The Queensland Government's 2032 Procurement Strategy had set a target to source 30% of food locally and a 3% spend on First Nations businesses.
The 2032 Brisbane Olympics offers a transformative opportunity for South East Queensland's (SEQ) food system, creating a sustainable, ethical and inclusive regional procurement legacy. The Olympic Sustainability and Legacy Committees and Queensland Government recognise the challenge of ensuring sustainable, nutritious food supply chains while delivering lasting social and economic benefits beyond the event.
Food will be central to athlete and spectator wellbeing, with sustainable sourcing from local suppliers showcasing regional produce and culinary expertise while improving equity in food system governance. While procurement policies have been widely shown to offer viable pathways to future resilience, decarbonisation, decent work, equity and food security, large public events (including Olympic Games) have had a mixed record for social and environmental sustainability.
This seed project aimed to convene key government, industry and community stakeholders to co-create a values-based sustainable food procurement policy for Brisbane 2032, with a focus on collaboration for social, ecological and economic objectives. Building on the recommendations of the 2024 SEQ Food Summit (delivered by Brisbane-based social enterprise the Food Connect Foundation), this project:
Established an inter-disciplinary UQ working group to identify, engage and collaborate with external partners and seek ways to leverage their support in developing a transformative food-systems agenda towards Brisbane 2032.
Project researchers undertook baseline data analysis on the existing and future capacity for an institutional food procurement target of 30% from local producers and 3% ‘spend’ of food from Indigenous enterprises. This was based on two case studies (i) Production data from a relevant SEQ LGA, and (ii) Current best practice case study in institutional food procurement.
Using these case studies as examples, in collaboration with Food Connect Foundation, project researchers convened a multi-stakeholder roundtable discussions with industry (agriculture, supply chains, food waste, event management, hospitality), government (public health, business, environment, education), and community groups in Queensland to co-design an ethical and sustainable food procurement policy.
This project provides baseline data, formalise industry/government collaboration and produce policy recommendations that will provide the foundation for a larger project that develops a roadmap towards Brisbane 2032, ensuring this event has a legacy of transformation for SEQ's food system.
Using futures thinking, our report provides a preliminary stakeholder analysis of the regional food procurement landscape and maps the major opportunities and constraints shaping the system. Stakeholders consistently emphasised both the appetite for more sustainable, inclusive procurement and the structural barriers that make such change difficult: underrepresentation of smallholder farmers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), fragmented regional supply chains, labour shortages, inconsistent ‘ethical’ standards, missing data on food flows, and limited participatory governance infrastructure especially for civil society stakeholders and marginalised groups.
The report presents an explicit ‘public good’ and ‘social impact’ framework for food procurement policy making, starting with the ambitious target for 30% of the food consumed in SEQ to be regionally-produced in time for Brisbane 2032. This target is supported by a growing coalition of First Nations’ groups, community organisations, local state and federal agencies, food and agricultural industry peak bodies, chefs and hospitality stakeholders, health and nutrition experts, regulators, education and training organisations, researchers and environmental groups.
We found that:
- Stakeholders widely view Brisbane 2032 as a catalyst for social inclusion, regional resilience and sustainability that endures long after the Games, but only if guided by a clearer impact procurement strategy underpinned by improved food flow data and participatory decision-making.
- There is an important opportunity to strengthen impact-oriented food procurement in hospitals, schools and other public institutions, to ensure a longer-term Olympics legacy for the regional food system.
Dr Natalie Jones, UQ School of the Environment/Queensland Centre for Olympic and Paralympic Studies affiliate
UQ Faculty of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences Partnership Grant