Communicating Goals and Impacts of Food Sharing

Published by SHARECITY on the 5th June 2018.

Urban Agriculture Magazine, 34: Measuring Impact

Anna Davies, Marion Weymes, Stephen MacKenzie

Urban food sharing – which includes collective or shared practices around growing, preparing, eating and redistributing food – is experiencing a technology-fuelled renaissance, but are these activities contributing to more sustainable food systems? Delving into the project’s research findings, this article analyses the goals of ICT-mediated urban food sharing initiatives from nine global cities and examines the ways that these organisations are communicating their activities and impacts through their online profiles. Five categories – social, environmental, economic, health and political – are used to classify goals and impacts. The article concludes by distilling the key challenges of establishing sustainability impacts.