IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v36y2019i3d10.1007_s10460-019-09942-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Our school system is trying to be agrarian”: educating for reskilling and food system transformation in the rural school garden

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah E. Cramer

    (Stetson University)

  • Anna L. Ball

    (University of Missouri)

  • Mary K. Hendrickson

    (University of Missouri)

Abstract

School gardens and garden-based learning continue to gain great popularity in the United States, and their pedagogical potential, and ability to impact students’ fruit and vegetable consumption and activity levels have been well-documented. Less examined is their potential to be agents of food system reskilling and transformation. Though producer and consumer are inextricably linked in the food system, and deskilling of one directly influences the other, theorists often focus on production-centered and consumption-centered deskilling separately. However, in a school garden, the production/consumption disconnect is erased, by virtue of the design of the site itself and how it is utilized by the actors within it. School gardens provide the critical component of education in alternative food networks, and contribute to the producer/consumer reskilling that is a necessary part of food system transformation. We conducted a case study of an established school garden program during its transition from autonomous non-profit to official, district-funded program of a rural school district in the Midwest. By participating in the full “seed to plate” life cycle of a garden crop, students in the garden were actively involved in the reconnection of producer and consumer, while educators were fostering in students an appreciation for fresh, healthy foods and actively challenging the “McDonaldization” of both students’ diets and education. Based upon these findings, we argue that school gardens in rural areas could leverage the dominant role of rural America in developing and shifting food system paradigms.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah E. Cramer & Anna L. Ball & Mary K. Hendrickson, 2019. "“Our school system is trying to be agrarian”: educating for reskilling and food system transformation in the rural school garden," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(3), pages 507-519, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:36:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-019-09942-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-019-09942-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-019-09942-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-019-09942-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Asp, Elaine H., 1999. "Factors affecting food decisions made by individual consumers," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2-3), pages 287-294, May.
    2. Alan Barkema, 1993. "Reaching Consumers in the Twenty-First Century: The Short Way Around the Barn," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 75(5), pages 1126-1131.
    3. Ben White, 2012. "Agriculture and the Generation Problem: Rural Youth, Employment and the Future of Farming," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(6), pages 9-19, November.
    4. Alejandro Rojas & Will Valley & Brent Mansfield & Elena Orrego & Gwen E. Chapman & Yael Harlap, 2011. "Toward Food System Sustainability through School Food System Change: Think&EatGreen@School and the Making of a Community-University Research Alliance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 3(5), pages 1-26, May.
    5. T Marsden & N Wrigley, 1995. "Regulation, Retailing, and Consumption," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(12), pages 1899-1912, December.
    6. Lois Morton & Ella Bitto & Mary Oakland & Mary Sand, 2008. "Accessing food resources: Rural and urban patterns of giving and getting food," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 25(1), pages 107-119, January.
    7. Patricia Allen & Julie Guthman, 2006. "From “old school” to “farm-to-school”: Neoliberalization from the ground up," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 23(4), pages 401-415, December.
    8. Phil Mount, 2012. "Growing local food: scale and local food systems governance," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 29(1), pages 107-121, March.
    9. Jennifer Wilkins, 2005. "Eating Right Here: Moving from Consumer to Food Citizen," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 22(3), pages 269-273, September.
    10. Laura DeLind, 2011. "Are local food and the local food movement taking us where we want to go? Or are we hitching our wagons to the wrong stars?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(2), pages 273-283, June.
    11. Sini Forssell & Leena Lankoski, 2015. "The sustainability promise of alternative food networks: an examination through “alternative” characteristics," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 32(1), pages 63-75, March.
    12. Ann M. Vandeman, 1995. "Management in a Bottle: Pesticides and the Deskilling of Agriculture," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 49-59, September.
    13. John Taylor & Sarah Lovell, 2014. "Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(2), pages 285-305, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuanyuan Zhu & Yukuan Wang & Bin Fu & Qin Liu & Ming Li & Kun Yan, 2021. "How Are Rural Youths’ Agricultural Skills? Empirical Results and Implications in Southwest China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-17, September.
    2. William Lacy, 2023. "Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Grace Gardner & Wendy Burton & Maddie Sinclair & Maria Bryant, 2023. "Interventions to Strengthen Environmental Sustainability of School Food Systems: Narrative Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(11), pages 1-17, May.
    4. Douglas H. Constance, 2023. "The doctors of agrifood studies," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 31-43, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Naomi Beingessner & Amber J. Fletcher, 2020. "“Going local”: farmers’ perspectives on local food systems in rural Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 129-145, March.
    2. William Lacy, 2023. "Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Matthew M. Mars & Hope Jensen Schau & Tyler E. Thorp, 2023. "Narrative curation and stewardship in contested marketspaces," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 418-443, March.
    4. Isabel Miralles & Domenico Dentoni & Stefano Pascucci, 2017. "Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(4), pages 833-854, December.
    5. Osamu Saito & Chiho Kamiyama & Shizuka Hashimoto, 2018. "Non-Market Food Provision and Sharing in Japan’s Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, January.
    6. Tiffanie F. Stone & Janette R. Thompson & Kurt A. Rosentrater & Ajay Nair, 2021. "A Life Cycle Assessment Approach for Vegetables in Large-, Mid-, and Small-Scale Food Systems in the Midwest US," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-20, October.
    7. François Lohest & Tom Bauler & Solène Sureau & Joris Van Mol & Wouter M. J. Achten, 2019. "Linking Food Democracy and Sustainability on the Ground: Learnings from the Study of Three Alternative Food Networks in Brussels," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 21-31.
    8. Bliss, Sam & Egler, Megan, 2020. "Ecological Economics Beyond Markets," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    9. Angela M. Chapman & Harold A. Perkins, 2020. "Malign and benign neglect: a local food system and the myth of sustainable redevelopment in Appalachia Ohio," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 113-127, March.
    10. Mattia Andreola & Angelica Pianegonda & Sara Favargiotti & Francesca Forno, 2021. "Urban Food Strategy in the Making: Context, Conventions and Contestations," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-25, February.
    11. Minh Ngo & Michael Brklacich, 2014. "New farmers’ efforts to create a sense of place in rural communities: insights from southern Ontario, Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(1), pages 53-67, March.
    12. Kate Cairns & Josée Johnston, 2018. "On (not) knowing where your food comes from: meat, mothering and ethical eating," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(3), pages 569-580, September.
    13. Virginie Baritaux & Carole Chazoule, 2018. "Légitimité et positionnement des marchés de gros dans les dynamiques de relocalisation de l’alimentation : les cas du marché de Lyon Corbas et du MIN de Grenoble," Post-Print hal-03122984, HAL.
    14. Sini Forssell & Leena Lankoski, 2017. "Navigating the tensions and agreements in alternative food and sustainability: a convention theoretical perspective on alternative food retail," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(3), pages 513-527, September.
    15. Amaranta Herrero & Fern Wickson & Rosa Binimelis, 2015. "Seeing GMOs from a Systems Perspective: The Need for Comparative Cartographies of Agri/Cultures for Sustainability Assessment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(8), pages 1-24, August.
    16. Matthew M. Mars & Hope Jensen Schau, 2017. "Institutional entrepreneurship and the negotiation and blending of multiple logics in the Southern Arizona local food system," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(2), pages 407-422, June.
    17. Eugenio DEMARTINI & Anna GAVIGLIO & Alberto PIRANI, 2017. "Farmers' motivation and perceived effects of participating in short food supply chains: evidence from a North Italian survey," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 63(5), pages 204-216.
    18. Clare Gupta & Tamar Makov, 2017. "How global is my local milk? Evaluating the first-order inputs of “local” milk in Hawai‘i," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(3), pages 619-630, September.
    19. Aintzira Oñederra-Aramendi & Mirene Begiristain-Zubillaga & Mamen Cuellar-Padilla, 2023. "Characterisation of food governance for alternative and sustainable food systems: a systematic review," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-32, December.
    20. Gustavo Magalh?es de Oliveira & Gaetano Martino & Chiara Riganelli & Michela Ascani, 2022. "Sustainable transition and food democracy: The role of decision making process in Solidarity Purchasing Groups," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 24(2), pages 1-34.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:36:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-019-09942-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.