The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and Rikolto are jointly organising a technical workshop on "Leveraging local and traditional food markets and public food procurement to improve the availability of nutritious food". The event is taking place at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 24 to 26 June and can be followed via webcast:

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Monday 24

• 9:00 –12:00 | https://lnkd.in/dMGHQrWk
• 13:30 –17:15 | https://lnkd.in/dkMvku6b

Tuesday 25

• 08:45 –12:45 | https://lnkd.in/dAUzhrjc
• 13:45 –17:15 | https://lnkd.in/dEw_dtRr

Wednesday 26

• 08:45–12:30 | https://lnkd.in/dsv5a2FF
• 13:30–17:20 | https://lnkd.in/d9NnspWQ

Bringing together  technical experts, development practitioners, and public food procurement and market actors, the workshop  provides a platform to discuss the potential of local and traditional food markets and public food procurement to increase the availability of nutritious foods for consumers and to create opportunities for small-scale producers and  agrifood small and medium enterprises.

Meeting the challenge of access to nutritious food

Access to nutritious, adequate, culturally appropriate, and safe food is a fundamental human right. And a healthy diet can become achievable when nutritious and diverse food is available, accessible, affordable, and desirable to consumers.

Despite their central role in agri-food systems, local and traditional food markets (LTFMs) currently struggle to incentivise the provision of more nutritious food to consumers (CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition, 2021).  The poor business environment within markets in LTFMs, characterised by inadequate infrastructure for example, affects the profitability of both food suppliers and retailers. This can also impact the quality, desirability, and convenience of food.  These challenges not only limit opportunities for suppliers of nutritious foods to scale up their operations,but also discourage other businesses, such as small supply chain actors and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), from offering more nutritious food options.

In addition to LTFMs, public food procurement (PFP) programmes, such as school feeding programmes, offer another channel through which a significant percentage of food is consumed. By increasingly sourcing nutritious food from small-scale supply chain actors and SMEs, PFP programmes can create opportunities for these businesses to innovate and scale up their operations,while also functioning as a market space that can stimulate the provision of more nutritious food in other market channels.

Despite their role for consumers and market actors, LTFM and PFP programmes still have unexplored potential to contribute to access to healthy diets.

This technical workshop aims to provide a platform for technical experts, development practitioners and market and PFP actors to:

• Explore how LFTMs and PFP programmes can provide scale-up opportunities for small-scale producers and SMEs to supply nutritious food; and
• discuss if and how LFTMs and PFP programmes can influence other dimensions of food environments, such as the accessibility, desirability and convenience of nutritious foods.

For more information about the event, reach out to:

Charlotte Flechet, Global Programme Director, Good Food for Cities, Rikolto- charlotte.flechet@rikolto.org‍