As has become abundantly clear to the social scientists, agriculturalists, policymakers, and food justice advocates who have taken up the fight, progress toward more resilient, fair, and effective food systems is hard fought and prone to challenges. Vexingly, the competing goals of food system improvement even make defining “success” in food system transformation difficult: accessible, affordable food versus nutritious food; diversity in the agricultural economy versus the cost savings of consolidation; and consumer choice and variety versus the ecological advantages of eating seasonally and locally. In this commentary, we treat American college campuses as analogs of the larger food system and as such, laboratories[1] for study of these systemic tradeoffs and proving grounds for policy interventions. We argue that the lived context of college students approximates that of communities in which financial, logistical, and other challenges negatively affect nutrition, equitable food access, and food knowledge outcomes. We suggest that the rigorous assessment of changes in educational philosophy, management practices, and spending priorities on campuses may offer insight into the ways in which we might effect change throughout the broad national food landscape, to facilitate the transition to more equitable and just food systems. [1] Our propositions here connect more broadly with the literature examining the campus as a living laboratory, which addresses a wide array of sustainability issues (e.g., Gomez & Derr, 2021; Hansen, 2017; Save et al., 2021).

Participatory guarantee systems (PGS) are locally-rooted agroecological governance mechanisms primarily designed to meet the needs of local producers for product certification and cooperative sales. They have experienced periodic waves of interest in different places throughout the globe. There is a small but rich and growing scholarship devoted to understanding how they are managed, how they are sustained, and what factors predict their success. Interestingly, there is little evidence that they have developed in the United States, which has instead, witnessed the growth of community supported agriculture (CSA), farmer’s markets, food hubs and food policy councils (FPC), although many of these mechanisms have failed to sustain interest and support. Here, we explore the factors that drive the creation of systems in the global South, Europe and other regions, and identify the factors that shape a different trajectory for local agriculture in the United States. We discuss the possibilities for more radical food system transformation in the United States, considering a changing climate, an industrial food system that has prioritized profit over health, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we conclude by identifying some future pathways for policy reform and research opportunities.