Emerging Local Food Systems – The Role of Locally Developed Innovation in Small-scale Sustainable Farming in Northeast Georgia

View the project final report

• 2009 annual report
• 2010 annual report
• 2011 annual report
• 2012 annual report

Commodities

Practices

• Sustainable Communities: local and regional food systems

Innovation adoption is an important process in the spread of sustainable agriculture practices. Application of the innovation diffusion model to sustainable and organic agriculture has primarily focused on challenges faced by transitioning farmers and suggest that the complexity or “suite of practices” required is a major limiting factor to adoption (Padel 2001). Little attention however has been directed at understanding the role of innovation amongst the most rapidly growing segment of sustainable farmers; small scale, resource limited, and newer farms engaged in the creation of local food systems. This research project investigates how locally adapted innovation development (a distinct process from innovation adoption) promotes local problem solving capacity while maximizing creative use of available resources, skills and relationships within local food systems. In the literature innovation tends to be treated as aspatial, equally beneficial to all adopters and production focused. This study will expand and revise this view to examine how innovation development may solve problems unique to local food system producers such as low capital and broader social and marketing needs. The research site for this study is two communities in the blue ridge mountains of Northeast Georgia with similar climates and geographies and differing agricultural histories and economies.