Social Sustainability and Reciprocity: Co-designing a Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SO-LCA) framework for a food hub at the peri-urban agricultural interface

Abstract

This research is grounded in sustainability, food, and people. It is a case study exploring how to holistically measure the social equity pillar of sustainable agriculture. More specifically, how to equitably measure the needs and impacts of the many stakeholders-sustaining food systems at the peri-urban agricultural interface. To explore this proof of concept, a community-design approach was utilized to develop a framework for measuring the social impact of stakeholders on and by The Good Acre, a food hub in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. The community-design approach incorporated participatory action research (PAR) principles, which included interviews, routine meetings, focus groups, surveys, follow-up emails, and compensation for time and knowledge shared. The measuring of social impact involved a social organizational life cycle assessment (SO-LCA), which is an emerging methodology used to measure progress in social equity for the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SO-LCA is designed to measure how impacts are distributed and accrued across all stakeholders in a system. The stakeholders of The Good Acre include people living in and around the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area (TCMA) who grow, process, package, prepare, distribute, consume, fund, govern, work, or volunteer with local food systems associated with The Good Acre. For this research, the methodology was adapted and re-imagined with the community, for the community, using PAR methods. The methodology and framework that resulted from this study is an exploratory proof of concept for modeling the reciprocal relationships stakeholders have with organizations, communities, and systems in the context of life cycle assessment and sustainability. The effectiveness of the framework should be further explored by 1) applying this methodology to a variety of agricultural organizations to capture a diversity of scales, geographies, and stakeholder priorities (re-imagining “organizations” as social networks), 2) incorporating routine surveys or other methods for soliciting continuous feedback as a metric in the SO-LCA framework to capture the dynamic needs of these social systems over time, and 3) utilizing the indicators from this process as the framework for conducting a sustainability life cycle assessment. Ultimately, this research could be used to inform more targeted and equitable policy and planning approach for agricultural systems at the peri-urban agricultural interface.