Local Foods and Sustainable Food Systems

• White Paper on Antibiotic Use in Food Systems: Critical Findings For Registered Dietitians, 2011. This document, prepared by HEN, provides information to help RDs speak knowledgeably about the role of subtherapeutic antibiotic use in animals on the incidence of resistant infections. It includes talking points and a more detailed description of the research organized by the impact antibiotic use has on RDs in different roles, such as community, food service and clinical RDs.

• Healthy Land, Healthy People: Building a Better Understanding of Sustainable Food Systems for Food and Nutrition Professionals. A Primer on Sustainable Food Systems and Emerging Roles for Food and Nutrition Professionals, by the Sustainable Food System Task Force of the ADA*, 2007. This primer includes what are sustainable food systems, opportunities for food and nutrition professionals to support and influence sustainable food systems, relevant resources, organizations and websites, and a glossary.

The BEN Center’s Smarter Lunchroom Movement uses research based solutions to lead children tomake healthier choices in the school lunchroom. http://smarterlunchrooms.org includes short videos such as Doing a Lunchroom Makeover, Name that Food, Do You Want Fruit With That? A series of best practices with tips on how to implement specific actions in the school, such as how to increase the number of students that select vegetables or white milk, or how to create a healthy-items-only convenience line that students will use, is at: http://smarterlunchrooms.org/matrix.html

GRACE Communications Foundation focuses on the interconnections between food, water and energy. Ecocentric is their blog, at http://www.ecocentricblog.org. In addition to daily news and commentary, the website links to their water footprint calculator that estimates how many gallons of water a household uses in a day, plus ways to reduce their “water footprint.”

Sustainable Table, at http://www.sustainabletable.org educates viewers about food and agriculture through education kits, recipes and issue pages on such topics as sustainable meat and factory farming. Their EatWell Guide®, at http://www.eatwellguide.org is a free online database of over 25,000 listings for finding fresh, locally grown and sustainably produced food in the US and Canada. Listings include stores, farms, CSA, restaurants, and personal chefs, searchable by location or category. A mapping tool helps people planning a trip find these foods and locations when traveling.

LocalHarvest has a nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local sources of sustainably grown food. Its online store, at: http://www.localharvest.org/store has over 11,400 products, including fresh produce and meats, to help small farms develop markets for their products beyond their local area. A monthly newsletter covers such topics as Farmers Market Season and Choosing a CSA.

Farm to School is a nationwide program that connects schools (K-12) and local farms. Farm to School programs may include local products in school meals, food-related curriculum development, school gardens, farm tours, culinary education and support of local and regional farmers.

Information on federal, state, and local policies is at: http://www.farmtoschool.org/policy

A variety of resources are available: curricula, marketing materials, toolkits, fact sheets, and more.

• Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) is a USDA-wide effort to strengthen local and regional food systems and the connection between consumers and farmers. It links to information on farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) and food policy councils.

• The USDA KYF2 blog is at: http://blogs.usda.gov/category/know-your-farmer-know-your-food

• A searchable database of farmers markets throughout the US is at: http://search.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets