Faces of Food Systems Planning

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Luis Nieves-Ruiz

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Name: Luis Nieves-Ruiz, AICP

Current Position: Economic Development Manager for the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council (ECFRPC), a council of governments located in Orlando, FL.

Lusi Nieves-Ruiz, AICP

What do you currently enjoy about your work?

My current position allows me the flexibility to pursue my individual interests and passions including regional food systems. This requires me to identify potential funding sources and continuously develop new scopes of work, project methodologies, and grant applications, forcing me to flex my creative and entrepreneurial muscles quite often. Working for a technical assistance provider, I also get to be involved in different types of projects such as economic impact modeling, industry cluster analysis, and resiliency planning, among other areas. In turn, the experiences gained through these projects have helped to inform how I approach my food systems work. Finally, I get the opportunity to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders including economic development agencies, public health departments, and academic institutions, among other organizations.  This always keeps work interesting. 

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work?

Money is always a problem for our agency. Every year we have to raise about 60 percent of our budget through grants and contracts. You are often forced to do more with less.  In my case, I am usually working on three or four different projects at the same time:  not only managing the project, but also doing the basic research, designing the document’s graphics and layout, and doing the final write up. I used to have to do most of this work by myself. Recently, I have been able to hire other planners to assist me with some of these tasks. The lack of consistent funding is usually a deterrent for me to focus on the implementation of long-term projects and initiatives. Another challenge is time. You can have great ideas, but sometimes there is not enough time to make them a reality. 

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work, and where does that fit in with the rest of the work that you do?

My research work has three focus areas. I spent a good part of the last five years developing a sound methodology to assess regional food production systems. This includes identifying and mapping critical assets such as agricultural lands and food production businesses (farms, processors, and distributors). My approach to studying food systems is rooted in my interest in industry cluster analysis. I like to understand how the parts of the system work or do not work together. My planning background has also helped me to understand that land use regulations can act as barriers to the development of regional food systems. I specifically study how jurisdictions regulate food uses in their zoning codes. Finally, as an economic development official, I am working to develop a framework to use regional food systems to revitalize distressed communities.  Food production can help to generate much needed jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities in low-income areas. 

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? 

If you had asked me this question five years ago, I would have said no. However, after being awarded $150K in grants and contracts to complete this type of work, I can confidently call myself a food systems planner. It is all about validation. When I started doing food systems work in Orange County, most of my peers regarded this work as a nice hobby. Thankfully, I had a planner colleague that really believed in my work more than I did myself. Winning the first grant to study Orange County’s regional food production system was definitely a game changer for me.  It helped me to start developing a body of work in the food systems area. These projects helped me to be selected as a Regional Food Economies Fellow by the Wallace Center at Winrock International in 2018. This has certainly been the highest point of my career as a food systems planner. Currently, I dedicate about 40 percent of my time to work on food systems projects.

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with?

I think that there is generally some antagonism between planners and food systems practitioners. Most food systems practitioners are entrepreneurs that want things to happen immediately. On the other hand, urban planners take a long view and understand that change takes time. I witnessed some of this dynamic when East Central Florida started its food policy council. After a couple of months, most of the food business owners had left the group. One thing that I have started to do is try to bridge the gap between both groups by developing some common language and tools. I am still working on it. 

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner?

Alissa Barber Torres, my first planning supervisor in Orange County, taught me two very important career lessons. First, it is important to let young planners pursue their passion areas. She provided me with the opportunity and space to work on my food systems planning and economic development projects. These two areas are currently the backbone of my planning career. I continue to use these lessons in my planning work and apply with the younger planners in the office. Sadly, my journey as a food system planner has been more lonesome. I can’t think of any other planners that were doing similar work to mine. Through my involvement with the Wallace Center and the Council for Development Finance Agencies, I met some great food systems practitioners.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning-related work?

Food systems planning is a very broad field. While it is important for planners to be conversant in all areas, at some point you will need to identify your own niche within the profession. To get to this point though, you need to understand what your strengths are.  Some of the skills that I use in my food systems work include Geographic Information Systems (GIS), data analysis, and policy analysis. Finally, to be successful in this line of work you have to be a good communicator. I credit my experience with Toastmasters for my ability to develop a concise message that that can be tailored to different audiences. 

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school?

Most planning school students are idealists by nature. They go to planning school to learn how to change their communities for the better. However, professional planners often get caught in the “planning review process wheel” which prioritizes short-term projects (rezonings, site plan developments, etc..) over long-term policy solutions. There is also a plenty of antagonism towards planning and government in general. Your role is to convince multiple stakeholders and elected officials that what you propose is the best option for the community. Therefore, this idealism needs to be tempered by the understanding that in real life change is slow and incremental in nature. To become a more effective planner you need to become a better listener and focus on building bridges to allow for real collaboration. 

How do you think COVID 19 will shape/change your job/food systems?

It has been interesting to see how the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred interest in mapping regional food systems. In the ten years I have been involved in food systems, I have never seen so many webinars discussing ways to map community food assets. However, most of these efforts will fall short if there is no concrete goal behind the mapping exercise. The end goal should not be to produce a cool map, but to develop an analysis tool to help food systems practitioners identify trends and patterns in the data. 

 Moreover, by exacerbating the inequities and brokenness of the current food system, the pandemic has also opened opportunities to discuss alternatives to the status quo. Every crisis is an opportunity. Elected officials and other stakeholders might now be more open to addressing food deserts and identifying ways to increase local food production. 

*Some portions edited for length.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Vincenzo Ferriola

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Name: Vincenzo Ferriola

Current Position: APA Food System’s Division’s Student Representative

Vincenzo Ferriola

Vincenzo Ferriola is a Master’s Student in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Vincenzo has received their Bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Rowan University. Vincenzo is currently interning with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation to support Growing from the Root: Philadelphia’s Urban Agriculture Plan. Vincenzo has previously worked with Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative to co-manage a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in West Philadelphia and curate workshops in agroecological growing practices for high school students. Vincenzo is committed to improving food sovereignty and increasing local food production with underserved populations.

What do you enjoy about your work? Being that this is my first position with a city agency and one of my first professional positions, I am finding that the work that I am doing can impact an entire population of around 1.5 million people. My previous positions have been at much smaller scales and I am now understanding the power dynamics between the government and the residents of Philadelphia.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? This position has challenged me to think critically, keeping an open mind. For example, while I might advocate for a fruit tree to be planted in the public right of way (such as a sidewalk or traffic median), there are many people who don’t have the same desire. Instead of making decisions too quickly, which might retrace some of the problematic and racist planning practices of history, we should be intentional and deliberate, hearing and uplifting voices that need to be heard. That is what I envision a more successful planning process might look like.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work, and where does that fit in with the rest of the work that you do? I am quite new to the food systems planning world, although agriculture has been a part of my upbringing and continues to motivate me. The Master’s program requires students to choose a concentration that best fits one’s professional goals. I resonated the most with the community economic development concentration as my personal and professional motivations are grounded in community visualized and realized processes.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? While I am still new to this profession, I am constantly learning and unlearning, growing and pruning old branches. I do consider myself a budding food systems planner. Food is something we all need. Fresh, locally grown, culturally significant food is something we need even more. I’d like to be able to provide (at least some of) the resources to make this possible for the many communities that make up Philadelphia. This requires a holistic approach to understand and appreciate not only a place, but also the people and the unique cultures that make it so enriching.

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with? Even though I am new to Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, I am aware that there is a complicated and lengthy process to attain land rights for urban farming. Agriculture is not legally seen as a land use in Philadelphia, which makes land sovereignty and ultimately self-sufficiency unattainable. When land is seemingly bought so quickly by developers, it is unjust that agriculture does not receive the same support. This is a racial inequity, currently and historically, as black and brown growers are more adversely impacted by discriminatory land use laws. This makes me eager to learn more about land use laws, land tenure, and zoning, to learn how I can best advocate for people who need the most support.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? Quite honestly, I did not know what food systems planning was a year ago. I’ve worked on an urban farm in West Philly, but it wasn’t until taking a graduate course in Metropolitan Food Systems Planning with Domenic Vitiello that I fully (or at least more fully) understood the workings and dynamics of this field. Food systems planning is not uni-dimensional. There is no one position that precisely fits the description of a food systems planner.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? I owe an incalculable amount of respect to Philadelphia’s Director of Urban Agriculture, Ash Richards. They have been my role model since their appointment to this position. Ash’s practice embodies intentionality and consensus building, which is what I strive to incorporate as a new professional in the planning field. They aim to uplift voices who have traditionally been left out and concretely emphasize racial justice. I cannot thank them enough for giving me the opportunity to learn under them.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning-related work? Planning should be a reflective practice. Haste might produce more, but does not mean it’s a superior outcome. I believe it’s imperative to be thoughtful and deliberate, to fully ground decisions in what is needed for the people who need it. To understand the outcomes and potential consequences of decisions. To practice empathy, sympathy at the least.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school?  I made the decision to attend planning school immediately after graduating from undergrad, which put me at a different place professionally from the majority of my peers. Rather than seeing this as a deficit, I turned it into an opportunity to learn not only from my professors, but also from my cohort. There is less of a formula in planning than there is in civil engineering, both in learning (and unlearning) and in practicing. I found myself initially seeking the one path that led to the final product. But, planning is not just about a product, in my opinion, it’s about the process.

How do you think COVID 19 will shape/change your job/food systems? Being that I started my current position during COVID-19, I have acclimated myself to a work-from-home mode. This has been a bit of a challenge to connect with coworkers on a more personal level, although I’m hoping for in-person, socially distanced meetings in the future.

COVID-19 really started to impact Philadelphia mid-March into April. Grocery stores with 45+ minute waits and empty shelves were alarming and anxiety inducing. I looked to farm shares and found the majority to have wait lists. As the supply and demand leveled out over the past few months, grocery stores have been able to restock most of their products, especially the products in high demand. I hope this pandemic strengthens the case for localized food production with an increased need for urban agriculture.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Molly Riordan

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Name: Molly Riordan

Current Position: Good Food Purchasing Coordinator, City of Philadelphia

Molly Riordan in greenhouse
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Molly is currently the Good Food Purchasing Coordinator at the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health Division of Chronic Disease & Injury Prevention. She is responsible for helping implement the City’s Nutrition Standards and increase the amount of local, sustainably-grown, fairly-produced food the City purchases for its food programs at its prisons, summer and after school programs, homeless shelters, and other congregate settings. Beyond purchasing, her work includes policy and program development to support a good food economy in Philadelphia.

Molly earned her Master’s in Regional Planning from Cornell University, and has worked at the intersection of agriculture and economic development through several nonprofits and academic roles. She was a lead author of The Promise of Urban Agriculture, a national study of commercial farming in urban areas, and of Good Eats, an assessment of the Philadelphia food economy’s potential to support health, equity, and economic growth.

What do you enjoy about your work? I get to explore new ideas about what a good food future looks like, and figure out ways to make it happen. The “how” is always more complicated, but working within the confines of a public agency makes me stretch my creative muscles to figure out new ways to achieve that future.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? One of the most challenging parts of my work at the City is raising the profile of food as a priority area. Food system planners know that food cuts across so many other priority areas for city leaders: land use, housing, small business development, large business attraction, health, waste reduction, gardening & farming, education, climate resilience and adaptation, and on and on. But governments don’t often look at systems: they look at specific issues and how to solve the problem at hand. It’s hard to keep people’s attention long enough to explain what “good food” means, let alone get them to envision the multi-pronged approach to realizing a good food economy.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work, and where does that fit in with the rest of the work that you do? The core of my work is focused on food programs funded via public dollars, but to change that food I engage distributors, manufacturers, and restaurants. That means my work is wide-ranging: I work with distributors to develop reporting metrics to find out what percent of City food comes from regional sources; I work with the Drexel Food Lab to engage manufacturers in producing lower-sodium foods that meet good food criteria. I work with groups engaged in urban agriculture and waste reduction to create intersections and synergies that support our vision for a good food future. My work is seeing those synergies through, and every day is different.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? I do consider myself a food systems planner, because while I’m not focused on land use policy or economic development, my work hinges on understanding interrelationships across the food system and developing policy and program recommendations that can advance positive change in one area without having negative consequences in another area. The “plans” may not look like what most planners think of when they think “plan,” but the functions are the same.

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with? Philadelphia has a deep history of urban agriculture, primarily through the work of people of color and especially Black farmers and gardeners. And while the City made some concessions to urban agriculture and ran some of its own programming, there was no plan in place to support growers in securing land and resources to continue to farm. Through a multi-year effort led by urban agriculture advocates and supported by City leaders, staff, and elected officials, we finally got the funding to hire an Urban Agriculture Director who is leading the process of developing an urban ag plan for Philadelphia. It is a strong process rooted in community engagement and undoing white supremacy, and it would not have been possible if that urban agriculture community had not worked together for years to make it happen.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? It is a lot more varied than what I had originally envisioned, where you are either the Food Policy Director of a city or working for a handful of consulting firms. There are so many ways to work in this field that, on their face, have nothing to do with planning, but in which a planning background truly sets a person apart.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? Susan Christopherson was my advisor at Cornell and initially woke me up to regional economic development through cluster activities. Becca Jablonski was earning her PhD at Cornell at the same time, and I had the opportunity to work with her on an economic impact assessment of a regional food hub that laid the foundation for the creation of the Local Food Impact Calculator. Working with Becca set me on my path to understanding the potential for regional food distribution as a means of wealth creation in rural areas, and her work continues to inspire me and guide my upstream approach to food systems change.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning-related work? Talk to as many people doing the work you think you’re interested in as you can, and ask them questions. Also, see if they have any jobs available. I did not intern or work in the planning field before entering graduate school, and I think I would have asked more or different questions if I had. Asking others for their expertise—and everyone has expertise—is the primary thing that I learned from planning and what has helped me in my work. You can’t change things through sheer will or good ideas; you have to engage others’ expertise so that together you can come to a better solution than any single person alone could design.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school?  How much of the most valuable learning happens outside of the classroom. I worked two part-time jobs while I was in grad school, so I did not have as much time as my classmates for volunteer work weekends or studios that took us off campus for several days at a time. I couldn’t have done much differently from a financial standpoint, but maybe I could have restructured some things to take full advantage of that off-campus learning.

How do you think COVID 19 will shape/change your job/food systems? When COVID-19 hit, it was like everyone who had ever eaten a meal was all of a sudden an expert in the food supply chain and emergency food provision. And while it was tough at first to bring other staff up to speed on what is and is not possible or ideal in that emergency moment, it did make food a priority in a way that it hadn’t been before. And then George Floyd’s murder and the protests for racial justice opened everyone’s eyes to the fact that inequitable food access is a consequence of systemic and institutional racism in the United States. The dual fights to end white supremacy and end food insecurity intersect in food systems planning, and I hope that we can finally use our tools to reshape a future that is better for all of us.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Ross Daniels

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Name: Ross Daniels

Current Position: Community Planner and Policy Analyst at the Public Health Law Center, and based in St. Paul, MN

Ross Daniels
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Ross works at the intersection of public health and the built environment, improving both via food systems, trails, parks, sidewalks, and bike paths. His work includes development of research, trainings, and toolkits for funders and partners in these areas, and assists in drafting ordinances, resolutions, and memoranda of understanding to incorporate projects into official local policy. Prior to the Public Health Law Center, Ross held a planning position in Nashville, TN, and earned a dual masters in Urban & Regional Planning and Public Health from University of Wisconsin Madison.

This interview was conducted via email by Molly Riordan in June 2020, member of the Food Systems Division Executive Committee.

What do you enjoy about your work? I don’t think that urban planners traditionally get to think about the types of things that I get to think about on a day-to-day basis. I get to think about how infrastructure and community development can shape public health and address public health issues.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? My profession has its roots in public health, and I think for decades we lost sight of that. Because of that, we don’t have a very robust evidence base or menu of best practices on how to solve some of the most pressing health issues of today through planning. When I’m working with a community on how to improve physical health through a built environment intervention, or how to close health disparity gaps, often there are few examples to draw from and replicate.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work, and where does that fit in with the rest of the work that you do? I tend to focus on food production (e.g., urban growth boundaries and conservation zoning) and markets. With respect to the latter, I explore how land use and zoning tools can be leveraged to promote access to food via mixed-use development, incentive zoning, planned unit developments, and other methods that push back against the Euclidean type of zoning model we’ve been accustomed to for decades.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? I provide technical assistance on how planning can help create a better and more equitable food system, but I have not done the planning myself. When it comes to food systems, I’m more of a policy analyst than a planner, evaluating what planners are doing to improve everything from cultivation to consumption.

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with? COVID-19 has really challenged the way we’ve been going about things from a food systems perspective. One of my organization’s ongoing projects is the Healthy Food Policy Project, which captures municipal government policies designed to promote good and resilient food systems. When the pandemic hit, the supply chain faced some stresses, workers from cultivation through sales were put at risk of infection, food service establishments shuttered at least temporarily, and people lost their jobs. Suddenly our work had this added dimension of how municipalities could simply keep people fed. Right now, we as planners are in this uncertain space where we don’t really know what cities are going to look like in the future, and how food systems will play into it.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? Speaking with people in food systems, I have begun to understand more about how the layers of regulations—economic, environmental, and so on—affected growers. These policies are often written with large, industrial farms in mind, but in many cases they apply across the board, even for smaller scale farms or urban growers. Because food policies have been implemented piecemeal over the years and across many agencies that don’t talk to one another, it is extremely difficult to promote and advocate for new and different models of agriculture.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? If more people had listened to Jane Jacobs, planning might not have created and perpetuated so many racial and socioeconomic inequities.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning-related work? We are living in a moment where racial inequities have been laid bare. Look at how food systems have mapped onto health disparities across racial lines, and think about how to undo the cycles of poverty and illness to which our profession has contributed. Think creatively, too. Think about what you know about, say, TIF districts or overlay districts or TDR programs. Chances are you learned about these ideas in the context of housing or economic development, but you can apply them to food access as well. You don’t always have to completely invent brand new strategies when you’re trying to improve your local food system.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school?  I went into planning school thinking about land use mainly, and to be honest knowing its hold in transportation, economic development, food systems, and so many other spaces. I went through a cycle of thinking I was going to do everything. One day I was going to be a transportation planner, the next I was going to do NEPA, and so forth.

How do you think COVID 19 will shape/change your job/food systems? When this is all over, we are going to see brick-and-mortar retail shuttered permanently and office buildings abandoned. We are going to see commuting patterns change, particularly as work-from-home becomes the norm for much of our white-collar workforce. We might see a reaction against density. These are going to have massive ramifications to the physical landscape, and it is my hope that this will get us to think about how our transportation system can get people to food and vice versa, and how we can use our newly open spaces for more opportunities to cultivate food and provide it to people.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Marcia Caton Campbell

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MCatonCampbell.jpgMarcia Caton Campbell is the executive director of the Center for Resilient Cities (CRC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Madison, WI. CRC’s work pulls together many “systems” of a neighborhood: how we build community, how we feed ourselves, how we educate our children, how we produce energy and manage natural resources, how we create jobs, and how we design buildings and reclaim our neighborhood spaces. Marcia has close to 20 years of experience in community-based planning and food systems planning, research, and practice. Prior to joining CRC in 2006, Marcia taught urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in food systems planning, community-based planning, and environmental conflict resolution. Her research, teaching, and publications focused on consensus building and community-based planning with diverse publics, and multi-stakeholder conflict resolution. She is a member of the American Planning Association’s Food Interest Group Leadership Committee and serves on the City of Milwaukee’s Green Team, coauthoring ReFresh Milwaukee’s food systems chapter. She is co-author of Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy Sustainable Places and Principles of a Healthy, Sustainable Food System.

This interview was conducted via email in March 2017 by Kimberley Hodgson of Cultivating Healthy Places, and chair of APA-FIG.

What do you enjoy about your work? Although my entire career has been grounded in consistent themes of equity, social justice, collaboration and progressivism, what I enjoy the most about the work is that no two days are exactly alike. I am never bored – and I never tire of learning about what other food systems planners are doing and how I can bring their work to bear upon my own.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? The current national political climate is increasingly challenging for food systems work. It’s a climate we’ve been living with in Wisconsin for a while now. There’s a short-sightedness and lack of vision at the higher levels of elected office about the multifaceted nature of food systems planning – and how advances in our field translate into advances in neighborhood and community resilience, local and regional economies, public health, you name it. Food systems planning can serve a bridging function across political and economic spectrums, because everybody wants and needs to eat, healthfully, economically and, increasingly, sustainably.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work? My organization’s mission is to cultivate healthy, resilient people in healthy, resilient places. Our work is place-based, with community vision leading the way. In our current work, we operate the Badger Rock Center, a collaborative project in Madison, WI, that involves a neighborhood center, a public charter middle school with an urban agriculture curriculum, and a variety of food system-related activities (urban agricultural production, commercial kitchen, winter farmers market). We have been involved in local food policy work in both Madison and Milwaukee, and hold community gardens in trust in Madison.

In the work that you perform, where does addressing food systems issues fit in? How has this changed over time? I’ve worked on many aspects of the food system in planning over my career, from theory-building scholarship to professional practice, from site-specific urban agriculture projects to citywide food policy. What’s compelling to me right now from a planning perspective is cracking large institutional procurement and food supply chain issues, and developing food policy that leads to more resilient local and regional food systems. And, I want to see food justice achieved in the global North and South, though I recognize that the best role I might play in supporting that work may well be one of “stepping up to step back.”

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Absolutely.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? Well, food systems planning didn’t exist when I first entered the planning field in the early 1980s. I was lucky to have been in the right place at the right time: to participate in the field’s early development in the late 1990s, and to continue working in food systems planning throughout my career. These days, I no longer have to explain – in certain circles, anyway – what a food systems planner does, thanks to the growing interest on the part of the general public in sustainability and resilience.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? Dale Bertsch and Ken Pearlman, my planning professors at Ohio State, played a pivotal role in shaping my early interests and progressivism. I benefitted from working with them for many years, first as a master’s student, then as managing editor of the Journal of Planning Literature, and finally as a doctoral student. Tim Beatley’s thoughtful engagement and support of my work has been a great help over my entire career, dating back to my time at the Journal. I think I own every book Beatley has ever published.

But without question, Jerry Kaufman has had the deepest, most profound influence on me as an urban planner and food systems planner. I was so incredibly fortunate to become Jerry’s colleague as food systems planning was in its infancy. We worked together for close to a decade at the UW—Madison on research projects, scholarship, and professional practice issues — and then for the rest of his life, as close friends and colleagues on the Growing Power board of directors and as members of APA-FIG. Every professional conversation we had touched upon the food system. Many of the personal conversations did too.

My enthusiasm for food systems planning continues to be fed by the second and third generations of food systems planners, in the breadth, depth and richness of their food systems work. I think of Samina Raja and Kimberley Hodgson especially – and too many others to name! I have a front row seat for a lot of this, in my capacity as a member of APA-FIG’s leadership team.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning related work? Food systems planning is both a stand-alone area of intensive focus and work, and interdisciplinary and connected to every other subfield of planning. To be successful, you need to be grounded traditional planning skills: systems thinking combined with attention to detail, time and project management, data collection and analysis leading to evidence-based recommendation. But you also need the softer skills of negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution; collaboration, especially in cross-sectoral partnerships; the ability to recognize your own inherent privilege and associated biases; and above all, the ability to listen to what others have to say.

 What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school? That there’s lots of room for outside-the-box and creative thinking. I wish I had thirty more years of food systems planning ahead of me – I think it’s the most exciting work to do as a planner.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Kimberley Hodgson

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KHodgson_2013Apr.jpgKimberley Hodgson, MURP, MS, AICP, RD is the principal and founder of Cultivating Healthy Places, an international consulting business based in Vancouver, BC that specializes in community health, social equity, and resilient food systems planning. Before launching her business in 2012, she worked for the American Planning Association in Washington, DC as a senior research associate and manager of the Planning and Community Health Center. As a certified planner and health professional, her work focuses on conducting policy-relevant research and providing technical assistance on the design and development of healthy, sustainable places. She is a co-investigator of Growing Food Connections, a national project to build local government capacity to strengthen community food systems. She chairs the American Planning Association’s Food Systems Planning Interest Group and serves on the Vancouver Food Policy Council. She is the author of Planning for Food Access and Community-Based Food Systems, co-author of Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy Sustainable Places and co-author of the Principles of a Healthy, Sustainable Food System.

This interview was conducted via email in March 2017 by Marcia Caton Campbell of the Center for Resilient Cities, and member of the APA-FIG Leadership Committee.

What do you enjoy about your work? I love the variety of work I get to do. As a consultant, I work with a diversity of clients (from developers and municipal governments to large non-profits like universities) on a range of projects (policy identification and analysis, policy-relevant research and evaluation, etc.). My work spans the health, food systems, and planning fields. I never get bored.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? As a trained and certified urban planner and health professional, I sometimes feel that I don’t fit anywhere. I occupy a space in between fields. However, this dual background provides a unique perspective. I am able to navigate between the public health and planning fields.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work? My work focuses on the entire food system – from production to waste management, more specifically how urban and regional planners can plan for healthy, sustainable food systems and the role of plans and policies in strengthening local food systems.

In the work that you perform, where does addressing food systems issues fit in? How has this changed over time? Before becoming a planner, my work focused on nutrition and food access. While a dietetic intern in New York City, I was exposed to health and food access inequities faced by low-income residents. Many of my clients did not have a grocery store in their neighborhood or had to travel long distances to access healthy, affordable foods. This experience sparked my interest in urban planning. While nutrition education is important, I realized I was more interested in how the built and natural environments impact a person’s health behavior. Although my path was not linear, I ended up pursuing a second master’s degree in urban and regional planning. This degree allowed me to think about specific health inequities in different ways, about how an individual’s neighborhood can support or inhibit health and well-being.

My career in food systems planning initially focused on food access and equity, but the more work I did in the field, the more I realized that food access is a systems problem. A problem that is greatly impacted by how and what type of food is produced, how it is aggregated, distributed and processed, etc. Urban planners are trained to think in systems – how everything is connected to everything else. My work with the American Planning Association taught me that the food system is connected to other urban food systems – land use, transportation, solid waste, housing, air and water, and more. It is not an isolated system and shouldn’t be treated in isolation.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? I consider myself an urban planner with a specialization in community health planning and food systems planning.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? For the past decade, my perception of food systems planning has evolved. I have been very fortunate to lead national research studies that have identified and explored how local governments and planners are planning for healthy, sustainable food systems. These studies have shaped my perception of the field and expanded how I view food systems planning.

Additionally, I have served as a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council (VFPC) since 2012. This all volunteer civic advisory committee has helped me to experience the challenges residents and community groups face in affecting policy changes.

Who (or what) has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? I have been very fortunate to work with brilliant people throughout my career as a planner. Several people have had a huge impact on my work: Joseph Schilling, Jerry Kaufman, Samina Raja, Marcia Caton Campbell, Kami Pothukuchi, Nisha Botchwey, Bill Klein. Each of these people have mentored me at one point in time and taught me about the importance of community engagement, equity and sustainability within food systems planning.

My life experiences have also had a tremendous influence on me as a planner. I am passionate about food systems equity and justice work, in part because I grew up in a low-income family and was a recipient of free and reduced priced lunches and food stamps. I have first-hand knowledge of food insecurity.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning related work? A degree in urban planning is essential. While my background in food policy and nutrition has helped me in my career, my urban planning degree has allowed be to think about the bigger picture: how land use, transportation, solid waste, housing, development, and other decisions made by municipalities and counties influence the food system. How everything is connected. My urban planning degree has also provided me with a robust understanding of local government policy. That said, many universities offer a food system course. These courses, whether or not they are housed in planning, offer a chance to explore food system issues.

Traveling and living in a number of different places has exposed me to a number of urban planning and food systems issues. I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, TX, lived and worked in New York City; Paris, France; Boston, MA; Blacksburg/Roanoke, VA; Alexandria, VA; Washington, DC; and Vancouver, BC.

In terms of consulting, skills in time, budget, and project management are essential. I was fortunate to learn them in a previous job. Without them consulting would be daunting.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school? One thing planning school doesn’t teach you is to think “outside the box” in terms of jobs and career possibilities. Being a public sector planner or working for a private firm are not the only job positions available to planners. I have met so many “undercover” planners working in various non-planning jobs and doing amazing food systems work.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Megan Bucknum

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MB.JPGMegan Bucknum is ¾ faculty with the Department of Geography, Planning and Sustainability at Rowan University in New Jersey where she currently teaches planning courses, including food systems planning. As a consultant, she has worked on food projects throughout the country and has held staff positions at New Venture Advisors LLC, Philly CowShare, The Food Trust, Fair Food Philadelphia and the Wallace Center at Winrock International, as well as assisting with the University of Vermont’s inaugural Food Hub Management Certificate course. She has been a contributing author to a the planning guide Building Successful Food Hubs, the Healthy Food in Small Stores report, and the book “Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement is Changing the Way We Eat.” Megan serves as a board member for the Share Food Program in Philadelphia, and is a member of the APA-FIG Leadership Committee.

This interview was conducted via email in March 2017 by Laine Cidlowski, member of the APA-FIG Leadership Committee.

What is your current position? Part-time Faculty at Rowan University (NJ) + Independent Consultant

How long have you held this position? Just over 3 years, with different degrees of teaching/consulting split

What do you enjoy about your work? Listening to and learning from people’s agrarian experiences. The majority of my consulting work has been conducting primary research, mostly through interviews, and facilitating public meetings. Through this work, I have been able to talk with and meet people from across the food supply chain in the quest to find where there are barriers and opportunities to increase the amount of regional food available within an area. The great part about splitting my time between consulting and teaching is that I get to help spread the stories of food producers to the next generation.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? This field has a lot of turnover, mostly due to the predominance of grant-funded positions within the subject area. I feel that it can be hard for projects and initiatives to create projects based on institutional knowledge because of staff turnover. Additionally, I think improvement can be made to try to connect various efforts within the good food movement to ensure that projects are not recreating the wheel.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work? While my career focus has been varied, the majority of my work (and interest) has been in regional food distribution and procurement, specifically integrating regionally produced food into conventional distribution routes. While this focus is very distinct, achievement of this goal will have wide benefits for both producers and consumers of regional food.

In the work that you perform, where does addressing food systems issues fit in? How has this changed over time? Addressing the food system has always been the core of the jobs that I have held.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? Building upon my previous answer, I have always sought after jobs that are completely food systems related. Because of this I have held a lot of nontraditional planning jobs and have often referred to myself as a “quasi planner.” I always preface my Introduction to Planning courses by mentioning how I am a planner, but a bit of a weird one.

The majority of the food-related jobs and projects on which I have worked may not seem fully planning related on the surface, like conducting a food hub feasibility study. However successfully implementing food systems projects requires working on more traditional planning related tasks, like farmland conservation, economic development incentive packages and making sure there are adequate accessible commercial properties available.

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with? In my opinion, over (or premature) investment in infrastructure is a hurdle to food systems projects. While it may be look great for a food systems related project to have a large warehouse, or for a municipality to have been able to offer subsidization for that project, if the business model is not secure, this project will likely not be viewed as a success for long.

An alternative is to have municipalities assist in the business development phase of a food-based project by leveraging a collaborative planning approach. This technique can help qualify and quantify regional food supply and demand as well as make connections that could be used for infrastructure sharing.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? The more time I spend in this field, the more I favor public-private partnerships to implement food systems projects, especially those associated with regional food supply chain development. Because the market is still developing for source-identified foods, some financial assistance may be necessary to jump start programs, projects and businesses. I have seen more success in projects that have forged a public-private partnership to secure some of this assistance than projects that are fully grant funded.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? My graduate advisor at the University of Virginia Tanya Denckla Cobb. Not only did she deepen my understanding of the food system in general, but she taught me the most valuable tool to any project and community development: facilitation. Drawing from her experience as a trained mediator and facilitator, she taught me how to conduct a successful interview, facilitate a meeting and design a project plan that allows for public inclusion in a meaningful way. Lastly, she taught me to ask people, “if you had a magic wand, what would you do?” I cannot tell you the wealth of information I have unearthed by asking this question…right after the interviewee asks if I’m serious.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning related work? Work in this field before you consider any academic training, even undergraduate education! Yes, this is coming from someone who teaches at a university and teaches a food systems planning course. Because this field is so specific, I think people really need to be sure that they want to focus on this before they make the financial commitment to a traditional education experience. If you are interested in working in the food system, start at the source: the farm. Apprentice on a farm and consider a Food Systems 101 class; feel free to email me and I’ll send you a list of readings to accompany your work experience.

The skill I use most in my food systems work that has allowed me to successfully contribute to projects is listening. Truly listening to people, not just hearing them, will reveal both hurdles — as well as their possible solutions — in our food system. People experiencing a problem have often thought about a solution. Try asking them about their ideas.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school? A little bit more about the discipline! I embarrassingly did not know a lot about this field, I had to look up who Jane Jacobs way the first week of classes.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Amanda Wagner

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WagnerAmanda Wagner is the Nutrition and Physical Activity Program Manager for Get Healthy Philly, a program of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, working with stakeholders across the city to help Philadelphians eat healthy and be active.

Laura An, a planning intern at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission and a graduate student of planning at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted this interview in October 2015.

What is your first and last name? Amanda Wagner

What is your current position? Nutrition and Physical Activity Program Manager – Get Healthy Philly – Philadelphia Department of Public Health

How long have you held this position? Since January 2014. Prior to this position I was the Food Policy Coordinator with Get Healthy Philly since 2010.

What do you enjoy about your work? I enjoy working across departments and sectors; looking into “policy, systems, and environmental” change opportunities; and making connections between individual, environmental, and public health.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? Identifying leverage points to make things happen at scale; balancing implementing initiatives and taking time to measure/assess outcomes and make tweaks as necessary; navigating bureaucracy, funding, and capacity.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work, and where does that fit in with the rest of the work that you do? Consumption and food retail including healthy food access in communities (corner stores, Chinese takeout, farmers’ markets, SNAP incentives, etc), institutional food procurement (city departments, hospitals, food programs); food access initiatives (including coordinating with Food Access Collaborative, City shelters, and feeding programs such as summer, afterschool, school lunch and breakfast). I am also starting to do more work with production. We received a recent grant on health impacts of urban gardening and greening on brownfields. I also work on integrating health (including healthy food access) into planning and zoning; and looking at opportunities to partner more with manufacturing, distribution, and food waste recovery.  

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? Yes and no. I think of myself as a planner whose work includes food system issues, but I also do a lot of implementation and policy work, and integrating with other health issues such as active design, physical activity and health equity.  I do oversee a “Healthy Communities Planner” who is integrating health into planning and zoning, and we do create and implement strategic plans that involve food system issues.  

What is the biggest food systems planning-related hurdle your community/organization faced in recent years and how was it dealt with? Identifying ways to address deep rooted poverty in Philadelphia, while making a livable wage for farmers in agriculturally-steeped region and workers throughout the food-chain. An ongoing process to be addressed that also involved building on the community, non-profit, and academic capital we also have on hand.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? It needs to be married to economic realities and policy/implementation.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? Alison Hastings has had a tremendous impact on me! She was my first supervisor after planning school and working on food system planning.  She demonstrates the effectiveness of bringing together planners with other stakeholders, and using planning tools and data to move projects forward. I was also influenced by a trio of professors at Penn’s Planning school – Tom Daniels (farmland preservation), Domenic Vitiello (urban agriculture and food justice), and Amy Hillier (food and health).

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What makes you successful in your work? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning-related work? Knowing GIS and spatial analysis is helpful everywhere, also use skills in projection, stakeholder convening, good PPT design, bridging spatial and other factors together.

What do you wish you would have known before going to planning school? Carefully think about compensation and student loan debt!  And get a good combination of hard and soft skills in your coursework.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. Click here for more information. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Andrea Petzel

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APetzel.jpgAndrea Petzel, AICP, is the principal of Broadview Planning, a women-owned consulting firm specializing in community planning and public engagement. Before founding Broadview Planning in 2014, Andrea was a project manager and senior urban planner for the City of Seattle. During her time at the City of Seattle, Andrea led the legislative process for the city’s Urban Agriculture Ordinance, one of the nation’s first comprehensive urban agriculture ordinances aimed at removing barriers to growing and producing local food. In 2016, Andrea made the shift from policy to practice by starting her own backyard urban farm, Alouette Acres.

Andrea serves on APA-FIG’s Leadership Committee and was interviewed by Valerie Pacino on February 28, 2017.

How long have you been in this position? I founded Broadview Planning three years ago after leaving a position with the City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment. While I was at the City of Seattle, I was lucky to work on a wide range of policy projects, from food systems and health impact assessments to energy efficiency and workforce development. When I left, I was eager to find a new opportunity to continue to work on a wide range of policy and public process projects. I quickly realized consulting was the best fit for my skills and interests, and so I created that role for myself by starting my own firm.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? No, I consider myself a traditional land use planner, but I seek out projects at the nexus of health, sustainability, and the built environment. I’ve been really lucky to work on some exciting food systems work, but I wouldn’t say I’m a food systems planner.

How did you get involved in food systems planning? Through my work on the City of Seattle’s Urban Agriculture ordinance, the goal of which was to reduce code barriers to growing and selling food in city. Through the policy development process, I was introduced to a great network of food systems planners, academics, urban farmers, and non-profit organizations all working towards a shared goal of increasing access to local grown, healthy food. It was a really exciting project, because at the time no other city had legislated a comprehensive approach to allowing urban agriculture in the city. It was thrilling to lead such a creative and collaborative policy development process that laid the groundwork for a much larger conversation about health and planning at the City of Seattle. The success of the Urban Agriculture ordinance led us to pursing federal funding to develop Seattle’s Healthy Living Assessment (HLA), a framework to assess health impacts at the neighborhood level. We worked to create clear, measurable metrics to assess community health at the neighborhood level using data that was easy to access, and readily used by community members in order to track progress toward health outcomes. The project was awarded a 2013 National Planning Achievement Award for a Best Practice from APA.

What do you enjoy about your work? The range of projects I get to work on brings me joy, and I thrive on bringing a health and food systems perspective to new clients and projects. I also love learning new things and thinking through new ideas, so I launched my own urban farm endeavor, and watching how policy translates into the real-life practice of growing and selling food is fascinating.

What do you find challenging about your work? Definitely getting people to make the link between food systems and the built environment. Also getting policy makers to embrace genuine community engagement in order to understand the very real challenges of people doing the work they’re trying to legislate.

Any advice to people who want to work in food systems planning? I believe a solid grounding in traditional land use planning is essential. Find a network of people doing the work you’re interested in and engage with them however you can – be curious, persistent, and helpful. Join APA-FIG! Also, find out what’s happen in your community and get involved with local projects.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.

Faces of Food Systems Planning: Ben Kerrick

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Ben Kerrick head shotBen Kerrick has been a consultant with Karen Karp & Partners in New York City for nearly three years. Ben has a wide range of life experiences and technical expertise, all of which he brings to bear on his work as a food systems planner. With nationally renowned food system consultant Karen Karp, Ben co-hosted the 2015 Heritage Radio Network podcast series, How Great Cities Are Fed. Inspired by W.P. Hedden’s 1929 book of the same name, Karen and Ben examine food systems in historical and contemporary terms through topics such as refrigeration, foodsheds, transportation, and “the middlemen.” Karen and Ben are joined by guest experts and friends from the food sector as they delve into the issues and hidden workings of how our great cities are fed.

This interview was conducted via email on July 5, 2016, and was edited by Marcia Caton Campbell. She highly recommends binge listening to How Great Cities are Fed on your favorite podcast subscription service.

What do you enjoy about your work? We work all across the food chain, and as consultants our work is project-based, so there’s a tremendous variety and dynamism to the work – no two days are the same. So far this year my work has included designing a kitchen and café program for a social services non-profit, assessing a food bank supply chain, developing a concept for a new food education hub in a small town, and researching feasibility and market demand for a new slaughterhouse in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. So it’s really engaging, and we often get to see the way our work impacts organizations and people in tangible ways. I also get to make maps and other data visuals fairly often, which I get a big kick out of. And, you know, I love to eat, so I feel pretty lucky that I get to talk and think about food every day.

My background is in the arts – I have a degree in theater, and I spent five years working for a New York City arts non-profit – so I also enjoy being able to draw on that experience whenever I can, whether in our event design projects, or by engaging with artists and designers whose work deals with issues of food, agriculture, and sustainability.

Similarly, what do you find challenging about your work? There’s so much to learn. Food systems are so complex – I sometimes feel overwhelmed by how much I don’t know. But that’s also what keeps it exciting and interesting, and I learn something new every day and with every project. I ask a lot of questions.

Another challenging and engaging dimension of food systems work is that food is so fundamental to daily life – we all eat, everyday – so people have strong personal feelings and opinions about food, and the stakes often feel high. But that also convinces me that this work matters. And it’s rewarding when you can work with a diverse group of stakeholders to find some new solution to a gap in the food system.

What areas of the food system do you focus on in your work? As I mentioned, we work all along the food chain. I’m the only one trained as a planner on staff, so I do tend to work on the more “planner-y” projects – community or regional food assessments, economic development through food business, things like that. I’ve also done food access-oriented work with food banks and social services organizations. We do event design and facilitation for food-related events (such as the James Beard Foundation Food Conference), and with my background in theater and the arts, I work on those as well. Others in our company focus on different areas, like culinary education, supply chain analysis, and program design and evaluation (though much of my work touches those things too).

In the work that you perform, where does addressing food systems issues fit in? How has this changed over time? I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most or all of the work I do addresses food systems issues. It just depends on the lens you’re using, and how explicit it is. Sometimes it’s a community saying, “Research and assess our food system, identify issues and needs, and help us find opportunities for improving it.” Other times it’s an independent entity like a non-profit or business doing something that touches food, and we’re working on some narrow component of it – but even in that case, the first thing we do is always to contextualize that program within the larger food system.

Do you consider yourself a food systems planner? Why or why not? Absolutely. All of my work relates to food systems planning in some way.

How has your perception of food systems planning changed since you first entered the planning field? I came to the broader field of planning by way of food systems planning – not vice versa. I went to graduate school knowing I wanted to study food systems, and did dual Master’s degrees in Environmental Science and City & Regional Planning. So I entered the urban planning world sort of thinking everyone else would be as excited about food systems as I am, which needless to say wasn’t exactly the case. But I was lucky that there were some great food systems-oriented opportunities in my planning program, and I’ve been very lucky to continue that trajectory into my current work.

But I think food systems planning is still kind of a blip in the larger world of planning. In most contexts, when I’m talking to someone new, I have to explain what food systems planning is – the phrase alone usually elicits blank stares. I go to a monthly happy hour with LGBT urban planners, and even people I meet there – practicing urban planners! – don’t usually know about food systems planning as a field and discipline. I experience the same thing at the APA conference. That all being said, I do think there’s more and more food systems planning happening out there, and I think it will continue to grow.

Who has had the most influence on you as a planner? As a food systems planner? Dr. Casey Hoy was my advisor at Ohio State University – and after I graduated I managed the Agroecosystems Management Program that he directs. He really instilled in me a willingness to not shy away from areas of daunting complexity in food systems research, and a deep commitment to robust, rigorous data analysis – and the ability to communicate that analysis clearly and effectively. Casey is great at getting a diverse group of stakeholders to the table and “translating” between the different languages that, say, farmers, academics, policymakers, and businesspeople use. That skill is crucial to successful food systems work, and I try to get better at it with every project. If the people you bring to the table all speak the same language, you’re probably not trying hard enough to get diverse voices into the conversation.

And now I have the pleasure of working with an outstanding staff at KK&P – we all bring something different to the table and I learn from each of them every day. Karen Karp has been doing this work for over 25 years, so she was really early on the scene of food systems work (though I’m not sure that phrase would have been used then). My background is firmly in the non-profit/public service/academic world, whereas Karen came to this work through restaurant and business consulting. So working with Karen has really broadened my knowledge and toolkit in terms of working with food businesses and entrepreneurs to create a more resilient food system. Karen, like Casey, is also a really skilled facilitator of diverse stakeholder groups, so I learn a lot from her in how she approaches those conversations.

Do you have any advice for someone entering the food systems planning field? What skills do you use the most in your food systems planning related work? I think effective food systems planners need to be both generalists and specialists. So I would advise an aspiring food systems planner to get exposure to as much of the food system as possible – agriculture, processing, distribution, retail, institutional feeding, food access work, the list goes on – to build an understanding of how the pieces fit and relate to each other. And whenever a particular topic or area really catches your interest, dig deep to develop more specialized expertise. I wouldn’t say I’ve been especially strategic about picking my areas of expertise, but I’ve followed my interests and passions and that has served me well.

I also think effective stakeholder engagement and facilitation is absolutely foundational to successful food systems work that pursues sustainability, resilience, and equity. Keep asking, “Who’s not at the table? Whose voices are being left out of this conversation, and how can we include them?” I’ve never taken formal facilitation training, but it’s central to the work that we do, and I would highly recommend seeking training or opportunities for learning about stakeholder engagement and facilitation.

Faces of Food Systems Planning is a series of interviews with practicing planners from across North America who are engaging in food systems planning and policy work. This series is part of APA-FIG’s efforts to highlight food systems planning as an important planning topic. The APA will be featuring 8 food system planners at the National Planning Conference this May 2017 in a special “Faces of Food Systems Planning Session”. Click here for more information.