Food Policy Resources

MHC has been around for 20 years, serving families and individuals, talking about good food and the root causes of hunger, and building relationships and community. Our food pantry, community gardens, and nutrition programming have always prioritized healthy, fresh food in the pantry. At the same time, we've always known that emergency food alone doesn't address the reason that folks need our services to begin with and that education's usefulness is often limited by the opportunities and resources to exercise it. With all that in mind, when we started looking at advocacy and policy work several years ago, we knew we wanted to use the same values we've had in our direct service and education programs: community, equity, and sustainability, to name just a few. But we also wanted to make sure that our work was grounded in providing opportunities- opportunities for economic growth, community empowerment, and the growth of supportive networks. 

These photos show those values in action. The first is our low-barrier food pantry, full of fresh greens and local goods. The second and third show our Hub Farm Stand and a Hub Dinner, respectively. In the pantry, we make sure that people get the food they need today. But with the Hub Farm Stand, pantry patrons like Lisa and Kenny can sell their homegrown produce and handmade goods to other community members, providing an economic opportunity for them while also increasing the availability of affordable, local, fresh goods for other patrons. Or take the Hub Dinners; these monthly meals give community members a chance to come together over delicious food and learn about a range of advocacy tools. In the third photo, patrons, Hub staff, interns, and community members are finishing piecing together a timeline of how the Indiana General Assembly works just before breaking into small groups to look at upcoming bills for 2019.

Though this work is still new for us, we've already seen its positive impacts. In the last year alone, we've seen 109 voters registered in the food pantry through efforts that began at a Hub Dinner. We've had Farm Stand vendors come back two years in a row to sell, who are already planning to join us for the coming season. We've brought community members together to discuss what makes it hard to access food and to start mapping out how we can impact policy change at the state level. It's new work, but we're excited to keep working on it.

Image credit: Hannah Lencheck and Laxmi Palde, Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Local Produce Link (LPL) is an initiative funded by the New York State Department of Health Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (NYSDOH HPNAP) that connects regional farmers with food-insecure communities in New York City. Using the community-supported agriculture model, 8 farmers make weekly deliveries during the growing season to provide fresh produce to 49 food pantries in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Designed with the hub-and-spoke concept, one food pantry serves as the hub host and receives weekly deliveries containing multiple shares of vegetables during the months of June to November. The host pantry keeps one vegetable share to distribute in the next two days to their clients as part of a balanced food package, while other food pantries pick up the remaining shares to serve their own communities. LPL is unique in that the arrangement is intentional; these farm-delivered vegetables are not gleaned or rescued. Each farmer is contracted to grow these crops for the pantry communities and is compensated a market rate for their harvest.

The process depicted in this series of 3 photos marks the steps involved in getting the produce from the farmers to the clients. In the first image, the driver from the Farm at Miller's Crossing is unloading his Wednesday haul at the Long Island City, Queens hub, Hour Children Community Pantry. The second image shows team members from South Side United HDFC/ Los Sures collecting their boxes to take them back to their food pantry in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lastly, at Child Development Support Corporation in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, fresh organic veggies from LPL are offered as part of their client choice-style food distribution. The pantry coordinator there shared, "The program is fantastic. I look forward to participating in 2019."

Image credit: Jennifer Horan, United Way of New York City, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

The mission of UpRoot Colorado is to measurably reduce on-farm surplus agriculture in Colorado through gleaning, experiential education, research, and nonpartisan legislation. As part of our efforts to reduce and better manage on-farm surplus agriculture, we partnered in 2018 with Rocky Mountain Farmers Union and Veterans to Farmers to pilot a mobile farm workforce (MFW) in an attempt to effectively address the labor shortages on Colorado farms. Over a period of nine weeks‚ spanning from mid-September through early November‚ the MFW visited (and often revisited) 10 farms throughout the Metro Denver area, providing paid, efficient, and mobile labor to farmers. In total, the MFW assisted in harvesting ~ 200,000 pounds of crops‚ from okra to hemp to cherry tomatoes to organic watermelons‚ for the economic benefit of farmers. The pilot's success may lead to the development of a worker-owned cooperative or labor trust that can address the on-farm needs of Colorado's farmers year-round. This series of photos highlights the work performed on a farm in Boulder County where the MFW brought in 20-plus acres of pumpkins and squash over a period of several weeks.

Image credit: David Laskarzewski, Uproot Colorado/Colorado Food Policy Network, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Over the past year, students at Green Street Academy built out a "Food Computer Room"- a hydroponic, indoor farm system controlled with computer programming and robotics--in the basement of the school during their science class. Students conceptualized, designed, built, and farmed in their Food Computer Room after spending a semester learning about plant science, different types of agriculture, human-centered design, and computer programming through building tabletop Food Computers and discussing how this technology is applicable in everyday life. We know that access to healthy food is a key determinant of health, however, at least 1 in 4 Baltimore City residents live in a food desert, without regular access to fresh produce. We used constructing and farming in Food Computers to design potential solutions for food access in our communities using students' expertise in Food Computer technology, computer coding, agriculture, and human-centered design.
From community interviews, students learned that the average Baltimorean was not familiar with urban agriculture or new technology, and that many parents wanted their children to eat healthy food, however, children didn't necessarily want to eat healthy food. Because of this, students explored solutions to food deserts such as building a mobile "grocery store" that grew its own produce in Food Computers, holding after-school Family Cooking Nights where people could learn about nutrition and how to incorporate new foods into their diet, and teaching computer coding classes to younger students so that they are more inclined to accept technology and agriculture changes as they grow up. After vetting their ideas, this year's senior students decided to run Food Computer workshops in elementary schools so that students in all Baltimore City Public Schools could potentially learn about the intersection of food and technology and grow up to be Baltimore citizens who can help shape the future of food systems policies.

Image credit: Melanie Shimano, Green Street Academy, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

This series of photos depicts a small food pantry's amazing three year progression, from 2016-2018, to create change in the quality and distribution of the food received at the Bread of Life Food Pantry in Baldwin, MI. Their history was one of packing bags with food they thought pantry users wanted. Space was limited so bags were chosen while families waited outside the door. The pantry focused on getting the most food for their dollar. There were few fresh fruits and vegetables.  Hotdogs and lunchmeats were standards. Many of the choices were convenience foods containing extra salt, sugar, and fat. As depicted in the first photo, their first attempt at empowering community members to choose their own food began with several grocery carts sitting outside that were filled with local produce, allowing for extra fresh food choices after they received their standard bags. In partnership with the Lake County Community Food Council, the pantry took on the challenge of visiting other choice pantries and the idea of converting to MyChoice began to grow. This ultimately created an interest in expanding the pantry building and installing a combined glass front refrigerator and freezer unit to allow for a visual shopping experience. The staff and volunteers, through a USDA grant called Voices for Food, participated in "Small Steps to Health" nutrition workshops. This investment began to create a unified language within the pantry, reflecting what a healthy plate looks like and how to eat healthy on a limited budget. Shelves were color-coded and organized according to MyPlate. Pantry users receive a guided shopping experience and take in consistent, factual nutrition messages through signage displays, recipe offerings, and discussions with pantry staff. The assistant pantry director put it so well when she said ‚"We went from giving out food that they might use to having them choose the food they will use." This evolution to MyChoice created new partnerships with local farmers and retail food distributors. Last year, hunters donated 2000 pounds of venison to the pantry. This new way of looking at and accessing healthy food changed what was ordered and why. They transitioned from focusing on just getting the lowest cost food to hand-picking higher quality foods that support health and chronic disease prevention. This small group of volunteers has leaned into uncertainty, taken on the challenge to network with other communities utilizing MyChoice, and ultimately embraced this empowering model to support food access in their community. It is one thing to start a project, it is something totally different when community groups continue to evolve as they progress, bringing the project full circle in a way that they never imagined. Henry Ford said, "Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success". The Bread of Life Food Pantry has done a beautiful job of coming together and finishing strong!

Image credit: Kendra Gibson, Lake County Food Council, Bread of Life Food Pantry, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Over the last two years, Cass Clay Food Partners has been researching policy and other system strategies to address food waste in our community. This has included the development of a food waste issue brief, presentations about the issue to Cass Clay Food Commission and the general public, and strengthening relationships with the emergency food system and farmers. This work culminated in 2018 with the launch of GleaND, a network of volunteers and farmers working together to glean surplus produce and deliver to the Great Plains Food Bank, which distributes to food pantries across North Dakota. GleaND is hosted by Fargo Cass Public Health and is also supported by North Dakota State University and the Great Plains Food Bank, representing an organizational-level policy change as the three organizations have worked together to institutionalize the gleaning program. GleaND rescued over 7,000 lbs of food in 2018.

Image credit: Megan Myrdal, Cass Clay Food Partners / Cass Clay Food Commission, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

The mission of UpRoot Colorado is to measurably reduce on-farm surplus agriculture in Colorado through gleaning, experiential education, research and nonpartisan legislation. As part of our educational outreach, we hold on-farm seeding and planting events in addition to our gleaning and harvesting work. Jinx, the barn cat, decided to nestle-in to my knapsack at the sign-in station for volunteers with a contented countenance that helped reinforce our efforts to reinstall food wisdom into our communities one human at a time.

Image credit: David Laskarzewski, Uproot Colorado/Colorado Food Policy Network, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

In 2018, Cass Clay Food Partners launched a new part of our network called the Cass Clay Food Action Network, which builds on the work of, and is hosted, by Ugly Food of the North. The action network organized a monthly gathering called First Fridays at B, an opportunity for networking, learning, and taking action to improve our local food system. The action network provides grassroots support for our food policy work of the Cass Clay Food Commission (another component of Cass Clay Food Partners). Every month, attendees provide kudos and shoutouts for the good work happening in the community. Or apparently, to share random commentary about fashion trends in agriculture. This note was discovered on the FEEDback board after a recent First Fridays gathering.

Image credit: Megan Myrdal, Cass Clay Food Partners / Cass Clay Food Commission, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

The seniors at Green Street Academy in Baltimore, Maryland have spent the past year building Food Computers, which are tabletop, hydroponic greenhouses that are climate-controlled with computer programming and robotics. In building these Food Computers, students learn how to apply technical skills in computer programming, engineering, urban agriculture, plant science, and design to immediate, real-world challenges such as food access and food deserts. At the end of each grow cycle, when the produce in our Food Computers is fully grown, students harvest the produce (in this picture students harvested a mixture of basil and cilantro), and cook with it! Throughout the year we'll have a few food science and nutrition classes where students will get to experiment with making dishes to understand the impact of different cooking techniques, and then we'll end the semester with an "Iron Chef"-style cooking competition where the students will have to make a dish that contains something that we've grown in a Food Computer. I took this photo after we had talked about how we can use herbs to flavor dishes and the difference between fresh and dried herbs in a dish. In this class, students compared pasta dishes with different types of herbs mixed into the sauce to taste the difference between basil, cilantro, sage, and mint.

Image credit: Melanie Shimano, Green Street Academy, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Pima County Food Alliance used "high tech" communication at a local festival to get the word out about the Farm Bill's history and future in America (participants could take a quiz to be entered into a raffle). The tin can phone was used to practice calling state representatives to advocate for the Farm Bill. 

Image credit: Julie Glaser Ray, Pima County Food Alliance, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Lakeshore Food Club in Ludington, Michigan partnered with Michigan State University Extension to offer a 10 week summer nutrition and gardening series for young children entitled ""Eat A Rainbow!"". The child pictured here was shy and reserved at the start of the program but began to blossom more with each weekly experience. Towards the end of the series she proudly presented at the start of class with her own personal picking container. She was so excited to help gather the weekly bounty and share it with the food club. Every week was an adventure racing outside to see what the garden had produced. This quote from Fritjof Capra sums up this summer experience so well: ""For children, most importantly, being in the garden is something magical"". These children planted, touched, and had new food experiences all summer long. You could see them opening themselves up to try something new and to be brave. Their eyes lit up with the wonder of what they had help create. Even parents wanted to linger and be a part of what they saw happening in their children. As an instructor, their total engagement made me smile from the inside out. It was unharnessed joy for sure! We all walked away with a new appreciation for what happens in the garden and the power of food. These little people reignited in me the desire to be fully present and open myself up to new experiences too.

Image credit: Kendra Gibson, Lakeshore Food Club, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

This was our first compost customer who was sad to see the end of his time when the residential food scrap collection service in Nashua came by!  He'll be returned as nutrients to the soil in the community urban farms next season!

Image credit: Justin Munroe, Nashua Food Council, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

Local Produce Link (LPL) is an initiative funded by the New York State Department of Health Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (NYSDOH HPNAP) that connects regional farmers with food-insecure communities in New York City. Using the community-supported agriculture model, 8 farmers make weekly deliveries during the growing season to provide fresh produce to 49 food pantries in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Designed with the hub-and-spoke concept, one food pantry serves as the hub host and receives weekly deliveries containing multiple shares of vegetables during the months of June to November. The host pantry keeps one vegetable share to distribute in the next two days to their clients as part of a balanced food package, while other food pantries pick up the remaining shares to serve their own communities. LPL is unique in that the arrangement is intentional; these farm-delivered vegetables are not gleaned or rescued. Each farmer is contracted to grow these crops for the pantry communities and is compensated a market rate for their harvest. As the program name indicates, Local Produce Link only provides shares of fresh produce for its food pantries, but many of the farmers participating in the program also raise livestock. On a recent farm trip, this pig posed perfectly for the paparazzi up on Hearty Roots Community Farm in Germantown, New York. What a ham!

Image credit: Jennifer Horan, United Way of New York City, CLF Food Policy Networks Photo Contest, 2018.

By downloading this image, you agree to use the photo within the context that it was taken. You also agree to never use it for commercial purposes. The image always belongs to the original photographer and should be attributed to the photographer and Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks Photo Contest.

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Networks project presents Evolved and Dissolved: Lessons Learned from the Transience of Food Policy Councils, part of the webinar series, "Edible Inquiries: Food Policy Research Connections". Edible Inquiries: Food Policy Research Connections is part of our broader efforts to cohesively connect researchers and food policy councils, with the aim of fostering research on FPCs that is relevant, proactive, and responsive. This webinar features a discussion about how the transitory nature of FPCs affects their ability to influence policy change and what elements can contribute to the sustainability of FPCs. This webinar highlights lessons learned from Nicole Debose about the revival of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition, Monica Cuneo on the dissolution of the Portland Multnomah FPC, and Raychel Santo on the instability of FPCs.

This series of three virtual workshops, presented by noted leaders in network development June Holley and Yasmin Yonis, discusses different aspects of network approaches, including the value of networks and networked councils, communication tools, strategies for self-organizing, and mapping funders. Links to each of the three workshops is in Related Content. 

Presented by: June Holley and Yasmin Yonis.

A diversity of cross-sectoral, multi-scalar networks are emerging to connect place-based food governance initiatives, such as food policy councils and partnerships, aimed to foster sustainable food security. Yet little research has explored how local food policy groups (LFPGs) are (horizontally) connecting to share knowledge and resources, or interacting (vertically) with other scales of food governance. To address this gap, we examine the trans-local dimension of food policy networks—and its potential to facilitate transformative food system reform. We build on alternative food network, social network, and assemblage thinking to develop an analytical framework that unveils the mobile, unstable, and relational processes and spatialities of LFPGs and the networks which connect them. Through an action-research project comprising a comparative analysis of the Food Policy Networks project in the US and Sustainable Food Cities Network in the UK, we explore how LFPGs connect across different scales and emerge as social-spatial assemblages of food system knowledge, practices, and infrastructure.

Food policy councils (FPCs) are collaboratives that work to strengthen food systems. Over 300 FPCs exist in the United States, Canada, and Tribal Nations. In 2015, we surveyed the types of initiatives FPCs undertook and identified food sector targets and domains of potential impact in an effort to inform comprehensive FPC impact assessments. FPCs (N=66) reported 317 policy, systems, and environmental initiatives. At least half of these were focused on food production, and many were focused on institutional food service and the food assistance sectors. Commercial food service, food processing, and food waste were less often the focus. Potential impacts of their initiatives were classified into six domains: supporting resilient food systems (235, 74%); increasing access to healthy foods (171, 54%); supporting economic development (115, 36%); promoting equity in the food system (94, 30%); promoting environmental sustainability (82, 26%); and increasing knowledge of or demand for healthy foods (27, 9%). Many initiatives were likely to impact multiple domains.

Edible Inquiries interactive webinar series is part of the Food Policy Networks project's broader efforts to connect researchers and food policy councils, with the aim of fostering research on food policy groups that is relevant, proactive, and responsive. This second webinar in the series focused on the politics of the Farm Bill. Two political scientists who have studied the history and interests that gave rise to and sustained the Farm Bill over the decades, explored how growing partisanship, geographical differences, and ideological positions could influence the current and future Farm Bill renegotiation processes.
 
Presenters: Christopher Bosso, Adam Sheingate, Mark Winne

Edible Inquiries interactive webinar series is part of the Food Policy Networks project's broader efforts to connect researchers and food policy councils, with the aim of fostering research on food policy groups that is relevant, proactive, and responsive. This webinar is focused on the politics of the Farm Bill. Two political scientists who have studied the history and interests that gave rise to and sustained the Farm Bill over the decades, explored how growing partisanship, geographical differences, and ideological positions could influence the current and future Farm Bill renegotiation processes.
 
Presented by: Christopher Bosso, Adam Sheingate, and Mark Winne.

Over the past ten years, staff at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) have witnessed a surge in food-related activities in communities around the country, including the formation of food policy councils, expansion of healthy food purchase incentives, and growth of urban agriculture initiatives. While non-profit and community organizations are driving much of this work, city governments are also playing a leading role in developing and strengthening policy to support food systems. This webinar featured food policy council organizers from Milwaukee, Columbus, and Baltimore who shared their accomplishments and relationships with city government. CLF and Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence staff also discussed how to use data and tools to understand your jurisdiction's food system.

Presented by: Nya Taryor Jr., Tim McCollow, Cheryl Graffagnino, Jalisa Dawkins, Holly Freishtat, Caitlin Misiaszek, and Kat Klosek.