Running A Food Hub: A Business Operations Guide

Overview

This report is part of a multi-volume technical report series entitled Running a Food Hub, with this guide serving as a companion piece to other United
States Department of Agriculture reports by providing in depth guidance on starting and running a food hub
enterprise. In order to compile the most current information on best management and operations practices, the authors used published information on food hubs, surveyed numerous operating food hubs, and pulled from their existing experience and knowledge of working directly
with food hubs across the country as an agricultural business consulting firm.
 
The report’s main focus is on the operational issues faced by food hubs, including choosing an organizational structure, choosing a location, deciding
on infrastructure and equipment, logistics and transportation, human resources, and risks. As such, the guide explores the different decision points associated
with the organizational steps for starting and implementing a food hub. For some sections, sidebars provide “decision points,” which food hub managers will
need to address to make key operational decisions.

Temptation at Checkout: The Food Industry’s Sneaky Strategy for Selling More Full Report

Overview

This report examines one reason why it is so difficult to eat well in America today: retail marketing manipulates food choices (Kerr, 2012). We conclude that with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases due to poor nutrition, the retail environment should be
shaped not only by economic drivers but also by public health considerations. We propose beginning with the checkout aisles of retail stores, where the vast majority of purchases are unplanned. By rethinking checkout, retailers could support their customers’ health, rather
than pushing the consumption of extra—and often unwanted—calories from candy, soda, and other unhealthy foods and beverages.

Feeding Ourselves: Food Access, Health Disparities, and the Pathways to Healthy Native American Communities

Overview

This report, Feeding Ourselves: Food Access, Health Disparities, and the Pathways to Healthy Native American Communities, explores the complex historical and
contemporary challenges to Native American healthy food access, childhood obesity, and health disparities. Looking frst at the historical context of colonization,
the treatment of Native Americans as sovereign Tribal Nations, and the evolution of Federal Indian policy, Feeding Ourselves frames the work ahead to engage and
assist Native communities in moving beyond this condition. 

Nutrition Assistance in Farmers Markets: Understanding the Shopping Patterns of SNAP Participants

Overview

The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeks to expand access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods through farmers markets (FMs) among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. As such, the FNS has funded a portfolio of three large-scale studies regarding different aspects of how farmers markets function within SNAP. This report presents the findings of one of those studies—Nutrition Assistance in Farmers Markets: Understanding the Shopping Patterns of SNAP Participants.
 
The broad research objectives of the study were to:
1. Describe the shopping patterns of SNAP participants redeeming benefits at FMs.
2. Describe why some SNAP participants do not shop at FMs.
3. Describe the characteristics of the FMs serving the participants surveyed in relationship to their shopping decisions. 

Community Food Projects Indicators of Success

Overview

The Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program (CFP) was started in 1996 with the aim of fighting food insecurity through the development of community food projects that promote the self-sufficiency of lowincome communities. Since 1996 this program has awarded approximately $85 million to organizations nationally (Community Food Projects, 2015). 
 
In order to determine the collective impact of this grant program on an annual basis, the Community Food Security Coalition and the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture developed the Community Food Projects Indicators of Success

Building an Equitable Tax Code: A Primer for Advocates

Overview

In recent years a national discussion has been underway about the causes and effects of growing inequality, but one cause that has received little attention is the role of the U.S. tax code. The individual tax code contains more than $1 trillion in tax subsidies known to policymakers and economists as tax expenditures because, like spending programs, they provide financial assistance to support specific activities or groups of people. Of these subsidies, more than half a trillion, $540 billion, support some form of savings or investment (e.g., higher education, retirement, homeownership).

In theory, tax code–based public subsidies should help all families save and invest, but instead, wealthier households receive most of the benefits. In fact, a recent analysis of the largest wealth- building tax subsidies found that the top 1 percent of households received more benefits from these tax code–based subsidies than the bottom 80 percent combined.

This primer aims to answer key questions about tax expenditures for antipoverty advocates: What are they? How do they work?
Who benefits? In addition, since the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not collect tax data by race, the primer uses data related to the distribution of benefits by income quintiles and the demographics of each quintile to provide a rough approximation of how different racial and ethnic groups do or do not benefit from the different categories of tax expenditures.

Mapping Baltimore City's Food Environment

Overview

This report and analysis will guide us in creating and expanding specific food access strategies and policies that will promote equitable access to healthy
affordable food for all residents.

Fostering Community Benefits: How Food Access Nonprofits and Hospitals Can Work Together to Promote Wellness

Overview

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, nonprofit hospitals are required to provide benefits to the communities they serve to keep a tax-exempt status. In the past, nonprofit hospitals have met this requirement by providing care to uninsured or underinsured patients. Now that the Affordable Care Act has expanded insurance coverage to these populations, hospitals are looking for new ways to give back to the communities they serve.
 
The Affordable Care Act has also tasked these hospitals with conducting a Community Health Needs Assessment and subsequently developing Community Health Improvement Plans to help prioritize the most pressing needs in their community and identify programs and resources that will directly improve patient health outcomes.
 
This new requirement is an opportunity for hospitals to work together with community partners to foster a culture of health by addressing underlying drivers
of chronic disease, which often include lack of access to healthy, affordable food.

The State of Higher Education in California: Black Report

Overview

California is home to the nation’s fifth largest Black population, and though Black students today are more likely to graduate from high school and college than they were a decade ago, persistent opportunity gaps exist in college access and success and completion outcomes are still too low.  These troubling findings are a result of funding, policy and institutional weaknesses rather than individual student dedication. The report calls for a concerted, strategic effort to produce better educational outcomes for Black students.

Food for Every Child: The Need for Healthy Food Financing in Michigan

Overview

Michigan must address the significant need for fresh food resources in many of its communities. A myriad of factors have created a shortage of healthy food resources in lower-income areas across the state, creating a public health
crisis.
 
Despite having the nation’s second most diverse agriculture industry, 17.9% of Michigan’s residents are food insecure, meaning they lack reliable access to healthy food. In Kent County, home to Grand Rapids, the largest city in West Michigan, 80,000 people are food insecure.
 
More than 1.8 million Michigan residents, including an estimated 300,000 children, live in lower-income communities with limited
supermarket access. Underserved communities can be found in rural areas such as Hillsdale, Tuscola, Sanilac, Cold Water and Allegan, as well as in urban centers including Flint and Detroit.

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