Gail Feenstra

Local food systems and sustainable communities

The long-term health of a communitys food system is an important indicator of its vitality and sustainability. A logical and appropriate way to revitalize a community is by the development of a local food economy. People throughout the United States are designing and implementing sustainable, local food systems that are rooted in particular places, aim to be economically viable for farmers and consumers, use ecologically sound production and distribution practices, and enhance social equity and democracy for all members of the community. This paper reviews the existing literature on local food systems, examines a variety of strategies and initiatives that are currently underway, and identifies steps that community kaders and citizens can use to develop their own local food systems. Finally, I suggest what research is needed to support these community efforts.

Creating space for sustainable food systems: Lessons from the field

In response to growing trendsin the current food system toward globalintegration, economic consolidation, andenvironmental degradation, communities haveinitiated alternative, more sustainable foodand agricultural systems. Lessons may now belearned about the development and maintenanceof local, sustainable food systems projects –those that attempt to integrate theenvironmental, economic, and social health oftheir food systems in particular places. Fourkinds of space need to be created and protected– social space, political space, intellectualspace, and economic space. Three importantthemes emerge from these community spaces:public participation, new partnerships, and acommitment to social, economic, andenvironmental justice principles.

The Evolution of the School Food and Farm to School Movement in the United States: Connecting Childhood Health, Farms, and Communities

This article provides an historical review of the evolution of the Farm to School movement within the larger context of school food in the United States. The Farm to School movement emerged amidst the growing public concern about childhood health and obesity, as well as increasing awareness about environmental and economic challenges in our food and agricultural system. It offered America’s small and midsized farmers an alternative market while potentially improving student health and public awareness of healthy eating. We discuss the role of key stakeholders in contributing to innovative strategies, programs, and policies related to School Food and Farm to School. The growing involvement of larger school districts has helped focus attention and efforts on the persistent challenges related to procurement and distribution. As the Farm to School movement has matured and moved onto the national arena, policy, research, and evaluation have helped define and shape new directions. Finally, we reflect on what it will take to strengthen Farm to School so that it can better contribute to human and community health.

Values-Based Supply Chains: Supporting Regional Food and Farms

Values-based supply chains (VBSCs) have emerged as a structure to enhance the viability of mid-scale farms while preserving jobs and rural economies. They involve partnerships between producers, processors, distributors, retailers, and food service operators who share environmental, economic, and/or social values. We developed case studies and interviewed key informants to analyze the impacts of access to capital, regulations, infrastructure, and business acumen on the success of VBSCs. Communicating the benefits of VBSCs’ products to customers, as well as to the VBSC partners, was instrumental to the success of the VBSCs in our case studies. However, our key informants emphasized that additional communications are needed to develop markets for VBSCs’ products. Scale-appropriate infrastructure is also required, but funders are not convinced that these investments are secure. Successful VBSCs operate with economies of scale to broaden demand for their products while also generating fair returns to producers and other supply chain partners.

The Shaping Healthy Choices Program: Design and Implementation Methodologies for a Multicomponent, School-Based Nutrition Education Intervention

OBJECTIVE To provide a framework for implementation of multicomponent, school-based nutrition interventions. This article describes the research methods for the Shaping Healthy Choices Program, a model to improve nutrition and health-related knowledge and behaviors among school-aged children. DESIGN Longitudinal, pretest/posttest, randomized, controlled intervention. SETTING Four elementary schools in California. PARTICIPANTS Fourth-grade students at intervention (n = 252) and control (n = 238) schools and their parents and teachers. Power analyses demonstrate that a minimum of 159 students per group will be needed to achieve sufficient power. The sample size was determined using the variables of nutrition knowledge, vegetable preference score, and body mass index percentile. INTERVENTION A multicomponent school-based nutrition education intervention over 1 academic year, followed by activities to support sustainability of the program. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Dietary and nutrition knowledge and behavior, critical thinking skills, healthy food preferences and consumption, and physical activity will be measured using a nutrition knowledge questionnaire, a food frequency questionnaire, a vegetable preferences assessment tool, the Test of Basic Science Process Skills, digital photography of plate waste, PolarActive accelerometers, anthropometrics, a parent questionnaire, and the School and Community Actions for Nutrition survey. ANALYSIS Evaluation will include quantitative and qualitative measures. Quantitative data will use paired t, chi-square, and Mann-Whitney U tests and regression modeling using P = .05 to determine statistical significance.

Gearing up to support urban farming in California: Preliminary results of a needs assessment

According to the United States Census, California is the most urban state in the nation. Although there are many outstanding examples of urban farms in California, in general, urban agriculture (UA) has been slower to gain momentum here than in some other states with large urban populations. Over the past several years, urban agriculture’s popularity in California has begun to escalate, with strong emerging interest in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles and other metropolitan communities. One challenge for urban farmers and municipal decision makers engaged with UA in California has been limited availability of relevant information and technical assistance. A new project team at the University of California Cooperative Extension, part of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) is working to develop web-based educational resources that will be grounded in a needs assessment that is currently underway. The needs assessment includes a literature review, an internal survey of UC ANR personnel, and community clientele interviews. This paper will report on preliminary findings and analyses of the needs assessment, particularly how UC ANR personnel are engaged with UA, and what tools they think would best serve urban farmers. We suggest implications for those involved with UA, such as personnel of land-grant universities, local governments and non-profits seeking to address the needs of urban farmers in an environment of constrained resources.

A Multicomponent, School-Based Intervention, the Shaping Healthy Choices Program, Improves Nutrition-Related Outcomes

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Shaping Healthy Choices Program (SHCP). Design: A clustered, randomized, controlled intervention lasting 1 school year. Setting: Schools in northern and central California. Participants: Fourth‐graders (aged 9–10 years) at 2 control schools (n = 179) and 2 intervention schools (n = 230). Intervention: Garden‐enhanced education, family, and community partnerships; increased regionally procured produce in the lunchroom; and school‐site wellness committees. Main Outcome Measures: Changes in body mass index (BMI) percentiles/Z‐scores; nutrition knowledge, science process skills, and vegetable identification and preferences; and reported fruit and vegetable intake. Analysis: Student t test, chi‐square, ANOVA of change, and multilevel regression mixed model to evaluate change in outcomes with school as a random effect to account for cluster design effects. Statistical significance was set at P < .05. Results: There was a greater improvement in BMI percentile (−6.08; P < 0.01), BMI Z‐score (−0.28; P < .001), and waist‐to‐height ratio (−0.02; P < .001) in the intervention compared with the control schools. Conclusions and Implications: The SHCP resulted in improvements in nutrition knowledge, vegetable identification, and a significant decrease in BMI percentiles. This supports the concept that the SHCP can be used to improve the health of upper elementary school students.

Increasing Access to Fresh, Local Produce: Building Values-Based Supply Chains in San Diego Unified School District

Childhood obesity rates have increased over the last 30 years, with 17% of children and adolescents now considered obese.1 While initiatives to reduce obesity are multipronged, Farm to school advocates believe that schools can play an important part by serving fresh, local produce in school meals. Farm to school programs, in which some foods are sourced from regional producers, provide an opportunity for improving children’s nutrition while opening a market for local small and midsized growers.2 interest in Farm to school programs has grown since the 1990s, with programs now in all 50 states.3 in early Farm to school programs, districts purchased food directly from multiple small farmers or co-ops. yet larger districts need a greater volume of local food than direct marketing can provide, and values-based supply chains are being explored as a potential way to procure local food.4 traditional school food supply chains usually move food from farms to packer/shippers and sometimes processors to wholesale distributors. Most school districts order food through their primary distributor. All parties try to attain efficiencies and economies of scale to minimize costs and prices. in “values-based” supply chains, a conscious effort is made to identify values such as “regionally and/or sustainably produced” or “from a small or midscale farm” throughout the chain. Aggregating products from many small and midscale producers, a values-based supply chain relies on people across the supply chain working together to capture benefits for all parties.5 building trust, sharing information, collaboration, product identification across the supply chain, and collective decision-making processes are key components of successful valuesbased supply chains.6,7 San Diego Unified School District Farm to School Program

Impact of a multicomponent, school-based nutrition intervention on students’ lunchtime fruit and vegetable availability and intake: A pilot study evaluating the Shaping Healthy Choices Program

ABSTRACT This pilot study evaluated the impact of a school-based intervention integrating garden-enhanced nutrition education, family and community partnerships, and improvements to school fruit and vegetable availability. Two elementary schools in Northern California were randomly assigned to control and intervention. Changes in lunchtime fruit and vegetable intake as well as changes in fruit and vegetable availability were compared between schools, with dietary outcomes assessed among fourth-grade students having complete fruit (n = 111) and vegetable (n = 112) intake data. There were greater increases in vegetable consumption, produce expenditures, and vegetable variety at the intervention than control school (p < 0.01) but no differences for fruit outcomes. The complementary nature of program components illustrates how the promotion of vegetables available at school meals can be connected to garden-enhanced nutrition education.

Institutional Policy Change to Promote Health and Sustainability through Food

The rising price of food in the global market place, food safety scares, concerns about peak oil, concerns about coming grain shortages, and the poor diet of the average American have brought healthy and sustainable food to the forefront of US food policy debates. In the US, some two-thirds of adults are managing the negative consequences of overnutrition, including premature death from heart disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer (1, 2). The US adult diet has shifted so that the average adult consumes about half of their meals away from home (3) and an increasing proportion of calories from sugar-sweetened beverages (4) and salty and highly processed snacks (5). The negative environmental impact of this dietary pattern is estimated to be five times that of the environmental impact of a dietary pattern from organically-produced foods or a plant-based diet (6). In this context, most foods eaten in the US are prepared by people who are not members of the same household, with food and ingredient choices being made by businesses and other institutions. Therefore, institutional policy designed to improve access to nutritious food holds great promise. Policy design is a process in which potential policy instruments (e.g., guidelines, regulations, or incentives) for social problems, such as poor nutrition or environmental degradation, are identified, advocated, and adopted (7). To change food practices at institutions such as private corporations or government agencies, policy design can either be initiated by the institution or by decision-makers external to the institution. To be effective in attaining the goals described in a policy, the design needs to be a good fit for the policy context (8). Thus, institutional food policy change, whether initiated internally or externally, should seek to improve health and sustainability, recognizing that, for most Americans, much of their food is selected and prepared outside the home. Potential food policy change should also take into account the institutions’ constraints and commitment to changing its food practices. In this supplement, two important policy developments for healthy and sustainable food service practices are described. These policy strategies represent what appear to be very good fits for the current political context. They focus on institutions and communities. They leverage the purchasing power of institutions to create demand for healthier and more sustainably produced foods. In the first paper, the process of developing food service guidelines is described. These guidelines, adopted by Health and Human Services and Government Services Agency, allow contracting officers to prefer healthy and sustainable foods when making their selections. The second paper describes farm-to-institution programs that link local producers and the purchasing power of local institutions, such as schools. In the discussion section of each paper, evaluation of the intended and unintended consequences of each policy strategy is described. While these policy designs are promising, additional action will be needed to shift dietary practices in the US. Food company policies and decisions are just as important and may even be more influential. Recent bottled water policies are illustrative (9). Bottled water was first marketed in the US to elite consumers as a health and fashion symbol. Citizens in communities where bottled water companies were drawing water from aquifers became concerned about conserving local water supplies and environmental advocates focused on the unnecessary use of plastics, making bottled water less appealing to these elite consumers. More than one hundred cities banned the sale of bottled water in certain venues because of citizen concerns over local water conservation and environmental impact. Bottled water companies responded to these bans by lowering prices and launching new marketing campaigns to stabilize sales without substantially changing the product or production methods. The marketing focus also changed to increase urban sales by increasing urban consumers’ concern over the health and safety of municipal water supplies. It is possible (or even likely) that private corporations will respond to institutional policy change in a similar way, including initiating new marketing strategies, lower prices, promotions, and targeting other groups. For instance, the Health and Sustainability Guidelines might reduce the demand for trans-fat in one market (e.g., government employees working for federal agencies), and companies might respond by marketing and promoting trans-fat foods to other segments, including in less empowered and protected populations. Changing food company policies regarding questionable ingredients or practices may require more than regulations that affect only one of their markets. In the context of new Health and Sustainability Guidelines for institutions and farm-to-institution strategies, two areas of policy development are needed to advance the goal of improving human nutrition and reducing environmental degradation in the US. These include: continued local organization and coalition building to create local policy change, and federal government policies that direct institutional practices. The following examples describe these three policy strategies. Coalition building Large school districts nationwide are exploring new procurement strategies to bring more healthful, regionally sourced and sustainably produced food to school cafeterias. Led by School Food FOCUS, a national collaborative that works with school food service leaders, school district partners, and policymakers to achieve these goals, dozens of districts are demanding more healthful foods from manufacturers. Examples to date include flavored milk with less sugar, higher percentages of whole grain in bread and whole-muscle chicken produced with fewer or no antibiotics. Peer-to-peer communication among districts and vendors has helped to create more demand for these products. Eventually, these practices may become part of new institutional bids or new local food policies. Future federal government policies to direct institutional practices Additional institutional policy development can continue in many directions. We focus on one critical insight from the private corporation perspective here. Current Health and Sustainability Guidelines focus on what foods will be offered to a relatively narrow group of people, employees of government agencies. The strategy recognizes the power of purchasers, such as government cafeterias, to negotiate a contract for what foods are served to their employees but ignores the power of purchasers to demand similar standards for the food the company sells to all of its customers. In other words, government purchasers could demand higher standards than are currently exercised through Health and Sustainability Guidelines. Currently, federal policy related to nutrition has focused on providing guidance to consumers and to some institutions, such as schools and daycare centers, about what foods can support health. Other policy issues, such as labor practices and environmental protection, have effectively shifted overall business performance to meet social goals. These policies require that companies implement desired practices throughout their operations in order to be eligible to do business with federal government agencies. Given the relatively small lever provided by direct federal spending, this approach may be another effective strategy to improve the public health and environmental sustainability of the nation’s food system.