Browsing by Author "Ayankojo, Joy O."

Increase in population growth hence, increase in human need for nutrition and energy as well as the challenges of climate change limiting agricultural farming practices require advanced agricultural production and food supply in an environmentally friendly and affordable way. Food localization within each municipality is proposed as a potential solution that also ensures food security, transparency and sovereignty. This study aims to determine the feasibility of localizing food purchased for public catering and how agroecological symbiosis (AES) network can enhance such practicability. Data were collected from public food purchase in Mäntsälä, sorted and analyzed. Further evaluation was achieved by employing known standards from Finnish statistics and other existing literatures, to determine the possibility of localizing individual food category in Mäntsälä. Results shows that a total of 404,366 kg of food was purchased for public catering. The evaluation of the primary products needed indicate that an average of 3 Finnish dairy farms are needed to produce the milk purchased and one Finnish dairy farm is needed for the cheese purchased while less than one Finnish poultry is needed in producing the total egg purchased. Furthermore, while about 11 and 4 hectares of land are required to produce the purchased bread and vegetable respectively, the result also reveals that less than one Finnish dairy farm is needed for the production of the total meat purchased for public catering in the Mäntsälä. By comparing the evaluated values of the needed primary products obtained in this research with what is obtainable in Mäntsälä, localization of the production and supply of the studied individual food category was found to be achievable. More importantly, the potential advantages of AES networking in advancing the feasibility and sustainability of localizing public food catering within the municipality was established.