Food Systems Plans & Charters: A Landscape Analysis
Toolkit Overview
This toolkit provides a centralized synthesis of 25 state- and city-level food systems plans and charters from across the United States. Born out of a project to inform food systems planning in Hawai’i with support from the The Hawai’i Institute for Sustainable Community Food Systems at the at the University of Hawai’i’ – West O’ahu. These resources are intended to help future food systems transformation efforts organize their initiatives and envision change. To do so, our databases and analyses focus on the how and what of food systems planning efforts across the country.
What This Toolkit Is
Explore The Toolkit
Plan Scope & Content Insights:
Recommendation Database
Search recommendations across 25 plans and charters. Use our searchable keywords to find plan tactics across over 80 topic areas.
Recommendation Analysis
What do plans and charters recommend? Understand the scope and content of food system plans’ recommendations and strategies. We provide definitions and examples of 16 “Key Planning Elements.”
Planning & Process Insights
Catalog of Food Systems Plans and Charters
A database of state-level food systems plans and charters – as well as 5 city- and county-level plans – that provides summaries of plan content and creation. Use the database to explore each plan and charter.
Process Analysis
How are plans and charters developed? Drawing from plans, research, and interviews, we offer insights into the pre-conditions and creation strategies of effective food planning efforts.
A Note On Language: Plans & Charters
“Plans,” “charters,” “visions,” “agendas,” “roadmaps”: The documents analyzed in this database call themselves by different names, but each seeks to offer whole-system strategies to transform local and regional food systems within their own unique contexts. Recognizing that a “plan” can describe a more technical process, we use “plan and charter” throughout our research to encapsulate the breadth and variety of these documents. Read more about our methodology to understand how we chose which documents to analyze.