OC employee co-authors paper on social connections within sustainable food production

Getting by with a little help from friends may be more than just catchy song lyrics, when it comes to sustainable food production.

According to new research published in Frontiers of Agronomy, Okanagan agriculture producers with ties to others in their region benefit from the "currency of connection," supporting food production operations even when facing challenges like climate change.

Chea Elton, an Okanagan College employee, was a UBCO Master of Arts in Sustainability student in 2019 when she joined on a consortium project with Kwantlen Polytechnic University researchers investigating food systems in the Okanagan bioregion.

They sought to investigate the social impact of local food systems, and Elton was tasked with conducting interviews alongside fellow grad student Ayla De Grandpre to understand consumer and producer social networks. They found research subjects that built social capital like relationships, networks, reciprocity and learning and knowledge transfer were better able to withstand disturbances in the food system. "Farmers and producers with more social capital have a higher ability to adapt to changes," Elton explains.

The research team identified key places that provided people opportunities to build social capital. Farmers markets, subscription boxes and community gardens enabled consumers and/or producers to build relationships, which have the potential to help each individual become more resilient in the case of adversity.

Elton gave one example involving a producer who regularly attended the farmer's market to sell their goods. The producer was injured in a car accident, and because of their connections through the farmer's market, they had people visiting them in the hospital and helping on the farm during their recovery.

"It's a real sense of community at these social spaces," she said. "This needs to be investigated more because, despite these findings, there seems to be this disconnect among producers: they agree that soft measures have value, but they're moving forward with hard measures which are often more expensive."

Elton and De Grandpre submitted findings to Frontiers of Agronomy, and the original research was published on Oct. 31, 2022. You can read the journal publication online: https://doi.org/10.3389/fagro.2022.980888