Jablonski, Becca B. R., authorMcFadden, Dawn Thilmany, authorJournal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, publisher2021-03-122021-03-122019-01-30Jablonski, B. B. R., & Thilmany McFadden, D. (2019). IN THIS ISSUE: What Is a ‘Multiplier’ Anyway? Assessing the Economics of Local Food Systems Toolkit. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 8(C), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2019.08C.013https://hdl.handle.net/10217/226605This special issue examines the effectiveness of organizing and conducting formal impact assess­ments in measuring the economic impacts and opportunity costs associated with local food system policies, programming, and investment. It features 11 articles by a diverse range of academic research­ers and community stakeholders who have used the publication, the Economics of Local Food Systems: A Toolkit to Guide Community Discussions, Assessments and Choices[1] (which we refer to as “the Toolkit” hereafter) to initialize, frame, and carry out eco­nomic impact assessments of local and regional food system activity. Many of the case studies fea­tured in this special issue are directly connected to the over 30 technical assis­tance workshops pro­vided by the Toolkit’s authors and other partners between 2015 and 2018 follow­ing the Toolkit’s release. Our intention in compil­ing these papers is to gauge whether practitioners and researchers find the Toolkit useful in demon­strating compelling evidence of the economic impacts of food system development strategies, and when they do, to demonstrate its utility and share best practices. [1] See the Toolkit online at https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/economics-local-food-systems-toolkit-guide-community-discussions-assessments.born digitalarticlesenglocal food systems toolkitimpactevaluationeditorialTextThis article is open access and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2019.08C.013