Vic Borell – Brighton and Hove Food Partnership
Vic introduced us to the role of food partnerships in local food resilience.
The Brighton and Hove Food Partnership is a not for profit, independent organisation working at a policy and strategic level with individuals, community groups, and food and farming businesses. It is all about strategy and community action reinforcing one another. It connects people, creates the conditions for collaboration, secures resources, shares learning and helps good ideas to grow!
One of the main things they have learnt over their 20 years of existence is that food resilience starts with people and place – coping in a food crisis starts by having built connections and from knowing where the food, and associated infrastructure, is in your area. Those connections and that knowledge allows a food partnership to respond to challenges, to innovate and adapt.
As an example of how they work, Vic told us that the Partnership found themselves delivering food within a week of Covid lockdowns beginning, which they credit to having already built up a network of connections in their area.
People create resilience through activities such a growing food together, cooking and eating together; focussing on food use and avoiding food waste.
A better food system won't be delivered to people, it will be created with them. What works in one area will be different to what works in another implying that local knowledge and connections are critically important. Navigating a food crisis will require the right interventions at the right levels, some local, some regional, some national.
We need to move to a situation in which food is considered as critical infrastructure, taken as seriously as transport or energy. The food system is complex, involving production (farming, fishing, growing); processing (turning produce into food); storage (consider space, supply chains, contingency); distribution (routes, logisitics, access); skills (it is people that make the system work); and procurement (public spending that builds resilience). A resilient food system will have considered all of these.
The various food partnerships of Sussex are working together as the Sussex Alliance of Food Partnerships. The separate food partnerships include Adur and Worthing; Arun and Chichester; Mid Sussex; Brighton and Hove; Lewes District; Wealden; Eastbourne; Rother (and that is the East Sussex Rother, not our Rother!).
The mayoral reorganisation could be viewed as an opportunity. Food must not be seen as a niche interest, but as a strategic lever. A mayoral strategic authority should recognise the food economy, support regenerative farming, strengthen infrastructures and supply chains; develop skills and employment; support fisheries and coastal economies, use procurement for local wealth; make food growing green infrastructure; embed food across health, economy and environment.
If we only notice food infrastructure when it fails then we have left resilience too late.
For more information see www.bhfood.org.uk