The goal of this template is to help Value Chain Coordination (VCC) professionals quickly build an evaluation plan based on best practices in the field. This template was developed by the Wallace Center’s Food Systems Leadership Network team with input from Value Chain Coordination professionals and consultants with expertise in evaluation and racial equity.

This guide and the accompanying evaluation template are designed to help Value Chain Coordination Professionals design and implement an evaluation plan that is aligned with your values and unique role in your community. The guide includes prompts for reflection and space to write out your values, your unique role and activities, and includes an accompanying template where you can build your evaluation plan. Prompts are included throughout to illuminate how a given activity contributes to racial equity or perpetuates inequalities. Regardless of where you are in your journey, these questions can help you align your work and impact with your values and intentions.

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A Process for Value Chain Development

An overview of the Value Chain Initiative in Alberta, Canada

An overview of the role of institutions in building equitable regional food systems

Elliott Smith of Kitchen Sync Strategies outlines the concept of institutional investment in equitable food systems through explaining some of the conditions that make it necessary and defining some terms.

What institutions need to know to move beyond procurement policies and build partnerships for an equitable food economy

This article highlights examples of institutions investing in their local food systems

The Four Corners GroupGAP Group: A Case Study This report describes the history and learnings from the Four Corners GroupGAP Group, including the pros and cons of GroupGAP, the value of QMS, and key attributes of successful …

When COVID-19 upended markets in the spring of 2020, many hubs borrowed elements of a Community Supported Agriculture model- which guarantees a market for farmers, provides customers a food box on a regular schedule, and strives to match the needs of farmers and growers. Local food hubs, even those that didn’t run CSAs, were able to collaborate with partners and use these models to manage this massive market …

Findings and recommendations from Wallace Center led research into local- and regional- sourcing contractors participating in the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program

Over the past ten years, investment in local food systems focused on rebuilding eroded physical food systems infrastructure like aggregation and processing facilities and delivery and transportation logistics. Recently food systems practitioners are starting to redevelop the “soft” or “social infrastructure.” This quicksheet looks at the value of funding the value chain and the positive impact it can have on a viable regional food …

Convening groups of stakeholders is an important facet of value chain coordination work. Meetings offer an opportunity to capture diverse stakeholder perspectives and surveys can be an effective way to understand relationship connectivity in the group. This quicksheet offers two survey approaches that can be used to track VCC relationship-building efforts through convening events. Each approach includes explanations of data collection, examples of results, and pros and cons of each approach, to allow you to choose the best method for your organization’s …

This quicksheet describes value chain coordination as a set of roles that foster soft infrastructure development to build regional economies and communities. Strong soft infrastructure, in the form of skills, competencies and relationships, provides the ability for individuals and organizations to acquire and utilize hard infrastructure in their …

This toolkit is designed to help new and emerging healthy food system value chain efforts. While it draws heavily from the experience of Appalachian Sustainable Development, including particularly its Appalachian Harvest network, it also includes ideas, challenges and insights from other value chain and food system initiatives, both within Appalachia and other parts of the country. The toolkit is intended to be a hands on resource which can help spur new thinking, help refine plans, and perhaps help guide implementation of new and emerging food system …

Definitions and characterization of “Values-Based Value …

This document is designed to provide guidance on how food value chains are initiated and structured, how they function, and the benefits they provide to participants, with the intent of encouraging their adoption where the opportunities for successful collaboration …

This report examines the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of eight diverse food value chains to glean practical lessons about how they operate, the challenges they face, and how they take advantage of emerging opportunities for marketing differentiated food …

Healthy Food and Small Stores A report on innovations to improve access to nutritious, affordable food in small stores—including corner stores, bodegas, convenience stores, fuel-based retail and rural grocers—a key factor in access for underserved communities. Year …

Harvesting Opportunity – The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities A collaboration between the Federal Reserve and USDA, this report focuses on regional food systems as a means for enhancing economic opportunity. Year …

Value Chain Strategies for Source-Identified Minimally Processed Produce for the School Market WSDA analyzed minimally processed fruits & vegetable supply chains in Washington State in order to identify strategies for developing the “value chain” infrastructure and relationships that might help local farms meet the demand for those products from K-12 schools and other institutional buyers. Year …