Cultivating a Network of Citizen-Scientists to Track Change in the Sonora-Arizona Foodshed

Abstract

Over the past couple of years, the University of Arizona has launched both a new under­graduate degree program in Food Studies and a Center for Regional Food Studies (CRFS). The mission of the CRFS is “to integrate social, behavioral, and life sciences into interdisciplinary studies and community dialogue regarding change in regional food systems. We involve students and faculty in the design, implementation, and evalua­tion of pilot interventions and participatory community-based research in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands foodshed surrounding Tucson, a UNESCO-designated City of Gastronomy, in a manner that can be replicated, scaled up, and applied to other regions globally.”

The CRFS’s annual State of the Tucson Food System (STFS) report seeks to support the efforts of diverse social actors and institutions working across various sectors of the Sonora-Arizona borderlands foodshed by collecting and synthe­sizing the most recent data available to underscore successes, problems, and barriers. The intended use of the report is to help inform policy at various scales and within both informal and formal policy settings. . . .