Using a metric-based flexible framework for implementation
Lady proud of her produce
Minneapolis
The Good Food Purchasing Program’s metric-based, flexible framework encourages large public institutions to measure and then make shifts in their food purchases. By adopting the framework, food service institutions commit to improving their regional food system by implementing meaningful purchasing standards in all five value categories:
Local Economics: the Good Food Purchasing Program supports local small and mid-sized agricultural and food processing operations.
Environmental Sustainability: the Good Food Purchasing Progam requires institutions to source at least 15% of the food from producers that employ sustainable production systems.
Valued Workforce: the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes safe and healthy working conditions and fair compensation for all food chain workers and producers.
Animal Welfare: the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes healthy and humane care for farm animals.
Nutrition: Finally, the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes health and well-being by outlining best practices that offer generous portions of vegetables, fruit, whole grains and minimally processed foods, while reducing salt, added sugars, saturated fats, and red meat consumption, and eliminating artificial additives.
The Good Food Purchasing Program is nationally regarded as the most comprehensive and metric-based food procurement policy in the country. Verification, scoring and recognition are central components. When an institution enrolls in the Good Food Purchasing Program, staff of the Center for Good Food Purchasing work with them to collect in depth information about purchasing and food service practices.
To become a Good Food Provider, the food service institution has to at least meet the baseline (equal to one point) in each of the five values. Meeting even higher standards results in more points being awarded. The accumulation of points across all values is used to calculate and award a star rating. The baseline and higher standard purchasing criteria are set out in the Good Food Purchasing Standards, which are updated every five years, most recently in September 2017. There are five status levels of a Good Food Purchaser (1-5 Stars) that correspond to a respective range of points. In order to achieve a 5 Star level, the institution must achieve 25 or more points. As of June 2018, five out of 27 institutions have achieved a star rating, amongst them Boulder Valley School District that achieved 5 Stars in 2017 and Oakland Unified School District that achieved 4 Stars in 2016. After one year, purchasers are expected to increase the amount of Good Food that they purchase.
Adopted first by the City of Los Angeles in 2012, the Good Food Purchasing Program ® creates a transparent supply chain and helps institutions to measure and then make shifts in their food purchases.
Its objectives are:
To harness the purchasing power of major institutions to encourage greater production of sustainably produced food, healthy eating, respect for workers’ rights, humane treatment of animals and support for the local small business economy.
To shift as many dollars as possible towards Good Food in order to achieve an economy of scale.
It is the first procurement model to support five food system values – local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare and nutrition – in equal measure and thereby encourages myriad organizations to come together to engage for shared goals.
Within just six years, the Good Food Purchasing Program has achieved remarkable impact.
The Good Food Purchasing Program has set off a nationwide movement to establish similar policies in localities small and large, and inspired the creation of the Center for Good Food Purchasing.
Using a metric-based flexible framework for implementation
Potential as a Transferable Model
TEEBAgriFood’s Evaluation Framework and methodologies
Sustainable Food Systems
TEEB
TEEBAgriFood’s Evaluation Framework answers the question: What should we evaluate about food systems? And TEEBAgriFood’s methodologies answer the question: How should we do these evaluations? TEEBAgriFood illustrates five families of applications to compare: (a) different policy scenarios; (b) different farming typologies; (c) different food and beverage products; (d) different diets/ food plates; and (e) adjusted versus conventional national or sectoral accounts.
TEEBAgriFood gives ten examples showing how to apply this framework and methodologies for various types of evaluations. One of them is, for example, a study in New Zealand of 15 conventional and 14 organic fields that valued 12 ecosystem services and found both crops as well as other ecosystem services to be higher in the organic fields.
The TEEBAgriFood evaluation framework provides a structure and an overview of what should be included in the analysis. However, methods of valuation depend on the values to be assessed, availability of data, and the purpose of the analysis. Ideally one should be able to say with some confidence what are the externalities associated with each euro or dollar spent on a given kind of food, produced, distributed and disposed of in a given way. The application of the framework requires an interdisciplinary approach, where all relevant stakeholders, including policy-makers, businesses, and citizens, understand and identify questions that are to be answered by a valuation exercise. Therefore, stakeholder engagement across sectors is critical to the effective application of TEEBAgriFood in specific contexts and policy arenas.
AGRUPAR could well serve as a model for other cities and form the basis for a national policy on local production.
CONQUITO has favoured observation tours and exchanges of experiences as well as transfer of methodologies, including among ministries and NGOs, for example the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture and Fisheries and the Peace Corps.
Since 2015, AGRUPAR contributed to both the City Region Food Systems Project of FAO and the RUAF Foundation, which evaluated Quito’s food system. As a result, AGRUPAR staff decided to work towards a food policy for the city in a more systemic sense, within which urban agriculture is a strategic activity.
Commitment from the municipality to keep continuing and investing into the programme in the long term
A great equipe
The buyin of CONQUITO
Over its 16 years of existence, AGRUPAR has achieved impressive results. These results helped to make it an international well-known example of exemplary urban participatory agriculture and serve now as benchmark for all others that follow their path.
Promotion of food consumption, healthy diets and nutrition through bio-fairs and education
Young women collecting carrots
CONQUITO
Through the biofairs and other activities, AGRUPAR promotes healthy diets and sustainability. The Programme created 17 bio-fairs where 105 types of food are offered. Through these, 25% of the produce is commercialized, for about USD 350,000 per year.
Since 2007, a total of 6,663 bio-fairs have been organized.
Aall produce is organic.
Nearly 170,000 consumers have attended the bio-fairs and were sensibilized on healthy diets and nutrition. Surveys have identified increased dietary diversity among producers and their families.
Food is sold in organic produce markets – the bioferias –located in low-income neighbourhoods and peri-urban zones, as well as in better-off parts of the city. As well, the District Trade Coordination Agency has begun to consider the large-scale commercialization of agro-ecological and organic foods through its markets and opened a first market of this kind, including for farmers supported by AGRUPAR. To help producers meet food quality and safety standards, AGRUPAR has introduced improved processing technologies and the use of containers, packaging and labels. AGRUPAR is registered as a producer and marketer of organic produce at the national level allowing it to share the cost of product certification with participating producers.
In addition to the bio-fairs, networks of farmers are also formed to deliver organic produce baskets directly to producers and to hotels or restaurants selling traditional food. AGRUPAR is registered as a producer and marketer of organic produce at the national level and shares the cost of product certification with producers.
To ensure quality of production, the bio-fairs are only open to producers who have followed the Programme.
In addition to the bio-fairs, networks of farmers have been formed to deliver organic produce directly to local food processing companies and to hotels and restaurants.
To ensure the widest possible availability and consumption of organic food, bio fairs
are located in low-income neighbourhoods and peri-urban zones.
Today AGRUPAR’s participants annually produce more than 960,000 kg of food products. Almost half of the production (47 per cent) is used for home consumption, strengthening food security and diversifying the diets of the 12,000 participating urban farmers and their families, while the other half is marketed. The Programme created 17 bio-fairs where 105 types of food are offered. Through these, 25% of the produce is commercialized, for about USD 350,000 per year. Since 2007, a total of 6,663 bio-fairs have been organized and all produce is organic. Both formal organic certification for orchards with marketing possibilities (since 2007) and the internal control system (SIC, since 2013) are used. As of 2010, the Programme had created five associations of producers and therefore generated better opportunities for the commercialization of products.
