Lexicon

PRONUNCIATION | CATEGORY:

/food/ /sov-RUHN-tee/ | typically used as a noun 

DEFINITION:

The right of peoples to determine and control their own food and agriculture systems and to access healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

The CFC characterizes sovereign food systems as:

• Motivated by community relations rather than the pursuit of private financial profit;

• Grounded in inclusivity, accessibility, cooperation and justice, with a critical understanding of systemic inequality and the repercussions of imperialist colonization;

• Building on successful regenerative food system models by integrating food value chain research and innovation.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (Nyéléni process)

Michelle Daigle (2017): Tracing the terrain of Indigenous food sovereignties, The Journal of Peasant Studies

CONTRIBUTOR(S):

La Via Campesina, Concordia Food Coalition

/pree-fig-yuh-RAY-shuhn/ | v.

The act of working toward a desired future within the limitations of the current world. 

Prefiguration is a strategy of social and ecological change focused on action - on building solutions, coupled with 

the acknowledgement that (a) the conditions for change might not be perfect, and (b) that the solution may be

Imperfect, partial, and transient. This can be contrasted with perspectives to social and ecological change that

insist on strategies that postpone transformation until the conditions are perfect, or that pursue other avenues of 

change (ie. policy change). 

Prefigurative politics in practice: Examples and strategies 

Naegler, L. (2018). ‘Goldman-Sachs doesn’t care if you raise chicken’: The challenges of resistance prefiguration. Social 

Movement Studies, 17:5, 507-523. DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2018.1495074

All of you! 

DEFINITION:

Food culture encompasses the practices related to food preparation, consumption habits, rituals around meals, dietary customs specific to a particular society or group. It includes aspects such as traditional cuisines, food preferences based on cultural heritage or geographical location.

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

Campus food culture is an important consideration in reforming campus food systems. Changemaking on campuses needs to include ideas around campus food culture as well as a focus on what’s on the plates. 

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

The best reference I can find to this is the introduction from my book. : )

CONTRIBUTOR(S):

If applicable, identify the individual(s) responsible for creating or contributing to this lexicon entry.

DEFINITION:

“The term “food literacy” describes the idea of proficiency in food related skills and knowledge. This

prevalent term is broadly applied, although its core elements vary from initiative to initiative.”

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

Previously, food literacy was just focused on the knowledge around healthy eating. This piece has broadened to include more food systems knowledge as well.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666316306833

CONTRIBUTOR(S):

If applicable, identify the individual(s) responsible for creating or contributing to this lexicon entry.

DEFINITION:

A food sovereign campus is transformative, controlled by an array of campus-community partners, not run by large multinational foodservice corporations, and provides value to the campus and surrounding communities instead of externalizing social and environmental costs. 

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

Food sovereignty frameworks help differentiate between corporate, weak-sustainability and food sovereignty approaches to campus food systems/services. 

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Chevrier, E (Forthcoming) Cultivating Food Sovereign Campuses. In, Classens, M., Spiegelaar, N., and Lawler, M. (Eds.) (In production). Hungry for change: How postsecondary campuses are transforming food systems. University of Toronto Press.

DEFINITION:

Bieler and McKenzie (2017) suggest that for universities to be genuinely transformational, they need to meet, “…higher-order organizational learning about sustainability…[by] questioning worldviews in relation to sustainability, reorienting educational purposes and paradigms in alignment with sustainability values, and practicing sustainable forms of community engagement. (p. 17)”

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

We need to go beyond weak sustainability. Weak sustainability is ‘econocentric’; the universal discourse reflects market economies (Gowdy & O’Hara, 1997). Strong sustainability is ‘anthropocentric’; it recognizes that sustainability has hierarchies, where the biosphere is the primary, most important system. Transformative sustainability is aligned with ecological and social justice. 

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Bieler, A., & McKenzie, M. (2017). Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canada Higher Education. Sustainability, 9(161), 1-22.

Gowdy, J., & O’Hara, S. (1997). Weak Sustainability and Viable Technologies. Ecological Economics, 22(3), 239-247.

DEFINITION:

Critical-participatory-action research refers to a type of participatory-action research that allows participants to address collective problems, especially those that are irrational, unsustainable, and unjust.

Participatory-action research is a type of action research whereby participants are involved with designing the research project, acting as co-researchers and/or helping to interpret and implement the results.

Action research is a multidisciplinary research approach where investigators engage with practitioners in their local environments to learn from these participants' practices and solve issues together.

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

Critical-participatory-action research can help develop conditions of campus and community food sovereignty. 

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1998). The Action Research Reader (Vol. 3rd). : Deakin University Press.

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research. Springer.

Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1989). Participatory Action Research and Action Science Compared: A Commentary. The American Behavioral Scientist, 32(5), 612-623.

PRONUNCIATION | CATEGORY:

/ANG-kur in-sti-TOO-shuhn/ | n.

DEFINITION:

“Entities like hospitals, colleges, and universities that have strong local roots – which can use their operational spending to advance goals like equitable economic development, affordable housing, and environmental sustainability.” (Murphy, p. 3)

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

These institutions are place-based and can use their resources strategically to benefit local economies, including to provide long-term stable markets for local and sustainable farmers and processors.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Murphy, Colette (2021) Community Wealth Building: A Canadian Philanthropist’s Perspective. In Susan D. Phillips and Bob Wyatt (Eds.), Intersections and Innovations: Change for Canada’s Voluntary and Nonprofit Sector. Edmonton, AB, Canada: Muttart Foundation

DEFINITION: 

A term developed by Dr. Lori Stahlbrand to describe “the range of resources, services, skill sets, capacities, networks and communities of practice required to connect mid-sized farmers to public purpose institutions such as universities, a market from which they have been largely excluded.” (Stahlbrand, p. 88)

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION: 

This is the hard and soft infrastructure that is disappearing in an oligopolized food system controlled by global corporations, yet it is essential if mid-sized local and sustainable farmers and processors are to survive.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Stahlbrand, L. (2018). Can values-based food chains advance local and sustainable food systems? Evidence from case studies of university procurement in Canada and the UK. The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 24(1), 77-95.

PRONUNCIATION | CATEGORY:
/ol-i-GOP-uh-lee/ | n.
DEFINITION:  

one who “voluntarily takes extraordinary interest in the adoption, implementation, and success of a cause, policy, program, project, or product” (Business Dictionary, 2018) 

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION: 

Local and sustainable campus food systems need champions until a commitment to a new way of thinking about the campus food system is embedded into the culture and operations of the institution. Students can be champions, but there must also be a champion who holds a position of some authority within the institution and possesses a range of social skills and knowledge competencies that permit them to move the agenda. This usually requires unusual levels of personal courage, talent and creativity.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Stahlbrand, L. (2016). A typology of “infrastructure of the middle” in university food procurement in England and Canada:: elaborating the “to” in “farm to cafeteria”. Raizes: Revista de Ciencias Sociais E Economicas, 36(2), 32-46.

DEFINITION:

On-campus initiatives that are motivated by animating structural, practice, and/or policy change through the campus foodscape. 

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION:

CFSA stand in contrast (and opposition) to conventional campus food services. The terms is meant to 

capture the diversity of actors, activities, and initiatives on campuses that are aimed at challenging / providing an alternative too / critiquing the capital intensive, industrial food system. 

REFERENCES/RESOURCES:

Chevrier, E. (2022). Building Food Sovereign Campuses: A Case Study of the Campus-Community Food Groups at Concordia University [Phd, Concordia University]. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/991200/

Classens, M., Adam, K., & Srebot, S. (2023). Food systems change and the alternative campus foodscape. Journal of

Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 12(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2023.123.010

CONTRIBUTOR(S):

All of you! 

DEFINITION:
“a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.” (Oxford Online Dictionary, 2024)

SIGNIFICANCE/APPLICATION: 

The institutional foodservice sector is dominated by three transnational foodservice corporations (Compass, Sodexo and Aramark) and two transnational distributors Sysco and GFS). Their business model is based on centralized supply chains, and cheap anonymous food procured from anywhere in the world. They have revenues in the billions of dollars and they employ more than one million people at colleges and universities, schools, hospitals, sports facilities, workplace cafeterias, airlines, railways, remote mining camps, offshore platforms, the military and prisons. Compass and Sodexo are ranked among the largest private sector employers in the world (Martin & Andrée, 2012). This oligopolistic domination of foodservice means that new entrants find it very difficult to gain a foothold because the three main players drive prices down by using their enormous aggregate purchasing power, and by externalizing any social and environmental costs of cheap food (Clapp & Fuchs, 2009; Martin & Andrée, 2012).  

REFERENCES/RESOURCES: 

Martin, S., & Andrée, P. (2012). The “Buy-Local'' Challenge to Institutional Foodservice Corporations in Historical Context. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 116–175. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2012.023.008 

Clapp, J., & Fuchs, D. A. (Eds.). (2009). Corporate power in global agrifood governance. MIT Press.