Moya KneafseyCoventry University | CU · Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
Moya Kneafsey
BA, PhD
About
82
Publications
72,377
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4,947
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I want my research to contribute to more sustainable and resilient livelihoods and lifestyles. Through my current focus on short food chains and urban community food initiatives, I aim to develop critical insight into the social and economic innovations which have the potential to deliver human health and wellbeing, without destroying vital planetary resources.
Additional affiliations
January 2015 - September 2015
August 2014 - present
Position
- Reader in Human geography
Description
- The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) is driving innovative, transdisciplinary research on the understanding and development of resilient food and water systems internationally.
Publications
Publications (82)
Innovation in Territorial Food Systems: Collaboration is Key
Professor Moya Kneafsey at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience discusses the importance of The COACH project, which aims to facilitate collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to ‘scale up’ short agri-food chains which rebalance farmers’ po...
Commissioned by Feeding Britain, this report presents the findings of an evaluation of the Community Food Hub (CFH) project in Foleshill, Coventry. An earlier interim evaluation was conducted covering the launch of the Foleshill Social Supermarket in March 2020 to the end of December 2020 (referred to as Year 1), resulting in an Interim Report. The...
With growing scholarly and societal interest in the challenges confronting current and future food systems, there is an urgent need for a wide-ranging introduction to the issues at hand. This authoritative and accessible book offers students and practitioners alike the tools to develop a 'geographical imagination' about food. Essential reading." Da...
What is the future of food in light of growing threats from the climate emergency and natural resource depletion, as well as economic and social inequality? This textbook engages with this question, and considers the complex relationships between food, place, and space, providing students with an introduction to the contemporary and future geograph...
![Figure 1. Agroecology territories framework. Source: adapted from [18].](profile/Luke-Owen/publication/342179262/figure/fig1/AS:902710320713731@1592234320531/Agroecology-territories-framework-Source-adapted-from-18_Q320.jpg)
Geographical Indications (GIs) are regarded as important endogenous rural development mechanisms by the European Union. GIs have proven successful for some producers in some regions, delivering higher added value and safeguarding a product's identity and heritage through the notion of terroir. Within the context of a gradual "greening" of GIs, this...
Food justice represents an evolving framework that puts social justice at the center of debates on how to achieve sustainable food systems. Food justice has largely been examined in community-level pro-jects and activism outside the UK. This paper uses food justice as a framework through which to ana-lyze food policy discourse in the UK. Our analys...
The debate on urban resilience and metabolism has directed increasing attention to the ecological footprint of food consumption, self-sufficiency as a means of food security, and regionalisation of food systems for shortening supply chains. Recently, metropolitan regions have proposed food policies that aim to foster local food systems connected to...
The purpose of this discussion paper is to:
1. Provide insight into the challenges and opportunities of the Protected Food Names (PFN) scheme in Wales.
2. Introduce discussion points and future research trajectories to initiate conversations and generate debate about the ways in which Welsh PFNs could be developed post-EU-Exit.
This discussion pap...
Food security is high on the global agenda and a key limitation to achieving it in conventional food systems is high levels of food loss and waste. Current approaches to this problem generally consider farm production, supply chain and household waste as separate issues. Despite being linked systematically, to date there has been no attempt to aggr...
The purpose of this report is to provide insight into the current status of the UK’s
(United Kingdom) Protected Food Names scheme, describe key considerations for its
future, and outline the main ways in which the scheme could be developed post-Brexit.
The report explains what Protected Food Names (PFNs) are, why they matter and why
they are import...
Urban gardening is not a new phenomenon but it has received considerably more practical and academic interest in recent years. Studies on economic aspects such as crop yields, inputs and outputs of production, productivity, gross margins and the contribution to home economics are rare, especially in Europe. While urban gardening plays an important...
Short 10 page report
This report summarises the key results and highlights that have emerged from a toolkit pilot in 2017 with five small-scale agroecological enterprises in England. This work has been funded through the Power to Change project (2017), which was instigated to further the work that took place through the Just Growth funding program...
This one page of inforgraphics captures the headline data from a recent pilot study (2017) about the impacts of agreocology in England.
The data were generated through a co-developed toolkit following a collaboration between enterprises self-identifying as aligned with the principles of agroecology, The Real Farming Trust and The Centre for Agroe...
This report summarises the key results and highlights that have emerged from a toolkit pilot in 2017 with five small-scale agroecological enterprises in England. This work has been funded through the Power to Change project (2017), which was instigated to further the work that took place through the Just Growth funding programme (2015-16). This res...
Greater London has a vibrant food scene comprising of many different types of urban and peri-urban ‘short food supply chains’ (SFSCs). This paper reports on exploratory research, which used examples of SFSCs from London to build a more detailed understanding of different types of urban SFSC and their relative performance compared to each other. To...
The unglamorous leek is an everyday foodstuff in a British supermarket, but its meaning is constructed through the interplay of a range of non-human materialities including the plant, its packaging and its information dense labels. This chapter examines the variations in the ways in which leeks are marketed in different supermarkets, with a particu...
This paper discusses the extent to which charity-led initiatives can contribute to capacity building for food justice in England. The paper draws on evaluations of two projects run by the charity Garden Organic: the Master Gardener Programme, operating a network of volunteers who mentor households, schools and community groups to support local food...
This is the report of the EIP-AGRI focus group on Innovative Short Food Supply Chain Management.
This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of the Master Gardener Programme, a gardening intervention at a local prison with substance misuse offenders undertaken by an inter-disciplinary research team from Coventry University. The Master Gardener programme, led by Garden Organic ‘the UK’s leading organic charity’, was initially launched a...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the ability of the Chinese geographical indications (GI) system to offer extra guarantees on food safety.
Design/methodology/approach
– Based on a network approach, the research includes a literature review and takes a sample of GI products in Jiangxi Province as a means of exploring the ability o...
FOODMETRES has combined quantitative and qualitative methods and engaged with a variety of actors in metropolitan regions including food producers, civic food organisations, and government bodies. FOODMETRES defines metropolitan regions in the context of the land use impacts of cities on their surrounding areas. It hence considers phenomena such as...
KEY RESULTS
The application of ecological footprint tools such as the Metropolitan Foodscape Planner demonstrates that the land available around large cities such as London, Berlin, Rotterdam, Milan or Ljubljana offers sufficient productive land for feeding the respective urban populations (with the food that can be grown in their biogeographic zon...
FOODMETRES aims to describe, analyse and facilitate the development of short food supply chain
(SFSC) innovations in metropolitan regions, including their rural, urban and periurban areas. The
research carried out in this project covers questions of food production, processing and logistics; its
focus is sustainable and resource-efficient soluti...
Food chains considered to be sustainable are chains that produce food closer to the city, reduce the number of steps in the chain and use natural resources more efficiently. In the FOODMETRES project (see previous article), case studies were undertaken for six metropolitan regions – London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Milan, Ljubljana, and Nairobi – to show...
Building on previous evaluations, this project was especially designed to evaluate the health and social impacts of a project called Sowing New Seeds facilitated by Garden Organic; the national charity for organic growing in the UK. The report evaluated the Sowing New Seeds: Supporting Change phase of the initiative.
Book synopsis: Reconnecting so-called alternative food geographies back to the mainstream food system - especially in light of the discursive and material 'transgressions' currently happening between alternative and conventional food networks, this volume critically interrogates and evaluates what stands for 'food politics' in these spaces of trans...
The challenge of feeding the world’s growing population without further damaging the natural resource base is becoming increasingly urgent, and must be met in ways that also allow adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. Agriculture provides not only food, but also fuel, fibre and a wide range of ecosystem services. This paper discusses the...
The present study aims at describing the state-of-play of short food supply chains (SFSC) in the EU understood as being the chains in which foods involved are identified by, and traceable to a farmer and for which the number of intermediaries between farmer and consumer should be minimal or ideally nil. Several types of SFSCs can be identified, for...
Provoked by concerns about climate change, resource depletion and economic recession, the concept of food security has experienced a renaissance in international policy and research agendas. Despite this interest, the problem of food insecurity in wealthy countries has still not received enough attention. We argue that it is worthy of research and...
‘Food security’ has recently gained policy salience in the UK and internationally. Definitions vary, but the term is generally used by policy makers to imply sustained access by all consumers to sufficient food that is affordable, safe, nutritious and appropriate for an active and healthy life. Recent attention partly reflects anxiety over possible...
Book synopsis: Shifting global consumption patterns, tastes and attitudes towards food, leisure, travel and place have opened new opportunities for rural producers in the form of agritourism, ecotourism, wine, food and rural tourism and specialized niche market agricultural production for tourism. Agriculture is one of the oldest and most basic par...
There has been an explosion of interest in ‘re-localized’ and ‘re-connected’ modes of food provision, which could provide
solutions to the socio-economic and environmental problems associated with food production and consumption. Within this context,
this paper aims to critically review the significance of the ‘region’ for debates about future food...
Book synopsis: Alternative ways of thinking, analysing and performing economic geographies have become increasingly significant in recent years, partly due to the recent financial crisis, which has had social and political consequences throughout the world. Yet there is a danger that the debate about alternatives may become simply a way of fixing g...
Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food presents a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of alternatives to current models of food provision. The book offers insights into the identities, motives and practices of individuals engaged in reconnecting producers, consumers and food.
Arguing for a critical revaluation of the meanings of choice...
Book synopsis: In a neo-liberal era where society in the Developed World is reliant on mass-produced cheap foods, and living standards are based on high consumption of non-renewable energy and materials, this book investigates the growing significance of sustainable systems in rural areas. Drawing on a wide range of topical case studies, primarily...
Direct marketing strategies of different kinds are often central to so-called “alternative food networks”, which tend to be underpinned by a central principle of somehow “reconnecting” food producers and consumers. This paper uses a case study of a community-supported agriculture project in Scotland to examine the motivations behind producers' and...
This paper investigates the perceptions of tourists and gatekeepers (such as tour operators and destination marketing organizations) on integrated rural tourism (IRT), noting their role in consuming and marketing the more recently acknowledged qualities of rurality, such as food processing, creativity and the arts, heritage and outdoor recreation....
Modes of food production–consumption defined as ‘alternative’ have received considerable academic attention, with studies exploring both their potential for contributing to rural development strategies and the opportunities they provide for countering established power relations in food supply systems. However, the use of the term ‘alternative’ as...
Book synopsis: Since the late 1990s, agro-food researchers have identified attempts to re-configure food provision around more ethically sound, economically and ecologically sustainable relationships between food producers, processors and consumers. Largely in the context of developed market economies, notions of relocalization and the quality turn...
Dirt - and our rituals to eradicate it - is as much a part of our everyday lives as eating, breathing and sleeping. Yet this very fact means that we seldom stop to question what we mean by dirt. What do our attitudes to dirt and cleanliness tell us about ourselves and the societies we live in? Exploring a wide variety of settings - domestic, urban,...
Recent European literature on ‘alternative’ food networks (AFNs) draws heavily upon an apparently accessible and diverse body of non-conventional food networks in the agro-food sector and whilst researchers frequently refer to individual examples of farmers markets, box schemes, producer cooperatives and community-supported agriculture projects, le...
This paper focuses on a case study of an ‘alternative’ food network based in the Abruzzo National Park, Italy, to explore how ideas of sustainable farmland management can be expressed through broader understandings of developing networks of care concerned with local economies and societies, high-quality specialist food products, particular ‘traditi...
Ricketts Hein J., Ilbery B. and Kneafsey M. (2006) Distribution of local food activity in England and Wales: an Index of Food Relocalization, Regional Studies 40, 289-301. Despite much interest in the relocalization of the food supply chain in England and Wales, it is unclear whether local food systems are more developed in some areas than others....
The village pub has traditionally held an important 'place' in British economy and society and as such is an interesting site for social and cultural analysis. At one level, it is a site with pronounced mythic qualities. Yet on another level, the place of the village pub is highly unstable and contested, with many reportedly facing closure. Adoptin...
Considerable academic interest now revolves around the recomposition of specific (or ‘alternative’) food chains based on notions of quality, territory and social embeddedness.A key to such recomposition is the marketing of ‘difference’ through a range of accreditation and labelling schemes. Using examples from Europe and North America, this paper e...
Keywords: Lagging rural regions; Rural development dynamic; Food supply chains; Delphi technique; The UK Endemic problems in EU ‘lagging rural regions’ (LRRs) are well documented and various support mechanisms have long been in place to help overcome structural difficulties. Nevertheless, new rural development architectures are now being sought and...
The aim of this paper is to begin to examine the emergence of Farmers’ Markets (FM)in the UK. It is suggested that FM represent a new type of ‘consumption space’ within the contemporary British foodscape, one which may be read as a heterotopic convergence of localist, moral, ethical and environmental discourses,mediated by networks of producers, co...
This paper focuses on the spaces and social relations of food consumption in order to examine how Irish migrants to Coventry, a city in the English West Midlands, form a sense of identity. On the basis of in depth interviews with first generation migrants, it is argued that food consumption practices are linked to Irish identity in three ways. Firs...
Considerable work has now been conducted into the ways in which the countryside and related products are commodified, yet relatively few accounts have attempted to examine the factors affecting local resident participation in this so-called “commodification dynamic”. The aim of this paper is to explore some of these factors through a case study of...
Many rural areas in developed market economies are now responding to globalization by trying to encourage a relocalization of production and consumption through the establishment of niche markets based on locally embedded skills, resources and knowledges. Such strategies can be theorized as features of a territorially based culture economy. By intr...
A range of factors, including consumer concerns about food safety, the growing popularity of rural tourism and policy initiatives to promote endogenous rural development, is converging to promote a relocalization of food production and service provision, especially in those regions marginalized by the globalization of the food supply system. The re...
There is currently much interest in the potential for small producers in the speciality food and drinks industry to develop niche markets based on the regionally distinctive character of their products. One possible tool for developing such markets lies in the use of marketing and promotional strategies which attempt to create associations between...
Summary Regional food products are of contemporary interest as people are increasingly concerned to know where food comes from and how it is produced. Geographers have been slow to examine the link between product and place and this paper provides initial insights into the uptake of a European regulation designed to protect and promote high quality...
Within the context of recent concerns over potential health threats from BSE, E.Coli and genetically modified organisms, food quality is of increasing importance in contemporary British society. Thus food producers, retailers and government institutions are engaged in an attempt to reassure consumers that their food is of high quality and safe to c...
Despite the increasingly globalized nature of food production and consumption patterns, the demand for regional speciality food and drink products is also increasing. Yet little research exists that examines the link between specific products and particular places. This paper reports on an EU regulation aimed at `protecting' and `promoting' food an...
Rural areas in many peripheral areas of Europe have turned to tourism as an alternative development strategy in the face of changes to the agricultural food production system. Particularly in more remote and less agriculturally viable areas, national and European-level policies have often concentrated on trying to encourage ‘bottom-up’ development...
The aim of this paper is to begin to examine the emergence of Farmers' Markets (FM) in the UK. It is suggested that FM represent a new type of 'consumption space' within the contemporary British foodscape, one which may be read as a heterotopic convergence of localist, moral, ethical and environmental discourses, mediated by networks of producers,...
Set within the context of recent rural restructuring in developed market economies, the authors examine the potential of niche markets for speciality food products (SFPs) to contribute towards rural development in peripheral (lagging) regions. Drawing on elements of regulation theory, actor-network approaches, and consumption studies, niche markets...
Quality products and services (niche markets) could be an important instrument of rural development in the lagging regions of the European Union. However, there is little research which relates product to place in a rural context. After providing a brief insight into aspects of agricultural and rural restructuring, the article reviews existing lite...
This paper aims to examine aspects of the relationship between tourism and place identity in rural Ireland. This relationship is conceptualised in terms of the seemingly contradictory themes of change and continuity and. through a case study, it is argued that the impact of tourism must be understood in terms of the new social relations which emerg...
Considerable work has now been conducted into the ways in which the countryside and related products are commodified, yet relatively few accounts have attempted to examine the factors affecting local resident participation in this so-called “commodification dynamic”. The aim of this paper is to explore some of these factors through a case study of...
Projects
Projects (4)
Welsh agri-food systems centred around small-scale family farming are heading towards crisis. Pressures associated with climate change and uncertainties with post-Brexit devolved governance (such as the Common Agricultural Policy replacement) are forcing Welsh Government (WG) and the agri-food industry to identify strategies for adaptation and transformation.
One such strategy relates to ‘Protected Food Names’ (PFNs). PFNs are collectively owned, producer-led initiatives that safeguard and promote geographical and artisanal qualities of traditional food and drink. WG regard PFNs as an important mechanism to develop small-scale farming and endogenous territorial food systems. Indeed, Wales now has 16 registered PFNs (compared to 4 in 2015). They include products of economic significance to Wales such as Welsh beef and lamb.
Initial research (undertaken by the supervisory team) suggests, however, that there is a need to further align PFN production systems with sustainability and environmental principles. The project addresses this challenge by exploring the possibilities for integrating principles and practices of agroecology into PFN systems.
The study will deepen understanding about the multi-scalar interconnections between territorial food systems, rural development, agroecology and PFNs in Wales through collaborative research (with businesses, PFN associations etc,) to safeguard the future of small-scale agri-food systems.
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/agroforestry_ecosystem_regeneration
The FP7 project ‘Food Planning and Innovation for Sustainable Metropolitan Regions’ FOODMETRES) thrives to assess both the environmental and the socio-economic impacts of food chains with regard to spatial, logistical and resource dimension of growing food as well as food planning and governance. FOODMETRES uses food-chain characteristics (such as environmental and performance indicators) to assess the “land footprint” of urban food consumptions in terms of the socio-economic and environmental impacts.
The main goals are:
Identify opportunities for food chain innovation at both the local-regional as well the large-scale metropolitan level;
Assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of food chain systems by means of ecological footprint and product life cycle analysis;
Study and compare technical, logistical, organisational and governance aspects of innovative food chain systems in selected case studies in Europe and Africa.
Develop and provide scenario modeling and impact assessment tools in support of stakeholder interaction and policy making;
Apply knowledge brokerage techniques to speed up innovation and innovation exchange within the case studies.