Community food systems resilience: Values, benefits, and indicators

Abstract

There is increasing awareness that community food policies and programs can address issues of equity, sustainability, profitability, and resilience in food systems. Community coalitions, local governments, food policy councils, cooperative extension, and other stakeholders seek to improve community food systems through policy and programmatic development. However, these groups often do not know what types of policy or program models exist to help achieve their goals. This research identified expert consensus on three important topics related to community food systems resilience: (1) values that should guide adopting and implementing poli­cies and programs to facilitate community food systems resilience, (2) benefits of adopting policies and programs that support community food sys­tems resilience, and (3) policies, programs, and ini­tiatives that are indicators of resilience. These indi­cators can be used to assess the resilience of communities and to help communities identify pol­icy options to achieve specific goals and objectives. The results of this study were used to create a com­munity food system resilience audit tool that com­munity groups can use to assess the current resili­ency of their food system, identify priorities, and set goals. The audit tool focuses on seven core themes that contribute to community food systems resilience: agricultural and ecological sustainability, community health, community self-reliance, dis­tributive and democratic leadership, focus on the farmer and food maker, food justice, and place-based economics. The individual indicators in this audit tool provide specific policies and practices that can be adopted by local governments, sup­ported by cooperative extension agents, and advo­cated for by food policy councils and community-based organizations.

Analysis of Sorghum Local Food Development Analysis Community-Based For Food Security and Nutrition in Lembata and East Flores, East Nusa Tenggara Province

“…18 of 2012, and the Sustainable Food System. The results of this study are supported by previous research, which states that policies are needed to help the community's food security system in facing potential threats that disrupt the stability of the food supply chain and sustainable food system by utilizing local wisdom (Campbell et al, 2022).…”

Food Resilience Toolkit in action

“…Respondents reacted to the climate change risk scenario with both assets and gaps around local food production, distribution, and consumption (echoing Biehl et al, 2018, and their preparations around production and supply chain failures and lack of food access) and noted the value of Vermont's network of NGOs. We also collected the perspectives of a broad swath of stakeholders, including technical assistance providers (Extension educators and those from nonprofit organizations), state and federal government officials, researchers from higher education, as did Campbell et al (2022). Unlike those studies, we applied the community capitals model (Flora et al, 2004), which highlighted that Vermont has many built capital assets that could be leveraged to improve food system resilience in the climate migration scenario.…”

“…Ferguson et al (2022) framed FSR as a disaster preparedness strategy for island nations and emphasized increasing local food production and use, facilitated by strong networks. Campbell et al (2022) created an audit tool for use by state and local government, food policy councils, and extension educators. This tool uses a socio-ecological systems approach as the theoretical framework, arguing that FSR is an integrated approach to understanding social, ecological, economic, and other systems.…”

Developing a food system indicators database to facilitate local food systems assessments: Using a scoping review approach

“…Other resources include reports or articles using data indicators important to the goals of their local jurisdiction (Freudenberg et al, 2018;Los Angeles Food Policy Council, 2020;NYC Food Policy, n.d.) and online resources for food system stakeholders to download and use data to assess and evaluate their food systems, such as the Maryland Food System Map or the Food Systems Dashboard (Fanzo et al, 2020;Global n.d.-a). Reports or articles with specific suggestions on metrics to measure food system outcomes also exist (Campbell et al, 2022;Rodman-Alvarez & Colasanti, 2019). However, little information exists on standardized metrics or indicators to inform routine monitoring of community food systems (Schreiber et al, 2019).…”