How to Procure Sustainable Food and Include Famers in Public Procurement
This study explores the integration of sustainability into public food procurement, focusing on its alignment with the EU public procurement legal framework.
The study begins by providing an introduction to EU procurement law in order to highlight its relevance for sustainable public food procurement. This has been achieved by highlighting fundamental principles of EU public procurement law. Furthermore, an overview of historical EU legal developments (CJEU case law, Public Sector Directives and soft law instruments) that led to integrating sustainability considerations into public procurement is provided.
The core of the study thoroughly examines several conceptualizations of sustainable food, such as organic, local, fresh, seasonal, fairly traded, and those involving short supply chains, assessing how these definitions influence procurement decisions and align with current laws. Furthermore, key legal constraints that affect sustainable food procurement are identified – including the necessity for a direct link to the subject matter of the contract, the risk of artificially narrowing competition, the prohibition against splitting contracts to avoid EU procurement rules, and limitations on purchasing ‘local’ food under EU law. Additionally, the study discusses the inclusion of farmers in public procurement processes, highlighting the challenges they face and the opportunities to enhance their participation. It underscores the particular challenges in pursuing socially responsible procurement and the barriers small farmers face in public tenders. Strategies such as dividing tenders into lots, consortia bidding, and subcontracting are proposed to rebalance farmers’ positions in public procurement.
Lastly, legislative changes are suggested to facilitate the wider adoption of sustainable food procurement practices. The report concludes with a synthesis of findings and recommendations for future amendments to EU procurement laws to support environmental and social objectives more effectively.
Public Food Procurement for Sustainable Food System and Healthy Diets
Sustainable Public Food Procurement (PFP) represents a key game changer for food systems transformation. It can influence both food consumption and food production patterns. It can deliver multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits towards sustainable food systems for healthy diets.
Strengthening Local Fresh Food Markets for Resilient Food Systems
Proclaimed at the highest international levels, the global food system is experiencing the worst crisis in history. Unlike the food price crisis of 2007-8, in 2022 there is convergence of multiple crises. Hunger and malnutrition have soared in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).
Strengthening Urban Rural Linkages for Sustainable Development
Urbanization and ecosystems are profoundly intertwined. As urbanization takes over more land and has greater impacts on ecosystems, and as towns and cities of all sizes demand ecosystem services (food, fiber, water, energy, etc.), flows of people, goods, services, information, capital, etc. define and drive urban–rural linkages in complex and intricate patterns.
School Meals Programmes and the Education Crisis
The immediate context for this financial landscape analysis is the learning crisis triggered by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic and the shrinking fiscal space available to governments. We look at the potential for school feeding programmes to play an expanded role in addressing the learning crisis – and at the public financing options available. The analysis draws on seven rapid assessment country studies commissioned by the SFI.
Public food procurement as a game changer for food system transformation
The last decade has seen various countries, regions, and cities from low-income to high-income economies develop public food procurement (PFP) initiatives designed to use government purchasing power and regular demand for food as a policy instrument to promote sustainable development.1 These initiatives—often also referred to as institutional food procurement, including school meals programmes and purchase of food for public hospitals, prisons, universities, public building cafeterias, and other social programmes— have been increasingly recognised as an important entry point to trigger more sustainable food systems and healthy diets. They are also an important instrument for the achievement of target 12.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): “to promote public procurement practices that are sustainable in accordance with national policies and priorities”.
Food Action Cities: Case Study Archive
Discover how other cities improved their food system and learn from their experience
Building sustainable and resilient food systems: Integrating Market Systems at the Centre of Urban-Rural Linkages
On the 21st of April, Earth Day 2022, a technical consultation was hosted by UN-Habitat. The subject was integrating market systems at the centre of urban-rural linkages as a pathway to building sustainable and resilient food systems. A concept note for the
consultation can be found here. The topic of market systems builds on the worldwide crisis of food markets during the pandemic and the widespread innovations and lessons from food market responses
to crisis.
The crisis of food systems and the need for their transformation became a global conversation in the first United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021. To bring market actors from the front lines of impact and response to the shocks of COVID-19 and other
crises, three global market platforms were invited to be co-organizers of the consultation. They are the World Union of Wholesale Markets (WUWM), the Market Cities Initiative, and the World Farmers Markets Coalition (WFMC).
From Plate to Planet: How local governments are driving action on climate change through food
The small window of opportunity the world has to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global
warming to 1.5°C is rapidly closing. The latest
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
report, published in March 2023, sounded a stark
warning and final call to action. The report
underlined that global warming is already killing
people, destroying nature, and making the world
poorer. Damages are accelerating as temperatures
rise, causing unprecedented costs to people,
economies, the environment, and food security.
Women, youth, marginalized urban populations,
smallholder farmers, and Indigenous communities
bear the brunt of these damages. Deeper and faster 1
cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are the only
way to limit these impacts.