The ACRE Collective: Advancing Agriculture, Neighborhood, Resilience & Fairness  by Values-Primarily based Procurement is a collaborative partnership aimed toward enhancing the provision of nutritious, domestically sourced meals, to the benefit of each participant inside the meals community. Via value-based procurement (VBP), the ACRE Collective goals to create sustainable, long-term shopping for relationships between native meals producers and enormous establishments, reminiscent of colleges, universities and hospitals. The Frequent Market Southeast leads the ACRE Collective with assist from organizations reminiscent of Georgia Organics, Well being Care With out Hurt, and the Turner Environmental Legislation Clinic at Emory College to assist make sure the longevity of values-based meals procurement practices in Atlanta-area colleges.  

One of many ACRE Collective’s first initiatives was to launch a values-based native meals incentive pilot program with Marietta Metropolis Colleges and Rockdale County Public Colleges. This pilot demonstrates how native meals incentive {dollars} assist a shift towards native procurement, catalyze financial alternative for numerous farmers in our area, and improve scholar entry to contemporary, wholesome meals. The ACRE Collective offered a $60,000 grant to those districts with the aim of accelerating the quantity of native, culturally vital meals included in class meals and inspiring statewide adoption of a neighborhood meals incentive program for all colleges in Georgia.  

With the assist of Georgia Organics, the ACRE Collective additionally empowers faculty vitamin employees by sharing information on finest practices for contemporary meals prep, info on the place contemporary substances are sourced from, and construction for easy methods to plan vitamin training actions to interact scholar management in class vitamin. College students give their insights and suggestions throughout style checks, which finally form the meals bought and the meals served within the cafeteria.