Governing Urban Food Systems in the Long Run: Comparing Best Practices in Sustainable Food Procurement Regulations

Abstract

Today's food and agricultural systems are closely linked to pressing challenges for sustainable human life. Longer-term policy-making is seriously needed. Urban decision-makers have considerable power to shape the food and agricultural sector by, among other things, changing public food procurements towards greater sustainability. Governing Urban Food Systems in the Long Run Comparing Best Practices in Sustainable Food Procurement Regulations oday's food and agricultural systems are closely linked to the most pressing challenges to sustainable human life such as climate change, the exploitation of natural resources, and antibio tic resistance. Notably, around 31 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are associated with the food system (Wellesley et al. 2015). 1 Our food system is thus confronted with an increasing number of long-term problems, with cost implications reaching far into the future. Over 50 percent of the world population and over 70 percent of the European population (UN 2014) live in cities. Cities can act as a catalyst for societal and technological innovations to solve humans' most pressing challenges. One example of urban decision-makers' considerable power to shape the food and agricultural sector involves introducing urban food strategies and regulations with the goal to change public food procurements towards greater sustainability (

Emphasizing urgency of climate change is insufficient to increase policy support

“…78 Finally, linking tailored temporal risk frames to policy strategies that design mitigation measures to account for the underlying temporal policy dynamics could create virtuous feedback cycles and increase the political feasibility of ambitious climate policy. 31,79,80 For example, policy designs that package together costly and compensatory measures, 81,82 redistribute certain mitigation costs to future generations (e.g., through green bonds), 83 and emphasize short-term co-benefits of addressing climate change 18,84,85 appear to be promising (but still underre-…”

Local urban government policies to facilitate healthy and environmentally sustainable diet-related practices: a scoping review

“…Of the included studies (n 27) (29,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56) most applied qualitative research methods (n 21) and used either content, document or policy analysis (n 16), interviews (n 11) or case studies (n 10) to address study aims (see online Supplemental Materials S4: Summary characteristics of included studies and S5: Data extraction from included studies). Most studies targeted local government stakeholders such as leaders and city planners (n 21), while approximately one-third included stakeholders from other levels of government (n 9) and several engaged primary producers of food (n 3).…”

Role of Food System Planning in Facilitating Local Food Procurement for School Meals

“…The lack of funding, infrastructure, and rigid contracts often results in public institutions relying on inexpensive and pre-processed ingredients (Reynolds & Hunter, 2017). Contradictions in governmental policies also result in a lack of accountability and diffusion of action in developing effective local foodfocused strategies and solutions (Fesenfeld, 2016). The B.C.…”