34th Annual Student Research Conference
Thoughts for Food: Relevance of Food Analysis to the City of Kirksville
William M. Connolly
Dr. Christine Harker and Dr. Bridget Thomas, Faculty Mentors
The globalization of food systems has normalized the transportation of produce over hundreds of miles from farm to market. The distance our food travels has created a disconnect between consumers and agricultural effects on land degradation, chemical pollution, and transportation emissions. Scholars have long debated the best strategies for addressing and reducing the environmental harms that result from industrial agriculture. Localization of food production is often considered a more sustainable alternative to systems of global food distribution (Peters, Kloppenberg, Kurtz). But where to start? Foodshed analysis is a method for visualizing where a given population’s food comes from and modeling how that area could be localized to reduce the externalities of distribution. Because foodshed analysis is essential to understanding how a given community’s food system could be scaled down, I will make the case for conducting such an analysis for the City of Kirksville.
Keywords: agronomy, food culture, foodsheds, localization, geographic information systems
Topic(s):Environmental Studies
Agricultural Science
Sociology
Presentation Type: Asynchronous Virtual Oral Presentation
Session: 1-4
Location: https://flipgrid.com/0d87f987
Time: 0:00