How to Make Regenerative Food Procurement Work: Lessons from the U.S.
By Alexandra Payne
Published Sept. 23, 2025, The Rockefeller Foundation
Based on learnings from the field, this article suggests three key areas of investment to accelerate values-based and regenerative public food procurement: (1) creating stable demand and upfront support for farmers through tools like forward commitments and pre-season payments that de-risk the transition to regenerative practices; (2) strengthening both hard infrastructure (aggregation, cold storage, transportation) and soft infrastructure (intermediaries, coordination, technical assistance) to connect small and mid-scale producers to institutional buyers; and (3) fostering coalitions that unite policymakers, institutions, researchers, and food system actors to translate policy into locally feasible programs and sustain momentum.
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