J. Dara Bloom

Background: Despite growing recognition of culturally appropriate food for promoting health equity, research on cultural food security remains limited. This study explored the experiences and perceptions of cultural food security among Congolese adult immigrants and elicited their insights on improving it in the context of dietary acculturation. Methods: We used photovoice, a participatory research method. In 2025, participants residing in New Hampshire, U.S., were trained to take photographs depicting post-immigration dietary experiences that were then shared in five in-person focus groups. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to analyze focus group transcripts. Results: Seventeen Congolese adults discussed how cultural food security was understood and sustained in everyday life. Themes showed that cultural food security extended beyond access to culturally familiar foods, emphasizing freshness, from-scratch preparation, food production, and hybrid cultural food practices. Participants described navigating food environments through collective knowledge and selective cohesion, with caregivers adapting family foodways amid time, labor and institutional constraints. Needs identified by participants included structural investments for community well-being, strengthened social networks, and more inclusive school food environments. Findings show that perceptions of cultural food security are diverse. Uneven access to and selective engagement with community resources shape opportunities for cultural food security, underscoring the need for equity-oriented, rights-based approaches.

The majority of children ages 0–5 consume most of their meals in early care and education (ECE) settings, prompting interest in the nutritional qual­ity of childcare meals and snacks as a vehicle for improving dietary-related health outcomes for this vulnerable population.[1] Our team has identified central kitchens that serve prepared meals to child­care centers as a potential model to improve meal quality for children, while also relieving childcare providers of the burdens of meal preparation and paperwork associated with federal meal reimburse­ments, and aggregating local food purchases to cre­ate a larger market for farmers than purchases by individual centers. Our team partnered with a funder, a church, and community organizations to attempt a pilot that would replicate this central kitchen model in a rural area. Unfortunately, the pilot project was never fully realized, leading us to conduct a process evaluation to identify the gener­alizable factors that impeded its success. We identi­fied four key factors, including the underlying power dynamic between the funder and recipient, reliance on a single project champion, lack of buy-in from community stakeholders, and failure to involve the county health department early in the planning process. In this paper, we construct a timeline of the project to help identify key factors that led to the project’s failure to launch, explain our four key findings, and provide a set of recom­mendations that funders and other communities can take into consideration as they consider the viability of this timely intervention. [1] We define children as vulnerable based on the fact that they are completely dependent on adults for decision-making that affects their health and well-being, which is especially true for children in the 0–5 age group (Bagattini, 2019).

The purpose of this study was to determine the training needs of extension agents in Uganda to lead successful education programs on genetically engineered (GE) crops. This was a descriptive survey research study conducted online with public agricultural extension agents in the eastern agro-ecological zone of Uganda. This study used Borich’s method to identify training needs. A survey instrument was designed to determine extension agents’ perceived importance and proficiency of 60 competencies organized under the eight Public Issues Education (PIE) framework competency constructs. The survey received 58 usable responses comprising an 83% response rate. All eight PIE competency constructs were perceived by the extension agents to be important. This study identified additional four competencies important for PIE in addition to the eight competencies in the model. Agents’ greatest training needs were creating partnerships and designing GE education programs. The lowest training needs were creating an environment of professionalism and managing conflicts. The findings indicate the importance of training extension agents on how to engage with farmers in new ways to educate them on GE technology. This study provides implications for determining the training needs of extension agents in PIE such as educating farmers on GE technology.

In 2019, a national group of local food system educators and practitioners identified over 140 foundational core competencies critical to local food system development work and began to identify existing educational resources related to these competencies. This process resulted in a new aggregated resource: the Local Food System Practitioner and Educational Resource Database. Included in this database is a core competency matrix that distinguishes three levels of learning for each competency so that practitioners can identify learning opportunities most closely tailored to their educational needs. It also serves as a framework and competency matrix for educators to use to help assess and communicate the learn­ing out­comes of their curricula. This framework is the overall concept for understanding the compe­ten­cies, and the matrix is the tool developed to assess and evaluate the level at which an educa­tional resource teaches a competency. In this article we apply the newly create core competency matrix to two existing local food system develop­ment courses. We share lessons learned from applying the matrix and insights gained from com­paring two introductory level courses. We con­clude with recommendations for improving the resource database and matrix to a more user-friendly model for educators and local food system practitioners.

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) has spent the past two decades developing local food systems to support communities and increase resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how existing structural inequities, primarily along racial lines, are exacerbated. It has also shown the value of community-based food systems work that helps communities network, sharing valuable resources and funding to respond to the ongoing crisis. In this article, we document how CEFS’ community-based food systems initiatives are responding to the pandemic. Some of CEFS programs are community-based, working with food policy councils, offering racial equity trainings, networking schools and early care and education sites, and supporting youth convenings and internships. Others are focused on production and supply chains for meat, seafood, and produce in order to develop stronger local food systems. Through­out the work of all of CEFS’ community-based food systems initiatives in response to the pandemic, we have learned that our past efforts have increased local food systems resilience. We also note the impor­tance of flexible funders who allowed grant dollars to be reallocated to community partners to address urgent needs. We have found that online programming has increased participation and access to resources. Finally, we have been inspired by the creativity, flexibility, and adaptability of our community partners, and we are energized to continue to support them while also offering the resources we have developed to a broader audience.

Evaluation metrics that assess the impacts of Cooperative Extensionprogramming focus on quantifiable indicators that may overlookbroader community-level changes. This study addresses this by usingthe “spiraling up” theory of change and Ripple Effect Mapping to assesshow volunteers build Cooperative Extension’s communitydevelopment capacity. Focusing on Family and Consumer Scienceagents and volunteers in the North Carolina Extension Master FoodVolunteer program, analysis focused on whether volunteers increasedExtension’s bonding and bridging social capital to create a process ofexpanded community engagement. Findings indicate that volunteershelped Extension agents reach new areas, organizations, andpopulations, expanding impacts and increasing community access toresources, as suggested by the “spiraling up” theory of change. Thecommunity relationships fostered by volunteers are a key first step toincreasing Extension’s capacity to affect institutional and communitylevelchanges, which provides lessons for organizations that use healthand wellness programs to promote community development.

Existing studies suggests that immigrants’ dietary quality often declines over time after they move to the U.S., despite public and private efforts to provide immigrants and refugees to the U.S. with nutritional resources. Drawing on two interview-based studies with immigrants (n = 30) and refugees (n = 8) in North Carolina, we find that these immigrant/refugee communities often have healthy food traditions from their home countries that they want to maintain, but they lack guidance about how to navigate the U.S. food system in order to do so. Our findings question the notion that “good nutrition” is a universal concept; we argue that by focusing solely on the nutritional components of food, rather than approaching dietary behavior holistically, service providers exacerbate the challenges that immigrants and refugees face in continuing healthy food traditions in the U.S. Our analyzes extend previous research on food socialization by specifically examining the nutrition socialization process of immigrant and refugees, furthering our understanding of how and why immigrants’ diets change over time.

Cooperative Extension programs across the United States are embracing food systems and local food as a new topic area. Previous studies indicate that successful local food programming requires cross-program collaboration. However, research in this area has underrepresented Extension educators from non-agricultural program areas, although understanding their perspectives is key to fostering cross-program collaboration. The case study presented in this paper examines qualitative evaluation data from the pilot year of the NC State Extension Master Food Volunteer (EMFV) program, which provides training in food systems and local food to Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) educators and their volunteers. Data from semistructured interviews with educators in the pilot program and from focus groups with their volunteers provide the opportunity to explore areas of intersection and divergence between local food and the FCS program area in order to determine how to best integrate FCS and local food. Findings suggest that integrating local food into FCS programming will require special attention to potentially controversial issues that require educators and volunteers to communicate with the public about scientific issues that also invoke personal values, such as pesticide use and genetic engineering. We also found that educators and volunteers felt that promoting local food was not always compatible with an FCS focus on healthy eating. Overall, this case study demonstrates the potential to engage FCS educators and volunteers in cross-program, community-based food system projects, and to provide public education in the growing field of food systems and local food.

JAFSCD: Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. Publication of the Thomas A. Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems