January 2020-January 2023
Local food movements argue that a reduction of food-miles has positive social, environmental and economic impacts. A full account of the costs of food production, however, needs to go beyond the path from food to plate and consider the wider set of translocal social and economic relations involved in local food production. Using a multi-method, ethnographic approach, this project examines the costs of local food production with special attention on the international labour migration that sustains Nova Scotia’s agricultural sector.
The study entails:
- surveys of farmers' market and CSA food box customers
- a survey of Nova Scotia farmers
- interviews with Nova Scotia farmers and farm workers
- participant observation on several small NS farms
The research is funded by the EU Mobile Lives Forum. See the full proposal here.