Let's Talk About Food!
On the 11th October we spent the day at the new community space in the Grafton centre, talking about food in Cambridge. A big thanks goes out to Ian and the Grafton team for hosting us, and to all our wonderful volunteers for helping us!
Never has there been such a need for a change in the way we think about food and the potential it has to play in tackling the deep-rooted challenges faced by our communities and the planet.
Since 2017, Cambridge Sustainable Food has made progress on overcoming these challenges in Cambridge, through an Action Plan, which you can look at here. The goals of this Action Plan are set to finish by 2020, so we need to create a new plan for the future! All of our work as a Community Interest Company is designed to tackle the food challenges we face locally and to create a better, more sustainable Cambridge for the future. One of the first steps in creating this Action Plan, and a key component for its success is input from you!
This event marks the launch of a public consultation and engagement process, aiming to find out what the public think about the future of sustainable food in our city. All of the information we gather as a part of this process will be considered in the development of the Action Plan. We set up a small exhibition on what CSF have been doing over the last few years to work on food sustainability throughout Cambridge. Passers by were welcomed into the community space, and encouraged them to engage with the exhibition and tell us what concerns them about food in Cambridge.
We want to raise the profile of healthy and sustainable food so that it becomes a mainstream topic. But, we can only do that by asking everybody what they think, as we build our action plan for the years ahead. So, we asked the public a question:
‘What fires you up about our food?’
Passers by used the Grafton centre’s floor to ceiling cork board to pin up their thoughts! All of these thoughts and ideas will be fed into our action plan for the city.
At the same time, we encouraged people to sign up to our manifesto and pledge to make a sustainable change to their lifestyle. Anyone who made a pledge was entered into a competition to win a hamper, full of tasty treats, from Radmore Farm Shop!
So, what does fire people up about our food?
After some initial analysis of the thoughts and ideas we heard at the event, here are some of the things people feel passionately about in Cambridge:
Broad concern about the unnecessary packaging and transport of food, and the associated need for incentives (for people and businesses) to reduce both of these things.
Many people emphasised the importance of supporting the local food industry. This included growing, eating and shopping locally. An important concern here, felt by many, was that local solutions need careful consideration: “people should eat and buy local food, but for this to happen eating locally needs to be a practical alternative (for everyone) to buying from big supermarkets”.
Lots of visitors mentioned their involvement in allotments and how they would like to see more across the city to enable more people to grow their own food. This linked with some interesting ideas from other members of the public, such as harvesting from public fruit trees, community veg growing schemes and providing more information on growing your own veg!
A secondary broad concern surrounding public health issues and the relationship of unhealthy diets, fast food businesses and a lack of truly healthy and sustainable food.
A final concern for many was food waste. There is lots of work being done in the city on food waste, but many people suggested businesses needed to step up. As one visitor pointed out: “It’s insane that we can waste so much food when so many people don’t have enough”.
This event was the first of several planned public consultations on sustainable food in Cambridge. We have more consultations planned. Take a look at our events schedule and keep an eye out on social media for announcements of the future consultations.
If you missed this event and still want to contribute to our Action Plan, you can do so below. We want to know what the people of Cambridge want, and need! Please tell us what is important to you by filling out this form: https://cambridgesustainablefood.org/action-plan-contributions