Institute This: Sustainable Food Policy

Do you work in an institution? By that I mean a big organization like a government, school, or hospital. Even a large company will do. If your organization has buying clout and wields it to garner good bulk deals as a consumer, it's an institutional buyer. This means that your institution has an opportunity to transform the landscape of sustainable food policy in a way that many individual consumers do not. While drops in the bucket make a difference in the world of sustainable food, changing the bucket is a fast way to transforming our buying relationship with food.

What am I talking about? Let's use my past university as an example. Much to the chagrin of its students, one of my alma maters cut a deal with a major beverage manufacturer. All of the beverages sold on campus were going to be part of that manufacturer's brands, and that included those sold in vending machines. Students were up in arms about the limitation of choice and the social and political activity of the company in question. The university was pleased with the deal, since handing over the buying population of the university meant that the educational institution received a sum of money from the company in question.

All companies have social and environmental ties that may or may not be sustainable. While shareholders have some influence on a company's actions, those who buy from the company have a great deal of influence as well. If there are no sales, there's no product. Institutions in particular have a huge influence, since they are big buyers: for example, in Canada, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan happens to be a huge investor in the stock of various companies, and when teachers raise a stink about a particular investment and the pension plan engineers a shift of its money, companies listen.

Where does this leave the average employee of a large institution? Institutional buying offers a gateway to influence sustainable food policy. For example, with a sustainable food push, the students or teachers at a school can work with the manager of a school cafeteria to institute a food policy that supports local and organic food. Sustainable food also includes socially ethical food, and those same students and employees can help institute a policy of selling fair trade bananas in the cafeteria or selling fair trade coffee for coffee breaks. These small steps make a large impact when they are spread over the thousands of people at an institution.

Institutions can be big beasts to move, but when pushed hard enough from the inside, they may gradually adopt sustainable policies that include social and environmental factors as part of the bottom line. The localization of the food in school cafeterias is one example. Can you think of others?