About Food Vision 2030

The Vision builds off of these past efforts, beginning with early grassroots initiatives to cultivate food justice and build greater food sovereignty to the community roundtables that led to the founding of the San Diego Food System Alliance.

More than a decade ago in 2010, the San Diego Food System Working Group with the support of UC Davis, articulated three visions for the future of the region’s food system that included better health and well-being of San Diego County residents, agricultural stewardship of San Diego County’s environmental resource base, and thriving communities and sustainable economic growth. 

In 2011, the San Diego Urban-Rural Roundtable released a set of recommendations for strengthening the region’s food system that called for adopting and implementing a comprehensive set of food system policies, aligning and leveraging the political environment to support key federal, state and regional food and agricultural policies, and supporting the creation of a regional food system alliance. This third recommendation led to the founding of the San Diego Food System Alliance. 

We have looked to these past efforts as a springboard for developing Food Vision 2030. We have also drawn from the efforts of countless organizations and institutions, many of which are partners of the Alliance, who have conducted food system research in the region over the past several years. Most recently, the County of San Diego developed The State of the Food System in the San Diego Region, a collaborative report that examined challenges and opportunities in San Diego County’s food system. Food Vision 2030 builds on the recommendations from this 2019 report. 

And finally, we looked to other regions that have developed food system plans, including Santa Barbara County’s 2016 Food Action Plan, HEAL Food Alliance’s Platform for Real Food, Los Angeles Food Policy Council’s Good Food For All Agenda, and Vermont’s Farm to Plate Initiative. 

The work of those working locally, nationally, and globally to strengthen food systems inspired the development of Food Vision 2030. Wherever possible, we leveraged our relationships with community leaders far and wide to incorporate the lessons of past efforts and build on current ones.

¹ Ellsworth, Susan and Gail Feenstra, December 2010, Assessing the San Diego County Food System: Indicators for a More Food Secure Future, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54b30bbae4b0fc4c2291385e/t/56096c47e4b0566c6094504f/1443458119325/SDFSWG_Final_Report_optimized.pdf.

² Roots of Change, June 30, 2011, Final Recommendations of the San Diego Urban-Rural Roundtable, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54b30bbae4b0fc4c2291385e/t/56097131e4b06ea5093d0461/1443459377175/SDURRT+Final+Report+June+2011.pdf.

We integrated the many lessons learned—including the importance of centering values; cultivating relationships with and engaging food system leaders, workers, and residents, along with political and philanthropic leaders; breaking down silos; fostering collective impact; diversifying funding; and being adaptable. 

We arrived at a decision that is guided by the Collective Impact framework, which highlights several conditions that work together to achieve alignment and results.

Source: Cabaj, Mark and Lize Weaver, 2016, Collective Impact 3.0: An Evolving Framework for Community Change, Tamarack Institute, https://www.collectiveimpactforum.org/sites/default/files/Collective%20Impact%203.0.pdf. 

³ Kania, John and Mark Kramer, 2011, “Collective Impact,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact.

Building on the Collective Impact framework, we centered three primary values for Food Vision 2030: cultivating justice, fighting climate change, and building resilience. These values underpin the Vision, and became the foundational goals for the next decade.

To achieve this, we crafted a set of steps that incorporated accountability throughout the two-year process.

The Leadership Council of the Alliance, a group of nearly 40 leaders working across the food system, served as early advisors before we launched Food Vision 2030 and continued to provide strategic guidance through quarterly meetings throughout the two-year process. They also played a key role with outreach to communities and developing the goals, objectives, and strategies.

To ensure that Food Vision 2030 was grounded in the values and aspirations of both the Alliance and the broader community, we brought together a diverse Steering Committee as well. The 16-member Steering Committee was carefully curated to include community organizers across the food system as well as representatives from nonprofit, political, and philanthropic communities. The Steering Committee met bi-monthly over the two-year period and were essential in engaging the broader community, especially those most impacted by the food system, and infusing accountability into our process. They also played an important role in guiding the overall planning process and developing the goals, objectives, and strategies.

In our efforts to reach those most impacted by the food system, we also cultivated partnerships with 12 specific communities across San Diego County. We worked with community partners in these historically underserved neighborhoods over the course of the two-year planning process to engage as many residents as possible. We also worked with organizers to engage essential workers, including farmers, fishermen, food business owners, farmworkers, and food workers. Several of our community partners and organizers also served on the Leadership Council and Food Vision 2030 Steering Committee, and were vital in holding us accountable within their communities.

During the final phase of developing the report and content for Food Vision 2030, we invited Leadership Council members, our Steering Committee, community partners, and those we interviewed throughout the planning process the opportunity to review and offer feedback on each of the chapters reflected in this final report. We are grateful for all of these important stakeholders and their commitment to holding us accountable.

Sources included the U.S. Department of Agriculture, San Diego Agriculture, Weights, and Measures, the American Community Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and more.
We also conducted over 100 interviews and over two dozen focus groups with individuals working across the food system, including food producers, food business owners, institutional leaders, nonprofit leaders, political leaders, and funders and investors. And we collected nearly 3,000 survey responses from the residents and essential food system workers.
Based on the research conducted, we developed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses for the major components of San Diego County’s food system. We also developed dozens of indicators to create a shared measurement system for tracking progress within the region over time.
And finally, we organized all of the feedback from the literature, data analyses, interviews, focus groups and community surveys to develop goals, objectives, and strategies for San Diego County’s food system.

To build a shared vision that included voices from the community, particularly those most affected by current inequities in the food system, we cultivated trusting and reciprocal relationships with community organizers that have been working within historically disinvested neighborhoods for decades and with those supporting essential food system workers.
These partnerships were intended to support a series of community forums and neighborhood convenings—in Chula Vista, City Heights, El Cajon, Escondido, Imperial Beach, Logan Heights, National City, Oceanside, Southeastern San Diego, San Ysidro, Vista, Unincorporated communities, and Indigenous communities—with the goal of fostering community conversations, gathering community input, and sharing stories of the work happening across the food system in San Diego County. With the support of the County of San Diego’s Board of Supervisors, we also planned 5 large forums in each county district to launch the beginning of our community engagement process.
Unfortunately, the launch of the community engagement process in March 2020 coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and we were forced to pivot. Moving the community engagement process online challenged our ability to reach the community, especially residents in priority communities that may experience barriers in accessing reliable internet and technology, along with essential food system workers.
We worked closely with our community partners and organizers to understand the best approach for engaging each community. We also conducted research on the digital divide and tested a variety of online platforms. In collaboration with our partners, we ultimately created a plan to implement an equitable and safe digital engagement campaign.
Our community-based partners were essential to this process, and played a vital role in engaging community members in the process and encouraging them to make their voices heard. By cultivating deep and trusting relationships, we were able to lean on our community partners and organizers for support when facing the need to pivot in 2020.

With their support, we implemented the following to engage residents and food system workers:

Through this process, we sought community feedback in two phases. The first was in the summer of 2020 to gather insight on needs and aspirations. This feedback informed the development of the draft goals, objectives, and strategies. The second phase was in the fall of 2020 with the intention of obtaining input on a set of draft goals, objectives, and strategies. Through these two efforts, we engaged nearly 3,000 residents, with more than 60% from communities most impacted by inequities and essential food system workers.

We included policymakers and funders on the Food Vision 2030 Steering Committee, and worked with them to conduct outreach to these communities throughout the two-year process.

We developed a comprehensive government engagement strategy, cultivating relationships with key County and City policymakers. We held several one-on-one meetings, strategy sessions, and presentations with government officials across the county. Similarly, we also developed a philanthropic engagement strategy to involve funders and investors in the planning process for Food Vision 2030. We engaged with them as partners in this collective effort, hosting one-on-one meetings, presentations, and funder convenings.

Together, these efforts were foundational to our process, and will be vital as we move toward the collective implementation of Food Vision 2030.