Research Database in Progress: Calling for Resources!

Overview

We’re building an online food systems research database. It will be:

Free to everyone
Specific to the North Central Florida region
Searchable using keywords

So far, we’ve been searching for published sources. Now, we’re looking for resources that are not already available online. If you have information that might be a good fit, we’d love to hear from you! We’re interested in a wide range of academic and non-academic resource types, including:

Academic journal articles
Reports
White papers
Brochures
De-identified datasets (please make sure NO information could be used to identify any person)

We also know that “food systems” is a very broad topic, since food touches so many aspects of life. We will be grateful for any resources related to food systems that you can share. However, we’re especially interested in these high-priority areas:

Community food security & accessibility
Food sovereignty
Farmer & farmworker well-being
Food policy
Local food economy
Nutritional health & behavior
Local food culture & history
Food waste
Food safety
Community gardening

Contact us!

The team currently includes Miranda Carver Martin, Renz Torres, and Cody Gusto. If you have resources to contribute, please use this contact form to reach us:

More about the research database project

What is the purpose of the research database?

There are many food-focused databases already. However, this one will be specific to our geographic area. Our goal is to make locally produced food systems research easier to find. Doing so should support initiatives tailored to the contexts of our local communities. Gathering lessons learned from past efforts into a shared database will also help us build on previous work instead of repeating it.

Who is it for?

Anyone will be able to access and use this online tool for free. We intend for everyone to benefit from it. However, the target users of the research database itself include (but are not limited to):

What about academic sources behind paywalls?

We will follow copyright laws. As a result, we will not host full texts on the front-end of the database unless we are granted express legal permission by the author/publisher. However, we understand that paywalls make important information inaccessible to most people. Therefore, we plan to provide jargon-free summaries along with external links to full-text landing pages. These summaries will highlight the parts of each source that pertain to our local food systems. That way, database users can make more informed decisions about whether to pay for the full text.