1 September 2012

Parallel Session 5: Food and Agriculture Related HIAs


  • Not many HIAs on food and agriculture internationally
  • Challenges of dealing with multiple sectors
  • Have a discussion on the issues hopefully

Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Policy, HB 2800 (State Level Policy)
Tia Henderson



What is Farm to school?

  • Buying local food
  • Educating children about where food comes from and why food is important
  • Promoting home grown and local foods
  • Involve people in local community garden activities
  • $200,000 competitive grant program, reimbursement for school lunches made from local foods and local garden activities


HIA Goals

  • Inform Oregon legislative process
  • Outline linkages and magnitude of interactions between policy and health outcomes
  • Inform Agency plans
  • Act as a exemplar for others doing food HIAs


HIA process

  • Two advisory committees
  • Key informant interviews
  • A State wide survey
  • Two Community Forums
  • Communications Workshop


New methodology aspects:

  • Economic analysis - of jobs that would be created
  • Looked at food security/insecurity

Findings

  • Employment
  • Educational for duets and children
  • Improved diet and through improved nutrition improved learning at school
  • Improve physical activity
Recommendations:

  • Only produced and processed in state grown food not packaged
  • Prioritise the schools
  • Develop multi component projects linked to other non health projects/programmes





National Nutrition Standards HIA




  • US Secretary of Agriculture is required to establish dietary standar for food in schools.
  • Competitive foods - snacks sold in schools; may eat school canteen, bring food from home, etc.


Objectives of HIA

  • This is a health focused policy so ingesting to think about the value of doing a HIA
  • Aim was to build a much stronger base for action
  • Schools consider selling such foods are an important revenue stream and hence there was likely to be resistance


How will we engage stakeholders for a national policy was an issue we had to grapple with.



Assessment methods for analysis of impacts

  • We assumed that the draft regulations would follow dietary guidelines
  • Regulations would retract access to unhealthy food and enhance access to healthier foods
  • Would reduce the risk of poor nutrition
  • Revenue analysis was quite a sophisticated analysis, looked at other schools with similar policies showed that they got more revenue from federal grants and that the net affect on income was negligible/small
  • Did look at minority ethnic communities and judged that they would benefit as well


Recommendations

  • Follow sodium, fat, restrictions
  • Have calories restrictions
  • Provide school with tools and guides on models for implementing these regulations




Hawaii County Agriculture Development Plan


  • Lot of food imports even though a significant amount of land in Hawaii is agricultural
  • Aim to analyse she health and economic implications
  • Limited institutional buying
  • Small amount of food agriculture for local markets
  • 1 in 4 of adults and 1 in 3 in receipt of food welfare benefits
  • High ovweight/obesity
  • High unemployment
  • Colonial issues


Key findings

  • Increase institutional buying
  • Increase selling in local markets, eg use of the food befit smart card to buy local foods, etc.
  • Increase community growing


Outcomes

  • Greater investment in food processing infrastructure
  • More coordinated thinking across all the islands
  • Development of farm to school projects
Q&A

  • None of the commissioned by decisionmakers, funded by NGOs
  • Have inputted into the decision making process, waiting to see what happens as presidential elections in November
  • In one were invited to give testimony and some of the commendations were incorporated, Oregon HIA
  • Have built bridges




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