Community-based land use planning for a regenerative food growing future

Keywords: Participatory, Action, Learning, PALAR, Regenerative, Food, Community, Land, Development, Pedagogy
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 10

Abstract

Trent University is located in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough Ontario, situated in Michi Saagiig lands governed by Treaty 20. The university is laying a foundation for its long-term land use and developments through the Trent Land and Nature Areas Plan (TLNAP). Preliminary development decisions may negatively impact the on-campus food system through: a loss of soil fertility, perennial foods, medicinal plants, pollinators and ecological functions, as well as impacting the stability of the organizations who maintain the land.

Implicit in Trent’s decision-making bodies are relationships of power which may conceal tendencies to reinscribe settler-colonial logics predicated on hegemony, knowledge hierarchies and narratives that naturalize relationships to land as property.

Without sustained and meaningful engagement with those who operate Trent’s food system assets, the lands planning process risks depreciating key campus resources and sustainable initiatives – a circumstance that seems antithetical to the TLNAP principles.

Using Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR), a participatory, community-based methodology, my thesis aims at fostering collective research on the implications that the TLNAP has on its campus food system community, and aiding the coordination of the various food system organizations in addressing the planning gaps. More widely, the project seeks to identify and untangle barriers that appear when prefiguring solutions to the entrenched social and ecological unsustainability of the contemporary food system. Through the PALAR approach, I argue that we can transform our ways of learning and relating to build relationships which move us toward a regenerative food growing future.