Agrarian Trust

Free Journal on Cooperatives and Alternative Food Systems Initiatives

A new issue on Cooperatives and Alternative Food Systems Initiatives has just been completed and will be freely available — no subscription needed! — through the month of July. http://www.agdevjournal.com/volume-4-issue-3.html. We are doing this to make these papers more readily available to researchers and practitioners. It also offers prospective subscribers a chance to explore the contents of JAFSCD. I encourage you to share this notice with your colleagues and networks.
The Special Issue: 
Working Together to Build Cooperative Food Systems
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development 4(3)
Edited by:  Anderson, C.R., Brushett, L., Renting, H. and T. Gray
A recent emphasis on cooperation and innovative forms of collective action within the food movement invokes a community-centered approach to food provisioning where collective problem solving and democracy take centre place in the development agenda. Cooperative alternative food networks are becoming powerful tools for community development and important vehicles for cultivating democratically controlled food systems at multiple scales.  The articles in this special issue provide an important contribution to our understanding of the function, the challenges and the potential of cooperativism and collective action in enabling more just and resilient food systems. (from editorial introduction).
The Journal: JAFSCD is an online, international, peer-reviewed publication that emphasizes best practices and tools related to the planning, community economic development, and ecological protection of local and regional agriculture and food systems, and works to bridge the interests of practitioners and academics. As the journal focuses on the practice of agriculture and food system development, empirical and methodological content are emphasized over purely theoretical writing. Applied research-based papers, case studies, project post-mortems, effective strategies, impact analyses, new possibilities (problems-solving, opportunity-taking and the like) are examples of high impact approaches to publishing that will inform the practice of professionals in government, the nonprofit sector, the private sector and in academia while also developing a broad knowledge base and conceptual models.
Submit: JAFSCD is eager to publish work from around the world. Please consider submitting: http://www.agdevjournal.com/submissions.html
Subscribe: For those who are affiliated with a university, but do not have institutional access to this journal, please consider recommending it to your library. Individual subscription options are also available as are rates for non-profits and other agencies. Visit here for more details: http://www.agdevjournal.com/subscribe.html
Regards,
Colin Anderson
Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
Coventry University