SF’s Federal Reserve Bank hosted the Innovations in Healthy Food Access and Finance conference to share best practices for increasing access to healthy food through urban farming and helping to expand economic opportunity. This includes youth and the formally incarcerated through partnerships, enterprises, funding, lending, skill building and job creation. Speakers also emphasized that access is not the same as demand and shared efforts to increase consumer demand for healthy foods can include approaches such as healthy prepared foods as a way to sustain food and farming enterprises and create more jobs.

There are numerous funding sources for financing and growing healthy food access initiatives such as the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiatives, state CalFresh Works Fund, and Community Development Financing Institutions (CDFIs) such as Capital Impact Partners and Northern CA Community Loan Fund. Find the full list of funding opportunities here.