The Midwest is synonymous with acres of farmland, bountiful harvests, and diverse histories of agricultural practices and innovations, and Urbana, Illinois, is no exception. Located in the East Central region of the state, Urbana and its twin city Champaign hold a population of over 127,000 residents. Home to Illinois’ flagship land grant college, the University of Illinois, the Urbana-Champaign community has a wealth of academic, community, and agricultural resources that benefit the steadily growing…
Topic: Resilience Playbook
Choctaw Fresh Produce (CFP) is a native-led, organic farming project centrally located in Mississippi’s Neshoba County. Since 2012, CFP has challenged food inaccessibility and strengthened food sovereignty for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians….
This service delivery approach was utilized for a year until the first lockdown of the COVID- 19 pandemic forced its closure. Like the adaptation phase that allowed HHFP to grow from a church program to something more widely scaled, Kenya also had to adjust to providing service to a community now experiencing heavily increased rates of food insecurity due to COVID-19….
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…
This directory of sector and stakeholder specific local and regional food system networks was created as part of the Local and Regional Food Systems Response to COVIS-19 Resilience Playbook. We recognize that each sub-sector of LRFS has its own distinct operations, challenges, and adaptations, and recognize the value offered by national and regional networks in supporting work across sectors and scales. This directory offers a list of networks who have participated in this project’s…
Below is an outline of the playbook’s approach to and understanding of resilience as a concept, emphasizing the process of achieving and maintaining resilience of any system (food system, educational system, ecosystem, etc.). Understanding resilience as a dynamic, relational, and evolving process, and not something to “achieve” allows us to focus on a learning process, rather than a destination….
The COVID-19 pandemic, and associated public health mandates, caused unprecedented shifts and disruptions for local and regional food systems (LRFS). Impacts on market channels, driven by significant shifts in consumer behavior, were some of the most visible impacts. For example, local food enterprises such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) quickly filled localized gaps in food systems caused by global supply chain disruptions. In other sectors – such as restaurants and institutional food service –…
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…
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. A coalition was formed to unite stakeholders, which continued meeting and networking through 2019….
Farm To Institution New England and National Farm To School Network
Communities with existing farm to school initiatives and multi-agency collaboratives were able to quickly pivot to provide urgently needed food access while re-investing local, philanthropic, and federal dollars into a local food economy reeling from pandemic disruptions. It is precisely because of community-scale networks and ongoing partnerships (rather than large scale or consolidated efforts) that initiatives highlighted in this brief were able to provide hundreds of thousands of pounds of locally produced, fresh, and…
