Feeding Manchester: October 2009

Feeding Manchester October 2009 Kath Dalmeny Policy Director of Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming (www.sustainweb.org) Also Trustee of Growing Communities (www.growingcommunities.org)

This is what we do at Sustain… …HELP BUSINESSES to use more sustainable food …CAMPAIGN for standards for food, and food education …BUILD NETWORKS to share experience and support

…HELP COMMUNITIES take back control of their food

…CAMPAIGN to get new legislation to drive change

…DO RESEARCH into food, health and sustainability

…RAISE AWARENESS of food and climate change

…HELP GOVERNMENT develop food strategies and policy

Greenhouse gas emissions from UK food consumption Fertiliser manufacture 1.0% Agriculture 7.4%

Food manufacturing 2.2% Packaging 0.9%

Transport incl overseas 2.5% Home food related 2.1% Retail 0.9%

Catering 1.5% Non food 81.6%

Figure: Greenhouse gas emissions from the food chain, shown in relation to total UK greenhouse gas emissions (Food Climate Research Network, 2007)

Biomass of fish in 1990

Biomass of fish in 1999

Fairness in the supply chain

Self-sufficiency ratios for a sample of commodities 1980-2005 Defra (2006) Fig 6-2, p 34 Self-sufficiency

What is sustainable food? Use local and seasonal ingredients Support environmentally friendly farming (e.g. organic) Eat more plants; eat less meat, grown to higher standards Eat only sustainable fish Choose Fairtrade-certified products Avoid bottled water Promote health and well-being - cook with generous portions of vegetables, fruit and starchy staples, cutting out the junk. And of course, don‟t forget energy, water and waste…

How do we bring about change? • • • • •

Use the power of the public purse Change mainstream food Build supportive local and national policy Help communities take control Get organised

Use the power of the public purse 1 in every 3 meals eaten outside the home are in publicly funded institutions (schools, hospitals, care homes, etc.); and 1 in 4 people is employed in the public sector, so has tremendous influence. Why isn‟t all of our money (£2.2 billion per year) being spent on healthy and sustainable food, served by well trained staff? At the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, 24% of food purchased is local, from an organic source, and a healthier choice

Sustainable fish in schools… • 9 LEAs already use MSC logo on menu (Norfolk, Herts, Tower Hamlets, Surrey, Coventry, Havering, Vale of Glamorgan, Cardiff, Cheshire) • Nearly 2,000 schools participating • Over 570,000 children offered sustainable seafood regularly

Change mainstream food

The problems

Communities taking control

Community food work How can community food projects become sustainable* and contribute to resilience? Especially when they are…. • • • •

Set up to address social or environmental need: Values driven Heavily reliant on local skills and facilities, and voluntary labour Can be supported or blocked by local policy on e.g. land / funds One way or another, having to face up to “the money thing”

Service delivery

Trading

Grant funding

* In the broadest sense of the word – long-lasting, but also economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.

Bridport Centre for Local Food

Pumpkins on Prescription!

Service delivery

Cookery classes and farm visits

OrganicLea: Hornbeam Centre

Trading

Communities and producers trading directly share more of the value (and values!)

Trading: Growing Communities

What Growing Communities is achieving At Growing Communities, we monitor our Key Principles to see what we are achieving over the course of each year. Here are some of our results for 2008.  Growing Communities‟ box scheme supplies fruit and veg to 484 households across Hackney providing sustainably produced fruit and veg to over 1,000 people in our community every week.  The box scheme and farmers‟ market together provide a key outlet for 44 small-scale farmers and producers who are local and organic. This includes 4 food producers from our immediate area: our newest producer is Hatice Trugrul who makes traditional Turkish pancakes, using organic ingredients from farmers at the market.  75% of the veg and 24% of the fruit supplied by our box scheme came directly from local farms while 59% of our fruit and 81% of our vegetables are fairly traded. 780 bags of fruit and vegetables are packed each week – over 96 tonnes annually. The average distance travelled by producers to the market is 56 miles.  Over 1,500 people shop at the market every Saturday. 94% of customers at the market walk, cycle or take public transport to get to the market. Annual turnover of producers at the market is nearly £500,000.  Salad production from our sites reached 260 bags per week this year. Yields were the equivalent of 24 tonnes per hectare per year and we generated just over £8,800 from sales of Hackney grown produce – from a total land area of 0.5 of an acre.  The turnover of the organisation as a whole for last year was around £330,000. 100% of that income was self-generated. We employ 18 part-time staff. 80 volunteers worked with us over the last year along with 2 apprentice growers.  In July 2008 we introduced a Pensioners‟ discount for the box scheme. We already accept Healthy Start vouchers which allow people on low incomes to get discounted veg or fruit bags. 30% of people joining the box scheme considered themselves to be on a low income.

Growing Communities Food Zones

www.growingcommunities.org

Growing Communities: next steps Patchwork Farm Apprentice Scheme Starter Farms Replication…

Supportive local and national policy People growing their own food is great. People running social enterprises trading food is even better. Communities, and farmers, can make a good living that protects the environment We need to back it up with (here are just a few examples): • land use and planning policy, protecting food growing land (and requiring it for new homes), and retail diversity • public procurement policy buying sustainable food • training a „green collar‟ army in horticulture, food trading • building distribution infrastructure that can work with less (or no) oil • sharing models that work • telling permanent stories about mutuality, resilience and trading Local food strategies can help…

Find out more… Capital Growth: www.capitalgrowth.org Food Climate Research Network: www.fcrn.org.uk Food Co-ops: www.foodcoops.org Growing Communities: www.growingcommunities.org London Food Link: www.londonfoodlink.org Making Local Food Work: www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk [Social enterprise support; Models of good practice; Research, evidence and evaluation; Governance training; Support or advice to set up food co-ops, Country Markets, co-operative farmers‟ markets] Real Bread Campaign: www.realbreadcampaign.org Sustain: www.sustainweb.org Sustainable food guidelines: www.sustainweb.org/sustainablefood