A Local Gap in Sustainable Food Procurement: Organic Vegetables in Berlin’s School Meals

Abstract

Organic and local food plays an important role in the discussion of sustainable public procurement for school catering services. The present study investigates the value chain supplying school catering with organic produce, using the organic vegetable industry in the Berlin-Brandenburg region in Germany as an example. The qualitative case study employs a structuration theory approach to explore value chain actors’ perspectives and their practices. Data is collected by conducting 14 in-depth interviews with actors on different supply chain levels (farming, wholesale, and catering) and analyzed by means of qualitative content analysis. The results suggest that, while organic food is generally important in school catering in Berlin, locally produced organic vegetables play only a minor role. A constraining factor is the lack of incentives for the use of locally produced organic food in the procurement guidelines, combined with a very limited budget for sourcing. Also, there are no preprocessing facilities in the region, while work organization in school catering services depends heavily on preprocessed food. From a farmers’ perspective, focusing on process grade vegetables is rarely a common marketing strategy.

Features and Functions of Multifunctional Urban Agriculture in the Global North: A Review

“…Accordingly, the production risk (which is also being exacerbated by price fluctuations in a global market and uncertainty of production in response to climate change) is distributed among the different food stakeholders rather than placed only on farmers (Pölling et al, 2016a). Beside CSA schemes, citizens are also engaging in collective actions in the Global North, including the establishment of so-called Food Policy Councils, where active citizenships results in modifying public procurement schemes (e.g., in schools and prisons), as occurred in the city of Berlin, where the establishment of the local Ernahrungsrat (Food Policy Council) in 2015, significantly contributed to the creation of a food strategy and a dedicated municipal office (Berlin Isst so-Unsere Ernahrungsstrategie) devoted to improve sustainability of the food system (Braun et al, 2018).…”

Behind the scenes of a learning agri-food value chain: lessons from action research

“…Workshops and field trips with practitioners, weekly meetings of the facilitation team, and evaluation meetings with external consultants and mentors Field notes from meetings and phone conversations Email archive Berlin-Brandenburg region, which consists of Berlin, a city of 3.8 million people, and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, a largely rural region dominated by agriculture. In the metropolitan area of Berlin, there is an increasing demand for organic food, both in retail and public catering, driven by consumer interest and by policies promoting sustainable procurement practices (Braun et al 2018;Doernberg et al 2016). While organic farming in the surrounding state of Brandenburg has also increased, a number of structural issues in the agri-food sector prevent local actors from using the potential.…”

“…This paper offers insights into a learning network that was formed to bring together a group of actors from the agri-food system-farmers, food processors, and traders-in the Berlin-Brandenburg region in eastern Germany. There is a high demand for local and organic food in the region, but structural issues in the agri-food system prevent local actors from benefitting from the potential for local capture of the value of that demand, particularly in the organic vegetable sector (Braun et al 2018;Doernberg et al 2016). The members of the learning network aimed to gain a better understanding of these issues, and to develop a sustainable agri-food value chain that benefits all actors involved equitably.…”

Public procurement as strategy to foster organic transition: insights from the Brazilian experience

“…While we do not question the importance of establishing an institutional framework (e.g., institutional markets, research funding, and policies) for supporting a scaling-up of organic agriculture, the use of public procurement with price incentives to create demand for organic foods has yet to be shown to have much impact on increasing production of organic food at the local level and among small-holder farmers (Sambuichi et al ., 2014; Braun et al ., 2018; Lundberg and Marklund, 2018).…”