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There is a tension between enhancing vulnerable people's access to local nutritious food and ensuring viable incomes for local farmers. This tension arises as a result of interactions and processes scaling outward to the broad level of economic and political ideologies (Ikerd, 2005; 2012). We suggest that by conceiving of this tension as a wicked problem and employing complex adaptive systems theory, we create space in which community members are empowered to share existing knowledge and develop new knowledge as they innovate potential solutions and discuss constructive change. We introduce this space as the beginnings of a dialogue-driven, shared journey through four features of the back loop of the adaptive cycle. Drawing on this theoretical foundation as well as Block's (2009) structure for creating a community of belonging, we hosted two one-half-day-long events for 90 community members, including farmers, foodinsecure people, government representatives, and public agencies. This bottom-up, emergent approach to developing new system patterns may ultimately transform the domain of the problem and present viable alternative futures, which then may be adapted to the local reality and enhance community well being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the range and complexity of pressures on food systems across the globe, we suggest that future research on sustainable food systems can be clustered under three broad topics: the need for integration across multiple jurisdictions, and disciplines that includes different models of food systems and community visions of an integrated food system; the need for focus on tensions and compromises related to increased numbers and reach of sustainable food systems by scaling out and up; and the need for appropriate governance structures and institutions. Comparative research that works directly with communitybased organizations to co-create and apply shared research tools and then engage in common assessment projects offers ways to develop more connected scholarship. More extensive work using concept maps, participatory action research, lifecycle analysis, and urban/rural metabolic flows may help to develop, animate, and answer future research questions in more integrated ways, and will build on opportunities emerging from more inclusive, connected, and multidisciplinary approaches. Work in Ontario helps to illustrate research exploring the three themes through embedded connections to communities of food in the ongoing research project Nourishing Communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]