Growing Food Connections is pleased to announce the creation of Translating Research for Policy, a new series of policy briefs that brings original and published research on food systems planning to the attention of a broad audience of food system practitioners, local governments, planners and policy makers. The first brief, How Food Policy Emerges, is now available. This brief shares the work found in the journal article Rustbelt Radicalism: A decade of food systems planning in Buffalo, New York, originally published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.
How Food Policy Emerges documents how community activists, coined Rustbelt Radicals, use community-led practice to shape local government policy in Buffalo, New York. Their incremental yet collective transformation of the food system in a limited-resource community offers a paradigm of change for other post-industrial cities. The brief features seven factors that bring food to the public policy table, offering a blueprint for communities looking to shift from food-blind plans and policies to introducing food as a public issue in their community.
Desert Exposure recently featured the work of the Luna County, NM, community who is partnering with Growing Food Connections. See the full article below.
Luna County Combats Food Insecurity
Luna County is one of eight counties across the nation selected to begin a new grant- funded program intended to link family farmers with members of the community who lack healthy access to food.
Every county in the nation, 3,007 of them, was invited to apply for the Growing Food Connections funding, and Luna County was among 27 other appli-cations accepted to argue for the award. The highly competitive process was capped by Luna County Manager Charles “Tink” Jackson fighting for bringing the program and funding locally. Jackson’s passionate argument for the program, coupled with research and fact-finding by county staff, secured Luna County’s place in the nationwide effort.
“This county was built on the hard work of farmers, ranchers and the others involved in the complex world of agriculture,” Jackson said. “We plan to sup-port the hard work of today’s ag community in Luna County while addressing the serious issues around healthy food access.”
Luna County’s rich agricultural traditions, coupled with the county’s vision to increase access to healthy foods for area residents, create an ideal environment to strengthen the local food systems. This new pro-gram will join the county’s existing multi-pronged approach, through Luna County Healthy Kids Healthy Communities, to combating food insecurity and healthy food access.
“We have found that our local leaders want tools and resources, not handouts,” said Julia Freedgood, Assistant Vice President for Programs with American Farmland Trust.
American Farmland Trust is a national organiza-tion dedicated to promoting sound farming practices and keeping farmers on the land. The group is one of the partners under the program funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.
The partnerships will bring national expertise in food policy and planning to Luna County to assist with the creation of locally created and controlled plans and policies to support family farmers and en-hance food security.
At the county level, the process will be facilitated by a committee of local residents currently being cre-ated. If you are interested in serving on the committee, contact Jessica Etcheverry at 575-546-0494.
“I’m excited to begin working with members of our community to address the issues they see and the problems we can alleviate together with good planning and teamwork,” Etcheverry, Luna County’s community projects director, said. “Don’t be shy; please contact me so we can begin collaborating toward these important goals.”
Luna County is one of two counties in New Mexico awarded the program. The other is neighboring Doña Ana County. With the exception of the New Mexico counties and a county in Kansas, all of the other sites are located in the Southern United States or east coast.
“The selected local governments will blaze a path for more than 30,000 local governments in the United States that have traditionally overlooked the problems and opportunities in their communities’ food systems,” Dr. Samina Raja, GFC Principal Investigator and Associate Professor at the University of Buffalo, said.
The Association of European Schools of Planning is announcing their 7th International AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Conference on localizing urban food strategies. The conference is being hosted by the Polytechnic University of Turin and will take place on October 7th-9th in Torino, Italy. The conference will provide opportunity for cross disciplinary dialogue, networking and identification of important and emerging research related to sustainable food planning. International cross-disciplinary researchers in the fields of planning, agronomy, design, geography and administration and more will attend as well as new and early career researchers. The conference has a dual goal of ‘farming cities’ and ‘performing rurality’ to highlight innovative roles for agriculture in the cities while equally supporting the important role of agriculture in rural areas. The conference will be organized by five tracks: spatial planning and urban design, governance and private entrepreneurship, relevant experience and practice, training and jobs, and flows and network. Abstracts will be accepted until May 31sth via the AESOP website and students and young scholars are encouraged to apply.
Growing Food Connections is excited to announce Exploring Stories of Innovation, a series of short articles that explore how local governments from across the United States are strengthening their community’s food system through planning and policy.
Beginning in 2012, Growing Food Connections (GFC) conducted a national scan and identified 299 local governments across the United States that are developing and implementing a range of innovative plans, public programs, regulations, laws, financial investments and other policies to strengthen the food system. GFC conducted exploratory telephone interviews with 20 of these local governments. This series will highlight some of the unique planning and policy strategies used by these urban and rural local governments to enhance community food security while ensuring sustainable and economically viable agriculture and food production. The first four articles in the series feature Seattle, WA; Baltimore, MD; Cabarrus County, NC; and Lancaster County, PA.
Marquette County Food Supply Plan Gains National Recognition
By Esther Kwon, Upper Peninsula Matters
April 30, 205
Marquette County’s work to improve the community’s food system is creating attention at the national level.
Thyra Karlstrom, Senior Planner for Marquette County, was recently invited to speak at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in Seattle, Washington. The opportunity was a result of Marquette County being identified as a “community of innovation” by Growing Food Connections (GFC), a USDA-funded project that is conducting research on how local governments are improving food security and strengthening agriculture and food production in their communities. “We are impressed with the food systems planning and policy work of Marquette County government, namely the leadership of staff on food systems issues; long-range food systems planning efforts; coordination and collaboration within and outside the local government; and government support of food systems related projects and programs,” said Kimberley Hodgson, Co-Investigator of GFC and Principal of Cultivating Healthy Places.
As part of a GFC-hosted workshop (focused on advancing food systems planning and policy), Karlstrom spoke about Marquette County’s Local Food Supply Plan. The Plan was adopted by the County in 2012 and explains what a food system is, our regional challenges which include a short growing season, why a strong local food system is essential, and what the community and policy makers can do to strengthen ours.
“Representing rural communities and sharing Marquette County’s story at a national planning conference was an incredible opportunity,” Karlstrom said. “Our community has countless people and agencies dedicated to increasing healthy food consumption, providing opportunities for agriculture, and connecting food growers and consumers. Local governments have a key role and that is to set policy that encourages food production, processing, and even consumption.”
Marquette County is committed. Goals identified in the Plan include an improved economy, improved health, and reduced dependency on imported foods. The Plan can be found under comprehensive planning documents on Marquette County’s website. http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/.
An editorial by Dr. Samina Raja, a principal investigator of Growing Food Connections, was recently featured in The Conversation. The discussion features the work of planners in addressing food systems and highlights why all cities should have a Department of Food. Read the article below or see the original article here.
Why all cities should have a Department of Food
Dr. Samina Raja, April 3, 2015
In the United States, we live in a nation where hunger and obesity go hand in hand. More than 17 million US households struggle to put food on the table, and when they do, it’s often high in fat and sugar because healthy options are scarce in low-income neighborhoods.
These problems are well known. They’re frequently in the news. But what’s missing from the conversation is a discussion of how they came to be.
The dearth of grocery stores and other sources of fresh food in underserved communities is not a product of happenstance, but the result, in part, of poor urban and regional planning.
More than 38,000 local governments — counties, cities, villages, towns and townships — exist in the United States, and their operations impact the lives of more than 319 million Americans on a daily basis. These entities are entrusted with a broad set of responsibilities: They ensure public safety; they regulate economic activity; they have departments that deliver water, education, transportation, green space (parks) and social services.
Yet, local governments pay little systemic attention to the one resource most essential for all Americans’ well-being: food.
Local food policy
In a 2014 survey of planners and other elected officials who are members of the American Planning Association, the University at Buffalo and partners found abysmally low levels of engagement by local governments in the realm of food. Just 13 percent of 1,169 respondents working for these governments named food systems planning as a significant priority in their work. A full 50 percent said their engagement was non-existent or minimal.
This disturbing lapse contributes to a bevy of food-related problems, from disparities in food access among consumers to financial struggles among farmers, many of whom hold two jobs to make ends meet.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Last month, a project launched to help eight communities across the US to connect family farmers to consumers who lack access to healthy food. Called Growing Food Connections, it’s a federally funded project I lead along with the American Farmland Trust and other partners. The targeted regions will be urban and rural, ranging from the Kansas City metro area to two sparsely populated areas of New Mexico. Local governments will play an important role in each.
The project will do research around how local governments can remove public policy barriers to locally grown food and foster connections between family farmers and underserved community residents. We plan to provide policy recommendations to improve local food security by encouraging sustainable and economically viable food production.
Blocking farmers markets?
But making improvements in eight forward-thinking communities is not enough.
Across the country, we need to incorporate food into the way we plan and organize the places we live. For this, we need officials in local government who are dedicated full-time to addressing the problem.
That’s because the food system is complicated: It includes physical components such as land for farming; facilities for storage, butchering and retail; and transportation networks for distributing food. It also includes natural resources such as soil, water, sunshine and pollinators, and human resources like entrepreneurs and a trained workforce of farmers, farmworkers, butchers, processors and chefs.
Today, in many communities, this infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. Zoning codes that dictate where food businesses can locate are often incredibly antiquated, some dating back to the 1950s. Some prohibit people from growing food on their own front yards. Others ban farmers’ markets in residential neighborhoods, making it difficult for people without cars to reach healthy food destinations. Many additional problems persist.
Urban planners and food
So how would food systems planners in local government address these concerns?
They would perform a pulse-taking function, tracking problems as well as missed opportunities. They would ensure that land use and transportation plans protect assets such as farmland. They would help bring amenities like farmers’ markets and community gardens to neighborhoods that need them. They would rewrite outdated zoning codes. They would assist in creating stronger regional supply chains of farmers, processors, distributors and consumers.
Baltimore, Maryland and Seattle, Washington are cities where thoughtful planning is already taking place. Both have staff focused on developing purposeful food policy. Both also have food policy councils — advisory groups of committed, volunteer residents — who advocate for improvements.
This allocation of resources has paid dividends. In Seattle, the city runs P-Patch, one of the largest municipal community gardening programs in the country. The city provides staff and financial support for the project, which enabled residents to grow food and donate 29,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to food banks and programs in 2014.
Recognizing the value, Seattle’s voters included US$2 million in a 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy for P-Patch community garden development, and the city’s comprehensive plan encourages community gardens as a land use.
Bringing food production back
One great irony is that local government agencies, such as departments of planning and economic development, have continually shaped communities’ food infrastructure, albeit with little awareness that they are doing so.
Local governments create land use plans that place prime farmland in the path of development. They regulate access to water for food growers. They tax food businesses. They enforce outdated zoning codes. And they do it all with little or no systemic understanding of their communities’ food infrastructure — and certainly with no departments of food.
These modern failures of local planning have precedent in the City Beautiful movement of the early 1900s. During that era, planners designed cities for grandeur rather than quotidian functions such as growing and harvesting food.
A preoccupation with auto-centric development further degraded food infrastructure from the mid-century onwards. In 1965, for example, the city of Buffalo, New York sold the century-old Washington Market, where vendors hawked poultry, dairy, fruits and vegetables from 400 stalls, to a bank. The buyer razed the market to create a parking lot that remains there today.
Fortunately for Buffalo, city officials and planners are now supporting grassroots efforts to rebuild food infrastructure through innovative public policy.
An editorial by Dr. Samina Raja, a principal investigator of Growing Food Connections, was recently featured in The Conversation. The discussion features the work of planners in addressing food systems and highlights why all cities should have a Department of Food. Read the article below or see the original article here.
Why all cities should have a Department of Food
Dr. Samina Raja, April 3, 2015
In the United States, we live in a nation where hunger and obesity go hand in hand. More than 17 million US households struggle to put food on the table, and when they do, it’s often high in fat and sugar because healthy options are scarce in low-income neighborhoods.
These problems are well known. They’re frequently in the news. But what’s missing from the conversation is a discussion of how they came to be.
The dearth of grocery stores and other sources of fresh food in underserved communities is not a product of happenstance, but the result, in part, of poor urban and regional planning.
More than 38,000 local governments — counties, cities, villages, towns and townships — exist in the United States, and their operations impact the lives of more than 319 million Americans on a daily basis. These entities are entrusted with a broad set of responsibilities: They ensure public safety; they regulate economic activity; they have departments that deliver water, education, transportation, green space (parks) and social services.
Yet, local governments pay little systemic attention to the one resource most essential for all Americans’ well-being: food.
Local food policy
In a 2014 survey of planners and other elected officials who are members of the American Planning Association, the University at Buffalo and partners found abysmally low levels of engagement by local governments in the realm of food. Just 13 percent of 1,169 respondents working for these governments named food systems planning as a significant priority in their work. A full 50 percent said their engagement was non-existent or minimal.
This disturbing lapse contributes to a bevy of food-related problems, from disparities in food access among consumers to financial struggles among farmers, many of whom hold two jobs to make ends meet.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Last month, a project launched to help eight communities across the US to connect family farmers to consumers who lack access to healthy food. Called Growing Food Connections, it’s a federally funded project I lead along with the American Farmland Trust and other partners. The targeted regions will be urban and rural, ranging from the Kansas City metro area to two sparsely populated areas of New Mexico. Local governments will play an important role in each.
The project will do research around how local governments can remove public policy barriers to locally grown food and foster connections between family farmers and underserved community residents. We plan to provide policy recommendations to improve local food security by encouraging sustainable and economically viable food production.
Blocking farmers markets?
But making improvements in eight forward-thinking communities is not enough.
Across the country, we need to incorporate food into the way we plan and organize the places we live. For this, we need officials in local government who are dedicated full-time to addressing the problem.
That’s because the food system is complicated: It includes physical components such as land for farming; facilities for storage, butchering and retail; and transportation networks for distributing food. It also includes natural resources such as soil, water, sunshine and pollinators, and human resources like entrepreneurs and a trained workforce of farmers, farmworkers, butchers, processors and chefs.
Today, in many communities, this infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. Zoning codes that dictate where food businesses can locate are often incredibly antiquated, some dating back to the 1950s. Some prohibit people from growing food on their own front yards. Others ban farmers’ markets in residential neighborhoods, making it difficult for people without cars to reach healthy food destinations. Many additional problems persist.
Urban planners and food
So how would food systems planners in local government address these concerns?
They would perform a pulse-taking function, tracking problems as well as missed opportunities. They would ensure that land use and transportation plans protect assets such as farmland. They would help bring amenities like farmers’ markets and community gardens to neighborhoods that need them. They would rewrite outdated zoning codes. They would assist in creating stronger regional supply chains of farmers, processors, distributors and consumers.
Baltimore, Maryland and Seattle, Washington are cities where thoughtful planning is already taking place. Both have staff focused on developing purposeful food policy. Both also have food policy councils — advisory groups of committed, volunteer residents — who advocate for improvements.
This allocation of resources has paid dividends. In Seattle, the city runs P-Patch, one of the largest municipal community gardening programs in the country. The city provides staff and financial support for the project, which enabled residents to grow food and donate 29,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to food banks and programs in 2014.
Recognizing the value, Seattle’s voters included US$2 million in a 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy for P-Patch community garden development, and the city’s comprehensive plan encourages community gardens as a land use.
Bringing food production back
One great irony is that local government agencies, such as departments of planning and economic development, have continually shaped communities’ food infrastructure, albeit with little awareness that they are doing so.
Local governments create land use plans that place prime farmland in the path of development. They regulate access to water for food growers. They tax food businesses. They enforce outdated zoning codes. And they do it all with little or no systemic understanding of their communities’ food infrastructure — and certainly with no departments of food.
These modern failures of local planning have precedent in the City Beautiful movement of the early 1900s. During that era, planners designed cities for grandeur rather than quotidian functions such as growing and harvesting food.
A preoccupation with auto-centric development further degraded food infrastructure from the mid-century onwards. In 1965, for example, the city of Buffalo, New York sold the century-old Washington Market, where vendors hawked poultry, dairy, fruits and vegetables from 400 stalls, to a bank. The buyer razed the market to create a parking lot that remains there today.
Fortunately for Buffalo, city officials and planners are now supporting grassroots efforts to rebuild food infrastructure through innovative public policy.
After a competitive process, Doña Ana County has been selected as one of eight communities from across the country to receive training and assistance to connect family farmers and local residents who lack access to healthy food.
The Growing Food Connections program will be facilitated locally by the Doña Ana County Health and Human Services Department in partnership with La Semilla. The partnership will focus on plans, policies and partnerships to strengthen ocal food systems.
County staff will receive evidence-based and in-depth customized assistance and training over a three-year period to support family farmers and enhance food security.
“We are consistently looking for ways to develop partnerships and increase our capacity. Partnering with La Semilla and others in this endeavor will improve access to healthy food in our communities throughout the County,” said Health and Human Services Department Director Jamie Michael. “Access to healthy foods is key to good health. In an agricultural community we have tremendous opportunities to link fresh foods to families and individuals within our communities.”
The initiative aims to foster communication, facilitate the development of partnerships, encourage information sharing, and stimulate cross learning within and between various communities. Doña Ana County and Luna County are the two counties from New Mexico participating in this grant. The other six counties span from New York to Kansas.
“We’re thrilled to partner with these eight communities,” said American Farmland Trust Assistant Vice President for Programs, Julia Freedgood, who leads Growing Food Connections’ outreach. “We selected them based on need, desire and readiness for change, and we are very excited about what we can achieve together in Doña Ana County to support sustainable agriculture and to assist community residents who are underserved by our current food system.”
The program is designed to serve as a model for other communities nationwide that face similar challenges.
“By leveraging the assets within their communities, our partners in this initiative are well-positioned to emerge as policy innovators among the 38,000 local governments in the U.S. that have traditionally overlooked the importance of the food system as a public infrastructure with tremendous potential for promoting public health and economic development,” said Dr. Samina Raja, principal investigator and associate professor at the University at Buffalo.
WASHINGTON — Eight communities across the country will receive training and assistance to link family farmers and local residents who lack access to healthy food.
Growing Food Connections will help local governments, planners, family farmers, and consumers work together to strengthen their food systems. The collaborative effort is coordinated by American Farmland Trust.
Pilot communities
The eight Communities of Opportunity are:
Chautauqua County, New York (Jamestown)
Cumberland County, Maine (Portland)
Dougherty County, Georgia (Albany)
Dona Ana County, New Mexico (Las Cruces)
Douglas County, Nebraska (Omaha)
Luna County, New Mexico (Deming)
Polk County, North Carolina (Columbus)
Wyandotte County, Kansas (Kansas City)
Game plan
“We have found that local leaders want tools and resources, not handouts,” said AFT Assistant Vice President for Programs Julia Freedgood.
“And, that’s what GFC will do — help local governments develop a vision and a game plan to benefit farmers and ranchers and community residents who are underserved by our current food system.”
Three-year project
Over a three-year period, Growing Food Connections will help local governments create their own plans, policies, partnerships, and make public investment to support family farmers and enhance food security. The communities will also serve as models for other communities nationwide that face similar challenges. They were selected from a competitive nationwide search and application process.
Partners
AFT will lead outreach efforts in partnership with the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (GFC project lead), Ohio State University, and Cultivating Healthy Places. The American Planning Association and the Growing Food Connections National Advisory Committee also advise the project.
GFC is a five-year, $3.96 million research initiative funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the USDA.
Chautauqua County is among eight U.S. communities to receive training and assistance to link farmers to residents who lack access to healthy food.
American Farmland Trust will lead outreach efforts in partnership with the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo, Ohio State University and Cultivating Healthy Places. The American Planning Association and the Growing Food Connections National Advisory Committee also advise the project; and the UB lab is the project lead.
Over a three-year period, Growing Food Connections will work with local governments to create their own plans, policies and partnerships, and make public investments to support family farmers. Growing Food Connections is a five-year, $3.96 million research initiative funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture program, will help local governments, planners, family farmers and consumers work together to strengthen their food systems.
The eight communities are models for other communities nationwide that face similar challenges.
Samina Raja, Growing Food Connections principal investigator and associate professor of urban and regional planning at University at Buffalo, said that the communities were selected from a competitive nationwide search and application process.
“The selected local governments will blaze a path for more than 30,000 local governments in the United States that have traditionally overlooked the problems and opportunities in their communities’ food systems,” Raja said.
