June 2024
Project Update
Producer engagement has been a primary emphasis of the team over the past two months, including producer focus groups and interviews with dry bean primary and secondary processors, as well as distributors. These conversations are designed to capture the current state of the industry, production and management decisions including input use, practices, margins, balance of power along the supply chain, and what factors motivate choices of suppliers, bean type, and market channel selection. At the beginning of June, the City Food Policy Team began its exploration into NYS beef production, holding a focus group with nine beef and dairy farmers in Syracuse, NY. Similar to our Dry Bean Focus Group, we co-developed the NY beef supply chain (see a draft of the map below), validating financial, production, and marketing data that the research team pulled from the restricted-access Ag Census specifically for beef and dairy farms in New York, and discussing the bottlenecks and opportunities for increased production and profitability.
Preliminary Takeaways
Interviewed farmers and processors – across all focus commodities and segments of the supply chain – expressed a willingness to shift to NYC markets if there is market confidence and consistency (e.g., forward contracting). If NYC buyers incorporate risk management language for supply chain actors in their bid documents, these businesses report that they would shift production, raising, processing, and distributing sought-after products in larger quantities that result in price points that are more competitive and attractive. This positive ripple effect would also enable them better access to capital as they can demonstrate the ability to manage risk, therein increasing their willingness to make infrastructure and other production management investments to support sustained sales.
We also discussed the evolving challenges of the NYS meat processing industry. As recently as 12 months ago, driven by the growth in market demand for local proteins during COVID and the shift of NYS producers to use NYS processors that could provide custom-source verified slaughter and co-packing, NYS processors lacked sufficient capacity. Interviewees reported that today’s reality is starkly different:
- low levels of national beef cattle inventory (lowest levels since the 1970s)
- historic investments (>$1B) by the US Department of Agriculture and the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets in small and midscale processing capacity
- high prices at auction houses
- reduced interest by producers in selling through local food markets given a) high prices at auction houses, and b) perceived reduced demand by local food consumers post COVID
- excess capacity at NYS small and mid-scale processing facilities due to the inability to compete with large processors at auction.
Looking Beyond New York
CFP team member Thomas Forster, who also led the technical team that drafted the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, recently returned from East Africa where he participated in meetings of market actors, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations working at the intersection of urbanization, food systems, climate change and biodiversity. Upon his return he wrote the following.
Recognizing regional diversity of values-based public food procurement
In recent years recognition of the potential application of the demand-side policy tool of public food procurement to sustainable food systems has risen across the world in many cities and countries. In the United States the experience with public food procurement has for decades applied other values besides lowest cost to school food feeding programs, for example to support local agriculture and minimally processed fruits and vegetables.
Other regions in the world have their own experiences in public food procurement. Brazil is well known globally for its Zero Fome (zero hunger) and Bolsa Familia (family basket) policies and programs also starting over 20 years ago and credited with significantly reducing hunger and poverty in that country. The values chosen by the programs in Brazil include direct support for smaller family farms secure access to markets (school feeding and social kitchens) and the improvement of literacy in poor rural families.
Public food procurement is expressed somewhat differently in Europe, where the prohibition on geographic preferences has prevailed and municipal efforts to apply other values to procurement has led to other approaches such as targeting varieties of foods produced only in certain regions, limits on time out of harvest, or foods with reduced emissions in transportation. Copenhagen is well known for applying the value of organically grown school food, with impacts at a national level on organic food production in Denmark.
In Africa the rate of urbanization in mostly rural countries has been among the most rapid in the world, with consequences that are usually thought of as negative. However, the form of the usually unplanned spread of settlements in forms of conurbation are often very close to rural agriculture and many cities include food production meeting significant portions of municipal food supply in certain food items. In Africa it is more often the national level that is supporting public procurement and usually for improved nutrition and school meals. But with so much of Africa’s food system in the informal sector dominated by small farmers, the greatest asset may be its informality.
In all regions, food systems change and public procurement entails local, subnational and national levels of governance. It is clear that a “multi-level” policy approach to public food procurement that embraces other values besides production for lowest cost require the engagement of actors across supply chains from farmers and producers to buyers, including distributors, aggregators, processors and wholesalers.
What’s Happening Around the Globe
Earlier in the year, City Food Policy Project Lead Dr. Becca Jablonski testified at the UN High-Level Political Forum Expert Group Meeting for Sustainable Development Goal 2 in Rome, Italy. Presenting to a group discussing the effective delivery of sustainable, resilient, and innovative solutions to eradicate poverty and achieve the 2030 Agenda, Dr. Jablonski emphasized that “Often farmers are left out of these conversations due to power imbalances and lack of mechanisms to facilitate regional participation” (Jablonski et al. 2019). “As a result, there is increased polarization across many rural and urban stakeholders, promotion of certain farm management or production practices that may not actually result in improved environmental outcomes and misunderstanding about the incentives that promote farm transitions to sustainable agriculture”. Follow this link to read the entirety of her testimony, which highlights that Regional Governance, Not Taking a One Size Fits All Approach, and Farmer Decision-Making, are key elements to building a resilient food system.
In May 2024, researchers in Copenhagen released the study How to Procure Sustainable Food and Include Farmers in Public Procurement? – Legal Constraints and Opportunities. Similar to the City Food Policy Project, the study examines how various definitions and laws influence values-based food procurement. The study also details how essential it is to engage farmers in public procurement processes.
In our next What’s New, CFP will highlight the numerous policy action items that the NYC MOFP is interested in gaining a better understanding of the environmental and economic tradeoffs associated with each. We will also detail the various federal, state, and city funding streams and laws that prescribe “Local” for NYC and NYS institutions.