Co-Chairs:
- Dalila Boclin | Director of Food System Investment, Locus
- Rachel Clark | Healthy Communities Consultant
- Jose Morales | VP Sales, Keany Produce
- Kashaf Momin | Food Policy Analyst, Office of Planning
2025 Priorities
Accomplishments:
Food Procurement in the District of Columbia: A Weak Link in the Value Chain (2025): The District of Columbia spends millions per year on food procurement, feeding tens of thousands of children, seniors, and vulnerable residents each day. While the District has recognized that this spending is an opportunity to use public tax dollars to advance equity, health, and sustainability, it has struggled to shift its purchasing behaviors to fully realize these goals. The Sustainable Supply Chain Working Group advised the George Washington University’s Redstone Center’s new report, which examines current procurement policies and practices to identify barriers to implementing better food procurement in the District. Watch a recording of a presentation on the report here.
Recommendations for Supporting Farmers Markets (2024): The Sustainable Supply Chain Working Group held a series of listening sessions in 2022 and 2023 with Farmers Market managers, vendors, and aspiring farmers market organizers, especially in Wards 7 and 8, to hear current barriers for launching, maintaining, and expanding Farmers Markets. The group presented their recommendations, synthesized from the listening sessions, at the August 2024 Food Policy Council meeting.
Values Based Food Procurement Guide (2022): The Guide is an on-ramp for small businesses, organizations, and individuals, who want to understand how to use their purchasing power to drive positive change for the food system. The Guide was modeled on best practices and structures from procurement programs and acknowledges their work as a foundation for this document. The information is broken out into a broad overview of four big issue areas – Local Economies, Health, Valued Workforce, and Animal Welfare – and provides options for how to incrementally change purchasing behavior. Each issue area is examined through a racial equity, environmental impact, and resiliency lens.
Glasgow Food and Climate Policy Brief (2022): In October 2021, Mayor Bowser signed the Glasgow Food & Climate Declaration. This commitment centers food policy in government strategies to directly address the climate crisis. The Summer M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at George Washington University published a Policy Brief to serve as a roadmap for achieving the District’s commitments under the Declaration.
Advocacy guides: The FPC creates advocacy guides for legislation related to food and sustainability, including the Healthy Students Amendment Act of 2018, which amended the Healthy Schools Act of 2010 to increase the District’s investment in school breakfast, require a study on best practices for building a central kitchen facility, and require DCPS to undergo a Good Food Purchasing Program baseline assessment, and the Save Good Food Amendment Act of 2018 (passed October 2018), which expanded liability protections for food donors, limiting the types of products required to carry date labels, and created a food donation best practices guide.
Partnerships: The FPC is an active contributor in several DC coalitions, including the DC Good Food Purchasing Program coalition, the DCPS School Food Advisory Group, and the DC Food Recovery Working Group.