Status report - FoodReach Toronto: lowering food costs for social agencies and community groups

Coleman, Paul; Gultig, John; Emanuel, B.; Gee, Marianne E.; Orpana, Heather

doi:10.24095/hpcdp.38.1.05

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…The economic sustainability of the agri-food system is also addressed in relation to food accessibility and affordability [240,250,251], which are related to the level of prices of agri-food products as well as their volatility [251,252]. What is alarming is that the increase in food prices might induce many people to substitute nutritious, fresh food with carbohydrates and sugar, which has detrimental health impacts (cf.…”

Section: Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Environment, Economy, Society, and Policy

2021

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Agri-food systems (AFS) have been central in the debate on sustainable development. Despite this growing interest in AFS, comprehensive analyses of the scholarly literature are hard to find. Therefore, the present systematic review delineated the contours of this growing research strand and analyzed how it relates to sustainability. A search performed on the Web of Science in January 2020 yielded 1389 documents, and 1289 were selected and underwent bibliometric and topical analyses. The topical analysis was informed by the SAFA (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems) approach of FAO and structured along four dimensions viz. environment, economy, society and culture, and policy and governance. The review shows an increasing interest in AFS with an exponential increase in publications number. However, the study field is north-biased and dominated by researchers and organizations from developed countries. Moreover, the analysis suggests that while environmental aspects are sufficiently addressed, social, economic, and political ones are generally overlooked. The paper ends by providing directions for future research and listing some topics to be integrated into a comprehensive, multidisciplinary agenda addressing the multifaceted (un)sustainability of AFS. It makes the case for adopting a holistic, 4-P (planet, people, profit, policy) approach in agri-food system studies.

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Section: Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Environment, Economy, Society, and Policy

2021

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“…Other prominent focus words, including health, seasonal, and quality, were also associated with economic sustainability. Health, in the context of economic sustainability, was associated with reduced costs for health care due to better health, see e.g., [17,18,52,55,105]. The most frequent way to address better human health through food was, as mentioned above, to procure organic products.…”

Section: Framing Economic Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Sustainability within Public Procurement of Food: A Systematic Literature Review

2021

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Public procurement has been recognized as a tool to promote more sustainable production and consumption practices. As such, an increasing body of literature has become available in recent years focusing on the sustainable public procurement of food. This article reviews the literature on the sustainable public procurement of food with the aim to analyze how sustainability is framed. This is done by analyzing what aspects of sustainability are emphasized and what practices are identified as sustainable. A systematic literature review was conducted between the years 2000 and 2020, identifying 103 articles. Results from the literature review indicate that the focus has primarily been on studies to evaluate and explore policy and good practices for procuring sustainable foods. A dominant focus on specific foods types and origins, e.g., those locally sourced and organic foods, is highlighted by a large share of the literature to address all three sustainability pillars. We observed that most articles focus on all three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic), addressing different aspects and types of foods, although the focus varied depending upon geographic location. Despite many studies identifying opportunities and potential, few articles assess the sustainability or outcomes of procurement processes through quantitative or qualitative methods or how actors in the procurement process can improve procurement toward more sustainable foods. This indicates a need for further case studies and guidelines to measure the development, progress, and performance of public food procurement.

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“…Realistically, food environments are unlikely to change independently without public demand prioritizing nutrient-rich foods across settings; therefore, it is likely that food environments and food preferences will shift organizations with the development of the FoodReach initiative, a program that brings together small organizations to increase purchasing power for healthy, fresh food products. 7 This approach is a valuable example of how to successfully implement healthy procurement policies in small organizations. The creation of a knowledge exchange portal will also help with cross-learning from policy and program experience, which was a recommendation stemming from the expert consensus by Raine and colleagues.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%