Response to Kathleen’s Questions 

-your motivations for having done the work
Motivations for pursuing my research about the history of food distribution and city planning were shamelessly personal and self serving—I needed a dissertation topic.  I sought to find one that could combine my academic field of historic preservation with my fledgling interest in the food system, which was itself a nascent subject of academic inquiry in the early 2000s.  At that time, it was possible to read the entire contemporary literature about domestic food system planning in less than one day.  As the research progressed, I became convinced that the historic preservation movement has been overly preoccupied with the design of buildings, the appearance of historic places (in itself, not a novel finding).  Using the food system as a lens for my historical inquiry, I began to realize that there were many opportunities and several turning points in the past, when preservationists did sometimes take initiative to preserve the functional aspects of historic places—how they were used, for what, and by whom.  I tended to find these examples in the form of protests and advocacy to preserve the historic uses of public food markets between the 1960s-1980s in the United States.  I am trying to turn these findings, and other similar observations of historical attachment to place, traditional use, and neighborhoods to articulate a different way of approaching historic preservation that considers more than just the appearances of physical artifacts, landscapes, and buildings.

My first research in this area was also profoundly inspired by two early food system planning articles by Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome L. Kaufman: “The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field,” Journal of the American Planning Association 66,no. 2 (2000); and Pothukuchi and Kaufman, “Placing the Food System on the Urban Agenda: The Role of Municipal Institutions in Food System Planning,”
Agriculture and Human Values 16, no. 2 (June 1999).

I wondered, was it possible, as they asserted, that planners had with only a few exceptions been historically absent from 20th century matters pertaining to food?  I began digging in reports and archives, and found that, in fact, food was among the top concerns of the planning movement in the early decades of the profession’s development.

-your expectations going into it
Several: 1) That I was examining a highly esoteric topic that few people would ever care about, inside or outside academia. (My advisers in a department of City and Regional Planning told me in 2003 that “food system planning” was not a PhD minor, and the subject would be entertained as a curiosity by my future colleagues, at best.)  2) That the research questions would not be well defined by an existing body of scholarship, beyond simply trying to find any mention of planners concerned with food over the course of the 20th century.

-your modes of engagement (how you conducted your public/engaged scholarship, for example: stakeholder sessions, focus groups, interviews, etc.)
Like Tracey, my research is mostly archival, though recently I have begun finding and reaching out to those who, through my research, I consider to be some of the early food system planners or their heirs.  For example, I’ve been carrying on a year-long correspondence, mostly by postal mail (!), with William C. Crow, Jr, son of William C. Crow, the Director of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service for decades in mid-20th century.  He was known to his colleagues as “Mr. Produce Market,” and, in my analysis, was a key figure in designing the modern food distribution system we know today, and producing the analysis that justified its creation.

As stated in my abstract for this conference, I also consider researchers studying and implementing food system interventions today to be my “stakeholders,” in a sense.  I see them as one of the potential audiences for my research.  I also find myself drawing research questions from their work; ie: what is the historical basis for the “market failures” they are seeking to correct?

I would also like my research to have more direct connections and collaborations with the public, or various publics, but I am 1) not exactly sure how; and 2) not sure I have the time to do so given the tenure imperative I have to publish a book about this research in the next three years. Publically-engaged scholarly, as I know from my work that deals more directly with traditional matters of historic preservation, takes a lot of time and is sadly undervalued by most of academia, despite rhetorical emphasis that might suggest otherwise.

-unforeseen implications or ramifications of the project.
Most unforeseen when I started researching this topic about a decade ago was the exponential growth of interest in all maters food related.  What I once thought was VERY esoteric historical research is now considered somewhat relevant to contemporary food system issues and debates—I now regularly read about topics directly related to my research in the New York Times.  I am often invited to lecture to, or participate in, food system symposia that have nothing to do with historic preservation or the history of city planning.  This, I could never have predicted.  Again, the ramifications of this development seem mostly personal at this point.  On the hand, I’m delighted “my topic” has become “relevant.”  On the other hand, I feel somewhat ambivalent about being one researcher among many in what has become a crowded field of inquiry.  This is both exciting and a bit anxiety inducing.