Sacramento Local Food Hub

The Sacramento region is located in and near some of the most prime agricultural land in the world, yet we export 98% of what we grow locally. That means we consume only 2% of what we produce. The rest is shipped out and we turn around and ship in most of our food. This is unsustainable and makes no sense. In fact, it’s just plain stupid.

On The School Board, I co-chair the district’s healthy foods task force. One of the primary goals of this task force is to develop policies and processes that will enable us to deliver healthier, locally grown and raised foods to our students. With childhood obesity on the rise, we owe it to our kids to do a better job of providing more nutritious meals, particularly those in lower income schools where a majority of the students’ meals come from their school cafeterias. I am proud that, under my leadership, the Sacramento City School District was the first elected body in the region to adopt a policy calling for the implementation of regional policies promoting local, sustainable, healthy food production and availability. And I am proud that we have adopted a policy that will require all of our schools to offer fresh fruit and vegetables at salad bars by the end of this school year.

This will also provide local farmers, including small urban farmers, a market while addressing issues like air quality and agricultural land / open space preservation.

On the City Council, I will work with local farmers and food distributors to develop a food hub that will help close the gap in the local food supply chain. Here, farmers can deliver their product to one location where that product will be simply packaged and delivered to local users, in economies of scale that make it a sustainable business practice. This will allow schools, restaurants, industrial food users and even home cooks more opportunities to by local and eat fresh, while strengthening economic resources here in our region.