Food Policy Resources

This report examines the differences in characteristics between producers who sell direct-to-institution and those who do not. It delves deeper into the practices of producers that sell direct-to-institution and explores sales to institutions through intermediaries like food distributors, food hubs, and food service management companies. This report presents in-depth findings and makes specific, data-driven recommendations for farmers, producer service providers, government officials, funders, and institutions. 

This Prospectus presents a road map for how Washington might achieve its food vision and provides a framework for collaboration, engagement and shared responsibility. The Prospectus provides the opportunity for alignment across sectors, distributed leadership, and continued development of strategies over time. From 2012 to 2017, the Washington State Food System Roundtable, a diverse coalition of public and private partners, developed this Prospectus through a process that included research by consultants, university faculty and graduate students, and input from a variety of interests through a statewide engagement process.

This toolkit was developed to help food councils host a successful events so that decision makers see your food council as a local expert on issues related to food, health and agriculture.  The toolkit includes tips and steps for organizing candidate forums and common best practices for these types of events.

Community health advocates and planners can use this resource to explore how local community planning efforts to support the health and well-being of Kansans by incorporating public health goals into traditional planning elements. The guide includes specific examples from existing local community plans in Kansas to illustrate how language around health can be incorporated into the plans. This resource is merely a starting point to provide guidance on how community health advocates working across Kansas can better leverage local community planning to advance efforts to build a healthier Kansas.

Transformation of the food system rests, in part, on changing the rules by which all actors play. Many of these rules take the form of public policy, whether they be laws, regulations, government spending or other tools used to impact markets. So concerns are raised when local groups in the food movement are reluctant to politically engage to change these rules. This chapter begins by outlining the concepts of food democracy, civic agriculture and civic food networks and their relevance to the advocacy coalition framework (ACF). Then the ACF is used to organize a case study of the Franklin County Local Food Council and its transition from a civically-oriented group to an advocacy coalition through the use of a technical tool: the food policy audit. The chapter concludes by suggesting that community-based food groups have a responsibility to span the civic-political divide and bring food system governance back into balance.

The Food Counts: A Pan-Canadian Sustainable Food Systems Report Card brings together already existing measures of social, environmental, and economic well-being to help researchers, policy makers, and practitioners examine food systems at the national level. The report card uses a food sovereignty framework to reframe food within an integrated systems perspective and makes connections to a global movement focused on food as a means for collective social change. As one practical tool for reimagining Canadian food systems, the Food Counts Report Card acts as a benchmark, identifies gaps in data and where case studies can elaborate on successes and limitations, and informs policy making at all levels of government.

Created by Charles Levkoe, Rachel Lefebvre and Alison Blay-Palmer

A handbook for new members to orient them to the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council. The handbook covers everything from the Council's mission and values statements to it's membership structure to the group's meeting norms.

The Food Turn Up Report is an educational and visual tool that shares practical ways to prevent and reduce chronic disease by creating a stronger and more local food system. Created by the former River Region Food Policy Council, now Montgomery Roots, this report was crafted intentionally for the Black people in Lowndes, Macon and Montgomery Counties of Alabama after two years of a community food assessment process completed in rural and urban settings in the Black Belt. 

While the opportunity for sharing commercial kitchen space is growing, shared-use kitchens in the United States suffer from regulatory ambiguity that limits their potential. This report explores the struggles of shared use kitchens in navigating the tricky waters of local departments of health, conflicting state and county policy, and inadequate licensing options, and the national policy landscape for shared-use kitchens to help identify best practices and policies to support the emerging industry.

Created by Ashley Colpaart, Wendy Grahn and Devon Seymour

Pittsburgh Public Schools were early adopters of the Community Eligibility Provision, which ensures that all children in the school district receive free breakfast and lunch each day. This memorandum covers strategies to improve the nutritional quality of school meals, on ways to increase participation in school meal programs and access to food during the school day as well as after school, and on ways to incorporate healthy foods into the school curriculum and change school culture to encourage kids to eat healthy foods.

Created by Erika Dunyak, Daniel Edelstein, Henry Thomas, and Ona Balkus

This report distills current research to reveal the human, environmental, and social impacts of the production of high-protein foods other than meat to arm hospitals and other institutions with key information to design the healthiest plate. The findings and associated Purchasing Considerations guide the complex decision-making process encountered when applying an environmental nutrition approach to food purchases, specifically when reducing and replacing meat on the plate.

While a growing body of scholarship identifies urban agriculture’s broad suite of benefits and drivers, it remains unclear how motivations to engage in urban agriculture (UA) interrelate or how they differ across cities and types of organizations. This paper draws on survey responses collected from more than 250 UA organizations and businesses from 84 cities across the United States and Canada.  Based on synthesis of the results of this survey, the paper describes six motivational frames that appear to guide organizations and businesses in their UA practice: Entrepreneurial, Sustainable Development, Educational, Eco-Centric, DIY Secessionist, and Radical. Identifying how practitioners stack functions and frame their work is a first step in helping to differentiate the diverse and often contradictory efforts transforming urban food environments. This paper demonstrates that a wide range of objectives drive UA and that political orientations and discourses differ by geography, organizational type and size, and funding regime. These six paradigms provide a basic framework for understanding UA that can guide more in-depth studies of the gap between intentions and outcomes, while helping link historically and geographically specific insights to wider social and political economic processes.

Food councils examine the local food system and provide recommendations to improve that system. Food councils have proven to be an effective entity for reviewing and recommending state and local food policies. One of the first steps a food council should take is to draft and enact bylaws. Bylaws are written rules that govern the internal operations of an organization and define the organization’s purpose, membership requirements, and the management of its operations including how meetings should be conducted and how offices are to be assigned.

This report sought to identify, document and analyze successful community-based innovations in the U.S. food system. The research targeted projects grounded in community and utilize innovative strategies to produce or provide healthy, fair, affordable and sustainably grown food. Individually and in combination, these community-based projects are transforming the way food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed and
consumed in the United States.

The FPN project welcomed Dan Glickman, former Secretary of Agriculture for the USDA and Bob Ehart, Senior Policy and Science Advisor for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture for a conversation about the role of the USDA in the current administration and how federal changes will potentially impact state departments of agriculture, and food and farm policy, regulations and programs.

Many federal policies, laws, and regulations guide and structure our food system. However, these laws are fragmented and sometimes inconsistent, hindering food system improvements. To promote a healthy, economically viable, equitable, and resilient food system, the United States needs a coordinated federal approach to food and agricultural law and policy. This report provides a roadmap for the process to develop a national food strategy.

Created by Emily Broad Leib, Laurie J. Beyranevand, and Emma Clippinger

This article, written by a group of experienced organizers, outlines a hard-won set of six principles to address longstanding problems of inequity and injustice in the United States. The principles, drawn from decades of research, organizing, and experience in a wide range of fields, facilitate successful cross-sector collaboration for social change in a way that explicitly lifts up equity and justice for all and creates measurable change.

To kick off the new year and a new federal administration, the FPN project hosted a video conference call with food and farm policy experts talking about how the results of the 2016 Federal and state elections may impact food and farm policy priorities. 

Note: The first 10 minutes of the call are not captured in the recording.

Presented by: Kate Fitzgerald, Ferd Hoefner, and Robert Martin.

This factsheet lays out the different types of tools--policy, contracts, and permits--that state and local governments can use to adopt food service guidelines and ensure healthier foods to their facilities. Food service guidelines provide standards for nutrition, facility efficiency, environmental support, community development, food safety, and behavioral design for use in food service concession and vending operations.

It has been over six years since the unanimous passage of Detroit's Food Security Policy and the establishment of Detroit Food Policy Council. A food secure Detroit ensures that residents have the energy and vitality to pursue their lives and contribute to their community. This document is the first step in taking a look back to see how far we have come, assessing how the food security policy reflects the priorities of residents, and charting a collaborative path forward. To accomplish this, DFPC's Research and Policy Committee and staff assembled a team to connect with the community to assess their thoughts, concerns, and reactions to Detroit's Food Security Policy. This process was an opportunity to connect with longtime advocates and new faces while learning about the progress, barriers and priorities around food security in the city of Detroit.

Created by Stephen Arellano and Amy Kuras