Abstract
In an increasingly globalized food economy, local agri-food initiatives are promoted as more sustainable alternatives, both for small-scale producers and ecologically conscious consumers. However, revitalizing local agri-food communities in rural agro-industrial regions is particularly challenging. This case study examines Grant and Chelan Counties, two industrial farming regions in rural Central Washington State, distant from the urban fringe. Farmers in these counties have tried diversifying large-scale processing into organics and marketing niche and organic produce at popular farmers markets in Seattle about 200 miles away. Such strategies invoke the question, “How are ‘local’ agri-food networks socially and geographically defined?” The meaning of what constitutes “local” and/or “sustainable” systems merits consideration in the linking of these rural counties with distant urban farmers markets. Employing historical, in-depth interview and survey research, we analyze production and consumption networks and the non-market systems that residents in these counties access for self-provisioning and food security.
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Abbreviations
- CSA:
-
Community Supported Agriculture
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Theresa Selfa is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University and Research Fellow in Geography at the University of Exeter-Cornwall. She received her PhD in Development Sociology at Cornell University and was a post-doctoral research associate at Washington State University. Current research interests include examining policy and institutional arrangements related to sustainable food and water systems in the Western US.
Joan Qazi is an Adjunct Professor teaching Geography and Sustainable Agriculture at Wenatchee Valley College in Central Washington. She received her PhD in Geography from the University of Washington with dissertation research examining gender and racial-ethnic divisions of labor in the apple industry. Her current research focuses on local agro-food networks, farm labor, and food security issues.
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Selfa, T., Qazi, J. Place, Taste, or Face-to-Face? Understanding Producer–Consumer Networks in “Local” Food Systems in Washington State. Agric Hum Values 22, 451–464 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-005-3401-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-005-3401-0