Implementation of an Inter-Sectoral Policy: Healthy and Location-Efficient Food Procurement in the State of California

The California Health in All Policies Task Force convenes 18 State agencies to identify and implement strategies to improve the health of Californians while advancing State sustainability goals. One current policy project of the Task Force is to leverage government spending to support healthy food procurement. Leveraging state food spending to purchase healthy and local foods, whenever possible, gives the State an opportunity to both influence what people consume and support a robust local food system, which helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve agricultural lands.

This presentation will describe California's efforts to develop healthy and location-efficient food procurement standards and model policy language and will provide an overview of steps being taken to create a pilot test of a model healthy and location-efficient food procurement policy. In addition, this effort will serve as an example to describe some of the challenges and opportunities resulting from inter-sectoral relationships. The presenter will also describe how ensuring that co-benefits result from any proposed policy is essential to maintaining relationships and ensuring success.