THE ANGELS–(BUSINESS WIRE) – The nonprofit Center for Good Food Purchasing has launched its Good Food Impact Hub, a set of online tools that help large food service institutions such as school districts calculate economic, environmental and value for money. the health of adopting more sustainable purchasing practices.
Impact Hub provides users with an easy-to-use interface to quantify and articulate the positive impacts of implementing smarter methods of providing food to their constituents, from buying more organic produce to sourcing more food locally.
Users can package data sets through five value lenses: better health and nutrition, reduced environmental impacts, more robust local economies, most valued workforces, and improvement of animal welfare. Users can customize the projected benefits and savings for their communities based on the size of their annual purchasing power. Typical users include anyone who is in a position to advocate and generate public support for better food procurement policies and practices, from policy makers to community coalitions and food procurement decision makers who oversee food supply chains. for public schools, universities, hospitals and prisons. facilities and the like.
“Knowledge is power,” said Paula Daniels, co-founder and director of What’s Next at the Center for Good Food Purchasing. “Our new Impact Hub will provide key insights to food service managers and policymakers looking to adopt a more values-driven procurement strategy, providing them with the solid data to show that investing in these changes will pay huge economic, environmental and economic dividends. health in their communities. ”
Information from the Impact Hub reinforced a report recently released by the Rockefeller Foundation in association with the Center for Good Food Purchasing. The “Real Cost of Food Case Study: School Meals” details the health and poverty reduction benefits of US school meal programs that adopt more sustainable food purchasing practices:
- Increase purchases from local and regional producers and suppliers to 30% of all food purchases. This would support 19,552 local jobs, equivalent to annual local salaries of $ 971 million. Employment in the localized food system may include jobs as farm-to-school coordinators, culinary staff to cook from scratch, and local food center operations.
- Reduce conventionally raised grain-fed beef by 30% (for example, through a meatless Monday program). This would result in a CO2 equivalent reduction of 2.98 billion pounds (equivalent to taking 292,000 passenger vehicles off the road annually).
- Replacing conventional produce with USDA certified organic for the top 20 most purchased produce. This would reduce pesticide use by 567,000 pounds and reduce pesticide use on 47,600 acres of farmland (equivalent to 36,100 soccer fields).
Impact Hub allows users to perform similar calculations in their region and provide a dollar analysis to administrators. The microsite has been designed to act as a town hall for agents of change eager to move food systems from a profit-based model to a more community-based model. Beyond calculators, the Hub offers case studies, Practical recommendations, evidence-based proofs of concept and support resources from the Center.
Some 60 institutions of significant scale in 24 regions, including the The Angels, New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington dc, Austin, and Oakland School Districts, have signed up for the Good Food Purchasing program. Together, these entities represent more than $ 1 billion in annual purchasing power and serve more than 3 million people each week. The Center works with food service managers and the communities they serve to establish supply chain transparency from farm to fork, assisting with setting metric-based goals and measuring progress across the five valuable glasses.
Alexa Delwiche, Co-Founder and CEO, noted that “Impact Hub is rich with real-world impact case studies that are already underway. The new content includes details on the local shopping policies of eight cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. The Center has calculated the impacts of the purchase changes for those cities. By implementing the Meatless Monday changes across all city agencies, New York City could reduce annual carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 202 million pounds; equivalent to taking approximately 20,228 passenger vehicles off the road annually. ”
The Rockefeller Foundation funded the development and launch of the Good Food Impact Hub as part of its ongoing work to create a more equitable and healthier public food system.
About the Impact Hub methodology
The Center developed the impact calculators by interacting with subject matter experts, conducting a comprehensive review of the literature, and creating a detailed analytical model. You can find more information on methodology and sources here.
About the Center for Good Food Shopping
The Center for Good Food Purchasing was created in 2015 to guide the national expansion of the Good Food Purchasing Program, a qualification program for large food service providers. It was first implemented in the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District beginning in 2012. The Center works with national partners, local food policy councils and grassroots coalitions, administrators and elected officials in cities across the country to climb the Good. Food purchase model.