This research analyzes the emergent collaborative governance of local food systems (LFS) development in a six-county region of Michigan’s Western Upper Peninsula, a post-industrial mining region with a long history of local food provisioning. We contribute to scholarship on rural food systems by framing LFS development as a social good, benefiting placemaking and long-term economic development. We use a community-based research case study and policy analysis to identify policy-related gaps, including LFS’ low legitimacy, goal divergence among different jurisdictions, and lack of regional leadership. LFS development may present ways for rural communities to foster placemaking and economic development; however, we find that LFS are less visible and not always on the policy agenda of local governments. In this study, collaborations among grassroots actors and organizations outside of local government are leading LFS development. We conclude that collaborative governance may have a better chance to succeed when LFS have a clear public identity and legitimacy as a social good, partners reach goal consensus, and appropriate leaderships are formed.

The landowner–tenant relationship is important to the implementation of conservation on agricultural lands. Women own or co‐own a significant portion of U.S. farmland yet are underrepresented in conservation research. The next generation of agriculture professionals can benefit from first‐hand experience in assisting women landowners and their tenants in navigating the complexities of conservation decision‐making. This article analyzes undergraduate student perceptions of landowner–tenant relationships in conservation management through their engagement in case studies with women landowner–tenant pairs in the Western Corn Belt. Student groups were asked to complete a management improvement plan that both incorporated the agronomic and conservation goals discussed by the landowners and tenants, following a field trip and interviews with the landowners, tenants, and other key stakeholders. Assessment data included a quantitative survey of career goals and conservation attitudes, qualitative reflections at start and end of course, and autoethnographic observations. The case studies presented students with new knowledge challenging previously held assumptions, leading some students to reconsider landowner–tenant relationships and conservation decision‐making. However, students returned to existing gendered norms and production‐oriented stereotypes when applying this knowledge in real‐world farm management plans. Although students gained firsthand valuable experience from the case studies, a one‐semester case study was insufficient to significantly shift student perceptions. We recommend that more curricular experiences incorporate the complexities of agricultural decision‐making to better equip future agricultural professionals with skills to ensure environmental and social sustainability outcomes.

Justice is a term increasingly used in rural studies and agri-food systems research. In this article, we examine how rural studies can gain by more directly integrating food justice and its focus on transformative intervention. First, we identify existing gaps in discussions about social justice in relation to rurality in the United States. Second, we analyze prominent food justice literature and its main conceptualizations, characteristics, and gaps in relation to rurality. Drawing on existing gaps and opportunities in rural studies and food justice, we discuss why and how critical analyses of race/white supremacy, intersectionality, and engaged scholarship can strengthen the study of injustices in rural settings. In prioritizing these aspects, rural scholars might adopt powerful lenses for interrogating the ongoing hegemonies of rural communities while also facilitating greater engagement in social justice within and outside our disciplines.

The past decade has witnessed the global rise of policy innovation labs (PILs), many of which are nonprofit organizations. Policymakers have promoted PILs as a novel approach to addressing pressing economic and social issues. Concurrent with the growing importance of PILs has been the shift to public value management (PVM), which focuses on policy outcomes that benefit the public and the needs and problems in society. One relatively new process raised in the public managementliterature is co-experience, which considers stakeholders' engagement with public policies or programs within the broader context of life experience. This, the authors argue, is an important contribution to public value creation. Social media platforms such as Twitter (now X) are one tool that PILs can employ to assess and develop stakeholder co-experience. The authors analyzed 13,009 Twitter messages largely generated by stakeholders relating to 42 U.S.-based PILs.