Through community-engaged research, we investi­gate how political and economic practices have cre­ated food apartheid and the ways in which this legacy complicates efforts toward equitable urban agriculture in Salt Lake City (SLC). The study takes place in SLC’s Westside, where an ample number of farms and gardens exist, yet food insecurity is a persistent issue. We partner with a small urban CSA farm operating in a USDA-designated food desert in SLC’s Westside to explore the farmers’ own questions about whom their farm is serving and the farms’ potential to contribute to food jus­tice in their community. Specifically, we examine (1) the member distribution of this urban CSA farm and (2) the underlying socio-political, eco­nomic, and geographic factors, such as inequitable access to land, housing, urban agriculture, food, and transportation, that contribute to this distribu­tion. GIS analyses, developed with community partners, reveal spatial patterns between contempo­rary food insecurity and ongoing socioeconomic disparities matching 1930s residential redlining maps. These data resonate with a critical geo­graphic approach to food apartheid and inform a need for deeper and more holistic strategies for food sovereignty through urban agriculture in SLC. While resource constraints may prevent some small farmers from attending to these issues, partner­ships in praxis can build capacity and engender opportunities to investigate and disrupt the racial hierarchies enmeshed in federal agricultural policy, municipal zoning, and residential homeownership programs that perpetuate food apartheid.

Appreciative Inquiry was employed to understand the mutual impact of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and nearby communities’ relationships with tourism. Specifically, the goals of this study were to: understand the role of Theodore Roosevelt National Park related to stimulating regional tourism; to ascertain gateway community resident perceptions of benefits from tourism as it relates to economic development and quality of; and, to explore nearby communities’ relationships with the park and how those communities may help influence quality visitor experiences, advance park goals, and develop and leverage partnerships. Results include a collection of emergent themes from the community inquiry related to resource access and tourism management, citizen and community engagement, conservation, marketing, and communication between the park and neighboring residents. These findings illuminate the need to understand nearby communities’ relationship to public lands and regional sustainability support between public land managers and these communities.

Previous research studies have explored the activities, motivations, and outcomes for the culinary tourist, and researchers have theorized certain segments of culinary travelers (Boniface, 2003; Mitchell, Hall & McIntosh, 2000). Contrasting to this, investigation into “the foodie” and his or her activities at home has been strikingly infrequent. Exploring the foodie ‘at home’ or the foodie’s everyday behavior is critical to understanding different types of foodies, how to market to foodies, and their decision-making processes for culinary travel. The purpose of this study is to test, via an online survey, a scale that distinguishes between different types of foodies, and determine if their home-foodie habits are the same while traveling. The study includes five samples: all of the populations were selected to attempt to get a variety of respondents; some settings were food-focused and some were not. Factor analysis was used to group like respondents together; factors that overlapped across samples includes Sustainable Food Activist, Cooking, Cooking Competitor/Do-It-Yourself, Trendy Traveler, Gardening, and Drinking activity dimensions. Food-related businesses and tourism marketers would benefit from greater distinction between types of foodies so as to develop and market specific products to them, to create new packages with complementary activities, and to convert ‘crossover’ markets who visit for one reason but who could be convinced to ‘cross over’ to participate in other activities.

The proliferation of tourism to U.S. national parks yields increasing demands for service and conservation programs that are well-matched with the broadening view of sustainability management in and around PPAs. As such, there is a critical need for research regarding holistic perspectives on planning and monitoring sustainable development. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is a non-profit, independent organization that develops and manages global baseline standards for sustainable travel and tourism, known as the GSTC Criteria. The GSTC Destination Criteria have not been widely applied to PPAs, yet these criteria may offer a useful guiding framework for sustainable tourism development in PPAs. Therefore, this study explores the utility of the GSTC Destination Criteria as a tool for assisting managers at Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) in developing a destination-level sustainability plan. In August 2018, we conducted a sustainability evaluation using the GSTC Destination Criteria. Specific areas of success and improvement were identified, and park managers are using this information to improve the park’s strategic plan. The results of this evaluation are reviewed and critiqued within our broader assessment of the utility of the GSTC Destination Criteria in national park planning.

This article highlights the transformative power of community-engaged research for food sovereignty through an examination of reflexive interviewing and knowledge co-production with community partners. Initially, we connected with an urban Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm to explore farmers’ concerns regarding their export of food from marginalized areas of the city to predominantly affluent neighborhoods. Our response to confirmatory data was to explore CSA members’ interest in subsidizing shares for low-income residents. However, continued fieldwork revealed that similar charity-based approaches implemented by other food-access advocates were perhaps underutilized, given their basis in food security rather than more complex community-driven food sovereignty. Recognizing the need to understand the broader relationship between urban agriculture and food equity in SLC, we set out to research how university scholars can work with community partners and food advocates to advance food justice and sovereignty. Through dialogic methods, we explore how critical reflexivity can be embedded in research protocols such that researchers and interviewees reflect on their own biases, thus shifting the outcomes and research processes. Through a retrospective review of data collection, we highlight interactional strategies to promote critical reflexivity before proposing an interview framework that prompts paradigm shifts towards food sovereignty.

It was a late summer evening in Sacramento. We had our largest group yet for Big & Bold Paddle (BBP) and were focused on logistics. Everything came to a halt when one of our participants found hers...