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Recent News

SFSS member and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Eduardo Brondizio, has been elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences! Read more here.
IU's Critical Food Studies Lab partnered with the Bloomington Food Policy Council to analyze responses to a survey on Bloomington food access as part of the City of Bloomington's 2018 Sustainability Action Plan. The analysis has been published in a report and shared with the City. You can find the report here.
Congratulations to SFSS member Keitlyn Alcantara for her recently published review essay in the journal Nature and Culture: “Not Lost but Found: Rebuilding Relations and Reclaiming Indigenous Food Systems.” Oct 7, 2021
A new paper by SFSS member Eduardo Brondizio and colleagues provides a comprehensive review of the contributions of Indigenous and local knowledge, values, and practices for nature: Brondizio, E. S. Y. Aumeeruddy-Thomas, P. Bates, J. Carino, Á. Fernández-Llamazares, M. Ferrari, K. Galvin, V. Reyes-García, P. McElwee, Z. Molnar, A. Samakov, U. Shrestha. 2021. Locally based, regionally manifested, and globally relevant: Indigenous and local knowledge, values, and practices for nature. Annual Review of Environment and Resources. Vol. 46..
SFSS member Eduardo Brondizio is part of a project with Virginia Tech collaborators being funded by NSF’s DISES program examining community-based management of Amazon’s largest fisheries, the Arapaima: 2021-2024-CNH2-L: Integrating Cross-scale Social-Ecological Feedbacks in Freshwater Fisheries Co-PI. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Indiana University-Bloomington
SFSS member Eduardo Brondizio was recently elected as a foreign member (‘associated member’) to the French Academy of Agriculture of the Academie d’Agriculture de France, in particular to the session “Rural Economies and policies.” Brondizio joins deceased IU faculty Elinor Ostrom who was elected to the same session of the academy in 2010. The academy was founded in 1761 and is very active today. Dedicated to “Agriculture, Nourishment, and Environment” current efforts include issues related to rural development, food and nutrition, territory and environment, and agricultural policies and sciences in general.
SFSS Member Angela Babb recently submitted written comments to the USDA's Food & Nutrition Service about the Thrifty Food Plan, which they are finally updating after 15 years. Her comments can be read here. July 2021
SFSS members Jordan Blekking and Kurt Waldman were recently published in El Sevier Science Direct with their piece "The benefits and limitations of agricultural input cooperatives in Zambia." The paper explores how agricultural cooperatives can serve as an institutional vehicle for policymakers to deliver direct benefits to smallholder farmers while also acknowledging its potential caveats for the poorest, most rural farmers who are often not members of these cooperatives. You can read the full article here.

SFSS members Julia Valliant, Stephanie Dickinson, and James Farmer were recently published in Frontiers in Climate with their article "Product diversification, adaptive management, and climate change: Farming and family in the U.S. Corn Belt." To view this open access online publication, please click here. July, 2021.

SFSS member Carl Ipsen was awarded the 2021 Sophie Coe prize in Food History from a field of 85 entries, for his piece "From Cloth Oil to Extra Virgin: Italian Olive Oil Before the Invention of the Mediterranean Diet." (Publication forthcoming) The judges all agreed that "the breadth of sources investigated was impressive, the facts elicited surprising, the exposition clear and well expressed. The larger point of the essay is the mobility of foods across continents, but the real interest lies in the mobility of food standards across time." Watch his acceptance address here. July, 2021.

SFSS member, Olga Kalentzidou, was featured last week on Indiana Public Media's show, Earth Eats. Olga is a lecturer in the Department of Geography and she taught a popular "Geography of Food" class this semester, with a focus on Indiana foodways. Listen to the episode for a peek at what goes on during her cooking labs, and to hear her thoughts on the significance of food in the emotional geography of "place."

SFSS member Olga Kalentzidou was featured on a recent episode of the podcast "In This Climate" put on by the IU Media School and Environmental Resilience Institute. The episode was focused on the idea of "redesigning food systems" and Kalentzidou talks about soil health, urban farming, and more! Watch the episode here. May 13, 2021.

SFSS member Claire Frohman interviewed SFSS researchers Shellye Suttles, Keitlyn Alcantara, and Kurt Waldman this spring for the Ostrom Workshop's new podcast series, Governance Roundtable at the Ostrom Workshop, or G.R.O.W. You can listen to the interviews here in the Ostrom podcast library or on Soundcloud, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. May, 2021.

SFSS researchers Angela Babb and Dan Knudsen had their recent article Examining Public Transportation in Healthy Food Access Research published in Taylor and Francis Online in the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. This piece examines the role of public transit access in food access and demonstrates the need for a place-based, household-level analysis of healthy food access. The study provides an example of this relationship as well as lessons for incorporating public transportation into healthy food access research.

Congratulations to SFSS member Wes Zebrowski for receiving an Ostrom Fellowship with the Ostrom Workshopand for being admitted to the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program! Mar 26, 2021.

“Incentivizing Land Access for Small, Beginning and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers: Research, Extension and Community of Practice," a research project lead by SFSS member Julia Valliant, was one of 24 innovative projects recently awarded grants by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) through their Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). AFRI is the nation’s leading and largest competitive grants program for agricultural sciences. Mar 26, 2021.

Congratulations to SFSS member Jordan Blekking for being awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship! March 24, 2021.

What will food be like after the pandemic? A new study by SFSS researchers outlines an alternative food system emerging in the American Midwest. The IPES-Food Communique of April 2020 made four recommendations in light of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our food system: “take immediate action to protect the most vulnerable,” “build resilient agroecological food systems” that use “natural synergies” to support regenerative systems and local food cultures and communities, “rebalance economic power for the public good,” and “reform international food systems governance.” In their recent article in Global Sustainability, SFSS members Jennifer Meta Robinson, Leila Mzali, Daniel Knudsen, James Farmer, Ruta Spiewak, Shellye Suttles, Annie Shattuck, Julia Valliant, and Angela Babb, and graduate student Mecca Burris examine the disruption that the current pandemic has created within the US industrial food system and suggest that attending to small-scale responses to the pandemic can guide policy and public investments towards a more just and sustainable future for food. Read the paper here.

SFSS member James Farmer and SFSS alumna Analena Bruce explore the influence of climate risks on farmer behaviors in the Southern Wabash River Basin in a new publication. Their piece, published in Land Use Policy, an international and interdisciplinary journal concerned with the social, economic, political, legal, physical and planning aspects of urban and rural land use, draws on 33 semi-structured interviews with farmers to understand whether climate risks are driving the above-average rates of cover-crop adoption in the Southern Wabash River Basin compared to other areas in Indiana. Read the full article here.

"Farm Seeker Needs Versus Farm Owner Offers - A Comparison and Analysis in the U.S. Midwest and Plains." In a new publication in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, SFSS members Julia Valliant, James Farmer, and Stephanie Dickinson compare how farm seekers’ needs align with the offerings of farm owners whose farm assets may transfer out of family in the 12-state North Central Region as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Read the full piece here.

SFSS member Wes Zebrowski was recently published in Sustainability, an international journal of environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings. In the publication, drawing on data from an original survey of 1001 rural farm households across five study sites in sub-Saharan African, Zebrowski and co-authors explore the different levels of access for men and women to formal markets for agricultural inputs, including seed, and reflect upon the need for careful attention to the different implications of seed policies, market interventions, and other seed system reforms to support gender-equitable food security in the region. Read the full open access article here. Feb 15, 2021.

SFSS and the Center for Rural Engagement just wrapped up their second collaborative Indiana Uplands Winter Food Conference. The conference, which was online this year, was spread out over the course of three weeks of lunchtime sessions and covered a rich array of topics to help create a thriving regional food system. Check out the conference page on our website for links to recordings and other resources from the sessions. Feb 12, 2021.

SFSS member Olga Kalentzidou is featured in the latest Euro Exchange Newsletter with a piece entitled "Culinary Crossings." Her piece explores the power of shared culinary traditions to unite a region of otherwise tense political relations, as well as the emotions that come with being an immigrant far from one's homeland around the holidays. Kalentzidou shares recipes for kreatopita (a meat pie), and stuffed cappabge leaves. Her piece begins on page 10 of the newsletter, which you can find here. January, 2021.

A research initiative exploring the implementation of the idea of "food as medicine" led and coordinated by SFSS members Julia Valliant and Jodee Ellett was featured on a recent episode of the Earth Eats podcast on Indiana Public Media. Learn more and listen to the episode here. Jan 15, 2021.