Insights into the government's role in food system policy making: improving access to healthy, local food alongside other priorities.

Jessica Wegener,Kim D Raine,Rhona M Hanning

doi:10.3390/ijerph9114103

Abstract

Government actors have an important role to play in creating healthy public policies and supportive environments to facilitate access to safe, affordable, nutritious food. The purpose of this research was to examine Waterloo Region (Ontario, Canada) as a case study for “what works” with respect to facilitating access to healthy, local food through regional food system policy making. Policy and planning approaches were explored through multi-sectoral perspectives of: (a) the development and adoption of food policies as part of the comprehensive planning process; (b) barriers to food system planning; and (c) the role and motivation of the Region’s public health and planning departments in food system policy making. Forty-seven in-depth interviews with decision makers, experts in public health and planning, and local food system stakeholders provided rich insight into strategic government actions, as well as the local and historical context within which food system policies were developed. Grounded theory methods were used to identify key overarching themes including: “strategic positioning”, “partnerships” and “knowledge transfer” and related sub-themes (“aligned agendas”, “issue framing”, “visioning” and “legitimacy”). A conceptual framework to illustrate the process and features of food system policy making is presented and can be used as a starting point to engage multi-sectoral stakeholders in plans and actions to facilitate access to healthy food.

Highlights

There has been a growing interest in linking food system policies and land use planning practices to healthier diets and healthier communities [1,2,3,4,5,6]
This paper aims to address these gaps by exploring multi-sectoral perspectives of the role and motivations of new government actors—most notably the Region’s public health and planning departments—in advancing supportive policy and environmental changes to improve access to healthy food, alongside other important government priorities
The findings presented below address the third key objective of a larger study which was to describe the role and motivation of new government actors, namely the Region’s public health and planning departments, in advancing plans to facilitate access to healthy food as an element of a more food secure community

Summary

Introduction

There has been a growing interest in linking food system policies and land use planning practices to healthier diets and healthier communities [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Little is known about the process of food system policy making or the impact of planning and policy decisions in shaping local food systems and supportive community food environments, including opportunities for healthy food access. In 2009, Waterloo Region (Ontario, Canada) adopted a new Regional Official Plan (ROP), a long-range community planning framework that includes a progressive commitment to support the regional food system through actions to facilitate access to healthy, local food [7]. The policies include a series of targeted planning actions to: protect the Region’s agricultural land; permit a full range of agriculture- and farmrelated uses on agricultural land (i.e., to support farmer viability); allow for a mix of land uses, including food destinations within close proximity to each other to increase neighbourhood access to food; and permit temporary farmers’ markets and community and rooftop gardens. Government actors in Public Health became passionate champions in their efforts to ensure that all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice [8]

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Conclusion