v The GFASG membership rosters climbed by about 50% since last year! Learn more in A Message from Our Chairs, p. 2

v The GFASG Specialty Group Highlighted Session at AAG this year is “Labor/workers across the food chain: Building collaborations between activists and academics,” building on last year’s successes in bringing geographers into conversation with labor activists working in the field and behind the factory and kitchen door. For more info, see p. 4

v The GFASG is proud to sponsor two AAG field trips this year! Learn more on p. 4

v Please make plans to attend the GFASG AAG Annual Meeting Mixer on Wednesday, April 22, from 5:30-7:30. Get details on p. 4

v All are encouraged to attend the GFASG Business Meeting on Thursday, April 23, from 11:50 a.m. – 1:10 p.m. See p. 4 for details

v We are proud to announce that Elsie Lewison has received the 2015 GFASG Graduate Research Grant! More on p. 6

Association of American Geographers

Field Notes Newsletter of the

Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group

Volume 3, Issue 1 April 2015

Inside the Issue Highlights A Message from Our Chairs 2 Highlighting Members’ Achievements 3 Recent Publications of GFASG Members 3

GFASG Sessions, Meetings & Events at AAG, Chicago 4 AAG Annual Meeting Mixer 4 2015 GFASG Graduate Research Grant Winner 6

Field Notes Volume 3, Issue 1

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Field Notes

Chair Nathan McClintock

Portland State University

Co-Chair

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Syracuse University

Secretary-Treasurer Katia R. Avilés-Vázquez

University of Texas

Faculty Board Members At Large

Daniel Block Chicago State University

Jennifer Blecha

San Francisco State

Student Board Members At Large

Colleen Hammelman Temple University

Levi Van Sant

University of Georgia

Newsletter Editor Laura Johnson Michigan State

University

Website Coordinator Xiang Chen

Arkansas State University

Special thanks to past newsletter editor and GFASG co-founder:

Gina Thornburg Kansas State University

Volume X, Issue X

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GFASG Board of Directors

A Message from Our Chairs…

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Greetings current and future GFASG members! The Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group is pleased to welcome you all to this year’s Annual Meeting in Chicago. Building on the momentum of last year’s conference, our Specialty Group has been working behind the scenes to support agri-food interests within the AAG. No surprise, but agri-food issues are becoming increasingly popular among geographers. Our membership rosters climbed by about 50% to 359 members since last year, and we received a much larger number of requests for session sponsorship this year. In the end, we sponsored nearly fifty sessions at this year’s Annual Meeting, and quick keyword search of abstracts came up with about 150 papers with a keyword of “agriculture” and well over 200 papers focusing on “food”! The GFASG-sponsored sessions cover a range of topics, from campus food to the farm bill. Both human and physical geographers are engaging with food, covering issues like climate change, public health, and agro-ecological sustainability from multidisciplinary perspectives. And geographers’ engagement with urban agriculture seems to be keeping pace with its skyrocketing popularity in cities across the world, with nearly 40 presentations this year relating to urban gardens and farms. Finally, we’re very pleased to see a growing interest in labor among agri-food scholars at this year’s AAG. Multiple sessions concerning agricultural labor and food movements highlight the increasing awareness among food studies scholars and activists that “knowing where your food comes from,” should also include knowing who picked it, who processed it, and who prepared it. On this note, our Specialty Group Highlighted Session this year is called “Labor/workers across the food chain: Building collaborations between activists and academics” (see more on p. 4) and builds on last year’s successes in bringing geographers into conversation with labor activists working in the field and behind the factory and kitchen door. Last year we brought representatives from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to a panel bringing activists into conversation with geographers. Our panel this year draws attention to other labor nodes in the food chain, from production to distribution to processing to preparation to consumption. We’re excited to welcome JoAnn Lo, Co-Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and Felipe Tendick-Matesanz, National High Road Coordinator at Restaurant Opportunities Center United to this panel. (Continued on p. 4)

Field Notes Volume 3, Issue 1

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During the past year, our GFASG members have made great achievements in areas of research, teaching and community service. Below are some selected awards/honors:

Angela Babb, Associate Instructor at Indiana University Bloomington, received a Campus Catalyst Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to campus sustainability at IU Bloomington.

Billy Hall, PhD Candidate at Florida International University, was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Black Studies to support his research on food deserts in Miami and their relation to processes of gentrification.

Emma Mullaney, PhD Candidate of Geography & Women’s Study at Penn State, was selected to serve as a Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) Fellow with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) as one of approximately 700 experts selected from all UN countries to participate in the global and regional assessments.

Katia R. Avilés-Vázquez, PhD Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin and GFASG Board Member, was selected for an EPA Environmental Champion Award. Each April, EPA honors individuals and organizations who have contributed significantly to improving the environment during the prior year in New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Susanne Freidberg, Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College, received an NSF award (co-funded by the GSS and STS programs) for a project titled “Contending with metrics in the corporate food supply chain.”

Highlighting Members’ Achievements

Recent Publications of GFASG Members

2015

Buechler, S., & Hanson, A.-M. (2015). A Political Ecology of Women, Water and Global Environmental Change. London and New York: Routledge.

Chen, X., & Clark, J. (2015). Measuring space-time access to food retailers: A case of temporal access disparity in Franklin County, Ohio. The Professional Geographer (forthcoming).

Coplen, A. K., & Cuneo, M. (2015). Dissolved: Lessons learned from the Portland Multnomah Food Policy Council. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 52(2), 91–107.

Duram, L. A., & Klein, S. (2015). University food gardens: A unifying place for higher education sustainability. International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development (forthcoming).

Duram, L. A. & Williams, L. (2015). Assessing long-term support for student organic gardens within a sustainable campus. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 16(1), 3–15.

Freidberg, S. (2015). Moral economies and the cold chain. Historical Research, 88, 25–137.

Gallaher, C., WinklerPrins, A., Njenga, M., & Karanja, N. (2015). Creating space: Sack gardening as a livelihood strategy in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 5(2), 1–19.

Hall, B. (2015). Food Stamps and WIC. Food Issues: An Encyclopedia, (Ed.) Ken Albala, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks: CA (forthcoming encyclopedic entry).

(Continued on p. 5)

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Panel Session: Labor/workers across the food chain: Building collaborations between activists and academics Friday, April 24, 5:20 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Stetson BC, Hyatt, West Tower, Purple Level

Business Meeting:

Thursday, April 23, 11:50 a.m. – 1:10 p.m. Columbus H, Hyatt, East Tower, Gold Level

Field Trips:

Planting the City: Urban Agriculture, Aquaponics, and Community Gardens on Chicago’s South Side Time: Tuesday, April 21, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Trip Capacity: 14 Cost/person: $46 (includes transportation, lunch, and admission) Agricultural Landscapes of Illinois Time: Saturday, April 25, 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Trip Capacity: 12 Cost/person: $46 (includes transportation)

For more info visit geofoodag.org Sign up at www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/fieldtrips

GFASG Co-Sponsored Sessions, Meetings and Events at the 2015 AAG, Chicago

(A Message from Our Chairs, cont. from p. 2) AAG Enrichment Funds have made this possible. Finally, we’re really excited to announce the winner of the first ever GFASG Graduate Student Research Grant. We had 24 applications, many more than we anticipated. The selection committee was thrilled with the quality of graduate student research on food and agriculture - it was a very difficult decision. Congratulations to Elsie Lewison, PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Toronto, for her excellent proposal. See page 6 for more on Elsie’s project. We’re looking forward to seeing old members and meeting new ones this year! We’ll be at the GFASG mixer from 5:30 to 7:30 on Wednesday at The Gage (see below) or if you see us in the hallway at the conference, please say hi and introduce yourself. Have a great conference! Sincerely, Nathan McClintock, GFASG Chair and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, GFASG Co-Chair

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(Member Publications, cont. from p. 3)

Hammelman, C., & Hayes-Conroy, A. (2015). Understanding cultural acceptability for urban food policy. Journal of Planning Literature, 30, 37–48.

MacDonald, G. K., Brauman, K. A., Sun, S., Carlson, K. M., Cassidy, E. S., Gerber, J. S., West, P. C. (2015). Rethinking agricultural trade relationships in an era of globalization. BioScience, 65(3), 275–289.

Myers, J. S., & Sbicca, J. (2015). Bridging good food and good jobs: From secession to confrontation within alternative food movement politics. Geoforum, 61, 17–26.

Sbicca, J. (2015). Food Labor, economic inequality and the imperfect politics of process in the alternative food movement. Agriculture and Human Values. DOI: 10.1007/s10460-015-9582-2.

Sbicca, J. (2015). Farming while confronting the other: The production and maintenance of boundaries in the borderlands. Journal of Rural Studies, 39, 1–10.

2014

Chen, X., & Yang, X. (2014). Does food environment influence food choices? A geographical analysis through “tweets”. Applied Geography, 51, 82–89.

Cohen, N., & Reynolds, K. (2014). Urban agriculture policy making in New York’s ‘new political spaces’: Strategizing for a participatory and representative system. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 34(2), 221–234.

Duram, L. A., & Mead, A. (2014). Exploring linkages between domestic fair trade and consumer food co-operatives in the United States. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 29(2): 151–160.

Dwyer, M. B. (2014). Micro-geopolitics: Capitalising security in Laos’s Golden Quadrangle. Geopolitics 19: 377–405. (Published in a special issue on geopolitics and agriculture)

Freidberg, S. (2014). Footprint technopolitics, Geoforum, 55, 178–189.

Graddy, T. G. (2014). Situating in situ: A critical geography of agricultural biodiversity conservation in the Peruvian Andes and beyond. Antipode, 46(2), 426–454.

Henson, Z., & Munsey, G. (2014). Race, culture, and practice: Segregation and the alternative food movement in Birmingham, Alabama. Urban Geography, 35(7), 998–1019.

Huggins, C. (2014). ‘Control grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: Emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda. Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(3), 365–384.

Lave, R., Wilson, M., Barron, E., Biermann, C., Carey, M., Duvall, C., Johnson, L., Lane, M., McClintock, N., Munroe, D., Pain, R., Proctor, J., Rhoads, B., Robertson, M., Rossi, J., Sayre, N., Simon, G., Tadaki, M., & Van Dyke, C. (2014). Intervention: Critical physical geography. The Canadian Geographer, 58(1), 1–10.

McClintock, N., Pallana, E., & Wooten, H. (2014). Urban livestock ownership, management, and regulation in the United States: An exploratory survey and research agenda. Land Use Policy, 38, 426–440.

McClintock, N. (2014). [Review of the book California cuisine and just food]. Pacific Historical Review, 83(1), 172–173.

McKay, B., Nehring, R., & Walsh-Dilley M. (2014). The ‘State’ of food sovereignty in Latin America: Political projects and alternative pathways in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia”. Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 1175-1200.

Minkoff-Zern, L.-A. (2014). Challenging the agrarian imaginary: Farmworker-led food movements and the potential for farm labor justice. Human Geography, 7(1), 85–101.

Minkoff-Zern. L.-A. (2014). Subsidizing farmworker hunger: Food assistance programs, farmworker gardens, and the social reproduction of California farm labor. Geoforum, 57, 91–98.

Mullaney, E. G. (2014). Geopolitical maize: Peasant seeds, everyday practices, and food security in Mexico. Geopolitics, 19(2), 406–30.

Minkoff-Zern, L.-A. (2014). Knowing “good food”: Immigrant knowledge and the racial politics of farmworker food insecurity. Antipode, 46(5), 1190–1204.

Naylor, L. (2014). ‘Some are more fair than others’: Fair trade certification, development, and North–South subjects. Agriculture and Human Values, 31(2), 273–84.

Continued on p. 6

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(Member Publications, cont. from p. 5)

Reynolds, K. (2014). Disparity despite diversity: Social injustice in New York City’s urban agriculture system. Antipode, 47(1), 240–259. Naylor, L. (2014). ‘Some are more fair than others’: Fair trade certification, development, and North–South subjects. Agriculture and Human Values, 31(2), 273–84.

Reynolds, K. (2014). Disparity despite diversity: Social injustice in New York City’s urban agriculture system. Antipode, 47(1), 240–259.

Rogé, P., Friedman, A. R., Astier, M., Altieri, M. A. (2014). Farmer strategies for dealing with climatic variability: A case study from the Mixteca Alta Region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 38(7), 786–811.

Sadler, R. C., Gilliland, J. A., & Arku, G. (2014). Stakeholder and Policy Maker Perception of Key Issues in Food Systems Planning and Policy Making. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 9(1), 1–15.

Sadler, R. C., Arku, G., & Gilliland, J. A. (2014). Local food networks as catalysts for food policy change to improve health and build the economy. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. DOI:10.1080/13549839.2014.894965.

Sbicca, J. (2014). The need to feed: Urban metabolic struggles of actually existing radical projects. Critical Sociology, 40(6), 817–834.

Shannon, J. (2014). What does SNAP benefit usage tell us about food access in low-income neighborhoods? Social Science & Medicine, 107, 89–99.

Solís, P., Adams, J., Duram, L. A., Hume, S., Kuslikis, A., Lawson, V., Miyares, I., Padgett, D., Ramírez, A. (2014). Diverse experiences in diversity at the geography department scale. Professional Geographer, 66(2), 205–220.

Terry, W. (2014). Solving labor problems and building capacity in sustainable agriculture through volunteer tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 49, 94–107.

Warshawsky, D. N. (2014). Civil society and urban food insecurity: Analyzing the roles of local food organizations in Johannesburg. Urban Geography, 35(1), 109–132.

Warshawsky, D. N. (2014). The potential for mixed methods: Results from the field in urban South Africa. The Professional Geographer, 66(1), 160–168.

Zinda, J. A., Yang, J., Xue, X., & Cheng, H. (2014). Varying impacts of tourism participation on natural resource use in communities in southwest China. Human Ecology, 42(5), 739–751.

Elsie Lewison Receives 2015 GFASG Graduate Research Grant

The GFASG is pleased to announce the results of the 2015 GFASG Graduate Research Grant Competition. This year we had 24 applicants and it was truly difficult to make a decision. Elsie Lewison, PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Toronto, receives this award for her compelling and clearly articulated project.

Elsie completed a BA in development studies and comparative religion at McGill University. There, she became particularly interested in the complex articulations of development ideologies and capital, not only in places of program implementation, but within the institutions and assemblages of development governance.

For her dissertation, Elsie is pursuing a project about her favorite food item, the apple, in one of her favorite places, Nepal. She moved to University of Toronto for her MA in Geography, examining governance in the context of community forestry development in

Nepal. Building on these themes, her dissertation research examines the history and contemporary socio-natural relations of apple agroforestry in Jumla, Nepal. Drawing on critical development studies, feminist technoscience, and post-colonial agrarian studies literatures, her research focuses particularly on rationalities and technologies of governance, and agrarian political ecologies.

Congratulations, Elsie!