Planning with Food in Mind

     In the article Potential Contributions of Planning to Community Food Systems by Kate Clancy, the author highlighted her immediate perspective on how food systems should be represented. Clancy suggested that food system advocates within communities join forces with other like minded organizations such as environmental groups to engage planners for further insight and assistance on how to address specific issues within their city. I thought this was a fantastic suggestion- within my executive board position within Student Government; I’ve come to learn that you often need to pull together resources to have your voice heard within the system. Often it’s not only an issue of having your issue listened to, but an additional task of having this issue actually addressed. Taken to a larger scale administrative system like a city’s urban planning group, and you see the prioritizing of technical infrastructure issues before social issues like food justice.

     It was fantastic to see this approach expanded on in the article The Food System by Kameshwari Pothukuchi and Jerome L. Kaufman. Their suggestions included compiling data on the community food system in question, analyzing how this can connect to other planning concerns (i.e. land use, economic development, zoning, etc.), educating planners on food system discrepancies, and assessing the impact of current planning on local food security. I believe that when compared to the issues they found in their studies in relation to urban planners and community food systems, these suggestions are significant improvements. 

     One of the overlapping major issues that both articles highlighted is the resistance of planners to include food issues in their evaluations. While the first article offered a sweeping view of why planners are wary, the second on drew in details that offer concerns that can be easily addressed to incorporate food systems more. The authors explained that planning is comprehensive, future-oriented, public-interest driven, and for furthering the livability of communities. However over-arching this may seem, there is specific specialization that does not often allow for the research of social issues outside of research of land use, housing, transport, environment, and economy issues. Therefore the food system is absent from planning research, education, practice. 

     The comparison of the level of involvement different agencies have with the different food system faucets was allowed me to understand where the interest lacks most.  The table showed location of sources for sale of commercial food received the most involvement and reporting agencies. Agricultural land preservation had little to no involvement by planning agencies. This specifically was pretty interesting, because this seems like it would be a basis for community gardens, farmers markets, food issues, and even hunger prevention. 

I think as future planners, the most important aspect of the articles to focus on is where there seems to be the most need for planner intervention or collaboration. Four major food system concerns that could most immediately benefit from planning attention were listed as the following: 

• Agricultural land preservation; 
• Documenting and mitigating the environmental impacts of the food system
• Integrating food issues into economic development activities
• Land use and zoning related to food access