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.