On any given day, when you open a local newspaper or magazine, you’re likely to find a story about Nashville’s rapid changes and persistent challenges. From promises of a reimagined public transit system to demands for more affordable housing, we are well-aware that we have a long way to go before our city reaches its full potential as a vibrant place where all residents can thrive.
But, what about food in our city? Everyone in our city eats, yet the challenges to food security are stubbornly persistent in specific communities for all-too-familiar reasons. Obstacles to achieving community food security in Nashville are the symptoms of deeper, systemic issues that go unaddressed as we seek to confront the challenges of hunger in the present. At The Nashville Food Project, we want to bring people together more often, and more intentionally, to imagine how we might actually create a sustainable and just local food system for everyone. This food system would provide food security and food access for all, limit our food waste and environmental harm, and strengthen our local food and agricultural economy.
We often think simple solutions are all we need to address challenges like hunger. FeedBack Nashville uses a community-based, systems change approach because hunger is a wildly complex issue!
Alongside a network of partner organizations, we are excited to launch a new effort to bring food to the forefront of action in our city. FeedBack Nashville (FBN) is a new citywide initiative to describe the opportunities and limitations of Nashville’s current food system, and to identify pathways to build a more just and sustainable food system for the future. The initiative received its first round of funding support from Metro Nashville’s American Relief Plan Act Funds in May 2023. The first phase of the project focuses on three goals:
Analyze Nashville’s current food system, including issues related to food access, land access, food waste, and local agricultural production
Create a shared vision for a future Nashville food system that is just and sustainable for everyone, from farmers to consumers
Identify pathways and partnerships that will help bring forth the changes we need and want to see in our food system in the short and long-term
Visual representation of the project goals of the first phase of FeedBack Nashville. Graphic created by Forum for the Future, FeedBack Nashville’s Convening Facilitator.
FeedBack Nashville’s approach to achieving these goals is twofold: it aims to center community perspectives and disrupt the existing system that perpetuates persistent issues. FeedBack Nashville uses these two approaches because challenges like hunger in our city are complex and require each of us to understand how our unique relationships, behaviors, and experiences may be used to support meaningful, lasting change.
As a community-based project, FBN centers perspectives and lived experiences of community members. This is because community members who are most affected by food challenges possess knowledge and ideas about how we may change the food system so that it is more equitable for everyone. By engaging residents and collaborating with specific communities to design solutions for the future, we are more likely to achieve lasting change.
As a systems change initiative, FeedBack Nashville moves our city beyond emergency response solutions to hunger and food access. Systems change approaches position us to better understand how different social, economic, and environmental circumstances interact to create hunger and other food-related challenges. They bring together individuals and organizations from the grassroots to the government to design creative solutions, from policy changes to mindset shifts.
Iceberg models like this one above help illustrate why systems change approaches are useful for complex challenges like hunger. Systems change approaches understand that multiple interventions, working at different levels in society, are required to create lasting change. Graphic created by Forum for the Future, FeedBack Nashville’s Convening Facilitator.
The Nashville Food Project is honored to serve as FeedBack Nashville’s project coordinator. Our mission is to grow, cook, and share food with the goals of alleviating hunger and cultivating community. In 2023, inspired by this mission, we established a strategic priority to support systems change approaches that bring together diverse partners to fundamentally shift the way food access and hunger are addressed in our city. FeedBack Nashville offers a timely and meaningful opportunity for us to collaborate with partners and neighbors to build an alternative food future for Nashville that is just and sustainable for everyone.
As the project coordinator, we are working to ensure that the project’s Steering Committee and convening facilitator, Forum for the Future, have access to the resources, administrative support, and coordinating logistics they need to achieve FeedBack Nashville’s intended outcomes. Currently, we are supporting the project’s Steering Committee and Forum for the Future to develop and launch FeedBack Nashville’s community engagement strategy. Stay tuned for our next FeedBack Nashville blog post, which will introduce the Steering Committee and Forum for the Future, and provide more information on how you can support the effort within your community!