Data to Support a Thriving and Informed Local and Regional Food Sector

This project provides open-access tools and data to illustrate areas of need and opportunities to close equity gaps related to nutrition, food access, food system labor, and agriculture and food business ownership.  As you use this site, we ask that you consider the recommendations in our data equity framework.

Webinar: Data to support your local, regional, state food systems work

To support this goal, we created:

  • 1
    A data warehouse (GitHub site) that includes data to help understand local and regional food system assets, health, and dynamics
  • 2
    The Food and Agriculture Data Explorer (FADE) to help stakeholders more easily visual their community/sector data
  • 3
    Voices from the Field to demonstrate ways in which community stakeholders are leveraging local and regional food system data to tell their own stories.

To learn more: About Us

Data warehouse (GitHub):

The data warehouse is a data storage site housed by GitHub. GitHub is a public data repository website also used by the Department and the USDA Forest Service for the same purpose. This site includes relevant publicly available survey instruments, county-level data, and point level data. The site keeps stakeholders from having to search the internet to find multiple data sets; these LRFS data sets are now all in one place.  

To learn more: Data Warehouse

Open Access Data Warehouse

Food and Agriculture Mapper and Explorer (FAME)

Voices From the Field

About Us

Food and Agriculture Mapper and Explorer (FAME):

As a preliminary effort to help communities gain easier access to relevant local and regional food system data, a series of Tableau data visualizations were designed to showcase the data in the warehouse but more importantly, assist grant applicants and grant recipients, and local and regional food system stakeholders at large. The FAME data that are mapped or visualized are at the county level. Also included are point level data from the USDA showcasing the locations of farmers markets, CSAs, and meat processors, among others. The tabs on the site indicate the data used from each of the five key areas outlined above.

Stories from the Field

Sharing ways that YOU use the data to tell your story and the story of your community and the role of local and regional food systems is critical to this project. This space provides “stories from the field” – capturing snapshots of ways in which various stakeholders have used these data and why data was important to telling their story.

To learn more: Stories from the field

Suggested Citation:

Chaifetz, A., B.B.R. Jablonski, A. Bauman, D. Broadaway, L. Christensen, T. Cable, H. Edmondson, M. Gill, H. Leighton, A. Long, C. Naumoff, E. Rausch, J. Rossi, M. Sankey, S. Schaffstall, J. Stoll, A. Vega-Labiosa, B. Wolff, D. Wolnick, T. Woods. 2022. Data to Support a Thriving and Informed Local and Regional Food Sector. eXtension Community Local Regional Food System Community of Practice.

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