Targeting 100% Organic, Local and Homemade Meals in Dordogne Secondary Schools

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Small plate, big impact

A healthy school meal for every child in every school - sign the petition here!

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2nd Eating City - Food Wave Ambassador Meeting

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Are you a Chef or a Champion?

Take part in the Cous Cous Challenge!

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1st Food Wave Workshop report

is now available here

Read more
Co-Funded by the European Union

Eating City

to accompany renowned French Chef in award ceremony

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photo credits: Ecocert

Eating City's

advocacy campaign for Sustainable School Canteens

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7th Villarceaux Declaration

of Eating City Summer Campus 2019

Read more

7th Eating City Summer Campus 2019

 

Why Venice?
Venice is, by its nature, morphology and history the ideal place to speak about algae and innovation, as in past centuries this city has been the entry point for so many spices and great innovations. Today it can strive to be forerunner of a new urban food system also based on the spirulina as source of proteins and other important nutrients.

Why the Carnival?
From its origin, the carnival has strong relationships with the food, as recalled by the etymology of the word Carnevale: “Carne Levare” (to remove meat). Spiruline high content of vegetarian proteins as well as precious nutrients all dressed with intense green does not deny Carnival’s history, for it has been characterized since the beginning by extravagance and abundance and provides an extra touch of resilience.

Why the spirulina?

Indeed, Spirulina is a microalgae, a phytoplankton and on of the first life form able to live in the inhospital conditions on Earth, about 3 and half billions years ago.

It belongs to the group of cyanobacteria, precursor of the photosynthesis, the first producers of O2 which allowed life to colonize seas and continents. Today as previously, plankton is having a key role, too little acknowledged, on ecosystems functioning and in particular on the trophic chain.

As we rediscover the value of traditions for our food and the impact of our meals on health, wellness, quality of life, environmental resilience, social cohesion and local development, the fitoplankton spirulina can also play its part also in such a frame …

Indeed to use spirulina to feed people is not a recent invention, at most a rediscovery, as shown by african women collecting it in the area of  lake Chad and preparing small patties to eat with cereal but also the italian spacewoman Samantha Cristoforetti who gave preference to food prepared with high quality ingredients to bring with her on board of the International Space Station. She included the spirulina, rich of vegetal proteins with all essential amino acids, but also vitamins, minerals, etc…

And during the Fresch in festival, the same spirulina is invited as one of the ingredients of some of the sandwiches proposed to the visitors…Produced in a small farm with high quality standards, it gently refreshes our traditionnal recipes with a hint of innovation, whereas the phytotière, specially developed to allow a domestic production of spirulina opens new perspectives on our daily food.

Come and join us on 22, 23 and 25 february in Venice to know more: Facebook Event

Learn more about La Voie Bleue.

Watch the video

 

The present globalization movement was encouraged because it allowed to prospect an efficient worldwide based food production system. However, such system, handled today by private operators, is causing increasing problems. On one hand because it is based on intensive methods of production that are harming the environment and endangering subsistence farming. On another hand, because the resulting model of diet, despite it apparently solves starvation, is accentuating nutritional imbalances and food related pathologies among the populations. These and other reasons have been invoked to induce cities to come back to local food sourcing (both urban and peri-urban agriculture), in order to match citizens’ basic food needs and also to re-appropriate urban food logistics management.

To handle such complex issues, however, cities must revise their usual competences, and need for that, to build up a vision in which the food issue shifts from its mere definition to a more systemic understanding. Indeed, food is not only a sum of calories and nutrients necessary to make our body working, but it is embedded in a whole system that influences our quality of life and includes all activities and infrastructures necessary to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, market, consume, and dispose food and all food-related items. This life-cycle thinking approach allows to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city and to design an organization chart that connects all actors and stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, giving them a role and a responsibility.

It is very important that urban planners and city managers understand that such a model is not self-standing. This is because “food systems” run within and are strongly influenced by cultural, social, economic and environmental contexts, all relationships that allows to make synergies between food planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.

Planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.
Indeed:

  • food consumption is an integral part of all our lives including its history and culture;
  • food is affecting our health and wellness, including nutrition, obesity and food safety;
  • food environmental impacts are becoming an increasing concern;
    food also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education;
  • food is a pillar of the economy, at local and global level.

Read the whole paper

The Declaration for a Food and Agriculture Transition in the Mediterranean was presented within a workshop held on 17th November in the COP22, with its first 50 signatory organisations from 13 different Mediterranean countries.

logo-mcaf

No doubts subsist that Food and climate issues are inextricably bound up. In this context Mediterranean Food Systems are under the spotlights, not only because Mediterranean diet was inscribed in 2013 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If the intangible Cultural heritage celebrates and commemorates “a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food“, the document of MCAF highlights how decades of amnesy is detrimental for the current preparation of future actions to preserve environment, health, jobs, quality of life, culture, for mediterranean populations…

The declaration can be downloaded in:

english version

french version 

spanish version

To endorse the declaration, more information can be asked at the following address secretariat@fundacionacm.org

eip-agri.eu

 

The scope of the workshop  also was to make optimal use of EU programs and fundings, for instance the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development which is the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy and  the Horizon 2020 EU research programmes, to create smart and sustainable food chains.

In order to stimulate actions, the workshop launched the “AMICI” format, where AMICI stands for Actions for Mobilizing Innovation through Cooperation and Interaction. AMICI are any actions such as forming a group, exchanging further information, investigating an issue deeper, etc…

This multi-actor event brought together around 80 participants from 20 different countries and was prepared in cooperation with representatives from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) and the Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation.

The report on the EIP-AGRI Workshop Cities and Food : Connecting consumers and producers can be now downloaded here.

Climate Chance bridges the appointments of Paris  Cop 21 and Marrakech Cop 22. There is a clear necessity to incitate the civil society to become a protagonist of the discussions around climate issues and to create an alliance between all actors working on sustainable Food Systems. In one hand, food should be a pillar on the climate agenda for multiple reasons. On the other hand the climate emergence could allow the various existing initiatives on sustainable food to converge in a unified message.

If climate change is projected to cause lower yields from major crops, to increase price volatility for agricultural commodites and to reduce food quality, it is clear also that dominant food production systems are one cause of climate change (for instance, the amount of energy necessary to cultivate, process, pack and bring the food to European citizens’ tables accounts for 26% of the EU’s final energy consumption in 2013). Therefore food is at the core of climate issues as part of problematic issues and also as part of fundamental solutions to help humanity to survive such threat.

An holistic approach is necessary to tackle efficiently and sustainably such a complex issue in an action plan that integrates mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the pace & magnitude of the changes in global climate being caused by human activities and the adverse impacts on human well-being resulting from the changes in climate that do occur.

In the absence of national or international efficient climate policy direction, cities are already at the frontline, directly called up to take practical measures to protect an increasing population from adverse climate impacts. In parallel, the idea that cities can be crucial to foster sustainable food systems is also gradually gaining ground. Through a deep cultural change, Cities Food Policies may turn food into a thread to connect all the main competences of the cities related to economic development, education, health, environment, solidarity, culture and leisure, governance, and give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and rural territories. In such context, Eating City platfom promotes pragmatic approach to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city to design an organization chart that connects all stakeholders and infrastructures, giving them a role and a responsibility to foster resilient/regenerative food systems.

Workshop AGR2 Climate Chance 2016

 

This was the thematic of the workshop : “The role of collective catering in the paradigm shift in food systems” chaired by Maurizio Mariani at the Climate Chance meeting in September 26th, which gathered Robin Gourlay and Giuseppe Mastruzzo, both members of the Steering Committee, Philippe Hersant, founder of Restaurants sans frontières, Guilhem Soutou, working on the Sustainable food and diets Program of Fondation Nina et Daniel Carasso, Amandine Lebreton from Fondation Nicolas Hulot, Rocio Llamas Vacas from Mensa Civica discussed on the role of Public food Service in the needed change of paradigm. Edith Salminem presented the 4th declaration of Villarceaux in a report prepared after the campus.

 

 

During one week, 23 young participants have met, discussed and put their energy and creativity in this text which is the 4th Villarceaux Declaration.

Discover their straightforward recipe to implement the change of paradigm for sustainable food systems.

ECSC group 2016

DONWLOAD THE VILLARCEAUX DECLARATION 2016

We are young professionals from 20 different European countries with different backgrounds and realities. We spent seven days discussing, sharing and confronting arguments and experiences about food. Together, we acknowledge that our current food system is in deep crisis. There is an immediate need for a paradigm shift.

In line with the Eating City platform, the Eating City Summer Campus 2016 acknowledges that the City is at the centre of the problem – and the solution. The Public Food Service presents a transformative opportunity to affect positive change. This is why our united message is addressed to the cities, in particular to the municipal decision-makers. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the fact that each layer of governance has its duties and responsibilities, from the EU to the local level.

The crisis we face today is a complex one. Currently, humans control Nature for their own benefit disregarding its agroecological resilience. We as the human race have forgotten that we are part of a bigger picture and that we are interdependent. This extractive model is no longer viable to ensure the future of the planet and human kind. The dominant claim to keep producing more food to feed the world is only making the problem grow bigger.

Hunger, obesity, non-communicable diseases, waste, processed food, ignorance, exclusion, inequality. This is on the menu. Right to food, food sovereignty, social inclusion, pleasure, flavour, cultural recognition, linking the urban and the rural. This is what we want.

In order to make our food cycle sustainable, we have identified two different and interconnected sets of actions. On the one hand, a new facilitating governance framework for food is necessary. On the other, we have to transform each step of the cycle from production through consumption to waste – and back to the land again.

This is our recipe:
FOSTERING Governance
Problem: There is a lack of political willingness and/or capacity to deal with sustainability issues and with food issues in particular. Consequently, cities’ actions are often fragmented and rely on personal motivation of individual City officials.
Solution: Fostering interdepartmental and cross-sectoral coordination will enable an integrated vision and positive synergies in cities sustainable food policies.
IMPROVING Public Food Service
Problem: Millions of meals are served daily by our cities. Unsustainable Public Food Service has a huge negative
impact on public health and environment.
Solution: Resilient and sustainable Public Food Service offers an immense opportunity to shift consumption patterns and ensure social inclusion.
JOINING Education and Engagement
Problem: Cities do not facilitate community engagement with sustainable food issues or the integration of these challenges into public education.
Solution: Investing in food knowledge and education will stimulate public awareness and encourage participatory food governance.
CONNECTING Food Production to Food Spaces

Problem: Inhabitants are disconnected from their food physically and conceptually. On the other hand, small to medium scale food producers lack the capacity to market access.
Solution: Activating and linking the physical, social and professional space for food will facilitate the shortening of food chains between consumers and producers, and encourage building relationships toward achieving sustainable food practices.
RETHINKING Food Waste
Problem: Food waste is regarded as an inevitable byproduct of an “efficient” food system tilted towards consumer responsibility. So far, the response has been reactive rather than preventive and city action has been fragmented. Responsibilities are not being distributed throughout the chain.
Solution: Waste management should be considered from pre-production through post-consumption. Cities should assess services and infrastructure in order to promote integrated actions.

Bon Appétit!

 

From 16 benefits identified by the International Sustainability Unit, the number rises up to 34.  Whatever you prioritize,you’ll find some benefits worth to advocate for, ranging from food security (and food rights), economic development, environment(al goods and services), health, democracy (governance) and culture.

To read the publication : Food in an Urbanized World: The Role of City Region Food Systems in Resilience and Sustainable Development
To read the reinforced argumentation with 34 propositions

Collaborative knowledge and understanding must be used to improve and reinforce such food common sense argument. Only doing this tirelessly we can break through the “Glass Ceiling” and push food issues into the highest arena of discussions, whether during international climate negotiations, or discussions about international trade agreements such as the on-going Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. (TTIP).

And there is little doubt that this list, a toolkit for policy makers, will keep growing as long as people innovate. Building up a dynamic and complex vision in which rural and urban territories, not only cities supported by surrounding regional food system, get more vital and  symbiotic.

There is no doubt about our current food system’s unsustainability, but in absence of a consensual scenario, world leaders are still tempted to foster economic levers to the detriment of environmental aspects. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact’ s ratification by more than 133 cities worldwide highlights the will of cities to play a role in new cooperation models: urban centers are now home to half of the global population and they, strategically, bridge local and global interests. A flourishing context of innovative practices related to agriculture diversification, rural tourism and alternative food systems is echoed in the growing number of urban agriculture projects that transform cities in creative social spaces, where new solutions bringing significant improvement to sustainable food systems are designed and experienced (Schiff, 2013).

Such cultural effervescence must not overshadow the traditional competence of public food procurement as a leverage for the shift of paradigm.

18_kitchen copenhagen

Today, 40% of calories are consumed out of home. The total social foodservice market of all Member States in EU-28 was valued €82 billion in 2013 (GIRA Foodservice, 2014). This is low compared to the 1.048 billions of euro of the annual turnover of the whole european food and beverage industry (Fooddrink Europe, 2014), but certainly relevant to give a significant signal. By experiencing that an in depth “cooking from scratch” re-engineering approach is propedeutical to high quality public meals, several pionniers have already paved the way to re-qualify Public Food Service (PFS) (Lacourt and Mariani, 2015). An effort is now needed to broaden the interest and attractiveness of cities for such a competence that is still too often outsourced at the lowest price.

Starting from the definition of a specific activity code to assess properly the economic weight of an activity that equals to 21 billions of meals served every year in EU. Acknowledging the potential impact of exemplarity to promote food education, social inclusion, local economy and to contrast the hidden costs of food waste and patients malnutrition in hospitals, not forgetting that public food services provides food on a daily basis to one european citizen every six. Therefore, the economic lever of public procurement seems appropriate to create suitable market conditions for more sustainable food systems and in the meantime it fosters local authorities’s authoritativeness and efficiency to raise population awareness and promote synergies with civil society in the emergence of more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.

Schiff, R. (2013). The Role of Food Policy Councils in Developing Sustainable Food Systems. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 3(2-3): 206-228>

GIRA Foodservice, (2014), The Contract Catering Market in Europe 2009 – 2014 – 15 counties, for FoodServiceEurope, October 2014

Fooddrink Europe, (2014) Data & Trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2013-2014.

Lacourt, I., Mariani, M. (2015). City Food Policies. Securing our daily bread in an urbanizing world. Le Château edizioni, Aosta. 176 p. ISBN 978-88-7637-186-8

For more than 10 years of research to promote sustainability in Public Food Service, we have been faced with the difficulty to give a clearcut definition of what is really sustainable and what is not. For this reason we enlarged our vision based on life cycle analysis, considering not only environmental impacts but also social, cultural aspects of food systems… It was also in that vein that we evolved from food service perspective to urban food systems perpective in 2010, with the project Eating City.

We were deeply convinced at that time and still are of the necessity to develop a vision that support specific urban policies to manage urban food systems. But such effort could be unsufficient if it is only considering quantitative urban metabolism of food chains and food flows dimension. Similarly as frustrating attempts to assess sustainability, the complexity of logistics makes tricky sustainable urban food planning and zoning, leading people in endless debates, for instance, on what should be considered as local or not …

Texts such as the Protocol of Lima may renews our frame of thinking and help us to ponderate priorities. When we endorse the necessity “to recognize our shared responsibilities to the planet as a condition for the survival and progress of humankind“, we also agree on the difficulty to act without a global consensus as “the proclamation and pursuit of universal rights are not sufficient to adjust our behaviour, as rights are inoperative when there is no single institution able to guarantee the conditions of their application“.

The eight Principles of Universal Responsibility of the Protocol of Lima straightforwardly lead to the notion of the common good. A  recent review of “THE ECOLOGY OF LAW”  quoted: “We are now faced with choosing either to be friendly with our ecology of with we are not exclusive or choose to confront unbeatable battle of preventing our untimely extinction.” In other words, “we are badly in need of an objective framework in protecting the commons from total extinction “. In such context, “Law should not be seen as a means of violence or power but rather it should solidify the cultural and traditional lives of the people and make them sovereign.”

By recognizing the interdependences between communities and between humankind and Nature, these texts open the door to the discussion over the the notion of the commons, and in our case, about food as commons and not merely as a commodity.

  • Food as commons induces a shared responsibility that entitle communities to take into account immediate and deffered effects on environment and health.
  • Food as commons prescribes that a minority should not decide for the majority on a matter of life itself.
  • Food as commons unites people…

… and when we reach this point of awareness, we get a glimpse on the possibilities that are freed up when adopting the logic of commons.

Of course to consider food as commons and not a commodity requires a first step generosity that may seem uncompatible with current budget restrictions. But to consider food as commons and not commodity gives access to immaterial assets through which food is : more than a fuel or the sum of its parts”. And we have now enough successful projects and practices to refer to, that demonstrate how such understanding is a promising entry point to empower people for the change of paradigm. Eating City SC2015 United 4 Food

The Manifest Lima to Paris was presented at the meeting “What responsibility the world needs to face climate change? For a new environmental governance”, which took place in the Andean Community in Lima, Peru, on December 11, 2014, during the People’s Summit, a civil society event parallel to COP20, the UN Climate Summit.

It should be taken as start for a sustained call for support, with local and regional meetings taking place worldwide to discuss this proposal before the COP21 in Paris (29 November – 11 December 2015).

 

Read the Manifest

MANIFEST OF LIMA TO PARIS

Appeal to the conscience of the powerful of this world

 

Why Venice?
Venice is, by its nature, morphology and history the ideal place to speak about algae and innovation, as in past centuries this city has been the entry point for so many spices and great innovations. Today it can strive to be forerunner of a new urban food system also based on the spirulina as source of proteins and other important nutrients.

Why the Carnival?
From its origin, the carnival has strong relationships with the food, as recalled by the etymology of the word Carnevale: “Carne Levare” (to remove meat). Spiruline high content of vegetarian proteins as well as precious nutrients all dressed with intense green does not deny Carnival’s history, for it has been characterized since the beginning by extravagance and abundance and provides an extra touch of resilience.

Why the spirulina?

Indeed, Spirulina is a microalgae, a phytoplankton and on of the first life form able to live in the inhospital conditions on Earth, about 3 and half billions years ago.

It belongs to the group of cyanobacteria, precursor of the photosynthesis, the first producers of O2 which allowed life to colonize seas and continents. Today as previously, plankton is having a key role, too little acknowledged, on ecosystems functioning and in particular on the trophic chain.

As we rediscover the value of traditions for our food and the impact of our meals on health, wellness, quality of life, environmental resilience, social cohesion and local development, the fitoplankton spirulina can also play its part also in such a frame …

Indeed to use spirulina to feed people is not a recent invention, at most a rediscovery, as shown by african women collecting it in the area of  lake Chad and preparing small patties to eat with cereal but also the italian spacewoman Samantha Cristoforetti who gave preference to food prepared with high quality ingredients to bring with her on board of the International Space Station. She included the spirulina, rich of vegetal proteins with all essential amino acids, but also vitamins, minerals, etc…

And during the Fresch in festival, the same spirulina is invited as one of the ingredients of some of the sandwiches proposed to the visitors…Produced in a small farm with high quality standards, it gently refreshes our traditionnal recipes with a hint of innovation, whereas the phytotière, specially developed to allow a domestic production of spirulina opens new perspectives on our daily food.

Come and join us on 22, 23 and 25 february in Venice to know more: Facebook Event

Learn more about La Voie Bleue.

Watch the video

 

The present globalization movement was encouraged because it allowed to prospect an efficient worldwide based food production system. However, such system, handled today by private operators, is causing increasing problems. On one hand because it is based on intensive methods of production that are harming the environment and endangering subsistence farming. On another hand, because the resulting model of diet, despite it apparently solves starvation, is accentuating nutritional imbalances and food related pathologies among the populations. These and other reasons have been invoked to induce cities to come back to local food sourcing (both urban and peri-urban agriculture), in order to match citizens’ basic food needs and also to re-appropriate urban food logistics management.

To handle such complex issues, however, cities must revise their usual competences, and need for that, to build up a vision in which the food issue shifts from its mere definition to a more systemic understanding. Indeed, food is not only a sum of calories and nutrients necessary to make our body working, but it is embedded in a whole system that influences our quality of life and includes all activities and infrastructures necessary to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, market, consume, and dispose food and all food-related items. This life-cycle thinking approach allows to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city and to design an organization chart that connects all actors and stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, giving them a role and a responsibility.

It is very important that urban planners and city managers understand that such a model is not self-standing. This is because “food systems” run within and are strongly influenced by cultural, social, economic and environmental contexts, all relationships that allows to make synergies between food planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.

Planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.
Indeed:

  • food consumption is an integral part of all our lives including its history and culture;
  • food is affecting our health and wellness, including nutrition, obesity and food safety;
  • food environmental impacts are becoming an increasing concern;
    food also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education;
  • food is a pillar of the economy, at local and global level.

Read the whole paper

The Declaration for a Food and Agriculture Transition in the Mediterranean was presented within a workshop held on 17th November in the COP22, with its first 50 signatory organisations from 13 different Mediterranean countries.

logo-mcaf

No doubts subsist that Food and climate issues are inextricably bound up. In this context Mediterranean Food Systems are under the spotlights, not only because Mediterranean diet was inscribed in 2013 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If the intangible Cultural heritage celebrates and commemorates “a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food“, the document of MCAF highlights how decades of amnesy is detrimental for the current preparation of future actions to preserve environment, health, jobs, quality of life, culture, for mediterranean populations…

The declaration can be downloaded in:

english version

french version 

spanish version

To endorse the declaration, more information can be asked at the following address secretariat@fundacionacm.org

eip-agri.eu

 

The scope of the workshop  also was to make optimal use of EU programs and fundings, for instance the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development which is the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy and  the Horizon 2020 EU research programmes, to create smart and sustainable food chains.

In order to stimulate actions, the workshop launched the “AMICI” format, where AMICI stands for Actions for Mobilizing Innovation through Cooperation and Interaction. AMICI are any actions such as forming a group, exchanging further information, investigating an issue deeper, etc…

This multi-actor event brought together around 80 participants from 20 different countries and was prepared in cooperation with representatives from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) and the Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation.

The report on the EIP-AGRI Workshop Cities and Food : Connecting consumers and producers can be now downloaded here.

Climate Chance bridges the appointments of Paris  Cop 21 and Marrakech Cop 22. There is a clear necessity to incitate the civil society to become a protagonist of the discussions around climate issues and to create an alliance between all actors working on sustainable Food Systems. In one hand, food should be a pillar on the climate agenda for multiple reasons. On the other hand the climate emergence could allow the various existing initiatives on sustainable food to converge in a unified message.

If climate change is projected to cause lower yields from major crops, to increase price volatility for agricultural commodites and to reduce food quality, it is clear also that dominant food production systems are one cause of climate change (for instance, the amount of energy necessary to cultivate, process, pack and bring the food to European citizens’ tables accounts for 26% of the EU’s final energy consumption in 2013). Therefore food is at the core of climate issues as part of problematic issues and also as part of fundamental solutions to help humanity to survive such threat.

An holistic approach is necessary to tackle efficiently and sustainably such a complex issue in an action plan that integrates mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the pace & magnitude of the changes in global climate being caused by human activities and the adverse impacts on human well-being resulting from the changes in climate that do occur.

In the absence of national or international efficient climate policy direction, cities are already at the frontline, directly called up to take practical measures to protect an increasing population from adverse climate impacts. In parallel, the idea that cities can be crucial to foster sustainable food systems is also gradually gaining ground. Through a deep cultural change, Cities Food Policies may turn food into a thread to connect all the main competences of the cities related to economic development, education, health, environment, solidarity, culture and leisure, governance, and give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and rural territories. In such context, Eating City platfom promotes pragmatic approach to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city to design an organization chart that connects all stakeholders and infrastructures, giving them a role and a responsibility to foster resilient/regenerative food systems.

Workshop AGR2 Climate Chance 2016

 

This was the thematic of the workshop : “The role of collective catering in the paradigm shift in food systems” chaired by Maurizio Mariani at the Climate Chance meeting in September 26th, which gathered Robin Gourlay and Giuseppe Mastruzzo, both members of the Steering Committee, Philippe Hersant, founder of Restaurants sans frontières, Guilhem Soutou, working on the Sustainable food and diets Program of Fondation Nina et Daniel Carasso, Amandine Lebreton from Fondation Nicolas Hulot, Rocio Llamas Vacas from Mensa Civica discussed on the role of Public food Service in the needed change of paradigm. Edith Salminem presented the 4th declaration of Villarceaux in a report prepared after the campus.

 

 

During one week, 23 young participants have met, discussed and put their energy and creativity in this text which is the 4th Villarceaux Declaration.

Discover their straightforward recipe to implement the change of paradigm for sustainable food systems.

ECSC group 2016

DONWLOAD THE VILLARCEAUX DECLARATION 2016

We are young professionals from 20 different European countries with different backgrounds and realities. We spent seven days discussing, sharing and confronting arguments and experiences about food. Together, we acknowledge that our current food system is in deep crisis. There is an immediate need for a paradigm shift.

In line with the Eating City platform, the Eating City Summer Campus 2016 acknowledges that the City is at the centre of the problem – and the solution. The Public Food Service presents a transformative opportunity to affect positive change. This is why our united message is addressed to the cities, in particular to the municipal decision-makers. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the fact that each layer of governance has its duties and responsibilities, from the EU to the local level.

The crisis we face today is a complex one. Currently, humans control Nature for their own benefit disregarding its agroecological resilience. We as the human race have forgotten that we are part of a bigger picture and that we are interdependent. This extractive model is no longer viable to ensure the future of the planet and human kind. The dominant claim to keep producing more food to feed the world is only making the problem grow bigger.

Hunger, obesity, non-communicable diseases, waste, processed food, ignorance, exclusion, inequality. This is on the menu. Right to food, food sovereignty, social inclusion, pleasure, flavour, cultural recognition, linking the urban and the rural. This is what we want.

In order to make our food cycle sustainable, we have identified two different and interconnected sets of actions. On the one hand, a new facilitating governance framework for food is necessary. On the other, we have to transform each step of the cycle from production through consumption to waste – and back to the land again.

This is our recipe:
FOSTERING Governance
Problem: There is a lack of political willingness and/or capacity to deal with sustainability issues and with food issues in particular. Consequently, cities’ actions are often fragmented and rely on personal motivation of individual City officials.
Solution: Fostering interdepartmental and cross-sectoral coordination will enable an integrated vision and positive synergies in cities sustainable food policies.
IMPROVING Public Food Service
Problem: Millions of meals are served daily by our cities. Unsustainable Public Food Service has a huge negative
impact on public health and environment.
Solution: Resilient and sustainable Public Food Service offers an immense opportunity to shift consumption patterns and ensure social inclusion.
JOINING Education and Engagement
Problem: Cities do not facilitate community engagement with sustainable food issues or the integration of these challenges into public education.
Solution: Investing in food knowledge and education will stimulate public awareness and encourage participatory food governance.
CONNECTING Food Production to Food Spaces

Problem: Inhabitants are disconnected from their food physically and conceptually. On the other hand, small to medium scale food producers lack the capacity to market access.
Solution: Activating and linking the physical, social and professional space for food will facilitate the shortening of food chains between consumers and producers, and encourage building relationships toward achieving sustainable food practices.
RETHINKING Food Waste
Problem: Food waste is regarded as an inevitable byproduct of an “efficient” food system tilted towards consumer responsibility. So far, the response has been reactive rather than preventive and city action has been fragmented. Responsibilities are not being distributed throughout the chain.
Solution: Waste management should be considered from pre-production through post-consumption. Cities should assess services and infrastructure in order to promote integrated actions.

Bon Appétit!

 

From 16 benefits identified by the International Sustainability Unit, the number rises up to 34.  Whatever you prioritize,you’ll find some benefits worth to advocate for, ranging from food security (and food rights), economic development, environment(al goods and services), health, democracy (governance) and culture.

To read the publication : Food in an Urbanized World: The Role of City Region Food Systems in Resilience and Sustainable Development
To read the reinforced argumentation with 34 propositions

Collaborative knowledge and understanding must be used to improve and reinforce such food common sense argument. Only doing this tirelessly we can break through the “Glass Ceiling” and push food issues into the highest arena of discussions, whether during international climate negotiations, or discussions about international trade agreements such as the on-going Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. (TTIP).

And there is little doubt that this list, a toolkit for policy makers, will keep growing as long as people innovate. Building up a dynamic and complex vision in which rural and urban territories, not only cities supported by surrounding regional food system, get more vital and  symbiotic.

There is no doubt about our current food system’s unsustainability, but in absence of a consensual scenario, world leaders are still tempted to foster economic levers to the detriment of environmental aspects. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact’ s ratification by more than 133 cities worldwide highlights the will of cities to play a role in new cooperation models: urban centers are now home to half of the global population and they, strategically, bridge local and global interests. A flourishing context of innovative practices related to agriculture diversification, rural tourism and alternative food systems is echoed in the growing number of urban agriculture projects that transform cities in creative social spaces, where new solutions bringing significant improvement to sustainable food systems are designed and experienced (Schiff, 2013).

Such cultural effervescence must not overshadow the traditional competence of public food procurement as a leverage for the shift of paradigm.

18_kitchen copenhagen

Today, 40% of calories are consumed out of home. The total social foodservice market of all Member States in EU-28 was valued €82 billion in 2013 (GIRA Foodservice, 2014). This is low compared to the 1.048 billions of euro of the annual turnover of the whole european food and beverage industry (Fooddrink Europe, 2014), but certainly relevant to give a significant signal. By experiencing that an in depth “cooking from scratch” re-engineering approach is propedeutical to high quality public meals, several pionniers have already paved the way to re-qualify Public Food Service (PFS) (Lacourt and Mariani, 2015). An effort is now needed to broaden the interest and attractiveness of cities for such a competence that is still too often outsourced at the lowest price.

Starting from the definition of a specific activity code to assess properly the economic weight of an activity that equals to 21 billions of meals served every year in EU. Acknowledging the potential impact of exemplarity to promote food education, social inclusion, local economy and to contrast the hidden costs of food waste and patients malnutrition in hospitals, not forgetting that public food services provides food on a daily basis to one european citizen every six. Therefore, the economic lever of public procurement seems appropriate to create suitable market conditions for more sustainable food systems and in the meantime it fosters local authorities’s authoritativeness and efficiency to raise population awareness and promote synergies with civil society in the emergence of more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.

Schiff, R. (2013). The Role of Food Policy Councils in Developing Sustainable Food Systems. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 3(2-3): 206-228>

GIRA Foodservice, (2014), The Contract Catering Market in Europe 2009 – 2014 – 15 counties, for FoodServiceEurope, October 2014

Fooddrink Europe, (2014) Data & Trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2013-2014.

Lacourt, I., Mariani, M. (2015). City Food Policies. Securing our daily bread in an urbanizing world. Le Château edizioni, Aosta. 176 p. ISBN 978-88-7637-186-8

For more than 10 years of research to promote sustainability in Public Food Service, we have been faced with the difficulty to give a clearcut definition of what is really sustainable and what is not. For this reason we enlarged our vision based on life cycle analysis, considering not only environmental impacts but also social, cultural aspects of food systems… It was also in that vein that we evolved from food service perspective to urban food systems perpective in 2010, with the project Eating City.

We were deeply convinced at that time and still are of the necessity to develop a vision that support specific urban policies to manage urban food systems. But such effort could be unsufficient if it is only considering quantitative urban metabolism of food chains and food flows dimension. Similarly as frustrating attempts to assess sustainability, the complexity of logistics makes tricky sustainable urban food planning and zoning, leading people in endless debates, for instance, on what should be considered as local or not …

Texts such as the Protocol of Lima may renews our frame of thinking and help us to ponderate priorities. When we endorse the necessity “to recognize our shared responsibilities to the planet as a condition for the survival and progress of humankind“, we also agree on the difficulty to act without a global consensus as “the proclamation and pursuit of universal rights are not sufficient to adjust our behaviour, as rights are inoperative when there is no single institution able to guarantee the conditions of their application“.

The eight Principles of Universal Responsibility of the Protocol of Lima straightforwardly lead to the notion of the common good. A  recent review of “THE ECOLOGY OF LAW”  quoted: “We are now faced with choosing either to be friendly with our ecology of with we are not exclusive or choose to confront unbeatable battle of preventing our untimely extinction.” In other words, “we are badly in need of an objective framework in protecting the commons from total extinction “. In such context, “Law should not be seen as a means of violence or power but rather it should solidify the cultural and traditional lives of the people and make them sovereign.”

By recognizing the interdependences between communities and between humankind and Nature, these texts open the door to the discussion over the the notion of the commons, and in our case, about food as commons and not merely as a commodity.

  • Food as commons induces a shared responsibility that entitle communities to take into account immediate and deffered effects on environment and health.
  • Food as commons prescribes that a minority should not decide for the majority on a matter of life itself.
  • Food as commons unites people…

… and when we reach this point of awareness, we get a glimpse on the possibilities that are freed up when adopting the logic of commons.

Of course to consider food as commons and not a commodity requires a first step generosity that may seem uncompatible with current budget restrictions. But to consider food as commons and not commodity gives access to immaterial assets through which food is : more than a fuel or the sum of its parts”. And we have now enough successful projects and practices to refer to, that demonstrate how such understanding is a promising entry point to empower people for the change of paradigm. Eating City SC2015 United 4 Food

The Manifest Lima to Paris was presented at the meeting “What responsibility the world needs to face climate change? For a new environmental governance”, which took place in the Andean Community in Lima, Peru, on December 11, 2014, during the People’s Summit, a civil society event parallel to COP20, the UN Climate Summit.

It should be taken as start for a sustained call for support, with local and regional meetings taking place worldwide to discuss this proposal before the COP21 in Paris (29 November – 11 December 2015).

 

Read the Manifest

MANIFEST OF LIMA TO PARIS

Appeal to the conscience of the powerful of this world

 

Why Venice?
Venice is, by its nature, morphology and history the ideal place to speak about algae and innovation, as in past centuries this city has been the entry point for so many spices and great innovations. Today it can strive to be forerunner of a new urban food system also based on the spirulina as source of proteins and other important nutrients.

Why the Carnival?
From its origin, the carnival has strong relationships with the food, as recalled by the etymology of the word Carnevale: “Carne Levare” (to remove meat). Spiruline high content of vegetarian proteins as well as precious nutrients all dressed with intense green does not deny Carnival’s history, for it has been characterized since the beginning by extravagance and abundance and provides an extra touch of resilience.

Why the spirulina?

Indeed, Spirulina is a microalgae, a phytoplankton and on of the first life form able to live in the inhospital conditions on Earth, about 3 and half billions years ago.

It belongs to the group of cyanobacteria, precursor of the photosynthesis, the first producers of O2 which allowed life to colonize seas and continents. Today as previously, plankton is having a key role, too little acknowledged, on ecosystems functioning and in particular on the trophic chain.

As we rediscover the value of traditions for our food and the impact of our meals on health, wellness, quality of life, environmental resilience, social cohesion and local development, the fitoplankton spirulina can also play its part also in such a frame …

Indeed to use spirulina to feed people is not a recent invention, at most a rediscovery, as shown by african women collecting it in the area of  lake Chad and preparing small patties to eat with cereal but also the italian spacewoman Samantha Cristoforetti who gave preference to food prepared with high quality ingredients to bring with her on board of the International Space Station. She included the spirulina, rich of vegetal proteins with all essential amino acids, but also vitamins, minerals, etc…

And during the Fresch in festival, the same spirulina is invited as one of the ingredients of some of the sandwiches proposed to the visitors…Produced in a small farm with high quality standards, it gently refreshes our traditionnal recipes with a hint of innovation, whereas the phytotière, specially developed to allow a domestic production of spirulina opens new perspectives on our daily food.

Come and join us on 22, 23 and 25 february in Venice to know more: Facebook Event

Learn more about La Voie Bleue.

Watch the video

 

The present globalization movement was encouraged because it allowed to prospect an efficient worldwide based food production system. However, such system, handled today by private operators, is causing increasing problems. On one hand because it is based on intensive methods of production that are harming the environment and endangering subsistence farming. On another hand, because the resulting model of diet, despite it apparently solves starvation, is accentuating nutritional imbalances and food related pathologies among the populations. These and other reasons have been invoked to induce cities to come back to local food sourcing (both urban and peri-urban agriculture), in order to match citizens’ basic food needs and also to re-appropriate urban food logistics management.

To handle such complex issues, however, cities must revise their usual competences, and need for that, to build up a vision in which the food issue shifts from its mere definition to a more systemic understanding. Indeed, food is not only a sum of calories and nutrients necessary to make our body working, but it is embedded in a whole system that influences our quality of life and includes all activities and infrastructures necessary to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, market, consume, and dispose food and all food-related items. This life-cycle thinking approach allows to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city and to design an organization chart that connects all actors and stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, giving them a role and a responsibility.

It is very important that urban planners and city managers understand that such a model is not self-standing. This is because “food systems” run within and are strongly influenced by cultural, social, economic and environmental contexts, all relationships that allows to make synergies between food planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.

Planning policy and other mainstream urban policies about more usual issues such as mobility, education, health, etc.
Indeed:

  • food consumption is an integral part of all our lives including its history and culture;
  • food is affecting our health and wellness, including nutrition, obesity and food safety;
  • food environmental impacts are becoming an increasing concern;
    food also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education;
  • food is a pillar of the economy, at local and global level.

Read the whole paper

The Declaration for a Food and Agriculture Transition in the Mediterranean was presented within a workshop held on 17th November in the COP22, with its first 50 signatory organisations from 13 different Mediterranean countries.

logo-mcaf

No doubts subsist that Food and climate issues are inextricably bound up. In this context Mediterranean Food Systems are under the spotlights, not only because Mediterranean diet was inscribed in 2013 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

If the intangible Cultural heritage celebrates and commemorates “a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food“, the document of MCAF highlights how decades of amnesy is detrimental for the current preparation of future actions to preserve environment, health, jobs, quality of life, culture, for mediterranean populations…

The declaration can be downloaded in:

english version

french version 

spanish version

To endorse the declaration, more information can be asked at the following address secretariat@fundacionacm.org

eip-agri.eu

 

The scope of the workshop  also was to make optimal use of EU programs and fundings, for instance the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development which is the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy and  the Horizon 2020 EU research programmes, to create smart and sustainable food chains.

In order to stimulate actions, the workshop launched the “AMICI” format, where AMICI stands for Actions for Mobilizing Innovation through Cooperation and Interaction. AMICI are any actions such as forming a group, exchanging further information, investigating an issue deeper, etc…

This multi-actor event brought together around 80 participants from 20 different countries and was prepared in cooperation with representatives from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) and the Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation.

The report on the EIP-AGRI Workshop Cities and Food : Connecting consumers and producers can be now downloaded here.

Climate Chance bridges the appointments of Paris  Cop 21 and Marrakech Cop 22. There is a clear necessity to incitate the civil society to become a protagonist of the discussions around climate issues and to create an alliance between all actors working on sustainable Food Systems. In one hand, food should be a pillar on the climate agenda for multiple reasons. On the other hand the climate emergence could allow the various existing initiatives on sustainable food to converge in a unified message.

If climate change is projected to cause lower yields from major crops, to increase price volatility for agricultural commodites and to reduce food quality, it is clear also that dominant food production systems are one cause of climate change (for instance, the amount of energy necessary to cultivate, process, pack and bring the food to European citizens’ tables accounts for 26% of the EU’s final energy consumption in 2013). Therefore food is at the core of climate issues as part of problematic issues and also as part of fundamental solutions to help humanity to survive such threat.

An holistic approach is necessary to tackle efficiently and sustainably such a complex issue in an action plan that integrates mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the pace & magnitude of the changes in global climate being caused by human activities and the adverse impacts on human well-being resulting from the changes in climate that do occur.

In the absence of national or international efficient climate policy direction, cities are already at the frontline, directly called up to take practical measures to protect an increasing population from adverse climate impacts. In parallel, the idea that cities can be crucial to foster sustainable food systems is also gradually gaining ground. Through a deep cultural change, Cities Food Policies may turn food into a thread to connect all the main competences of the cities related to economic development, education, health, environment, solidarity, culture and leisure, governance, and give consistency to a synergic osmosis between cities and rural territories. In such context, Eating City platfom promotes pragmatic approach to build a model of food lifespan from origin to plate that makes possible to identify all food-related activities and infrastructures in and out the city to design an organization chart that connects all stakeholders and infrastructures, giving them a role and a responsibility to foster resilient/regenerative food systems.

Workshop AGR2 Climate Chance 2016

 

This was the thematic of the workshop : “The role of collective catering in the paradigm shift in food systems” chaired by Maurizio Mariani at the Climate Chance meeting in September 26th, which gathered Robin Gourlay and Giuseppe Mastruzzo, both members of the Steering Committee, Philippe Hersant, founder of Restaurants sans frontières, Guilhem Soutou, working on the Sustainable food and diets Program of Fondation Nina et Daniel Carasso, Amandine Lebreton from Fondation Nicolas Hulot, Rocio Llamas Vacas from Mensa Civica discussed on the role of Public food Service in the needed change of paradigm. Edith Salminem presented the 4th declaration of Villarceaux in a report prepared after the campus.

 

 

During one week, 23 young participants have met, discussed and put their energy and creativity in this text which is the 4th Villarceaux Declaration.

Discover their straightforward recipe to implement the change of paradigm for sustainable food systems.

ECSC group 2016

DONWLOAD THE VILLARCEAUX DECLARATION 2016

We are young professionals from 20 different European countries with different backgrounds and realities. We spent seven days discussing, sharing and confronting arguments and experiences about food. Together, we acknowledge that our current food system is in deep crisis. There is an immediate need for a paradigm shift.

In line with the Eating City platform, the Eating City Summer Campus 2016 acknowledges that the City is at the centre of the problem – and the solution. The Public Food Service presents a transformative opportunity to affect positive change. This is why our united message is addressed to the cities, in particular to the municipal decision-makers. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the fact that each layer of governance has its duties and responsibilities, from the EU to the local level.

The crisis we face today is a complex one. Currently, humans control Nature for their own benefit disregarding its agroecological resilience. We as the human race have forgotten that we are part of a bigger picture and that we are interdependent. This extractive model is no longer viable to ensure the future of the planet and human kind. The dominant claim to keep producing more food to feed the world is only making the problem grow bigger.

Hunger, obesity, non-communicable diseases, waste, processed food, ignorance, exclusion, inequality. This is on the menu. Right to food, food sovereignty, social inclusion, pleasure, flavour, cultural recognition, linking the urban and the rural. This is what we want.

In order to make our food cycle sustainable, we have identified two different and interconnected sets of actions. On the one hand, a new facilitating governance framework for food is necessary. On the other, we have to transform each step of the cycle from production through consumption to waste – and back to the land again.

This is our recipe:
FOSTERING Governance
Problem: There is a lack of political willingness and/or capacity to deal with sustainability issues and with food issues in particular. Consequently, cities’ actions are often fragmented and rely on personal motivation of individual City officials.
Solution: Fostering interdepartmental and cross-sectoral coordination will enable an integrated vision and positive synergies in cities sustainable food policies.
IMPROVING Public Food Service
Problem: Millions of meals are served daily by our cities. Unsustainable Public Food Service has a huge negative
impact on public health and environment.
Solution: Resilient and sustainable Public Food Service offers an immense opportunity to shift consumption patterns and ensure social inclusion.
JOINING Education and Engagement
Problem: Cities do not facilitate community engagement with sustainable food issues or the integration of these challenges into public education.
Solution: Investing in food knowledge and education will stimulate public awareness and encourage participatory food governance.
CONNECTING Food Production to Food Spaces

Problem: Inhabitants are disconnected from their food physically and conceptually. On the other hand, small to medium scale food producers lack the capacity to market access.
Solution: Activating and linking the physical, social and professional space for food will facilitate the shortening of food chains between consumers and producers, and encourage building relationships toward achieving sustainable food practices.
RETHINKING Food Waste
Problem: Food waste is regarded as an inevitable byproduct of an “efficient” food system tilted towards consumer responsibility. So far, the response has been reactive rather than preventive and city action has been fragmented. Responsibilities are not being distributed throughout the chain.
Solution: Waste management should be considered from pre-production through post-consumption. Cities should assess services and infrastructure in order to promote integrated actions.

Bon Appétit!

 

From 16 benefits identified by the International Sustainability Unit, the number rises up to 34.  Whatever you prioritize,you’ll find some benefits worth to advocate for, ranging from food security (and food rights), economic development, environment(al goods and services), health, democracy (governance) and culture.

To read the publication : Food in an Urbanized World: The Role of City Region Food Systems in Resilience and Sustainable Development
To read the reinforced argumentation with 34 propositions

Collaborative knowledge and understanding must be used to improve and reinforce such food common sense argument. Only doing this tirelessly we can break through the “Glass Ceiling” and push food issues into the highest arena of discussions, whether during international climate negotiations, or discussions about international trade agreements such as the on-going Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. (TTIP).

And there is little doubt that this list, a toolkit for policy makers, will keep growing as long as people innovate. Building up a dynamic and complex vision in which rural and urban territories, not only cities supported by surrounding regional food system, get more vital and  symbiotic.

There is no doubt about our current food system’s unsustainability, but in absence of a consensual scenario, world leaders are still tempted to foster economic levers to the detriment of environmental aspects. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact’ s ratification by more than 133 cities worldwide highlights the will of cities to play a role in new cooperation models: urban centers are now home to half of the global population and they, strategically, bridge local and global interests. A flourishing context of innovative practices related to agriculture diversification, rural tourism and alternative food systems is echoed in the growing number of urban agriculture projects that transform cities in creative social spaces, where new solutions bringing significant improvement to sustainable food systems are designed and experienced (Schiff, 2013).

Such cultural effervescence must not overshadow the traditional competence of public food procurement as a leverage for the shift of paradigm.

18_kitchen copenhagen

Today, 40% of calories are consumed out of home. The total social foodservice market of all Member States in EU-28 was valued €82 billion in 2013 (GIRA Foodservice, 2014). This is low compared to the 1.048 billions of euro of the annual turnover of the whole european food and beverage industry (Fooddrink Europe, 2014), but certainly relevant to give a significant signal. By experiencing that an in depth “cooking from scratch” re-engineering approach is propedeutical to high quality public meals, several pionniers have already paved the way to re-qualify Public Food Service (PFS) (Lacourt and Mariani, 2015). An effort is now needed to broaden the interest and attractiveness of cities for such a competence that is still too often outsourced at the lowest price.

Starting from the definition of a specific activity code to assess properly the economic weight of an activity that equals to 21 billions of meals served every year in EU. Acknowledging the potential impact of exemplarity to promote food education, social inclusion, local economy and to contrast the hidden costs of food waste and patients malnutrition in hospitals, not forgetting that public food services provides food on a daily basis to one european citizen every six. Therefore, the economic lever of public procurement seems appropriate to create suitable market conditions for more sustainable food systems and in the meantime it fosters local authorities’s authoritativeness and efficiency to raise population awareness and promote synergies with civil society in the emergence of more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.

Schiff, R. (2013). The Role of Food Policy Councils in Developing Sustainable Food Systems. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 3(2-3): 206-228>

GIRA Foodservice, (2014), The Contract Catering Market in Europe 2009 – 2014 – 15 counties, for FoodServiceEurope, October 2014

Fooddrink Europe, (2014) Data & Trends of the European Food and Drink Industry 2013-2014.

Lacourt, I., Mariani, M. (2015). City Food Policies. Securing our daily bread in an urbanizing world. Le Château edizioni, Aosta. 176 p. ISBN 978-88-7637-186-8

For more than 10 years of research to promote sustainability in Public Food Service, we have been faced with the difficulty to give a clearcut definition of what is really sustainable and what is not. For this reason we enlarged our vision based on life cycle analysis, considering not only environmental impacts but also social, cultural aspects of food systems… It was also in that vein that we evolved from food service perspective to urban food systems perpective in 2010, with the project Eating City.

We were deeply convinced at that time and still are of the necessity to develop a vision that support specific urban policies to manage urban food systems. But such effort could be unsufficient if it is only considering quantitative urban metabolism of food chains and food flows dimension. Similarly as frustrating attempts to assess sustainability, the complexity of logistics makes tricky sustainable urban food planning and zoning, leading people in endless debates, for instance, on what should be considered as local or not …

Texts such as the Protocol of Lima may renews our frame of thinking and help us to ponderate priorities. When we endorse the necessity “to recognize our shared responsibilities to the planet as a condition for the survival and progress of humankind“, we also agree on the difficulty to act without a global consensus as “the proclamation and pursuit of universal rights are not sufficient to adjust our behaviour, as rights are inoperative when there is no single institution able to guarantee the conditions of their application“.

The eight Principles of Universal Responsibility of the Protocol of Lima straightforwardly lead to the notion of the common good. A  recent review of “THE ECOLOGY OF LAW”  quoted: “We are now faced with choosing either to be friendly with our ecology of with we are not exclusive or choose to confront unbeatable battle of preventing our untimely extinction.” In other words, “we are badly in need of an objective framework in protecting the commons from total extinction “. In such context, “Law should not be seen as a means of violence or power but rather it should solidify the cultural and traditional lives of the people and make them sovereign.”

By recognizing the interdependences between communities and between humankind and Nature, these texts open the door to the discussion over the the notion of the commons, and in our case, about food as commons and not merely as a commodity.

  • Food as commons induces a shared responsibility that entitle communities to take into account immediate and deffered effects on environment and health.
  • Food as commons prescribes that a minority should not decide for the majority on a matter of life itself.
  • Food as commons unites people…

… and when we reach this point of awareness, we get a glimpse on the possibilities that are freed up when adopting the logic of commons.

Of course to consider food as commons and not a commodity requires a first step generosity that may seem uncompatible with current budget restrictions. But to consider food as commons and not commodity gives access to immaterial assets through which food is : more than a fuel or the sum of its parts”. And we have now enough successful projects and practices to refer to, that demonstrate how such understanding is a promising entry point to empower people for the change of paradigm. Eating City SC2015 United 4 Food

The Manifest Lima to Paris was presented at the meeting “What responsibility the world needs to face climate change? For a new environmental governance”, which took place in the Andean Community in Lima, Peru, on December 11, 2014, during the People’s Summit, a civil society event parallel to COP20, the UN Climate Summit.

It should be taken as start for a sustained call for support, with local and regional meetings taking place worldwide to discuss this proposal before the COP21 in Paris (29 November – 11 December 2015).

 

Read the Manifest

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