The Saline County Food Action Community Team’s mission is to build a strong, culturally appropriate local food system and improve access to healthy food for all in Saline County. We envision a thriving community with open pathways leading to healthy living fueled by local food resources.

What is the food system?

The food system includes all the activities, people, and resources involved in producing, transportation, processing, packaging, buying, cooking, eating, disposing, and reusing food.

What is a food policy council?

A food policy council partners residents, stakeholders, and policymakers to examine how the local food system operates. These councils bring together diverse stakeholders to develop recommendations that will improve the food environment. These recommendations can take the form of policy, systems, or environmental changes.

Why do food policy councils matter?

Food systems out of balance hurt people. If people don’t eat well, they won’t live well.
Imbalanced food systems can affect communities in many ways. These include chronic and infectious diseases the obesity and overweight epidemic, food deserts and food swamps, social inequity and inequality, a loss of agricultural land, declining farming employment, animal welfare, environmental degradation, and the concentration of economic power.

A food policy council’s goal is to build bridges across sectors to coordinate action that addresses the entire food system, not just parts of it. Actors within the food system may not otherwise work together.

The “what” of food policy councils is also “why” communities form them. They:

• Encourage team problem solving to improve the local food system
• Make the local food system more sustainable and socially just
• Help spur local economic development
• Improve body weight in the overall population
• Give voice to many stakeholders and serve as a public forum to discuss food issues
• Democratize food policy decisions and reflect diverse perspectives
• Build relationships between government, nonprofit and private sectors, as well as community members.
• Play an active role in educating policymakers and the public about the food system

Our Mission and Approach