The journal Built Environment will be publishing a special issue on food systems planning edited by Samina Raja and Kevin Morgan. The issue will address, “how the growing engagement of the planning and design disciplines within city and regional food systems subverts, reinforces, or exacerbates inequities and injustices”. The guest editors invite submissions from scholars from across the Global South and Global North to submit articles that focus on food systems at varying scales and address:

One of the Growing Food Connections Communities of Opportunity, Polk County, NC recently passed a new policy to allow the creation of a mobile farmers market. The county-wide mobile market, run by Growing Rural Opportunities, will launch out of a bookmobile donated by the county. The county commissioners recently approved the new resolution to allow the county to donate any personal property that is deemed to be surplus, obsolete or unused to a nonprofit organization. The new mobile farmers market will be one of the only mobile markets in western North Carolina. The passage of this new policy demonstrates the power of nonprofit, private, and local government collaboration. The Growing Food Connections team congratulates Polk County on the new policy to support agriculture and expand access to healthy foods for all of Polk’s residents.

Please see the  Tryon Daily Bulletin article for more information about the bookmobile to mobile farmers market conversion.

The University at Buffalo Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab (Food Lab) has partnered with the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization to lead a training session on food systems planning and policy at the upcoming Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador next week.

The workshop, titled Planning for Food Systems in Urban Settlements: Lessons and Challenges from North America, will focus on planning tools that strengthen the capacity of local governments in supporting food security and agricultural viability, as well as information and strategies for how the New Urban Agenda can be implemented. The session will provide participants with information on community-led food systems planning techniques that have been used successfully in North America, particularly Buffalo and Seattle. The workshop is designed as a fast-paced interactive session and includes brief presentations and hands-on activities for participants.

The workshop will be on Sunday, October 16, 2016, from 14:30 – 16:00 in Room B, One UN Pavilion.

If you are interested in attending the workshop, please RSVP here.

For more information, see the full press release from University at Buffalo here.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released information on new technical assistance programs designed to help rural communities revitalize downtown areas. Read more below about Rural Advantage, Local Foods, Local Places, Cool and Connected, and Healthy Places for Healthy People.

EPA Offers Assistance to Help Rural Communities Revitalize Downtowns

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today invited rural communities to apply for planning assistance to develop strategies that help grow the economy and revitalize downtown neighborhoods. EPA is offering this assistance as part of Rural Advantage, a suite of federal economic development planning assistance programs for rural communities.

“Rural Advantage is helping communities reinvent themselves in ways that are good for the economy and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “We are excited to partner with communities that want to use their unique rural assets to create a brighter, healthier future.

Communities may apply for assistance through the following programs:

• Local Foods, Local Places (LFLP), which helps communities leverage local food enterprise to diversify their economy and renew their downtowns.
• Cool & Connected, which helps communities use broadband service to create walkable, connected, economically successful neighborhoods.

Healthy Places for Healthy People, a new program that will help communities partner with health care facilities to catalyze downtown revitalization and to improve options for healthy living and economic opportunity.

Rural Advantage is part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to place-based strategies to help communities develop competitive advantages. In these places, federal experts are working side by side with residents and local leaders to create customized solutions, bolstering coordination across agencies and improving how we interact with and serve community partners.

Under the Obama Administration, EPA and federal partners have provided rural advantage assistance to 83 communities, to date.  Sixty-eight communities have been selected for assistance through Local Foods, Local Places, and 15 communities have received assistance through Cool & Connected, ten of which are in Appalachia.

In 2012, Williamson, W Va., was selected to participate in the Livable Communities in Appalachia program, the predecessor to LFLP. Through that effort, a team of small-town development experts worked with Sustainable Williamson to create an action plan tailored to achieving the town’s goals, including improving access to food to realize better health outcomes.

Upon implementing the plan, Sustainable Williamson received an $80,000 planning grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration. That grant helped create a Federally Qualified Health Center that later received an additional $650,000 to support clinic operations. Sustainable Williamson also established a downtown farmers’ market and community garden that increased access to healthy foods for Williamson residents. The Williamson Health and Wellness Center also received LFLP assistance, in 2015, to provide support to new entrepreneurs starting up their businesses in the local food and health care sectors, and to expand the community’s innovative approaches to creating a culture of health.

In Montrose, Co., the Cool & Connected action plan helped advance Proximity Space, an award-winning coworking project, and link it to the community’s efforts to build a walkable and investment-ready downtown. Coworking space allows people to access high-speed internet, conference rooms, and office equipment, and is one of many ways that small towns can leverage broadband to boost main street development.

Communities selected for this latest round of assistance will work with an EPA-supported team of experts, including through a two-day workshop, to develop strategies and action plans that enable them to realize their local revitalization goals.  The team will include people with expertise in community development, and representatives of the federal agencies that sponsor the three programs so communities can build connections and take better advantage of federal programs and resources.

Working with federal partners, EPA will select thirty or more communities for assistance through a competitive process.

EPA’s Rural Advantage federal partners are the United States Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority and the Economic Development Administration.

Communities may apply by submitting letters of interest by November 6. For more information and to submit an application, see: https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth

The profession of urban and regional planning aspires to create places that work for people. Yet, mainstream planning in the Global North and Global South continues to overlook the critical need to plan for people’s access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally relevant foods. Fortunately, community groups around the world are stepping up and demanding that planners plan for food systems, including urban agriculture.

The University at Buffalo Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab team is pleased to partner with The RUAF Foundation on the publication of a special issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine (UAM), titled “Inclusive Use of Urban Space”, focused on community involvement in planing and policy to strengthen city-region food systems. Key questions explored in this issue are how communities are engaging in urban food policy making and planning and how local governments are responding to community demands for food policies and plans. The issue includes case studies from across the globe, including in Buffalo, NY and Madison, WI.

The full magazine will be released in print at the United Nations Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador in two weeks.

Thank you to UB Community of Global Health Equity for supporting this publication!

In 2015, eight communities from across the county were chosen as Communities of Opportunity (COO), places where there is significant potential to strengthen ties between small and medium –sized farmers and residents with limited food access.  Each Community of Opportunity established a Steering Committee and commenced on charting a vision for their community’s food system.  Through our ongoing partnership with each COO, Growing Food Connections is excited to announce Exploring Stories of Opportunity, a series of case studies that explore how each COO is overcoming barriers to strengthen their food systems through planning, policy, and partnerships within communities. These case studies are informed by extensive research, including the ongoing capacity building of the Growing Food Connections Steering Committees in each Community of Opportunity.

Each case study in the series contains sections highlighting opportunities and challenges within the county’s food system in separate sections on food production and food security.  A following section summarizes the local public policy environment, including ways in which community-led civic organizations and private entrepreneurs have partnered with supportive county, city, and town governments. The case studies conclude with ‘Ideas for the Future’, a section on key future policy and implementation efforts that can strengthen each county’s food system.

Our first case study of the series, Growing a Local Food Economy for a Healthy Wyandotte, draws on interviews with Wyandotte County stakeholders and secondary data sources.  It is designed to inform the work of the Wyandotte Steering Committee, as well as serving as a resource for planners and policy makers in Wyandotte.  Read the full case study to learn how Wyandotte County, KS is transforming their food system and building healthier communities for all their residents:

Exploring Stories of Opportunity: Growing a Local Food Economy for a Healthy Wyandotte