Cities play an important role in ensuring the wellbeing of their citizens. This includes providing clean water, clean air, better local transportation, and healthy food for everyone. While food has not traditionally been seen as the responsibility of local authorities, this view is changing.
Through projects like Food Trails, local governments have been able to experiment and collect experience and expertise on why and how to develop urban food policies and they are eager to share it and exchange with peers to take food policies to the next level.
The ‘Midday munchies with urban food policies’ online series does that by providing a platform for exchange between Food Trails cities, and other municipalities and stakeholders outside the project. It creates an opportunity to inspire, learn and encourage cooperation to solve common challenges in urban food systems.
Here is a summary of all eight episodes, where you can also re-watch all the recordings.
#1 Why developing urban food policies?
“It has been increasingly recognised that food makes significant contributions to the fabric of our cities, to economic life, to social life, and to the environment,” said Prof. Paul Milbourne from Cardiff University at the inaugural episode of the Food Trails ‘Midday munchies’ series back in March. “Given this significance, it deserves policy recognition.”
Cities are not only more aware of their role in creating sustainable food systems, but they are also increasingly taking active roles in improving both food production and consumption for a greener, healthier, and more inclusive future. This was the case brilliantly explained by Carla Quiviger, Project Officer for the Bordeaux Metropolitan Area and Olga Voutsikaki, Project Officer for the City of Thessaloniki. Both explained how they have developed their urban food policy and food policy council to help their city achieved their food ambitions.
Webinar No. 1
Webinar No. 2
#2 How to engage citizens and foster behavioural change?
The second episode focused on the importance of engaging with stakeholders to shape comprehensive urban food policies. “Food is already on the local agenda, its currently, in most cases, not yet coordinated in terms of integrated food strategies and action plans,” said expert and partner of the Food Trails project Stephanie Wunder, Head of the Sustainable Food Team at the think tank Agora Agriculture. “If we want to move to a more integrated food policy,” added Wunder cities must map existing activities and actors working on food issues, develop strategies involving stakeholders and citizens and involve them in pilot projects.
From the city’s experience, Funchal presented how they organised multiple focus groups with local stakeholders involved in food-related activities. This collaborative approach allowed to build trust among participants and was crucial in developing the city’s first urban food policy.
Groningen, on the other hand, implemented food education initiatives, including cooking classes in schools and evening programs, to teach children about healthy, plant-based eating and aiming to change behaviours and habits from an early age.
Webinar No. 3
Webinar No. 4
#3 Which tools support cities in developing and implementing an urban food policy?
In the third episode, the ‘Midday munchies’ moved on to present two tools and frameworks developed during the Food Trails project that helped cities start their food policies: the Food Policy Action Canva and the Theory of Change. The Food Trails partners found that these tools were key for the early stages of policy development, mainly serving as a foundation for thorough planning.
Ernst-Jan Prosman, Researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, explained how the project partners took inspiration from the business model canvas and adapted it to food policy development. “Food policy becomes the desired change cities want to see,” he said, and the canvas helps define how it should look like to be feasible and viable in each local context. The Theory of Change then supports cities to go a step further and identify indicators that will help the local administration monitor and evaluate the impact of their actions.
Nadia Tonoli, from the Municipality of Bergamo, shared how the Food Policy Action Canvas provided a clear picture of the city’s existing food initiatives. The tool helped the municipality see how they could support and collaborate with stakeholders to boost Bergamo’s food movement.
In a similar way, Mette Svendgaard Høgholm, testified how the Municipality of Copenhagen used the Theory of Change to not only map what was already happening in the city but also to draft a detailed action plan. This plan included steps to involve different actors and set impact indicators to measure the strategy’s success.
Speakers stressed that the most crucial point in developing food policies is to start the process and then to understand that it is not set, but evolving over time and needs continuous adaptation, improvement and involvement.
#4 How to work on food waste prevention and reduction?
Alice Casiraghi, Food Trails Crosscutting Manager on Circularity explained how food waste reveals deeper problems within our food systems. From overproduction and inefficient supply chains to consumer habits and inadequate policies, food waste highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to how we produce, distribute, and consume food.
To tackle this issue, cities like Warsaw and Birmingham, need to act as a bridge between different local stakeholders to co-create solutions.
Both Food Trails project partner cities presented the different projects they set up, in collaboration with researchers, citizens, community gardens, or small restaurants to tackle food waste holistically. For example, Birmingham has connected people to collect and transforms food scraps into compost for urban gardens. Warsaw has worked on improving the donation of food surplus from small restaurants to the food bank as well as optimising the storage and distribution of these donations so as to minimise food waste at all stages of the process.
Webinar No. 5
Webinar No. 6
#5 How do we use food procurement to foster more sustainable and inclusive cities?
Cities have a central role to play in building sustainable food systems. Whether it is by shaping a comprehensive food policy, engaging with stakeholders or setting up an anti-food waste strategy, cities have a lot of action points they can leverage to encourage sustainable food consumption.
Another tool cities have is public procurement, through which municipalities can ensure access to organic, healthy and sustainable meals in public canteens including schools and other institutions.
“When we [municipalities] do something with public procurement, if we put in some sustainable criteria, we can actually move the market in a direction. We have the power to change things,” says Betina Bergmann Madsen, Food Trails Cross-cutting Manager on Climate and Chief Procurement Officer at the City of Copenhagen.
Public procurement is widely used by cities. However, its potential in shaping sustainable food consumption is often underestimated. When shaped with ambitious and inclusive criteria, food procurement can have a massive impact on producers and consumers.
Nadia Tonoli, City officer for Bergamo, explains that using food procurement in public school canteens fosters a healthy and local diet for children.
Bordeaux, in collaboration with a network of other French cities, has pushed more local and organic food consumption, explains Astrid Joubert, Food Governance Project Manager for Bordeaux Métropole.
#6 How can a city foster local and quality food production?
What is our food environment? Our current food system is broken, and heavily dependent on global industrial food chains. Local food and short supply chains can reconnect people to their food environment, a healthier diet, and their community.
“Transforming food systems is not just a task of cities”, says Professor Frederike Praasterink from HAS University of Applied Sciences, “They [cities] are contingent to imperatives also at the national and international levels. But cities can lead the way and the Food Trails project facilitated and is facilitating collective learning across Europe,” Professor Praasterink adds.
Shortening supply chains, working with local producers, and providing quality food to residents are keyway to fostering greener, healthier, and more inclusive food systems.
“There is no proper definition for local or rural – what consists of a local food system and regional food system,” says Professor Praasterink. For her, local food systems and regional food systems are a conter-trend against globalised food systems.
Léa Ravinet, Sustainable Catering Project Officer at Grenobles-Alpes Metropolitan Area explains that the metropolitan government has been working intensively with farmers around the city to create dialogues on how to foster short food supply chains and bring food to the city. Tirana built the Agro Park, a food centre at the doors of the city, to accommodate best the producers in bringing in and out their products and boost local consumption, explains Fiona Konmi, Head of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Service for the city of Tirana.
Webinar No. 7
Webinar No. 8
#7 How can cities finance food ambitions?
Developing cities’ urban food policy ambitions takes time, resources and requires financing. Public money is often scarce and covers many other municipal areas. So how can it be used cleverly? How can cities finance food ambitions beyond public money?
Some solutions rest in engaging entrepreneurs, accessing national or European funding, or seeking impact investors.
“Think about the economy in the food policy,” says Thom Achterbosch, Senior Researcher at Wageningen University & Research. “There is a lot of creativity in entrepreneurial arenas when it comes to food. And building those places and locations where entrepreneurs can contribute to food systems transformation is an important way of showing impact,” he concludes.
Indeed, Andrea Patrucco, Food Trails Project Manager, explains that Milan is developed strong collaborations with entrepreneurs by opening its doors to the startup ecosystem of the city in implementing sustainable food practices.
Sarah Pullen, Food System Lead for the Birmingham City Council, adds that Birmingham faced a lot of financial challenges over the past few years, but they ended up creating a community of food actors. Also, by working transversally across departments, they managed to extend the funding of their activities. For her, the key to financing food policy is developing strong and trusting relationships.
#8 How to ensure access to healthy and quality food for all?
None of these efforts would be sufficient if access to food is limited to those who can afford good quality. How can cities help in ensuring access to good food for all?
Shaleen Meelu, Food Trails Cross-cutting Manager on Nutrition in Cities, describes that for cities to have an amazing impact on their residents and to enable them to make healthy and sustainable food choices, they must address every aspect of the food chain.
For example, Groningen follows a ‘food hub’ approach to ensure that everyone can, in one way or another, interact with initiatives on local, organic and sustainable food. Activities include cooking classes, community-supported agriculture, or farmer markets, explains Hiltje van der Wal, Groningen Policy Officer.
But for Meelu, “In Europe, Northern Europe especially, we need to learn more from our Southern European partners on what eating and community means.”
Elisa Porreca, Project Officer for Milan, shares that the city promotes meals out of fresh and seasonal products in all the public schools of the city. This allows all children to have healthy meals at school. They have more than 30 different menus that they adapt based on the pupils’ diets, the season, and the producers.
This article is a combination of two that first appeared on the eurocities.eu website.
Article 1 – Why and how to develop urban food policies?
Article 2 – Eight webinars to ensure quality and sustainable food for all
