Investing in Community Linkages to Improve our Food System

Investing in Community Linkages to Improve our Food System

Summary

The Houston Regional Food Assessment will give local policy makers the best access in the nation to meaningful information, maps, data, and policy ideas on the Houston food system that feeds 6 million people and growing. We believe that this access to better information can transform the region’s ability to find local solutions to equitably provide better access to healthy foods, better preserve agricultural resources, and lead toward more sustainable dependable careers and benefits for farmers, distributors, chefs, processors, restaurateurs, ranchers, and more, while allowing more efficient targeting of government and nonprofit services.

SARE funding is allowing the Houston Regional Food Assessment (HRFA) to bring new attention to rural issues in the Houston region. We are attempting to meet the problems and the promise of feeding a region expected to grow to 10 million people by 2040 while maximizing agricultural potential and sustainability.

The full HRFA will combine 25 neighborhood Community Food Security Assessments across the Houston region including at least 5 rural communities. We are currently conducting a pilot assessment following USDA toolkit for Matagorda County, home to 36,702 people and along with other operations, substantial rice farms – $15 million in rice production over 20,446 acres in production across the County (as of 2007 Census data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service).

Following the pilot assessment, we plan to ramp up operations to conduct the full set of assessments, including at least 4 other rural communities, as well as conducting the other elements of the complete food system study that will look at all aspects from soils and changing land use to access to markets to obesity. In general, we have extended our schedule and slowed down the expected process for the entire HRFA due to funding constraints. We hope to secure several grants from two local foundations who have indicated strong support for the project that will allow us to move into the next phase of the project.

Summary
The Investing in Community Linkages to Improve our Food System (ICLIFS) Project focuses on planning, implementing, and reporting the results of rural community food assessments within a two year period, although a portion of the funds will also be used throughout the two years to involve local farmers in meaningful ways in the broad 13 County Houston Regional Food Assessment, occurring at the same time.

Houston Tomorrow, together with a coalition of local governments, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, is embarking on a food system assessment of the Houston region. The assessment will 1) assess the overall food system that currently feeds 6 million people in the 13-county region and 2) consider implications for the system as the region grows to an expected 10 million people by 2040, according to forecasts by the Houston-Galveston Area Council. It will cover 13 counties including: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Walker, Waller, and Wharton.

This assessment will provide policymakers and the public with a clear picture of the food system’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Tying together demographic trends such as population growth, nutrition-related disease, and other indicators, with 25 in-depth community food security assessments, this study will provide the data and understanding we critically need to make informed decisions.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Information collected will be used to inform the development of policies, identify economic opportunities, improve the overall health and quality of life, and ideally will lead to the establishment of the Houston Food Policy Council to implement recommendations from the assessment. This food policy council will provide an ongoing forum for governments, nonprofits, private interests, and citizens to improve the local food system, which impacts all residents in the Houston region.

The assessment will:

• Describe and identify gaps in the Houston Region Food System.
• Define the food needs of the Houston Region through 2040.
• Measure food security in 25 representative communities throughout the region.
• Identify the limitations and barriers to healthy food access, and inequities therein between communities.
• Quantify the prevalence of hunger, obesity, diabetes, and other food-related public health impacts throughout the region.
• Identify government policies that affect the food system.
• Identify barriers to collaboration between public and nonprofit efforts.
• Provide recommendations to enhance the food system and ensure regional, equitable access to healthy food.
• Identify economic opportunities for citizens & businesses in local food.

SCIG funds will support:
• overseeing and managing continual outreach by the field team;
• conducting 3-5 individual community food assessments in rural areas;
• contributing datasets and qualitative information for the production of a Local Food Guide,
• holding auxiliary networking and information events in rural locations in the project region,
• developing a distribution and education plan that takes into consideration other information from the HRFA, and provides the HFPW with guidance on how to take the next logical steps toward addressing high priority policy issues.

The Investing in Community Linkages to Improve our Food System Project has 3 important objectives. The project objectives are:
1. Develop a feasible framework to conduct community food assessments in rural areas of the 13-county region and according to guidance from the USDA Economic Resource Services Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit.
2. Hold community food talk events to expand communications, share information, provide networking opportunity, and develop business relationships. Create a regularly scheduled forum that brings stakeholders together to discuss issues of common concern.
3. Complete individual community food assessments with broad local support from farm businesses, food distribution organizations, faith-based organizations, advocacy groups, government agencies, agricultural extension and academic entities, and other groups with invested interest.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Through the grant from the USDA SARE program, in-kind work by graduate students from the UT School of Public Health, and use of our general fund, Houston Tomorrow is conducting the pilot phase of the Houston Regional Food Assessment. The pilot phase consists of the implementation of two community food security assessments in one urban community and one rural community out of the 13-county Houston Region. Community food security, according to the USDA, “concerns the underlying social, economic, and institutional factors within a community that affect the quantity and quality of available food and its affordability or price relative to the sufficiency of financial resources available to acquire it.” The two pilot assessments will be added to 23 other community food security assessments to reach the overall goals of the Food System Study.

Houston Tomorrow will work with community leaders and volunteers in order to collect data necessary to fulfill the assessments. Specific components of the community foods security assessments include:
• Socio-demographic information on each community;
• The number and location of community gardens, grocery stores, and local food manufacturing centers;
• The existence and extent of federal food aid;
• Household food security surveys; and,
• Food store surveys.

In addition, Houston Tomorrow will also work with communities to identify additional data points that are important according to the community. Experiences from these pilot studies will inform how the remaining 23 assessments will proceed and will be included in the final study results.

With proper funding and a solidification of our expected partnerships, the big picture assessment will begin in spring 2012 along with the launch of the remaining community food security assessments. The final phase of the project, expected in fall 2013, will consist of a series of public events, publications, and forums culminating in a set of recommendations and a proposal for the development of a 13-county regional food policy council to begin to assist our local governments, nonprofits, and private entities to work toward the further development of a sustainable local food system, accessible to all. Our original plan continues, but we have pushed everything back while seeking full funding for the HRFA.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We have currently only used a small portion of our SARE grant, as the project will be most useful in conjunction with the fully funded overall HRFA, although we are making progress. The Community Food Security Assessment of Matagorda County is nearing completion and our partnerships are solidifying for the complete project. The Texas Department of State Health Services has served as an important resource on the project, with Haley Jackson serving on an In Kind basis on the team conducting this pilot assessment as well as preliminary work on designing the assessment. The Houston – Galveston Area Council is also an active partner on the project serving as the lead liaison with local governments and providing substantial assistance on data collection and mapping. We are working on an agreement with the Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services Department to integrate our project with their Harris County Obesity Collaborative, which includes elements of food assessments.

The Houston Food Policy Workgroup began conducting rural quarterly meetings across the Houston region two years ago to provide easier access to rural partners to the meetings and expose Houstonians to the various agricultural assets of the region. We have now held 5 meetings across the 13 county region, including tours of RiceTec, Laughing Frog Farm, the Prairie View A&M Goat Research Center, the Railean Rum Distillery, a pecan house, and HAAK Winery. At each of these meetings, we host a panel of local farmers, ranchers, and others working in the food system. We realized at the first meeting how valuable these hour-long panels are as a document of the struggles, ideas, and hopes of our rural partners, so they are all being recorded and we expect this to evolve into a more elaborate set of meetings in rural areas and documentation of rural interests as part of the HRFA.

We believe the full implementation of this funding from SARE will assist in a long-term transformation of the Houston food system that will facilitate more sustainable farms, a better market, and healthier Houstonians. However, we are already seeing some success. The first rural meeting held in the City of Waller in some ways led to a recent all day seminar on sustainable vegetable and fruit tree production as well as a just opened weekly farmers’ market. These small steps as well as the growing collaboration of rural and urban entities in our region are already improving the food system for Houston.

Collaborators: