12 pages, Food waste and food insecurity are two concurrent major public health issues. To address them, gleaning programs can reduce waste and enhance food security by diverting produce to food pantries. To understand the experiences of farmers and gleaning programs, interviews were completed with 12 farmers who had participated in a gleaning program and 16 farmers who had not donated produce through a gleaning program within the Greater Kansas City metro area. For farmers who had participated in the gleaning program, the ease of donating and tax incentives were primary benefits. Inadequate experience and inefficient volunteers were cited as challenges. Farmers without experience with gleaning programs cited safety and liability issues as concerns. Because farmers communicate frequently with other farmers, food rescue organizations should consider enlisting their support. Communities and government agencies should provide financial support to improve the resources and infrastructure of gleaning organizations to improve farmer-gleaner relationships.
13 pages, This article looks at the United States’ federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program and reforms proposed by the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. In this policy analysis, we draw on media content analysis and qualitative interviews to compare the viewpoints of farmers, workers, grower and worker advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians. We find that perspectives on the program are dependent upon actors’ level of direct interaction with workers. Moderate-sized farmers and regionally based worker advocacy groups tend to be the most concerned with day-to-day program operations and fair working conditions. In contrast, national-level advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians are less critical of the program and seek to broadly expand farmer access to guestworkers, justifying proposed program reforms with discourses of national food security and immigration reform. Ultimately, we suggest that engaging a food systems lens to understand these policies provides a more nuanced perspective, addressing national food security and immigration as related issues.
24 pages, National planning and health organizations agree that to achieve healthy and sustainable food systems, planners must balance goals across a spectrum of sustainability issues that include economic vitality, public health, ecological sustainability, social equity, and cultural diversity. This research is an assessment of government-adopted food system plans in the U.S. that examines which topics, across the three dimensions of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic), are included in local food system plans and conducts an exploratory analysis that asks whether the community capitals (built, cultural, social, financial, human, and natural) available in a community are associated with the content of food system plans. The research team first developed a Sustainable Food System Policy Index made up of 26 policy areas across the three dimensions that, in aggregate, define and operationalize sustainable food systems. With this index we evaluated a sample of 28 food system plans for inclusion of these policy impact areas. We then performed an exploratory regression analysis to examine whether the availability of community capitals was associated with the content of food system plans. Findings indicated that jurisdictions integrated a broad range of issues into their food system plans; however, there are certain issues across every dimension of sustainability that are much less frequently included in plans, such as strategies related to participation in decision-making, financial infrastructure, and the stewardship of natural resources. Regression analysis identified statistically significant linear relationships between particular capitals and the proportion of policy areas included in plans. In particular, higher metrics associated with poverty were associated with the inclusion of fewer policy areas and with a potentially narrower policy agenda. This study adds to the plan evaluation literature as one of the first attempts to document the content of a sample of U.S. food system plans through a sustainability lens, contributing to the knowledge of what types of issues are advanced by local food system plans and the policy implications of current gaps in planning agendas.
