Connecting the Regional Food Economy

Leading to a Healthy, Accessible Food System

With our pride in the region’s growing reputation as the “Farm to Fork” capital, we must also deal with the reality that many suffer from hunger and live in “food deserts” with limited access to fresh, locally grown food. This unacceptable contrast exists despite the fact that we live in a region rich with agriculture and farmlands. Solving this complex problem requires coordinated effort that involves all sectors of our local food economy. 

Our leadership in Connecting the Regional Food Economy aims to create upstream changes that ensure everyone benefits from a healthy and thriving regional food system with access for all. We partner with the key players in the food economy — including local farmers, distributors, and vendors — to pursue that aim.

Through a partnership made possible by this initiative, for example, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services (SFBFS) streamlined its system of 220 partner agencies, building a more effective and efficient emergency food distribution system to escalate the fight against hunger in Sacramento County. Because of our sustained collaboration, SFBFS has improved its use of computers and databases to track the food its agencies distribute, purchased more trucks and forklifts to move food pallets with ease throughout Sacramento County, and has increased its refrigeration storage to keep foods fresh — which was essential to meeting skyrocketing need that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic.

That partnership advanced one goal of the Sacramento Region Food System Action Plan (the Regional Action Plan), a Foundation-funded report that recommends strategies to strengthen the region’s food entire system. 

The 2021 Sacramento Region Food System Action Plan, produced in partnership with Valley Vision, identifies opportunities to strengthen the regional food system.

Look through the Plan

Originally developed with Valley Vision in 2015, we updated Regional Action Plan in 2021 to reflect changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the local food ecosystem, including the exacerbation of inequities described in the 2015 research.

Learn about the 2021 Action Plan

The Healthy Food Economy Fund collaboratively funds the large-scale investments that are improving the greater Sacramento region's entire food system.

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Our collaborative investments to pursue the recommendations of the Regional Action Plan are resourced by the Healthy Food Economy Fund, which we seeded in 2015 to collaboratively fund the large-scale investments that will improve the greater Sacramento region's entire food system. 

Learn about the healthy food economy fund