In This Issue: Short Supply Chains

Full text of this issue's editorial:In this issue that completes our sixth volume, we present several papers on short supply chains: food hubs, farm-to-grocers, farmers markets, local grains (in Ethiopia), and, interestingly, two different takes on diversification. It is also worth noting that in this issue we offer a multicultural blend of North American and international papers. We are pleased with our growing international reach, and encourage our distant colleagues from around the world studying food and farming–based community development to expand their contributions to JAFSCD! Doing so fosters that cross-cultural study of food systems that benefits all of us. We look forward to continued submissions from around the globe.We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Monica M. White, assistant professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is coming on board this fall as a new columnist for JAFSCD. Last summer we completed an issue of the journal devoted to race and ethnicity in the food system, including 24 eye-opening commentaries on the topic. The issue was very well received, and we were determined to maintain visibility on the subject of food systems and race. This past winter we began a search for the strong voice of a woman of color who has scholarly expertise in the food movement, and Monica fit the bill perfectly. With a joint appointment in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, she will be using her columns address a broad range of topics related to food justice and communities of color.We begin this issue, as we typically do, with the Economic Pamphleteer himself, John Ikerd, who in his column addresses the wicked problem of How Do We Ensure Good Food For All? Next, reflecting our cover photo, Olya Rysin and Rebecca Dunning use the annual operating revenues and expenses of four North Carolina food hubs to create a model operating budget for a food hub linking small and midscale farmers to local retail and institutional buyers in Economic Viability of a Food Hub Business: Assessment of Annual Operational Expenses and Revenues. In a related paper entitled Collaboration and Commitment in a Regional Supermarket Supply Chain, Rebecca Dunning explores the barriers to social capital formation in short supply chains and identifies how these may be overcome.In Local Foods and Low-income Communities: Location, Transportation, and Values, James R. Farmer, Sara Minard, and Cliff Edens similarly look at the barriers and facilitators of consumer participation in farmers markets and offer strategies for serving low- and moderate-income communities.Next, Christian J. Peters, Jennifer L. Wilkins, Scott R. Rosas, Brenda K. Pepe, Jamie Picardy, and Gary W. Fick share the results of a series of trial workshops conducted to test the efficacy of training local stakeholders on the value of local/regional food production capacity modeling (“foodprinting”) in Engaging Stakeholders To Refine Models of State-level Food Self-reliance.In their reflective essay entitled Delineating the Southwest British Columbia Bioregion for Food System Design and Planning: A Practical Approach, Greg Harris, Denver Nixon, Lenore Newman, and Kent Mullinix elucidate the complex and layered process of delineating a bioregional food system that others may want to adopt or adapt.Also focused on the Pacific Northwest, Love Jonson uses GIS to reveal gentrification-driven displacement in Portland, Oregon, that challenges its reputation as a local food haven in Choosing and Siting Food Access Interventions: Food Mirages and Produce Stands in Portland, Oregon.In addition to our usual complement of Canadian papers, this issue’s international papers are from Ireland, Ethiopia, and Lebanon. In Taking the Leap and Sustaining the Journey: Diversification on the Irish Family Farm, Aisling Moroney, Seamus O’Reilly, and Mary O’Shaughnessy interviewed a group of entrepre­neurial farm households in Ireland to explore how their operations contribute to their own livelihoods and to rural sustainability and economic life.Megerssa Tolessa Walo studies the local grain supply chain and the prospects for strengthening rural-urban economic linkages and finds that current attempts at diversification are not creating permanent solutions to poverty—and that more fundamental marketing infrastructure is required—in Bridging the Rural-Urban Divide for Local Economic Development in Nekemte and its Hinterlands, Oromia, Ethiopia.In our final paper, Sara M. Moledor, Ali Chalak, Monika Fabian, and Salma N. Talhouk conduct a feasibility study of community-based vermicomposting microenterprises that utilize municipal waste in Socioeconomic Dynamics of Vermicomposting Systems in Lebanon.Wrapping up the issue are two book reviews: Laxmi Prasad Pant reviews Responsive Countryside: The Digital Age and Rural Communities, by Roberto Gallardo, and Carrie A. Scrufari reviews Grace Gershuny’s Organic Revolutionary: A Memoir of the Movement for Real Food, Planetary Healing, and Human Liberation.I want to take this opportunity to remind you that we’ll soon be launching our new publishing website, which will host all JAFSCD content and also provide our editorial review system—all in one place for the first time! We are not quite done migrating our content and designing the site, but you can have a sneak peak at http://www.foodsystemsjournal.org. We’ll be soliciting your feedback on the new platform in 2017.Thanks for your continued support of JAFSCD. As we begin our seventh year of publication, we look forward to producing many fruitful issues to come!Publisher and Editor in Chief