Nourishing Communities

​Nourishing Communities: From Fractured Food Systems to Transformative Pathways is the product of more than a decade of collaborative work by a network of scholars, community-based partners and practitioners interested in constructing more sustainable just food systems. Established in 2007, the Nourishing Communities research network aimed to foster direct connections between university- and community-based actors, and to draw on tools rooted in both theory and practice to support food system transformation. The organization's early work was based primarily in the province of Ontario, Canada, where it explored a wide range of sustainable food systems initiatives in an effort to better understand their successes, innovations and challenges, and make their experiences more accessible to a wider audience. Drawing on the varied backgrounds and areas of expertise of the network’s first members, the group has adopted an interdisciplinary approach, and collaborated closely with regionally-anchored community organizations, businesses, and government personnel representing the inter-related actors that comprise a food system.

• Preface .- Introduction .- Section I: Need for Transformations .- Chapter 1: Connecting Food Access and Housing Security: Lessons from Peterborough, Ontario.- Chapter 2 : Strengthening the Backbone: Local Food, Foreign Labour and Social Justice.- Chapter 3: Community Food Security in Pictou Landing First Nation.- Chapter 4: The Us Experience in Planning for Community Food Systems: An Era of Advocacy, Awareness, and (Some) Learning.- Section II: Pathways to Transformation .- Chapter 5: Can Community-Based Initiatives Address the Conundrum of Improving Household Food Access While Supporting Local Smallholder Farmer Livelihoods?.- Chapter 6: Nourishing Learning Environments: School Food Gardens and Sustainable Food Systems.- Chapter 7 : Using A Complexity Lens to Address Local Food Dilemmas in Northern Ontario: The Viability of Crowdsourcing And Crowdfunding.- Chapter 8: The Local Food Policy Audit: Spanning the Civic-Political Agrifood Divide.- Chapter 9: Supply Management as Food Sovereignty.- Chapter 10: Navigating Spaces for Political Action: Victories and Compromises for Mexico’s Local Organic Movement.- Chapter 11: Communities of Food Practice: Regional Networks As Strategic Tools for Food Systems Transformation.- Postscript.