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Climate Resilience: How to strengthen the food system in the face of a climate emergency? Actions urgently needed: 1) Better understand what is happening in the area by creating workgroups and gaining insights into the “lay of the land”: understand the threats, what is already being impacted and how. 2) Implement a plan so that efforts are not duplicated. Other efforts/actions include: 1) Increase use of urban gardens (households, commercial rooftops, public lands) 2) Increase use of household food stocks for emergencies such as hurricanes (stockpiling) 3) Create intra-neighborhood network... Read mores to aid most at risk households especially the elderly and shut-ins 4) Make food systems flexible and adaptable as climate threats change 5) Build desalinization plants 6) Increase use of more resilient crops, phase out less resilient crops, for better use of agricultural land 7) Facilitate households growing their own landscaping plants so that landscaping companies can convert their land to agricultural crops 8) Create a public community garden at every public school 9) Counter the effect of the increase in poor diet health problems among people 10) Transition to a more sustainable, less wasteful food system - government/agencies working with industries/corporations 11) Provide equity in food security across race, ethnicity and income Key stakeholders: Actions will require the participation of food organizations, local elected officials, government, farmers, distributors and businesses. Ways in which progress could be assessed: • Determine the impact felt in marginalized communities, which are/will be the most affected; determine number of food insecure people • Monitor food costs, as they will go up if actions are not successful • Access to fresh food will be more difficult if action is not successful • Monitor malnutrition, as it could be a problem. How to ensure nutrients make it to the communities? • House insecurity, homelessness, food insecurity…all interconnected – monitor these to determine success. • If not successful there will be an increase in poor diet health problems among people • There must be equity in food security across race, ethnicity and income • There will be a rise/fall in proportion of fresh produce within diets • Determine the agricultural productivity per acre on vital commodities/produce • Ability to adapt to sudden or unexpected crises • Measurement of unsold food recovered or rescued and diverted to food banks, pantries, homeless shelters, etc. Read less

Food Security: SE Florida’s Agriculture in the Coming Decades Actions urgently needed: 1) Short-term actions: • Increase support for/dependence on local farmers, especially by having grocery stores and restaurants get more produce from South Florida farmers. That would reduce emissions and lower the number of imports, which undercut local growers and drive down the wages of local agricultural employees. • For any imports that remain, move away from using wood pallets or increase regulation to ensure they’re treated and cannot introduce new pests. • Pass heat standards at the federal ... Read morelevel (H.R.3668 - Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act) and at the state level so there’s a legal mandate for agricultural employers to provide their workers with rest breaks, water access and restrooms. • Maintain the urban development boundary where it is. • Invest in technology and pilot projects for sustainable agriculture in South Florida, especially in partnership with local universities. 2) Longer-term actions: • Work on increasing farms’ energy efficiency and on converting the power grid to renewable sources so that energy used on farms does not contribute to climate change. • Convert septic tanks to sewer systems to avoid nutrient leakage into waterways. Key stakeholders: Most participants would be willing to advocate for most of the issues above if there were clear channels through which they could do so. Some organizations already lobby on the issues of heat protection and the urban development boundary. Priority issues that would benefit from a more organized advocacy effort include buying local produce (especially getting supermarkets and restaurants to buy local) and converting the energy grid. These issues align with many of the advocacy efforts of local climate groups, so perhaps there’s a way to jointly mobilize with them. Many of these organizations would be willing to partner with one another or with universities on pilot projects for sustainable agriculture, if the opportunities and funding were made available to them. Ways in which progress could be assessed: How would success look like? Examples: If the Urban Development Boundary stays where it is. If Congress and Florida’s Legislature each pass laws mandating heat risk protections for ag workers. If there’s increased regulation/reduced use of untreated wooden pallets leading to a decline in the emergence of new pests and diseases. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the economy’s reliance on local farmers are harder to quantify. Read less

Resilience after COVID-19: How to build back better food systems Actions urgently needed 1) Recognize the lack of preparedness for major shifts and the need for restructuring the balance between international supply and local. 2) Carefully manage food supply balance to avoid drastic changes in cost of food 3) Support local farmers and local growers by prioritizing the purchase through educational campaigns 4) Attract young people to farmers, cultivating and incentivizing youth to work in the rural environment 5) Have big supermarket chains choose part of their supply from local farmers (having... Read more a % of their total purchases coming from local producers) 6) Create government incentives through tax incentives for supermarkets prioritizing local farmers products 7) Update US food regulations (based in the 19th Century) 8) Amplify the Fresh From Florida database outreach, making it more visible and distributed. 9) Advocate for the changes needed, demanding from local official's tax incentives needed to prioritize local farmer's purchase 10) Incorporate a system thinking approach to food systems 11) Implement and test the solutions such as programs related to Food Readiness and encourage the creation of Food Incubators Key stakeholders • Supermarkets • Local farmers • Government • Public-Private partnerships (Corporations) • Young people • Schools (and the taught content related to planting, food crops, rural) • Doctors Ways in which progress could be assessed: What we have experienced during the Covid-19 Pandemic showed our inadequacy to deal with our global nutrition. The success of our actions will be measured by the level of urgency in acting before the next global challenge arrives - the Climate Crisis. The group recognized the many lessons learned from the Pandemic and the proposed solutions should be put in speed action by our governments now. Read less

Food access: How do we ensure sustainable, affordable and nutritious food for all communities Actions urgently needed: 1) Policies: Work with municipalities to work on policies, which can have a higher level of change. Ex: Local food policies that allow for growing food at home and having more urban food agriculture more possible. 2) Urban ag: • Implement community gardens on a certain piece of land and focus on government policy to ensure that the soil is safe and not contaminated to streamlined the process of testing and analysis. • Increase the number of on-site farms at community facil... Read moreities such as hospitals, schools, etc. (Grow to Heal at Baptist Health) • Increase the number of community gardens and promote the 365-day growing season in Miami • Hydroponic growing and urban growing to preserve farm land and not give that land up. 3) Access and Utilization: • Make farmer’s markets more readily accessible and not considered an event- change the mindset of the community and politicians will show that there is a need for more access. • Increase the number of programs that could be culturally sensitive, ex: Little Haiti could integrate local chefs in the community to create recipes and have fun events to show how they make recipes, give them out, and show how they can eliminate food waste when cooking. Ex: how to cut a pepper to avoid as much waste as possible, and use as much of the food as possible 4) Food waste: Increase composting efforts - It is hard to find places to compost which is a problem in itself, along with the fact that not enough food is composted, but thrown out instead 5) Partnerships: Increase partnerships are needed in general in the tourism industry- opportunity to marry caters, hotels etc. with a community- overflow of foods from events can get donated and there can be incentives for caters and hotels in a form of taxes etc. to reduce waste 6) Priorities: Pin point better the places within neighborhoods that are in most need (access what the community needs and not what we feel the community wants- it’s not about us, it’s about the community) Key stakeholders: • Organizations such as hospitals, (Ex: Baptist Health) as well as schools will change the mind-set of what a farmer’s market is. It needs to be more accessible and more common, and changes in culture can make this happen. Farmers markets are typically on weekends and during limited hours, but this should be more accessible to people. Farmer’s markets are also typically located in affluent areas, and that poses a barrier- Meet people where they are, and bring the market to these areas to eliminate barriers of access. • Refrigerators in Liberty City- allowing the community to come in and take what they wish- donator can put into the refrigerator what they wish. This is innovative and will become more larger and mainstream. Challenges are the health and safety and monitoring of what gets put into these refrigerators. Having good partnerships with donators so that the right foods are going into the refrigerator is imperative Ways in which progress could be assessed: 1) Short-term: examples of increasing access to farmer markets: • Observing the mind-set of people on how they feel about community gardens by talking to people or engaging in focus groups in various communities. This will provide important insight into whether or not these actions are being successful or not. • Counting the frequency and hours in which farmers markets are available is a reat way to quantitatively measure success. This is more immediate measure. 2) Long-term: • General health of population- less access to nutrition food = long term health problems. If over the course of many years, the health of a community improves significantly, we can assess the effect that increased focus on food access has on a group. Read less

The following solutions have been identified: Education – Education is critical to engage the SE FL community on improving food systems. Includes education of consumers about the environmental impact of diets and shelf-life, young people about careers in Food System and farmers about sustainability. Transparency - is needed and can be made possible e.g. through vizualizations of food system map, audits and research. Communication - we need to communicate to counter misinformation and educate. Governance – stronger leadership is needed. Includes, for example, the creation of a board to over... Read moresee food system work. Partnerships/stakeholder collaboration – includes the establishment of partnerships e.g. with churches, and collaborations between farmers. Measurement - we can only manage what we can measure. Needs to use indicators that are holistic and impact-focused (e.g. measure health outcomes). Implementation – can be fostered by bringing in community members of trust. Below are the main findings for each action track. AT1: Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all We need more transparency on distribution of access points: we should count them, and overlay them with health outcomes. Solutions: identify food deserts, increase the number of community gardens and on-site farms at community facilities, bring food market to the people, increase policy support of urban agriculture. AT2 : Shift to sustainable consumption patterns We need to engage and educate populations about the health and environmental impact of food and food waste: engage communities in garden developments, create partnerships with local grocers, supermarkets and farmers’ markets to provide access to healthy food and funding for gardens, promote plant-based options (e.g. Meatless Monday), implement sustainable nutrition education components in schools, expand composting efforts through a municipal-based pick-up and drop-off system for composting facilities. Local farmers need to 1) diversify their production based on local demand, and 2) create their own composting facility on site to process local food scraps. AT3 : Boost nature-positive production We need to increase support for local farmers and increase regulation: ensure remaining imports are treated and cannot introduce new pests, pass heat standards at the federal level (H.R.3668 - Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act) and at the state level so there’s a legal mandate for agricultural employers to provide their workers with rest breaks, water access and restrooms. We need to increase farms’ energy efficiency: invest in technology and pilot projects for sustainable agriculture, convert the power grid to renewable sources, convert septic tanks to sewer systems to avoid nutrient leakage into waterways. AT4 : Advance equitable livelihoods We need to integrate youth into the agri-food system by educating them using technology (social media, apps), having young people talk to other young people to engage them, increase communication on career opportunities in food systems, create a community education component on food systems and community growing in higher education. It is critical to give control back to rural communities and involve them in decision-making, make SNAP available to ex-felons in state of Florida, give farmers contracts for funding, insist on the positive financial impact of transforming food systems to get elected officials involved in giving communities more power over land. AT5: Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress To increase resilience, we need to: increase use of urban gardens (households, commercial rooftops, public lands) and of household food stocks for emergencies such as hurricanes (stockpiling), develop intra-neighborhood networks to aid most at risk households, use more resilient crops, facilitate households growing their own landscaping plants so that landscaping companies can convert their land to agricultural crops. To build back better from COVID-19, we must prioritize local farmers purchase (supermarkets must have a % of their total purchases coming from local producers, government tax incentives for supermarkets doing so), implement and test the solutions such as programs related to Food Readiness and encouraging the creation of Food Incubators. Read less

The focus of our Dialogue was: Envisioning a Sustainable and Resilient Food System in SE Florida by 2030. Ten Discussion Groups were organized: 1) Food access: How do we ensure sustainable, affordable and nutritious food for all communities (Action tracks #1, #2 and #4) 2) Resilience after COVID-19: How to build back better food systems (Action track #5) 3) Food Security: SE Florida’s Agriculture in the Coming Decades (Action track #4) 4) Climate Resilience: How to strengthen the food system in the face of a climate emergency (Action track #5) 5) Food Waste and Recovery: What supply chain so... Read morelutions can help ensure responsible use of resources, reduce and recover food waste from farmers to consumers (Action track #3) 6) Partnership: Game-changing Solutions for transforming Food Systems (Action tracks #1, #3, #4 and #5) 7) The environmental impacts of Food: How can we eat more responsibly? (Action track #2) 8) Making food systems more inclusive: The role of minorities in food systems (Action track #4) 9) Youth Power: How young people can help shift help shift food systems towards increased sustainability and climate resilience (Action tracks #1, #3, #4, and #5) 10) Community building: How to foster collaboration between food system stakeholders to focus and strengthen collective action (Action tracks #1, 2, 3, 4 and #5) Read less

There were some points of divergence: • On the question of who is in charge of collecting data? Two strong opposing views were advanced. One was that Leadership/government is responsible for overall strategy for data collection, data protection, and the financing of it. Governments have to buy into the vision and be held accountable to it. They have to put policies in place across different levels of their countries. They are ultimately responsible. The second view on the contrary indicated that private sector is also responsible for collection of data. Government sector alone cannot do it. ... Read more• A participant suggested that a disruptive advocacy (for example non-importation of certain foods) should apply to foods that are produced in or available in African countries. Advocating for this could serve to encourage the consumption of local foods. Overall, the future for Africa is to depend on itself for food supply. Another participant fervently disagreed, indicating that disruptive advocacy is not the solution, but what needs to be advocated for is for countries to link national agricultural transformation, trade policies, food and nutrition security policies to the nutritional needs of the population. • The tension between the proponents of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) by farmers and the opponents. The proponents advanced the view that technology will help with data capturing, e.g., AI could link farmers on the ground to food producers and buyers to help them know what is selling and what is not. But the opposing view intimated the use of AI could be very bad especially if not used properly – especially when it is not clear who/what/when/how data should or could be used. Would need to have that information upfront. • The trade-offs regarding the role celebrities could play to help promote the Food System. There was a suggestion for celebrities to use their influence to promote food system transformation. However, some participants felt involving celebrities may only lead to popularization which is not necessarily transformation. • Finally, there was the question of why the private sector is not engaging as expected, and yet they have too much data that they cannot even manage. They should be more open in sharing data. However, others noted that the private sector actors are business minded; they are interested in the bottom lines, or their profits and so if engaging will not lead to this why should they? Others felt that was their responsibility to engage and serve not just their board of directors, but their clients- all humans. The participant mooted the idea of decolonialization of data and destabilization of information asymmetries if we need to truly transform our food systems. Read less

Topic 7. Inclusive leadership and networking There should be a responsible and inclusive leadership so that people at the grassroots are included in policy making and also educated on the existence of these policies. • Inclusive leadership from government, media, civil society, and public health experts is needed. This should involve the community and the people at the grassroots levels from all sectors of the food system to enhance ownership and sustainability. • Farmers are often left out in the formulation of policies that affect agriculture, yet they are the major stakeholders. • Lea... Read moreders need to network and share ideas to collaborate on projects. • Communication must be bi-directional, from leaders to stakeholders and the grassroots members. • Leaders must be attentive and build capacity so the populace can be competent and independent. • Government leaders should ensure capacity building and knowledge dissemination; community actors can engage in building capacity, e.g., Chiefs can provide storage facilities for farmers, whiles nutrition champions and policy entrepreneurs need to be supported. • To monitor food systems transformation in Africa, Africa needs to develop a national or regional index/classification of countries based on their food systems transformation efforts. • We need a platform for leaders to speak to each other and understand each other. • For continuity and sustainability, leaders do not have to be political leaders. All Food systems actors can play leadership roles. Leader from where you stand. • Inaccessibility to land for women and youth are leadership failures: Government policies on land ownership, and use are discriminatory. It would take bold leaders to change this. Read less

Topic 6. Sustainability of programmes and projects for food system: Programmes and projects at all levels and sectors along the food systems need to be sustained. The discussions identified certain solutions that will ensure sustainability; • Build capacity of local leaders on various actors of the food systems value chain. • Local experts and community food systems actors should be linked to the state institutions in a way that engages them in various planning and execution of food systems actions. The government, the private sector as well as the academia need to support this process. �... Read more� Advocacy for sustainability: Farmers, Civil society, and other food systems actors need to create awareness regarding seasonality of foods. The UN food systems summit dialogues should evolve into a permanent entity/forum or ongoing advocacy that is inclusive (comprising all food systems actors and not just CSOs) to bring voices from food systems toward private and public sectors • Climate change and sustainability framing - in US and Europe, humans are told they are the cause of climate change, in terms of their excessive consumption behaviors. In Africa, natural disasters/water shortages/stresses/low rainfall/environmental problems affect food systems. Thus, framing plays a role in how food systems have to be reimagined and how data should be collected, because dialogues relevant in one setting may not be relevant in other settings. Read less

Topic 5. Building demand for advocacy: It is the responsibility of all of us to create the needed awareness to transform the food system. The following actions were highlighted: • Regulatory organizations need to actively be involved in communication, dissemination of information to support advocacy efforts. • Use consumer driven advocacy: Often industry responds to public demand or the demands of the consumer. Advocacy efforts could be used to change food consumption preferences by consumers. • Make consumers aware of the health and nutrition benefits. • Use evidence and science to ad... Read morevocate to consumers: industry would respond to science by making highly nutritious foods available because that is what consumers prefer. An example was shared about the demand for organic traditional foods in Egypt by “high class” individuals. • Industry could lead advocacy of organic foods. Avoidance can also be a strong advocacy strategy, e.g., avoid certain foods. • Re-discovery of lost foods and cooking methods; undiscovered traditional foods ways of cooking that are healthy can be promoted. Recipes with high nutritional value e.g., Quinoa, Fonio and healthy cooking methods could be used as advocacy tools and not only scientific data. • National agricultural transformation: we need to advocate for countries to link national agricultural transformation, trade policies, food and nutrition security policies to the nutritional needs of the population; • Because agriculture is so seasonal, there is a need for a type of policy investment that can be made to find ways to either process foods through freeze drying and other types of technology that preserve the nutritional values. • Need to create awareness by both producers and consumers regarding seasonality of foods. You cannot expect to eat certain products when they are off season. • Build demand advocacy: building demand within the marketplace- the consumer demand for healthy foods; there can be social marketing with celebrities to promote particular products or types of food. Any food system transformation will involve a certain shift in public perception and demand in certain foods. So more of a higher-level strategy to build demand for healthy sustainable diets that align with some of the policy instruments that might be used to improve what is available in the market. • If you need Governments to act, you have to speak in the language that the Government understands. Until governments see the food system issues as having a significant positive or negative impact on the economy, they may not act. Food systems issues are economic issues for governments; food systems issues must be health issues. We need to talk about food systems in terms of people, in terms of dollars, in terms of lives lost or saved. • We need to rationalize, empathize, and humanize the food system conversation/narrative • Healthy foods are not always Read less

Participants from the breakout rooms highlighted the following action areas: • Making use of incentives: What are the incentives for doing the right thing? Smart incentives and disincentives need to be created to align actors in sectors of the food system. • SMEs play large role in Africa food systems and should be provided with incentives for producing healthy, safe and sustainable food. • Perhaps there needs to be a combo of incentives and disincentives. • Disincentives such as making plastic bags expensive so people bring their own cloth bags can also be created. Strategic Policies ... Read morethat will enable SMEs to compete with multilateral organization should be formulated. • Food retailers equally need to understand their role in the food system. When adequately informed, their decisions may influence the food industry to churn forth better products. • The government should regulate the food retail environment. There should be regulatory standards for the food retail environment. For instance, its tax incentives, etc. in order to increase access to healthy foods. • Enforcement of legislative instruments: We do not have strong regulations and standards on food safety and types of additives. Laws should be enforced to ensure food safety standards and apply labelling regulations on food items. There should also be stronger regulation around food advertisement, media, including billboards. Read less