Category Archives: Resource

Research Article: Equitable Food Value Chains through Collaborative Action

Food system practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in applying collective and place-based efforts to create equitable food systems. How well do such efforts work? A team from the UB Food Lab, led by Dr. Micaela Lipman, explores this question in a paper about Buffalo, NY. Drawing on community coalition action theory (CCAT), the authors explore the potential for enhancing food equity through collaborative action across the food value chain. Through a case study of a collaborative initiative to promote equitable food systems, they document the possibilities and pitfalls of collaborative, cohort-based efforts within the inequitable landscape of Buffalo, New York (NY). The paper relies on mixed-methods data that include key informant interviews, participant observations, and surveys of organizations that participated in the Buffalo Community Food System Grant program. Corroborating prior research, the authors report that initiatives that seek to foster collective action offer unique possibilities for food equity, as well as some key limitations, especially within the context of a racialized food environment. Strengthening food systems by investing in relationships across food value chains opens new avenues for collective action. To promote food equity, new forms of collective action, including functional relationships across the value chain, must address deeper structural imbalances in the food system, such as those resulting from structural racism.

Article is open access and available through JAFSCD.

Citation: Lipman, M., Griffin, D., Woyciesjes, E., Hall, G., & Raja, S. (2025). Equitable food value chains through collaborative action [in an inequitable landscape]: Insights from Buffalo, New York. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(1), 207–226. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2025.141.019

Local Government Food Policy Database

Local Government Food Policy Database:

Growing Food Connections

The Growing Food Connections Local Government Policy Database is a searchable collection of local public policies that explicitly support community food systems. This database provides policymakers, government staff, and others interested in food policy with concrete examples of local public policies that have been adopted to address a range of food systems issues: rural and urban food production, farmland protection, transfer of development rights, food aggregation and distribution infrastructure, local food purchasing and procurement, healthy food access, food policy councils, food policy coordination, food system metrics, tax reductions and exemptions for food infrastructure, and much more.

Local Public Policy

The Growing Food Connections team defines local public policy as: a course of municipal, county or regional government action in response to public problems or issues.

Policy Types

This database includes a range of policies such as local laws, ordinances, resolutions, motions, orders, and directives, as well as plans, standards, guidelines, tax exemptions and other public financing policies. Policies span different geographic regions, sizes of government, rural and urban contexts, and public issues. In addition to general information about policy type, topic and adoption date, the database includes policy documents, or the adopted policy language for each policy. When available, this database also lists information about the adopting, implementing, and supporting public agencies and non-governmental organizations; funding amount and sources; and policy outcomes – initiatives, programs, projects and other actions enabled, established or supported by the policy.

Submit A Policy From Your Community

Help your community be recognized! If your community has adopted a local or regional government policy that impacts the food system, submit it for inclusion in the database. We are only able to include policies that have been officially adopted by a local government (municipality or county) in the United States.

Policies can be submitted by completing this form.

What about food systems plans and policies adopted outside of the United States?

If you are interested in sub-national policies that are being adopted outside of the United States, please visit this Global Database hosted by the University at Buffalo and RUAF Foundation.

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This database is continually updated. Policies included in this database have not been evaluated. Population categories are based on USDA’s Rural-Urban Continuum Codes. The database is the intellectual property of the University at Buffalo and partners.

Local Government Food Policy Database

External Policy Reviewers

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab is grateful for the support of external policy reviewers who collaborate with us remotely on the Global Database for City and Regional Food Policies. External policy reviewers include:

Ayako Honzawa, PhD student, Tokyo Institute of Technology

About the Global Database for City and Regional Food Policies

The Global Database for City and Regional Food Policies is a resource for local and sub-national governments to learn about food system policies from around the globe. The searchable database provides copies of the legislation, plans, funding allocations, or other public actions authorized or implemented by cities, municipalities, regions, and sub-national governments. This resource allows local and sub-national governments to learn from strategies utilized in other regions or countries. Policymakers and support organizations can search policies using keywords, location, language, population size, and year to find policies that are well suited as inspirations for their own communities. The database is updated regularly.

Use the search tools below to find one or more policies. GENERAL SEARCH by a keyword. Or for a more ADVANCED SEARCH, you can choose from a pre-determined set of terms listed in the drop-down menus. GENERAL SEARCH ADVANCED SEARCH

We recommend using the database in a Chrome browser. For technical assistance or questions regarding database, contact the Food Lab at foodsystems@ap.buffalo.edu. Users may also contact RUAF with policy-specific inquiries or for other resources related to international city and regional food systems at info@ruaf.org. For additional global food systems resources for city and regional governments, please visit the ICLEI-RUAF CITYFOOD Network.

To search for policies within the United States/Canada, please visit the Growing Food Connections policy database.

Submit a Policy
Do you have a local government food-related policy that you would like to showcase for a global audience? We welcome submissions of local and regional government policies for inclusion in the database from across the world. The policy must touch some aspect of the food system and be officially adopted by a sub-national government such as a municipality, district, town, city, region, etc. Policies can be submitted by completing this form.

This database is a work in progress and is updated regularly. Policies included in this database have not been evaluated. Population sizes are drawn from the most recent census reports in the United Nation’s Demographic Yearbook 2015: Population of capital cities and cities of 100,000 or more inhabitants. The database is the intellectual property of the University at Buffalo and RUAF.