More organic food on the public plate – need for a New Public Governance? WG 2. Institutional food procurement and school feeding programmes: exploring the benefits, challenges and opportunities

More organic food to public plate can contribute to reaching important goals of the Sustainable Development Goals. Public procurement policies (POPP’s) has proven to be a well suited strategy to increase the uptake of organic produce. Transition of the agricultural system in a more sustainable direction however, cannot be achieved through public policy alone. Instead the concerted action of a long range of stakeholders along the supply chain seems to of importance. The objective of this study was to examine the views and attitudes of important representatives from the three powers of society (civil society, market and public actors) on enabling and disabling factors public procurement policies in order to provide recommendations on governance strategies for sustainable public food consumption. We use Bourdieu' thinking and the ideas of New Public Governance to explain some of the enabling and disabling factors in the dynamics of the organic public plate. The results points to the fact that political decision for supporting and a strong financing from different levels of government and innovative approaches to training of staff focusing on development of craftsmanship and inspiration about organic food in NPG frame were considered by stakeholders to be key enabling factors that opens new possibilities for public organic food services and sustainable development. In contrast to the value conflicts in top managers, were considered to be disabling factors.