From Rural Ground to Rural Grocery: Designing a local food value chain

Abstract

Present-day food systems in the U.S. are fraught with challenges that have spillover effects ranging from economic hardship of agricultural communities, inequitable access to nutritional foods, asymmetrical distribution of subsidies, and harsh environmental strains. Further contributing to a problematic system is the growing division between urban and rural settings, with the former receiving the majority of attention, planning, resources, and capital investment.

This thesis highlights the need to rethink the relationship between food and spatial planning. In response to more prevalent urban-focused queries that ask, “can food be produced where it is consumed,” the author of this work asks, “can food be consumed where it is produced?” to acknowledge issues around food access, nutritional health, and living wages of farmers and food producers.

Through a proposed design-planning approach that integrates lived experience and data analysis, the author offers methodological strategies for food system planning in a rural context. She discusses the role of design at multiple scales, and its importance in participatory food system planning. Lastly, a case study of a Food Hub project in North Central Massachusetts is used to enact the design-planning approach and propose schematic designs.