Alison Blay-Palmer has been studying and promoting local food systems for nearly 20 years, and her enthusiasm for the topic is greater than ever. Blay-Palmer is director of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., where she explores the big questions around sustainability.
Those big questions include social justice, a factor rarely considered in mainstream ag research. For her, looking into economics means not only farm incomes, but also migrant labour, access to affordable food, and what she calls food “re-localization,” or “closing the loop” — to retain as much money as possible in the community.
And yes, this is federally funded research, although not exactly ag research.
Last fall, Blay-Palmer was named International Government Innovation Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the Waterloo-based Balsillie School of International Affairs. Even more recently, she obtained $2.4 million over five years from the national Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to look at community food projects that are happening across the country and around the world. Read more…..