THE LEEDS FOOD PARTNERSHIP
Like many other towns and cities across the world, Leeds wants to celebrate good food and how it contributes to our lives, and creating a strategy to keep the Leeds Food System improving. This is being co-ordinated by the Leeds Food Partnership, of which I'm a member. At the moment, this takes the form of an initial group of people to get things started, it will evolve over time. A Leeds Food Charter is nearly ready, which sets out key areas for action. These are:
1) Promoting healthy and sustainable food to the public
2) Tackling food poverty, diet-related ill health and access to healthy food
3) Building community food knowledge, skills, resources and projects
4) Promoting a vibrant and diverse sustainable food economy
5) Transforming catering and food procurement
6) Reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system.
We will be looking for people and organisations to support this charter soon. We are in the process of developing a strategy to start to deliver this vision, and are supported by a grant from Sustainable Food Cities (SFC), matched by the N8 AgriFood Programme at the University of Leeds. We are also preparing an application for an SFC bronze award to recognise and celebrate what's already happening, and what is planned to happen in Leeds.
Like many other towns and cities across the world, Leeds wants to celebrate good food and how it contributes to our lives, and creating a strategy to keep the Leeds Food System improving. This is being co-ordinated by the Leeds Food Partnership, of which I'm a member. At the moment, this takes the form of an initial group of people to get things started, it will evolve over time. A Leeds Food Charter is nearly ready, which sets out key areas for action. These are:
1) Promoting healthy and sustainable food to the public
2) Tackling food poverty, diet-related ill health and access to healthy food
3) Building community food knowledge, skills, resources and projects
4) Promoting a vibrant and diverse sustainable food economy
5) Transforming catering and food procurement
6) Reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system.
We will be looking for people and organisations to support this charter soon. We are in the process of developing a strategy to start to deliver this vision, and are supported by a grant from Sustainable Food Cities (SFC), matched by the N8 AgriFood Programme at the University of Leeds. We are also preparing an application for an SFC bronze award to recognise and celebrate what's already happening, and what is planned to happen in Leeds.
FEED LEEDS
There are lots of people, businesses and organisations involved in increasing access to healthy food in the Leeds area. I'm involved with one of these groups, Feed Leeds that helps co-ordinate activity around local food growing in Leeds and also ideas for enhancing local food security. As part of this process, we're involved in a series of debates about food security. I gave one of the presentations to set the scene at the 'Can Yorkshire Feed Itself' event in Bradford in March 2015, and I discussed the potential balance between supply and demand for food in Yorkshire at the next event in Leeds on 28 May.
The next step is to develop a Food Strategy for Leeds, that seeks to ensure high quality nutrition for everyone in Leeds. This is about access to food and choices about what people eat, all in an uncertain future.
The next step is to develop a Food Strategy for Leeds, that seeks to ensure high quality nutrition for everyone in Leeds. This is about access to food and choices about what people eat, all in an uncertain future.
