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Planning Towards Sustainable Food Systems: An Analysis of U.S. Municipal Food System Plans

Karetny, Jane Abigail
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607085379674489

Abstract Details

2020, Master of City and Regional Planning, Ohio State University, City and Regional Planning.
Current means of production and consumption are failing to deliver what is needed to ensure their full contribution to social, economic, and ecological wellbeing. In response, municipalities are adopting food system plans (FSPs) to better address local food needs. National planning and health organizations agree that to achieve healthy and sustainable food systems, food system planning must balance goals across a spectrum of sustainability issues including economic vitality, public health, ecological sustainability, social equity, and cultural diversity. However, no research has yet evaluated how comprehensively FSPs advance these issues. Given the increased responsibility placed on food policy to achieve multidimensional outcomes and the growing number of local governments developing FSPs, it is useful to determine if food system plans, as vehicles for coordinated food system policy, are in fact comprehensive in scope. To gain a better understanding of how completely the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of the food system are incorporated into FSPs, a completeness index is developed and utilized to evaluate the presence of twenty-six policy impact areas within plans. Twenty-seven FSPs were identified from a national search; these sample plans represent city, county, and regional-level documents originating from every major region of the continental U.S. The completeness of plans is evaluated based on the percent of impact areas addressed within the plans. Likewise, dimensional completeness is calculated as the percent of impact areas within any of the three sustainability dimensions addressed by the goals, objectives, or strategies within the plan. Simple regressions are run to test the relationships between these metrics and plan scale, poverty level, food insecurity and several other explanatory variables. Analysis showed that FSPs are incomplete on average but provide balanced support to the dimensions of sustainability. While gaps in plans exist in every dimension of the sustainable food system index, models of social, environmental, and economic completeness are present within the sample of plans. Compared to the average plan, these model plans address the multidimensionality of food system components/topics by considering the role of an issue, such as food waste or land use, in achieving social, ecological, and economic objectives. Scale (whether the plan was developed at the city, county, or regional level) had no practically significant bearing on overall or dimensional completeness. An additional observation is gleaned from regression analysis. Inverse relationships between food insecurity and social completeness and between poverty level and social completeness suggest that the severity of social issues constrict the municipal agenda. Municipalities with severe social concerns choose to narrow their agenda to aid attention to pressing issues but may be risking the long-term vitality of their food systems by not taking a systems approach to planning. This study makes several significant contributions to our knowledge and understanding of what types of issues are advanced by local food system plans. The evaluation utilized in this research can be repurposed by municipalities as an audit tool to ensure that all pertinent issues are being discussed. Finally, this research adds to the plan evaluation literature as one of the first attempts to evaluate all comprehensive U.S. food system plans according to sustainability criteria. In cataloging FSPs, this work also creates a current list of plans that can be used to further practice and research.
Casey Hoy (Committee Chair)
Kareem Usher (Committee Member)
Jill Clark (Committee Member)
Maria Manta Conroy (Committee Member)
95 p.
Sustainability; Urban Planning
food system; plan evaluation; sustainability

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Karetny, J. A. (2020). Planning Towards Sustainable Food Systems: An Analysis of U.S. Municipal Food System Plans [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607085379674489

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Karetny, Jane. Planning Towards Sustainable Food Systems: An Analysis of U.S. Municipal Food System Plans. 2020. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607085379674489.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Karetny, Jane. "Planning Towards Sustainable Food Systems: An Analysis of U.S. Municipal Food System Plans." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607085379674489

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1607085379674489
343
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.