Food Policy Resources

This report suggests ways that the city of Somerville, Massachusetts and its non-profit allies can increase the amount of food grown in the city and methods for establishing a local distribution scheme to benefit both gardeners and Somerville residents. The primary recommendations are to increase the available public space for gardening, begin a city-wide yard waste and food scrap collection program for composting, establish a gardeners' network to support backyard and market gardeners, promote innovative growing techniques for small spaces, and establish a shared-use community kitchen.

Created by Carl Bickerdike, Christina DiLisio, Julia Haskin, Molly McCullagh, Mari Pierce-Quinonez

Many regional development organizations and councils of governments are exploring how they can support regional food systems infrastructure. This report describes the role of regional development organizations in supporting regional farmers, processors and distributors. By developing partnerships with area farmers and other stakeholders, regional development organizations can help to develop regional food systems infrastructure that will support economic development initiatives and other program goals.

This report offers policy recommendations and practical steps that the state of Louisiana, city of New Orleans, and school districts and  individual schools in New Orleans can take to increase food access, expand the reach of child nutrition programs, improve food quality and nutritional value, and build a strong culture and vision for school food. The recommendations and actions in this report are based on the work of New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee members who researched best practices and model school meal programs, and identified barriers to transforming school food programs.

Created by Alison Heston

Reports on a large and consistent body of evidence that supports what residents have long observed: many low-income communities, communities of color, and sparsely populated rural areas do not have sufficient opportunities to buy healthy, affordable food.

Created by Sarah Treuhaft, Allison Karpyn

Food Works: A Vision to Improve NYC's Food System explores some of the complexities and interconnections of the food system in and around New York City, and outlines a plan for how to build a better food system that provides healthy, affordable food for all New Yorkers, while supporting the local and regional economy and mitigating environmental impacts.

Created by Sarah Brannen.

This report is an assessment based on an extensive literature review and testimony from 48 individual interviews with the people most involved in food policy councils. It is one of the first reports to offer lessons learned about local and state policy making from the early work of food policy councils.

Created by Alethea Harper, Annie Shattuck, Eric Holt-Gimenez, Alison Alkon and Frances Lambrick

This report, the product of a year-long Baltimore City (Maryland) Food Policy Task Force, contains the recommendations to increase access to and consumption of healthy foods in Baltimore. The list of recommendations does not represent an exhaustive set of strategies that could be pursued to increase the consumption of healthy foods in Baltimore City. Rather, it shows ten specific actions that the Task Force members considered to be especially promising with respect to both timing and impact, and that, as a result, were designated as top priorities. The Food Policy Task Force was convened by Baltimore City Mayor Sheila Dixon and led by the Baltimore City Department of Planning and the Baltimore City Health Department.

The Local Food, Farms, and Jobs Act directs all Illinois state agencies (hospitals, schools, prisons) to purchase 20% of their food locally by 2020, even if it costs more, and authorizes the creation of a Local Food, Farms, and Jobs Council.

This commentary contends that, in order to be most effective, public health professionals need to consider the full range of interdependent policies that affect the system. Food policy councils have proven to be an effective tool, particularly at the local and state level, for developing comprehensive food systems policies that can improve public health.

This first ever comprehensive food policy for San Francisco, California considers the food production, distribution, consumption, and recycling system holistically and addresses, hunger, healthy food planning and procurement for city departments, food production on city owned land, a healthy food business plan, marketing regionally grown food in San Francisco, recycling, an education and awareness plan, and advocating for consistent state and federal policies among others.

These recommendations pertain to programs, incentives, strategies and practical actions that San Francisco, California could implement to support the regional agricultural economy and to increase the amount of high quality, sustainably produced, and regionally sourced food available to all of San Francisco's residents regardless of income level. 

This report equips food policy advocates with a broad framework for characterizing the impact of food retail format on the whole community and builds the case for supporting food retail that actively contributes to equitable, sustainable neighborhood development.

Created by Hannah Laurison, Nella Young

Whole Measures for Community Food Systems is the work of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC, no longer in operation), a planning and evaluation tool developed in partnership with members of Center for Whole Communities and others adapting the Whole Measures framework to food systems. The guide describes how to use Whole Measures from the early stages of a project (defining outcomes) through to the final stages of reflection (discussing evaluation results and potential changes). Organizations can plug into this process at various stages and modify the use of the tool to suit their needs and working culture.

This paper briefly outlines the value of backyard chickens, the opposition to and concerns about backyard chickens, and then gives an overview of the policies of cities that allow backyard flocks. While there are some US sources, the bulk of the policy examined is from Canadian examples, and much of it is gleaned directly from bylaws and from conversations with urban hen activists across the country. Finally, a short examination of the situation in the City of Ottawa wraps up the paper as a stepping-stone for developing and recommending local chicken policy to Ottawa City Council. 

Created by Jacqueline Jolliffe 

The City of Saint Paul, Minnesota is an acknowledged national and international leader in creating a vision for a municipal food policy. Saint Paul is among six cities, including Los Angeles and Toronto, known to have invested time and resources in planning for a sustainable food system. The results of that process, which culminated in the 1987 Saint Paul City Municipal Food Policy, is a visionary and foundational document that can direct community and City efforts to this day. The St. Paul Commission on Food and Nutrition was appointed to implement the policy, but came to an end in 1999 without realizing the whole vision of the Food Policy. Since then there has been no organized municipal attention to food policy in the City, until now.

Created  by Seitu Jones, Anna Wasescha, Kathryn Draeger

FRESH, an initiative of New York City Mayor Bloomberg's Five-Borough Economic Opportunity Plan, promotes the establishment and retention of neighborhood grocery stores in underserved communities by providing zoning and financial incentives.

This report is a response to the growing interest in food and healthy eating among planners and communities nationwide. It describes how community and regional food planning can be used to facilitate healthy eating in communities. Following an introduction to community and regional food planning, this report describes survey results of planners' opinions of and role in this emerging area of planning. The report also includes case studies of six communities--Marin County, CA; Madison, WI; Philadelphia, PA; Louisville, KY; Portland, OR; Buffalo, NY--that have demonstrated leadership in promoting healthy eating using innovative strategies. The report concludes with strategies that planners can use to plan and design neighborhoods, routes, and destinations to facilitate healthy eating and build healthier communities.

Created by: Samina Raja, Branden Born, and Jessica Kozlowski Russell.

The purpose of this project was to engage Aboriginal communities in discussions that would enable individuals and groups involved with food-related action to explore and identify ways that the British Columbia (Canada) Food Systems Network's Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty can support their work on increasing food security.

Prepared by: Dawn Morrison.

This article presents a new approach, the Cynefin framework, to leadership and decision making based on complexity science.  This framework offers ways to see new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities. It sorts the issues into five contexts, simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and disorder, defined by the nature of the relationship between cause and effect. Using the Cynefin framework can help to make better decisions and also avoid the problems that arise when a preferred management style causes mistakes. This article offers examples and suggestions about how to lead by making appropriate decisions.

Municipal governments are in a unique position to plan for and support development projects that incorporate local urban agriculture and to integrate direction for urban agriculture into a broad policy framework. This report provides an overview of Canadian best practices in urban agriculture and a set of recommendations for how the City of Kamloops (British Columbia, Canada) can support urban agriculture.