Food and Agriculture
Our goal: Create healthy, just and sustainable food systems, and put an end to food insecurity.
SPUR’s Five-Year Priorities:
• Make healthy food easier to find, afford and choose.
• Preserve agricultural land and reduce the food systems’ environmental impact.
• Support Good Food Purchasing practices, access to farmland and industrial land for farmers and producers, and quality jobs in the food industry.
Double Up Food Bucks California
Piloting a scalable model for making healthy food more affordable
One of the biggest obstacles to healthy eating is the affordability of healthy food. Our Double Up Food Bucks California project helps families overcome that barrier. The project provides matching funds so that families and individuals participating in the CalFresh program can buy even more fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store.
Medically-Supportive Food and Nutrition
Expanding health care coverage to use food as medicine
The need for these food-based interventions in Medicaid has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which highlighted many health and social inequities, especially for Black and Brown communities. This pandemic emphasizes the need to use food to treat and prevent chronic disease and to decrease the effects of health disparities and food insecurity on chronic disease.
SPUR Report
Healthy Food Within Reach
One in 10 adults in the Bay Area struggle to find three meals a day, while more than half of adults are overweight or obese. To meet our basic needs, improve public health and enhance our quality of life, Bay Area residents must have access to healthy food. SPUR recommends 12 actions that local governments can take to improve food access in Bay Area communities.
SPUR Report
Locally Nourished
The Bay Area’s food system supports our greenbelt, employs hundreds of thousands of people, and helps reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. SPUR's recommends a series of policies to help us more effectively capture the benefits of our regional food system.
SPUR Report
Public Harvest
Urban agriculture has captured the imagination of San Franciscans in recent years. But the city won't realize all the benefits of this growing interest unless it provides more land, more resources and better institutional support.
Ongoing Initiative
Double Up Food Bucks California
Double Up Food Bucks California provides matching funds so that families and individuals participating in the CalFresh program can buy even more fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. For example, a shopper who spends $10 of CalFresh benefits on California-grown fruits and vegetables at participating stores will get an extra $10 to spend on any fresh produce in the store.
Updates and Events
California Must Seize the Opportunity to Improve Health for Less
News /Imagine if insurers paid for the prevention— not just the treatment – of severe medical conditions. What if the health care system could help people improve their health today while also preventing diabetes or reducing the risk of heart attacks tomorrow? With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in sight, the California Department of Health Care Services is working on doing just that.
SPUR Leads Coalition Encouraging the Department of Health Care Services to Better Integrate Medically-Supportive Food and Nutrition into Medi-Cal
Policy LetterThe California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) released draft implementation documents outlining how health care plans and providers will implement proposed changes to Medi-Cal. SPUR, alongside 20 additional organizations, urges DHCS to better integrate the inclusion of food based supports into the guidance.
SPUR Supports SB 107 Legislation to Simplify the CalFresh Application
Policy LetterSPUR supports Senate Bill 107, which would simplify the CalFresh application for many older adults and people with disabilities, and ensure all applicants and participants can complete the application and recertification interview processes by phone, including the required client signature
Expanding Healthy Food Incentives Increases Community Wealth
News /For years now, research has shown that healthy food incentive programs, like SPUR’s Double Up Food Bucks, improve health. What new research shows, in a more comprehensive way than ever before, is that healthy food incentive programs also improve community wealth.
Alameda County Joins a Growing Movement to Buy Better Food
News /Alameda County correctional facilities spend more than $20 million annually on food, but until recently there was no way to evaluate whether these purchases lived up to county’s values. This changed last month, when the Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved the Good Food Purchasing policy to see how well their food purchasing supports a healthy, local, sustainable and fair food supply chain.
The Economic Contributions of Expanding Healthy Food Incentives
SPUR ReportBroad expansions of healthy food incentives would provide powerful economic benefits – for families, grocers, and farmers, as well as more broadly among the state economies where incentive programs are expanded. The findings in this study demonstrate that state and federal policymakers would be wise to double down on their support for these programs.
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