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 …HELP
COMMUNITIES
take back
…BUILD NETWORKS to share control of
experience and support their food

…CAMPAIGN to get new

legislation to drive change

…RAISE AWARENESS of
…DO RESEARCH into food, food and climate change …HELP GOVERNMENT develop
health and sustainability food strategies and policy
Greenhouse gas emissions from UK food consumption
Fertiliser Food
manufacture manufacturing
Transport incl
1.0% 2.2%
overseas
Agriculture Packaging 2.5%
7.4% 0.9%
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
Self-sufficiency
commodities 1980-2005 Defra (2006) Fig 6-2, p 34
 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