Private, Public Agree on Benefits of More Fresh, Local Food

By Greg Cook, WHF Associate

This October grocery giant Wal-Mart Stores announced a comprehensive plan to bring more locally-produced foods into is supply chain and on its shelves. Wal-Mart’s position is that this move will help food producers around the world and offer fresh foods to more people. As part of the move, Wal-Mart will provide a “sustainability index” for consumers to use to help make choices between similar products. This plan is one more endorsement of thinking about health, nutrition, and local food producers, with the added feature of “scaleability,” meaning that, due to Wal-mart’s ability to manage its procurement and supply on a vast scale, locally-gown foods may become available to a wider population. Critics of the growing local food movement have pointed to distribution and marketing difficulties, but Wal-Mart’s new emphasis in this area could be a game-changer. As “the world’s largest grocer” (according to The New York Times), Wal-Mart’s commitment to buying and selling locally-grown food and investing in growers sends an unmistakable signal to others in the grocery sector.

Wal-Mart’s new focus could bolster efforts in Washington to promote agriculture across the state and offer healthier choices to our state’s residents. This state is fortunate to have The Access to Healthy Food Coalition, a group of private and public partners looking at how food gets to people and how that process can be improved, as well as improving the quality of food while also supporting Washington farmers. Earlier this year, the coalition issued a report on the subject: Opportunities for Increasing Access to Healthy Foods in Washington (click here for a link to that report). This report attempts to show many of the ways healthy food makes its way onto the plates of Washingtonians.

When private and public forces connect to overcome barriers and increase the supply of healthy local foods, families, businesses, and institutions can then work on ways to make healthy choices (such as selecting nutritious foods) the easy choices. That is a cornerstone of the Healthiest Communities Partnership’s (HCP) approach. HCP is a private-public partnership bringing together businesses, philanthropies, non-profits, community groups, and government to craft policies fighting back against chronic diseases and making Washington a healthier state. For more information on HCP, click here.