Upgrade StorageReader Response Post 5: New York State Contexts
[This post is intended to follow my Reader Response Post 4: Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) Ecosystems]
There are several emerging initiatives in New York State which might provide a potential context for exploring and funding Socio-Technical/Social and Solidarity Ecosystems within an agrifood systems context. This short post is intended to provide a brief overview of some of these to help ground these concepts within potential real life applications.
Working in partnership with the GROW-NY program, a business competition program funded through Empire State Development’s Upstate Revitalization Initiatives, the Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture (COE) and the Center for Regional Economic Advancement (CREA) at Cornell University recently release a report, A Call for Innovation: New York’s Agrifood System (Mehta, 2021). It offers “recommendations and guidance to aspiring inventors, innovators, and startup founders, as well as investors looking for investment opportunities in the agriculture, processing, and distribution space”. That includes recognition of the growing importance of online platforms for farmers to market and deliver their produce direct to consumers. While many of these may be quite useful to those with the resources and capabilities to act on these possibilities, little attention is given to how inclusion and equity issues might be addressed. This suggests the program might benefit from a more constructively critical perspective an STS approach could offer.
A food supply chain bill (N.Y. Legis. Assemb., 2020) has recently been signed into law. A New York Food Supply Working Group (NYFSWG) has been formed[1] because of that, to gather ideas on improving the resiliency and self-reliance of New York’s farm and food system and related supply chain logistics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suggestions are being gathered from all stakeholders, including individuals, organizations, and businesses, to share information that may be considered in the development of a Working Group report. Though individual stakeholders may not fully see their existing (or potential) role within the larger STSs they operate within, taking such a perspective within the Working Group could offer many useful insights, including those having value at a policy level.
New York City has recently released its “Food Forward NYC” 10-Year Food Policy Plan (City of New York, 2021), “lining up infrastructure, procurement and administration to address food insecurity and sustainability throughout its supply chains and communities". Goal 5 of the plan, "Support the systems and knowledge to implement the 10-year food policy plan", seeks to:
"[Enable] many stakeholders from different parts of the food system...to work together in ways they have never done before...[With] opportunities to connect with and learn from one another...To be able to create and share new knowledge and data about the food system. And…to have access to different pathways to make decisions about the food system."
As studies like the Columbia University Urban Design Lab’s NYC Regional Foodshed Initiative show (Columbia University, 2021), such an effort would need to include a diversity of people, organizations, and communities who grow, process, and ship the foods from hundreds of miles away, even in the best of circumstances. Adaptive and responsive STSs will be needed to scaffold that process.
More recently, a series of "Vision 2050" Roundtable discussions is being hosted by the Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE), in partnership with the Dyson School of Cornell University, the Cornell Small Farms Program, and faculty from Columbia University. The goal is to help envision what a more equitable, resilient, profitable, and healthy food system in New York State might look like, and identify opportunities or barriers related to that. Feedback gathered so far has focused on education, policy making, and collaboration across the food system, something an STS approach might help further facilitate.
References
(Titles hyperlink to respective citation entry for this group library)
Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE). Vision 2050. Cadefarms. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.cadefarms.org/vision-2050
City of New York. (2021, February). Food Forward NYC: A 10-Year Food Policy Plan. Retrieved from NYC: The Official Website of the City of New York: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/foodpolicy/reports-and-data/food-forward.page
Columbia University. (2021). NYC Regional Foodshed Initiative. Retrieved from Columbia University Earth Institute Urban Design Lab: http://urbandesignlab.columbia.edu/projects/food-and-the-urban-environment/nyc-regional-food-shed-initiative/
Mehta, C. (2021). A Call for Innovation: New York’s Agrifood System. Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture (COE) and the Center for Regional Economic Advancement (CREA) at Cornell University. Retrieved from https://cals.cornell.edu/cornell-agritech/partners-institutes/center-excellence-food-and-agriculture/agrifood-innovation-report
N.Y. Legis. Assemb. (2020). A10607. Reg. Sess. 2019-2020. Retrieved from https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?bn=A10607&term=2019
>My next Reader Response Post 6: Regional Development Ecosystems