Agroecology scholarship spans governance scales and nations, the urban and the rural, and is best understood through the lens of the food system , weaving together production and other system elements . The agroecological food system paradigm is framed by some scholar-activists as standing in direct contrast to the dominant industrial paradigm and the Law of Exploitation; it is “centered on the Earth and small-scale farmers, and especially women farmers… ecological food systems are local food systems. Sustainability and justice flow naturally from the Law of Return and from the localization of food production. The resources of the Earth… are managed as a ‘commons,’ or shared spaces for communities” . Other scholars such as Elinor Ostrom and David Bollier employ different philosophical and epistemological approaches to suggest management approaches grounded in cooperation and the commons. Ostrom famously posited eight principles for managing a commons, in direct response to Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her efforts. Bollier’s book “Think Like a Commoner” frames an alternative political economy, a paradigm of “working, evolving models of self-provisioning and stewardship that combine the economic and the social, the collective and the personal. It is humanistic at its core but also richly political in implication, because to honor the commons can risk unpleasant encounters with the power of the Market/State duopoly” . Bollier goes on to use words and phrases such as “bottom up, do-it-yourself styles of emancipation,” “new forms of production,” “open and accountable forms of governance,” “healthy, appealing ways to live,” and “pragmatic yet idealistic” to describe the paradigm of the commons. Inherent in both agroecology and the commons literature is the goal of returning to producers and individuals the power to self-determine systems of production and governance. Agroecological scholars increasingly engage in articulations of a vision for food system transformation, ranging from a radical overthrow of the status quo to more gradual shifts to current practices.

Agroecological research is described as “transdisciplinary, participatory, and change-oriented” ,hydroponic vertical farming and agroecology is commonly defined as a “science, practice and movement” . However, there is debate among food system scholars around how change is enacted. Some argue that agroecology is the best way to “feed the world,” and in fact, small agroecological farmers are already producing the majority of food consumed by the growing human population on a small percentage of total agricultural lands . Others argue that the land requirements of feeding a growing population through agroecological, regenerative1, and/or organic farming practices would be so large that land use change would exacerbate rather than ameliorate negative climate impacts associated with food production. These “land sparing vs. land sharing” and “feed the world debates” co-exist with debates around how to enact local food system reforms. I engage primarily with the local food system reform; my findings and contributions do not speak directly to the larger global land use and world hunger debates. Rather than arguing for radical and immediate food system revolution, the three cases presented in this dissertation illuminate opportunities for the current food system to improve along dimensions of sustainability, climate resilience, and education, presenting social and ecological benefits of local food system shifts. The cases advance an argument justifying and valorizing the existence of small farms, more easily able to provide social, ecological, and educational benefits to communities than environmentally destructive industrial farms. These benefits are not guaranteed or inevitable, however, when food systems relocalize or small farms focus on regenerative practices; they require public investment, civic engagement, and participatory action-research to sustain, safeguard, and enable their existence. Environmental literacy focuses on capacity building and empowering responsible action of young people and the broader public when it comes to human-nature interactions. It is not a traditional form of “literacy,” measured by knowledge and mental aptitude alone. There is a behavioral, affective element. When facing important social-ecological challenges such as those posed by climate change and the industrial food system, environmental education and literacy offer opportunities to confront challenges through grounded knowledge of local environments complemented by awareness of global environmental realities.

Knowledge alone does not inherently lead to behavior change , as climate education scholars have repeatedly shown. Pedagogies such as experiential learning are especially well suited to develop knowledge, agency, and engagement with topics in order to increase the likelihood of desired action and behavior changes. Environmental education “is set to become the largest, most effective tool in combating environmental damage and promoting sustainable development. With the planet facing the dire consequences of climate change and a global effort underway to reduce emissions…the question must be asked: How do we include the environment and sustainable development in our education system?” . Integrating environmental literacy throughout the education system is a working goal of many researchers, educators, and climate activists. Within food literacy research and practice, much work has focused on the sourcing and use of local foods in school cafeterias and classrooms. The National Farm to School Network has grown in the past decade into a major driver for incorporating local and healthy foods into K-12 education. NFSN now includes 42,587 schools representing all 50 states . The Farm to School “program model” comprises three elements: school gardens, cafeteria procurement, and education, offering curriculum modules for school garden teachers to reference. Other sub-national efforts to define “Food Education Standards” for K-12 schools have more recently emerged from nonprofit organizations such as Pilot Light in Chicago, IL and the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, CA. Despite the importance of the food climate nexus noted above, few of these food literacy efforts deal explicitly with climate change, missing an opportunity to build forms of environmental literacy synergistically. In the Pilot Light Food Education Standards, produced with collaborators from Columbia’s Teacher’s College and University of Chicago, there are seven simple standards broken down into grade-specific expectations for each standard. The only mention of climate change comes under Standard 3: “Food and the environment are interconnected,” in the Grade 9-12 expectation that students “Assess the impact of climate change on food availability” . There is a gap in food and farm-based K-12 education when it comes to addressing climate change as an integral challenge and impetus for building a better food system. The gap reflects the difficulty felt by many in the K-12 education sector around teaching the topic of climate change with confidence and without controversy. The research of this dissertation fills this gap by developing and evaluating an integrated effort to build food, climate,vertical hydroponic garden and overall environmental literacy. Farmer-educator professional development comprises an important component of this overall process.

What strategies and best practices exist for developing multiple forms of environmental literacy synergistically? Can food security and climate education challenges be resolved together? The research presented in the following chapters offers a partial answer to these questions, developing a food systems and climate change curriculum as an example of more creatively integrating environmental challenges into already-successful educational avenues such as school gardens and food-based education. Partnerships with farms, school gardens, food systems researchers, and climate change educators help foster this curriculum into existence and shape it as a work in progress. Food and climate literacy come together in a food production focused series of activities that guide students towards taking informed action to mitigate climate change through food production and consumption choices. Teaching students how to grow food has an inherent tie to promoting food security and food sovereignty; going one step further, there is an embedded hypothesis underlying this curriculum development that, through participating in where food comes from , students can better understand other aspects of the food system such as the consumption choices and importance of composting rather than throwing away food waste, making the production element an important leverage point for food systems education. Furthermore, food production spaces offer hopeful examples of removing carbon from the atmosphere, acting out the carbon cycle on a local scale. In the words of one school garden teacher, “the garden system is a perfect metaphor for the complexity of the climate system,” and thus a promising venue for engaging students in CCE. The research studies compiled in this dissertation employ participatory, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research designs. Mixed-method approaches to inquiry combine to yield results, drawing from participant observation, semi-structured interviews, key stakeholder surveys, GIS analysis, and literature review methodologies. The studies draw heavily from interdisciplinary epistemologies that value multiple ways of knowing and seek to incorporate multiple voices, especially those that have been historically marginalized, into the research design, implementation, analysis, and communication of results. The relevant spheres of influence for this grassroots and bottom-up approach to knowledge creation are ultimately decision-makers in climate policy making and those negotiating food systems power structures.As Walton illustrates in his essay “Making the Theoretical Case,” a case can change as you dive into it, and finding the appropriate theoretical frame is the work of the researcher; he cautions against the danger of coming in with a set theoretical frame in mind and trying to force the incoming data into that frame . Chapter 2 in particular exemplifies a case that started as a case of one thing and became a case of something else as the layers of research methodology, like layers of an onion, peeled back initial assumptions and observations until it struck at the core. Incorporating Elinor Ostrom’s call for better integration of the social and ecological sciences in governing sustainable social-ecological systems , interdisciplinary research questions in the chapters that follow incorporate natural and social scientists, as well as practical agricultural science. Doing participatory research requires a mix of experience and immersion in the literature to guide those who seek to do social justice oriented, empowering work with non-academic research partners. The scholarship of Jill Harrison , Jules Pretty , Nicole Klenk , and Alastair Iles is instrumental for guiding researchers towards effective practices that co-produce rather than extract knowledge. These researchers share a focus on climate and food systems research that is especially relevant for this dissertation.The chapters that follow investigate food systems research questions in the contexts of the San Juan Islands in Washington State, and the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. While all chapters engage with food systems holistically, each chapter enters into the food systems research question from a different element of the system. The second chapter focuses on the production side, introducing a case study of small-scale sustainable farming at the community scale on Lopez Island. The third chapter presents a food access and distribution research project taking place in the East Bay, investigating pathways through which urban produced foods do make it into the hands of food insecure consumers. The fourth chapter uses the lens of education to present an evaluation of a food and climate change curriculum, illustrating how climate change education and food systems research can work together to achieve common goals . The conclusion synthesizes key findings from all three chapters, pointing out what bigger picture food system questions are answered as well as questions requiring further investigation in the arena of relocalizing climate-friendly food systems. Small farms and farm-based education are ideal prototypes to investigate and disseminate work in this direction. Key strands of literature running throughout the paper include the literature on agroecology and emerging research on its application to the urban context- urban agroecology . Chapter 2 engages with the agroecological paradigm for food systems reform in a rural context, and Chapter 3 turns over new questions in the urban East Bay context. The chapter draws on scholarship from a recent RUAF magazine titled “Urban Agroecology,” that proposes UAE “not as a goal, yet an entry point into, and part of, much wider discussions of desirable presents and futures… [it is] a stepping stone to collectively think and act upon food system knowledge production, access to healthy and culturally appropriate food, decent living conditions for food producers and the cultivation of living soils and biodiversity, all at once” . Agroecology and UAE have important implications for how food systems education should be conducted , which are implicit in the pedagogical foundations underpinning the food and climate curriculum in Chapter 4.