Background: food systems planning and assessments

The field of planning was first critiqued by Pothukuchi and Kaufman (Reference Pothukuchi and Kaufman2000) for its longstanding neglect of food systems. Their (2000) provocative essay inspired increased attention to food system planning, which is now practiced by local and regional governments in both the global North and South. ‘In short’, Raja et al. (Reference Raja, Morgan and Hall2017) recently noted in a nod to the title of Pothukuchi and Kaufman's (Reference Pothukuchi and Kaufman2000) essay, ‘food is no longer a stranger to the planning agenda’ (p. 309).

Food planning initially emerged with a focus on ‘local’ food systems, at the scale of city/municipal/urban planning. Actors engaged in food planning efforts are now more conscious to avoid the ‘local trap’, whereby the local scale is assumed preferable to other scalar arrangements (Born and Purcell, Reference Born and Purcell2006). Thus, food system planning approaches are informed by an understanding of scale as produced, whereby the scale of food system interventions are themselves constructed by the actors working toward social change in ways that advance goals (Smith, Reference Smith, Doherty, Graham and Malek1992). Within more recent food planning interventions, participants actively ‘engage a politics of scale’ and find multiple and overlapping scales to engage food system change efforts (Kurtz, Reference Kurtz2003; Smith and Kurtz, Reference Smith and Kurtz2003).

Food system planning efforts are now often focused on ‘regions’ as the appropriate scale for intervention (FAO and RUAF, 2015; FAO, 2016; Peters et al., Reference Peters, Clancy, Hinrichs and Goetz2017; Raja et al., Reference Raja, Morgan and Hall2017). The ‘city region scale’, championed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, allows for leveraging rural–urban linkages to increase access to food, create good jobs, enhance environmental sustainability and strengthen participatory governance. Together the FAO and the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) promote a process that includes (1) ongoing participatory multi-stakeholder dialogue; (2) assessments as a first step to create baseline food system knowledge and identify opportunities for intervention; and (3) policy support and participatory planning to create change (FAO/RUAF, 2015; FAO, 2016). We utilize such a process through FoodPlanCNY.

Food system assessments are widely recognized as a ‘critical first step in revealing food system relationships, engaging the public, and outlining agendas for change’ (Potteiger, Reference Potteiger2013: 265). One participant reinforced this during a pilot interview for FoodPlanCNY: ‘How can you pursue policy if you're not really thinking about what's happening … You have to value the assets you have. You have to first identify them, and then really value them’ (Interview, grocery store owner, June 2016). Through this project, we thus aim to engage diverse stakeholders in a comprehensive assessment designed to capture a snapshot of the current structure and function of the CNY food system.

Methods: appreciating assets and engaging stakeholders

FoodPlanCNY is a mixed-methods community-engaged research project designed to provide baseline understanding of the CNY food system and identify assets that might be leveraged for food system change. The Syracuse University Institutional Review Board approved the project.

The research is regional in scope, engaging diverse stakeholders in a food system assessment that highlights opportunities to strengthen connections within the system. Following existing practices, for the purposes of the project, we define the CNY region as including Onondaga, Cayuga, Cortland, Madison and Oswego counties.Footnote ³

We deliberately use an assets-based approach. Often framed as an alternative to needs-based or problem-solving methods, assets-based approaches seek to foster community change by identifying and leveraging existing, albeit often unrecognized, assets (Kretzmann and McKnight, Reference Kretzmann and McKnight1993). Asset-based approaches are necessarily place-based and are noted for their role in community development activities (Mathie and Cunningham, Reference Mathie and Cunningham2005) and are increasingly appreciated for supporting public health (Brooks and Kendall, Reference Brooks and Kendall2013), mitigating disaster risk (Vatsa, Reference Vatsa2004), confronting persistent poverty (Carter and Barrett, Reference Carter and Barrett2006) and addressing food insecurity (Barrett, Reference Barrett2010).

This approach is significant in that CNY in general, and the City of Syracuse in particular, is often defined by problems and deficits. Indeed, this reputation is justified in many ways as nearly 50% of all children in Syracuse live in povertyFootnote ⁴ and the city has the shameful distinction of the highest rates of concentrated poverty among communities of color in the entire USA (Jargowsky Reference Jargowsky2015). However, the city, county and region are likewise characterized by key assets that could be better understood and utilized, especially in regards to food and agriculture. Thus, rather than focus on the region's many challenges, in FoodPlanCNY we prioritize existing assets that might be leveraged for change. The research team includes the authors as principal investigators and thus far has included ten students and five community members working as research assistants. Students have also participated in the project through courses—both at the graduate and undergraduate level—taught at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Syracuse University. Moreover, the authors both have extensive experience in CNY as community-engaged scholars.

Scholarship that is participatory, engaged, community-based, public or activist (to name but a few of the frames) is focused on collaborative knowledge development and social change (Hale, Reference Hale2008). As Reynolds and Cohen (Reference Reynolds and Cohen2016) explain, participatory research is ‘a framework or approach rather than a method’ that ‘envisions research as a tool to advance social change through having academic or professional researchers work with community members to design, implement, analyze, and, when relevant, report on findings from a study’ (p. 127). This research is participatory in that the need for an assessment emerged out of the Onondaga Agriculture Council, we continually seek input from participants in project design and implementation, data analysis is collaborative and food system stakeholders help define project goals. Deep and sustained engagement with key stakeholders ensured the project was ‘done with the community and not to the community’ (Nyden et al., Reference Nyden, Figert, Shibley and Burrows1997: 7). Moreover, the normative goals of the project—strengthening the economic, environmental and public health outcomes of the CNY food system—were made transparent from the outset and were set in tandem with community partners (Burawoy, Reference Burawoy2005; Weissman et al., Reference Weissman2018).

Throughout the project, we are utilizing multiple methodological approaches in order to be comprehensive and inclusive (Creswell, Reference Creswell2003; Adler and Clark, Reference Adler and Clark2011; Lemke and Bellows, Reference Lemke, Bellows and Albala2012). This includes secondary data from New York State Agriculture and Markets; the USDA Census of Agriculture; the US Department of Labor; the US Census Bureau; existing community-based surveys, interviews, and reports; and public reports from regional economic development officials, policy makers, and local agencies such as the Onondaga County Department of Health. We used GIS analysis to examine land-use changes in CNY, especially farmland uses and suburban development, food access and food sourcing. Archival data included historical photographs and land surveys, holdings from the Onondaga County Historical Association, and County documents (such as meeting minutes from the Onondaga County Legislature when they created a now-defunct food policy council in 1984, one in the USA).

We conducted 56 interviews with key stakeholders from diverse sectors of the food system. Interviewees included farmers representing various sizes and types of operations, food distributors, processors, diverse retailers, restaurateurs, waste management professionals, emergency food program directors, government employees, farmworker advocates, food justice activists, public health professionals and not-for-profit organizations.

Interviewees were identified through snowball sampling, starting with participants in the Onondaga County Agriculture Council and our own contacts from a combined 50+ yr of food system work in CNY. We used a semi-structured interview process, providing interviewees with the space to discuss topics that seemed most relevant, interesting or that aligned with interviewee expertise. An interview guide allowed us to gather perspectives and insights from key actors in the CNY food system, including information on their specific role, concerns or challenges in that work, opportunities for change and thoughts on the future of the CNY food system (Creswell, Reference Creswell2003; Adler and Clark, Reference Adler and Clark2011; Lemke and Bellows, Reference Lemke, Bellows and Albala2012).

Both authors participated in the interviews and interview notes and transcripts were read by both of us to ensure consistency. Data were scrubbed of identifying information and open-coded by a student research assistant and reviewed by one of us. The interview transcripts were then categorized into eight sets: (1) production; (2) distribution; (3) market/retail; (4) restaurateur; (5) waste; (6) government/public official; (7) emergency feeding program; (8) not-for-profit. Each set was thematically coded by the same research assistant and then reviewed by the same principal investigator. Transcripts were closely read multiple times to gain a broad overview of the interviews and to develop an understanding of the key themes in relation to existing literature and to develop a detailed understanding of interviewee perspectives (Creswell, Reference Creswell2003; Adler and Clark, Reference Adler and Clark2011; Lemke and Bellows, Reference Lemke, Bellows and Albala2012). Themes were then categorized inductively into three broader categories, or opportunities as discussed below, that emerged from interview data across a diverse set of stakeholders: (1) viability, (2) access and (3) coordination.

Key stakeholder meetings augmented interview data by exploring themes identified during interview coding and analysis (Creswell, Reference Creswell2003; Adler and Clark, Reference Adler and Clark2011; Lemke and Bellows, Reference Lemke, Bellows and Albala2012). These meetings consisted of both authors presenting an overview of the project and preliminary findings. Small groups were created for focused discussion on the three opportunities identified. Each group discussion included eight participants, one trained facilitator, one scribe to assist the facilitator and one trained research assistant to record fieldnotes from the discussion. These data are yet to be analyzed.

The project also included community market basket surveys conducted by community members serving as researchers. These researchers conducted a nine-item market basket survey and gathered narratives of peoples’ food shopping habits to gain a better understanding of consumer perspectives of the food system. The six distinct market basket surveys and accompanying research notes are not yet analyzed.

Finally, to foster transparency in the project, the authors produced a website (www.foodplancny.org) that went live in October 2017 and was presented during the key stakeholder meetings noted above. As the first tangible project outcome, the website is a tool for disseminating findings and a strategy to elicit participant input. The website is educational and keeps participants and the public informed of the project by describing the research—including preliminary findings—and provides project updates. The website also offers an introduction to the food system as a conceptual framework (the need for this emerged from data analysis as described below) and gives a brief overview of the CNY food system. The project report will be posted in fall 2018 once finalized and we expect the website to have ongoing utility for CNY food system coordination, planning and policy. Moreover, the website creates space for participation in FoodPlanCNY through a simple web-based form to provide input on the research, offer information on the CNY food system or to actually begin the work of food system planning and coordination. In fact, the first online participant was a retiring farmer looking for help with succession planning and connections with young farmers who may want to take over the farm for non-dairy production.

Findings: engaging diverse stakeholders and identifying opportunities to leverage key resources

Current project findings are tentative and have yet to be fully contextualized or analyzed. There are, however, preliminary outcomes important to report as unique from other food system assessments. In particular, we discuss two initial findings that emerge specifically from our collaborative engagement with diverse stakeholders and the preliminary findings from our assets-based approach.

The first finding that emerged early in the project was the lack of participant understandings of the ‘food system’ as a framework. Although all participants are key food system stakeholders, many—especially conventional farmers—did not see themselves as part of a food system or did not understand the concept. As one farmer noted at the start of an interview: ‘Why do you want to talk to me? I'm not part of the food system. I just produce milk, I don't have anything to do with it after it leaves here [gesturing to the farm]’ (Interview, dairy farmer, June 2017). Given that the project intends to encourage participation from diverse food system actors, we used the project to confront this gap of understanding food systems. Regular project updates—given at monthly Onondaga Agriculture Council meetings and elsewhere—include a primer on food systems. Interviews likewise start with a food system overview, and the project website discussed above was modified during production to include an introduction to the food system based on initial project findings.

As a participatory project, interviewees were always asked about making FoodPlanCNY practical for diverse stakeholders. Thus, a second important initial finding of the research is that participants are constantly looking for real-time data that are accessible to better understand indicators of the food system with specific concern for personal interests (such as market research, new economic opportunities or program evaluation data). Three examples from diverse interviews highlight this finding:

Because of this initial finding, the scope of the project grew and we began to gather more baseline food system data. Although some of these data were always within the project's scope, participant data needs were more granular and difficult to locate than expected.

In addition to these two initial findings, significant themes emerge within interview and focus group data as opportunities for food system planning, including land, labor, food access, market access, regional distribution, food waste, food recovery, and system connections and relationships. Often, these themes are confirmed by other data sources. For example, disparities in food access emerged as a theme within interviews and then neighborhood-level GIS analysis and market basket surveys by community researchers found limited access to certain products and higher costs for others in particular neighborhoods.

To highlight another example, the historical record indicates significant land-use changes in CNY during the second half of the 20th century, especially a significant growth of the suburbs in northern parts of the county and dairy expansion and consolidation in the southern edges. Likewise, various interviews noted difficulties in accessing land because of these land-use patterns:

From the themes we coded three opportunities to leverage existing assets for strengthening the food system in CNY: (1) viability, (2) access and (3) coordination. These opportunities emerged because of the participatory research methods of FoodPlanCNY. That is, without collaboration and diverse stakeholder participation, the existing assets—and opportunities to better leverage them—could not be fully understood or appreciated.

Food system viability in CNY is predicated on the individual and collective efforts of folks working across the different sectors of the food system. This includes the time, energy, knowhow and extensive resources to maintain a viable food system, one able to respond to economic instability, environmental change, demographic shifts and other changes. Collectively, the resilience of the CNY food system and diversity of experiences serve as valuable resources for seizing new food system opportunities, such as ensuring investments in the food system are inclusive of traditionally neglected communities or pushing agricultural production toward regenerative and agroecological practices.

Research participants discussed ‘access’ in a wide variety of ways, including access to foods, markets, information, land and employment opportunities. Equitable access to food is fundamental for community food security, whereby all community members ‘obtain a safe, culturally appropriate, nutritionally adequate diet’ (Hamm and Bellows, Reference Hamm and Bellows2003: 37) and is influenced by many factors including the physical environment, transportation infrastructure, living wage jobs and the social environment. Farmers, processors and other food business owners expressed interest in accessing markets at a variety of scales. Emergency food providers report needing better access to food recovery opportunities. Likewise, a strong and viable food system also relies on people and organizations having access to critical resources (economic, natural, social and political), as well as access to information for decision making; and business owners spoke of employment opportunities while food justice activists, worker representatives and emergency food providers extolled the need for access to quality jobs and access to various resources that make full employment possible (e.g., childcare, housing and transit).

Coordination emerged as the third opportunity to strengthen the CNY food system through planning. Food systems are complex and require coordinated efforts across different sectors, organizations and government agencies to foster change. To increase the amount of regionally produced food in local markets, for instance, involves coordination with producers, distributors, processors, different types of markets and likely funding organizations and government agencies. Creating quality employment opportunities in the food system requires coordination between potential employers and workforce development programs, not to mention other needed resources. Economic growth and innovation in the food system is best achieved through coordination between business owners, economic development organizations, policy makers and government agencies. Many people and organizations have worked hard to address critical issues in the regional food system. However, coordination could increase the effectiveness of these efforts, reduce the duplication of resources and expand the scale of their impacts.