Food Policy Resources

This toolkit is a great way to inform local citizens about how they can help advocate sensible food policies that prioritize public health. Communities must be a part of the decisions that shape access to healthy, affordable food. With this toolkit, you can join local efforts to make healthy, affordable food a regular part of your -- and potentially every -- community's landscape.

Created by Abbie Steiner, Danielle Fox, Deborah Bailin, and Pallavi Phartiyal

A presentation of how internal and external communication efforts can support a food policy council's work.

Created by: Corinne Shefner-Rogers and Anne Palmer.

A presentation of how internal and external communication efforts can support a food policy council's work.

Created by: Corinne Shefner-Rogers and Anne Palmer.

The Santa Fe (New Mexico) Food Plan recommends a variety of actions designed to promote food security, improve access to retail food outlets that offer healthy and affordable food, encourage healthy eating by all residents to reduce obesity and diet-related diseases, educate consumers, support farmers and ranchers, enhance the food system infrastructure, and protect the natural resources necessary to produce food. This is not a static document, but a dynamic one that is meant to be discussed, acted on, monitored, evaluated, and modified periodically. 

This special supplement of the Stanford Social Innovation Review features the most recent thinking and learning about how to use the collective impact approach to address large-scale social and environmental problems. Article topics include: Essential Mindset Shifts for Collective Impact, Defining Quality Collective Impact, The Role of Grantmakers in Collective Impact, Power Dynamics in Collective Impact, Roundtable on Community Engagement and Collective Impact, Aligning Collective Impact Initiatives, Learning in Action: Evaluating Collective Impact, Achieving Collective Impact for Opportunity Youth, Making Public Policy Collective Impact Friendly.

This comprehensive resource defines the full spectrum of outcomes farm to school can achieve across multiple sectors and offers guidelines and common language to measure and document those outcomes. For each of the four sectors highlighted in the document (public health, community economic development, education and environmental quality), the framework provides: a compilation of existing peer-reviewed research literature; stories from on-the-ground activities demonstrating outcomes in that sector; priority outcomes, indicators and measures vetted by contributors; examples of existing evaluation and implementation tools and resources; and a flavor of cross-sectoral connection feasible through farm to school activities.

 For decades, U.S. food and farm policy has been poorly aligned with public health objectives. But new opportunities, including an innovative federal program that provides incentives for low-income consumers to increase their purchases of fruits and vegetables, can now begin to address the problem. Hospitals and health insurers‚ long responsible only for treating diet-related illnesses, as opposed to preventing them‚ are part of the solution. By partnering with local organizations to devise and invest in healthy food systems, health care institutions can improve health and equity in their communities while reducing costs.

Documents roles, successes, and challenges of state food policy councils in helping comprehensively address food system objectives related to agriculture, health, economic development, and the environment.

Created by Sally Dover, Anne Dybsetter, Noelle Harden, Stephanie Heim, and Sheila Onzere

This resource reports on the work of the Community Farm Alliance and its partners on a Community Food Projects grant focused on building capacity for grassroots' democratic participation in determining local food system needs and developing sustainable solutions in Kentucky. The project aimed to increase collaboration among food systems stakeholders, determine the best approach for collaboration through the Kentucky Food Policy Network, increase awareness of local food, farm and nutrition issues, and conduct an assessment of food policies and programs.  The project included four listening sessions, two network-wide meetings, over 200 surveys, and eight key stakeholder interviews.

This report shares an analysis of what it means to build a racially equitable food system – from field to farm to fork – and lays out steps toward achieving that goal. It describes how policies impact racial equity in the food system; identifies potential policy solutions and strategic opportunities to create a more racially equitable food system; and offers tools and resources to guide the creation of racially equitable solutions.

Created by Anthony Giancatarino and Simran Noor

As cities across the nation seek to improve healthy food access, this participant observer case study highlights how one midsized city successfully developed a collaborative infrastructure to understand and address inequity in healthy food access. We trace the genesis and evolution of Baltimore's Food Policy Task Force, the hiring of a food policy director, and the establishment of the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, which is an intergovernmental partnership to increase access to healthy, affordable foods in urban food deserts. While some cities have approached food access issues through community coalitions pressuring city government or government edicts, Baltimore successfully identified its need, used available research to drive and inform action, established priorities, and acted expeditiously with a focus on sustainability. This case study is relevant and applicable for those seeking to influence change in local food policy in midsized urban settings.

This report seeks to provide policy makers and advocates with the information they need to make decisions that will further strengthen New York City's already robust institutional meals programs. With a new Mayor, a new City Council, and a growing food justice movement, NYC has the opportunity to create new models for using its public plate to improve health and nutrition, the economy, the environment and social justice.

This publication provides a brief history of the U.S. local food movement and its link to "good food" - food that is healthy, affordable, fair, and green - within the contexts of food access and health, food justice and sovereignty, the environment, and racial equity. It also contains a timeline that provides a sample of important U.S. events, policies, and statistics over the past 70 years that mark the growth of local food through the lens of the four elements of good food. 

Created by Rich Pirog, Crystal Miller, Lindsay Way, Christina Hazekamp, Emily Kim

This policy brief calls upon the Governor and the legislature to create a California Agricultural Land Preservation Policy and Strategy that encourages local and state governments to prioritize agricultural land protection, as well as providing resources and creating incentives for voluntary protection of agricultural land in collaboration with willing landowners.

Just as steps are being taken to reduce overuse of antibiotics in human medicine, it is critical that steps be taken to eliminate overuse in agriculture. Hospitals are on the front lines of treating infections, and with sizable food service budgets, the health care sector is poised to tackle the antibiotic resistance crisis beyond the walls of clinical practice. Through its purchasing power and moral authority, the health care sector can change both markets and policies to protect antibiotics and prevent their overuse in animal agriculture.

This report outlines the activities that New England health care systems, hospitals, and clinicians are currently engaged in through the Healthy Food in Health Care Program. It is a sampling of the innovative work underway in these facilities and details the variety of ways HFHC hospitals are using their economic power to move the marketplace toward health and sustainability.

Created by Stacia Clinton, John Stoddard, and Kit Perkins

This guide presents insights from the Farm Fresh Healthcare Project in hopes of providing guidance for other farm-to-institution initiatives. It is written as lessons learned rather than as a set of direct instructions since all local purchasing initiatives are unique based on the region they are located in and on the partners involved.

Created by Kendra Klein

Public interest in food systems and national prevention strategies focusing on cross-sectoral, community and systems level approaches paved the way for growing numbers of food policy councils. These councils function as organizations to discuss food-related problems, foster coordination across sectors, and influence food policies. Extension professionals can serve as ""change agents,"" bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, form cross-sectoral collaborations, take leadership roles, and build community capacity through food policy councils. Based on expert interviews and our experiences in establishing a council, we present practice recommendations to serve as a concise how to guide for Extension professionals.

Describes how to achieve more collaboration and efficiency in local/municipal FPC work through systems thinking and analysis.

This report identifies state and federal policies that are helping New England grow its capacity to feed itself, policies that are hindering this growth, gaps in the existing policy framework, and opportunities for new policies to strengthen our food system.

Created by Ben Bowell, Cris Coffin, Christophe Courchesne, Ivy Frignoca, Max Greene, Anthony Iarrapino, Jennifer Rushlow, Kathryn Ruhf