Tammara Soma

• Simon Fraser University

Businesses are turning to bio‐based, compostable plastic packaging as a circular economy solution to global plastic pollution. However, there is a lack of proper waste management systems for collection and processing. Through an international research initiative, a social innovation lab was undertaken in Brazil, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdo...

Food asset mapping is gaining prominence in Canada as an important planning tool for the evaluation of local food systems. In addition to being used by planners to identify opportunities for improved food security, food asset maps are also valuable references for sourcing food locally, particularly by people experiencing food insecurity. Seventy-th...

The sustainable agri-food system is an important sector recognized for promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals on food security, resource conservation and climate change mitigation. However, the increasing food loss and waste (FLW) along the supply chains has continued to hinder these goals. This study evaluates the trend of FLW...

Given the technological constraints of long-duration space travel and planetary settlement, off-Earth humans will likely need to employ food systems very different from their terrestrial counterparts, and newly emerging food technologies are being developed that will shape novel food systems in these off-Earth contexts. Projected off-Earth food sys...

Qualitative research methods had to quickly adapt to using online platforms due to the COVID-19 pandemic to limit in-person interactions. Online platforms have been used extensively for interviews and focus groups, but workshops with larger groups requiring more complex interactions have not been widely implemented. This paper presents a case study...

In this chapter, we aim to understand debates around urban food studies in Montreal and Vancouver by focusing on four issues: food policy, food security, urban agriculture, and food deserts. We identified food policy as a key theme given its growing importance in urban studies and planning (see Morgan, 2014; Rickards et al., 2016) and in light of t...

The climate crisis, natural resource exploitation, and concerns around how to feed a growing world population have resulted in a growing chorus identifying the need for a Plan B. For some, this Plan B entails preparing for long-duration space missions and the development of human settlement on Mars. To plan for long-duration space missions, the dev...

Food loss is a systemic problem contributing to negative environmental, social, and economic impacts. However, despite food loss quantification being identified as critical for food loss prevention and reduction, there is a dearth of studies exploring opportunities to digitize or simplify food loss measurement. Moreover, post-harvest food loss esti...

Compostable bioplastic food packaging and foodservice ware is gaining traction as an alternative to petroleum-based plastics and is being considered within institutional and corporate sustainability strategies. However, compostable bioplastics present their own complex challenges and limitations to sustainability across their lifecycle and may in s...

Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and polic...

Food asset mapping conducted by planners and policymakers usually consists of an online map identifying the locations of food-related sites in cities. However, food asset mapping may be limited in its consideration for ecological and cultural assets critical for community food security. Furthermore, what are considered “assets” may not reflect the...

Food waste is a complex problem with far reaching negative environmental, social, and economic impacts. To identify appropriate solutions to address food waste, the food recovery hierarchy developed by the Environmental Protection Agency is currently the most popular guiding framework in food waste prevention and reduction. However, this paper foun...

Background: In the City of Vancouver, Canada, non-profit food hubs such as food banks, neighbourhood houses, community centres, and soup kitchens serve communities that face food insecurity. Food that is available yet inaccessible cannot ensure urban food security. This study seeks to highlight food access challenges, especially in terms of mobili...

British Columbia’s food system is experiencing an emerging trend in the digitalization of agriculture, which will impact agricultural practices in the province. The rapid growth of this field has created a niche for training and education in digital agriculture and more specifically, in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data anal...

Worldviews, cultures, spirituality, and history not only influence how societies define “food” and “waste”, they also shape how we consume food and the relationship we have with the broader food system. While food waste has emerged as a global concern and a complex “wicked problem” that impacts stakeholders at all scales of operations, the issue is...

In this collectively drafted Commentary, we offer some reflections on the past year for CAFS (Canadian Association for Food Stuides), and the state of food studies in general. Note: this is a modified version of the 2021 CAFS Presidential Address, given at the joint CAFS/ASFS/AFHVS/SAFN Conference Just Food: Because it never it just Food on June 1...

Agricultural digitization is revolutionizing food production with promises to increase both yield and environmental sustainability through the reduction of chemical inputs. However, it is unclear whether the adoption of digital agricultural technologies can also play a role in preventing or reducing food loss and waste. Examples of technologies use...

Reducing food loss is key to improving farmers’ economic well-being and the sustainable management of water, energy, labour, and other resources. To develop appropriate solutions, we seek to identify the reasons for farm-level losses, and more specifically, why edible food intended for human consumption does not reach the intended recipients and re...

Food asset mapping is an emerging tool to promote food security and food resiliency in Canadian cities. It provides a baseline of a city’s food assets and identifies local food infrastructures that can support community food security. Mainstream food asset maps predominantly focus on the built environment, giving less consideration to the natural e...

As awareness around the issue of food waste has grown, various types of interventions to reduce food waste have emerged, many of which tackle waste at the household level. The most popular type of intervention is the awareness campaign, where information and tips are provided to individuals in order to motivate and improve the abilities of househol...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand determinants of food waste through analysing patterns of practices including shopping, planning, consumption of leftovers and attitudes around best-before dates. Design/methodology/approach A survey and waste composition analysis of 142 households was conducted in the City of Toronto. Bivariate an...

Studies on food waste can roughly be grouped into three streams of research. The first looks into the structure and type of food loss and waste (what type of food is wasted, and where and to which extent in the supply chain?), while the second explores the causes of food waste and why it occurs (why food is wasted, and which factors and situations...

Halving food waste by 2050 as per the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 is key to securing a food system that is sustainable. One approach to reducing household food waste is through education campaigns. We recruited 501 households divided into three types of intervention groups and compared with a control group to better understand the efficacy of...

Though there are great efforts to reduce and prevent food waste from occurring, some food waste is unavoidable. Due to the continued creation of unavoidable food waste, the proper disposal and treatment of food waste is an absolute priority. This chapter outlines the “lower” downstream recycling, recovery and disposal aspects of the food waste hier...

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that the food waste problem affects all parts of the inhabited world. It describes concept of ‘vastogenesis’. Far from being devoid of, or separate from, regimes of value, ‘food/waste is both supportive of and necessar...

Providing nutritious, safe and affordable food for all in a sustainable manner is one of the greatest challenges the world faces today, particularly in the context of Asia – where 515 million people are estimated to be undernourished, with the highest rates of food insecurity in Central and Southern Asia (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF et al., 2018). Yet an est...

This paper draws on the result of surveys completed by 323 households and a qualitative study of 21 households from upper (n = 7), middle (n = 7) and lower income (n = 7) households in Indonesia. This article employs practice theory to better understand the role of planning and infrastructure in food provisioning and food wasting practices. Results...

A comparison of the effectiveness of three methods of engaging residents in food waste awareness campaigns. Preliminary results show that gamification may be a promising strategy.

In the near future, Canada will be implementing a national food policy; in doing so, it will be joining a growing number of countries with policies and strategies that address the growing problem of food waste. Food waste is a major economic drain estimated to cost Canada $31 billion dollars annually or $107 billion in true cost, when the costs of...

Applying the conceptual frameworks of 'food distancing' (Clapp, 2012) and 'waste distancing' (Clapp, 2002), this paper investigates the issues of food consumption and food waste in urban Indonesia. The paperarguesthatthe'distancing' of food production via long-distance modern supply chains is connected to the growing issue of food waste in rapidly...

Current research on household food waste has not considered the impact of the inter-class power dynamics between employers and domestic helpers on food waste management and generation in the Global South. This article focuses on the issue of food justice and will demonstrate that it is important to reconsider household food practices within the fra...

In an age when we are inundated with information, efforts that streamline that information—by sifting kernels of wheat from the chaff—are precious. Our reviews are intended to assist CFS readers faced with a growing body of material relevant to food studies. However, the standard book review process is ill-suited to the increasingly common edited v...

There is an old tale wherein a farmer heard a sobbing sound coming from her field. She looked around the rice paddy only to find that the source of the sound was a handful of unharvested rice plants that were left behind during the harvest. Interviews conducted with women who are in charge of household food provisioning in Bogor, Indonesia, regardi...

There are a growing number of studies focusing on household food waste in the Global North. However, very little is known empirically about the impacts that class and privilege have upon food wasting practices in the Global South. According to Evans (2014), the passage of food into waste occurs more or less due to mundane household activities. This...

Recently, the planning profession in North America has begun to recognize the importance of integrating food considerations into planning. However, the field of food system planning is still in its infancy, and its proponents seek a more thorough understanding of the applied role of planning practitioners in this emerging field. This exploratory in...