Food Procurement
Guide for Developing a Sustainable Food Purchasing Policy
(Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2008)
Building Local Food Programs on College Campuses
(Community Alliance of Family Farms, 2008)
The Changing Vocabulary of Food Purchasing
(Sustainable Food Laboratory, 2008)
Sustainable Food Purchasing Guide
(Yale Sustainable Food Project)
- Summarizes basic terms and concepts related to sustainable food procurement, suggests strategies for implementing a sustainable food purchasing program (pdf).
- Provides a list of questions to ask suppliers of various types of food to determine whether a given product is sustainable or not.
Fresh Food Distribution Models for the Greater Los Angeles Region
(Center for Food & Justice, a division of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College, 2008)
- Evaluation of how large institutional clients could more readily access locally grown foods through traditional institutional procurement avenues such as large distribution firms (pdf).
- Regional case studies examine Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange, and Ventura counties.
Public Health and Animal Welfare
Cultivating Common Ground: Linking Health and Sustainable Agriculture
(Prevention Institute, 2004)
Farm Animal Welfare: An Assessment of Product Labeling Claims, Industry Quality Assurance Guidelines, and Third-Party Certification Standards
(Farm Sanctuary)
Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry
(World Watch Institute, 2005)
Food and Global Warming
Literature Review of Methods and Tools for Quantifying the Indirect Environmental Impacts of Food Procurement
(Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Environment, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2008)
Carbon Footprint Analysis for Kaiser Permanente Food Procurement Alternatives in Northern California
(Prepared by Center for Sustainable Economy for the Community Alliance of Family Farms, 2006)
- Analysis of fruit and vegetable carbon footprint based on food miles (pdf).
- Evaluates the relative carbon footprints of business as usual procurement practices, versus purchasing a high percentage of local produce.
Diet, Energy, and Global Warming
("Earth Interactions," 2006)
- Peer-reviewed article by two University of Chicago Geophysicists, on the carbon content of different types of diets (pdf).
- Analysis is based on energy inputs of plant-based diet versus meat-based diet, rather than on food miles traveled.
- Key finding: the greenhouse gas emissions of different diets vary by as much as the difference between owning an average sedan versus a sport-utility vehicle under typical driving conditions.