Food
by Gianmarco Katz
What’s the Problem?
America’s current food system is a disaster for consumers, the environment, and small business. Take, for example, four companies — Tyson, JBS, Marfrig, and Seaboard — that control between 55 to 85 percent of market share for pork, beef, and poultry. By consequence, local producers have little negotiating power when dealing with these giants, reducing their profits and limiting their options. Meanwhile, these cartels use their monopoly power to raise consumer prices, ignore food deserts, curtail access to basic nutrition, and facilitate tremendous amounts of pollution.
Local leaders must work to ensure all residents have access to healthy and affordable food. This roadmap details strategies for municipalities to improve food production, distribution, and consumption in their communities. By encouraging local and sustainable food production and expanding distribution to under-resourced communities, local governments can ensure all communities members have access to high-quality nutrition.
What are People Currently Doing?
Promoting access to healthy food is necessary for reducing health disparities and improving overall community health. Where possible, communities should update business licensing to require food retailers maintain a “healthy baseline” for food: this model municipal licensing ordinance provides a template for this kind of program. Where state law prevent municipalities from implementing these programs, policymakers can use incentive programs to encourage food retailers to stock healthy food selections (see ProGov21’s Home Rule roadmap for more on preemption).
But retailers need support to make these types of programs successful: local governments have successfully subsidized the cost of healthy food; provided education, training, and technical assistance in transitioning business models; reduced permitting and licensing fees; facilitated access to small business loans and grants; and hosted nutrition education classes in the stores and their surrounding communities. Local governments have also improved program outcomes by facilitating store participation in WIC and SNAP programs.
Access to high-quality food can also be improved by facilitating local farmers markets, which not only provide high-quality food to local residents but support small food producers. Cities like Burlington, VT, Fresno, CA, and Minneapolis, MN, have updated their zoning code to establish areas where farmers’ markets can be held with reduced or no permitting, local producers are allowed to sell produce directly to consumers. Other cities, including San Francisco, CA, have gone a step further and used zoning codes to require market vendors to accept food vouchers and EBT cards. Cities like Seattle and Detroit have expanded programs like Double Up Food Bucks to make healthy farmers market produce more affordable for SNAP users, doubling the value of federal benefits at local markets. To go further, cities must prioritize equity in zoning updates by streamlining permitting for farmers markets, food cooperatives, and mobile markets in underserved areas, and by explicitly legalizing community gardens, rooftop farms, and food hubs as by-right uses in urban plans. Local governments can also offer space on public land at a price point that permits broad access and inclusion for vendors, use proceeds to cover operating expenses, provide free advertising through city sources, offer free parking, electricity, and signage, and create microloan programs to support minority and immigrant farmers.
Local governments can take other steps to support local and sustainable food production. Cleveland, OH, gives local producers of healthy and environmentally sustainable food preferences in competing for municipal procurement dollars. Cities like Fitchburg, WI and Chicago, IL have updated their zoning code to promote urban farms and local sustainable food production, while cities like New York and Atlanta have taken these efforts even further, creating dedicated Offices of Urban Agriculture to support local growers, promote equitable food access, and expand urban farming infrastructure citywide.
As local governments strengthen their food systems, they can now tap into new federal initiatives designed to support local and regional food systems. USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture offers grants and technical assistance to expand urban farms and community gardens in underserved areas. The Regional Food Business Centers program provides funding and support to help small producers build regional supply chains and reach broader institutional markets. Additionally, the expanded Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (FMLFPP) offers grants to grow farmers markets, mobile markets, and local food retail infrastructure. By partnering with these initiatives, cities can scale their efforts, build more resilient food networks, and shift more public dollars toward community-driven food systems.
Taking it to the Next Level
Municipalities can also improve access to healthy food by ensuring people in underserved communities have convenient and safe transportation to high-quality grocery stores and supermarkets. Farmers markets, grocery stores, and supermarkets should be priority destinations for bus routes, walkways, and bike paths. Hartford, CT, introduced a cross-town bus line that cut travel time in half for people living in the city’s food deserts to a major supermarket — thereby also improving access to jobs and other retailers. Ridership of the new route increased 100 percent in the first year, with a third of riders reporting that they used the route to access high-quality food retailers. Knoxville Area Transit’s Shop & Ride program created a partnership with a local supermarket to give any customer spending more than $10 a free bus pass, with the city providing transit service and the supermarket funding the bus fares.
Local leaders must recognize that food insecurity is rooted in systemic racial and economic injustice. Black and brown communities have long faced barriers to land, capital, and fair food systems. While the USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture represents progress, studies show socially disadvantaged farmers still face exclusion and distrust due to past discrimination. Successful models like Atlanta’s Urban Food Forest show that centering racial equity — through land security, workforce development, and intentional support for Black and Brown urban growers — must be at the core of sustainable food system reforms.
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