Food Security Learning Center Topics

Community Food Security: Community Food Security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally appropriate, nutritionally sound diet through an economically and environmentally sustainable food system that promotes community self-reliance and social justice. The following eight topics of the Learning Center fall under Community Food Security:

• Community Food Assessment: A community food assessment is a tool for a community to identify both its challenges and its resources around food. It can serve as a springboard for other community food security measures.
• Community Gardens: Community gardens are essential to people and places in urban environments. They provide food access, open space, greenery, recreation, education, health benefits, and economic and social opportunities.
• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Through CSA, community members partner with a local farm to guarantee a secure market and financial support for the farm and a supply of healthy, farm-fresh food for the community.
• Farm to Cafeteria: In farm to cafeteria programs, schools, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions buy food directly from local and regional farmers, increasing access to healthy food while supporting local agriculture.
• Farmers’ Markets: Farmers’ markets are vital community gathering spaces in which producers and consumers connect directly over fresh, healthy, local food.
• Food Policy Councils: Food policy councils and food system councils bring together stakeholders from diverse food-related areas to examine how the food system is working and propose ways to improve it.
• Land Use Planning: Land is central to food production and distribution, and land use planning can be an effective tool for creating healthier food environments.
• Local & Regional Food Systems: Strengthening local and regional food systems is a powerful way to reduce food miles, keep food dollars circulating in communities, ensure access to healthy foods, and preserve farmland.

Domestic Hunger & Federal Food Programs: Hunger continues to be pervasive in the US, and truly addressing it requires an integrated approach of strengthening federal food programs, transforming the emergency feeding system, and building true community food security and social justice.

Family Farms: Independent family farms are in jeopardy in the US and around the world. Supporting them is critical for the production of healthful food, the survival of rural communities, the protection of the environment, and defending the right to food sovereignty.

Migrant & Seasonal Farmworkers: Those who harvest the food we eat are inextricably linked to the cycle that brings our food from "field to fork." Farmworkers and their families are often the forgotten face of the food system. As they organize themselves and fight for their rights, their food system allies must join them in this struggle.

Nutrition: We are what we eat, and food has a unique power to restore the health of individuals and communities. However, an increasingly industrialized, unhealthy food system is spreading throughout the US and abroad, challenging our understanding of what is nutritious food.

Rural Poverty: There are special challenges facing rural areas, where wealth is being extracted from communities by outside forces. Spurring innovation, job creation, and thriving local economies is the key to ensuring the long-term future of rural America, which in turn supports the nation’s farm economy and food system.