Format: Reports (5+ pages)

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach

Farm to School in Iowa was first legislated in 2007, when lawmakers established a program to one, link elementary, secondary, public and non-public schools with Iowa farmers; two, provide schools with fresh and minimally processed Iowa-grown food for inclusion in school meals and snacks; and three, encourage children to develop healthy eating habits and provide them with hands on learning activities. Realizing the need for the early childcare sector to receive the same support…
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food security as “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life” (1). Following a disaster, communities and individual households may experience a disruption in food security. Disaster studies have measured food insecurity primarily following events such as hurricanes and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Individual households are often most heavily affected. This is clear in studies…
Local, community-based organizations are often the first to respond to natural disasters like wildfires, as they have a deep understanding of the needs of their communities and the people who live there. When nature disasters such as wildfires impact the local and regional food system of an area, community organizations recognize and respond to the immediate need for relief funds for farm and ranch operations and can organize grassroots funding efforts to fill short-term…
The COVID-19 pandemic created disrupted supply chains in many industries. Since 2020, it is not uncommon to visit a grocery store and see a lack of meat products. Though many factors contribute to these shortages, processing capacity in large facilities was reduced by labor shortages. Processing facilities are designed to have human labor efficiently working with machinery. While these spatial layouts allow processors to scale up their activities, they also force workers into close…
CT Grown for CT Kids is a statewide grant program run through the Connecticut Department of Agriculture to help establish and further farm-to-school opportunities in CT schools. This grant program was first announced in late October 2021. It is slated to have another application period later this summer, with a total of $725,000 in two years from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding….
Leveraging the Collective Strength and Wisdom of Remote Communities While there are several similarities to food system disruptions across communities, islands like Puerto Rico and its municipality, Culebra are presented with unique impacts and challenges when it comes to securing their supply chains. This innovation brief focuses on examples from Puerto Rico and shows how decentralizing supply chains can move food more equitably using diffuse, and therefore more resilient, infrastructure. This work is often…
The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics The COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health and social distancing mandates caused unprecedented shifts and disruptions for local and regional food systems (LRFS). The pandemic also brought new and heightened attention to the structure and resiliency of US food systems, and LRFS appeared to be positioned to significantly increase the scope and scale of their market reach as a result. Researchers from three universities collaborated with…

Farmers Market Coalition

The first objective of this brief is to establish a more transparent and better understanding of the budgets of farmers market organizations. This document includes case studies with budgetary data from the Boulder County Farmers Markets (BCFM) in Colorado and the Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association (PCFMA) in the San Francisco Bay Area. The case studies are intended to help farmers market managers conceptualize the expenditures and revenue streams of markets with different organizational…

Farmers Market Coalition

Too often the impacts of a crisis such as COVID-19 are not measured until long after the opportunity to implement policy and programmatic solutions has passed. In this report, researchers from three of NYC’s leading food policy and research institutions analyze COVID-19’s impact on NYC’s food system during the first six months of the pandemic. Our goal is to provide research-based recommendations for policies and programs that support food security, retail, quality, and the…

Farmers Market Coalition

Public markets systems in North America are both agile and fragile. When the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread stay-at-home orders and business closures, many markets across the continent stayed open, continuing to safely provide fresh and healthy food to residents as supply chains were strained and serve as an economic lifeline to farmers and other producers. It was in this extreme context that the Market Cities Initiative at Project for Public Spaces undertook this research…

CSA Innovation Network

This report synthesizes input from 170 respondents on 23 ecommerce platforms and highlights the nine most popular platforms used by the participating farmers. The report is layered, allowing readers to quickly assess each platform and then click into more detail as they choose, including written farmer profiles and farmer-led video tours of the platforms….

National Association of State Departments of Agriculture NASDA Foundation

The Florida Seasonal Crop COVID-19 Impact Assessment was assembled utilizing phone interviews with growers on April 15, 2020. It must be noted that markets as well as selling and purchase strategies change rapidly, almost daily, for most crop sectors with the current conditions of the market. Fluctuations for some of the projected figures could be expected….
Scroll to Top