Where food, health & the environment come together.
December 15, 2019: Missouri Coalition for the Environment is excited to announce the release of our 2019 St. Louis Regional Food Study, updated with data from the 2012 and 2017 U.S. Agriculture Census! The 2019 update expands the geographic scope to 150 miles around St. Louis to reflect the expansion of MCE’s foodshed-level work over the last five years. Click here for a summary of the state of our foodshed looking at both the 150 mile radius and the previous 100 mile radius around St. Louis in order to facilitate comparison with the 2014 Food Study data.
The goal of the 2014 St. Louis Food Study is to better understand the connections between our food, health, and environment. This Study was the work of former Executive Director, Kathleen Logan Smith, MCE’s Food and Farm Director, Melissa Vatterott, and a team of interns over two summers. In order to understand the local effects of the industrialized food system, they compiled data from USDA and Missouri’s Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems (CARES). Their research demonstrates the clear link between our food, our health and the health of the St. Louis environment. We hope that this study will provide relevant data to individuals and organizations working on food, farm, & health in order to promote a more sustainable food system.
Below you will find the seven-chapter Food Study, the abridged report and the executive summary. Fact sheets on the different topics the Study covers are also be found below.
Access to the complete dataset behind the Food Study is available for $20. The data is maintained in a spreadsheet and periodically updated as more information becomes available. The spreadsheet includes citations and notes about how the data was collected.
