The Food Economy Engagement Tool (FEET) is a data collection and engagement tool intended to begin a conversation about how our food spending influences our food system now and in the future. It’s purpose is to evaluate how much people spend on food, where they spend it, and whether that money stays in the community or flows outside.
The goals of FEET are:
Evaluate food spending in each community to see where money is being spent
Illustrate buying power of communities
Begin conversation about community economy and keeping wealth in the community, which could then feed into Workshop 1.
The two parts of FEET work together to achieve the above goals:
1. Food Purchasing Log: Participants track food purchases for one week, paying particular attention to where food is purchased, what kind of store it is, what kinds of food were purchased, how much you spent at each location, how they got to that store, and the reason/reasons they went to that store.
2. Food Economy Survey and Reflection Questions: Pre- and post-log survey and questions aimed at collecting experiences and involvement in the current food economy, as well as reflecting on Food Purchasing Log.
If you would like to complete or distribute the log and survey, click on the links (included above) in order to download pdfs of FEET. Contact your community partners or the Practical Visionaries team if you would like editable versions of these documents (in Microsoft Excel and Word format).