For many years, the Eating City platform has been involved in observing and monitoring the economy of the agri-food chain with a particular focus on public food services. All this with a view to sustainable development and with the aim of facilitating the active role of young people in defining a new food paradigm (through the Eating City Summer Campuses).

Between April 24th-26th, the EU Commission hosted an #EUvsVirus hackathon whereby participants were invited to develop innovative solutions to COVID-19 related challenges in 48h!

We are very proud to annouce that Robin Gourlay who is a member of Eating City International Platform’s Steering Committee and he is also Leader of PFS internal Focus Group has been awarded an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” (OBE) for his services to the Scottish food and drink industry. Congratlations Robin for this well-deserved title!

Food Governance – “Sharing ideas about the use of a “blockchain” system in food governance”

We are pleased to announce that the selection results for the 7th “Eating City Summer Campus”, are now available.  We invite candidates to consult their emails.

Congratulations to Dr Katie Wilson, Eating City’s Steering Committee Member and Nutrition Focus Group Leader who has has recently been appointed Executive Director at the Urban School Food Alliance in the USA.

The Urban School Food Alliance was created by school foodservice professionals in 2012 to address the unique needs of the nation’s largest school districts. As a nonprofit, they share best practices for the health and wellness of students all over the United States.

After 10 days of discussions, workshops, sessions with experts, design-making, the 29 Food Dynamics participating in this year’s Eating City Summer Campus were able to investigate the complex challenges facing food sustainable systems with the understanding that truly sustainable solutions not only take into account biodiversity/soil/water /environment, but also people, culture, economy and the context of a given time and place.

Beginning of June, Maurizio Mariani was in Marseille, France for the restitution of the Intereg European project entitled “MADRE AVITEM”  where partners presented the project’s final results and launched the Mediterranean network on metropolitan agriculture and food systems amongst various cities and stakeholders.

credit photo : Let's Food Cities

It was also the opportunity to meet up with Eating City partners Let’s Food Cities and Milan Urban Food Policy Pact on the exchange of food initiatives on a Mediterranean scale.

More information can be found here

Eating City’s Director Maurizio Mariani was at the Italian Senate on 27th June to present yearly findings regarding the main financial indicators of Italian and international Public Food Services.

Eating City is very excited to announce that Chef Jamilka Borges from Pittsburgh, PA, USA, who was recently awarded the title of “Chef of the Year” by Pittsburgh Magazine, will be cooking for participants, speakers and staff at this year’s Eating City Summer Campus and interacting with them to foster a new era of sustainable gastronomy.

“Youths & Labor – how and why Food service should be a lever to create job opportunities for the young generation”

“Youths & Labor – how and why food service should be a lever to create job opportunities for the young generation”  #EC_SC2018

as told by Ana Puhač, Assistant to the CEO at Eating City

On October 23rd and 24^th 2017, Eating City staff and some participants of this year’s Summer Campus gathered together in New York City to attend the James Beard Food Summit and the annual James Beard Leadership Awards.

During dinner on October 19th, a youth delegation of the 2017 Eating City Summer Campus read the 5th “Villarceaux Declaration” in front of more than 90 Mayors participating in the MUFPP annual meeting in Valencia, Spain.

This was a great opportunity for our youths to foster their vision for a sustainable food system.  Watch the video!

Eating City Steering Committee member Nicola Robecchi and the Novaterra Foundation created the menu for the dinner, and Katie Wilson introduced the reading.

Discover the delicious, sustainable and seasonal Menu featuring an extract of the Declaration here.

Nicola Robecchi                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Katie Wilson

Eating City to read its 5th Declaration at the Mayors’ Summit of the Milan Pact 2017 (MUFPP) IN VALÈNCIA, ON 19, 20, 21 OCTOBER https://www.eatingcity.org/eating-city-read-5th-declaration-annual-gathering-mayors-summit-milan-pact-2017-mufpp/ https://www.eatingcity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/logo_tamanyo-4.png

Eating City will be reading its “5th Villarceaux Declaration” on Sustainable Food Systems (written by 27 Professional Food Dynamics) at the 2017 Annual Gathering and the Mayors’ Summit of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) signatory cities. The event will take place in València, Spain on 19 – 21 October.

Download the programme

The UNESCO World Food Systems Chair symposium organized from 16 to 18 November 2015 in Montpellier, France was the opportunity to explore three levers of strategic action that can be mobilized by cities and urban areas through concrete examples presented by political and technical leaders of urban governments,

• READ the proceedings online: English 

Isabelle Lacourt, Head of Research and Development at Eating City presented Risteco’s vision on the role of Public Catering.  Indeed,  public catering is a tremendous lever for implementing more effective public food policies and Isabelle give the examples of  Copenhagen, Denmark, and Mouans-Sarthous, France. You can watch the video of Isabelle’s presentation (in French) and download her presentation (in English).

The next International Symposium of UNESCO Chair will be held in Paris on 4, 5 and 6 December 2017 – “Socio-anthropological Perspectives on Urban Food Styles in Africa, Latin America and Asia”.

Registration open early October on:

www.lemangeur-ocha.com

www.chaireunesco-adm.com

The Eating City Summer Campus is currently in its 5th year.

In the truly inspiring location of the Bergerie de Villarceaux, near to Paris, 30 young professionals aged 22-32 spent more than a week together learning and sharing their ideas to shift the current food system paradigm leading to a written “declaration” aimed at alerting stakeholders across the whole food system.  “This declaration is a call to action. Critical collaborations, opportunities, and issues are needed to reduce the environmental impact of food, improve food business practices, and increase nutritional consumption.”

Elisabeth T Jones covered this year’s event dedicated sustainable gastronomy and you can read her article which features in the following Food Tank blog post.

The Flagship event of the Eating City International Platform is it’s annual Summer Campus held at “La Bergerie de Villarceaux” which is located 70 kms from Paris.

The 5th edition was dedicated to “gastronomy facing sustainability” and instead of us at Eating City sharing our thoughts on the week, we feel that this article, written by one of the 28 participants, Valentina De Gregorio, IUC Torino Food, Law and Finance Student, gives a more genuine insight.

Read Valentina’s article here

This 5th edition of the Eating City Summer Campus was dedicated to the theme of “Gastronomy facing Sustainability”.

Find out more about the speakers, the sustainable “cook-off” contest and the work carried out which lead to the writing of a final “Declaration” on sustainable food systems by the participants themselves.

Eating City has been collaborating with Nicolas Hulot’s Foundation for Nature and Mankind for many years now and sends warm congratulations to Nicolas Hulot for his recent nomination as French Ecology Minister.

Since the begining, Eating City aims to give life to ideas, to stimulate intellectual dialogue and to foster long term vision on the future of sustainable urban food supply chains worldwide. It is also action-oriented and shows evidences good practices and constructive propositions to shift the paradigm of food system.

In such frame, it introduces spirulina during Venice Carnival as gifted example of sustainable food of the future.

Historically, food has been a pivotal factor in the political construction of Europe, as Common Agriculture Policy has been one of the pillars of the European Union. Therefore, as food and drink industry is the largest EU manufacturing sector in terms of turnover and employment, it is not a utopia to think that sustainable food systems could become major assets of the Europe 2020 strategy of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

“The Declaration for a Food and Agriculture Transition in the Mediterranean” of MCAF highlights how decades of disinterest towards Mediterranean food and agriculture is detrimental for the current preparation of future actions to preserve environment, health, jobs, quality of life, culture, for mediterranean populations…

On October 13-14  2016, in Rome, Italy,  in the FAO headquarters , for two days,  Mayors and representatives from over 40 signatory cities of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, technical experts and country representatives and other stakeholders met on the occasion of World Food Day to review the progress of the Milan Pact and discuss priorities, results of follow up to the Milan Pact launch one year ago by the city of Milan, present the Milan Pact Awards and discuss and next steps.

Today, Higher Education Institutions can, and must play their role in promoting a spirit of innovation and encouraging a sense of responsibility in the transition towards Sustainable Food Systems.
Not only must they work to transfer knowledge between Professors and their students by teaching the concept of sustainability in an integrated and interdisciplinary way, they must also foster an efficient exchange of information and experience between Education & Research on the one hand and enterprises and civil society on the other.

Eating City has understood this challenge well and has teamed up with the I.S.L.E Education for Sustainable Development Network in order to be right at the heart of this important approach.

Despite increasing awareness of climate change, our emissions of greenhouse gases continue on a relentless rise. Even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases today, global warming and climate change will continue to affect future generations. Among the main climate risks for human societies: reduced agricultural productivity, heightened water insecurity, increased exposure to extreme weather events, collapse of ecosystems and increased health risks, at least 4 of them will have an immediate impact on rank 2 “Zero Hunger” Millenium development goal.

The unprecedented scale of the Agreement obtained in Paris during COP21 makes it an important milestone to mobilize all the actors of the international community to keep human made global warming less than 2°C – and if possible less than 1,5 °C – in the horizon 2100. It reinforces the core importance of non state actors to find and implement solutions for climate and to meet the objectives of the period 2015-2020. It also open the doors for their participation to the reassessment of States’ indicative contributions in 2018.

This 4th edition of the summer campus has looked at the relationships between Agro-ecology and Public food Service.

In his last newsletter, Wayne Roberts is presenting a re-elaboration of the potential benefits of City Regional Food Systems, published by the Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit.

The Manifest Lima to Paris is a contribution of the South American group, member of the Alliance for Responsible and Sustainable Societies. The document will be submitted to the organizing committee of the COP21.

The aim is to: ” “Propose the urgent adoption a “Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities”.  Such Declaration will govern the relations between states and peoples, will be shared promoted to all sectors of society and will be the basis of international laws of responsibility. There are indispensable to acknowledge our interdependencies and make us, people of the world, a community of destiny.”

Sign and endorse the Manifest!

Here is a post from Ana Maria Rivero Santos, a Colombian researcher on food sovereignty who participated to the third Eating City Summer Campus. Before coming back to her country she had the opportunity to attend three events where food was at the core of the debate : “Terra Madre – We Feed the Planet” – WFTP-in Milan, the 7th Sustainable Food Planning Conference – AESOP 2015 and the 3rd World Forum on Local Economic Development – LED Forum;  she accepted to share some of her impressions.

When Eating City platform 2010-2014 was launched, 2015 has been highlighted as the year of Expo, an exceptional opportunity to foster global conversation on sustainable food issues, always focusing on the need to get ready to deliver a clear message during EXPO time.

In July 2014, the Municipality of Milan and Fondazione Cariplo signed an agreement aimed at developing an innovative five-year term project about city’s Food Policy, with the objective to coordinate all policies dealing with food from different perspectives: community, welfare, education, environment, well-being and international relations.

The city has been strongly advocating an international protocol: the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact is going to be one of the most important legacies of Expo 2015.
More than 100 cities signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact presented to the UN secretary general.

Here is an interview of the Mayor of Milan, Giuliano Pisapia made in February 2015 and published in the dossier on City Food Policies prepared for the portal CITEGO

Extracts from the review of the Essay : “The Ecology of Law – Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community” by Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei

Read the original paper by Alagie Jingkang

Event reported by Sizwe Nyuka. Eat-In, hosted by Ikhaya Garden and Ekasi project green, supported by Slow Food Youth Network.

The Groupe de Bruges will officially launch its latest project ‘CAP What’s cooking?. Recipes for understanding the Common Agricultural Policy’’, in close collaboration with the Slow Food Youth Network (SFYN) and the European Young Farms Organisation (CEJA).  The event will host a mix of cookery demonstrations, farmers’ portraits and presentations on the relation between food, farming and the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

See Agenda

In a few hours the adventure will come to a conclusion, so many mixed feelings, their intensity matching the intensity of those last ten days. We shared life experiences, academic backgrounds, opinions, great meals in that magical space called La Bergerie de Villarceaux.

I’m proud to introduce the third Villarceaux Declaration “United 4 Food” and I invite you to sign after reading the document.

We are 42 young people from 34 countries spanning five continents. We hold a wide range of perspectives: we are chefs, farmers, gastronomists, lawyers, students and researchers in environmental, food and social sciences, urban planning, economics, and communication.

As public food service has been until now the poor relation of catering, far behind gourmet restaurants, today, the race for sustainability could be a chance to restore the status of such service and to highlight the cooking qualifications of these professional chefs required to prepare good and nutrient meals, lowering environmental impacts and with a limited budget.

Eating City is a multi-year program of activities promoted and managed by the
Consortium Risteco

Eating City head office
357 route du Goutier 73470 Novalaise, France
Tel: +33(0)479603950, Mobile: +33(0)624860454

This meeting has occured within a long activity of dialogue, started in 1995, between FPH, the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, based in Beijing and lately with Risteco.

Among the main steps of this process of dialogue: the visits in Shandong in 2006 and 2008, the international conferences in Ningxia in 1999, 2009, 2010, in Beijing in 2010, the workshop organised in Turin within the second edition of China Europe in 2007, the participation of a chinese delegation in Terra Madre event in 2008, in Turin and to the first international conference of Eating City organised in Rome in 2010.

The City of Tirana in the frame of Eating City International Platform organized a 2 days event (June 13-14, 2014) related to Food safety and Food Sustainability in European Emerging Countries, Balkan Countries included.

In the year of EXPO Milan, the Eating City Summer Campus has welcome 42 young participants from all over the world, aged 22-28, involved any aspect related to food. This year participants reflected on the sustainability of food systems by looking at the four elements: water, air, earth and fire.

Read the article and support the declaration

Since the launch of its Manifesto, in 2010, Eating City has been promoting a reflection about the relevance of urban food policies.

The amount of food being used for meals in the care sector – hospitals, care homes and home meal services – is huge. The standard way meal provisions in this sector has been organized over the last decades comes with a lot of sustainability issues. Big scale, industrialized production is demanding cheap, non-environmentally friendly methods. Products are sourced from all over the world, selected for their price, ignoring the costs of all the extra transport resulting from this process. Fresh food on the plate has become an exception rather than the rule, with implications for the taste and the well-being of consumers in hospitals, care homes and at home. Food waste within the care industry has grown dramatically.

The city eats. It eats food, but also it consumes the land needed to produce it. The flows created by an urban settlement in relation to its food requirements are very intense, important and of course inevitable Sustainability regards all aspects ranging from production, processing, distribution and logistics.

Why a Summer Campus?

Implementing food sustainability means a deep conversion of the whole food supply chain, largely based on replacing industrialized & standardized products by man know-how.

Consequently, training is one of the main tools promoted by the participants of all Eating City workshops so far. Especially, training for young people : our future decision makers. For this reason within the project Eating City has been launched the idea to organize a summer campus open to young European farmers and chefs in order to increase their awareness and vision about sustainable food systems; to create a new generation of future decision makers able to take into account social, cultural and environmental value and to place people at the center of economy.

Dialogue process is engaged for the construction of a new economic paradigm where human labor is at the center of economy and  environment is taken into account among the other entrepreneurial decision variables, in order to develop a new culture of doing Business.

As cities expand, the needs of farmers, citizens and workers increased in urban as well as in rural areas. While impacts of the food and financial crisis affect both rural and urban populations, the urban poor have been among the hardest hit. Citizens are almost exclusively dependent on food purchases and variations in food prices and income directly translate into diminished purchasing power and rising rates of food insecurity, thus compromising dietary quantity and quality. The issues linked with urban food policy call for a framework integrating a wide range of sustainable food and agriculture system elements into a community at a site, or neighbourhood or on city region wide scale.

The workshop has involved stakeholders (e.g, actors of food chain, scholars, and authorities) to share views and practices in order to draw lessons for inclusive, innovative and sustainable food urban planning.

They wrote  a Rome’s declaration addressed to the European MEPs and decision makers in view of future elections in UE Parliament.

Eating City Summer Campus partners can be involved in one or more steps of the process, for instance to find candidates or to participate in the organization of the campus.

The core purpose of Eating City summer campus is to build understanding and trust around complex and challenging issues related to urban food systems among young generations in order to create lasting networks, and define real solutions, either small or large, that participants can implement in their future careers for the betterment of society as a whole and for personal growth. 

These videos are made to document best practices or to interview the participants of different events performed within Eating City framwork. They are also available on the Eating City channel (YouTube)

“Eating and Talking in the Square” is born to facilitate the dialogue and increase citizens’ awareness on the future of food systems, with particular attention to metropoles, more and more crowded, energy intensive, which want to become smart cities.

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The aim of the Eating City platform is to create opportunities of international meeting, to elaborate case studies and publications with concrete proposals useful for public and private decision makers, working upstream and downstream of the food chain and also for food industry and food service operators and buyers.

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Towards a shift of paradigm of our daily Food System: From Commodities to Common Goods

Edition after edition, Eating City Summer Campuses involve youths and entrust them with the writing of a common “declaration” on what their vision and priorities to build up sustainable food systems are.  You can read more about the six previous Summer Campuses below..