This toolkit was written for community members who are interested in assessing their community’s current food system.  It offers an overview of what a baseline food system assessment is and provides a step-by-step guide for engaging practitioners and seeking community input to better understand a community’s food environment.

This toolkit was developed by Community Food Strategies, a multi-organizational team that provides network and technical support for food council development throughout North Carolina. We partner with councils in all phases of development, with the goal of building more resilient and equitable food systems.

At the time of this toolkit design, the Community Food Strategies team is comprised of Abbey Piner, Gini Knight and Shorlette Ammons of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), Amy Marion of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP), Jared Cates of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA), LaShauna Austria of Kindred Seedlings Farm, Lindsey Carver of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, and Megan Bolejack of Care Share Health Alliance.