In the quiet cloisters of a former monastery in Parma, now the city’s Open Lab, representatives from across Europe gathered to roll up their sleeves and talk about food: how it is grown, distributed, eaten and shared in urban life. This was the Eurocities Academy training on food policy hosted by the city of Parma – part of the wider mission of Eurocities’ Working Group on Food to empower municipalities through practical, peer to peer learning.
Parma: Starting with honesty, building with evidence
Parma has long worn its culinary heritage with pride, yet the idea of a formal food policy was new. “It was an obvious choice to propose a training dedicated to food policy. Because we don’t have a food policy. It was truly a way to learn how to approach the path leading to a food policy for our city,” explains Carlotta Beghi, Main Executive Contact for the Food Policy and UNESCO Creative City office in Parma.
Crucially, the Eurocities Academy helped Parma translate its ambition. The city left with a clear lesson: understand the local food system before drafting policy. “We cannot just copy a policy from the City of Milan…We are a smaller, totally different city, so we cannot just copy and paste it here. And so we need the data to understand what we’re dealing with locally,” says Beghi.
That evidence first approach is already under way. From January, the University of Parma will begin mapping production, distribution and consumption patterns, guiding the first political and technical decisions on priorities. An informal agreement with the university has identified two professors to support the municipality, ensuring Parma’s strategy is grounded in research. Based on the data, the city also plans to implement a pilot by the end of the year and has plans to weave food into its programme as European Youth Capital 2027.
Parma’s commitment starts from solid foundations. The municipality is alive with actions that anchor its culture of healthy, sustainable diets. For example, its school catering service ranks first in Italy for the sustainability of its menu and children’s response to meals.
Through ‘Madegus – Maestri del Gusto’, nutrition professionals eat with pupils in canteens, teaching seasonality, food waste reduction and balanced diets. And, for the past 25 years, Giocampus combined physical education with food and sustainability learning for five to seventeen year old, running through the school year and into summer and winter camps. “That’s the one summer campus that saves pretty much every family in Parma,” Beghi smiles.
If there was anxiety at the outset: “When the political level decided to start developing a food policy, I kept saying, ‘I don’t know anything about it’,” shares Beghi. It has since given way to confidence rooted in process, data and partnership.
It was truly a way to learn how to approach the path leading to a food policy for our city.
The Eurocities Academy also offered Parma a pragmatic tool for stakeholder engagement: a framework developed through the Food Trails project, which helps cities decide when and how to involve different actors.
“Our political level was keen to involve everyone from the beginning, yet each of them has different interests,” explains Beghi. “It was a relief to learn there’s an engagement tool that explains when it’s best to involve certain stakeholders.”
Turku: From food aid to climate smart systems
Across the table in Parma sat representatives from Turku, facing a stark challenge. “There are more people in food lines nowadays and the need for food aid is getting bigger and bigger,” says Noora Orvasto, Leading Expert at the City of Turku. Food aid had just been added to Turku’s city strategy, and the Eurocities Academy training was an opportunity to exchange practical perspectives with peers, from logistics and NGO partnerships to service design.
A key insight Turku came home with, was that food policy is not a single issue agenda; it sits at the intersection of health, social inclusion and climate goals. So the city plans to strengthen its cross departmental cooperation, because food touches everything from social services to climate and education.
“We are planning a larger strategic food strategy in Turku,” adds Anna Mari Sopenlehto Jokinen, Senior Advisor at the City of Turku. One promising innovation now on the table is the Food First project, Turku’s application to the Bloomberg Philanthropics challenge. The project will develop a platform that lets people book collection slots for food aid, reducing stigma from queuing while linking residents to other municipal services.
Turku also shared its long experience in healthy school meals. In Finland, pupils serve themselves, which both reduces plate waste and gives children agency. “We also have children panels that choose the kind of food they want to eat,” recounts Orvasto. “It’s quite surprising to see what they choose. One of their top choices is vegetable soup, and spinach pancakes are very popular.”
It was a relief to learn there’s an engagement tool that explains when it’s best to involve certain stakeholders.
Brno: New to the table, quick to learn
For Brno, the Eurocities Academy offered a structured entry point into a fast moving field. “The food topic is quite new for Brno,” says Kristína Ďuratná, from the Department of Metropolitan Cooperation at the City of Brno. With INTERREG funding, the city launched a pilot on Food Districts inspired by Turin. Within the pilot, the municipality has mapped production and distribution systems and analysed the local ecosystem’s challenges and opportunities.
Brno left the training with a notebook full of adaptable ideas: Bucharest’s community garden guidelines; Brussels’ Good Food label as a recognisable certificate for restaurants using local and seasonal ingredients; and Milan’s model of allocating city owned land to local farmers to shorten supply chains and support small businesses.
Back home, Brno is also applying for Horizon funding to deepen work on school catering – from showing canteen staff how to use local products daily to communicating that they already do so.
One line from a Parma professor stuck with Ďuratná: “You don’t just throw the cabbage away; you also throw all the energy you put in it.” That insight is now powering Brno’s plans for food waste education in school canteens.
The value of the Eurocities Academy
Cities came to the Eurocities Academy training with concrete challenges and left with transferable methods, evidence pathways, and policy tools – plus a network of peers to call when things get complicated.
The Academy mirrors Eurocities’ wider urban view: that cities are the delivery engines of social inclusion and climate action; that change happens through adaptive learning rather than copy and paste; and that co creation with residents, schools, NGOs, universities and businesses is what turns policy into daily practice.
We have children panels that choose the kind of food they want to eat.
It also underlines how Eurocities links policy ambition to implementation: through the Working Group on Food, the Academy, and connections to European projects like Cleverfood and Food Trails, cities can move from “Where do we start?” to “Here’s our pilot, and here’s how we’ll scale it.”
Why this matters now
Access to healthy and sustainable food remains challenging in Europe, while cities face binding climate targets and budget pressures. The experiences in Parma show how local governments can design out stigma, cut waste, shorten supply chains, and embed food education, not in isolation, but by learning from one another and tailoring ideas to local realities.
Back in Parma’s Open Lab, the conversations were candid, friendly and easy. Participants came up with practical next steps: Parma’s data led policy pathway and pilot, Turku’s Food First platform and cross department push, Brno’s school centred innovation and waste education. These are doable actions with measurable impact.
And that is the promise of the Eurocities Academy: a table where cities adapt; where expertise is shared; and where new alliances form between people who may never have met otherwise. The solutions our cities need are discovered when they sit around the same table, comparing notes, and leaving with new ideas and new friends to help turn those ideas into reality.
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The Eurocities Academy training on food policies unfolded over two days of presentations and group discussions, led by external experts from Milan, Bergamo, Eurocities, the University of Parma, and the City of Parma. The Eurocities Academy is the training service of Eurocities. It provides city officials with the expertise and skills they need to address current and future urban challenges through expert knowledge, peer-learning, and applied learning formats. Since it was established in 2024, the Academy has already trained over 350 city officials from over 160 European cities. If your city would like to host a similar training, contact Guillem Ramirez Chico.
The Eurocities Academy and the Cleverfood project champion a food systems approach and governance models that make healthy, sustainable food accessible to all. Both initiatives stress the urgency of improving food environments and call for stronger EU support to help cities deliver on this ambition.
