Cultivating Healthy Places’ founder and principal consultant, Kimberley Hodgson, received a 5-year contract as co-investigator for a $3.96 million grant awarded to the University at Buffalo from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Food Systems Program, a program of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The project, “Building Local Government Capacity to Alleviate Food Deserts”, will improve the ability of urban and rural communities to create, implement, and sustain policies that simultaneously enhance food security and foster a healthy local agricultural sector. This project is about making the food system work for vulnerable consumers and farmers who are not well served by our contemporary food system – consumers with limited access to nutritious foods, and small, mid-sized and limited resources farmers.

Hodgson’s co-investigators in this endeavor are Samina Raja, PhD (the project lead, University at Buffalo), Julia Freedgood (American Farmland Trust), and Jill Clark, PhD (Ohio State University). Key partners include the American Planning Association and individuals from other national non-profit organizations.

The project will begin with a national survey to identify and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative food systems policies in reducing food deserts and strengthening the local agricultural sector. Drawing on the successes and failures of these policies, the team will develop policy tools and provide technical assistance to 20 vulnerable urban and rural communities in the United States to build the capacity of their local government staff, extension educators, consumers, and farmers to develop and implement more effective food system policies.

In order to nurture the next generation of food systems policy thinkers and professionals, the team will prepare and disseminate multi-disciplinary curriculum materials on food systems policy for adoption in universities across the United States. The team will also launch a doctoral fellowship in food systems planning – the first in the United States.

Earlier this year, Hodgson founded Cultivating Healthy Places, an international consulting business that specializes in social equity, community health, and resilient food systems planning. As a certified planner and registered dietitian, Hodgson conducts policy-relevant research and provides technical assistance to private, public, and non-profit organizations in the United States and Canada on the design and development of healthy, sustainable places.

This project will build on Hodgson’s wealth of professional and educational experience related to food systems policy. Hodgson recently co-authored the American Planning Association’s seminal publication on urban agriculture, “Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy Sustainable Places” (January 2011), and the “Principles of a Healthy, Sustainable Food System“. Hodgson also completed a 3-year American Planning Association research project that was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to evaluate how local comprehensive and sustainability plans address and work to improve food access equity.

Currently, Hodgson is providing guidance to the City of Lawrence and Douglas County, Kansas and the City of Vancouver, British Columbia on the development and implementation of local level policies to support and enhance the local food system; co-developing a community agriculture plan for an area in Delta, British Columbia; and conducting research on the management and productive reuse of vacant properties for the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

Hodgson is a member of the American Planning Association, Canadian Institute of Planners, and the Vancouver Food Policy Council.