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From the Field

Planning for Food Systems Resilience in Hawai’i and Beyond

A team of UC Berkeley graduates have launched an interactive toolkit to inform community food systems planning.

April 18, 2023

By Rose Benjamin, MDP and Ella Geismar, MPP

Transforming Hawaii’s Food System Together is a multi-sectoral grassroots initiative working to create equity, sustainability, and resilience within Hawai’i’s food system. Photo by Ella Geismar

The Toolkit & Landscape Analysis

Since August, we’ve been working collaboratively with web developers to create this set of resources, now available on the THFST website. This analysis explores the “what” and “how” of major food planning trends and offers a multi-tiered set of databases and analytical insights seeking to help inform ongoing food systems planning efforts across the country. Specifically, we offer a set of dynamic tools that allow planners and food advocates to explore the strategies, recommendations, and processes employed by existing state-level plans and charters. Through functional databases and insights, our goal is to illustrate the broader landscape of food system planning and be a helpful resource for those interested in developing new approaches to persistent food system issues.

What’s in the Toolkit?

Our analysis explores the creation and content of 25 city, county, and state level food systems plans and charters. To do so, we’ve created two databases, each with corresponding analysis. See below for a summary of each.

  1. Plan Scope & Content
    • The Searchable Recommendation Database allows you to explore recommendations across 25 plans and charters across over 80 topic areas. You can filter searches by creation processes (such as author or funder type, region type, plan status, etc), or by content (such as Agriculture & Food Production, Climate Mitigation, Equity & Justice, etc.)
    • Our Recommendation Analysis offers insights into the scope and content of food system plans’ recommendations and strategies. As the visual shows below, this interactive map provides a thematic analysis of key elements across the 25 plans and a thematic analysis of the content within and across all recommendations.
  2. Planning & Process
    • The Catalog of Food Systems Plans and Charters documents the creation processes of each city, county, and state level plan. This catalog allows you to compare key attributes of the creation process across all plans, while also exploring one plan at a time.
    • Our Process Analysis offers insights from these plans and charters into their pre-conditions and creation strategies of effective food planning efforts.

It is our hope that this resource will illustrate the broader landscape of food system planning and be a helpful tool for those interested in developing new approaches to persistent food system issues. Take a moment to click around. Maybe your home state has a plan that you could be a part of!

The Searchable Recommendation Database allows you to explore recommendations across 25 plans and charters across over 80 topic areas.

The Recommendation Analysis offers insights into the scope and content of food system plans’ recommendations and strategies.