Category Archives: News

Updating Municipal database

Do you know of a local jurisdiction that has adopted or updated policies related to urban agriculture or land access in the past ten years? The UB Food Lab is updating the municipal policy database Growing Food Connections. The update focuses on urban agriculture, particularly policies impacting land access. If you are aware of any such recently adopted policies, consider sharing them with Growing Food Connections. It will be added to the publicly available database. Please send any relevant information to the UB Food Lab at foodsystems@ap.buffalo.edu.

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

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

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

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.

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 Lab team member to speak at Climate Solutions Summit

UB Food Lab team member Nathaniel Mich will be speaking on a panel at the Climate Solutions Summit with a focus on the Genesee-Finger Lakes region. The Summit will focus on climate solutions, and will build skills in climate action, advocacy, organizing and leadership. The Summit will feature regional projects/programs/initiatives, barriers and challenges to achieving short and long-term progress, co-benefits, including workforce dev, and opportunities for advocacy and public engagement. At the summit, Nathaniel Mich will share his perspective on “the role of planning and policy in building equitable, healthful and sustainable food systems and healthy communities.”  The panel will be held on April 23, 2022 at 10:30 am via Zoom.

Attendees must register here. https://www.climategfl.org/summit 

Making Food Work Visible on International Women’s Day


The world would be better off if there was no need for International Women’s Day. Inequity tied to structural factors fuels gender-related disparities in all walks of life (including in the world of research where our lab of researchers of women of color is a rarity). Consider the following examples from the world of food systems. Women farmworkers execute the bulk of manual work — such as weeding and harvesting — in fields but do not accrue commensurate financial benefits from the sale of products. Small-scale farm households headed by women earn 30% less, on average, than farm households headed by men. In India, women comprise 42% of the agricultural workforce but own only 2% of the land. In the US, half of the graduates of culinary schools are women, yet fewer than 20% are chefs. A greater proportion of women are likely to be farmworkers or food service workers than owners of farms or food businesses, and, therefore, have limited power and material resources within the food system. Within homes, women’s food-related work (of buying and preparing food, and feeding people) remains invisible. The examples are one too many.
We hope that our readers go beyond celebrating the individual successes of women to paying attention to structural questions. Why do gendered disparities continue to exist (in the food system)? Why is there a glass ceiling in the first place? What structural and policy changes are needed at all levels of governance to eliminate gender-related disparities, especially for women from marginalized groups? What would it take for city governments across the United States to conduct an audit of their policies, programs, and budgets to discern if municipal work is truly supporting women in their jurisdictions? Sure, celebrate International Women’s Day — but also act to eliminate gender-related inequities in the food system
Authors: UB Food Lab [Women of Color] Researchers including Insha Akram, Carol E Ramos Gerena, Lorna Georges, Rachel Grandits, Shireen Guru, Samina Raja, Rose Thomas, and Atqa Qadri.
Notes.1. Data sources: Available upon request.2. Photo: Women researchers of the UB Food Lab (Yes, our skills at research don’t necessarily translate well to making a fist).