innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth (iPOPY). Lessons learned from implementing organic into European school meals – policy implications.

Summary

The introduction of organic food offers new dimensions to school meals, and schools offer new dimensions
to organic food – when tackled properly. In this paper we present findings from the iPOPY research
project that is funded by the ERA-Net, CORE-Organic-I funding body network. It is based on studies of
school food policies in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway. The embedded food traditions and cultures have
had different attention in these countries, why also food related consumption, institutions and markets are
quite heterogeneous and dynamic. Whereas school food services are relatively widely embedded in the
school systems in Finland and Italy, the Danish and Norwegian school food is predominantly defined by the
packed lunch brought from home when it comes to organic food the pattern is different. To analyse the
strategies used in these countries we have selected a number of cases where in-depth studies have been
conducted. The concept of embedding has been used in these studies and it has been informed by policy
and actor network theories. The results of this analysis show a complexity in implementing organic food in
existing school food aims, in embedding school food policies and in comprising also aims and policies for
organic food purchasing in these. The variety amongst the analysed countries in strategies and success is
identified, covering both structural and stakeholder related findings. A major finding is pointing at the
challenge of “multi-embedding” processes when including organic food in school meal procurement.