Supporting Authors and Practitioners of Color

JAFSCD's Outreach, and Impact Program to Support Authors and Practitioners of Color

Since its launch in 2010, the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development has been producing cutting-edge, research-based content informing the work of researchers and practitioners on the forefront of the good food movement. Applied research published in JAFSCD supports the work of nutritionists, community organizers, Extension Educators, nonprofit staff, and local officials who work with families in communities of need and who create policies and programs affecting them.

Two recent developments challenged us to rethink our role. The first was the overwhelming response to our special, open-access issue on race and ethnicity in food systems work (summer 2015). The second was an internal review of our stakeholders (readers, authors, reviewers) that showed they are mostly “coastal” and privileged. 

From this day forward (fall of 2017) JAFSCD aspires to be recognized as a key resource by researchers and practitioners of color, especially in the southeast U.S., borderlands, Appalachia, and tribal areas. Our Outreach, and Impact Program will reach and cultivate researchers and practitioners in communities of color with the most pernicious and intractable poverty. We will accomplish this through a volunteer mentoring program to build capacity of authors from these communities and concerted efforts to publicize and share JAFSCD content at the front lines of the food movement. We will measure how much JAFSCD content reaches these communities, and will report measurable impact. We expect that supporting the capacity of the professionals who are working in communities with vulnerable children will improve their health and well-being through improved access to good food at home and in schools.