From the Ground Up: Supporting Municipalities to Buy Local
Posted: October 8, 2014
Categories: GoodFoodBites / Municipal Regional Food Policy Network / News from Sustain Ontario / Research / Working Group News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2014
Sustain Ontario, the alliance for healthy food and farming, has received a grant of $50,000 to work alongside the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, Bruce County, and Durham Region in establishing local food procurement plans. With over 80 member organizations and businesses and counting, the Sustain Ontario alliance works to transform Ontario’s food systems into one that is healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable.
Each year, millions of public dollars are spent on food by municipally funded and organized facilities including public cafeterias, childcare centres, convention centres, and long term care facilities. With 444 municipalities in Ontario purchasing some quantity of food, there is a huge potential to build a more resilient local food system by leveraging the food dollars spent by each facility. Following the passage of Bill 36, the Local Food Act, food purchasers in public institutions across the boards are now beginning to consider how they can get more Ontario food onto their menus.
“Municipalities purchase food, that’s true. But above all else, they set standards. Municipalities model best practices within their communities,” says Lauren Baker, Food Policy Specialist with Toronto’s Food Policy Council and an early collaborator in Sustain Ontario’s Municipal Regional Food Policy Network.
Sustain Ontario hosts a network of over 62 municipal food policy council members from across the province who are hungry to work collaboratively for change. Sustain’s overarching goal for the network and this project in particular, is to bring municipal leaders in local food together to share experiences, and build the capacity, rationale and tools for more municipalities to take a lead on local food.
“Local Food Procurement is the golden egg of Municipal Food Policy Council work,” says Janet Horner, Executive Director for the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance. “It’s the most potent policy shift, but also the most elusive.” Shifting purchasing habits is not an easy thing to accomplish and many finance and procurement departments are concerned about fair and transparent processes and the possibility of violating free trade agreements**. They also worry about overloading municipal staff with paperwork and the possibility of increased costs. This project attempts to help navigate some of those issues.
“The purpose of the project in our eyes is to equip municipalities with the tools, research and language to help prepare them for the implementation of the Local Food Act,” says Sustain Ontario Program Manager Carolyn Young. “We do this by learning from other municipal leaders and helping them share the learnings across the province. We know that each municipality is different, but there are some things that don’t need to be reinvented each time like approaches to policy, definitions of local, tracking mechanisms and relationship-building with suppliers.”
Above all else, this project is about supporting and expanding the existing efforts of our collaborating municipalities.
“As an agricultural community, food is a large part of our economy, our past, our present, and our future,” explains the Chatham-Kent Public Health Department. “We have identified local food procurement as a priority and our goals align well with Sustain Ontario’s—to address issues related to healthy food and local sustainable agriculture. The opportunity to partner with Sustain Ontario to determine how our Municipality can make local food both a policy and a practice is something we look forward to exploring.”
Thanks to the Greenbelt Fund and the Government of Ontario for making this work possible.
Grants to Eat Local Sudbury, Food and Beverage Ontario, Ontario Goat Breeders Association, and Halton Fresh Food Box were also announced today. Read the Greenbelt Fund media release “Feeding Halton More Fresh, Local Food” for more information.
*See Greenbelt Green Paper Policy: Trade Agreements and Sustain Ontario’s Policies from the Field: Possibilities for Local Food Procurement in Ontario.