NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan

The food system we want in New Hampshire starts with you.

The NH Food Alliance is spearheading the development of the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan and we need your input and participation to create a plan that is both comprehensive and impactful.   

A strategic plan for New Hampshire will align our food community, streamlining collective efforts to obtain funding, pass policies, develop programs, invest in infrastructure, and build networks in support of a thriving, fair, and sustainable local food system in the Granite State. Below we’ve laid out how this plan will be created, the components it will contain, and how you can be involved by joining the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan Action Team. Read on or watch the strategic plan intro video below.

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PLAN COMPONENTS

The NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan will have four major components.  

Goals: What do we want New Hampshire’s food system to look like?  

Objectives: How can we measure progress toward our goals? 

Priority Strategies: What specific programs, investments, and policies will move the needle toward the food system we want to build? 

Issue, Product, Market Briefs: What are the issues, products, and markets crucial to the New Hampshire food system? What are the recommendations from experts to strengthen, improve, or protect the identified issues, products, and markets?

 

PLAN PROCESS + TIMELINE

By employing the plan components, the strategic plan will be created and evaluated through the following process and timeline, with an anticipated publishing date of late 2024, early 2025.
 

Participatory Engagement Plan 

A key part of the strategic planning process in which stakeholders from across New Hampshire’s food system are identified and engaged in the planning process to provide feedback and input on the plan content through surveys, listening sessions, focus groups, and other convenings.
 

Process
 

• The list of Issue, Product, and Market Briefs is developed and reviewed by the NH Food System Strategic Plan Action Team. 

• Subject matter experts will be invited to research and write each brief. All briefs will have a standardized template and include 3-5 specific recommendations for how to strengthen our food system in relation to the issue, product, or market. 

• The recommendations from each brief will be clustered and analyzed by the NH Food Alliance Backbone Team, Network Leadership Team, and the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan Action Team to identify priority strategies. 

• Information gathered through the Participatory Engagement Plan will be analyzed to develop the goals and objectives. 

• The goals, objectives, recommendations from each brief, and priority strategies will be mapped in relation to one another so stakeholders can understand the connection between each. 

• A comment period for the full draft of the NH Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan will be held in fall 2024. 

• The NH Food System Strategic Plan will be published in early 2025.

Timeline
 

CONVENING SCHEDULE 

Stakeholders across the New Hampshire food community will be invited to attend in-person and virtual convenings throughout the strategic planning process, November 2023 through January 2025. The full schedule of meetings will be posted on this webpage and shared through various communication channels relevant to the specific stakeholder groups.