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This dissertation consists of three essays: In the first essay, we utilize a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to measure the residents’ perceptions of the local food system performance. Local food system (LFS) components are classified into related measures that may help explain the overall performance scores provided. LFS performance measures are explored across 15 different communities in the U.S. South. The second essay explores the awareness and performance differences toward farmers markets, including the markets themselves and the corresponding local food product quality, product diversity, and markets infrastructure across different age-range groups and community sizes in Southern states. Finally, in the third essay, we use the nationwide consumer survey data collected in Fall 2020 and cluster analysis to specify consumer segments profiled by food values and demographic variables to measure their changes in dollars spent on Food-at-Home and Direct-to-Consumer market channels during the pandemic.

Small and medium-sized farms are an important demographic of the agricultural sector in the Shenandoah Valley and Chesapeake Bay watershed. Having sufficient food system infrastructure available and accessible to these farm operations is essential to help them add value to their farm products; diversify their operations and differentiate their farm and food products in an increasingly competitive and commodity-based food system. Despite its importance, however, local food systems (LFS) frequently have incorrect types or insufficient amounts of the equipment and facilities needed to support these systems. Through the use of two case studies, this study investigates current circumstances, future needs, and offers recommendations for two important components of LFS infrastructure in the Shenandoah Valley. The first study inventories and assesses existing infrastructure capacity available in the region. Using data collected from farmers, LFS organizations, and institutional foodservice organizations, a needs assessment is then completed to determine the specific amounts and types of equipment and facilities which would be needed to meet current LFS infrastructure needs. The second study explores current and potential benefits, and future challenges of a produce auction to impact Mennonite communities in the Shenandoah Valley. This analysis of the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction (SVPA) was conducted using data obtained from both interviews and surveys. Results indicate that producers, existing infrastructure, and institutional buyers in the region would like to own, use, or rent food system infrastructure. There is unmet LFS infrastructure demand in due to the current lack of enough food cleaning, processing, packaging, and storing equipment in this area. For the SVPA, most of participants were satisfied with the auction. Buyers, however, reported that their procurement from the SVPA is limited by fluctuating prices, demand outpacing supply of produce, insufficient delivery services. Overall, food system infrastructure in general, and the SVPA in particular, were reported to have an important role in the region in supporting market access for local small and medium sized farmers, improve viability of local food system and the regional economy, and facilitating connections between consumers and their local food system. Several recommendations to strengthen the region's LFS are derived from these results.

Within the Central New Mexico regional foodshed (i.e. within a 300 mile radius of Albuquerque), many women are working within the local food system to help locally grown food go from farm to fork. In certain roles, women predominate. In others, women are less represented. Women participating in the local food system provided their insights and expertise on how gender affects their own participation, as well as their perceptions of the gender division of labor within the local food system. Through this exploration, eleven women co-participants of this study found that regardless of the role, there are challenges based on gender. However, for certain roles, especially the ones that require access to resources like capital and land, women are particularly challenged to succeed. These co-participants observe that women tend to cooperate to succeed within their roles, and believe that increasing opportunities and space available for women to deliberately share knowledge will increase women’s capacity to participate in local food system roles. Future inquiry efforts should address the identified obstacles, and also include co-participants with subject positions more representative of the general population in New Mexico.

Local food systems can play an important role in the environmental sustainability and human health of communities. This study aims to evaluate connections between the local food system and the retail environment in Southwest Atlanta, Georgia (USA) through mixed methods research. Agriculture site interviews and field research evaluate issues surrounding the local food system from a qualitative perspective. A mobile Geographic Information Systems (GIS) framework is developed to evaluate access and disparities in the retail food landscape from a quantitative perspective. This framework can be leveraged by residents and community stakeholders towards strategic primary data and research needs. In using both qualitative and quantitative methods, a more comprehensive study of the local food system and overall sustainability of communities is enabled. The results of this study may better inform planning and policy decisions and serve as a research model for use in other geographies.

The pressures of globalization and urbanization upon communities at the rural-urban interface are often presumed to degrade community self-sufficiency and threaten agricultural production. Yet many communities are responding to these pressures through resistance. These communities are actively developing their local food systems by organizing themselves to engage in community-problem solving through local working groups and food policy councils to promote direct marketing and increase the viability of local agriculture. The central goal of this research is to bridge and build upon both the local food system literature and community development literature to provide a better picture of what kinds of communities are able to effectively organize around local foods, and to explore whether organization makes a difference in terms of increased local food system development activities within communities. From the community development literature, it is clear that a level of organization is essential to the capacity of communities to shape the direction of local development. However, the local food system literature does not provide a good picture of what kind of communities are able to effectively organize around local foods, nor to what degree organization makes a difference in local food system development. Data for this study come from the 2008 survey Agricultural Change, Land Use, and Economic Development at the Rural-Urban Interface as well as the 1997 and the 2007 USDA-NASS Census of Agriculture and the 1990 and 2000 United States Census. The study finds that there are significant differences which distinguish counties with high levels of farming and food system organizational development from those counties with no organization. More organized communities tend to have higher levels of agricultural social infrastructure, which includes the flow of agricultural information, high quality agricultural leadership, and high quality social interaction and trust within the community. There is a significant correlation between the level of food and farming organizational development and local food system activities within a community, suggesting that organization does make a difference in local food system development.

Local food production movements have claimed a central role in proposals to mitigate some of the negative effects of economic globalization. Although not meant to be a panacea for the ills of the neoliberal order, local food production is advocated as a sustainable solution to a portion of the environmental degradation caused by global capitalism, and as a mechanism by which to rebuild community networks undermined by the globalization of commerce and culture and create the type of sustainable development necessary to restore and preserve the carrying capacity of the planet. This study seeks to develop a conceptual framework for assessing the potential for communities to create and sustain local food production by addressing three major factors that influence a community's ability to localize its food system: the physical capacity of the region or locality to produce enough food to feed its inhabitants, successful policy and trade adjustments by governments to create and enable the survival of local food production systems, and the willingness of consumers to participate in a localized food production system, which includes the community's willingness and ability to bear the costs of instituting and maintaining the local system.