From individual action to systems change: Instituting values-based food procurement

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OVERVIEW:

This practice study follows Dan Munshaw, an innovator in the City of Thunder Bay’s Supply Management Division, through three significant milestones in his pursuit of values-based food procurement. Dan’s journey illustrates how anchor institutions like municipalities, long-term care facilities and hospitals can use their financial and moral leadership to create greater health and equity for their communities.

THE PROBLEM: The City of Thunder Bay, in Northwestern Ontario, was purchasing food for its long-term care homes and other operations from large, broadline distributors based on lowest cost, and wanted to leverage its spend to benefit the community. The City also recognized that its significant First Nations population had been disenfranchised through decades of colonialism and racism, and the City was primed to work toward reconciliation and inclusion.

THE INTERVENTION: Procurement manager Dan Munshaw was willing to learn and to experiment as he seized opportunities to advance diversity and inclusion through food. Dan developed procurement practices and policies, embedding values around local, sustainable and culturally responsive food. He challenged existing policy barriers by creating tools to enable procurement from local farmers and Indigenous hunters and gatherers.

THE OUTCOMES: The City of Thunder Bay’s annual spending on local food is now tracked and has increased from 15% of total spending on food in 2012 to 34% in 2018. The more profound outcomes are the reciprocal relationships of trust Dan has formed with Indigenous communities and the ways he has empowered and supported community organizations.

THE SYSTEMIC IMPACTS: The City of Thunder Bay’s leadership on social procurement showcases what is possible when a champion is given the mandate to learn and innovate, and is willing to challenge the status quo. Anecdotal stories reveal emerging trust between the City and grassroots and Indigenous organizations that can lead to a more resilient place and community. The City’s quantifiable success also demonstrates how this leading-edge work can be scaled through policy and the dissemination of tools.

[The problem] A paradigm of public purchasing based on lowest cost

When Dan Munshaw joined the City of Thunder Bay as the Manager of Supply Management, his job was to operationalize an ambitious vision for sustainable procurement within the City’s food supply chain.

In 2006, Dan managed a total budget of 500 million dollars, of which 3 million was spent on food for the City’s three long-term care homes, as well as daycare facilities, community centres, arenas and stadiums. In 2008, the City of Thunder Bay endorsed the Thunder Bay Food Charter, which envisions inclusion, sustainability and the creation of a resilient regional local food chain. Committing to the charter’s principles was an opportunity for transformation. 

However, like many public institutions in Canada, almost all of the City’s food service operations were aligned with broadline distributors. Business with local growers was minimal; in 2006, they received less than 1% of the City’s total spend .

Furthermore, Dan encountered two major barriers to change in the “business-as-usual” approach to public procurement:

• A procurement paradigm centred around lowest cost: Many public institutions across Canada contract out food service operations to for-profit companies, whose business models are based on lean food supply chains that drive low unit costs.

• Assumptions about “risk” and “safety,” and policies based on such assumptions: There was an unfounded assumption that broadline distributors were the only safe suppliers, and that moving to local suppliers would present risks to food safety.

These barriers limited the possibilities for public spending. Dan’s mission was clear: overcome these barriers and learn how to maximize the social impacts of procurement.

[The intervention] Reaping the social, cultural and environmental benefits of values-based procurement

The City of Thunder Bay was able to tap into a rapidly growing movement around values-based or social procurement of food (see this report), which seeks to create social, economic and environmental value and is measured by more than the criteria of lowest cost.

Dan Munshaw wanted to unlock the power of public-sector-institution demand. Health care organizations and government agencies are accountable buyers who could take ownership and control of their supply chains by writing specific and measurable criteria into contracts. As he sought to implement values-based procurement in this and other ways, Dan embraced an iterative learning cycle that allowed him to learn from both his failures and successes. The stages in the cycle are as follows:

• Awareness: Learn about the problem

• Experimentation: Take small steps to test potential interventions

• Evaluation: Refine interventions through learnings in the field

• Embedding: Operationalize processes into policy

Over time, Dan has moved beyond a focus on local purchasing to invest in social impacts that address Indigenous reconciliation, diversity and inclusion, and food security. Here are three milestones in his journey mapped against the stages in the learning cycle. 

1. Using new tools, like forward buying, to procure more from local producers

One of Dan’s early successes resulted from applying the forward buying tool used in the oil and gas industry to the food industry.

Forward buying is an agreement to buy a certain amount of food in advance for an agreed-upon price. The commitment to buy a certain amount builds capacity in a local food system (“We can grow or produce more because we have a buyer.”) and increases transparency and the potential quality of the purchase for the buyer. While major manufacturers often use forward-buy contracts, these tools weren’t being used with local farmers. Dan endeavoured to learn how this tool could support local purchasing for the City of Thunder Bay.

Awareness: Research existing policies and context

Dan first tasked himself with reading the Ontario Long-Term Care Homes Act (2007) to understand the landscape for health-care-procurement policy. He learned about assumptions and misinformation that he could challenge—for example, that federally inspected foods from broadline distributors were more “safe” than provincially inspected foods. He knew this myth had been debunked and that the regulatory ability of local and provincial public health inspectors was recognized alongside that of federal inspectors.

Experimentation: Chip away at policy barriers through small innovations

Dan then took small innovative steps that could help him learn and build evidence to make big policy changes. He needed to trial interventions that were not yet “proven” as best practices in other jurisdictions.

Through conversations with local farmers, Dan learned that one of the major risks they experience is the unpredictability of environmental and market forces. For example, a small local farmer cannot agree to grow 10 kg of carrots for a hospital without the guarantee of a sale. So Dan developed an experimental forward buying tool to guarantee such sales and reduce the risk undertaken by the farmer.

Dan refined and customized the tool by creating a pricing mechanism that used the average cost of the food in the previous year plus a consideration for inflation.

Evaluation: Gather data to complement anecdotal evidence

Dan evaluated the success of this and other interventions by gathering quantitative data to complement qualitative stories of his impacts. He started calculating the City of Thunder Bay’s food spend to the penny and breaking it down by supplier and by location, in order to track the total spent on both local food and Indigenous food. As a result, Dan observed a marked increase in local food procurement as a percentage of total food procurement, from 15% (2012) to 34% (2018).

Embedding: From proof of concept to systems change

By creating the capacity for the City to buy directly from local producers through forward-buy contracts, Dan influenced demand for locally purchased food. Broadline distributors that the City worked with began creating relationships with and purchasing from local farmers so that they wouldn’t get cut out of the procurement process.

The City is now able to place aggregated orders with local growers through regional frontline distributors. Dan’s leadership resulted in broader systems change by inspiring national broadline distributors to recognize the value of, and demand for, local and sustainable food—and to make sure it is accessible to other institutional clients.

2. Food as a pathway to reconciliation

In the next phase of his learning journey, Dan Munshaw joined Nourish in 2017. With the Indigenous and non-Indigenous settler colleagues in his cohort, Dan learned about and advocated for the integration of Traditional, Indigenous foodways into health care. As part of the cohort’s Traditional Food Programs (TFP) collaborative team, Dan explored how a colonial health care system continues to disenfranchise Indigenous peoples to this day.

Dan’s work with his cohort revealed a glaring blind spot in his procurement approach. This blind spot was especially significant because the City of Thunder Bay is located in Ontario, the province with the largest population of First Nations in the country. Furthermore, Thunder Bay is the Census Metropolitan Area with the highest proportion of Indigenous people in Canada. At the time, investigations into the deaths of Indigenous youth were fueling conversation about systemic racism in the City, and while the City was aware of the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that awareness was not present in the supply chain.

Awareness: Respecting and recognizing the place-based nature of Indigenous foods

Dan’s formative and difficult learning journey included recognizing his complicity with a colonial and racist system. He joined Nourish’s Traditional Food Programs (TFP) collaborative team and committed to learning about how to respectfully build relationships and purchase food from Indigenous suppliers.

Deep listening and learning from his Indigenous colleagues transformed Dan’s understanding of Indigenous foodways, and led to critical considerations about how to incorporate Traditional foods into values-based purchasing.

When Dan first asked Kathy about how to integrate Indigenous foods into the City of Thunder Bay’s procurement, her response was, “You have to go ask this question of the Indigenous peoples of your area.” What is considered traditional among the Inuit of the North, the Haida of the West, and the Anishinaabe in Ontario looks and tastes very different, and is prepared and shared with different protocols.

Any public institution striving to source and serve Indigenous foods must connect with local Elders and First Nation communities to understand the traditional Indigenous foods of the region. This is the first step in learning about the cultures within the region that one lives and works in, and building trusting relationships with local communities.

Experimentation: Preserving the culture and spirit of Indigenous foodways in institutional procurement

What Dan learned about the spirit and culture of Indigenous foods resonated deeply within him, and he wanted to incorporate his new learnings into his procurement contracts. However, he had to confront the difficulty of translating complex Indigenous values around food into the world of capitalism and commodity markets.

Even if the City was given a recipe by local Elders, having a commercial cook create the meal with food procured from broadline distributors would not capture the “spirit of the food.” Instead, Dan had to weave in the complete life cycle of the food: how it was sustainably harvested and hunted, and the traditional ways by which it was thanked and cooked.

The City of Thunder Bay is now procuring harvested wild fish from an Indigenous supplier to serve in its long-term care home, and the City is actively looking for more opportunities to procure Traditional ingredients from local Indigenous hunters and gatherers.

Dan admits that it is a challenge. Finding Indigenous suppliers can be seen as very difficult, time-consuming and expensive from the perspective of institutional procurement, which optimizes for efficiency and consistency. The relationships around Indigenous-supplied foods are fluid, so the supply chain needs to be adaptive.

3. Leveraging the assets of a public institution for the benefit of the community

Throughout his learning journey, Dan’s passion for breaking down the walls of public institutions to serve the public good has only grown.

Awareness: Embrace the anchor mindset and recognize the City’s assets 

In 2019, Dan attended a Nourish retreat (Equitable Access to Sustainable Food for All) where he listened to stakeholders from grassroots community organizations, like the Black Creek Community Farm, speak about their work in the areas of community health, food security and food justice. He realized that in spite of the passion and dedication of their leaders, such organizations were drowning in demand but had limited reach, limited funds, and a limited capacity to meet that demand.

In that moment, Dan recognized his ability to leverage the power of his employer, the City of Thunder Bay, to assist more frontline organizations. Many large organizations, from municipalities to hospitals, are what can be defined as anchor institutions. Such institutions can harness their long-term presence, mission and resources to “anchor” well-being in their communities. Dan wants to find ways to share the networks, resources and knowledge that the City of Thunder Bay has access to with the wider community. This means looking into the social impacts of institutional supply chains, such as the need to consider the rights and fair treatment of workers in the companies supplying food to public institutions.

Dan’s journey to develop contract language that allows public institutions to express their values through their procurement continues.

Experimentation: Leverage the City’s assets to respond to urgent community needs during the COVID-19 pandemic

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearby Indigenous communities were provided emergency money to distribute emergency food to their members. While Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) had access to this funding, they needed to figure out how to purchase, store and distribute food to over 40,000 members. On behalf of the City of Thunder Bay, Dan was able to coordinate access to a warehouse for logistics and to share distribution contacts. In a time of crisis, Dan’s position and learning over the years allowed him to practice his allyship, leveraging resources he influenced for greater benefit.

[The Impact] Scaling impact through tangible tools, policy change, and an anchor mindset

Dan Munshaw’s journey illustrates how one individual’s growing awareness and willingness to learn can precipitate change at the level of institutions and systems. What began as a desire to increase procurement from local sources has developed into something much bigger: the ability to leverage municipal assets for the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of the community.

In addition to the successes and innovations described above—forward-buy contracts to build relationships with local growers, procuring from Indigenous hunters and suppliers, supporting Indigenous communities and frontline organizations— Dan is:

• leveraging City relationships and knowledge to support the development of infrastructure to source and store Traditional foods; and

• developing and embedding diversity and inclusion criteria into organizational policy (like Requests for Proposals) to hold vendors to account.

The leading work of the City of Thunder Bay showcases the myriad impacts that can be achieved with an anchor mindset, which recognizes the power of place-based institutions to invest in community well-being by leveraging their human, financial, and ecological assets.

[What’s next?] Anchoring learnings into policy and practice

One person can be an important catalyst for change, but more is required to sustain change.

The City of Thunder Bay’s successes show what is possible within government procurement, despite seemingly insurmountable policy barriers. Dan is now focussed on sharing his knowledge and embedding his learnings in the City’s policies and procedures so that diversity, inclusion, and local purchasing become the norm for his successors and other buyers.

While anecdotal stories about diversity and inclusion are powerful, tracking dollars spent keeps the City accountable to its targets even after an innovative leader like Dan leaves. Dan knows that “what gets measured gets managed.”

Dan is working with the local university to develop measurable criteria around diversity and inclusion to hold vendors to account in supporting Indigenous groups, minority groups and women. His work with the Nourish toward the creation of a National Food RFP Model for values-based procurement continues. Dan hopes that all of his learnings can inform the development of scalable contract tools and language that reflect the full cost of food decisions and the opportunity to create social, economic and environmental value through public purchasing.

What is the next major milestone for Dan? To influence policy change at the regional, provincial and federal levels.