Food Policy Resources

This resource is a toolkit for how to start a food policy councils and includes example ordinances, bylaws, evaluation resources, and food assessment tools.

Created by Bud Scott, Rita Scott, Sophie Oppenheimer, Doug Walton and Julie Gahn

This report provides an overview of urban agriculture and local food system resources and practices across the United States and parts of Canada, with a primary emphasis on providing resources that can encourage and support urban agriculture in Missouri's metropolitan areas.

Created by Mary K. Hendrickson, Mark Porth

This report is intented to share lessons learned, promote the continued success of active food hubs, and spur the development of new food hub operations. The target audiences for this guide are food entrepreneurs and their supporters who are interested in starting food hubs and operators of food hubs who are interested in expanding. This guide will also help philanthropic foundations, public agencies, lending institutions, and economic development organizations understand the nature, function, and operating models of food hubs, helping them to engage hubs in their areas.

Created by James Barham, Debra Tropp, Kathleen Enterline, Jeff Farbman, John Fisk, and Stacia Kiral

Significant greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions from all sectors of human enterprise are necessary to avoid further effects and reduce the current effects of climate change. Agriculture and the global food system are estimated to contribute to one-third of all anthropogenic GHGs. In British Columbia, Canada, mandated GHG reduction targets and voluntary climate action programs are challenging local governments to include emission reduction targets, policies, and actions within official planning documents. At this early stage of GHG reductions, local government attention does not yet include agriculture but is directed toward the transportation, buildings, and waste management sectors. Given agriculture's contribution to GHG emissions and local government's engagement with GHG mitigation and food system planning, it seems reasonable to anticipate that over time, local governments should and will engage increasingly in reducing GHGs from agriculture. With the goal of advancing agriculture GHG mitigation by local governments, this paper reviews the jurisdictional powers governing agriculture and climate change within British Columbia. It examines how local governments can support mitigation within the sector through their roles in planning, policy, programming, and public engagement, and identifies potential research agenda items.

This report provides a high level overview of the implications of climate change for the agriculture sector in British Columbia, Canada, including the key areas of risk and opportunity and the factors that will influence the industry's ability to adapte and thrive. It provides a baseline assessment of the potential impacts of climate change across the province for the agriculture sector.

Created by Erica Crawford and Emily MacNair

Through an analysis of municipal codes, this paper identifies how some communities have navigated challenges associated with welcoming livestock back into the city. Specifically, the paper analyzes how codes regulate livestock through prohibitions of certain types of animals, zoning to establish where in the municipality livestock can be kept, site-level restrictions that define property characteristics required to keep productive animals, and requirements for managing livestock and their accessory structures on the property. The analysis demonstrates that no two municipalities approach the urban livestock question in the same way; however, each seeks to place limits on raising livestock in urban areas through some combination of regulatory land use tools. The paper concludes with a broader discussion of how the regulations address key tensions associated with our understanding of the urban-rural divide and competing claims on public health.

In 2012, the Washington State Department of Health contracted with Puget Sound Regional Council’s Regional Food Policy Council to work on a policy or systems change that would increase equitable access to healthy foods in the Puget Sound region. The Regional Food Policy Council chose to develop policy recommendations to local jurisdictions related to Comprehensive Plans, Urban Agriculture, Farmers Markets, Local Food Procurement, and Rural Farmland Preservation. The blueprints aim to address challenges and opportunities around health disparities and access to healthy food, preserving agricultural resources, and ensuring resiliency in the food system during emergencies.

This case study details the growth and achievements of the Regional Food Systems Working Group in Iowa since 2003. The policy, funding, and capacity gains facilitated by that group's collaborative work are a valuable model of the power of networks and relationship-building.

Created by Rich Pirog and Corry Bregendahl.

This guide is divided into two sections. The first provides a general overview of economic development and ideas for how to approach economic development agencies with healthy food retail proposals. The second provides a comprehensive overview of local, state, and federal economic development programs that have been or could be used for healthy food retail projects.

This guide details policy tools that can help reduce the negative impact of fast food in communities. It focuses on four local policy approaches and includes case studies and challenges for each. The four approaches are: school policy, "healthy" zoning, curbing kid-focused marketing, and redirecting subsidies to healthier businesses.

Created by Monica Gagnon and Nicholas Freudenberg

This report, focused on healthy food accessibility across the United States, is the result of in-depth research and evaluation of “Limited Supermarket Access” areas, or LSAs. It includes a review of prior research methods, the methodological steps that comprised the LSA analysis and a summary of the findings.

Growing Urban Agriculture lifts up the policies, practices, and programs that are working to sustain urban agriculture efforts in low-income communities and communities of color. The report is grounded in extensive conversations with farmers, advocates, and policymakers to better understand the operational, financial, and social challenges that arise in making this work responsive and relevant to the needs of underserved communities. This report highlights creative solutions being implemented to make certain that local food products remain affordable and accessible and that community interests are represented in the process.

Created by Allison Hagey, Solana Rice, Rebecca Flournoy

This report takes a thorough county-by-county look at local governments and their treatment of farmland in the Puget Sound region of Washington. The results are a mix of bad and good news. It documents the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, which has resulted from an overheated market for urban land, lax land use regulations and underfunded land protection programs. The report also documents a great deal of progress in counties across the region to protect the 600,000 acres of farmland that remain.

Created by Dennis Canty, Alex Martinsons, and Anshika Kumar

The Iowa Food Policy Council offered a voice for smallscale producers, food justice advocates, and others who represented an alternative to the typical commodity-dominated agricultural interests of Iowa. Through a single-case study methodology using in-depth interviews and content analysis, this analysis examines the challenges and opportunities experienced by the IFPC from its beginning to its collapse.

Created by John Cotton Dean

Getting to Grocery is designed to help advocates and public health agencies coordinate and leverage the tools available through local government and other organizations to bring grocery stores into low-income communities.

This guide provides practical food access policy solutions that can be proposed or implemented at a municipal or county level. It is intended to help practitioners and policymakers in planning, public health, and community development increase their knowledge of relevant policy actions that address inadequate access to healthy foods.

Created by Eva Ringstrom and Branden Born

This is the first of four bulletins that discuss the findings of a local food system research project, Engaging Community Planners and Local Elected Officials with Local Food Systems Producers to Integrate Local Food Systems into Community Plans and Policies, funded by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. This bulletin provides an overview of the project and three subsequent bulletins provide details on the substantive findings of the project. 

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.

Created by Heather Wooten and Amy Ackerman

A growing number of local governments across the United States are rebuilding food systems through innovative public policy. Local governments are using plans, regulatory tools, fiscal incentives, and institutional mechanisms to strengthen food systems. This brief  includes a synthesis of recent best practices of local government policy and planning designed to strengthen community food systems.

Created by Kailee Neuner, Sylvia Kelly and Samina Raja

Food councils are developing across Canada to support and integrate an increasing number of community food initiatives and encourage the development of policy that supports a food system that is both just and sustainable. One of the primary tools food councils utilize to coordinate their work is a food Charter. This assessment involved performing a content analysis on 24 Canadian Food Charters, four telephone interviews, and seven electronic surveys. The overall aim of this assessment is to make recommendations to the Healthy Eating Working Group regarding the best methods for the development and implementation of a Food Charter in Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington.

Created by Megan May Jaquith