Nurcan Atalan Helicke

Skidmore College · Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences

This research examines the impact of COVID-19 on food security in New York state and the innovative approaches employed by food assistance organizations to help address the changing and increasing demand for their services from March 2020 to May 2021. We examine the case study of New York’s Capital District region through a qualitative approach. We...

As part of the alternative food movement, the number of seed libraries expanded significantly in the U.S. in the last two decades, representing a growing community interest in seed stewardship, access to local food, and food system resilience. Often housed in public libraries, seed libraries are innovations that facilitate semi-formal seed collecti...

This article explores the potential of alternative food networks (AFNs) for food security and resili­ence as COVID-19 has raised challenges to the global food supply chain. Pandemic-induced dis­ruptions to conventional food production, distri­bution, and consumption networks have revealed problems with the global food system and have drawn attentio...

Despite standardization initiatives among states, businesses and non-profit agencies, the understanding and practice of halal requirements vary. This fragmentation of halal certification is particularly significant in terms of genetically engineered food. Studies in both global North and South show that women consumers are more concerned about food...

We share in this reflection a selection of our own daily experiences and observations from Turkey and the U.S. of how Covid-19 has affected people’s relationship to shopping for food. We aim to show the multiple shifts that occurred in the mechanisms of trust that used to define how food is procured. We illustrate how disruptions in conventional an...

Turkey has been a major exporter of terrestrial snails (Helicidae) for food, mainly to European Union countries and to some extent to the United States. It is mainly the marginal communities like the gypsies in Turkey who are employed in the collection of land snails. There has been a decline in the total volume of snail harvests and snail collecti...

Turkey one of the centers of origin and genetic diversity for wheat. There are concerns about a global decline in crop genetic diversity in centers of agricultural diversity, the replacement of traditional varieties with modern varieties and implications for food security and climate change resilience. Market-oriented solutions can help conserve tr...

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum), locally known as siyez in northwest Turkey, is a hulled wheat variety. It is a semi-wild relative of wheat and is considered one of the Neolithic founder crops of agriculture, along with emmer and barley. Grown in the ancient Near East for at least eight thousand years, its production today is limited to marginal moun...

Collection of land snails is an important source of income for disadvantaged rural households, particularly for seasonal migrant labor and gypsy communities in Turkey. Turkey has been a major exporter of terrestrial snails (Helicidae) for food, mainly to European Union countries and to some extent to the United States. There has been a decline in t...

The halal food markets, catering to the dietary concerns of Muslims, have grown worldwide. Literature has discussed growing halal markets, particularly meat, and competing forms of certification to address quality and other concerns of Muslim consumers. Yet, discussions about genetically engineered (GE) food in the Muslim world are comparatively ne...

The security of the US food supply faces unprecedented challenges due to changes in our food system and the environment during recent decades. The 27 articles in the Symposium on American Food Resilience examine the resilience of food production and distribution – the system’s ability to withstand shocks or stresses that could lead to disruption of...

Seed exchange is a multidimensional issue with social, political, economic, and agricultural implications. There is a growing concern about the increase of the food system’s vulnerability as a result of loss of agricultural biodiversity. Farmers’ ability to replant, exchange, and distribute saved seed is a way to minimize their dependence on commer...

The resilience of the American food supply—the ability of the food system to withstand shocks or stresses that could lead to disruption or collapse—is a matter of genuine concern. While all seems well with supermarkets stocked to the brim, changes in the food system and our environment during recent decades have created risks that are no longer hyp...

Sustainability education increasingly emphasizes experiential, high-impact learning practices, and the understanding that changes in mind-sets, values, and lifestyles are required for the sustainability of a finite planet. In this essay, I discuss service learning as a sustainability education pedagogy for teachers in higher education interested in...

Given their value for both agriculture and biodiversity, seeds are the target of controversial efforts to establish intellectual property rights and variety protections that regulate sale, exchange, and breeding of genetic resources. This article examines seed governance in Turkey, a country in which many farmers continue to rely on "traditional" w...