Summary of London's Capital Growth urban ag project

Styles House allotment, on land owned by Transport for London above Southwark tube station.
(Source: The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/8524199/Urban-green-Londons-hidden-gardens.html?image=11)

A new report by the NGO Sustain (Growing Success: The Impact of Capital Growth on community food growing in London) describes the progress of Capital Growth, a partnership of London Food Link, the Mayor of London, and the Big Lottery’s Local Food Program to create 2,012 new community food growing spaces across London by the end of 2012. The project involved making new land available for gardening spaces, providing materials, technical assistance, and a support network for growers, and influencing policies to support the expansion of urban agriculture.

Among the accomplishments described in the report are:

• The creation of 124 acres of new food growing spaces;
• Establishing 20% of these urban agriculture sites on housing estates and 35% on school sites (with 700 schools growing food as part of the project); and
• Ensuring that two-thirds of the gardens/farms were on land that was unused, derelict, or inaccessible.

New policies are often driven by projects that require legal, administrative or procedural changes. One of the accomplishments of the Capital Growth effort was the generation of policy changes to accommodate the expansion of urban agriculture in London.  Key new policies include:

• Including the Capital Growth project in 
the London Plan, the city’s 20-year strategic framework, so that it encourages local planners to create and protect land for food production;
• Getting the Greater London Authority to include food production in the city’s green infrastructure plan;
• Getting local borough strategies to include food growing as an important land use;
• Challenging perceived legal barriers to growing food; and
• Working with Transport for London on ways to access transportation sites and developing a template lease agreement for these sites.

Vancouver's New Food Strategy

Sole Food Farms, Vancouver BC

On Tuesday, January 29, the Vancouver City Council will consider [UPDATE: PASSED UNANIMOUSLY BY THE COUNCIL] a comprehensive food strategy crafted through collaboration between city staff and the Vancouver Food Policy Council, with substantial input from members of the public.  The strategy document responds to a June 2003 mandate from the Council for the creation of a just and sustainable food system and elaborates on goals and objectives from the 2007 Vancouver Food Charter, the 2011 Greenest City Action Plan, and various laws, regulations, advisory documents, programs and grants that have, over the past decade, established Vancouver as a leader in food policy.

The Vancouver strategy addresses all phases of the food system, from production to disposal.  It emphasizes five areas that are by now common to the urban food plans that have been produced over the last few years:

• support for urban agriculture and connections to the rest of the food system;
• increasing public participation in the activities of neighborhood food networks and community based programs;
• improving access to healthy, local, affordable food;
• addressing the needs for food processing, storage and distribution infrastructure to increase the production and distribution of local food; and
• reducing food waste and increasing the beneficial reuse of discarded food

Several aspects of the strategy distinguish it from other city food plans and policy platforms:

The strategy emphasizes the value of promoting commercial urban agriculture through clarification in the city’s zoning of where commercial food production is appropriate, what limits or mitigation strategies are needed, whether and to what extent farm gate sales are appropriate, and through the creation of a new urban farming business license. The strategy also mentions the need for alternative food retail and distribution models, including community food markets, food distribution hubs and pre-approved Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) distribution sites in public locations to help urban farmers sell their produce.

The strategy calls for the integration of food production into the streetscape including growing vegetables and fruit and nut trees in residential boulevards, traffic circles and other marginal spaces. This includes switching from ornamental to edible landscaping in residential, commercial, institutional and parks landscaping plans, and the planting of food-bearing trees as new trees are planted in parks and on other public land. Cities are just beginning to experiment with urban orchards (e.g., Seattle) and urban farms as stormwater management infrastructure (e.g., NYC), but city engineers still resist vegetation that requires increased management and maintenance.

Throughout the Vancouver Food Strategy there is a strong emphasis on neighborhood-scale solutions.  This is expressed in support for neighborhood-based food networks (“coalitions of citizens, organizations and agencies that work collaboratively in and across Vancouver neighborhoods to address food system issues”) and neighborhood-scale food infrastructure.

City officials are often resistant to policies that extend beyond the municipal boundaries, particularly those addressing rural farming. The Vancouver strategy is notable in its discussion of the regional foodshed. The document recommends that Vancouver should strengthen alliances with other municipalities in the region and advocate for the enhancement of the Agricultural Land Reserve, which protects farmland in the agriculturally productive Fraser Valley region.

The Vancouver strategy recognizes that food system governance includes a wide range of entities, not just conventional government officials. It acknowledges that effective governance of the food system involves individuals in government, in non-governmental organizations, as well as ordinary citizens and people from different sectors, companies and organizations.

Finally, the Vancouver food strategy emphasizes integrating food policies with other municipal priorities, by “putting a food system lens on plans and policies at all levels of government.” The document calls for aligning Vancouver’s food systems goals with other municipal functions, highlighting the potential for food policies to add value to conventional city activities like housing development, land use planning, public health and transportation planning, which often are not perceived as food-related. The strategy recommends a “food system checklist” to help city staff pay attention to food system needs as they review development applications, rezoning applications, or community plans.

Evaluating Corner Store Programs

NGOs and cities throughout the US have launched programs to help the owners of bodegas, convenience stores, liquor stores and other small food establishments sell healthier food.  A concise article published by the Centers for Disease Control summarizes the evaluations of these programs to determine whether they have an impact on food availability, diet, and other factors that influence diet-related diseases.*

Among the findings:

Overall, the foods that were being promoted by these pilot programs were more available in the stores as a result of the pilots.  Where sales data were collected they showed that the programs resulted in significant increases in the sales of the promoted foods.  Produce sales, in particular, increased 25% to 50%.

Seven programs resulted in increased food and health-related knowledge among consumers, while 9 programs found significantly increased purchasing frequency of at least one promoted food.

Of 4 trial programs that assessed impacts on body mass index, no significant changes were observed from pre- to post-pilot.

Price reductions in the form of discounts, coupons, vouchers, and loans were (not surprisingly) found to increase consumer demand for and consumption of healthier foods.

The data suggests that these programs can make healthier food available in communities with limited full-service grocers and encourage the purchase of healthier food. Unfortunately, however, the evaluations have been insufficient to answer whether and to what extent they work, or whether certain interventions are more effective than others. The evaluative methods varied significantly, limiting the ability to compare the program impacts across the different pilots, and did not involve randomized controlled trials that would provide greater reliability.

More systematic evaluative data would help policymakers and philanthropic organizations decide how cost effective corner store programs are and the extent to which this is a viable strategy for increasing food access and improving public health.

*Gittelsohn J, Rowan M, Gadhoke P. Interventions in small food stores to change the food environment, improve diet, and reduce risk of chronic disease. Prev Chronic Dis 2012;9:110015. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd9.110015 .

Chicago's Draft Food Plan

In October 2012, Chicago released a draft food systems plan, called A Recipe for Healthy Places that recommends changes to the city’s food environment to reduce obesity and strategies to improve education about food, nutrition and healthy eating habits. Its vision statement calls for creating a “culture that values fresh, nutritious food” through urban farms and gardens and food enterprises, with adequate food retail availability in each neighborhood and a “food safety net” to ensure that the lowest income residents are able to eat well. The draft plan was developed through a process that included 26 public meetings held over 13 months, with more than 400 participants, and it suggests roles for both government and non-governmental entities.

While the plan outlines very general goals and strategies, many of which are included in other municipal food plans, A Recipe for Healthy Places describes several interesting initiatives:

(1) The Green Healthy Neighborhoods project, which involves residents and NGOs in several South Side neighborhoods (Englewood, West Englewood,
Washington Park, Woodlawn and parts of New City and Greater 
Grand Crossing) in developing a land-use strategy to create urban agriculture districts.

(2) An effort to integrate public health issues and strategies into local land-use planning projects. The Department of Housing and Economic Development will incorporate Health Impact Assessments (HIA) in local land-use planning to identify strategies for increasing the healthful impacts of a project, while the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) is considering incorporating HIAs into regional planning and project development efforts.

(3) The creation of a “system of farms and gardens,” with the City joint venturing with an NGO or land trust to develop city owned vacant land into urban agriculture sites, including amalgamated scattered farm sites. In addition, the Chicago Park District will identify space within parks for food production.

(4) An effort by the Department of Housing and Economic Development to work with residents and community organizations to identify land in neighborhoods that can be prepared for commercial-scale food production through a local planning process that involves finding suitable vacant land, willing community partners and an organization to maintain and operate the site(s).

(5) The development of a network of nonprofit and for-profit organizations to provide resources and technical assistance for school and community gardens.

(6) Protocol development for site remediation and management for food production.

(7) Work with existing retailers, including drug store chains, to increase fresh produce and other healthy food retail options, especially in underserved areas. 

(8) Developing more-efficient systems to help eligible households obtain and maintain SNAP benefits.

(9) Creating standards for the food served at catered meetings, public meetings, and vending machines in City buildings, and guidelines for healthy food for events that involve public funding or permits.

(10) Adoption as a formal plan by the City of Chicago.

The plan is funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) Initiative, which is funded through the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund. A number of other US cities, like Los Angeles and Seattle, are using CPPW funds to do food system planning. 

Seattle's Food Action Plan

Seattle just released its Food Action Plan, a blueprint to improve the city’s food system. Many of the recommendations in the plan will be familiar to those of us who work on urban food policymaking. These include: expanding SNAP enrollment; creating a “Fresh Bucks” program to help SNAP recipients shop at farmers markets; expanding the city’s P-Patch community gardening program and facilitating rooftop agriculture; investigating the viability of food hubs; helping corner stores sell healthy food; and promoting backyard composting.

The process for arriving at these recommendations follows what planners describe as a “rational” planning model: (1) Public participation to establish broad priorities; (2) Translation of these priorities into four goals; (3) Establishment of criteria (feasibility, potential reach, inclusivity, community health impacts) to evaluate different recommended actions; and (4) Evaluation of existing food-related activities and new policy ideas based on these criteria to arrive at final strategies, recommendations, and specific actions.

Two aspects of the plan – and Seattle’s efforts over the last several years in the area of food planning and policymaking -- distinguish it from many similar efforts around the country.  The difference is an emphasis on integration across agencies and integration of food into existing planning processes.

The city has a Food Interdepartmental Team (IDT), a working group of senior staff members from different agencies who collaborate on various food policy issues, and this team has been involved in the development of the Food Action Plan. The IDT has been successful at overcoming administrative silos and coordinating food policy work across different agencies, in part because they consist of energetic and dedicated individuals and in large measure because the current Mayor has given them direction to do so.

Second, Seattle has focused on integrating policies into existing planning processes so that officials consider the needs of the food system as different types of infrastructure are developed, new land uses are planned, and projects are designed. This integrated planning approach is reflected in several strategies.

For example, the Food Action Plan recommends integrating “food access policies into the Comprehensive Plan, the Transportation Strategic Plan, Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plans, the neighborhood planning process, and other relevant plans so that planning processes include consideration of the availability of healthy food” (emphasis added). In particular, the plan calls for new criteria that would be applied during the transportation planning process to ensure that food access is included as transportation infrastructure is developed. That means building “pedestrian, bicycle, and transit connections between neighborhoods and community gardens, food banks, grocery stores and farmers markets” as a matter of course as transportation engineers consider physical infrastructure and route planning.

The Food Action Plan also calls for integrating urban agriculture into the city’s Comprehensive Plan, and recommends integrating supportive policies into additional plans and efforts, such as incentive programs to encourage green development.  One such program, the Green Factor, requires developers of new projects to increase the use of landscaping.  The Green Factor provides a bonus for incorporating productive (vegetated) landscapes into new development. A second program, Priority Green, allows expedited permitting for projects that meet Seattle’s sustainability goals, which includes the design of on-site food production into new projects. A third expands a program to require developers to purchase development rights from farmers in the region to meet the city’s incentive zoning requirement in the downtown area and hopefully stem farmland conversion.

As with all plans, the Food Action Plan will require various city agencies, the Mayor, and the City Council to take steps to implement its recommendations.  Seattle’s food governance network, including NGOs, community activists, academics, the business community, and policy entrepreneurs within city government will have to monitor its implementation and effectiveness.