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Food System Mapping: The Value of Geographic Analysis

by Community Food Security Coalition

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Presentation used by Amanda Behrens, Project Manager at the John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future during the workshop titled "Knowing you Make a Difference: Community Food Security Assessment and ...

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Like Vincent, I represent a university perspective, but the Center is unique in that we are affiliated with Johns Hopkins, but funded through private donors, so we have leeway to partner with community groups. As you see here in our mission statement, we work to promote interest, research and action in and around how we raise our food, and how different agriculture systems impact our health. But we also work to serve as TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE to local orgs and as CONNECTORS – we stay aware of the multiple local orgs working on these issues & connect them with each other and with expertise when needed.
The project I manage at CLF is the MFSMP. It began with data collected thru PhD dissertation research about the “food environment” in Baltimore. In 2006, Manuel Franco set out to answer the question: Is there a disparity in the availability of healthy food options in the city versus the surrounding county? When the answer was found to be YES, we decided that it was important to start collecting data about the food environment, for our own research, and to serve as a resource for community groups, local farmers, planners and policy makers, anyone who could use more of this type of information. So my job is to collect and catalogue data on food access within the city limits… supermarkets, corner stores, farmers markets, community gardens. We also collect information about schools, rec centers and non-traditional food outlets. And then we also collect production and distribution data across the state in hope of identifying both the barriers and opportunities to addressing availability issues with local food. All of this data is entered into a mapping program so that we can look at it geographically. And the data and maps are available to other – soon through a web site! I’ll talk about this project in more detail later, and how it can be used as an evaluation tool.
I will discuss these different evaluation and assessment strategies and the scale at which they are both feasible and useful. The small-scale strategies are particularly suited to community organizations and small non-profits, that don’t have a lot of financial resources or man-power. CLF has implemented these tools, in partnership with community groups, and I’ll share our experience using these tools, and their benefits and limitations. The larger-scale methods and examples are worth noting. While not possible for all groups to conduct, they are resources that may be helpful. They all currently represent baseline data about the state of our local, regional and national food systems, and serve as initial exploratory efforts. What is good about these resources now existing, is that we can conduct similar surveys into the future and compare to this data. And thus evaluate the food environment & local food systems into the future. So in addition to my project, another East Coast initiative is the Phili Food Study – which also uses mapping and geography to understand local food. This was conducted by the regional planning commission and so was supported by generous funding and a team of technically skilled of planners and an expert advisory panel. They released the more than 200 page report, with maps, in the spring – very comprehensive regional study. Can find out more online. The USDA released the F. E. Atlas this year, it is an online map of a huge amount of data about population demographics and various measures of the food environment, including the distance to supermarkets (1 mile, 5 miles, etc.), availability of restaurants, food assistance, food security and more. It is broken down by census tract and there is so much data it can be overwhelming. But still a valuable resource. The fields of food security and the food environment research are young, and very complex subjects. It is important to collect as much information as we can, to understand where we are, where we need to go, and whether we are on target to meet our goals, i.e. EVALUATION.
To go into more depth about strategies that are useful and feasible for community orgs, let’s start with the CFA. Many if not all of you are very familiar with CFAs, so I’ll talk about our experience at CLF, and what we’ve done specific to Baltimore What do I mean by a Community Food Assessment? Involves both a Store survey AND Consumer Survey CFA tool (which we developed for Baltimore with help from CFSC and the Food Trust) As Vincent mentioned, crafting a good survey or questionnaire is not easy, so seeking assistance is to your advantage. CLF is in a unique position to offer expertise and technical assistance like this in Baltimore, and now Maryland (as other urban centers are looking to us for help). But CFSC and the Food Trust will help groups across the country. And of course, universities are a good resource as well. Typically the consumer survey is administered to 100 people or more (standard minimum for quantifiable results) – convenience sample (btwn random and non-random) The only identifying information we collect is ZIP CODES – but this is enough to allow us to track changes over time CLF has helped to conduct 2 CFAs in Baltimore, another underway and that we will use to validate the tool We have used this assessment primarily to inform project design and development, but plan to use it for evaluation also by conducting post-intervention assessments. As you can see in this list, many of these measures are excellent for measuring the impact of different project to address access. Here are listed some of the practical benefits, as well as outcomes that can be used for evaluation….
As you can see there are a mix of questions that will give you good numbers, numbers that can help you tell your story better – how many people are currently satisfied and where are the needs you can address with your organization. In addition to number, these questions reveal perceptions and beliefs, so you can get a pulse for the community’s level of understanding, their perceived and/or real barriers. As you can imagine, these questions can lead to erroneous remarks, if people are left to fill them out themselves., which we learned during our first assessment. So we now train community members and graduate students to work in teams together and conduct the surveys. Important to have a recorder so that you have clean and consistent responses. An added bonus is that comm. members are personally involved and learn from the experience. The assessment itself then becomes a Community building exercise – instead of “researchers coming in to study them.” This is an obvious point, but there inclusion is very important to the process and the outcomes – as discussed in the Participatory CFA workshop on Monday.
Here is an example of results from our first CFA in South west Baltimore. You can see that Most people report being satisfied, or at least somewhat satisfied – HOWEVER – when asked where they bought most of their food, they named 31 stores, of which only 5 fell within this zip code. It was found to be very important to ask both satisfaction questions AND specific questions about store locations and products offered, as together the answers tell a more complete story.
This is an example of the results from the store survey – which was developed using the Nutrition Environment Measurement Survey, adapted for Baltimore. This survey involves one to three data collectors to go out into the community, enter the key food stores and record some basic information about the types of foods available. Sometimes CLF hired students to help with this, or again, trained community members. This chart displays information about vegetable availability. We also collect information on fruits, whole wheat bread, skim milk. 13 stores have vegetables, 6 have them stored in non-working refrigerated cases. WIC requires carrots – so most freq carrots, followed by tomatoes, sweet peppers, celery, nothing else more than 2
Here is just another example of some of the results we gathered….
The second CFA we helped conduct was carried out because of a new urban agriculture enterprise – Real Food Farm – which started on school and park property in a very low income community, with dangerous corner stores dominating the food landscape – I say dangerous b/c the food and clerk are behind bulletproof plexi-glass due to crime in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, there are a number of these “behind glass” corner stores in Baltimore. While there was general acceptance that the area was a food desert, there was limited hard evidence to confirmed this. As there is no agreed upon definition of what qualifies as a food desert, any definition is subject to debate. So, again, we feel that we need more information – we are partnering with multiple community groups to conduct these assessments across the city. Gathering more evidence is all the more important as projects to address assumed needs keep cropping up, such as this farm, without evidence that the project is designed to actually meet the need. Note – some questions addressing a new farmers market that the farm would use to sell its produce to the community were added to the consumer survey. These questions were helpful to the farm in developing their marketing techniques. And the survey will then be conducted again after one or two years – allowing us to obtain pre and post data.
Because of good marketing efforts and recent media attention on urban agriculture in Baltimore, there was a lot of interest in this project and its potential, so in addition to the store and community survey, another group of students conducted a qualitative survey. QUALITATIVE APPROACH – with this approach, you don’t have hard numbers, but the information collected still valuable for certain purposes. It can evaluate the interest in proposed projects, the success in a new venture, or maybe discover that food access is not the most crucial issue to this community. Similar to Vincent’s example of speaking to key informants to understand the range of urban agriculture programs, this qualitative study aimed to understand the setting/neighborhood and experiences in the community’s terms. Some of the benefits of using these methods are: Data is Context Rich Textual Information in form of narrative and words Process is Iterative & Flexible Questions and methods change throughout study
Focus groups can be very informative, especially in the development phase of any project. But designing the set of questions, so they illicit useful responses is crucial – CLF and other universities can help with this. I suggest reaching out to partners with research expertise. In addition, focus groups require space, time (usually 2 hours) and money or other compensation for the participants. As there were 5 students working on this assessment, they employed other methods to round out their research – simple observations of the farm stand in action, and a pile sorting exercise that only took about 5 minutes. They set up the pile sort at the community center during an event, which consisted of asking peopleto group cards of different fruits and vegetables however they wanted, then explain why they arranged them in that order – which allowed for different interpretations and rich cultural information to come through.
This gives you a quick look at some of the results – in terms of barriers – that the students discovered. Price was of top concern. Across the board, respondents both from the community associations and from the community indicated that price was the major concern when considering adoption of a new food source. Price perceived as an entry barrier for RFF, which was interesting as the market was not even open. But this information was useful in developeing their marketing plan Also revealed some major cultural barriers – good food seen as a status symbol, but one that wasn’t important – which the top quote illustrates – people in the neighborhood might care more about shoes and clothes than good food. Consider how this information would inform your project design, Or how you might discover the impact or lack of impact your project or organization is making.
Now I’d like to move on to the mapping project and the role that geographic information can play. We use ArcInfo software (by Esri) to create these maps. (The program has just now been made available FREE TO NON-PROFITS! See www.esri.com for more info.) These two maps show Baltimore City and its community gardens in 2009 and 2010. I’m showing them side by side to make the point that time-stamped maps are helpful in tracking change and growth. In 2008 (not shown) we had 65 gardens, in 2009, 92, and in 2010, 136 – clear growth. Not only can we see overall growth, but where there are pockets of growth. This visualization also can help tell a quick and compelling story. These maps are also useful evaluations on their own of the state of community gardening in Baltimore, in addition to being used to track changes over time. Note – we are working on standardizing our displays, so that the maps are more easily comparable to each other visually.
We can also see where the gardens are located in relation to demographics, such as poverty. The area in purple is where 40% or more of the population make $37,000 or less annually. This amount is roughly equal to 185 % of the federal poverty level – the same measure at which school children qualify for free or reduced meals. Fortunately, the majority of the community gardens are within areas of poverty. But we still do not know the impact that these gardens have on communities – we don’t know the size of each garden, how much produce is grown, how many people they feed, etc. (as Vincent is measuring in Madison). It is a goal of our project to partner with groups to obtain this info.
Looking at Comm. Gardens is a form of asset mapping. The mapping project collects information on both assets and barriers (or where assets are lacking). This map looks at all stores, with same poverty measure, to serve as both asset and barrier map. Supermarkets seen as asset, but small stores often barrier w/ the easy access to convenient processed foods. What is most striking is perhaps the CONCENTRATION of these stores in impoverished areas. Both this and CG maps can be used to identify areas of need, but also to evaluate whether your org. is working in the right area. We are beginning to work with the food bank to evaluate their drop site locations. RFF is circled – you can see it is a mixed income neighborhood, but does have a high prevalence of smaller grocery/corner stores.
We created a map of food deserts, using a definition that we felt was appropriate to Baltimore. We used a Network Analysis (a “tool” in our mapping program) to calculate the distance to the nearest supermarket from the center of each block group. So the program followed the street grid from these centers to supermarkets, and those block groups that were farther than ¼ mile to a supermarket AND where 40% or more of the population is at 125% of the federal poverty level were shaded purple to indicate a food desert. Block groups are a smaller geographic unit to Census Tracts (tracts are made up of block groups), which we felt allowed us more accurate and specific demographic information. So our measure includes both distance and income measure. We feel that there are other outlets for healthy food in addition to supermarkets, but we wanted to first look at supermarket access as that is the most commonly used measure cited. And we chose ¼ mile b/c this is a common measure in the planning field for how far people are willing to walk for public transportation , which seemed appropriate as people will likely not walk further than this with groceries. So far these maps have been used to identify target areas for policy reform – starting with farmers markets, which you can see in the second map. They will be used to evaluate the progress of the city’s new food policy director, who has been tasked with addressing food deserts, starting with improving and expanding area farmers markets. We are working on looking at multiple definitions/measures of food deserts, to better understand the true food environment.
I don’t have ample time to get into the food production data and maps, but I want to end with this map to show the kind of data we are collecting about local food production. This map shows Maryland vegetable farms – according to the 2007 Census of Agricutlure, as displayed by the green shading – and farms with a CSA. The farms with a CSA were found from our own research, as we culled the internet for a list of farms in Maryland that sell locally and their products and marketing methods. Some counties could potentially use more CSA – maybe with support from Extension, which is now looking to use these maps to help develop their programming. We hope these maps serve as a jumping off point for further research or targeted support – i.e. help farmers in Eastern Shore start CSAs. Ideally, we would like to work on using the maps to make connections between local farms and corner stores, to address FOOD ACCESS with local, sustainable agriculture.

Food System Mapping: The Value of Geographic Analysis Presentation Transcript

Food System Mapping: The Value of Geographic Analysis Food, Culture & Justice CFSC Annual Conference Tuesday, October 19, 2010 Amanda Behrens, Project Manager, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
Center for a Livable Future
- Our mission : To promote research and to develop and communicate information about the complex interrelationships among diet, food production, environment and human health in order to advance an ecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of the public; and to promote policies that protect health, the global environment and the ability to sustain life for future generations.
Maryland Food System Mapping Project http://www.jhsph.edu/clf/programs/eating/proj_foodsystem.html
Evaluation Strategies
- Small scale (community-level):
- Larger scale (city-wide and state-wide):
Why do a community food assessment?
- Build the community’s capacity to examine food access issues
- Have data to inform your programs
- Use data available to tell the story in your community (residents, funders, universities, etc)
- Map existing assets
- Provides a reality check on community perceptions of food issues and overall landscape of food access.
- Identify institution and individual barriers and strengths
Sample Community Survey Questions
- How satisfied are you with the overall quality of the food sold in your neighborhood?
- How satisfied are you with the availability of healthy food in your neighborhood?
- How often do you buy food at a corner store or convenience store ?
- How easy is it for you to get to the supermarket?
- Also included - fruit & veg intake, health questions
R esidents Survey: Satisfaction with Food in OROSW Area
Availability of vegetables
- 69% - NO vegetables for sale
- 15% sold only one or two varieties
- Only 2 stores sold more than 5 types
Community Assets
- 55% - prepare meals from scratch daily or several times/week
- 50% interested in learning more about healthy food preparation
- 67% were interested in changing current eating patterns
- 83% would purchase fruits and vegetables grown in their neighborhood/ sold in farmer’s market
Real Food Farm Qualitative Study Methods
- METHODS
METHODS Participant Method Community Organization Representatives
- 8 In-Depth Interviews
Community Residents
- 2 Focus Groups Discussions
- 14 Pile Sorts
- Ongoing In-Depth Interviews
Community Sites (Farm Stands, Community Meetings, etc)
- Observations
Real Food Farm Qualitative Study Methods , continued FOCUS GROUP SET UP PILE SORT CARDS FARM STAND
“ When it comes to food, very few of us in this community are status food shoppers…we may be status tennis shoe buyers”
- RESULTS: Barriers
- Structural barriers
- Social relevance of health
- Cultural barriers
Community Gardens, 2009 (92) compared to 2010 (136)
Thank you! Amanda Behrens [email_address] www.jhsph.edu/clf