GLCN supports City of Ghent to profile Food Procurement Policy Results

The project 'Gent en Garde' has brought significant change to our local food system: through it, we are decreasing food waste, making food procurement more sustainable, and improving access to food. Since January 2017 the city of Ghent serves healthy, tasty and sustainable meals through its schools, daycare centres and boarding schools to around 4.500 students every day, 775,883 meals annually. The catering contract furthermore generates regular and "social" jobs: the city is currently employing 235 FTE service, logistical and catering staff. 43 schools were decorated with a campaign on sustainable food. Educational materials were distributed to 5667 children and 2572 teachers. Since the launch of Gent en Garde in 2013: The number of weekly farmers markets has increased from 3 to 9; Vegetable basket schemes have similarly grown and new alternative business models have started up successfully, e.g. an online ordering platform for local products, a catering business with a rooftop vegetable garden, aquaponics and packaging-free food stores; 7% of the citizens are now vegetarians; a new logistics platform for professional buyers; 300 tonnes of food waste has been redistributed in 10 months to 19,000 people in poverty; The initiative has connected 120 stakeholders on improving access to sustainable and healthy food; As a result of Thursday Veggie Day Ghent has the most vegetarian restaurants per inhabitant among cities in Europe.