People want to work together. The Roadmap’s Task Force sees an opportunity for the Roadmap to provide “soft infrastructure” that connects people and organizations throughout the food system. Those improved connections will mean people learn from each other, share best practices, and team up on projects.

There have been and they’ve fallen by the wayside. The Roadmap team does NOT want to create reports that sit unused on the shelf. The Roadmap will be effective by being a “process”, not a report. We have not yet defined that process, but we are guided by the idea of producing new ways of working together, not by the idea that we need another report.

Yes, we did produce a Phase I Report, but it did not define a final food system plan. It identified opportunities.

Experimental Station manages funding and is project manager for the Roadmap initiative. The Task Force is responsible for strategic direction.

Initial funding has been from the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), with additional funding provided by The Builder’s Initiative.

Participate in workshops, facilitated sessions, and surveys with us — the latest opportunities are always on our Collaborate page.

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No, the Illinois Asset Mapping Initiative is a project that is mapping the ‘missing middle’ of the food supply chain in Illinois — infrastructure for processing, storage, and distribution. This effort is led by Illinois Extension.

The Illinois Food System Roadmap is an initiative to bring better collaboration and coordinated action to ALL the parts of our state's food system, including the Asset Map. The Asset Map is mapping hard infrastructure; the Roadmap is creating soft infrastructure across ALL parts of the state’s food system.