Knowledgebase Collection
Food Systems
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Food systems planning is concerned with improving a community's food system. A food system is generally understood to be the chain of activities connecting food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste management. Food is a necessity; along with air, water, and shelter, it is a basic essential for life. Yet only in recent years have food systems been a focus of serious professional planning interest.
Food system activities take up a substantial amount of urban and regional land and represent important parts of community and regional economies. Access — or the lack thereof — to affordable, healthy food can have significant impacts on communities, and both hunger and obesity are nationwide public health concerns. The environmental impacts of industrial farming practices and food waste as well as the energy and resources consumed by growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting our food are also significant.
From this page you can search numerous resources that provide background, policy guidance, and examples of local plan recommendations for food systems planning from across the country. And you can filter these search results by various geographic and demographic characteristics.
APA Resources
APA Policy Guide ON Community and Regional Food Planning
This Policy Guide, adopted in 2007, describes the importance of community and local food systems and presents seven general policies that support food systems planning, each divided into several specific policies.
A Planners Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning
This PAS report shows how planners can play a significant role in shaping the food environment of their communities.
Community and Regional Food Planning
This PAS Memo article uses the first six general policies of APA's policy guide as a framework to present concrete examples of what planners and planning agencies are doing to support community and regional food systems.
Community Food System Assessments
This PAS Memo article offers guidance for planners on conducting a community food system assessment, featuring a case study of Buffalo, New York, to demonstrate how planners are using this tool.
Food systems Planning
This edition of PAS QuickNotes provides a primer on how planning affects the development of healthy, sustainable local and regional food systems.
The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field
This 2007 JAPA article discusses the absence of the food system from most planning practice, research, and education and offers reasons and ideas for planning involvement to strengthen community food systems.
Planning for Food Access and Community-Based Food Systems
This report from APA's Planning and Community Research Center examines how and why some local governments have addressed food access and food system issues in the comprehensive or sustainability planning process and identifies common themes and innovative features for implementing plan policies and achieving plan goals.
Principles of a Healthy, Sustainable Food System
This web page presents a concise set of shared principles for sustainable food systems that promote health.
Growing Food Connections Planning and Policy Briefs
This set of six briefing papers highlights promising planning and policy strategies used by local governments across North America to strengthen their communities' food systems by promoting agricultural viability and healthy food access.
Elements of Food Systems Planning
Community food systems planning is the collaborative planning process of developing and implementing local and regional land-use, economic development, public health, transportation, and environmental programs and policies to: (1) preserve existing and support new opportunities for local and regional urban and rural agriculture; (2) promote sustainable agriculture and food production practices; (3) support local and regional food value chains and related infrastructure involved in the processing, packaging, and distribution of food; (4) facilitate community food security, or equitable physical and economic access to safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate, and sustainably grown food at all times across a community, especially among vulnerable populations; (5) support and promote good nutrition and health; and 6) facilitate the reduction of solid food-related waste and develop or manage a reuse, recovery, recycling, and disposal system for food waste and related packaging.
The Benefits of Food Systems Planning
Healthy, sustainable local and regional food systems bring economic, environmental, and social benefits to local communities. Planning for local food systems helps maintain and grow economic opportunities in the agricultural and food sectors through jobs and production on farms and in farm support businesses, food processing, food transport, food marketing, food distribution, food retail, and other food-related areas. Community food systems that stress local and regional food production and sales as well as ecologically friendly, sustainable farming practices reduce the amount of energy and resources needed for food production and distribution as well as the negative environmental impacts of agricultural production on land, water, and air. Planning to promote better access to and availability of healthy, fresh food impacts health at both the individual and community level, as does attention to community food security and equitable food access issues. Educating and engaging local residents in community food systems can improve health outcomes, increase social capital, strengthen sense of place and community character, and offer entrepreneurial opportunities.
Planning for Local Food Systems
Planning for local food systems starts with a community food assessment, a comprehensive tool that provides a clear picture of the food system resources, assets, challenges, and opportunities in a community. It can be conducted at the neighborhood, city, or regional level, and emphasizes community participation throughout the process.
The information provided by a community food assessment on the status and needs of the local food system can be used to inform further food planning efforts, including the development of food system plans or the integration of food systems considerations into the comprehensive plan. As part of these processes, planners can engage communities in visioning exercises to identify problems and opportunities related to the community food system; engage and educate community residents about these issues; establish food systems goals and objectives; develop strategies to implement these goals and objectives; and ultimately promote the long-term health and sustainability of the community.
The inclusion of food issues in a comprehensive plan helps connect food systems with land use, transportation, economic development, natural resources, health, and other elements of local policy and planning. When included in comprehensive plans, food is often addressed through the lens of community health and access to healthy food, but food systems can be linked to other plan areas, including land use, economic development, natural resources, and energy, among others.
Background Resources
A Primer on Community Food Systems: Linking Food, Nutrition and Agriculture
This short briefing paper defines and explores community food systems.
Building a Common Table: The Role for Planning in Community Food Systems
This article explores the conflicts within the U.S. food system but then explores potential food system complementarities among stakeholders.
Community Food Systems in Oregon: Opportunities to Build Capacity for Food Security, Health and Economic Vitality
This report explores community food system work in Oregon and identifies opportunity areas for additional investment.
Growing Food Connections Local Government Food Policy Database
This online database is a searchable collection of local public policies that explicitly support community food systems.
Growing Local: A Community Guide to Planning for Agriculture and Food Systems
This guide is meant to help communities remove public policy barriers and advance policy solutions to strengthen community food systems.
Harvesting Healthier Options: State Legislative Trends in Local Foods 2012–2014
This report examines state legislation in all 50 states enacted between 2012 and 2014 related to local food systems.
Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities
This report focuses on regional food systems as a means for enhancing economic opportunity.
Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues
This USDA report offers a comprehensive overview of local food systems with an emphasis on economic impacts.
Trends in U.S. Local and Regional Food Systems: A Report to Congress
This USDA report assesses the scope of and trends in local and regional food systems across the country.
Food System Planning Guides
Community Food Assessment Guide
This guide was written to help health authorities and community organizations undertake a community food assessment.
Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit
This report provides a toolkit of standardized measurement tools for assessing various aspects of community food security.
Community Food System Assessment: A Companion Tool for the Guide
This companion report to the Community Food Assessment Guide provides a wide range of food systems planning indicators.
Community-Based Food Systems Assessment and Planning: Facilitator's Guidebook
This guidebook guides readers through a hands-on four-step community food systems assessment and planning process.
Cutting Through the Red Tape: A Resource Guide for Local Food Policy Practitioners and Organizers
This guide offers "toolkits" of strategies to support food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste recovery.
Food Access Policy and Planning Guide
This guide explains the roles of planners in improving food access and offers a "menu" of planning and policy options.
Local Food System Assessments
A Food Systems Assessment for Oakland, California: Toward a Sustainable Food Plan
This assessment provides a comprehensive evaluation and baseline information on each element of the city's food system.
Assessing the San Diego County, CA, Food System: Indicators for a More Food Secure Future
This food system assessment discusses trends and establishes goals and indicators for three overarching food system visions.
Building a Deep-Rooted Local Food System: A Food System Analysis for Douglas County, Jefferson County & Leavenworth County in Kansas
This food system analysis identifies the benefits, challenges, and opportunities for a successful and sustainable local food system.
Cabarrus County Food System Assessment
This food system assessment offers eight recommendations for building a local food economy.
Cultivating Resilience: A Food System Blueprint that Advances the Health of Iowans, Farms and Communities
The report rates Iowa's food system as "poor" and offers 14 sets of recommendations for action for five food systems sectors.
Food for All: Inclusive Neighborhood Food Planning in North Austin, TX
This food system assessment for the city of Austin's North Central Austin/Rundberg area identifies four key food system challenges for residents and offers policy recommendations for a more inclusive food system.
Local Food System Planning Policies
Asheville, NC, Resolution No. 13-17: Resolution Establishing the City of Asheville's Food Action Plan in Support of the Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Agenda
This city council resolution approves a list of food policy goals and actions developed by the local Food Policy Council.
San Francisco, CA, Executive Directive 09-03: Healthy and Sustainable Food for San Francisco
This mayoral directive creates a food policy council and tasks city departments with specific actions to help promote food access.
Seattle, WA, Resolution 31019: Local Food Action Initiative
This city council resolution lists 10 goals to provide guidance for analysis and development of the region’s food system.
Comprehensive Plans
Alachua County, FL, Comprehensive Plan 2011-2030
This comprehensive plan belongs to the Capital Improvements Programming, Comprehensive Planning, Food Systems, and Solar Energy collections.
Albany, NY, Albany 2030
This award-winning comprehensive plan includes a guiding vision statement, as well as policy recommendations that address food systems, acknowledge the importance of social service uses, and support solar energy use.
Austin, TX, Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan
The city's comprehensive plan includes a guiding vision statement, as well as policy recommendations that address creative placemaking, food systems, housing an aging population, social service uses, and solar energy use.
Bloomington, IL, Comprehensive Plan 2015: Bring It Bloomington!
This comprehensive plan achieved Silver-level recognition in APA's Comprehensive Plan Standards for Sustaining Places Recognition Program Pilot in 2016, and addresses food systems issues.
Capitol Regional Plan of Conservation and Development
Chapter 7 of this regional plan for the Hartford, CT, metro area focuses on food systems and food security.
Davidson, NC, Comprehensive Plan
The town’s comprehensive plan offers goals and recommendations related to universal design and aging-in-place, as well as food systems and scenic view protection.
Functional Plans
Eating Here: Greater Philadelphia's Food System Plan
This regional food systems plan offers a series of visionary goal statements and details a wide range of recommendations.
King County, WA, Local Food Initiative
This report presents five quantitative targets, 35 strategies, and more than 140 action items for food systems planning.
Marquette County, MI, Local Food Supply Plan
This food systems plan establishes a vision statement, four goals, and 21 policies to help create a vibrant local food system.
Mendocino County, CA, Food Action Plan
This food action plan is focused around five principles: farmers and food producers, the economy, health, land and water, and the community.
Metro Vancouver, BC, Regional Food System Action Plan
This action plan focuses on local government actions within a 3–5 year timeframe to implement Metro's Regional Food System Strategy.
Multnomah County, OR, Multnomah Food Action Plan
This food action plan was one of the first in the country.
Related Collections
Urban Agriculture
This collection catalogs resources that provide background and policy guidance or demonstrate how metropolitan localities are using plans, regulations, and programs to advance food production goals through urban agriculture uses.
Urban Livestock
This collection catalogs numerous resources that provide general background, policy guidance, and examples of local regulatory provisions governing the keeping of farm animals and poultry in urban areas.
Support for this collection was provided by the Growing Food Connections Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2012-68004-19894 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.