Learnings from the Appalachian Foodshed Project: Propositions for Organizing with Complexity

Since 2011, a consortium of community and university partners has been collaborating, as the Appalachian Foodshed Project, in an effort to systematically address issues of food insecurity in central Appalachia. In this collaborative work, we adopted a community food security approach, which acknowledges that hunger and household food insecurity are symptoms of a larger ecology of issues, like a lack of affordable, culturally appropriate food, disproportionate income spent on housing expenses, racism, insufficient public transportation, and limited employment options. From a community food security perspective, an equitable, resilient, and fair food system will only result by addressing these, and other larger issues. In our most recent work, we have embraced the complexity of these interconnected issues. Rather than attempting to create reductive solutions that fail to keep pace with dynamically changing complex issues, we have focused our energy on creating conditions for emergent solutions with novel organizational partnerships and alliances. In this paper, we will share some of our recent work and thinking regarding processes and mindsets that we believe need to be be nurtured in order to truly effect transformative systems-level change in a region like central Appalachia. We will share our series of propositions for organizing with complexity, as well as some of the potentialities that have emerged from the collective work