Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

• Welcome by new administrative advisor and chair, introductions & agenda review
• In Memoriam: George “Steve” Stevenson, Bill Heffernan, Christine Porter, Don Wyse.
• Project updates by NC1198 members (see Outputs/Activities below).
• Deep dive on three topics: 
• Firm diversification and resilience (Andrew Stevens, University of Wisconsin) and how are we defining resilience in our work. (roundtable discussion)
• Governance structures of values-based food supply chains and the internal and external constraints on their ability to preserve values along the supply chain.
• Hikaru Peterson, Univ of MN, leading discussion on socio-supply networks analysis (following the work of Catherine Brinkley)
• Becca Jablonski, Colorado State University, leading discussion on regional food policy councils https://localfoodeconomics.com/regional-fpc/
• The effects of systemic disruptions (i.e., COVID, climate change, natural disasters) on mid-scale food supply chain resilience, including on social equity (marginalized populations, racial equity) and environmental justice.
• Sarah Lloyd, wearer of many hats, leading discussion on community engagement lessons
• Anton Babkin on considering commodity and information flows.
• Overview of the new USDA Regional Food Business Centers, their priority audiences, methods, long-term goals, and evaluation; NC1198 members who are involved with RFBCs shared specifics. We also discussed the Resilient Food System Infrastructure program through state departments of agriculture. This group will continue to explore opportunities for cross-center learning/collaboration/evaluation, with USDA-AMS.
• Agriculture of the Middle Policy Work: members shared (1) current work informed by/connected to federal policy; (2) how they are communicating research findings to policymakers; and (3) state and local policy related to NC1198 objectives. We identified skillshare topics for the coming year. 
• Adam Wilke, NIFA, provided an update on Hatch Smith Lever and multistate funding programs, decreasing appropriations. NIFA Communications is looking for content.
• Selection of future NC1198 chairs: 2025 Bruce; 2026 Bauer.
• Identification of additional action items and future agenda items
• Annual reporting requirements and compilation process
• Co-author a white paper on AOTM for incoming administration

Accomplishments

The interdisciplinary NC1198 group was created to address a disconcerting structural change in US agriculture: the decline of midscale family farms and associated impacts on the well-being of US rural communities, the economy, and the environment. Since its inception, the group has expanded to examine other issues affecting the resilience, diversity, and competitiveness of the US food system, including the impacts of food system structure and policy on the viability of small and medium-sized farms and food businesses.

Following are synopses of multistate research, outreach, and policy projects that were born out of priorities and partnerships forged by NC1198. They represent active collaborations among current members on various issues concerning the viability and resilience of Agriculture of the Middle including topics such as meat supply chains; regional supply chains; perennial agriculture systems; external constraints on values-based supply chains; supply chain governance; investigations into the structure and function of distinct local and regional supply chains and sectors; and investigation and communication of policy issues surrounding mid-scale producers and supply chains.

Milestones: On Yr 3 of this 5-yr project, research, outreach and policy activities are continuing.

Outputs/Activities: The primary outputs to date are the acquisition and ongoing implementation of numerous collaborative grant-funded projects, publications, and resources that address the research, outreach, and policy priorities of NC1198. Data visualization has also been an output across multiple NC1198-related projects and has proven to be an important tool for distilling complex and dynamic data for research, farmer, and practitioner audiences; one member offered an online training for the group on data visualization techniques.

• Developing mediated market models to increase consumer engagement and market access for New England farmers. USDA NE SARE. $257,846, In progress. Highlights: Our team held a series of workshops at winter conferences and an event in collaboration with the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Success ORIS, as well as an online workshop series featuring farmers and community leaders developing different kinds of collaborative aggregation and marketing models. We also co-designed a comparative case study in collaboration with leaders of five of these emerging models, for which data collection is half way completed.
• Community Food Mobilization in Chicago. Funded by USDA as part of NSF's Civic Innovation Challenge. $1M for 1 year - January 2024-January 2025. The Community Food Mobilization in Chicago (CF-MOB) project investigates mechanisms to transform the structures of food production and distribution in ways that center racial justice, sovereignty and community food access. It aims to advance understanding of public procurement's role in investing in local, equitable food supply chain development, while empowering and creating space for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) food stakeholders to self-determine their participation in it. CF-MOB leverages strong multi-sectoral partnerships among food producers, workers, eaters, advocates and public institutions around the Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI). We are currently developing three deliverables: 1) strategy for the Chicago-based coalition using future scenario planning methods, with a focus on moving local suppliers into institutional supply chains, 2) identification of investment opportunities for hard and soft infrastructures needed to rebuild the middle of the regional food supply chain, 3) data maturity roadmap to inform values-based purchasing and celebrate a diverse farmer ecosystem. 
• Role of nonprofit governance structures in supporting the development of values-based supply chains. This is an unfunded project with a variety of student support. Fall semester of 2023 we worked with a group of 3 grad students from a Data Science program to analyze the farm data. This fall we are working with a group of environmental studies students to look at the other, nonfarm, organizations. 
• Returning to Our Roots: Rebuilding Native Farming Traditions and Food Sovereignty for Great Lakes Indigenous People. USDA-NIFA. $10,815,716. 7/2024-6/2028. With Sarah Lloyd, U of Minnesota with U of Wisconsin Bill Tracy, Erin Lowe, Dan Cornelius, Dustin Frye, Karu Sankaralingam, Erin Silva, Michelle Miller. Highlights: Early stages of developing data use agreements (human subjects, field research, operations management) other than standard research agreement to respect Tribal sovereignty. Investigating Tribal governance structures for supply network operations management. 
• Enhancing Food System Health and Resilience in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic Region from the Soil Up, The Agua Fund, $60,000, Funded, Virginia Tech, Virginia Soil Health Coalition, Social Impact Studios, and On the Farm Radio, continued promotion of core soil health principles to farmers but also a consumer-facing message about soil health and that we can all support the care of soil.
• "Analyzing the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Farmland Preservation Policies in Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Farms," USDA NIFA, $609,541, Year 2 of 3.U of Wisconsin.
• U.S. Food Flows: A Cold-Chain Network Analysis of Freight Movements to Inform Local and Regional Food Issues (USDA-AMS-TSD) UW-Madison, PI. Collaborators: U of MN, U of FL, Oregon State U. This project modeled food flow using US Census data on perishable food movements in 2017. Regional differences in food distribution are readily apparent, with large regions left out of food flow (such as Appalachia, the Plains states and rural southwest) and flow overly reliant on activity in other regions (especially Los Angeles metro). https://doi.org/10.21231/qfx4-4f67
• AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment (ICICLE) (National Science Foundation) Ohio State U, PI. Smart Foodsheds use case led by UC-Davis. Collaborators: Ohio State U, UW-Madison. The Smart Foodsheds team is developing food systems ontologies and knowledge graphs to make database integration possible and improve visualization of data and information. 
• Lessons from COVID-19: Positioning Regional Food Supply Chains for Future Pandemics, Natural Disasters and Human-made Crises (USDA-NIFA Special Project). U of MN., PI. This project collected data during the pandemic on the economic impact of COVID 19 on businesses in the food supply chain in three regions: Los Angeles metro, Miami metro, Minneapolis metro. Regions were differently impacted by the pandemic, with the most concentrated region–Los Angeles, most severely affected. Several papers published this year are based on this work. 
• Local and Regional Food Systems Recovery and Resilience 2.0 (USDA-AMS Cooperative Agreement). PI Colorado State U. Collaborators: U of Kentucky, Penn State U. This project focused on supporting local and regional food system stakeholders impacted by COVID. The project led to three deliverables: (1) Data warehouse (GitHub): public data repository website used by various federal agencies; includes publicly available survey instruments, county-level data, and point-level data. The site enables users to find multiple LRFS data sets in one place, including over 300 variables, and a detailed code and instructions. (2) Data visualizations and website: https://localfoodeconomics.com/data/ The Food and Agriculture Data Explorer (FADE) offers Tableau data visualizations for grant applicants and researchers with (1) county-level maps and visualizations, and (2) USDA point-level data on farmers markets, CSAs, meat processors, etc. (3) Equity statement and framework: We created a framework to guide the equitable use of data and worked with the USDA to develop an appropriate equity statement for the website.
• Farm Succession and Transfer Dynamics: Sustaining an Agriculture of the Middle in the U.S. (USDA-NIFA-AFRI) Penn State U, PI; Collaborators: Washington State U, U of MA, Land for Good, and Renewing the Countryside. This project investigates unique challenges and opportunities in intergenerational succession/transfer experienced by midscale farms and ranches by integrating analysis of secondary farm data at the national level and primary qualitative data collected with regional and national stakeholders/subject experts and retiring or near-retiring mid-scale farmers in PA, MN and WA. 
• Ongoing AOTM policy work. Over 15+ years of policy work by this group (NC1198 and preceding projects), there has been continual growth in policy application and communication by members. This year: two training seminars for members on data visualization and communicating policy findings from research to outside audiences; compilation of multiple federal and state policy engagement undertaken by members; and (3) identification of possible trainings on policy questions for the coming year.

Objective 1-Market Structure

A Haynes Stein, C Brinkley. Farm to Food Bank: Exploring the Ties between Local Food Producers and Charitable Food Assistance☆ Rural Sociology 88 (3), 682-707

J Fuchs-Chesney, S Raj, T Daruwalla, C Brinkley. All roads lead to the farmers market?: using network analysis to measure the orientation and central actors in a community food system through a case comparison of Yolo and … Agriculture and Human values 40 (1), 157-173

Gerhart, Jennifer Anne, and Philip H. Howard. 2023. Assessing the profitability of scaling up for retail access: Lessons from local salad mix in Southeast Michigan. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 12(4), 1-18. https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/1173

Ashwood, Loka and Phil Howard. 2023. Sorting out ownership questions – the ultimately unclear beneficiaries of power in industrial agriculture. Institutional Landscapes. February 18. http://institutionallandscapes.org/contribution/5-sorting-out-ownership-questions-the-ultimately-unclear-beneficiaries-of-power-in-industrial-agriculture/

Worosz, M.R. and M. Dupuis. 2024. Farming with a mission: The case of nonprofit farms. Agriculture and Human Values. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10588-x).

Stevens, A. W., J. Teal, C. D. Court, G. DiGiacomo, M. Miller, & H. H. Peterson (forthcoming). Predicting Firm Diversification in Agri-Food Value Chains. Journal of Food Distribution Research.

Miller, M., Hirsch, R., Chang, J., Shi, J., Long, D. (in review) “Transportation Issues Affecting Fresh Food Distribution: A Comparison Study of Urban vs Rural United States”. Transportation Research.

Miller, M. (2024) Foodsheds and Regional Food Systems. In: Abraham, Martin A. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Technologies, 2nd Edition, vol. 2, pp. 613–622. Oxford: Elsevier. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-90386-8.00083-08

Claire Lamine (INRAE), Eric Sabourin (CIRAD), Fabienne Barataud (INRAE), Tara Wight (LWA), Terry Marsden (Cardiff Un.), Paulo Niederle (UFRGS), Claudia Schmitt (UFRRJ), Adanella Rossi (Pisa Un.), Patrizia Pugliese (CIHEAM Bari), Sarah Loyd (CIAS UW-Madison), Michelle Miller (CIAS UW-Madison), Danièle Magda (INRAE) (forthcoming) “Supporting agroecological transitions in food systems: insights from a comparison of agrifood policies’ trajectories in 5 countries”, Agriculturas

Neidecker (MS student), A. Bruce (Chair), H. Darby, M. Hoffman, M. Miller, and T. Safford (Committee Members). From Seed to Sourdough and Barley to Beer: Understanding structure, partnership strategies, and governance mechanisms in three Northeast grain value chains.  

Objective 2 - Resilience

Ingram, Mrill. 2023. "Building Cover Crop Expertise with Citizen Science: Supporting farmer innovation in a time of change." Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Section Agroecology and Ecosystem Services Volume 7 - 2023 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1045769

C Brinkley, S Raj, S Raja. Planning for FEWsheds: the role of planning in integrating and strengthening food, energy and water systems. Journal of Planning Literature 38 (1), 33-58

Welsh, R., Amy K. Bentley, Lawrence Lam, Stefan Grimberg and Shane Rogers. 2024. “Anaerobic Digester Technology for Small-to-Moderate-Sized Dairy Farms: Constraints and Solutions.” In Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences. Elsevier Inc.

Stevens, A. W. & J. Teal (2024). Diversification and resilience of firms in the agrifood supply chain. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 106(2), 739–778.

Laura Vang Rasmussen, Ingo Grass, Zia Mehrabi, Olivia M Smith, Rachel Bezner-Kerr, Jennifer Blesh, Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi, Marney E Isaac, Christina M Kennedy, Hannah Wittman, Péter Batáry, Damayanti Buchori, Rolando Cerda, Julián Chará, David W Crowder, Kevin Darras, Kathryn DeMaster, Karina Garcia, Manuel Gómez, David Gonthier, Aidee Guzman, Purnama Hidayat, Juliana Hipólito, Mark Hirons, Lesli Hoey, Dana James, Innocensia John, Andrew D Jones, Daniel S Karp, Yodit Kebede, Carmen Bezner Kerr, Susanna Klassen, Martyna Kotowska, Holger Kreft, Ramiro Llanque, Christian Levers, Diego J Lizcano, Adrian Lu, Sidney Madsen, Rosebelly Nunes Marques, Pedro Buss Martins, America Melo, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong, Elissa M Olimpi, Jeb P Owen, Heiber Pantevez, Matin Qaim, Sarah Redlich, Christoph Scherber, Amber R Sciligo, Sieglinde Snapp, William E Snyder, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Anne Elise Stratton, Joseph M Taylor, Teja Tscharntke, Vivian Valencia, Cassandra Vogel, Claire Kremen. "Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture," 2024, Science, Volume 384, Issue 6691. 

Miller, M., Konar, M., Peterson, H., Court, C., Shakya, S., Stevens, A. (in review) “Measuring Food Supply Network Resilience: Centrality in perishable food distribution networks in the United States”. Environmental Research: Food Systems, Special Issue: Focus on Trade and Food Systems

Miller, M., Konar, M. (2024). “U.S. Food Flows: A Coldchain Network Analysis of Freight Movements to Inform Local and Regional Food Issues”. A report prepared for the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Transportation Services Division. https://doi.org/10.21231/qfx4-4f67

Gwin, L., Miller, M., Lowe, E., Hoy, C., Cohen, N., Pirog, R, Tomich, T., Kelly, T.. “Resilience strategies for centers and institutes focused on food systems transformation”, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development.

Objective 3 - Policy

L Poirier, D Antonio, M Dettmann, T Eng, J Ganata, S Ghosh, M Lopez, C Brinkley ...Making plans findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable with data infrastructure: A search engine for constructing, analyzing, and visualizing planning documents. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 23998083241227471

Staples, A., Howard, P., Conner, D., Sirrine, J., Ostrom, M., & Miller, M. (2023). Apples to advocacy: Evaluating consumer preferences for hard cider policies. Journal of Wine Economics, 1-16. doi:10.1017/jwe.2023.29

Stevens, A. W., J. Teal, C. D. Court, G. DiGiacomo, M. Miller, & H. H. Peterson (forthcoming). Predicting Firm Diversification in Agri-Food Value Chains. Journal of Food Distribution Research.

Clark, L., Luistro, A., Ares, G., Miller, M., Baraibar, M., Ncwadi, M. (2024) “Global Action to End Hunger: Prospects for 2030”, Performance Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2023.2363155