Community Food Assessments

In the first reading, “Understanding and Measuring Food Environments”, we get a brief overview of the ways in which planners can study and affect community food systems. The article addresses seemingly simple, but essential factors for measuring food environments, such as attention to various food destination and production sites within a community in terms of spatial configuration of these destinations and the quality of food available there. For instance, the article discusses how planners can use their GIS capabilities to examine spatial disparities within the food environment, and how these relate to social and economic factors present within underserved communities. Also, by looking at quality of food at these destinations, planners can obtain a more complete understanding of the situation. While the lack of conventional supermarkets is often a reliable indicator of the unavailability of healthy food, in some cases an examination of the quality of food at existing destinations may reveal, for instance, that small bodegas (which may otherwise be overlooked) present in the environment actually provide healthful and culturally acceptable food. This reading also calls attention to the need of planners to work within multiple scales of measurement, including regional, municipal, and neighborhood scales, and to pay attention to a variety of indicators relating to access of healthful food, such as food environment indicators, public infrastructure indicators, and demographic indicators, in order to effectively measure a food environment and achieve community food security.

In the Pothukuchi (2004) article, a number of community food assessments, carried out by those with planning expertise and community organizations without such education, are examined and used to identify the benefits of planners’ involvement in community food assessments when planning for community food security. The article begins by outlining the predominate streams of food into communities, including the market-oriented food system, charitable food assistance networks, and federal nutrition programs, and the alternatives to and critiques of such streams from the perspective of community food systems. Something that I have given little thought to in the past, but found enlightening in this reading, was the critique of food charity, such as food banks and soup kitchens. Pothukuchi states that such charity networks actually divert attention from policy reforms, such as better wages and jobs, improved health care, and education, and support political ideologies that prefer to rely on volunteerism to solve social problems. Pothukuchi goes on to identify reasons why planners should be involved in CFAs, including the attention of planners to the use of communities as units of analysis (as opposed to individuals/families), the skills that planners have in analyzing spatial dimensions of community needs (GIS technology), the focus on collecting and disseminating information within the realm of planning, the interdisciplinary perspective of planners and their relationships to multiple entities (such as decision-makers and stakeholders in public, private, and nonprofit sectors), the training of planners to facilitate participatory group processes, and the existing concern within the planning profession of achieving goals like healthy, sustainable communities. Pothukuchi also urges planners to be aware of the negative effects planning decisions may have on community food security, especially in terms of land-use policies, and the possibility of community food security advocates viewing planners as enemies rather than allies due to past planning decisions that may have exacerbated food security and equity problems within communities.

The Thomson, et al. article brings attention to the need for public participation. This discussion on community-initiated dialogue brings up important points about the need for community members to be able to access information and participate in processes that facilitate shared learning and understanding across various viewpoints. These dialogues need to engage both consumers and producers within a community, who look at the food system differently. Multiple strategies for public participation are outlined, including community forums, study circles, and focus groups. Something I found interesting in this article was the attention to the role of mass media, especially small newspapers, in framing the issues within communities. The ways in which information is interpreted and provided via media is an important factor influencing the level of concern and awareness among community members, as it is through this source that most of the public is introduced to issues such as community food security. Public participation is an important aspect of the community food security issue, and I think it necessary to integrate this participation into the processes of community food assessments in order to get a true understanding of the situation. After all, the consumers within a community can be agents of change, and "...the quality of individual and community life is significantly influenced by individual and public actions at the local level" (Thomson, et al.).