Procurement for Good and Bridging the Gap talk food hubs and public procurement at Groundswell 2025.

Groundswell 2025 was another inspiring year of farm walks, demos, talks, workshops, discussions and dancing.

 With sessions ranging from a land use framework, agroecological flower growing, integrating hazelnuts in your arable, dung beetle safaris to regenerative supply chains, the breadth and depth of the challenges and opportunities we face was evident.

 Chaired by the Open Food Network’s Nick Weir, we participated in a session entitled ‘Making public procurement workable by selling through food hubs’. Zosia Walczak (Growing Communities), Abi Mordin (Galloway Food Hub), Richard Edwards (Cultivate) and Sustain’s Kiloran O’Leary shared the floor, drawing the parallels, constraints and achievements of scaling food hubs as a model into public procurement.

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Having representation from food hubs across Wales, Scotland and England highlighted shared challenges but more importantly, what has been done to get around these challenges. Whether its reducing meat and dairy in menus to allow more budgeting for organic, seasonal or local, working closing with wholesalers to spread risk and bolster distribution networks, using open source digital platforms, or navigating complex catering contracts, the innovation and determination to scale food hubs as a model into public procurement was clear.

 A key takeaway from the talk and following Q&A was the importance of pilot projects, strategies to scale them and their potential to involve and inspire different actors along the supply chain. (We also discussed the need to move away from industrial language like supply chains; ‘relational networks of supply’ anyone?!). By sharing the amazing work the Procurement for Good food hubs are doing, we hope to engage in their local networks of supply and show concrete examples to catering and procurement teams the art of the possible.

Thank you to the Cherrys and the whole team at Groundswell. It is so important for us to get together and share, connect, think and celebrate as a regenerative, agroecological food and farming movement.