Oct. 17, 2024
Access to healthy, affordable food is a foundational element of a thriving community. But while most people may think that where their food comes from is pretty straightforward, Julia Freedgood, author of the new book Planning Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems, published by Routledge, looks at it from a much bigger perspective.
"In my experience, we have numerous intersecting food systems that are kind of nested together like Matryoshka dolls, and they run the gamut from emergency food systems to huge global supply chains with community, local, urban, rural, regional, domestic, and all these other food systems nested in between. And, to me, each is important and each has a role to play," says Freedgood, a senior fellow and senior program advisor at the American Farmland Trust, who joined American Planning Association (APA) Editor in Chief Meghan Stromberg on People Behind the Plans to talk about how planners can focus on comprehensive food systems planning and ways to help rural communities tackle food issues.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity, but you can listen to the whole conversation at planning.org/podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
MEGHAN STROMBERG: How can planners help create sustainable and resilient systems?
JULIA FREEDGOOD: I'm probably biased, because I'm a planner, and planners are supposed to look at systems. We're supposed to think about how different elements intersect with each other. The relationship between transportation, housing, environment, and hazard mitigation — all these things are embedded in our food systems. Planners have a particular ability to look at the system in a holistic way, and then to think about how you engage in communities to figure out how to strengthen what they're producing, consuming, and distributing. They also need to work with the communities or states to make sure that there's action that comes out of the plans.
Photo courtesy of Julia Freedgood.
STROMBERG: Supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred more interest in urban agriculture as a way to have immediate access to your food. Is that smarter than growing our food thousands of miles away?
FREEDGOOD: I think it's important not to pit one system against another. If we're going to create sustainable, resilient, equitable food systems, we need to address food insecurity and mitigate and adapt to climate change. We have to work together. Part of that is bridging the urban and rural divide. So, while a lot of the food we eat is produced in metro counties or urban-influence counties, especially perishable foods like fruits and vegetables, a lot more is produced in rural areas, especially staple commodities like wheat, rice, oats, and meat.
STROMBERG: You work in rural areas often. If a planner is new to working in those communities, what would you tell them about it?
FREEDGOOD: Rural areas, in my experience, tend to be a little skeptical about planning and government intervention. People work together. They help their neighbors. But they don't really look to the government for answers. And while most cities have planning departments, most rural counties often have volunteer boards and planning commissions, with land use decisions made at the municipal or township level.
It's really important to find people who are embedded in the community to help lead the engagement process, and to go into the community and listen to the wisdom of the room. To engage with the farming community, with processors, and with people who don't have access to high-quality fresh produce.
You also need to understand the community assets. What do you have to work with? Why are you exporting everything and not keeping anything in your community? Why are you importing your food when you can grow so much here? Having those conversations and taking an asset-based approach is really important.
"If we don't have good planning and local policy interventions, most of the solar development is going to happen on farmland, because it's cheaper, flat, has good solar exposure, and is easy to develop."
STROMBERG: A surprising land use is negatively affecting food systems: Why is large-scale solar production a threat?
FREEDGOOD: We know that low-density, sprawling residential development is an insidious threat to farmland. There's increasing competition from things like warehouses, renewable energy, and especially utility solar installations. The Department of Energy predicts that the rate of solar deployment could grow by four times by 2050 and 90 percent of that is going to occur on rural lands. They could work harmoniously, but we should look at where there's potentially disturbed lands instead of putting solar on our best-quality farmland. If we don't have good planning and local policy interventions, most of the solar development is going to happen on farmland, because it's cheaper, flat, has good solar exposure, and is easy to develop.
A good example is San Joaquin Valley in California, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions that's vital to our food supply. They have high solar isolation, a temperate climate, and they're under a lot of pressure to achieve the state's very aggressive renewable energy goals. With input from the Governor's Office of Planning and Research, they put together a team of planners and conservationists who did a stakeholder-led process to identify least-conflict lands for solar development. They used sophisticated mapping, but did a lot of engagement, too. They were able to identify 470,000 acres that were appropriate for solar, but only about five percent of the land base in the region. They could have renewable energy and continue to have sustainable food production.
STROMBERG: What do you think that example says about how planners can engage stakeholders?
FREEDGOOD: You bring people together, use good tools, get people talking, and come to decisions that everybody can live with. As scary as some of the things that are happening in the world can be, I really am optimistic that if we bring people together in these kinds of ways, we can solve our problems at the community and state levels. That's my hope for the future. That's my hope for the book.
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