Based on urgent needs for food security compounded by a changing climate which impacts and is impacted by agricultural land-use and food distribution practices, we explore the processes of action in implementing agroecological food systems. We identified the following characteristics for an agroecological food system: 1. Minimizing use of external inputs, 2. Extent of internal resource recycling, 3. Resilience, 4. Multifunctionality, 5. Building on complexity and incorporating greater systems integration, 6. Contextuality, 7. Equity and, 8. Nourishment. We focus on the city-region food systems context, concluding with practical drivers for realizing more agroecological food systems in cityregion contexts. Agroecological food systems are widely diverse, shaped by context, and achieved through multi-actor planning in rural, peri-urban and urban areas. Application of agroecological food systems in rural-urban contexts emphasize the necessity of diversification, zoning rural-urban landscapes, planning for seasonality in a food systems context, and producing at scale. Ruralurban food systems are a relevant and challenging entry point that provides opportunities for learning how food systems can be shaped for significant positive change. Social organization, community building, common learning, and knowledge creation are crucial for agroecological contextualized food systems, as are the supports from appropriate governing and institutional structures.

a b s t r a c tRe-localizing food distribution is expected to geographically concentrate social and economic capital toward values that are beneficial to both consumers and producers. Yet, both the theory of how communities benefit from purchasing local food and the practice of promoting local food lack foundational empiric evidence that makes spatially explicit the procurement typologies and the communities that are connected. This research pilots a method for understanding the geographic patterns of local food supply chains in relation to the social networks formed through farm tours, byproduct sales, farm-to-farm collaboration, and donations to the local food bank. This method is expected to improve both the theory and practice of re-localizing food systems, thereby helping scholars and policymakers to identify and correct for inequities while also recognizing successful practices and opportunities in situ. Findings are based on a novel dataset from Chester County, Pennsylvania encompassing 1089 connections between 117 farms and 637 locations. Farms primarily engage with one marketing typology. The most common marketing practices are wholesale distribution and direct-marketing to consumers through farmers' markets; both market typologies have an average reach of over 50 km. Central to the social network, is a third typology characterized by sales to restaurants, collaboration amongst farms and participation with local food bank programming. Interviews with policymakers and market managers ground-truth and relate findings to state and local regulations.

By uniting literature from farmland preservation, growth management, food systems, economics, bioengineering, and environmental studies, this article provides an overview and valuation of the services that farms provide for urban areas. This article first analyzes the mission statements of 130 nationally accredited land trusts to ascertain the criteria used in preserving farmland. Land trusts present uniform preference for parcels that provide ecosystem services, wildlife habitat, viewsheds, local heritage, and agricultural productivity. The list of benefits provided by land trusts was compared to a literature review drawing from farmland amenity, agritourism, farmland preservation, and ecosystems studies to reveal the range of market values for the various benefits of farmland. The market value of farmland services varies from −$37,541 to 124,000 per acre depending on the method of analysis and location of the farm. This research has strong implications for land-use planning, economic opportunities, and ecosystems infrastructure in peri-urban areas.

This research offers the first use of graph theory mathematics in social network analysis to explore relationships built through an alternative food network. The local food system is visualized using geo-social data from 110 farms and 224 markets around Baltimore County, Maryland, with 699 connections between them. Network behavior is explored through policy document review and interviews. The findings revealed a small-world architecture, with system resiliency built-in by diversified marketing practices at central nodes. This robust network design helps to explain the long-term survival of local food systems despite the meteoric rise of global industrial food supply chains. Modern alternative food networks are an example of a movement that seeks to reorient economic power structures in response to a variety of food system-related issues not limited to consumer health but including environmental impacts. Uncovering the underlying network architecture of this sustainability-oriented social movement helps reveal how it weaves systemic change more broadly. The methods used in this study demonstrate how social values, social networks, markets, and governance systems embed to transform both physical landscapes and human bodies. Network actors crafted informal policy reports, which were directly incorporated in state and local official land-use and economic planning documents. Community governance over land-use policy suggests a powerful mechanism for further localizing food systems.