Policy Cards

The Policy Cards serve as a demonstrator and facilitator tool for the policy mapping database. 

The aim of the Policy Cards is to provide the various stakeholders with an easy-to-read tool to better understand the structure and content of the food policy database.

Extractions and graphical representation of data from the policy mapping simply reflect the number of policies identified for each goal / economic actor / instrument, and no claim is made on the effectiveness or desirability of the various policy alternatives, in absence of clear scientific evidence and consensus on their impacts. The amount of available scientific evidence greatly varies across policy types, and one of the potential future extensions of the database is the inclusion of references to robust scientific evidence.

Building on the food policies’ classification criteria detailed in the Classification section, the Policy Cards are divided into three groups:

  1. Policy Cards by goal, which include infographics and charts for each of the five mentioned policy goals. The aim of this set of cards is to understand which are the actors mostly targeted to reach the different objectives and which policy instruments are used accordingly.
  2. Policy Cards by actor, which include infographics and charts for each target group, both ultimate beneficiaries and primary targets. The objective of these cards is to see on which policy goal do the various stakeholder groups insist on and which kind of policy instrument they adopt to reach the intended goal.
  3. Policy Cards by instrument, which include infographics and charts for each policy instrument. The purpose of this set of cards is to evaluate which instruments are more (or less) effective in tackling the various issues related to the food system, and to which degree they are used by the different actor groups.

Beyond these Policy Cards groups, a first and more general card named “Mapping Food Policies” has been designed to give a very brief overview of the methodology, results and representitiveness of the overall mapping activity, with infographics and charts by goal, ultimate beneficiary, primary target and instrument regarding all the 460 policies that have been mapped.

Moreover, those pie charts or histograms reflecting food policy trends that have been considered of particular interest are supported in the Policy Cards by coloured boxes. These “Food for Thought” boxes consist of comments, considerations or open questions that exemplify, based on the mapped food policies in the EU, what sort of possible issues might emerge in a policy discussion among various stakeholders. The idea behind them is not, indeed, that of making policy statements or giving opinions or recommendations, but rather providing inputs to stimulate debate occasions on existing food policies.

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Food Policy Database

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