UC Global Climate Leadership Council Sustainable Food Sourcing Project

Advancing Sustainable Food Supply Chain Sourcing and Dining Practices Across the University of California

This project will support UC campuses and academic health centers to align definitions, data collection, and reporting on sustainable food procurement, engage UC community members on sustainable food priorities, develop case studies on sustainable food procurement success stories, and advance progress towards the UC President’s goal of defining the actions and resources needed to procure at least 25 percent of our own food supplies from sustainable sources by 2025.

Tim Galarneau from the Center for Agroecology and Agnes Martelet from UC Office of the President’s Sustainability Office will co-direct the project initiative to engage all UC sites. The UC Global Climate Leadership Council is funding this project undertaking in the first phase (November 2023 through September 2024) with opportunities to further expand and deepen efforts across UC sites in further phases ahead.

Project Overview

This project will explore how to ensure campus data tracking and sourcing evaluation can be improved upon while engaging student fellows and technical assistance partnerships for increased sustainable food spending with a multi-pronged approach. Our team will assess supply chain and policy mechanisms to rapidly accelerate sustainable sourcing with a nuanced approach while leveraging the synergistic relationships between UC applied research, educational programing, operational budgets, and long-standing supply chain contracts and sourcing partnerships.

Our project goals are to: 1) Advance the expansion and sourcing for sustainable food producers and enterprises in UC food service operations; and, 2) Assess the key barriers and introduce recommendations for improving overall reporting and sourcing practices that integrate strategic systemwide sourcing and campus-specific secondary contracts and data collection.

Project Objectives

• Provide technical training and support for Sustainable Food Global Food Initiative Fellows in implementing site specific engagement in data collection and reporting/evaluation
• Facilitate systemwide and region-based campus/medical center technical assistance on sourcing and new sustainable food supply chain vendors and contract advances.
• Identify and operate a campus pilot utilizing a new data tracking platform in concert with UCOP procurement and the senior commodity food manager.
• Convene strategic procurement food commodity leads to review existing contracts with project team in order to examine opportunities to improve contract language to increase sustainable food sourcing for UC campus and medical sites.
• Host spring 2024 sustainable food systems campus and medical center events to promote greater sustainable food literacy and project awareness.
• Develop a project impact report providing insights on barriers and recommendations for improving regional and systemwide sustainable food sourcing, focusing on advancing the presidential priority focus for reaching 25% sustainable food sourcing by 2025.

Project Technical Assistance Team members include H Neito-Frambach, CEO, and Anna Bohbot, Senior Associate, from SupplyChange; Yousef Buzayan, Senior Farm to Market Manager with Community Alliance with Family Farmers; Héktor Calderón-Victoria, Regional Food Systems Specialist, Center for Agroecology; Amanda Chu, Procurement Director and Jesse James Student Organizing Director, Real Food Challenge. 

For more details please contact Tim Galarneau tgalarne@ucsc.edu or 831-359-8861.