Farm to School (FTS) programs are increasingly popular as methods to teach students about food, nutrition, and agriculture by connecting students with the sources of the food that they eat. They may also provide opportunity for farmers seeking to diversify market channels. Food service buyers in FTS programs often choose to procure food for school meals directly from farmers. The distribution practices required for such direct procurement often bring significant transaction costs for both school food service professionals and farmers. Analysis (...) of data from a survey of Vermont farmers who sell directly to school food services explores farmers’ motivations and distribution practices in these partnerships. A two-step cluster analysis procedure characterizes farmers’ motivations along a continuum between market-based and socially embedded values. Further bivariate analysis shows that farmers who are motivated most by market-based values are significantly associated with distribution practices that facilitate sales to school food services. Implications for technical assistance to facilitate these sales are discussed. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the permissibility of forming defensive alliances, which is a neglected topic in the contemporary literature on the ethics of war and peace. Drawing on the jus ad bellum criterion of proportionality in just war theory, I argue that if permissible defensive force requires that its expected harms must be counterbalanced by its expected goods, then, permissible defensive alliance formation seems to also require that its expected harms must be counterbalanced by its expected goods, as the (...) latter can result in much the same consequences as the former. Moreover, due to the incommensurability of values in play when making proportionality judgments, I argue for a value pluralist understanding of the criterion. On this view, defensive alliance formation is proportionate if the expected gains in certain values (goods) intuitively justify the expected losses in others (harms) when compared to the alternative expected value trade-offs of not allying. To explore the implications of my theoretical claims I consider them in relation to John Mearsheimer’s influential account of the causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War. On this account, the West’s strategy to assimilate Ukraine and Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership post-annexation of Crimea were disproportionate because the expected harms were unjustified when compared to the alternative expected goods and harms of forgoing Ukrainian membership of NATO. This does not imply that Russia’s aggression is just, but it does imply that the West and Ukraine are partially responsible for the war and that they acted impermissibly in attempting to expand/join NATO. (shrink)