Abstract:
Scott County contains some of the most productive agricultural soils in the metropolitan region and provides a valuable resource to produce local foods for the Twin Cities population. However, suburban growth has significantly increased land values in the rural parts of the county, creating a potential conflict between the use of land for agriculture and future urbanization. Scott County's 2030 Comprehensive Plan designates much of the existing farmland around the growing cities of Jordan, Belle Plaine, and New Prague as 'urban expansion' or 'urban transition' areas eligible for higher density development. U-CGO worked with the Scott County Department of Planning on a project that included evaluating the market potential for, feasibility of, and characteristics of a local food system in rural Scott County, including the physical infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, land use mix, tax policies, economic incentives, and land conservation policies that would be necessary to support a viable mix of agricultural uses.

Quick Facts:

• Author: Kate Aitchison
  
• Published: May, 2009, CURA, Univ of Minnesota
• Intended audience: Scott County (or any location's) policy makers & land use planners
  
• Goals / purpose: To evaluate the market potential for, feasibility of, and characteristics of a local food system in rural Scott County, including the physical & agricultural infrastructure, tax policies, economic incentives, and land conservation policies necessary to support a viable mix of agricultural uses.
  
• Methods - How would someone know they could trust this?
• Each section of the body has a definition of the approach, background on its use, examples, & its relevance for Scott Co.
• Appendix includes resources on how to put these approaches into practice.
• From 1 (not very well)–4 (very well), how well does this source of food knowledge:
• Engage an adequate range of perspectives and types of knowledge? (4)
  
• Translate between diverse perspectives? (3)
  
• Address conflicts across perspectives? (2)
  
• Generate useful information for those affected by the issues addressed? (4)
  
• Include an adequate range of relevant stakeholders throughout the knowledge-creation process? (4)
  
• Help users of this knowledge source learn from each other? (3)
  
• Allow users of this knowledge source to put what they learn into action? (4)
  
• Consider the larger context as necessary? (4)
  
• What is useful, meaningful, surprising, or a problem? Questions?
• Nice representation of elements of the food system in Scott Co. (Figure 1 & Table 1).
• Uses APA planning guide as a framework (as did A Field Guide to Making Food Good, a project headed by Valentine Cadieux, the same researcher leading the creation of this website)
  
• Extremely orderly and all-inclusive analysis of approaches to planning a food system.

• What do you think could or should be done with this source of knowledge?
• What has already been done?
• How should we keep track of what this knowledge does as it circulates in the world?
• What connections would you like to see made to other information / people / organizations?

See http://www.cura.umn.edu/publications/catalog/cgo-111 for this and other resources from CURA.

(ID# 1008)

This page annotates:

Comment on this page