th Annual reshaping ROCHESTER series, Community Design Center, Rochester, NY

Dr. Samina Raja will deliver a virtual lecture at the 17^th reSHAPING ROCHESTER series. This year the series focuses on what it means for a city to be “ideal,” and asks if/how a community could become ideal. Dr. Raja will focus her remarks on the ideal of food equity in cities.

Cities around the United States are rebuilding their community food infrastructure. Community gardens, urban farms, farmers’ markets, rooftop gardens, and fresh food cooperatives are transforming food landscapes. How does this resurgent interest in communities’ food infrastructure center questions of equity and justice, if at all? Who controls food landscapes in cities? What role can planning and design play in creating a more just and equitable community food infrastructure? Drawing on community-centered research completed in US cities, Dr. Samina Raja will explore these questions in her talk as part of the Reshaping Rochester series.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reshaping-rochester-webinar-with-dr-samina-raja-tickets-244428290597?aff=site