The American Planning Association is hosting the Planners Training Service Workshop focused on Community Food Systems Planning.

Washington, D.C. • November 10–11, 2014

Community food systems offer bountiful opportunities for promoting public health, economic development, and quality of life. Public policy and planning tools are key to cultivating these systems. But what’s the secret sauce?

Find out at a workshop that starts with the basics then adds advanced planning and policy techniques for launching and strengthening food systems. Interactive exercises will sample innovative strategies from around the country. You’ll take home the ingredients you need for a successful food system in your community.

You’ll learn about:

• Comprehensive planning for food systems
• Implementation tools for strengthening food systems
• Strategies for cultivating healthy food retail
• Food-sector economic development

More information available here.

Rustbelt Radicalism: A Decade of Food Systems Planning Practice in Buffalo, NY was recently published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. Growing Food Connections’ Principal Investigator, Dr. Samina Raja, co-authored the article along with Diane Picard, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Avenue Project.

Abstract: Pressure is increasing from nongovernmental actors to incorporate food more concretely into municipal policies and plans. A qualitative case study of Buffalo, New York (USA), demonstrates that incremental, persistent food systems practice and advocacy by nonstate actors, a group we call the “rustbelt radicals,” followed by their collective engagement with municipal planning, can lead to transformations in municipal policy and planning for strengthening food systems. The paper concludes with seven factors that enable “rustbelt radicals” to transform local food systems plans and policies.

The article is available through the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, Volume 4, Issue 4.

American Planning Association, an independent organization that supports professional planners, published two Zoning Practice issues that focus on two sectors of the food system: Zoning for Small-Scale Composting in Urban Areas and Urban Agriculture as an Emergent Land Use: Case Studies of Municipal Responsiveness.

Zoning Practice helps guide professional planners in writing and administering smart development codes.

The full text for Urban Agriculture as an Emergent Land Use: Case Studies of Municipal Responsiveness can be found on the Growing Food Connections Food Systems Reader.

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab presents Climate Change and the Future of Food on Friday, October 10th at 2pm in 114 Wende Hall on UB’s South Campus.

Dr. David W. Wolfe is Professor of Plant and Soil Ecology in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University, and a leading authority on climate change impacts on natural ecosystems and food security. He has co-authored several influential reports for policy-makers, such as the 2014 National Climate Assessment sponsored by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. He currently leads a $5 M USDA project focused on new tools for greenhouse gas management in agroecosystems, and contributes to several soil conservation and climate change adaptation projects in the Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania.  At Cornell he teaches “Climate Change and the Future of Food” and chairs the Atkinson Center Climate Change Focus Group.  He has been featured on National Public Radio and other news media outlets, and is author of the award-winning book on soil ecology for general audiences, Tales From the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life.

Following the presentation, a facilitated Q & A session will take place.  Please direct questions to Subhashni Raj at subhashn@buffalo.edu

Read more about Dr. Wolfe here: www.hort.cornell.edu/wolfe; www.climatechange.cornell.edu; http://soilhealth.cals.cornell.edu;www.nyserda.ny.gov/climaid

Farmland, Food & Livable Communities will be held October 20–22, 2014, at the Hilton Downtown Lexington, 369 West Vine Street, Lexington, Kentucky. Within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the U.S. population, Lexington is strategically located at the intersection of Interstates 64 and 75. Lodging is available at special conference rates. Join American Farmland Trust and more than 70 experts and national thought leaders in Lexington, Kentucky, to learn about best-in-class practices, planning and policy development. Help craft solutions to the urgent issues facing food and agriculture in the 21st century.

For more information: American Farmland Trust Conference

Planetizen Courses has released the first part of a new online video course on Healthy Urban Food Systems. The first part of the course, Planning Retail Facilities, examines the role that law and public health play in creating healthy food systems and addresses a variety of strategies and examples related to planning a healthy food system. Its instructor, Lauren Dunning, is a lawyer and public health practitioner. 

The course can be accessed for free during the month of August, and can be found here.

The current issue of the American Planning Association’s publication, Planning, highlights several local food-based community case studies.

Healthier, Wealthier, and Wiser: Local food systems provide more than one kind of sustenance