Framework for Local Food Systems Curricula

Ross MacDonald's picture

 

A vibrant local food system requires engaged, educated and entrepreneurial young adults and workforce re-entry adults who understand and can act on the integrative play in the local food chain across the production to consumption continuum. Moreover, curricula designed to engage, educate and promote entrepreneurism (The Three E's) can advance efforts to promote healthy residents and economically strong communities.

In addition to learning the agricultural basics, students need to think integratively and creatively so as to understand systems. Because local foods is a system, it follows that students will need to learn and practice ways of engaging effectively with others: collaborating, facilitating, brainstorming, capturing and synthesizing ideas. Students will also need to be prepared to design and engage in business activities across the value chain so as to generate decent income for themselves and create jobs for others. Regardless of where one initially focuses curricular efforts (location, product, or place in the value chain), the emergence of a local food system is necessarily dependent on a local food systems curriculum in the local and state schools from K-postgraduate. This blog focuses on grades 7-12.

Does such curricula exist? Go ahead, Google "local food systems curriculum." On January 31, 2010 at 10:45 a.m. EST, the search yielded exactly 1,100,000 hits. The first five on the search included the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Center for Ecoliteracy, the National Farm to School Network, the Food Project, Grassroots International. Let's make it the top six, because that takes us to localfoodsystems.org, specifically a post by Brian Raison, OSU Extension Director for Miami County. Brian's progressive thinking and action has led to the formation of a local food systems team, who have expressed interest in the nature of a curriculum focused on local foods systems.  To see if the quality of the search degraded deeper into the search, I jumped ahead to page 75 on my browser, guessing I was somewhere around hit #750. Still plenty of relevant information: from Shalom Seed Sanctuary's Sustainable Food Systems Curriculum to the Southwest Marketing Network's Farm to School Curriculum. There's no shortage of local food curricula.

If there are more than a million potential sources, how do we usefully organize our thinking about local foods curricula for grades 7-12? To make decisions about what to copy, adapt, aggregate, or create, we need a framework to organize our thinking, provide a critical perspective for assessing existing curricula in a consistent way, and make explicit our criteria for evaluation. And given the comprehensive elements needed to support a particular local foods curriculum, who else needs to be involved in its development and implementation? Just as the local food systems "play" integrates the food to table continuum, so the curricular play integrates the local partners continuum. To that end, I have developed a Local Food Systems Curricular Framework for grades 7-12, organized as a series of column headings.  Slight adaptations would render the Framework useful for K-6 and other slight modifications should work for Higher Education.

Back to grades 7-12. The components across the top are reminiscent of the adage, "It takes a village to raise a child." Analogously, a local foods curriculum must involve and take advantage of the resources and expertise of the local village, stakeholders in the local food system beyond those who actually implement the curriculum. Therefore, anchored by the Curricular Components on the far left are four categories of additional partners. While the attempt is to comprehensively list all general elements of the Curricular Components and types of Partners, there are certainly missing elements. No doubt experience and the input of others will help refine the list of elements for each column. Meanwhile, several of us are initiating use of the Local Foods Curricula Framework for particular projects and will be reporting our progress.

 

Curricular Components

Community Partners

K-12 School Partners (beyond the curriculum)

Land Grant University,
Extension and Outreach Partners

Government, Business,
Organization
Partners

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any local food systems effort concerned with school curriculum could fill out the particular details of their local village partners in order to guide network building and tracking. Urban Cleveland, for example, would have most or all of the same general elements as local foods efforts in Athens, but the particular elements would vary considerably. For example, under the column heading "Government, Business, Organization Partners," one element would be non-profits -- which could include local land conservatories. A 7-12 Local Food Food Systems curricular project in Cleveland, therefore, would most likely enlist the Cleveland Botanical Garden as a partner. A project outside the Greater Cleveland Area would almost certainly include non-profit organizations, possibly land trusts, but initial efforts would likely focus on local partners. Although if we consider the value of the Local Food Systems website and other networking tools, the Cleveland Land Trust's wealth of experience and expertise could be of considerable benefit to efforts in other metropolitan areas.

Moreover, a Local Food System effort may initially focus on one Curricular Component, such as nutrition and health. Such a focus would still benefit from a comprehensive consideration of each of the four partner categories. So as a real-life example, health and nutrition curricular components of several Local Food Systems efforts in Columbus have been initiated by or have included the City of Columbus Department of Public Health, and often included more specifically the Director of the Institute for Active Living, Barb Seckler, who has a wealth of experience and knowledge. In addition to the Cleveland Conservatory and the Institute for Active Living, a multitude of potential partners are available on this and other sites.

The following outline breaks down the elements column by column.

I. Curricular Components
    A. Overview and Introduction
        1. Food system
            a. The traditional agricultural value chain: scale
            b. Local food systems value chain: scope
                1) systems organization
                2) integrative thinking and collaborative action
        2. Food Availability
            a. Types of retail food stores and products sold
            b. Food balance (distance to nearest grocery store/distance to nearest fast food)
            c. Community gardeners and gardens
            d. Best spots for on-site visits and practical "labs"
        3. Collaboration and tools
            a. Networking tools and practices
            b. Working with others
    B. Background
        1. History of producing subsistence food
        2. Biology
of a safe and healthy diet
        3. Nutrition of food choice, healthy lifestyle, food safety
        4. Culture, food, comfort foods
        5. Computer and digital tools for networking
    C. STEM Content
        1. Science of
            a. ecosystems
            b. health and nutrition
            c. producing and processing food
        2. Technologies for networking and informational systems
        3. Engineering of a local food system
            a. equipment
            b. planting designs
            c. "harvesting" buildings (profit generating, re-use of materials from a condemned buildings
            d. green technologies and sustainable energy
        4. Math
of
            a. healthy diets
            b. costs and cost effectiveness and business potential and targets
            c. scientific on-site lab work and research
    D. Related Content
        1. Business
of marketing and selling locally sourced food
        2. Literacy of documents such as business plans
        3. Politics of community action and activism
        4. Art of cooking
        5. Psychology of food and eating
        6. Spirit of collaborating and partnering
        7. Soul
of personal and community pride

II. Community Partners
    A. Land
        1. Vacant
        2. With buildings waiting to be taken down
        3. Already in service
    B. Buildings
        1. Reusable as is
        2. Repurposable
        3. "Harvestable"
        4. Little to no use: to be razed
    C. People in the community
        1. Mentors
        2. Internship providers
        3. Entrepreneurs
        4. Leaders
        5. Community group leaders
        6. Nonprofit personnel
        7. Neighborhood commissioners
        8. Church leaders
        9. Business owners and leaders
        10. Community “laboratories” and demonstration sites
           a. backyard gardens
           b. businesse
s
           c. buildings in process

           d. green energy technologies and possibilities

III. School Resources Partners (other than curricular)
    A. Transportation
    B. Food purchasing, preparation, and services, including culinary arts
    C. Buildings and grounds
    D. Student services, including counseling
    E. Clubs and student organizations

IV. Land Grant University, Extension and Outreach Partners


    A. Programs, materials and expertise of highly trained researchers, educators, and county agents

    B. K-12 linkages such as early enrollment opportunities for promising high school students

V. Government, Business and Organizational Component
    A. Local and state agency personnel
        1. Public health departments
        2. Planning departments
        3. Neighborhood commissions, etc.
    B. Businesses with potential to be positively impacted by a strong and stable local food system
        1. Especially if a strong local workforce is available
    C. Local non-profits such as
        1. New Harvest Community Arts Center and Café in the Linden neighborhood, Columbus, Ohio

 

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