Yorkshire Councils Spurn Local Producers?

My eye was drawn to this story in today's Yorkshire Post suggesting that several Yorkshire Local Authorities are failing to procure significant amounts of local produce for their own internal use.

I'm a passionate believer in supporting local and independent producers, but I'm also acutely aware that the  contribution I can make as an individual and a small business is miniscule compared to that of, for example, large public sector bodies. And at a time when consumers are showing more and more interest in the provenance of their food, it would be surprising if local authorities were not alive to the trend and were seeking to source produce within their own boundaries, wouldn't it?

Yet it appears that not only are several Councils procuring up to a third of their food from abroad, some - reportedly including Calderdale and East Riding - did not even record information on where their food came from, and indicated that it was not a factor they considered when selecting suppliers.

The Yorkshire Post article was put (I hesitate to say cobbled) together from responses to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, and the problem with such journalism (I hesitate to call it lazy) is that you only get the answers to the questions you ask. If you scratch down beneath the surface of this story however, there is a mine of more interesting angles to be followed, surely?

For example, how much of the procurement process is actually carried out in house or has it been contracted out to private sector suppliers motivated only by bottom lines? What quality criteria are used when selecting suppliers and produce? What do the local producers themselves think of the problem and what moves have been made by them or their representative bodies to persuade public authorities to buy local? There is a lot more to this story than the simple regurgitation of raw statistics and huffy-puffy Yorkshire Post Comment suggests, and its a shame that the opportunity wasn't taken here to explore it.