Why:

The Michigan Good Food Charter is an action and advocacy framework that promotes collaboration to advance a “good food system” in Michigan, that is a thriving food economy distinguished by equity, health, and sustainability.

The Charter was initially published in 2010. It had a vision, six S.M.A.R.T. goals aiming for the year 2020, definition of “good food” and 25 agenda priorities (strategies to advance the vision and achieve the goals). The original charter arose from efforts of the Michigan Food Policy Council, which was in place from 2005 to 2015 and built momentum around efforts that advance a “good food system” in Michigan.

Efforts grew and deepened over the past 10 years and in 2018, network and organizational leaders in this movement agreed that the Charter should be updated to extend beyond 2020, reflecting the growth of this work, gaps we didn’t address, and new ideas for the future.

We began the statewide, collaborative update process in 2018, but 2020 saw the start of a larger outreach and engagement effort to get feedback on the working draft we developed in 2019.

The goal of outreach and engagement efforts in 2020 was to gather feedback and better understand the experience of key stakeholders throughout the food system in Michigan.

We asked for their feedback on the 2020 Charter working draft, which can be viewed here: https://sites.google.com/view/2020mgfc/2020-working-draft.

Who:

In the fall of 2019, we established a working draft committee composed of our shared measurement and steering committees as well as new individuals we invited to participate, and hosted four workshop sessions to create a working draft.

In 2020, we began to build on that through six workshops designed to dive deeper into each priority area, identifying key issues and possible indicators of progress.

The working draft committee represented over 30 Michigan organizations ranging from healthcare, education, food and farming nonprofits, government agencies, and food policy councils.

How:

Prior to the pandemic, we had already planned a multi-method outreach campaign. The pandemic limited our capacity to reach some populations, but also allowed more flexibility to offer fully virtual meetings which was more engaging for some participants who normally called in to in-person meetings.

In addition to the committee sessions, we were able to hire a few designated community ambassadors who could reach their networks through interviews, meetings, and conversations to gain feedback on the charter draft. This included farmers and food businesses in the Upper Peninsula, Indigenous communities throughout the state, and pan-Asian community members in southeast Michigan.

We also offered an online survey that we shared through grassroots networks and interest groups, gaining feedback on the charter from about 58 complete responses representing 17 counties.

CRFS Staff also worked with partners to include feedback sessions within existing events and meetings like local food summits and committee meetings.

Later in the year, we hosted a fully virtual Michigan Good Food Summit which featured 14 events including 10 webinars led by community leaders, two statewide network meetings, a networking event and a topic-based dialogue session. All events focused on key themes present in the Michigan Good Food Charter Draft Update and help to inform future outreach.

What:

This outreach resulted in ongoing engagement and trust-building with key food and health organizations, state agencies, policy advocates, and individual practitioners doing food systems work throughout the state of Michigan. We were able to document their perspectives and ideas as well as their current work which informs the action framework of the Charter draft.

This outreach also allowed us to test new methods of communication and engagement that will help us improve as we transition out of the requirement to work virtually. We will be able to incorporate effective virtual outreach strategies even as we transition back to more in-person outreach in the future.

The Michigan Good Food Charter update is a multi-year process, and thus is ongoing, but the feedback and ideas we received have already proven useful to developing a preliminary action strategies framework that represent much of the work happening in Michigan’s food system as well as new ideas.