Access to Healthy Food
Food Policy Council Site Visit
Hartford, Connecticut, June 15th and 16th, 2006
Page Updated September 13, 2006
Food Policy Council Site Visit Overview
The National Conference of State Legislatures and the Community Food Security Coalition organized a site visit to Hartford, Connecticut, on June 15 and 16, 2006. The purpose of this visit was to gather legislators, staff and representatives from community organizations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont to learn about and share ideas regarding food policy councils. These councils can help develop solutions to food, nutrition and agriculture problems. With representatives from the private and nonprofit sectors and government agencies, food policy councils can meet unmet needs, improve the efficiency of programs and services related to nutrition and food security, and conduct long-term planning.
During the two days of the site visit, the benefits and contributions of food policy councils at the state and municipal levels were highlighted, including conducting research, identifying policy options, holding educational events and publishing materials that help lead to policy change. Speakers provided a realistic assessment of the challenges of forming and operating food policy councils and presented ideas about how to address these challenges. The speakers also conveyed a valuable and unusual aspect of food policy councils—they engage people across different issues and sectors, which can lead to broader, more collaborative approaches to addressing food policy issues. Our hope was that relationships would be built that would promote continued cooperation between legislators and other partners who are working on food and agriculture policy, both within states and regionally (see table). During discussions throughout the site visit, the various roles that state legislators can take in addressing food, nutrition and agriculture policy were explored, as was the role of government agencies at all levels.
Table 1. Site visit participants
Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts
Legislators and staff
Hartford and Mansfield mayors
State and local agencies
Mansfield Public School faculty
University of Connecticut
Council of State Governments
Capitol Region Council of Governments (CT)
Michigan Food Policy Council
Community Food Security Coalition
American Farmland Trust
Grocery Manufacturers Association
American Beverage Association
Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group
Hartford Food System
CitySeed, Inc.
Foodshare,
End Hunger CT!
The Lawson Valentine Foundation
The Food Project
Hunger Action Network of New York State
Graywall Farm
The meeting began with an overview of food policy councils by Mark Winne from the Community Food Security Coalition. He had been instrumental in the development of both the Hartford Food Policy Commission and the CT Food Policy Council during his 25 years as director of the Hartford Food System. Mr. Winne discussed generally how food policy councils operate, their structure and the process to establish priorities. He provided specific examples from the Connecticut Food Policy Council and the New Mexico Food Policy Council. In New Mexico, the food policy council was created through a grassroots effort, while a legislative initiative created the council in Connecticut. Mr. Winne expressed that food policy councils provide a venue to consider the various aspects of the food system and understand it as a whole. He also noted that food issues are dealt with in various city and state agencies, but no state has one agency that is specifically dedicated to food.
To provide insight on a third means for creating a food policy council, Kristen Brooks spoke about the Michigan Food Policy Council, which was created by executive order. Ms. Brooks discussed the council’s challenges and successes to date and shared the structure of the council which includes supporting task forces.
Following the two overviews, site visit participants joined a meeting of the Connecticut and Hartford food policy councils. The meeting was co-chaired by Linda Drake and Lola Elliott-Hugh, both of whom are employed by the University of Connecticut; each chairs the state and city food groups, respectively. The purpose of the meeting was to learn what issues the council members have worked on and successes and barriers they have experienced. Council members shared their experiences in their work on nutrition education, school nutrition, farmers' markets and community food security assessments.
Pat Gray, the executive director of The Food Project in Massachusetts, spoke on the role of youth in the food systems movement. Dr. Nancy Bull, from the cooperative extension at the University of Connecticut, facilitated a discussion to help the group assess what they had learned thus far about food policy and discuss some of the perceived challenges in addressing food policy. The group discussed the different arenas to address food policy and the difficulty of reaching consensus when working with diverse stakeholders.
Finally, it was time to venture into the Connecticut countryside and see some of the work accomplished by the Connecticut Food Policy Council. Jay Dippel and Steve Reviczky from the state Farmland Preservation Program served as our tour guides for the ride to Graywall Farm in Lebanon. During the drive, we learned about the state purchase of development rights (PDR) and farmland preservation programs. On the way to Graywall Farm, we visited Blue Slope Farm and Cushman Farms, both participants in the farmland preservation program, and heard from the dairy owners about their participation in the program.
We were greeted at Graywall Farm by Robin and Lincoln Chesmer and some of the members of a business called The Farmer's Cow. Mr. Chesmer told us how a farmer's cooperative created The Farmer's Cow in an effort increase profits from milk sales. The group of farmers worked together to create an identity for the product, a business plan and a marketing plan. They created a product made exclusively from Connecticut dairies that contains no growth hormones. After a tour of the farm, Mr. Chesmer shared his personal experience with the state's farmland preservation program, noting that the farmer who had previously owned the Graywall Farm land had sold development rights to the state.
John Guszkowski, the director of Planning and Development for the City of Thompson, spoke about his work on farmland preservation while at the Capitol Region Council of Governments and in his current role in the town of Thompson. Mr. Guszkowski noted that food often is not covered by traditional planners, leaving it as the one essential human activity not covered under the planning umbrella.
Senate President Pro Tem Don Williams, introduced by CT Senator Edith Prague, joined the group following the tour to speak about nutrition, agriculture and farmland preservation policy efforts in Connecticut. During his compelling presentation, he told the group about the school nutrition legislation that was passed during the 2006 legislative session; it had been vetoed by the governor in 2005. The legislation sets strict nutrition guidelines for food sold in schools. Senator Williams noted that some farmland preservation program funding comes from a $30 fee on all real estate transactions. This model was borrowed from Massachusetts and adapted to more closely fit the needs in Connecticut. He urged us to consider increasing farm viability as a form of economic development.
Friday morning, Connecticut’s municipal and state food council members described the efforts and results of their work. The City Food Policy Commission shared its quarterly Grocery Store Survey instrument, and its successful organizing effort, which kept a regional bus route (which ran to several large grocery stores) intact when it faced cuts from the Connecticut legislature and Department of Transportation. Their creative food mapping project is further discussed below. Connecticut is a noteworthy state because it currently is the only state that has both state and city food councils; more municipal councils are being formed. Rigoberto Lopez from the University of Connecticut discussed a state-level town-by-town community food security assessment that was conducted by university faculty in conjunction with the Hartford Food System and the Connecticut Food Policy Council. The assessment addressed four categories of food security, including sociodemographics, community food resources, food resource accessibility and community food production resources.
A presentation by Rebecca Augur of the Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCoG) dealt with the community food resources map that was created through a collaboration with the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission. CRCoG provided mapping resources and staff, and the council provided the data for the map, which includes food pantries, soup kitchens, community gardens and markets, excluding grocery stores. Plans for distribution include a take-home brochure and posters to place throughout food-insecure communities.
To emphasize the need for collaboration with local-level policymakers, Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez spoke about grocery store development. Mayor Perez mentioned that the number of markets in the city decreased from 17 to one, a significant food access impediment. Mayor Perez has worked with the Hartford Food Policy Council to address grocery store development through nonprofits. For example, a low-income housing development created a community development corporation that succeeded in opening a Sav-A-Lot. Mayor Perez suggested that states can consider food access as a factor in community planning and provide tax incentives to grocery retailers.
Mary Parizo from the Connecticut Department of Social Services concluded the panel with a description of a nutrition education website that was the result of a statewide conference in March 2005 sponsored by the Connecticut Food Policy Council's subcommittee on Nutrition Education. The website was created to serve as a central clearinghouse through which nutrition educators in Connecticut could share information, access available materials and avoid duplication of efforts
Next on the agenda was a visit to the Annie E. Vinton School in Mansfield, where faculty members gave an overview of the school's fruit and vegetable snack program. Students receive a free snack in the morning, and nutritional messages are reinforced through art projects, teachers' role modeling and information sent home to caretakers. At Mansfield Middle School, the group experienced the school lunch program and learned about its recycling and composting programs. Maureen Staggenborg from the state Department of Education told us about farm-to-cafeteria efforts, and we then were guided to the composting pile used by school staff, parents and the community at large.
In Hartford, the group made a brief stop at the downtown Hartford Farmers' Market, where we heard about the history of farmers' markets in Connecticut. Jennifer McTiernan from CitySeed Inc. talked about collaborative efforts with the state departments of agriculture and social services and with the state food policy council to use electronic benefits transfer (EBT) at farmers' markets in New Haven. Approximately 37,000 food stamp recipients are served by the New Haven office. Although more than $40,000 in Farmers' Market Nutrition Program coupons were redeemed at New Haven Farmers' Markets in 2005, there is a huge earning potential for local farmers and an opportunity for increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables for New Haven residents.
Jerry Jones, the executive director of the Hartford Food System (HFS), spoke about urban food environments, specifically efforts to increase the amount of healthy grocery items sold in small markets and bodegas. With only one large grocery store in the city, residents rely on small stores where grocery items are priced at a premium. In an effort to work with the existing infrastructure, HFS has a campaign to get small stores to shift 5 percent of their shelf space to healthier grocery items.
The site visit evaluation results indicated that, on average, participants’ knowledge about food policy councils and food system issues increased during the two-day site visit from "somewhat knowledgeable" to "very knowledgeable." The school visits and the presentations by the farmers were found to be most useful, as participants learned about the barriers to implementing farm-to-school programs.
This project was supported by the Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program of the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, USDA, Grant # 2005-04310.
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