CED through Local and Regional Food Systems: The Latest Resources

Community and Economic Development – Blog by UNC School of Government

https://ced.sog.unc.edu

CED through Local and Regional Food Systems: The Latest Resources

By Maureen Berner

Published January 17, 2023

In the past year, activity around local food systems increased dramatically. Government has been involved in supporting food systems for decades, but primarily through programs adopted at the federal level to both promote food production and protect the health of consumers. But having government work with food systems as a specific vehicle of local CED efforts? Historically, perhaps not as much. This is changing, and in a major way. In fact, a significant new resource on local food system development (discussed below) was released just this morning. How can CED folks navigate all the action and take advantage of the current focus on food? Please note, this blog post is longer than normal given new resources just announced.

A first step for North Carolina CED professionals may be in understanding the local context of government and organizational involvement. What are the local priorities for the area food systems? They may include:

• a business sector approach (supporting farms to processers to retail grocery stores)
• a geographic approach (joint city/county efforts, or government-based regional partnerships)
• policy development/legal approach (creating a formal structure or framework backed by government),
• a non-profit organizational or educational service approach (support for food banks, pantries, Meals on Wheels, or summer meals programs, for example), or
• an intentional mix.

There is so much activity around food systems currently that, depending on the priorities for your area, there is likely a resource already in place to help. As an example of the variety of work taking place, listed below are four different approaches to improving food systems that are drawing national attention and resources that CED professionals can use to learn more.

Reducing Market Barriers to Sustainable Farm/Food Businesses: A Business/Consumer Perspective 

At the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health held last fall, a commitment was made to invest in local community and economic development to increase access to food (see page 12 of the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health presented at the Conference). The related conference session, led by the President and CEO of the National Council on Farmer Cooperatives, can be seen here. Many of the suggestions put forth at the conference related to creating sustainable economic development in food systems by improving connections and access, both from the business and the consumer side. A number of proposals were also outlined in the USDA Food Systems Transformation Framework announced this past summer. These ranged from expanding local market options to expanding urban agriculture.

Two aspects of this approach include efforts to make farmers markets more accessible to more people and efforts to make healthy food more accessible in retail markets. An example of the first is the effort to make it easier for farmers markets to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)/Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), such as those outlined by the North Carolina State University Extension Program found here.

An example of the second is the impressive effort by the North Carolina Healthy Food Retail Task Force’s report Supporting Healthy Food Access in North Carolina. While it covers a wide range of access issues, the core of the report focuses on the need to improve healthy food access through more avenues, particularly local grocery stores. With a nod to the regional approach mentioned above, the report states, “The North Carolina Healthy Food Retail Task Force acknowledges that efforts to increase access to healthy, affordable food should fit with the state’s greater economic development agenda. The success of efforts to improve healthy food access will depend on coordinated action from state and local government agencies, community development organizations, charitable foundations, the supermarket industry and others (emphasis in the original).”

Between Local Food Systems and State Governance: A Regional Perspective

A geographic perspective focuses on the overall, long-term goal of a robust and resilient food system rather than a single product or type of actor. Instead of dealing with individual problems one-by-one, constituencies come together to look at the big picture – such as how to make any system work across a specific local or regional area within a framework of goals, values, and collaboration.  A Regional Imperative: The Case for Regional Food Systems, recently released by the Thomas A. Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems, lays out the concepts behind (and advocates for) a regional approach to food systems. The wide range of individuals involved in the report, from academics to long-term practitioners, extensive research support, open/participatory review process and ability to speak to food system issues in direct and clear language is impressive. While the northeast United States is the context for the report, it can be helpful to CED professionals new to regional approaches because it lays out definitions, geographic information, and the issues practitioners need to consider when working at this level in a step-by-step fashion.

A recent example of how major funding is targeted to regional food systems that combine multiple aspects of local CED work is the “Farm to Food Assistance” effort such as the current U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program Plus (LFPA Plus).  States can receive funds used to support regional food systems – specifically, purchasing food that stays within the state, or at most, a 400-mile limit between producer and consumer. This program targets both economic development and community development. The product purchased from local farms and related producers must go to food assistance programs, including non-profit organizations. The economic and community benefits stay regional.

Formal Frameworks and Local Food Policy Development: A Local Policy and Process Perspective

A new resource for local CED professionals, especially those working directly with elected boards and local government administrators working on formalizing food system work through adopted policies and laws was released this morning (January 17, 2023). The Healthy Food Policy Project, funded by the USDA, is a collaborative of Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at the Vermont School of Law, the Public Health Law Center, and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut. The Project’s new resource encompasses 431 coded laws at the local level relating to access to healthy food in a searchable database with accompanying analysis. It is a national dataset, so North Carolina CED professionals would have to work with state and local legal experts on whether any particular example would be applicable or appropriate in our state/local context.

The site also has a substantial, generalizable, framework and policy drafting companion guide. It illustrates the main components of food systems, the legal strategies that are used in the various parts of the system to enact change, and multiple examples. The level of documentation and citation is considerable, the variety of policy examples is wide-ranging, and the overall tone is neutral, within the obvious focus on promoting access to healthy food.

Food Policy Councils (FPCs): An Up-down, All-around, Customized Perspective

In general, FPCs address any food related issues at the local, regional, state, and tribal levels with a focus on the state and/or local context. At our state level, North Carolina’s Local Food Council describes its work as collaborative, across organizations, fostering/facilitating support for local food systems, councils, and policy discussions.

At the local level, North Carolina’s FPCs span a wide range of forms, work, and success. An excellent three-minute introduction to FPCs in North Carolina can be found here, prepared by the North Carolina FPC coordinating organization, Community Food Strategies, which reports 60 of North Carolina’s 100 counties are served by a local food policy council. Maintaining a FPC can be difficult, however. Community Food Strategies lists seven North Carolina FPCs as currently inactive.

One successful example is the Cumberland Food Policy Council, whose mission is “to provide a forum for representatives involved in all aspects of the local food system to foster effective policies, programs, and community collaboration that decrease food insecurity and increase access to healthy foods within Fort Bragg and Cumberland County.” In the details around the FPC’s history and initiatives, there is clear emphasis on community participation and support as the local priority, and the effort has received significant grant funding. In fact, in 2021, Fort Bragg and Cumberland County founded the first joint County-Military Food Policy Council in the nation.

A leading national resource for FPCs is Johns Hopkins University with its support of the Food Policy Network (FPN). Beyond its own work, the FPN serves as a central information resource for local practitioners, with a database listing 1450 reports, guides, and items related to local food system issues, from marketing to food insecurity to food system equity. FPN’s most popular individual resource is From Partnerships to Policy: Promising Practices for New Food Policy Councils (2022). The FPN list-serv serves as an information sharing hub across local public and non-profit entities. They even support a frequent, free ‘curb-side’ consulting service to answer general FPC questions, where they “talk about broad food policy council goals for food system work and identifying possible policy and legal options within the local context.”

These examples and resources only touch the surface of the growing activity and influence of food systems work. With the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing supply-chain problems, wars, and inflation affecting the availability, accessibility, and affordability of food, local, regional and state food systems are going to remain in CED professionals’ bailiwick for some time to come.