newruralism

Questions

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Week 4: Local Food Systems, Food Security & Food Justice

What are some effective ways to engage community members in planning for food justice and local food systems?
What are the points of collaboration and conflict between the local food, sustainable agriculture, and food justice movements?
How much would it cost a particular organization or community to source certain food items locally?
- How many new local jobs would this add?
- How would increased food costs balance against the public health costs of malnutrition?
What would a societal balance sheet look like?
- How do you quantify a public good like healthier food and shorter shipping routes?
- How do you quantify the social cost of the industrial system?
Can a low-income urban community and a nearby farming community develop a mutually beneficial business relationship?
How do we facilitate a shift in the public's desires?
- Asking for healthy food
- Not having to drive everywhere
Conduct a comparative study between West and East Oakland, using participatory research methods
- Similarities and differences in obstacles to food justice
Why aren't people eating healthy? Is it access or education?
- Is there really demand for healthy food?
- Do public transportation routes facilitate access to food markets?
Do children who go to schools with gardening programs grow up to garden and eat healthy?
- Do their families start demanding healthier food immediately? (Is the inventory of local stores changing in response to changing demand?)

Week 5: Environmental Services & Constraints

What are appropriate roles of government/of private enterprise in conserving ecosystems and environmental services?
- What effect could quantified ecological services have on environmental justice?
- Would an environmental services market simply allow rich countries/corporations/individuals to continue their irresponsible practices, and pay someone else to deal with the environmental consequences?
Are there policy or market solutions that might decrease the resource-depletion effects of trade?
What can be done to remedy the break in nutrient cycling in both advanced capitalist countries and the developing world?
- What are the resulting environmental consequences?
- How feasible is waste cycling in the industrialized world?
- Do solid waste cycling solutions have to be market-based? Can they be policy-driven?
- What are the obstacles to waste cycling?
- How can we link the science behind waste cycling with economic and social feasibility studies?
  - What is out there that has worked? Is privatization of waste management the answer?

Week 6: Livelihood Conservation Strategies & Vitality of Rural Communities

Examine the last ten years of conservation measures in the Farm Bill
- Are the measures conserving farmland?
- Are they promoting small farms?
- Are they just subsidizing the big guys?
Look at Switzerland's small farm incentives
- Who benefits?
- What is the impact on number, total acres, and profitability of small farms?
How can policies be made more transparent?
- Question distinctions between urban and rural
- Quantify and publicize effects
What are the effects of food safety scares on policy?
Find or conduct post-occupancy evaluations on the New Ruralism case studies identified last spring
- How accessible are these places to low- or moderate-income populations?
- To what extent is agricultural activity taking place? Is it just window-dressing?

Week 7: Land Use Policy & Economics

How can meaningful dialog be maintained between stakeholders?
- Long-term, not one-time
- Institutional framework for ongoing communication
Study policy trends in LDCs

more questions coming soon

Week 8: Policy & Planning Strategies (Where do we go from here?)

How much are farmers paying themselves? (How profitable is farming, really?)
- How many unpaid hours do farmers/ranchers put in?
- How much of this shows up on income tax returns?
How do you give appropriate weight to various stakeholders in a participatory process?
- Who should orchestrate the process, and decide when and how to include various stakeholders?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of 'totalitarian' v. 'participatory' approaches to planning?