What's Cooking in Your Food System? A Guide to Community Food Assessment

This guide is aimed at informing and supporting the development of Community Food Assessments as a tool for increasing community food security and creating positive change. In 1993, Community Food Security Coalition co-founders Andy Fisher and Bob Gottlieb were involved in a year-long study of the Los Angeles food system, entitled "Seeds of Change: Strategies for Food Security for the Inner City". This study sparked interest among advocates in other communities in completing similar studies, and numerous requests to the Coalition for information and support. Thus, in 1999, the Coalition started offering workshops on how to do Community Food Assessments, and decided to deveop a guidebook on the subject. This publication is our first attempt to systematically summarize information on how to do a Community Food Assessment. Reflecting the state of current knowledge of this emerging field, it is necessarily imperfect and incomplete. Provenance: Contributed to Sipnuuk Food Security Collection by Sara Reid, Staff Research Associate at UC Berkeley, in association with her work with Jennifer Sowerwine coordinating Objective 8. Klamath Basin Food System/Sovereignty Assessment in the AFRI grant.