Surviving a Food Crisis: Who is responsible locally? Assess, Plan, Collaborate and Thrive!
The aim of the conference was to explore whether UK local authorities should have a duty to assess and plan for food resilience in a time of crisis and how they can work with a range of community organisations to strengthen our preparedness.
Chaired by Tony Whitbread, President of the Sussex WildLife Trust, there was a buzz of excitement as about 130 delegates gathered at the 104 Conference Hall in Chichester for the first food security conference in the city. This happened as a response to the growing warnings of potential food shortages and aimed to produce a Declaration which would set out what could be done to prepare for disruptions in the food system and lead the way to developing a resilient food system in our area.
The Conference was planned jointly by members of CANDo, an alliance of climate action groups based around the villages between Midhurst and Petersfield, plus Transition Town Chichester, Chichester District Council, the South Downs National Park and the Arun and Chichester Food partnership.
Together with a group of nationally renowned food experts as speakers, delegates included farmers, horticulturalists, food organisations, local politicians from both Sussex and Hampshire and community groups concerned with the many issues around food production and distribution.
There was a powerful sense of shared knowledge and determination to move towards making the necessary changes to our failing food system.
The five speakers were:
Professor Tim Lang, Keynote Speaker, Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy City St George’s, University of London. Author of the report to Government called “Just in Case: 7 steps to narrow the Civil Food Resilience Gap”.
Martin Lines, farmer and CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. ‘This network supports farmers in both producing good food and caring for nature’.
ffinlo Costain, editor in chief of 8point9.com a multi media news channel supporting knowledge transfer for people working in the land based sector. Host and Producer of the Farmgate podcast.
Vic Borrill, CEO Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, has been working over a long period on her local food system.
Amber Dansoh, Arun and Chichester Food Partnership. New to the Partnership, she is looking to expand the work of her predecessor and was the person most locally based for future development.
Following the presentations, there was a lively and wide-reaching panel discussion. Amongst others, questions came from East Hampshire District Council, The Chichester Food bank and Sussex Green Living in Horsham. There was a valuable contribution from Rushmere Farm, an organic farm working on regenerative principles.
Over lunch, provided by UK Harvest, there were themed discussions bringing together experience from leaders in farming, food poverty, local authorities and food distribution, enabling further networking. Clearly new connections were being made.
The afternoon was spent in workshops aimed at answering specific questions and coming up with strong actions for developing food resilience in our area.
The thoughts and suggestions gathered will be brought together to create The Chichester Declaration on Food Security, outlining what needs to be done to prepare for any possible food crisis and to build a more sustainable local food system.
The principles shaping the Declaration are:
Recognise healthy food as a critical component of local resilience.
Make food resilience part of climate adaptation.
Establish a national framework for local food resilience.
Give Local Authorities a clear responsibility for food resilience.
Put food into local emergency plans and test the system before a crisis.
Build stronger local and regional food networks and food partnerships.
Protect and strengthen local food production.
Protect the most vulnerable.
The organisers are so grateful to all the speakers, the table top discussion leaders and workshop facilitators and to all the volunteers who helped in so many ways to make the event a success.
However, they stress that this is not just a one off event and they hope people will join together to move this agenda forward.
There are fuller summaries of the five presentations in this newsletter and on our website blog page.