| Activity | An activity is something that people do together or on their own. For the Food Ladders framework, we are particularly interested in the opportunities that activities can provide participants (for example, to access food, learn skills, make friends, and develop businesses or cooperatives). The Food Ladders framework focuses on activities rather than organisations, as organisations often facilitate multiple activities simultaneously, providing different opportunities in different ways. |
| Capablity | A practice is something people do or say with some regularity to varying degrees of normativity. For example, going to the supermarket, having a TV dinner, and allotmenting. Practices are seen as a product of and constitutive of societal structures. We can see how several different social structures shape the human experience by paying attention to people’s practices. |
| Domain | Activities can affect a range of different areas of people’s lives. We call these different areas ‘domains’. Examples of domains include food, social life, the environment, the economy, and physical or mental health. Activities can span multiple domains or just affect one: a cash-payment scheme is mainly an economic activity but can benefit people’s access to food and physical health in the short term. Community gardening benefits the environment and participants’ physical and mental health and can provide opportunities for socialising, too. No domain is more important than any other – it is crucial to recognise that food activities can benefit people in many ways. |
| Food Security | People are food secure when they can easily access and use the food they need to live their best lives, without disproportionate struggle or worry. |
| Ladder | In Food Ladders, the ladder represents the community food ecosystem. A complete ladder provides a community with a broad range of activities, across multiple domains, that give opportunities for people to attain resilient, empowered, food security. |
| Practice | A practice is something people do or say with some regularity to varying degrees of normativity. For example, going to the supermarket, having a TV dinner, and allotmenting. Practices are seen as a product of and constitutive of societal structures, so by paying attention to people’s practices, we can see how several different social structures shape the human experience. |
| Resilience | Resilience is about being able to survive a crisis. However, some people and places are more vulnerable to crisis than others. Creating resilience can be about ensuring they survive when a crisis happens, or it can be about removing the vulnerability to crisis. Different rungs on the ladder address each of these notions. Rung 1 ensures survival. Rung 2 reduces vulnerability within the present system. Rung 3 seeks to change the system, which creates conditions for a crisis in the first instance. |
| Rung | Rungs of the ladder are distinct activities occurring within the food ecosystem. We distinguish between different rungs based on how their activities interact with people in communities. Rung 1 activities are done to or for people, Rung 2 activities are done with them, and Rung 3 activities are done by them. No rung is more important than any other – a ladder only works if all the rungs are there! |
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