Overcoming constraints and barriers for organic public procurement – Applying the theory of loosely coupled systems to the case of organic conversion in Danish municipalities

Summary

Organic food and farming has been an integrated part of agricultural policies in most European countries for many years. In some cases this priority has resulted in strategies aimed at increasing public procurement of organic foods. Public service provision in schools, institutions and kindergartens include consumption of huge amounts of foods. This paper analyses three Danish local government cases of introduction of organic foods in public foodservice in order to study what kind of influence this has had on the governance of public foods. The findings suggest that organic food policies seem to result in a rethinking of public food provision and the creation of virtual public food systems. The findings also suggest that these developments have been fuelled by a sub optimal functioning of the foodservice supply chain and that this in turn has forced administrators to see food procurement in a new horizontal perspective in which different types of public foodservice is looked upon as a whole. The findings suggest that the emerging organic food policies have modernised the way in which public food is governed and that organic foods have created a sense of public political consumption. The paper discusses the opportunities that this development creates for the organic food sector and in particular whether the development can open up further the public as a sales channel for organic food.