Food for Thought Series
Last updated January 2025
About “Food for Thought”
“Food for Thought” is a series of Central Texas-focused resources for anyone interested in learning about and/or effecting change in the food system locally or regionally. It serves as a conversation starter to apply system-level thinking to impact health, economy, and environment by:
highlighting key food system metrics housed on the Central Texas Food System Dashboard that can inform food system strategies,
elevating local voices and lived experience gathered through CTFB’s Food Access Community Needs Assessments (CNAs) that shed light on issues within the food system, and
providing examples of approaches food system planners across the country have applied that may contribute to impact.ⁱ
As a starting point for interpreting the data, region-level takeaways are paired with community voices and questions designed to connect the data to on-the-ground experiences.
What is a Food System?
Food systems encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products, as illustrated in Figure 1.¹
ⁱ Sample approaches were identified using Transforming Hawai’i’s Food System Together’s “Searchable Recommendation Database,” accessed at https://transforminghawaiifoodsystem.org/landscape-analysis/recommendation-analysis.
Figure 1. Food System Sectors
Which impact area interests you the most?
Click on a button below to learn more about each impact area or keep scrolling to explore them all.