Blog Archives

Licensing for Lettuce: A Guide to the Model Licensing Ordinance for Healthy Food Retailers

This resource provides a model ordinance that requires food retailers, especially corner stores, to stock healthier products. The ordinance changes business licensing policies to require all food stores (not including restaurants) to carry a minimum selection of healthy food and meet other basic operating standards. This resource also provides business owners with information on how they can partner with local government, health professionals, and community organizations to develop a beneficial relationship for business owners and consumers.

Planning for Agriculture: A Guide for Connecticut Municipalities

This guide provides a primer and introductory toolkit for planners and municipal officials in Connecticut on planning for agriculture. It outlines a broad range of tools and resources available to help local governments plan for agriculture. The guide focuses on the current challenges facing agriculture and provides specific ways the practice of agriculture, from planting and cultivating to processing and marketing, is affected and sometimes hindered by current rules and regulations.

Green for Greens: Finding Public Financing for Healthy Food Retail

This guide provides a general overview of economic development and ideas for how to approach economic development agencies with healthy food retail proposals. It also provides a comprehensive overview of local, state, and federal economic development programs that have been or could be used for healthy food retail projects.

Planning for Agriculture in New York: A toolkit for Towns and Counties

This guide helps communities engage farmers and rural landowners in local planning efforts; assesses current town policies and their effectiveness; and provides a range of tools available to help New York towns and counties support local farms. The guide contains case studies demonstrating how towns and counties are successfully planning for agriculture. Publications, state laws, local plans and ordinances are available online by opening the resource index.

Health on the Shelf: A Guide to Healthy Small Food Retailer Certification Programs

This guide describes how to create a strong healthy small food retailer certification program that requires participating stores to increase the variety of healthy foods they sell, reduce the offerings of unhealthy foods, and proactively market healthy options with help from a sponsoring agency or organization. It provides step-by-step instructions for developing a certification program, with ideas and examples from existing programs.

Dig, Eat, and be Healthy: A Guide to Growing Food on Public Property

This guide provides consumers with the necessary tools to start growing food on public property. The guide includes opportunities to work with public agencies to identify suitable property, common types of agreements between food-growing groups and public entities, common provisions in agreements, special issues related to growing good, and sample agreements from real-world projects.