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Executive Summary As the food and financial crises bring fresh urgency to concerns over hunger, food access, public health, labor and economic development -citizens and governments are beginning to connect these issues back to the food system as a whole. Councils are springing up across North America to `connect the dots'1 between the growing number of neighborhood food initiatives and communities forging policies for just, healthy food systems. Food Policy Councils act as both forums for food issues and platforms for coordinated action. The first Food Policy Council started in 1982 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then Food Policy Councils have been established at state, local and regional levels across the county. Some have remarkable success stories. Others have failed, disbanded, or spun-off into other service and non-profit organizations. What lessons can be taken from North America's three-decade experiment in formulating local food policy? Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned is an assessment based on an extensive literature review and testimony from 48 individual interviews with the people most involved in Food Policy Councils. Local and State Food Policies ;~ ~,~. Local and state governments are the testing ground Ciry Slicker Farms, Photo: Rebecca Meyer for innovative policy ideas that often become part of the national norm. They are also the places where we as citizens and well-informed organizations can have the most influence. Food Policy consists of the actions and in-actions by government that influence the supply, quality, price, production, distribution, and consumption of food. What government doesrit do, whether by design or neglect, is as much a policy as a specific action like a city regulation that prescribes the location of farmers markets or a state statute that protects farmland. Instead of one single place where one might address the wide range of"seed to table' items that make up our food system, food work is spread across numerous governmental departments and functions. City and state transportation departments, for instance, can promote or deter sprawl, which affects farmland, and snake it less difficult for people who depend on public transportation to reach a supermarket. Local school districts can purchase food from local farmers, restrict access by students to vending machines that dispense unhealthy food, and increase food education to promote healthy eating behaviors. Economic development officials can provide incentives to developers to locate supermarkets in underserved areas, assist with the establishment of food processing facilities and other infrastructure, or more generally account for the contribution that food and farming make to their local or state economies. Health departments can promote healthier eating through menu labeling or community-wide education programs, and social service agencies can distribute nutrition benefits such as food stamps to needy households. But these and other governmental institutions are not typically linked to each other around a common food system vision or set of goals any more than they are linked to the private sector. While his kind of"silo-ing" can lead to numerous dysfunctions, it also offers enormous opportunities to pursue coordinated and comprehensive food policies once an effort is made to connect the "silos:' ~, ~~. a ,~, ~„ Food Policy CouPncils 1Lessons Learned ~tt h~,~at number 3 2S