Growing Food Connections

📣 The UB Food Lab is looking for community evaluators! As part of our national study of community food system dashboards, we are exploring how dashboards can be better designed to help people get the information they need.

🫱🏿‍🫲🏽 If you’re interested in user experience, data about food systems, and improving data dashboards, this might be the opportunity for you!

⚙️ We expect this to take 10 hours of your time (including training via Zoom) in April 2026. Selected evaluators will receive a $250 honorarium.

📍Check out the flyer below for more information! Our interest form closes on March 20 ✨

Link to interest form: https://lnkd.in/eXT_Z6nq

📣 Call to join our Data Justice for Food Justice Learning Circle! Fill out our interest form by February 13th.

If you care about , then you care about data justice:

Why Food Justice?
Food justice is the condition where people—especially those who are marginalized—have the power and agency to control their food-related experiences in ways that are fair and just. It's more than ; it's about systems.

Why Data Justice?
Data justice is an expansive idea concerned with the just and ethical governance of the entire life cycle of data. Data use for food justice requires respect for community members' rights and dignity at all stages of data, from collection through policy. Data justice can create a foundation for just food systems.

Learn more and share your interest:
With funding from the RWJF and convening support from the American Planning Association Planning Division, we invite you to join the for Learning Circle.

❓ What: Facilitated learning calls covering a variety of data justice topics
📅 When: Quarterly calls starting in March
💻 Where: Zoom
🙋 Who: People who collect, manage, display, and use data to support food systems transformation–including planners, researchers, local government officials, and community based organizations.
⚖️ Why: to strengthen the connection between data justice and food justice, data governance strategies, and using data to develop usable and just data dashboards.

If your food justice work relies on data and you are interested in learning about data governance that supports data justice, please fill out this brief interest form. Learning Circle organizers will follow up with more information about the Learning Circle in late February.

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CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CRITICAL FOOD SYSTEMS PLANNING

Expression of interest with abstract due February 01, 2026
Deadline for chapter August 01, 2026

Drawing on diverse disciplines, the Routledge Handbook of Critical Food Systems Planning aims to articulate a critical scholarship and practice of food systems planning that responds to the challenges and opportunities faced by cities and regions across the Global North and Global South. Competing visions for the future of communities’ food systems have led to competing claims, ideas, and strategies for how food systems should be planned, protected, sustained, and leveraged through city and regional plans and policies. This book aims to contribute to the scholarly and practitioner-friendly literature by surfacing critical theoretical frameworks, epistemologies, and methodological approaches for community food systems planning. Community food systems planning has previously been defined as a deliberate and inclusive process by which communities envision a future for their community’s food system, establish goals for it, assess its current state, identify actions to transform it, and implement these actions to create a more just food system. Yet, scholarship on how such planning processes - often conducted under the ambit of the state - advance food justice and food sovereignty remains limited.

The Routledge Handbook provides an overview of the current state of the field of food systems planning across the Global North and South, and explores the potential for a critical practice of food systems planning. The book includes case examples of cities and regions from across the globe that have used planning and policy strategies to enhance just, healthy, and sustainable food systems.

GUIDANCE FOR INTERESTED AUTHORS
Individuals interested in contributing to the volume are invited to submit a brief abstract (up to 150 words) by February 01, 2026. Consider how a critical framework might inform the chapter; consider connections between the main topic of the chapter and other areas of planning (for example, food and economic justice); and consider what the chapter might offer for future directions of planning research, practice, or pedagogy. Include key readings and keywords with your abstract.

Submit the abstract as a Word file by email to [email protected]. In the subject line, write the authors’ last name(s) and the title of the proposed paper (authors are welcome to reach out to the editors to discuss their interest in a topic in advance of formally submitting their abstracts). Authors whose abstracts fit the volume will be invited to submit complete chapters (5500 words) by August 01, 2026 (all submissions will undergo peer review).

Abstracts from early-career scholars, practitioners, and co-author teams (of academic and community partners) are welcome.

OVERVIEW OF SECTIONS
The book will include chapters in five thematic areas following the introduction: theoretical frameworks; epistemological concerns; planning and policy responses; place-based food systems for food justice; health and wellbeing; and just futures. Interested authors are welcome to propose chapters for any section.
Introduction

The book's introductory section outlines a critical framework for community food systems planning, as well as a historic basis for the emergence of food systems planning in Global North and Global South cities and regions. The introductory section explores the possibilities and limits of food systems planning under varied governance regimes and contested settings, including cities in conflict regions, cities in occupied areas, and unceded territories.

Theory: Competing Theoretical Frameworks
This theoretical section surfaces critical theoretical frameworks for understanding community food systems, and their implications for the practice of city and regional food systems planning. Chapters that draw on Indigenous frameworks, Black feminist perspectives, and decolonial frameworks from the Global South to (re)frame food systems planning are welcome.

Research And Planning Methods and Processes: Epistemological Concerns and Contestations
Some have described planning as the process of using evidence to inform future actions that protect the public interest. However, the nature of what constitutes evidence is contested in food systems planning, especially as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation proliferate. This section interrogates the epistemological frameworks that guide food system planners’ work. We welcome chapters on data justice, participatory and counter-mapping, co-production and co-design of food systems planning, etc.

Planning and Policy Concerns and Responses to the Supply Chain: Food Production, Processing, Retail, Waste Management, and Consumption
The section includes critical analyses of local and regional government planning and policy practice in specific sectors of food systems, such as food production (agriculture, foraging, agroecology, agroforestry), wholesale, food processing, food retail, and food waste management, as well as chapters that address cross-sectoral analyses. Authors are welcome to propose chapters that address a range of topics, including spatial, built environment, land use, fiscal, and legal (regulatory) approaches to strengthening food systems. Chapters may include case studies from cities and regions across the Global South and the Global North.

Place-based food systems planning for food security, health, and wellbeing
This section will include case studies of ‘early adopter’ cities as well as insurgent, radical, or innovative approaches in food systems planning. We expect multiple place-based case studies that detail lessons from successes and failures of food system planning practice.

Just Futures: Sovereign Frameworks, Epistemologies, and Practices
The concluding section will include essays that reimagine possibilities for more just and sovereign frameworks, epistemologies, and practices in community food systems planning. Chapters may also include reflections on pedagogical approaches for critical food systems planning.

EDITORS
Subhashni Raj, University of Hawaii
Samina Raja, University at Buffalo
Tammara Soma, Simon Fraser University

Planning [for Urban Agriculture] as Public Nurturance

Oct 31, 2025, Cornell University Ithaca, NY [12:20 PM]

Drawing on a new coedited book titled Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture: Future Directions for a New Ethic in City Building, Dr. Raja will explore the idea of planning as public nurturance. Planning as public nurturance is a value-explicit process that centers on an ethic of care, especially protecting the interests of marginalized publics. It builds the capacity of marginalized groups to codesign and participate in authentic planning / policy processes. Such a planning approach requires that progress toward equitable outcomes be consistently evaluated through accountability measures. And, finally, such an approach requires attention to structural and institutional inequities. Addressing these four elements is more likely to create a condition under which urban agriculture may be used as a lever in the planning and development of more just and equitable cities.

Samina Raja: Planning [for Urban Agriculture] as Public Nurturance | Cornell AAP Samina Raja presents a care-centered approach from her book Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture that empowers marginalized communities to codesign equitable food and planning systems.

Event reminder | Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture | Oct 29th 2024, 4:00 PM EST | University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, Buffalo, NY

We are less than a week away from a gathering focused on fostering equitable urban agriculture through community-led planning and policy. The gathering celebrates the legacy of food systems planning scholar, teacher, and advocate, Jerome (Jerry) Kaufman (1933-2013) with the launch of a book in his honor. The book Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture is written by more than 50 individuals, many of whom are former colleagues, students, and mentees of Jerry Kaufman.

Speakers include authors, city officials (from Boston, MA and Dallas, TX), and urban growers and community leaders from Buffalo,NY. Speakers - city staff, scholars, and urban growers - will share ideas about how local government policy might advance equitable urban agriculture.

The gathering will open with remarks by Dan Kaufman, Jerry’s son, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and writer for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The Nation.

Organizers hope that the dialogue will surface strategies for advancing municipal policy for urban agriculture in the city of Buffalo. The gathering will conclude with a call for action focused on the city of Buffalo.

Individuals who are not in Buffalo are welcome to register via zoom (remote attendees will be able to join most, but not all, of the proceedings).

The book "Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture" can be downloaded for free from: https://lnkd.in/gAzGejpS

Please share information about this book and the event broadly.

Thank you to the many sponsors and partners of this event including the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, Gardens Buffalo Niagara, Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, University at Buffalo Humanities Institute, Urban Fruits & Veggies, Grassroots Gardens, Massachusetts Avenue Project, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Erie County, Food Policy Council of Buffalo and Erie County, and many others.

https://archplan.buffalo.edu/events/2024/fall/book-launch-planning.html

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