From catering organisations to environmental and health related public catering systems

Based on the political legitimacy for healthy food and environment by the citizens, the traditional public catering is suggested to be conceptualised as a public catering system. This Luhmann inspired systems notion conveys the boundary between the catering system and its environments, stressing the environmental communication and adaptation by catering systems. However, environmental communication needs more developed and particular environmental constructions to be implemented on the level of particular catering systems. Organisational and communication research on the shop floor is needed in order to solve particular tensions. The systems approach to catering discloses how profound a change is at hand when actors simply try to connect the aspects of health and environment to public catering

Common People’s Sustainability: Connectivity within a Food System Rhizome

They say that sustainable development has been around for about 20 years and not very much progress has been achieved. However, this view may refer to difficulties in identifying sustainable developments in everyday business activities without particularly visible publicity. Currently, new serious activity towards sustainable food systems, starting from retailing, processing industries and farmers as well as other food system actors seem to strive to connect the supply chains for sustainable food. This paper makes use of the notion of ‘social rhizomes’ structured as different networks to identify sustainable developments in actors’ lived experience. Furthermore, the notion of connectivity, as the ability to activate heterogenous ideas, persons, materials and spaces for sustainability within a ’social rhizome’ is used to explain the progress towards sustainability within local, national and global food system. Empirically, the paper is based on two presentations given on the Finnish Organic Conference 2008. The presentations were analysed for the progress towards sustainability within social rhizomes structured as chanceworks, meshworks, strategic networks and socially overlaid networks. Results suggest, that connectivity between different networks leads to transformations between the networks towards more shared economic, environmental and socio-cultural benefits, which can be identified as common people’s sustainability

The meaning of living environmental knowledge in productive activities: the case of a Finnish dairy farm

Individuals and communities need 'living' environmental knowledge as their particular resource in order to develop their environmental practices and identities. Environmental knowledge can be defined as embedded explanatory, instrumental and evaluative knowledge, offering the 'why' and 'how' for the actors

Strenthening local food systems: tracing learning of knowledge and skills by content and discourse analysis

The local food systems meet the food systems of scale on the local market, where the local and regional chains are looking for ways to survive and even to strengthen. The operations of local food systems become decided by many actors embedded in a socially complex local environment. This paper discusses some approaches to learning in the food chains and some qualitative research methods to capture learning in the chains through empirical material. The main research question, the learning of the actors in the local food chain and the effects of learning on the activities of the local chain are opened as more detailed and operative questions

Timing of the Early Retirement Decisions of Farming Couples

The retirement decisions of individuals are strongly influenced by spousal retirement, financial incentives and institutional constraints such as access to early retirement benefits. In the European Union (EU), farm retirement is encouraged by early retirement provisions for farmers. As exit from farming determines the characteristics of structural change in agriculture, it is important to find out how spousal retirement and economic incentives affect the timing and type of retirement decisions among elderly farmers. This paper analyses the timing of early retirement decisions of farming couples using duration analysis and different exit channels. The empirical analysis is based on Finnish farm-level panel data for the period 1993-1998. The results suggest that an expected pension particularly advances farm transfers. Farming couples are found to co-ordinate their early retirement decisions. However, farmers are not found to co-ordinate their early retirement according to spousal retirement under other pension schemes.Duration, early retirement, farming couple, farm transfer, succession, Farm Management,

Spousal Effect and Timing of Farmers' Early Retirement Decisions

The retirement decisions of individuals are strongly influenced by spousal retirement, financial incentives and institutional constraints such as access to early retirement benefits. In the European Union (EU), farm retirement is encouraged by early retirement provisions for farmers. As exit from farming determines the characteristics of structural change in agriculture, it is important to find out how spousal retirement and economic incentives affect the timing and type of retirement decisions among elderly farmers. This paper analyses the timing of early retirement decisions of farming couples using duration analysis and different exit channels. The empirical analysis is based on Finnish farm-level panel data for the period 1993-1998. The results suggest that an expected pension particularly advances farm transfers. Farming couples are found to co-ordinate their early retirement according to spousal retirement under other pension schemes.duration, early retirement, farming couple, succession, Farm Management, Labor and Human Capital, J26, Q12, C41,

WP 75 - Welfare reform in the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland Change within the limits of path dependence

In this article, we ask whether the principles of welfare redistribution have been altered in the era of ‘permanent austerity’; when pressures to dismantle (or at least cut down the costs) of social welfare institutions due to unfavourable economic and demographic developments have been strong. The primary finding from a systematic analysis of disability benefit reform in the UK, the Netherlands and Finland between 1980 and 2006 is that, regardless of the ‘irresistible forces’ (Pierson 1998) urging for reforms, the core principles of European social security provision have been preserved. Our findings speak for path dependence of institutions, but also call into question the deterministic views on path dependence. It is argued in the article that path dependence does not predict that policy-makers are unable to alter the systems, rather we claim that it delimits the number of options available for the policy makers. Key words: comparative research, institutions, path dependence, policy change, welfare state

Tracing Food Education for Sustainable Development in iPOPY countries. Recommendations for learning about sustainability and organic food within educational contexts.

Food Education for Sustainable Development (FESD) is evolving into a topical entity included in education in European countries due to the growing focus on environmental and health problems, which cause a ‘sustainability deficit’ within the food system. This paper presents qualitative and exploratory research results from iPOPY project, carried out in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway regarding FESD and organic food in public food service for young people. The national core curricula in the studied countries seem to allow FESD although it is addressed in school contexts in varying ways through different school subjects; to some extent, the implementation depends on teachers’ other school activities and school food culture. There are teachers who engage in innovative FESD with students, creating new connections between conceptual, practical and experiential education by networking with other teachers and food system actors. Results suggest that pupils and students would achieve more profound learning outcomes if a whole school approach with integrative and coherent educational strategies would be applied and school food culture would be considered from the point of view of SD. The school caterers seem not to be too much involved in FESD but their and their organization’s roles are becoming more important. For successful learning about sustainability and organic food among young people, teachers, caterers, students and school administration have to be included in the process