The shuttering of three area Walmart stores forced residents in a 44 square mile swath of southwest Wichita, Kansas to live in a food desert. However through the partnership and support of the CDFI Fund, Enterprise Community Loan Fund and veteran-owned business Honor Capital, low-income families again have access to healthy food options and locally-driven economic opportunity.

Commissioned by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, this report represents the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted on Farm Bill issues relevant to Indigenous populations in the United States. Regaining Our Future argues that Native communities must be prepared to better advocate for their interests, defend programs on which their most vulnerable members depend, and look for new ways to achieve greater food sovereignty through reform of federal policies.

Developed by Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, this guide aims to support Tribal communities gain a better understanding of the vast USDA programs and funding authorities for support of their visions.

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future is now offering an updated, on-demand version of our free, online Coursera course. In this short course, we provide a brief introduction to the U.S. food system and how food production practices and what we eat impacts the world in which we live. We discuss some key historical and political factors that have helped shape the current food system and consider alternative approaches from farm to fork.

The Primer offers short, easy-to-digest readings about topics from farm to fork, peppered with anecdotes and images that bring concepts to life. Directories of articles, reports, lesson plans, and other resources help food system scholars dig deeper into the issues. Developed by leading experts and educators at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, it is designed for educators, students, interested citizens, journalists, policymakers and researchers.

Developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) for food policy councils (FPCs), this advocacy capacity toolkit was designed to help FPCs assess their current capacity to work on advocacy and policy and provide them with appropriate recommendations and resources to reach their strategic goals.

Author(s): Benjamin W. Chrisinger, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine

Across the U.S., neighborhoods face disparate healthy food access, which has motivated federal, state, and local initiatives to develop supermarkets in “food deserts.” Differences in the implementation of these initiatives are evident, including the presence of health programming, yet no comprehensive inventory of projects exists to assess their impact. Using a variety of data sources, this paper provides details on all supermarket developments under “fresh food financing” regimes in the U.S. from 2004-2015, including information such as project location, financing, development, and the presence of health promotion efforts. The analysis identifies 126 projects, which have been developed in a majority of states, with concentrations in the mid-Atlantic and Southern California regions. Average store size was approximately 28,100 square feet, and those receiving financial assistance from local sources and New Markets Tax Credits were significantly larger, while those receiving assistance from other federal sources were significantly smaller. About 24 percent included health-oriented features; of these, over 80 percent received federal financing. If new supermarkets alone are insufficient for health behavior change, greater attention to these nuances is needed from program designers, policymakers, and advocates who seek to continue fresh food financing programs. Efforts to reduce rates of diet-related disease by expanding food access can be improved by taking stock of existing efforts.

The Blueprint for a National Food Strategy, a collaborative project between the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School and Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, examines the potential for developing a national food strategy in the United States. Through legal and original research, the Blueprint Project considers the need for a national food strategy, how other countries have developed national food strategies in response to similar food systems challenges faced by the United States, and the process by which the United States has developed national strategies in response to other issues. The resources created by this project provide a roadmap for the adoption of national food strategy in order to ensure a food secure future for all Americans.

After decades of job and population loss, the City of Detroit has shown recent signs of growth. However, this Detroit Renaissance is not enjoyed equally by all residents; deep racial disparities, declining wages, and a hollowing out of middle-wage, high-opportunity jobs threaten the city’s rebound and economic viability. Equitable development strategies will be essential if growth is to have an appreciable impact on poverty, inequality, and racial disparities. This equity profile was developed with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support local community groups, elected officials, planners, business leaders, funders, and others working to build a stronger and more equitable city. Read the full profile.

PolicyLink and The Food Trust present The Grocery Gap, the most comprehensive review of studies of healthy food access and its impacts, reaffirming that access to healthy food is a critical component of healthy, thriving communities:

Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters: A Review of Research (2013): An update to The Grocery Gap, the original report, this edition drew upon more than 170 studies, published between 2010 and 2013, in an attempt to synthesize and present the latest research on healthy food access and identify where gaps may still exist since the first report.

The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters (2010): The first groundbreaking report in 2010 reviewed 132 studies conducted in the United States in the past 20 years.