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The research illustrates the impact of young people shaping a community-based program.

From the perspective of a youth educator, this research uses participatory action research (PAR) in youth urban agriculture education.

Findings illustrate how youth-led programming creates new processes, revealing new educational opportunities. Outcomes of education programs are strengthened by engaging with students in ways that interest them.

Findings illustrate opportunities for social network bonding through community-based farm stands and challenges in social network bridging through Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs).

Previous articles have noted the need for practitioner perspective in youth education. Scholars have also noted the lack of research that assesses the role of youth urban agriculture programming to advance community engagement. This article contributes to both.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a model of corporate and civic communities as it relates to change in rural Atlantic Canada. The aim is to frame questions relevant to what appears to be a situation of changing paradigms.

This paper is largely conceptual. An exploration of Lyson's model of corporate and civic communities, review of selected Atlantic Canada historiography, and preliminary findings of a research consultation offer understanding of the historical and changing paradigmatic terrain of rural communities and agriculture in Atlantic Canada. Selected issues, emerging from the literature as well as from a series of consultations held with farmers, rural non‐profits, policy makers, businesses, agricultural groups and others, are examined in the context of the region's past and the corporate and civic models outlined by Lyson. Atlantic historiography is discussed in view of contemporary challenges, and questions relevant to change in the region are raised and framed.

Increasingly vulnerable to a number of provincially, regionally, nationally and globally formulated challenges, Atlantic Canada's rural communities have been and are being reshaped, as is the agriculture being practiced within them. In the midst of these upheavals, a practice‐policy “dis‐connect” is making it unclear how alternative agricultural and rural community developmental paradigms might be actualized in the region. But some of these challenges are not new.

The research consultation is at the beginning stages, and thus results reported are speculative.

Lessons from the Atlantic past, and Lyson's civic model, may provide guideposts toward a more ecologically‐sound and economically‐viable way for the future of rural communities and agriculture in the region.

This paper raises key questions that take into account the region's rural past and changing paradigms pertaining to agriculture and rural communities.

This introduction provides an overview of the discourse on alternative agrifood movements (AAMs) to (1) ascertain the degree of convergence and divergence around a common ethos of alterity and (2) context the chapters of the book. AAMs have increased in recent years in response to the growing legitimation crisis of the conventional agrifood system. Some agrifood researchers argue that AAMs represent the vanguard movement of our time, a formidable counter movement to global capitalism. Other authors note a pattern of blunting of the transformative qualities of AAMs due to conventionalization and mainstreaming in the market. The literature on AAMs is organized following a Four Questions in Agrifood Studies (Constance, 2008) framework. The section for each Question ends with a case study to better illustrate the historical dynamics of an AAM. The literature review ends with a summary of the discourse applied to the research question of the book: Are AAMs the vanguard social movement of our time? The last section of this introduction provides a short description of each contributing chapter of the book, which is divided into five sections: Introduction; Theoretical and Conceptual Framings; Food Sovereignty Movements; Alternative Movements in the Global North; and Conclusions.

Transformative learning experiences can expand individual personal and professional capacity. In this work, the meaning and significance of individual growth is viewed through the lens of public value, focusing on the connection between person and place. This chapter details how Nuffield International Farming Scholars perceive public value contributions stemming from their individual development and subsequent engagement in civic life and community development. Voices of program participants provide insight on capacity building experiences as part of sustainable community development efforts, and how perceived outcomes for individuals such as professional and personal benefits, post-program engagement, and a sense of reciprocity are motivators leading to public value contribution.

Urban farming is becoming more common in the USA, as food-based entrepreneurs seek to make money farming in the city. Yet many urban farms are concerned with other factors in addition to food production, and thus have incorporated social goals into their missions. The purpose of this paper is to identify the social missions of urban farms in the USA, their extent, and explores differences and similarities among farms with varying missions.

The authors use primary data collected from a 2012 national survey of urban farmers in the USA. In total, 35 questions, covering the 2012 farm year, targeted production and marketing practices, risks and challenges, information and technical assistance needs, farm size and location, age of primary farmer, and farm characteristics. A multinomial logistic model was used to analyze the social missions of urban farms in the sample.

The authors find that food production is an essential part of the mission for all urban farms. Some farms have social missions, as well, which the survey results indicate are related to food security, education, and community building. The authors find that all urban farms, regardless of their mission, are relatively small and face similar challenges in terms of providing the primary farmer with a living. Farms with explicit social missions, relative to those with a strict market orientation, donate a higher share of food from their farm and are less likely to own farmland. Urban farms located in with lower median income are more likely to have social goals related to building community or improving security food security.

Urban agriculture is becoming more prevalent in many developed nations. At the same time, social entrepreneurship is gaining traction. Given the limited ability of urban farms in terms of food production, the social mission of urban farms arises as a possible explanation for the recent growth. This paper provides insight into a new phenomenon, and uses new data to provide insight into size, types of farms, and farmer well-being and address the social missions of urban farms in the USA.

Academic and popular literatures have addressed growing concerns about the ways we produce, harvest, distribute, and consume food; manage fisheries and inputs to agriculture; and deal with waste. Throughout the 20th century, a series of issue-specific frames emerged that explicitly addressed issues of social justice, the environment, and human health in the food system. During the mid-1990s that comprehensive master frames were established in attempts to bring disparate ideas and actions together into a more inclusive food movement. In this chapter, we explore the development of these collective action frames and turn to Canada as a case study to examine the key moments that have brought together diverse actors through collaborative networks to assert their place within a broader social movement. We argue that recognizing the increasing development of food networks and making these relationships visible opens new theoretical and practical possibilities for food system transformation.

This work aimed to show how farmers’ markets can act as communication infrastructure, and by doing so, facilitate civic engagement. We used communication infrastructure theory (CIT) as a guide.

We integrated findings from two surveys that took place in the US state of Wisconsin. In a survey of Wisconsin farmers’ market leaders, we considered what features farmers’ markets have that may help them act as communication infrastructure. Using data from a survey of Wisconsin residents, we ran a regression model to demonstrate the relationship between farmers’ market attendance and micro-level storytelling about local food.

We found that farmers’ markets can act as meso-level storytellers and provide a communication action context supportive of civic engagement. Through the farmers’ market leader survey, we found that over half of the markets noted existing partnerships with media outlets. Furthermore, farmers’ markets may connect residents to important organizations in the community. Many farmers’ markets had features to make them more physically and financially accessible, such as accepting food assistance benefits. With the Wisconsin resident survey, we found that farmers’ market attendance predicted storytelling about local food better than overall local food purchasing, further suggesting that markets can facilitate social interactions.

We document an important benefit that farmers’ markets can offer communities: they have the potential to act as communication infrastructure. As stronger communication infrastructure can facilitate civic engagement, this work provides a mechanism by which to connect civic agriculture activities and increased levels of civic engagement.

The purpose of this study was to examine the latent part of geographic information systems in inclusive sustainable rural tourism, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and community development and empowerment in Southern Africa, Africa generally and many rural areas elsewhere worldwide.

The viewpoint utilizes literature and document reviews to assess African and worldwide agricultural, environmental and tourism resources management scenarios. It thus liaises with CBNRM and geographic information systems in sustainable tourism and local community development applications.

This review viewpoint uncovers a better potential synergetic relationship between tourism and rural (agricultural) activities that geographic information systems along a concept of CBNRM can amplify. Hence, it has poised a need for a decent and integrated tourism strategy to develop and empower the pertinent communities in many rural and marginalized areas within the continent.

Many rural communities in Southern Africa and Africa broadly dwell in low-income areas. Such milieus are rich in natural biodiversity, including tourism destination areas. Geographic information systems, sustainable tourism and CBNRM can form a gestalt of local community development projects within their environs.

As a movement for alternative means of food production and consumption has grown, so, too, have civic efforts to make alternative food accessible to low-income persons (LIPs). This article examines the impact of alternative food institutions (AFIs) on low-income communities in the United States and Canada, focusing on research published since 2008.

Through a three-stage literature search, I created a database of 110 articles that make empirical or theoretical contributions to scholarly knowledge on the relationship of AFIs to low-income communities in North America. I used an in vivo coding scheme to categorize the impacts that AFIs have on LIPs and to identify predominant barriers to LIPs’ engagement with AFIs.

The impacts of AFIs span seven outcome categories: food consumption, food access and security, food skills, economic, other health, civic, and neighborhood. Economic, social and cultural barriers impede LIPs’ engagement with AFIs. AFIs can promote positive health outcomes for low-income persons when they meet criteria for affordability, convenience and inclusivity.

This review exposes productive avenues of dialogue between health scholars and medical sociology and geography/environmental sociology. Health scholarship offers empirical support for consumer-focused solutions. Conversely, by constructively critiquing the neoliberal underpinnings of AFIs’ discourse and structure, geographers and sociologists supply health scholars with a language that may enable more systemic interventions.

This article is the first to synthesize research on five categories of alternative food institutions (farmers’ markets, CSAs, community gardens, urban farms, and food cooperatives) across disciplinary boundaries.

Pandemics always have an impact on everything; for wildlife it is somehow positive and for human health and safety it is negative. But yet there is not any critique on its impact on the agriculture sector and farmer community. The world is not aware of the hazards which will be caused by crop loss. On the globe the largest country by population is China, where natives in China consume rice as staple food. In past few years, it was among the highest rice producing and consuming countries. Rice is planted in February to May mostly in China, and rice crop production is strongly dependent on preplanting activates which farmers are unable to perform because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread and the need to follow safety measures. So, the purpose of this documentary analysis is to indicate the impact of coronavirus disease on the agricultural sector in China specifically for rice production.

In this article, a documentary analysis approach has been utilized. Moreover, due to the new and latest issue, not much research has been published in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the agriculture industry in China. Whereas, several online reports and expert reviews have been reviewed which have been published in online platforms and blogs websites. A total of 45 resources (journal articles, expert reviews) have been downloaded from reputed databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, out of which 31 of them were more relevant and related to the context of study.

The outcome based on this study has indicated that the rice cultivators and farmers are in uncertainty and not comfortable to work in their fields without proper safety measures due to the pandemic situation which will badly affect their lives and the economy of the country. Therefore, this study suggests that to overcome this issue, a proper safety framework is needed to be developed which can be implemented and which can facilitate the rice farming community.

Agriculture is important in so many ways including providing employment to the bulk of the population and providing the basic necessity of life and also contributing to the national economy. The outcome of this study will facilitate the agricultural scientist, economist and seasonal crop production stakeholders to indicate the most problematic domain and upcoming challenges faced by the rice farming community in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the first documentary analysis which is addressing the current issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the agriculture industry and specifically in the rice cultivation and producing community safety concerns and issues in China which is the first and most affected nation due to the coronavirus.