This essay describes some of the work leading up to the first issue of the Journal as a way to understand why it took the form it did and why its guiding concepts are still relevant. Those concepts-identifying philosophical assumptions, interdisciplinary research, and systems thinking are probably more relevant than they were four decades ago, given how complex agricultural and food issues have become.

First paragraph: Upon the initial release of our report, A Regional Imperative: The Case for Regional Food Systems (Ruhf & Clancy, 2022), we received criti­cism about our “treatment of racism and racial equity” from the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG), the report’s original sponsor. While this criticism was unsettling to us and was not accompanied by specific feedback, we acknowledged that we could have done more on the racial justice aspects of regional food systems. Despite lengthy sections on social justice, refer­ences to oppressed communities, and suggested remedies throughout the text, our original report fell short in certain important ways, and we wanted to strengthen it. . . .

First paragraph: Upon the initial release of our report, A Regional Imperative: The Case for Regional Food Systems (Ruhf & Clancy, 2022), we received criti­cism about our “treatment of racism and racial equity” from the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG), the report’s original sponsor. While this criticism was unsettling to us and was not accompanied by specific feedback, we acknowledged that we could have done more on the racial justice aspects of regional food systems. Despite lengthy sections on social justice, refer­ences to oppressed communities, and suggested remedies throughout the text, our original report fell short in certain important ways, and we wanted to strengthen it. . . .

This chapter provides information about many of the concepts that inform the planning and development of food system models that are covered in this book. The first section offers the origins and definitions of eight concepts: sustainability, sustainable development, sustainable agriculture, resilience, food systems, sustainable food systems, systems thinking and modeling and multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary research. Because sustainability and resilience are often confused with one another, as are food systems and systems thinking, the next two sections discuss the differences between these important concepts. The chapter concludes with a description of systems properties and their use in food systems models.

Regional food systems’ appears with increasing frequency in scholarly works and among food system practitioners. Yet regional food systems are understudied and undervalued. Much more attention to regionalism and regional food systems is necessary to create more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems for all. Building from the authors’ 2010 paper, “It takes a region… Exploring a regional food systems approach: A working paper,” this greatly expanded report explores the concepts, practices, challenges, and promise of regional food systems. The report’s focus is on the Northeast U.S., a laboratory for regional food systems thinking and action, but it also describes and gives examples of regional food systems development across the country. The arguments in favor of regional approaches and explorations apply to all regions and embracing them could not be more imperative to address contemporary conditions.

Due to correlations between purchasing patterns and diet disparities, differences in food shopping patterns and strategies across income levels and other socio-economic characteristics is a widely-studied research area. Most extant literature uses either primary or secondary data, which are often characterized by, respectively, limited geographical scope and considerable level of detail, or wide geographical reach but low detail. That literature also reveals contrasting results based on methods, data sources and geographic location. In this paper, we use three different datasets to characterize the differences in purchasing patterns across income levels, rural-urban status and other variables of food shoppers in the Northeastern USA and compare these trends with existing research. While many of the findings corroborate previous studies, new findings include less reliance on superstores overall, except for rural respondents, and a greater reliance on limited assortment supermarkets for SNAP and low-income households. Food purchasing differences are described by race and ethnicity, income and education, and children in the household. The analysis presented here includes a portion of the work performed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers engaged in the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative project Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE). By using primary data from shoppers' intercept surveys, and secondary data from two large datasets, one of household food purchases and the other of food expenditures, we identify purchasing decisions holding at both the case-study (limited geography) and broader geographic (entire Northeast) levels, which both support previous findings and reveal the need for additional research in this area.

Vibrio bacteria can accumulate in molluscan shellfish and cause human diseases. The United States (U.S.) has implemented Vibrio Control Plans to mitigate risks associated with these bacteria, which include time and temperature requirements for post-harvest processing and maintaining an unbroken cold chain. In this study, we tracked the performance of cold chains for U.S. farmed oysters distributed nationally and internationally using temperature sensors. Boxes and bags of oysters (n = 125) were shipped from farms in Washington State and the Chesapeake Bay to 143 unique businesses in 20 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Hong Kong, China. Eighty-one percent of the temperature sensors were returned with usable data. The average product temperature among all participants was 4.4 ± 2.7 °C (40 ± 5 °F), which is 5.6 °C (10 °F) cooler than the 10 °C (50 °F) guidance criterium established by the U.S. government. There were spikes in temperature in some shipments: 18% of shipments (16/91) experienced oyster temperatures above 10 °C for one hour or more, and the median time spent out of temperature control was 2.5 h. We modeled V. parahaemolyticus abundance using temperature sensor data and 75% (68/91) of shipments had a net decrease in V. parahaemolyticus abundance in the cold chain. There are opportunities for improvements in cold chain performance in the shellfish industry and related businesses. In the discussion we provide recommendations for oyster producers related to product cooling, for businesses that handle shellfish, and for government and industry groups to develop guidance for shipping by air, among other issues.

Temperature-controlled supply chains (cold chains) require an unbroken chain of refrigeration to maintain product quality and safety. This study investigated cold chains for farmed oysters raised in the Chesapeake Bay, one of the largest shellfish-growing regions in the United States, and sold live to the half-shell market in surrounding states. Temperature sensors were used in boxes of oysters from February to September 2017, which generated 5,250 h of temperature data. Thirty-nine businesses participated in the temperature sensor study, and 26 of those businesses participated in interviews to further understand how cold chains function. Internal oyster temperatures were measured above 50°F (10°C) for over 1 h in 19% (7 of 36) of shipments, which is a temperature that exceeds National Shellfish Sanitation Program criteria. The highest internal oyster temperature recorded in any shipment was 54.5°F (12.5°C). Some parts of the cold chain had difficulty maintaining storage temperatures below 45°F (7.2°C) in warmer months when Vibrio control plans were in effect. We modeled the effects of temperature on Vibrio parahaemolyticus. The model predicted moderate bacterial growth before oysters were under temperature control, but cold chains prevented further bacterial growth and provided a moderate drop-off in V. parahaemolyticus abundance.

Farmed oysters are one of the most valuable aquacultured products in the United States (U.S.), are highly perishable, and increasingly shipped live year-round. Supply chain actors must work together to bring refrigerated oysters to market quickly, while maintaining product value, safety and traceability information. In light of these demands, this study assesses the performance and conduct of supply chains for U.S. farmed oysters (Crassostrea virginica, C. gigas). Over the two-year study period, we conducted interviews with 56 businesses and tracked 125 oyster shipments from two major growing regions in the U.S. through six different types of supply chains. We hypothesized that direct and intermediated supply chains would perform differently in terms of time-to-market, product temperature in cold chains, compliance with temperature regulations, and modeled risks from Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Intermediated supply chains, by their definition have more connections than direct supply chains, and we found this introduces a longer time-to-market and a higher incidence of time and temperature abuse. However, these factors did not lead to greater modeled V. parahaemolyticus risks. Participants in both direct and intermediated supply chains were aware of the importance of traceability and felt uniformly positive about their ability to perform recalls. A common concern was the speed of government-imposed recalls, which can be declared by regulators after the affected live oysters are consumed. Members of these supply chains play different roles in maintaining the cold chain, possess different levels of information related to traceability, and describe different levels of trust with other supply chain actors. This paper contributes to a growing body of knowledge on supply chains for seafood and their critical, and sometimes overlooked, role in larger food systems.

First paragraphs: In 2010, we presented a set of arguments and assumptions supporting the value of regional thinking and the regional scale in food systems work in papers that we wrote under the aegis of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Clancy & Ruhf, 2010; Ruhf & Clancy, 2010). We pointed out that local food has resonated with the public, producers, and marketers, and that it has inspired many supportive public policies. We also talked about some of the drawbacks of the focus on “local”—its varied definitions, and its short­comings as a framework for sustainable and resilient food systems. We described how regions, which go beyond the local scale, play a unique and essential role in meeting the food needs of a population. Regions also play an important role in sustaining food chain participants and the natural resource base in the face of environmental, social, economic, and climate uncertainty. To us, “regional” signifies a substantial volume and variety of products that can more fully address demand when compared with “local” foods.”  Regional implies a larger scale, often multistate, but is not strictly limited to a radius or state bound­ary. We believe that the regional scale is one of multiple scales—along with local, national and global—that will produce food for the American diet into the future. Regional-scale food systems consider at a landscape scale certain needs and limitations, such as transportation efficiencies, broad land use and protection, energy use, pro­duc­tion systems, and climate. Using a regional scale provides an essential context for addressing cul­tural dynamics and differences, natural and human-made disturbances, and diversity and equity chal­lenges that cannot be adequately encompassed at the local scale.... See the press release for this article.

Despite 2 decades of effort by the public health community to combat obesity, obesity rates in the United States continue to rise. This lack of progress raises fundamental questions about the adequacy of our current approaches. Although the causes of population-wide obesity are multifactorial, attention to food systems as potential drivers of obesity has been prominent. However, the relationships between broader food systems and obesity are not always well understood. Our efforts to address obesity can be advanced and improved by the use of systems approaches that consider outcomes of the interconnected global food system, including undernutrition, climate change, the environmental sustainability of agriculture, and other social and economic concerns. By implementing innovative local and state programs, taking new approaches to overcome political obstacles to effect policy, and reconceptualizing research needs, we can improve obesity prevention efforts that target the food systems, maximize positive outcomes, and minimize adverse consequences. We recommend strengthening innovative local policies and programs, particularly those that involve community members in identifying problems and potential solutions and that embrace a broad set of goals beyond making eating patterns healthier. We also recommend undertaking interdisciplinary research projects that go beyond testing targeted interventions in specific populations and aim to build an understanding of the broader social, political, and economic context.

The market basket chosen for the Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE) project was one of its major tools, as its contents served as the subject of a variety of analyses across the research teams. The interdisciplinary systems project studied multiple components of food systems in the Northeast region. One of the team members’ first collaborative exercises was the choice of the eight items representing the major food groups, includ­ing different processed forms of food and healthier versions of several. This article summarizes the information gathered on the market basket items, including (1) some salient data describing the state of each food item’s industry; (2) the current regional-self-reliance production level; (3) consu­mer purchases of these items in the Northeast utilizing secondary data sources and data gathered in project intercept surveys; (4) store inventories, including prices and where the food is produced or manufactured; (5) the percentage of the market basket food that is produced regionally, as well as the regional economic value-added percentage; (6) models of six of the foods predicting the effect on production and supply chains of changes in the system, such as increased demand and environ­mental changes; and (7) foodprints for each food. Market baskets are frequently used instruments in food environment and cost studies. Using market baskets in EFSNE allowed the teams to aggregate and interconnect data from multiple analyses done by researchers from multiple disciplines to tell a rich story about a specific set of foods, their supply chains, and the future opportunities to enhance their production and distribution in the region.

Note: This is a JAFSCD commentary; it was not peer-reviewed. Complex projects must manage many challenges, including how to communicate about them. In this commentary, we present and assess the extension and outreach objectives, activities, challenges and outcomes of a complex, inter-disciplinary food systems research project called Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast through Regional Food Systems (EFSNE) project. As an integrated project—defined by USDA as including research, education, and extension—EFSNE focused on the regional food system of 12 Northeast states. EFSNE’s Outreach Team met the project’s outreach objectives by proactively sharing project find­ings with multiple audiences including participating low-income communities in a variety of ways. We outline the unique framework and rationale from which multiple outreach activities were conducted during the six years of the project. We also describe challenges we faced along the way, including the tension between research and community engagement, and the translation of complex research to multiple audiences. While complex systems projects often take several years to produce results, we believe that a contextually appropriate, coordinated and meaningful ways throughout the project provides significant benefits to multiple stakeholder audiences as well as to the project itself. We believe this compilation of our outreach strategies may inform similar work in other large, integrated complex regional research projects.

Emphasis on local foods and local food systems has often meant that the importance of other scales goes unrecognized or underappreciated. While each scale has limitations, some food system experts now assert the benefits of the regional scale for its ability to foster a more sufficient, diverse, affordable, and resilient food system. This paper contributes to this debate by exploring people’s perceptions of regionally produced foods. Seven focus groups were conducted with a total of 51 participants across four locations in the U.S. Northeast. Topics discussed included the importance of knowing where food is sourced, how people described their region, personal connections to the region, globalization of food, importance of food origin, perceived benefits and drawbacks of regional foods, and the sense of efficacy and engagement involving food. While many participants were familiar with the concept of the local food system, their perceptions of the regional scale were weaker, less formed, and more diver­gent. These focus groups provide founda­tional insights into emerging consumer definitions and values related to regional food systems, which may help develop appropriately targeted messages to reinforce regional benefits.

The Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE) project started in 2011 to explore the potential for regional food systems to improve food security in the Northeastern U.S. Building on the nationwide interest in local food systems, EFSNE researchers have been motivated by a desire to understand whether regional food systems, which have a larger geographic scope, might have some of the perceived sustainability benefits attributed to local food while providing food accessible to all consumers. To this end, an interdisciplinary team drawn from academic institu­tions, federal government research organizations, and nonprofits has spent seven years trying to understand food consumption, distribution, pro­cessing, and production in the Northeast. Through studying the actual supply chains in nine locations around the Northeast region and doing extensive modeling and analysis of secondary data on food systems, we have attempted to understand the extent to which the region can rely on its own food production and can meet the needs of low-income populations. This issue of JAFSCD presents an initial set of three papers that summarize key insights gathered so far. These papers explore (1) the food system as viewed through an eight-product market basket, (2) our experience engaging and informing stakeholders, and (3) consumers’ perceptions of regional food. Papers to be pub­lished in a later issue are likely to cover (4) our educational activities and their impact on students and trainees, (5) the distribution of products in the Northeast food system, and (6) the capacity of the region to produce food.

In the last chapter of her classic book, Thinking in Systems (2008), Donella Meadows laid out more than a dozen lessons and concepts that summa­rized what she had learned from her immersion in the systems world. In this column I want to focus on two of these systems lessons, and then describe findings from several recent publications in the sustainable food arena that illustrate why and how I think these lessons could be applied to much of what we are doing....

First paragraphs: Continuing from my first column in JAFSCD’s volume 3, issue 1,  feedback loops  are another systems concept with a great deal to offer to food systems projects and activities at any level — local to global. Feedback can be thought of as “an influence or message that conveys information about the outcome of a process or activity back to its source” (Capra, 1996, as cited in Sundkvist, Milestad, & Jansson, 2005, p. 225). Feedback loops act as communication and control devices in both natural and socioeconomic systems. Most people who have worked on sustainable agriculture are accustomed to thinking about ecosystem feedbacks such as those from eroded land, polluted water, declining biodiversity, and many other resource problems. People who study the phenomenon point out that feedback can be masked (when information can not be detected) or disregarded (when a problem is not addressed even though it is perceived). In the latter situation, often no effective measures are taken to change manage­ment practices — which allows disturbances to accumulate and create conditions for large-scale crises later on (Berkes & Folke, 1998, cited by Sundkvist et al., 2005), for example dead zones. With regard to masked feedback, we can examine the problem of long distances that impede the flow of information in the food system and block ecological feedback along the whole chain (Princen, 1999). We see this as the problem of not knowing how food is produced or where it comes from. Without information, the likelihood of farmers making good decisions on management and consumers good decisions on purchases is reduced. Also, as feedback loops become looser and less effective, the motivation for environmental action is reduced (Levin, 1999)....

The task presented to the committee was to propose a framework that could be utilized by researchers and stakeholders to assist in food and agriculture decision-making. We were also asked to provide examples of current food system issues for which there are present and future alternatives, and for which the utilization of the framework could be helpful in decision-making. The charge was to develop the framework and not to do any actual analyses of a particular issue....

First paragraph: I've been writing for several years now about the importance and usefulness of applying systems concepts to work in food systems. Several of my JAFSCD columns have offered highlights from different reports issued by the National Research Council (NRC, 2010) and from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council (Institute of Medicine & NRC, 2015) which have strongly called out the need for transformative food and agriculture research (K. Clancy, 2013; 2016). In this column, I want to focus on a report funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) and released in May 2017 by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), entitled The Challenge of Change: Harnessing University Discovery, Engagement, and Learning to Achieve Food and Nutrition Security. Although directed to public research universities, most of the analyses and recommendations apply just as well to private universities and other institu­tions of higher education that are tackling food security and insecurity at all levels....