Why CAFS?

CAFS members talk about why CAFS and CFS are important to them.

Canadian Association for Food Studies
https://foodstudies.info/

Our Mission: CAFS promotes critical, interdisciplinary scholarship in the broad area of food systems, including policy, production, distribution, and consumption. This recognizes the need for coordinated efforts in response to societal and environmental change. Our work is intended to inform policy makers, assess the outcomes of community-based work, broaden the scope and plurality of food knowledge, and demonstrate the impacts of local and global change that affects food-and-human systems. Membership is open to academics, community members, students, professionals, and practitioners, as well as all those interested in food systems and food studies. CAFS encourages research that promotes local, regional, national, and global food security, but does not advocate or endorse specific policies or political platforms.

Canadian Food Studies Journal
https://foodstudies.info/journal/

Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation is the open-access, online journal of the Canadian Association for Food Studies. The journal’s peer-reviewed publications are as diverse and entangled as the subject of food itself, providing critical perspectives on the ways in which humans, food, and the natural and built environments construct one another.

Hear more about the importance of CAFS/CFS:

Phoebe Stephens: "CAFS is important because it provides a much needed home to diverse scholars and practioners that are exploring issues related to food. Within university departments, there isn’t always a “natural” place for this interdisciplinary field so I think CAFS performs a very necessary function that will continue to grow as the awareness of the importance of food in our lives increases"

David Szanto: "Hi, I'm David Szanto and I'm a freelance food academic. The question about why we need CAFS, the Canadian Association for Food Studies, or CFS, the Canadian Food Studies journal, is really why we need food studies in the first place. This is an incredibly diverse and complicated field. We need to understand food and human-food relations much better than we already do. We need to propose speculative ideas that haven't been thought of by other disciplines or areas of academic pursuit. We need to do that is a way that is caring and good and thoughtful and generous and supportive to others who also want to do the same thing. For me, that's what CAFS and CFS bring together, a space of nurturing, a space of criticality, it's space of advancing in directions we don't even know exist yet, but we need to keep reaching out towards in order to make this world, not just a better place, but make this world last beyond 2023."

Michael Classens: "Canadian Food Studies, the journal, matters because it gives us a place to talk about food systems within the context of this particular colonial geography that is Canada. I think it's important because there are distinctive features of this political, administrative, colonial territory that differentiate us from the European Context, or the American context. It gives a place to tell the stories from these territories of Canada which I think is important because otherwise, we risk missing out on the particular ways in which, for example, inequity is built into the food system as it exists in this country. I think Canadian Food Studies is important for this reason and I hope that it continues to facilitate those kind of discussions for many years"

Rachel Engler-Stringer: "So why does the Canadian Association for Food Studies matter to me? For me, it's about a home, a place where there's enough different disciplinary perspectives that I am sort of stretched and encouraged to think differently, both what it is that I am studying myself and what others are studying. I really like that CAFS stretches the boundaries of what it is that I am thinking about when it comes to food, food systems, food security. Thanks"

Amanda Shankland: "CAFS is really important in terms of bringing together food scholars from a wide range of disciplines. The association allows me to stay current on important issues in food studies from a wide range of perspectives. As a political scientist studying food this is very important to me. I think that the articles in the journal are really useful in terms of teaching about food. Also, I think that the journal is a valuable resource for policy development, and as the association gains more visibility I think that there will be more opportunities for scholars in the association to make an impact on local and national food policies"

Luciana Godoy: "CAFS is important because it provides an interdisciplinary, pedagogical food platform for the exchange and sharing of information, research, and knowledge. CAFS extends communities by creating opportunities and spaces for communities of praxis and communities of research to connect"