People eating food in a community garden

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.

 

Read our policy agenda

 

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.

Close-up of apples

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.
Fruit haning from a tree

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


Ensuring That the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable Supplemental Benefits Program Doesn’t End

Advocacy Letter
On behalf of SPUR and Nourish California, we respectfully request that the 2024-2025 budget include an additional, one-time allocation of $21 million from the General Fund to sustain the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable Supplemental Benefits program. If additional funding is not provided in the FY 24-25 budget, the program will run out of funds this summer and tens of thousands of Californians across the state will have less money to put food on their tables.

Governor Newsom Signs SPUR-Sponsored Bills Into Law

News /
The close of the 2023 state legislative year brought a number of big wins for SPUR. Governor Newsom signed nine pieces of SPUR-sponsored legislation that will, among other things, prevent the misuse of environmental review processes to stop or delay new housing, pilot speed safety cameras on streets with high crash rates, and speed up timelines for connecting all-electric buildings and EV charging stations to the power grid.

A Roadmap for Regional Good Food Purchasing

Research
The San Francisco Bay Area Local Food Purchasing Collaborative, a partnership between 12 Bay Area public institutions, is combining its purchasing power to procure food that is local, sustainable, fair, humane, and healthy. SPUR worked with the collaborative to prepare a roadmap and toolkit of resources to assist policy makers and advocates interested in approaching values-based procurement as a region.

Revenue Allocations from Soda Taxes in Oakland and San Francisco Continue to Diverge from Advisory Committees’ Recommendations

News /
Each year SPUR analyzes how Oakland and San Francisco allocate the revenues from their respective soda taxes, which are intended to be spent on improving the health of populations disproportionately impacted by soda consumption and diet-related disease. Five years in, much of the soda tax revenues are consistently funneled to uses that depart from advisory committees’ recommendations.

How Detroit’s Food Entrepreneurs Are Invigorating Commercial Corridors and Neighborhoods

News /
Many Bay Area cities are seeing a significant uptick in commercial vacancies — a problem Detroit has been working to address for years. How has the Motor City responded, and what can we learn from its efforts? Here’s how four Detroit organizations have seized on the city’s culture of entrepreneurship to help launch and support food-related businesses that are repopulating deserted storefronts and enlivening neighborhoods that have received little investment.

Legislature and Governor Approve Extension of California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Program

News /
The California legislature and Governor Newsom have reinvested in the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot program, which provides low-income households with up to $60 each month in additional food assistance when they buy fresh fruits and vegetables with their electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards. Funding in the amount of $9.4 million in the state budget approved last month ensures that the program won’t die on the vine, a victory given the state’s significant budget deficit.