At the Start of Systems Change
Unfortunately, the modern institutional food system has been designed to prioritize price, convenience, and quantity over the welfare of food growers, the environment, animals, and meal recipients. The Good Food Purchasing Initiative is trying to change that--envisioning cafeterias where children, seniors, hospital patients, and other community members can access good food and celebrate the local community members who are growing and preparing their meals. This transformation will take time and support, and is not without many challenges for local food growers and businesses. Below are just a few of the major challenges that current GFPI participants have identified.
Access to Land & Water for Growers
Courtesy of Real Food Media and the Center of Good Food Purchasing
Before local food growers and producers can begin to explore institutional market opportunities, there are several fundamental needs that must be addressed first. For urban and peri-urban farmers, access to high quality land for growing food is challenging, and there are very few opportunities across Metro Chicago where a beginning farmer can identify a patient pathway to land ownership. Affordable water access for growing crops is another issue that many urban growers within the Metro Chicago area are also confronting. Coordination amongst public officials and community partners to address barriers to land and water for growers is a critical need that must be supported to help build a resilient and scalable local food system.
Support with Food Safety Certifications
Courtesy of Real Food Media and the Center of Good Food Purchasing
Because institutions rely on such long supply chains to procure their food, there has been a complex web of food safety requirements developed to prevent foodborne illness from spreading to meal recipients. These food safety standards can be difficult for small farmers to meet-- not because their farms aren’t safe, but because the paperwork and sanctioned safety protocols can be time consuming and expensive to implement. Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification, for example, can cost hundreds of dollars per audit, and an auditor may have to visit several times if a farmer needs to become certified in multiple crops.
Hospitals, schools, and senior meal programs understandably want to ensure that they are doing whatever they can to prevent the populations they serve from getting sick, but the regulatory landscape provides yet another hurdle for small farmers who want to sell to community-based institutions. The USDA has responded to this challenge by developing a “Group GAP” model, whereby one entity can certify multiple farms within their network. For Chicago growers, Advocates for Urban Agriculture is currently exploring how they can support this Group GAP model locally.
Support with Third-Party Good Food Certifications
Pictured is Mecca Bey from Sistas in the Village at a Lettuce Meetup/Alegría en la Granja event. To stay updated with Sistas in the Village, please follow them on Instagram @sistasinthevillage. To learn more about the farm incubator at Urban Growers Collective, visit: http://urbangrowerscollective.org/farmerincubatorprogram
The Center for Good Food Purchasing’s Good Food Standards are mainly based on third-party certification programs (click here for a list of which certifications qualify). For example, a product will score highest in Environmental Sustainability if it is USDA Certified Organic. A farmer’s produce can still qualify for this Good Food Standard if the farm signs an affidavit about their growing practices, but GFPP is predominantly driving demand toward products that hold these certifications. So, farmers and food producers with certified products have a competitive advantage within the GFPP framework. However, becoming certified can be time consuming, require lengthy paperwork, and cost a lot of money to attain. GFPI implementers don’t want certifications to pose a barrier for local BIPOC growers and food businesses from qualifying for the Good Food Standards or supplying an institution. GFPI is working to build more grant funding and technical support for certification processes, and also lifting up these concerns with the Center for Good Food Purchasing to ensure that the next version of the Good Food Standards respond to this issue.
Local Supply Chain Infrastructure
Courtesy of Real Food Media and the Center of Good Food Purchasing
The institutional food supply chain is characterized by high volume demand that has been served by long, complex, and highly consolidated supply chains. The economies of scale achieved by larger, corporate food businesses has pushed many medium and small-scale producers out of the supply chain. Much of the local and regional infrastructure that used to exist for smaller farmers has disappeared (if it ever existed in the first place).
If smaller and medium scale farmers are going to compete in wholesale and institutional supply chains, they need creative strategies to achieve their own economies of scale and manage logistics efficiently. Cooperative enterprises, like food hubs, offer one such strategy to help provide shared warehousing, processing, distribution, and marketing services for multiple farmers without adding new, profit-driven middlemen in between farmers and buyers. Over the past two years, Illinois Institute of Technology researchers have been exploring the feasibility of a cooperatively run food hub, owned and operated by BIPOC growers, that could serve institutional market channels. The study is anticipating to publish their results in Spring 2022; please join the GFPP Coalition to stay informed on updates.
Access to Capital & Financing
Pictured are volunteers at Cedillo’s Fresh Produce in Chicago, IL, during a Lettuce Meetup/Alegría en la Granja event hosted by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and Cedillo’s Fresh Produce.
Selling to community-based institutions is not going to make sense for every farm’s business model. For those farms that are interested in serving their community in this way, though, they need assistance in determining how to include this market channel in their overall business plan. They will also likely need assistance in accessing capital to help ensure their farm is prepared to sell into larger markets.
Support Navigating Institutional Procurement
Pictured are volunteers at Cedillo’s Fresh Produce in Chicago, IL, during a Lettuce Meetup/Alegría en la Granja event hosted by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and Cedillo’s Fresh Produce.
For smaller farmers that have only sold through direct-to-consumer channels, selling wholesale can be a daunting new enterprise. There are few resources tailored to small farmers about becoming an approved vendor for a food distributor or participating in a public procurement bidding process. We hope that this GFPI Guide for Food Growers and Businesses is a starting point for food producers, but we know more hands-on support and guidance is absolutely necessary. GFPI implementers are also working with institutions to explore ways to make their procurement processes easier for smaller farmers and food businesses to participate in; the onus shouldn’t be on farmers to “scale up,” but also for institutional meal programs to “scale down,” to meet farmers where they’re at.
In December 2021, GFPI implementers will be hosting a pilot “Buyer/Supplier Networking Mixer” to help build relationships between farmers, distributors, food processors, and institutional buyers. CFPAC has engaged several local partners in planning these efforts, including Windy City Harvest, Urban Growers Collective, Advocates for Urban Agriculture, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, and U of IL Extension. Partners hope to continue building more opportunities like this as we head into 2022. CFPAC has also started to coordinate meetings with regional value chain coordinators across the Upper Midwest who see potential in leveraging Chicago and Cook County’s GFPP to support GFPP-aligned producers across the region. While these efforts are a start, there is still much more coordination, training, and support needed to ensure that the procurement process is transparent and easy to navigate for food growers and businesses of all sizes.