New England Feeding New England Newsletter
Cultivating a Reliable Food Supply
A project of the New England State Food System Planners Partnership
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In 2019, the New England State Food System Planners Partnership launched the New England Feeding New England: Cultivating A Reliable Food Supply Project, a 10-year initiative to prepare the region for system shocks such as climate-related weather events and public health emergencies. Our aim is to increase regional food production for regional consumption. We can improve the reliability of our regional food system by strengthening supply chains and our goal is for 30% of food consumed in New England to be produced or harvested in New England by 2030.
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March Quarterly Update Meeting Summary
The NEFNE quarterly meeting focused on the economic impact of the food system in New England. Researcher Nic Rockler explained that there are many ways to measure impact, including the number of jobs that exist in the sector, the income generated by those jobs, the value added, the sales, and the number of businesses active in the sector. Food system industries include farming, some manufacturing jobs, wholesale food sales, retail or grocery stores, and service or restaurants and bars. Food often goes through many stages before it reaches a consumer and at each stage, jobs and inputs help to add value to it. The economic multiplier effect measures the change in value for each type of food and the greater the value added within a region, the larger the impact on the local economy.
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Based on this research, in 2020 there were 932,000 jobs in the New England food system. And the economic value of this sector is $38 billion. About 3.5% of the New England GDP is directly from the food industry, and in the ag states of Maine and Vermont, this percentage is higher, over 6%. Around 9% of the jobs in New England are in the food system, though many are part-time, seasonal, and low paid. Growth rates of the food sector from 2007 - 2017 range from 0% in Maine to over 4% in Vermont.
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In addition, the indirect impact of the food system is far greater – for every job in the food system, an additional .25 jobs are created. Nic found that an additional 219,000 jobs were indirectly a result of food system activity and the total value is $71 billion.
This data on the importance of the food system to employment and GDP in the region will help to inform future policy decision making and investments to ensure that more of the food consumed in the region is produced here. For more detailed state by state data, please see the recording and the slides. The full New England Feeding New England report, including more details on Nic Rockler's economic impact analysis, will be published in the fall.
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Save the date
Please save the date for the next NEFNE Quarterly Meeting Update which will be on June 21. Details to follow.
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Research Advisory Committee Update |
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The Research Advisory Committee for the New England Feeding New England Project met for the first time last month. At the meeting, subject matter experts heard presentations from three of the research teams. They provided feedback on the methodology and data sources being used. At later meetings, the advisors will also be asked to reflect on their state specific knowledge and how it might contribute to the regional project.
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Maine Food Strategy is a Network Partner in the Maine Food Convergence project along with four state-level network initiatives: Maine Farm to Institution, Maine Network of Community Food Councils, Maine Climate Action NOW! and Maine Gleaning Network. The Maine Food Convergence Project Report 2021-2022 was published recently and documents “lessons learned” over the past year including a realization among the Network Partner groups that while there is growing recognition of the importance of strong food systems closer to home, more work needs to be done to develop an inclusive vision for what this looks like and how it operates. In March, they held a virtual statewide meeting to share the report and its findings. Other results of the 2021 convergence event include a Processing Work Group coordinated through Maine Farm to Institution and a food policy coalition currently in a design phase.
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The Rhode Island Food Policy Council
The Rhode Island Food Policy Council successfully advocated for an increase in the Governor's budget for the state's Local Agriculture and Seafood Act Grant Program to from $100K to $250K. The Council introduced a $26.9M American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) food systems priority spending package. At this time the legislature is still determining the uses of ARPA funds. The group has closely monitored food system-related legislation introduced in the General Assembly through the Food System Bill Tracker.
RIFPC regularly convened four working groups focused on Business, Access, Climate, and Seafood which identified and advocated for high priority bills designed to improve food access, reduce the environmental footprint of food production and marketing chains, and increase access to farmland. They hosted two well-attended state Legislative Roundtables, one supporting small farmers and fishers in February and one supporting improvements to SNAP delivery services in March. They convened the network via the first quarter Hunger Elimination Task Force in February (75 members) and a Full Council meeting in March (20 members). RIFPC was invited to provide food systems expertise to several state planning bodies including the State Planning Council, the SNAP Policy Advisory Committee, and Interagency Food and Nutrition Policy Advisory Council, and the Executive Climate Coordinating Council.
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The NH Food Alliance
The NH Food Hub Network is laying the foundation of strong collaboration through the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding between its member food hubs. This document will help provide a unifying structure that outlines the ways in which NH's food hubs aim to collaborate with each other to create efficient distribution systems, diversify each other's local and regional product offerings, provide transparent food safety standards, and create an outlet for shared resources and experiences. Working with NH Farm to School and NH Feeding NH, the network has identified potential sourcing and distribution relationships between food hubs, schools and food pantries that they hope to build in the year ahead using forward contracting.
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Vermont Farm to Plate
The just released Farm to Plate 10-Year Retrospective captures progress made between 2010-2020 to strengthen Vermont’s food system. The report highlights both the results of the process Farm to Plate undertook to coordinate over 350 organizations through its network approach and illuminates the many positive changes (as well as areas of concerns that still require attention) that have taken place over the past 10 years. High on the list of results are:
- Local food sales increased from $114 million (5% of all food purchased in Vermont) in 2010 to $371 million (16.1%) in 2020
- Vermont’s food system economic output expanded 57.7%, from $7.599 billion (2007) to $11.985 billion (2017)
- Pre-COVID food system employment (2011-2019) increased 11% or 6,189 net new jobs; more than 65,000 Vermonters directly employed by over 11,500 farms and food-related businesses
- Pre-COVID household food insecurity rate declined from 13.8% in to 8.6% in 2020
After releasing the Vermont Agriculture & Food System Strategic Plan 2021-2030 in February 2021 (Vermont’s 2nd 10-year plan), the Farm to Plate Network has been restructured and repopulated to begin work implementing the plan. A Policy Team has been established for the first time, as a neutral space to discuss a range of policy options in advance of each legislative session. A new Meat Supply Chain Team has been meeting for over a year and has a major beef-on-dairy research project underway. And many groups, such as the Agritourism Community of Practice, are exploring opportunities to apply for Congressionally Directed Support in FFY23 budget.
In 2021, VT Governor Phil Scott named 12 members to the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Vermont Agriculture to strategize how best to grow agriculture in VT, working from the newly released 2021-2030 Strategic Plan. In creating the report, the Commissioners shared ideas, and tapped the expertise of young farmers, members of the public, and organizations working on environmentally sound farming practices, climate adaptation and resilience, and diversity. Their report to the Governor in November has now been released to the public.
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The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative
The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative is part of a team contracted by the state to develop a farmland action plan. The Plan, first recommended in the 2015 Local Food Action Plan, will develop state level goals and recommendations for increasing farmland protection, farmland access, food security, and the long-term economic and environmental viability of farms across all regions of the state. It will help guide state policies, programs, and investments through 2050. In developing the plan, the team is analyzing data, reviewing a wide range of past plans and reports, and conducting a robust engagement process that has involved more than 200 people so far. The Plan is expected to be completed this summer.
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The Connecticut Food System Alliance is developing a framework for the state food action plan based on the Whole Measures for Community Food Systems planning and evaluation tool. The values areas of "Vibrant Farms" and "Thriving Local Economies" align most closely with our NEFNE project work, which includes strategies for increasing market opportunities for local farmers. We are working with our project partners in Hartford and Eastern Connecticut on food planning at the local level and integrating with state and regional planning. The Eastern Connecticut work kicked off at the end of January, attended by local farmers who were particularly interested in creating more opportunities for institutional, retail, and direct to consumer sales. The goals of the Eastern Connecticut work are being finalized, but a major priority is strategies for promoting producer viability. In Hartford, our partners on the Hartford Advisory Commission on Food Policy are developing recommendations that include the redevelopment of the Hartford Regional Market, which holds great potential as a regional food hub. We are also celebrating the launch of a new food hub featuring an online portal for consumers and retailers, Fresher Choice, which is headed by our Steering Committee member Brandon Monti.
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Food Solutions New England
April marks the 8th annual FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge designed to support all regional food sectors in learning about centering equity and justice while also strengthening regional food supply chains and our New England food economy. More info here.
Food Solutions New England’s policy network manager is working on the creation of collaborative issue briefs that highlight key opportunities in the New England food system for alignment with regional network values like democracy, racial equity, sustainability and trust-building across sectors.
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Covid exposed the cracks in the US food system – meet the people trying to fix them
“The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted what we have known for decades, hunger, malnutrition and famine are not caused by inadequate amounts of food. They are caused by the political failures that restrict people’s access to adequate food,” said Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food in this Guardian article. He continued by noting that concentrated power and the lack of redundancy make the food system very fragile. “We need to create multiple supply chains,” he suggested, however, “You can have a shorter supply chain that will then reproduce the same problem of power and [lack of] accountability.”
One model that distributes power and sources local food is Mandela Grocers, a small employee-owned cooperative grocery store in Oakland, California. “We didn’t face those [supply chain] challenges because our supply chain is a lot shorter. There aren’t a lot of hands between our producers and our customers,” said Adrionna Fike, who works at the grocery store and like all seven workers, is a co-owner. Though they were very busy during the pandemic, Mandela Grocers took precautions to prevent staff burnout, including closing on Sundays. They haven’t had to close due to staffing shortages and they increased wages last year.
The NEFNE Project is doing research to understand how to best strengthen the regional food system and shorten supply chains.
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