What's a Community Food Assessment?
A community food assessment involves community members from all viewpoints and all walks of life with a goal of learning about the farmers, food sources, and hunger in a community. It will provide information about the local food system that can be used to improve or develop programs relating to the local food system, such as farmer education, farmland protection, nutrition programs, hunger reduction, food security initiatives, and policy advocacy.
Community Food Assessments are inclusive of the whole community, valuing input from a diverse range of community members. It focuses on assets as well as needs of the local food system. In the process, a CFA promotes community involvement, leadership opportunities for youth and others, collaboration among diverse participants (such as farming groups and health advocates), community discussion about the way food is connected to the community, and education of the public of food related issues.
What is a Food System?
The core components of a food system are: food production, food distribution, food consumption, and food recycling. The food system looks at all aspects of food in a given geographic area, which can range from a neighborhood to the world. A global food system includes food produced in all parts of the world, where it travels, and where and how it is consumed. In any smaller geographic region, food comes into that region from areas around the world and food leaves that region to go to other parts of the world. A “community food system” is one where links between food produced and food consumed are localized.
A sustainable community food system incudes:
• Economic vitality
• Resource stewardship
• Resiliencies
• Opportunities and justice for workers
• Food access for all
• Food choices that support the community
What is Food Security?
Food security can be identified as an individual or a community condition.
Individual or household food security can be defined as having access to sufficient affordable, nutritious, culturally-appropriate food.
Community food security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. (by Mike Hamm and Anne Bellows from Community Food Security Coalition website)