I am inaugurating Recipe for Sustainability with the release of the final project for my Master of Regional Planning degree, the report on opportunities for the local food system that led me to start this blog.  The paper is entitled Comprehensive Planning for the Napa County Food System: A Preliminary Study of Problems and Possibilities.

Because of the increasing understanding of the role that the food system plays in health, the environment, social justice and the economy, and the existing lack of holistic planning for this issue, I chose to analyze the condition of the Napa County’s food system.  In the paper I show that Napa shares national problems of obesity, lack of food knowledge, food insecurity and contribution to global climate change and other environmental problems.  I also show that there are a significant range of advocates and resources for the individual concerns that are affected by the food system.  I identify the benefits of bringing these stakeholders together in a participatory process to further assess and address the food system and suggest strategies and models for doing so.

Read the Executive Summary (PDF).

Read the FoodSystemReport (PDF).