Blog Archives

Exploring food system policy: A survey of food policy councils in the United States

This article provides an overview of results from a survey of 92 food policy councils in the United States. Results show food policy councils are engaged in policy processes at multiple levels and focus on multiple topics. However, there is similarity in the types of their activities, which include procurement (i.e., local food sourcing by institutions), agriculture (e.g., land preservation, urban agriculture) and access to healthy food (i.e., access in underserved areas), followed by community gardening, food planning, farmers

Local Agricultural Preservation: Making the Food System Connection

This PAS Memo begins by setting the context for the local food movement and its relationship to planning and economic development, showing why local food is important and why its economic importance has been undervalued in the past. The PAS Memo describes measures that planners, local officials, and citizens can take to overcome this lack of understanding and appreciation to help promote local small-scale agriculture and the many benefits it offers.

Seeding the City: Land Use Policies to Promote Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture refers to a wide range of activities involving the raising, cultivation, processing, marketing, and distribution of food in urban areas. Communities around the country are looking to promote healthier eating by encouraging urban agriculture, especially through backyard gardens, community gardens, and urban farms. This toolkit provides a framework and model language for land use policies that local policymakers can tailor to promote and sustain urban agriculture in their communities.

Planning for Food Access and Community-Based Food Systems: A National Scan and Evaluation of Local Comprehensive and Sustainability Plans

This report provides an overview of results from a multi-year study that identified and evaluated how local comprehensive and sustainability plans are supporting food related goals and policies. The report identifies 105 plans that explicitly address food access and other aspects of the food system; analyzes how a subset of these plans support and advance healthy, sustainable food systems; identifies common themes and innovative features for implementing plan policies and achieving plan goals; offers sample plan language of food systems related vision statements, goals, policies, action items and implementation mechanisms; and provides data collection and assessment tools to monitor and evaluate changes in the local food system over time.

Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning

This policy guide provides an overview of the connections between traditional planning and the field of community and regional food planning. The guide offers two overarching goals for planners and presents seven general policies, each divided into several specific policies. For each specific policy, a number of roles planners can play are suggested. The seven general policy areas include: comprehensive food planning at the community and regional levels; strengthening local and regional economies; improving public health; ecological sustainability; justice and equity; preserving and sustaining diverse traditional food cultures of Native American and other ethnic minority communities; developing state and federal legislation to facilitate community and regional food planning.

Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy, Sustainable Places

This report provides authoritative guidance for dealing with the opportunities and challenges faced by cities and counties of varying sizes, economies, and locations in supporting and expanding urban agriculture. Through case studies and in-depth interviews with planners, local government officials, and urban agriculture practitioners in 11 cities across the United States and Canada, the report illustrates the range of local government efforts, policies and programs both emerging and in place, and reveals the differences among local governments in their approaches as they respond to the needs of the urban agriculture community. Case study communities included Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Seattle and King County, Washington; Toronto, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia.

North American Food Sector, Part One: Program Scan and Literature Review

The first part of a three-part publication, this resource provides an overview of food sector research and practices in cities across North America. The resource assembles a body of research that cities can use to inform decision-making about where to invest in innovative ventures in the food sector to realize the greatest economic development benefits, particularly through job creation, and how they can enhance community access to healthy food.

Enhancing Urban Food Systems (PAS Essential Info Packet, EIP-16)

This Essential PAS Info Packet addresses the interrelationships between food, land use, transportation, economic development, and public health. It is a compilation of resources on planning for the food system and also includes innovative local policies and regulations from communities on the cutting edge of food systems planning. Issues include: providing information on how planners can ensure adequate and equitable access to healthy food; what role urban agriculture can play in food security; how local food helps the economy; and what planners can do to help create more sustainable food systems.

Avoiding the Local Trap: Scale and Food Systems in Planning Research

This article encourages food systems advocates to move away from the misguided notion that local food systems are superior to larger scale food systems. The article asserts that outcomes such as sustainability or justice are a result of the actions of stakeholders and the content of agendas and not the scale of the food system itself. The authors apply scale theory as adopted from the realm of geography as a justification for their argument.