Good Food Communities

Every year, public institutions like hospitals, schools, and prisons spend billions of tax dollars to feed communities. Unfortunately, when lowest cost is the only criteria in the contract process, public food procurement is rigged by corporations who use public funds to corner institutional markets.

The Good Food Purchasing Program

Since 2012, FCWA has helped build grassroots coalitions around the country to uphold fair labor practices in food supply chains by campaigning for local, public-serving institutions to join the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP).

GFPP is a metric-based framework to assess whether suppliers to public institutions are aligned with five core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and community health. It’s also a tool to advocate for legislation that redirects public food dollars to suppliers who uphold those values.

To date, 15 institutions across 10 cities and counties have adopted GFPP, including two of the largest school districts and the second largest county in the country — influencing over $540 million in taxpayer food dollars. 

Good Food Communities

In 2018, we launched Good Food Communities (GFC) with HEAL Food Alliance and grassroots leaders across the country. GFC was created to strengthen GFPP outcomes for workers and people of color according to five priorities:

  1. Protect the right to organize and secure living wages for frontline food workers.
  2. Secure institutional contacts for small-scale BIPOC producers and mechanisms to ensure frontline communities are the ones who determine if publicly-served food reflects shared values.
  3. Create protections from food & farm-related pollution for communities of color and frontline workers, and reward environmental sustainable farming practices.
  4. Win public access to supply chain data and create clear consequences for violating suppliers. 
  5. Hold all GFPP values in equal measure without sacrificing commitments to workers rights.
Artwork by Emitxin shows a poultry processing worker wearing an apron and hairnet, raising her fist as cuts of meat pass before her on a conveyer belt.

Using GFPP as a tool, we leverage policy and implementation of values-based public food contracts to hold institutions and suppliers accountable to these priorities, while making space for new suppliers that align.

In short, the GFC Network is leveraging 10+ years of GFPP successes to bolster food worker organizing and build worker power.

Learn more in our report, Procuring Food Justice: Grassroots Solutions for Reclaiming our Public Supply Chains.