Report: Toward Market Cities: Lessons on Supporting Public Market Systems from Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Toronto

Public markets systems in North America are both agile and fragile. When the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread stay-at-home orders and business closures, many markets across the continent stayed open, continuing to safely provide fresh and healthy food to residents as supply chains were strained and serve as an economic lifeline to farmers and other producers. This contribution to the resilience of our communities often took place despite limited, uncoordinated support from all levels of government.

It was in this extreme context that the Market Cities Initiative at Project for Public Spaces undertook this research effort to kickstart citywide market strategies in three North American cities—Seattle, Washington, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With support from The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Foundation, Project for Public Spaces provided each city with pro bono technical assistance and a small planning grant to audit each city’s existing market system, identify challenges and opportunities, and convene a broad group of stakeholders to advocate for new policy and governance structures.

This report includes background on the Market Cities Initiative and its research efforts to date, summaries of each local partner’s findings and recommendations, and broad takeaways for other cities looking to strengthen their market systems or leading their own Market City process.

Measuring Racial Equity in the Food System: Established and Suggested Metrics

From the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems.

This tool offers an expansive list of metrics that U.S. food system practitioners and food movement organizations can use to hold ourselves accountable for progress towards a more equitable food system. The metrics are either currently in use or are recommended by food system practitioners and food movement organizations in the United States. They are described, cited, and organized by themes: food access, food and farm business, food chain labor, and food movement.

Includes a PDF Guide and link to a webinar introduction to the guide.

Match the Market: Adapting Nutrition Incentives to Various Food Outlets

Meet the Presenters

Farmers Market Coalition and National Grocers Association TA Center in partnership with the Nutrition Incentive Hub have teamed up to present Match the Market: Adapting Nutrition Incentives to Various Food Outlets.

Nutrition incentive programs, which offer a “buy one get one” model to encourage customers to purchase more fruits and vegetables, have grown in popularity over the years. Although they originated in farmers markets, today nutrition incentives have expanded to reach several food outlets, including farm stands, CSAs, co-ops, and grocery stores. Throughout this expansion, administrators have discovered that there is no “one size fits all” approach.

This webinar will discuss how nutrition incentive practitioners can adapt and shift their programs to meet the unique needs of different types of food outlets. Statewide and regional organizations that expanded their nutrition incentive program from farm direct outlets to brick and mortar outlets (or vice versa) will discuss their rationale for this shift and how they adapted their program accordingly.  They will share the lessons they learned along the way, including tips on marketing, capacity support, and outlet funding requirements.

Attendees will learn:

• Important considerations when shifting an existing nutrition incentive model to a new type of food outlet
• The challenges faced when making the expansion between farm direct and brick and mortar outlets
• The benefits of running incentive programs in both farm direct and brick and mortar outlets

Whether your organization is already preparing to implement a nutrition incentive program in a new type of outlet, or you’re simply interested in learning about the difference between how incentive programs work at farm direct and brick and mortar sites, this webinar will offer you insight into how you can successfully match the market.

Click the image below for the recording of the webinar

Access presentation slides here
Webinar Q and A

The Management Center: Equity and Inclusion

How to talk about what’s going on with your team

“Acknowledge to your whole team what’s happening and why it matters. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the pandemic, it’s that who we are outside of work can’t be separated from who we are at work. And yet, many of us have mastered the art of compartmentalization. Sometimes, our privilege enables us to set aside horrific news and go about our days as usual. Often, compartmentalization is a survival mechanism. And for many Black staff, managers, and leaders, it is a suffocating performance of professionalism. As a leader or manager (especially if you’re not Black), merely naming what’s happening can help lift the burden of pretending that everything is okay.”

Dismantling Racism Works Web Workbook

This website is a web-based version of a workbook designed originally to support the Dismantling Racism workshop offered by Dismantling Racism Works, a training collaborative that is not offering workshops or consulting support at this time. The workshop was one step in a longer process developed initially by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun over three decades ago. It builds on the work of many people, including (but not limited to) Andrea Ayvazian, Cynthia Brown, Bree Carlson, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Eli Dueker, Nancy Emond, Jonathan Henderson, Vivette Jeffries-Logan, Michelle Johnson, Jonn Lunsford, Jes Kelley, Sharon Martinas, jona olsson, Suzanne Plihcik, Christina Rivera-Chapman, David Rogers, James Williams, Sally Yee, as well as the work of the Peace Development Fund, Grassroots Leadership, Equity Institute Inc, the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, the Lillie Allen Institute, the Western States Center, and the contributions of the many participants in the DR workshops over so many years. Many people’s thinking and experience have contributed to the resources you will find here.

Urban Sustainability Directors Network: Equity Foundations Training

In September 2015, USDN developed a holistic curriculum of webinars, videos, and worksheets to help local government staff to apply an equity lens to a sustainability project, including choosing a good project, communicating about the project and racial equity, building a team, applying proven equity tools, and designing the project to embed an equity lens in local government practice.

Racial Equity Tools

Racial Equity Tools is designed to support individuals and groups working to achieve racial equity. This site offers tools, research, tips, curricula and ideas for people who want to increase their own understanding and to help those working toward justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.

An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System (Seventh Edition)

The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to provide current research and outreach on structural racism in the U.S. food system for the food system practitioner, researcher, and educator.

Our intention was to look at literature and videos that broadly cover structural racism across the entire food supply chain as well as to examine specific sectors.

A RACIAL EQUITY IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE FOR FOOD HUBS: A framework for translating value into organizational action

We have to stop pretending that our food system is not broken. It is broken, and it isn’t just broken because of the threat of GMOs or people not knowing their farmers or where their food comes from. That is, indeed, part of it. But it is also broken because it has always reflected back to us the inequalities that exist in our society. To really reckon with that means that we have to consider how race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. are not just individual experiences or identities. They are structures, often oppressive structures, that we cannot ignore. To treat them intersectionally is to consider how food is not separate from race, not separate from gender, not separate from ability, etc. and that where a person or community stands at these intersections means that they have radically different life chances and access to food.

– Ashanté Reese, Assistant Professor, Sociology
and Anthropology, Spelman College

Market Types/Clusters

Pittsburgh PA farmers markets clustered by type from 2018 FMC report for City of Pittsburgh.