Community – Sustainability

HEAL Food Alliance (website)

The Health, Environment, Agriculture, and Labor (HEAL) Food Alliance was born out of the understanding that no single individual, organization, or sector can transform food and farm systems in isolation. HEAL Food Alliance believes that true transformation requires diverse skills, roles, resources, and collective organizing for real and lasting change.

Today, HEAL is a national, multi-sector, multi-racial coalition of 55 member organizations that collectively represent more than 2 million people — including rural and urban farmers, ranchers, fishers, farm and food chain workers, Indigenous groups, scientists, public health advocates, policy experts, community organizers, and activists.

Together, these members are building a powerful movement to transform food and farm systems away from extractive economic models and toward community control, care for the land, thriving local economies, dignified labor, and healthy communities nationwide. In doing so, HEAL advances the sovereignty and well-being of all living beings.

HEAL’s mission is to build collective power to create food and farm systems that are healthy for families, accessible and affordable for all communities, and fair to the working people who grow, distribute, prepare, and serve food — while protecting the air, water, and land on which everyone depends.

HEAL’s vision is that all people and all communities have the right and the means to produce, procure, prepare, share, and eat food that is both nutritionally and culturally appropriate, free from exploitation of themselves or others, and aligned with a harmonious relationship with the rest of the natural world.

HEAL’s 10-Point Platform for Real Food expresses the belief that food is humanity’s most intimate and powerful connection to one another, to culture, and to the earth. To transform the food system is to take a powerful step toward healing bodies, economies, and the environment.

Crafted by HEAL members, the Platform serves as both a call to action and a political compass for transformation. The 10-Point Platform represents the bedrock of HEAL’s principles and the policy goals it actively pursues. It is a roadmap — a shared path toward a future that truly nourishes health, economies, and the environment.

For more details, you can download the whole document on their website.

Economy

1 – Dignity for Food Workers

2 – Opportunity for All Producers

3 – Fair & Competitive Markets

4 – Resilient Regional Economies

Health

5 – Dump the junk

6 – Increase Food Literacy & Transparency

7 – Real Food in Every Hood

Environment

8 – Phase Out Factory Farming

9 – Promote Sustainable Farming, Fishing, & Ranching

10 – Close the Loop on Waste, Runoff, & Energy

updated 2026 January

Rikolto (Website)

Rikolto, which means harvest, is an international NGO with more than 50 years’ experience in partnering with farmer organisations and food chain stakeholders across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Their work is structured around three global programmes: our international Rice, Cocoa & Coffee and Good Food 4 Cities programmes.

‍Inclusive business is at their core. They promote long-term business relationships, fulfilling farmers’ and buyers’ needs alike. They ensure the sustainability of our actions through a holistic sustainable food systems approach, facilitating collective action among all food system actors.

Mission:

A sustainable income for farmers and nutritious, affordable food for everyone.

Good Food for Cities: Healthy, sustainable, and nutritious food in Latin American cities

Rikolto collaborates with local food system actors (governments, farmers, food retailers and distributors, citizens and their organisations, thematic experts, financial institutions, civil society organisations) to make urban food environments and food supply chains more conducive to healthy, sustainable, and nutritious diets in 11 cities. With diverse stakeholders, they collaborate and promote full participation (all represented), so that no one is left behind.

Contributed by Christine McCullum-Gomez, PhD, RDN

updated 2025 December

Case Study: Cardinia Food System Strategy (2025 Dec)

At a Glance:

The Cardinia Food Circles Collective Impact Project aimed to establish a healthy, delicious, sustainable, and fair food system for all Cardinia Shire residents.
The project began in November 2016 as a partnership between Cardinia Shire Council and backbone partners Sustain Australia to facilitate changes in the local food systems, which could support better health outcomes.
The Cardinia Shire Community Food Strategy was created and guided by a steering committee, and key partners from local and regional health organisations, education and research institutions, the food industry, community members, not-for-profit organisations, and local government staff.
Together, they advocated for and promoted the Strategy’s shared vision and common agenda, and led and supported key actions and activities across the wider project.
Lessons Learnt: Empowering local communities and engaging diverse partners are essential for building resilient, equitable food systems. Multisectoral approaches, focused on food literacy and local innovation, amplify the reach and sustainability of food strategies.

In 2016, Cardinia Shire embarked on an ambitious journey to transform its food landscape for all residents. Through months of extensive community consultation, the Council listened to local voices, aspirations, and challenges around food access, affordability, and quality.

This collaboration shaped the development of the first-ever Community Food Strategy for Cardinia, outlining a shared commitment to nutritious, sustainable, and culturally meaningful food.

Guided by five strategic objectives, Cardinia pledged to protect fertile agricultural land and empower local growers. The strategy supports a vibrant food economy, ensuring that fresh, healthy produce is both accessible and affordable.

Schools, workplaces, and clubs throughout the region have become central settings for fostering food literacy, skills, and positive food culture. Efforts to reduce and divert food waste, alongside water reuse initiatives, are framed as environmental and social imperatives. Finally, building capacity—by encouraging leadership, participation, and partnership—underpins all strategy work.

Over time, this work has led to greater advocacy for the community food system. New policies and plans have emerged from grassroots initiatives. Partnerships between the council, community organisations, local businesses, and volunteers have flourished, creating stronger support and new public spaces for food-related activities. Workforce skill-building and targeted funding have ensured these actions remain both relevant and sustainable.

Cardinia’s story is one of innovation and collaboration, showing what happens when people unite around a common vision: food that’s good for people, good for the place, and good for the future.

The cornerstone lesson is that genuine community engagement and strong partnerships are key to meaningful food system change. By listening deeply and working together, Cardinia forged a foundation for lasting improvements—ensuring healthy, sustainable food is more than just an aspiration, but a lived reality for current and future generations.

Contact Information

Cardinia Shire Council
mail@cardinia.vic.gov.au
(+61) 1300 787 624
www.cardinia.vic.gov.au/info/20031/liveability_health_and_wellbeing/645/cardinia_food_circles_project

Download a copy of ICDA SFS Case Study: Cardinia Food System Strategy Download PDF

Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Contact: ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca

The ICDA SFS Toolkit is made to be used & shared freely.
Please cite the authors of the resources you use, and the ICDA SFS Toolkit if you are able:
InternationalDietetics.org/Sustainability

Created 2025 December

Collaborative co-design for local blue food system transformation: the practicalities and challenges of the UK’s (FoodSEqual) ‘Plymouth Fish Finger’ pilot study (2025, Accepted Manuscript)

Hunt, L., Pettinger, C., Tsikritzi, R., & Wagstaff, C. (2025). Collaborative co-design for local blue food system transformation: The practicalities and challenges of the UK’s (FoodSEqual) “Plymouth Fish Finger” pilot study. Environmental Research: Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/ae1f1c (Open Access, Accepted Manuscript)

Abstract

Purpose: UK food system transformation is urgently needed but blue foods (e.g. fish) have been only minimally part of this discourse. Informed by community action research in a UK southwest coastal city, fish was identified as a food commodity for food system innovation, leading to local collaborative ‘co-design’ of an iconic British food. The ‘Plymouth Fish Finger’ pilot assessed the practicalities and challenges of this social innovation and its provision into the school meal system.

Design: Exploratory creative mixed methods mapped the journey of the Fish Finger as a social innovation. Methods drew on ‘co-production’ approaches, involving Community Food Researchers (CFR), co-design with secondary school students, expert fish/school stakeholder consultations, educational pop-up taste tests in primary schools, processual observations and fieldnote reflections. Descriptive statistics and participatory analyses provided quantitative and qualitative insights respectively.

Findings: Taste testing with schools and communities showed positive sensory and educational attributes. Participatory analyses resulted in five core themes:
i) ‘Supply’ – disrupting traditional supply chains;
ii) ‘Environmental benefits’ – reduced impact of small vessels;
iii) ‘Processing’ – making an appealing product;
iv) ‘Education’ – the value of educational input; and
v) ‘Upscaling and legacy’ – routes to possible future expansion.
An underpinning category was also constructed – ‘Pride and identity meets reality’, which illuminates pride in the product and the imperative of its economic viability.

Originality: This small-scale exploratory pilot study forged relationships between academics, communities, fishing industry stakeholders, schools, and school meal providers. It successfully built the concept of a community-led fish finger social innovation, advocating for collaborative action towards (blue) food system transformation. This paper offers insights and recommendations for research, policy, and practice, which exemplify the complex interplay between factors driving distortions in access to and availability of fish within the local food system

2025 December: When the Accepted Manuscript is finalized this figure will be updated.

updated 2025 December

Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in planet-friendly school meals for children: a scoping review (2025 Nov)

*Distribution of evidence from the 124 articles on home grown school meals or school garden interventions, or both, with labels showing the number of articles per country.*

Estrada-Carmona, N., Hunter, D., Samrat, S., & Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition. (2025). Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in planet-friendly school meals for children: A scoping review. The Lancet Planetary Health, 9(11), 101374. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(25)00252-9[1]

The global shift away from healthy, diverse, and sustainable diets threatens children’s health and futures. Although school gardens and home-grown school meals can reconnect children with nutritious, sustainably produced food, these interventions are often implemented separately and with little attention to agrobiodiversity, which is a cornerstone for sustainability and healthy diets.

Via a scoping review of 124 articles from 35 countries, we identified wide-ranging and complementary benefits of these interventions beyond health and education. The benchmark of the species used in these interventions against cultivated, predicted, and listed edible plants shows that agrobiodiversity is underused.

Despite fragmented and incomplete evidence, our research shows that these interventions can jointly drive profound transformation. Realising this potential demands systemic shifts toward holistic, rights-based approaches that overcome surmountable barriers and build objective, sustainable, and resilient food systems delivering planet-friendly school meals.

Contributed by Christine McCullum-Gomez, PhD, RDN

updated 2025 December

Sustainable diets: where from and where to? (2025)

Macheka L, Kanter R, Lawrence M, Dernini S, Naja F, Oenema S. Sustainable diets: where from and where to? Journal of Nutritional Science. 2025;14:e78. doi:10.1017/jns.2025.10049 (Open access)

Abstract

The multilevel dimensions of sustainable diets associating food systems, public health, environmental sustainability, and culture are presented in this paper. It begins by defining sustainable diets as those that are healthful, have low environmental impacts, are affordable, and culturally acceptable.

The discussion includes the history of research on sustainable diets, from initial studies focused on environmental impacts to more recent, comprehensive frameworks that integrate affordability, cultural relevance, and nutritional adequacy as key dimensions of diet sustainability. In addition, the paper highlights recent innovations, such as the Planetary Health Diet of EAT–Lancet and the SHARP model, and the conflicts and optimum trade-offs between sustainability and nutrition, particularly within low- and middle-income countries.

Case descriptions of Mediterranean Diet with a focus on Traditional Lebanese Diet, and African Indigenous Foods demonstrate culturally confined dietary patterns associated with sustainability objectives. These examples show that sustainable diets are not a single set of prescriptions, but a series of multiple pathways that are shaped by local food environments, ecological belts, and sociocultural heritages.

The paper also describes major policy and governance activities necessary to promote sustainable diets. Finally, the paper addresses measurement challenges and advocates for better indicator options to measure sustainable food systems in all their facets and for participatory and context-specific approaches.

The discussion concludes that fairer and culturally diverse inclusion strategies, system change, and political determination are imperative in achieving sustainable diets. Diets able to sustain are posited as agents capable of driving the 2030 agenda, enhancing planetary health, and social integrity.

Contributed by Christine McCullum-Gomez, PhD, RDN

updated 2025 December

Switzerland’s National Pathway for Food Systems Transformation in Support of the 2030 Agenda (2025 July)

In response to the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021, Switzerland developed its first National Pathway for Food Systems Transformation as part of global efforts to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Grounded in Switzerland’s 2030 Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS 2030) and its initial Action Plan, the Pathway outlines national priorities and actions toward more sustainable consumption and production, both domestically and internationally.

Since its adoption, Switzerland has further refined this framework through new strategic documents—including the Agriculture and Food Climate Strategy 2050, Swiss Nutrition Strategy 2025–2032, and the Action Plan against Food Waste, among others.

This updated version of the National Pathway highlights progress made during the first three years and sets out next steps toward a resilient, equitable, and sustainable food system.

By 2030, Switzerland aims to achieve key milestones: moving toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, halting biodiversity loss, and eradicating hunger and all forms of malnutrition—while ensuring that environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability are balanced and integrated.

updated 2025 December

Equator Prize: sustainable use of biodiversity (website)

The Equator Prize, organized by the United Nations Development Programme since 1993, is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

As sustainable community initiatives take root throughout the tropics, they are laying the foundation for a global movement of local successes that are collectively making a contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As local and indigenous groups across the tropics demonstrate and exemplify sustainable development, the Equator Prize shines a spotlight on their efforts by celebrating them on an international stage.

As of 2025, the Equator Prize has been awarded to 306 initiatives around the world. D-Ns can search the database to identify relevant SFS Role models by country, region, or topic. Some examples of how they could be useful include:
– for education in a classroom or field visit, or
– to partner with on activities, or
– for inspiring a group you are working with, or
– applying for the Equator Prize!

Selection Criteria

Equator Prize winners are selected by an independent Technical Advisory Committee, which assesses nominations based on the following criteria, which include many aspects of Sustainable Food Systems:

Impact: The extent to which the nominated initiative has resulted in measurable and positive environmental, social and economic impacts, related to two or more Sustainable Development Goals;
Innovation: The extent to which the nominated initiative demonstrates new approaches and models that overcome prevailing constraints, and could offer fundamentally new approaches to attaining sustainable development;
Scalability and/or replicability: The extent to which the nominated initiative could be scaled up sub-nationally or nationally and/or, the extent to which the initiative can be replicated within the country and beyond;
Resilience, Adaptability, and Self-Sufficiency: The extent to which the nominated initiative demonstrates adaptability to environmental, social and economic change, resilience in the face of external pressures, and improved capacity for local self-sufficiency;
Reduced inequalities: The extent to which the initiative reduces inequalities in income as well as those based on age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status, particularly for the poor;
Social Inclusion: The extent to which the nominated initiative includes youth, elders, indigenous members and other diverse groups in the decision-making processes and the actions that affect them;
Gender Equality: The extent to which the nominated Initiative promotes the equality and empowerment of women and girls.

updated 2025 Nov

Reclaiming the Future of Food: Community Pathways to Resilience, Justice and Regeneration (2025)

A collaboratively written manifesto for community-led food system transformation. ECOLISE is the European Network for Community-Led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability. Since 2014, they have been supporting community-led initiatives, their networks, and partners to catalyse systemic transformation within and across society.

This co-created policy paper, developed through a participatory process involving ECOLISE members, networks, and partners across Europe, outlines a shared vision and 13 policy recommendations to empower communities to drive the transition towards resilient, regenerative, and just food systems.

It aligns local innovation with European policy ambitions, offering concrete pathways for multilevel collaboration and collective impact. An extended edition, to be published soon, will include detailed case studies and good practices illustrating these recommendations in action.

Mexican Dietary Guidelines (2025)

Mexico launches new Dietary Guidelines with a sustainability lens 🌱 by Cecilia De Bustos, UNICEF Mexico:

On 2025 October 16, the Government of Mexico officially launched the second edition of the Dietary Guidelines for the Mexican Population 2025–2030, a milestone in public health and food systems transformation for Mexico. These guidelines are not just about what we eat—they are a call to action for a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable future.

UNICEF México is proud to have provided technical support in the development of these guidelines, alongside the Ministry of Health, INSP, FAO and many other stakeholders. This collaborative effort reflects a shared commitment to improving nutrition while protecting our planet.

🌍 What makes these guidelines groundbreaking?

✅ They promote environmentally friendly dietary patterns, including breastfeeding and the consumption of local, seasonal, and plant-based foods.
✅ They adopt a sustainable food systems approach, considering the entire food chain—from production to consumption—with a focus on sustainable agriculture and responsible supply chains.
✅ They call for the reduction of food waste, both at home and across the supply chain.
✅ They support the consumption of foods that preserve biodiversity and natural resources, including water and soil.
✅ They value traditional food practices and promote diets that are culturally appropriate, accessible, and equitable for all.

🌽 The guidelines also celebrate the Dieta de la Milpa—a traditional Mexican dietary pattern —as a model for healthy, sustainable eating.