What's for Lunch? Local food purchasing by Indiana institutions

Abstract

We set out to understand current purchasing patterns across institution types and to: 1) Understand if and how institutions are buying locally produced foods; 2) Examine the barriers and motivations for purchasing local food; and 3)Determine what steps to take to support ourIndiana farm economy through wholesale,institutional purchasing of Indiana grown,raised and produced foods. Through 200 food purchasers who spend more than $522 million per year buying food, we learned 1) 78% are buying local food; 2) Half of buyers define 'local' as food grown within Indiana; 3) Buyers need support from value chain professionals to strategically source and implement a local food buying program; 4) Distributors need to clearly identify local product and highlight for buyers; 5) Fiscal incentives are appealing for buyers.