Interested to learn how public procurement can be a driver for a more regional, sustainable and healthy food system?

FoodShift’s Regional Lunch for All Lab is based in Avignon, France, and aims at shifting public procurement towards a sustainable food transition.

As of 2015, Avignon’s City Hall decided to take back the organization of school canteens – previously managed by a private company – to foster the quality of meals and reduce the impact on the environment. From September 2020 to mid-October, 38.1% of the products were certified organic (SIQO) and 20% were local.

To achieve this, Avignon City Hall built a strong network of stakeholders engaged in local and organic farming such as a research center (INRAE), a platform selling local food products (AGRILOCAL), organic farmers (or farmers in conversion), local farmers, local bakeries, and relevant public stakeholders.

In addition, the City Hall tries to reduce their impact on carbon farming by proposing more plant-based meals every day. These include one vegetarian meal, one with fish and two with meat. The City Hall also reduces their food waste by serving meals more adapted with children’s taste.

This lab is part of FoodSHIFT2030 (FoodSystem Hubs Innovating towards Fast Transition by 2030), a consortium of 30 partners (7 municipalities, 8 SMEs, 8 NGOs, 7 research institutes) from 12 European countries. Within the project, IFOAM Organics Europe provides advice on creating a food strategy, boosts the project visibility through dissemination to present the outcomes, and will organize the closing conference of the project.

FoodSHIFT 2030 is a 7.5 million EUR Innovation Action project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, which addresses the call on innovative and citizen-driven food system approaches in cities, in view of shifting towards a low carbon circular future.