Category Archives: Policy

Planning sustainable food systems

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Planners are discovering food. Until recently, planners left food to the market. But times are changing and so are attitudes towards planning for food. This was the general notion during the first European Sustainable Food Planning conference, held last friday and saturday in Almere (see blog for program).

There is less timidity to interfere with what until recently was seen as the private sphere of consumer choice. Neoliberalism has lost its credibility and the myth of consumer choice is weakening. Food becomes part of the urban public agenda again. Jerry Kaufman, professor emeritus in Urban and Regional Planning at University of Wisconsin showed how food slowly gained the interest of the US planning community over the last ten years with many young people interested nowadays.

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Food is back in the public realm for two reasons. First the recognition that access to healthy food is a citizen right. People with low income eat less well, pay more and have less access to healthy foods. Planners have a task in changing obesogenic environments. We were reminded that the first health policies 150 years ago started with food.

And second, food is related to a large number of domains which all are facing food related problems. Transport congestion through consumer shopping and supply delivery; health and well being of a rapidly increasing obesogenic population; environmental problems related to food miles, food scares and pollution of industrial agriculture and so on.

The sustainability agenda which is now penetrating to all sectors of the economy demands a holistic view. We saw examples of how city departments can not work in isolation to this problem in a meaningful way. We need cross-department and cross-disciplinary working to bring planning, health, transport, supply, production and consumption knowledge together. “We spent 20 years defining sustainability, we now can design it”.

 

 

Food and urban planning

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MorgenTomorrowLast week the municipality of Amsterdam, together with the Netherlands Institute for Planning & Housing and the Ministry of  Housing, Spatial Planning & the Environment, organized and hosted the International Urban Planning Conference entitled MorgenTomorrow. The two-day conference was a combination of plenary sessions in the morning and parallel workshops in the afternoon. I had the honour and pleasure of convening a workshop entitled ‘Food and the City’. Although the food system is, as Pothukuchi and Kaufman (2000) rightfully state in their article in the Journal of the American Planning Association, a stranger to the field of urban planning it was good to see that the conference organizers had put food very prominently on the conference agenda. Not only by means of the workshop I convened but also by means of keynote lectures in the plenary sessions by LaDonna Redmond and Tim Lang. Both are extremely critical about the prevailing food system.

LaDonna is a community activist as well as founder and CEO the Institute for Community Resource Development (ICRD) in Chicago (Illinois). The ICRD’s mission is to rebuild the local food system by building grocery stores that bring access to sustainable products to urban communities of color, organizing farmers markets, converting vacant lots to urban farm sites and distributing local grown produce to restaurants. I was unable to attend LaDonna Redmond’s keynote, but she participated in my workshop and reflected on the different presentations.

Tim is Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy of City University London. He has authored and co-authored many articles and books about food policy, especially focussing on the relation between food, health, social justice and the environment. His current work is about ‘omni-standards for sustainable diets’. I attended his keynote lecture and what I very much appreciated about his vision is that, despite the food system being a major contributor to climate change, devising sustainable food systems is not simply a matter of creating ‘climate neutral’ food systems. It will only be truely sustainable if it is able to meet a whole range of sustainability standards (a set of omni-standards as he calls them) in which social and health aspects are as important as economic and environmental ones. What struck me most in his presentation, and which will undoubtedly become the new issue in food debates, is the water footprint of the conventional food system.

Around 65% of all fresh water is used for food production and with growing water scarcity and an increase in water-stressed countries, water use is likely to become the main threat for food production. The table below, of which Tim displayed a part in his presentation, is rather shocking. It shows how much water is needed to produce one portion of a whole range of mainly food products and drinks. It surely makes one (at least is does make me) aware of the urgent need for change.

Portion Litres Portion Litres Portion Litres
Pint of beer, 568ml 170 Cup of coffee, 125ml 140 Glass of orange juice, 200ml 170
Glass of milk, 200ml 200 Cup of instant coffee, 125ml 80 Glass of apple juice, 200ml 190
Cup of tea, 250ml 35 Glass of wine, 125ml 120 Orange, 100g 50
Slice of bread, 30g 135 Bread with cheese, 30g + 10g 90 Bag of potato crisps, 200g 185
Egg, 40g 135 Tomato, 70g 13 Hamburger, 150g 2400
Potato, 100g 25 Apple, 100g 70 Bovine leather shoes 8000
Sheet of A4, 80 g/m² 10 Cotton tee-shirt, medium 500g 4100 Microchip, 2g 32
Source: http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=326

Eten van dichtbij

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Werkplaats 10 - Eten van dichtbij

Werkplaats 10 - Eten van dichtbij

Vorige week verscheen een nieuwe uitgave van het blad “Werkplaats voor de Leefomgeving” van de Koninklijke Nederlandse HeideMaatschappij (KNHM). Deze 10e uitgave van dit blad heeft als thema “Eten van dichtbij” en gaat onder meer over stadsboeren, pergolabedrijven, stad-plattelandrelaties en publieke sector catering. Verder bevat het tal van korte beschrijvingen van en web-links naar initiatieven over regionale voedselvoorziening uit zowel Nederland als andere landen. De diversiteit aan activiteiten en benaderingen is zonder meer indrukwekkend. Voor een ieder die geïnteresseerd is in verschillende vormen en aspecten van regionale voedselvoorziening en/of stad-platteland relaties biedt dit themanummer een informatief en toegankelijk overzicht.

Mariann Fischer Boel’s blog – How the EU supports the dairy sector

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In her blog Mariann Fischers Boel list what the EU is already doing to support the dairy sector and what next, steady but firm steps as she argues, will be taken.

Know your farmer, know your food

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Recently I joined a Dutch internet Sustainable Food group. Today the convenor of this group informed the members about a new initiative of the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture): “Know your farmer, know your food”. The aim of this USDA initiative is to help more Americans understand where their food comes from and how they can support local food economies in their communities. The initiative was announced by USDA secretary Tom Vilsack in a YouTube video:

“An American people that is more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture. Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food.”

While the White House kitchen garden and Obama’s idea to have a weekly farmers’ market at the White House (see my blog posted on 4 September) could have been perceived as ‘window dressing’, this USDA initiative surely gives the impression that the Obama administration is seriously attempting to fundamentally change US agrofood and rural development policy. Will, in this case, Obama’s campaign slogan – “Yes, we can” – become true?