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Cities play an important role in ensuring the wellbeing of their citizens. This includes providing clean water, clean air, better local transportation, and healthy food for everyone. While food has not traditionally been seen as the responsibility of local authorities, this view is changing.

Through projects like Food Trails, local governments have been able to experiment and collect experience and expertise on why and how to develop urban food policies and they are eager to share it and exchange with peers to take food policies to the next level.

The ‘Midday munchies with urban food policies’ webinar series launched in March 2024 provided a platform for exchange between Food Trails cities, and other municipalities and stakeholders outside the project. It created an opportunity to inspire, learn, and encourage cooperation to solve common challenges in urban food systems.

Below are short introductions to all eight episodes and the full recordings.

#1 Why develop urban food policies?

“It has been increasingly recognised that food makes significant contributions to the fabric of our cities, their economic life, social life, and the environment,” says Prof. Paul Milbourne from Cardiff University in this inaugural episode. “Given this significance, it deserves policy recognition.”

Cities are more aware of their role in creating sustainable food systems and are increasingly taking active roles in improving food production and consumption for a greener, healthier, and more inclusive future. Carla Quiviger, Project Officer for the Bordeaux Metropolitan Area and Olga Voutsikaki, Project Officer for the City of Thessaloniki explain how they have developed their urban food policy and food policy council to help their city achieve their food ambitions.

#2 How to engage citizens and foster behavioural change?

This episode focuses on the importance of engaging with stakeholders to shape comprehensive urban food policies. “Food is already on the local agenda, it’s currently, in most cases, not yet coordinated in terms of integrated food strategies and action plans,” says expert and partner of the Food Trails project Stephanie Wunder, Head of the Sustainable Food Team at the think tank Agora Agriculture. “If we want to move to a more integrated food policy,” adds Wunder cities must map existing activities and actors working on food issues, develop strategies involving stakeholders and citizens, and involve them in pilot projects.

From the city’s experience, Funchal presents how they organised multiple focus groups with local stakeholders involved in food-related activities. This collaborative approach built trust among participants and was crucial in developing the city’s first urban food policy.

Groningen, on the other hand, implemented food education initiatives, including cooking classes in schools and evening programs, to teach children about healthy, plant-based eating and to change behaviours and habits from an early age.

#3 Which tools support cities in developing and implementing an urban food policy?

The third episode of the ‘Midday munchies’ presents two tools and frameworks developed during the Food Trails project that helped cities start their food policies: the Food Policy Action Canva and the Theory of Change. These tools were key for the early stages of policy development, mainly serving as a foundation for thorough planning in the Food Trails project.

Ernst-Jan Prosman, Researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, explains how the project partners took inspiration from the business model canvas and adapted it to food policy development. “Food policy becomes the desired change cities want to see,” he says, and the canvas helps define how it should look to be feasible and viable in each local context. The Theory of Change then supports cities in identifying indicators that will help the local administration monitor and evaluate the impact of their actions.

Nadia Tonoli, from the Municipality of Bergamo, shares how the Food Policy Action Canvas provided a clear picture of the city’s existing food initiatives. The tool helped the municipality see how they could support and collaborate with stakeholders to boost Bergamo’s food movement.

Similarly, Mette Svendgaard Høgholm, reports how the Municipality of Copenhagen used the Theory of Change to draft a detailed action plan after mapping what was already happening in the city. This plan included steps to involve different actors and set impact indicators to measure the strategy’s success.

Speakers stress that the most crucial point in developing food policies is to start the process and then understand that it is not set, but evolving over time and needs continuous adaptation, improvement, and involvement.

#4 How to work on food waste prevention and reduction?

Alice Casiraghi, Food Trails Crosscutting Manager on Circularity explains how food waste reveals deeper problems within our food systems. From overproduction and inefficient supply chains to consumer habits and inadequate policies, food waste highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to how we produce, distribute, and consume food. To tackle this issue cities need to act as a bridge between different local stakeholders to co-create solutions.

Warsaw and Birmingham present the different projects they set up, in collaboration with researchers, citizens, community gardens, or small restaurants to tackle food waste holistically. For example, Birmingham has connected people to collect and transform food scraps into compost for urban gardens. While Warsaw has improved the donation of food surplus from small restaurants to the food bank and optimised the storage and distribution of these donations to minimise food waste at all stages of the process.

#5 How do we use food procurement to foster more sustainable and inclusive cities?

Cities have a central role to play in building sustainable food systems. Whether it is by shaping a comprehensive food policy, engaging with stakeholders or setting up an anti-food waste strategy. Cities have a lot of action points they can leverage to encourage sustainable food consumption.

Another tool cities have is public procurement, through which municipalities can ensure access to organic, healthy, and sustainable meals in public canteens including schools and other institutions.

“When we [municipalities] do something with public procurement if we put in some sustainable criteria, we can actually move the market in a direction. We have the power to change things,” says Betina Bergmann Madsen, Food Trails Cross-cutting Manager on Climate and Chief Procurement Officer at the City of Copenhagen.

Public procurement is widely used by cities. However, its potential in shaping sustainable food consumption is often underestimated. When shaped with ambitious and inclusive criteria, food procurement can have a massive impact on producers and consumers.

Nadia Tonoli, City officer for Bergamo, explains that using food procurement in public school canteens fosters a healthy and local diet for children.

Bordeaux, in collaboration with a network of other French cities, has pushed more local and organic food consumption, explains Astrid Joubert, Food Governance Project Manager for Bordeaux Metropole.

#6 How can a city foster local and quality food production?

Our current food system is broken, and heavily dependent on global industrial food chains. Local food and short supply chains can reconnect people to their food environment, a healthier diet, and their community.

“Transforming food systems is not just a task of cities”, says Professor Frederike Praasterink from HAS University of Applied Sciences, “They [cities] are contingent to imperatives also at the national and international levels. But cities can lead the way and the Food Trails project facilitated and is facilitating collective learning across Europe.”

Shortening supply chains, working with local producers, and providing quality food to residents are keyway to fostering greener, healthier, and more inclusive food systems.

“There is no proper definition for local or rural – what consists of a local food system and regional food system,” says Praasterink. For her, local food systems and regional food systems are a counter-trend against globalised food systems.

Léa Ravinet, Sustainable Catering Project Officer at Grenobles-Alpes Metropolitan Area explains that the metropolitan government has been working intensively with farmers around the city to create dialogues on how to foster short food supply chains and bring food to the city. Tirana built the Agro Park, a food centre at the doors of the city, to accommodate producers in bringing in and out their products and boost local consumption, explains Fiona Konmi, Head of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Service for the city of Tirana.

#7 How can cities finance food ambitions?

Developing cities’ urban food policy ambitions takes time, resources and requires financing. Public money is often scarce and covers many other municipal areas. So how can it be used cleverly? How can cities finance food ambitions beyond public money?

Some solutions rest in engaging entrepreneurs, accessing national or European funding, or seeking impact investors.

“Think about the economy in the food policy,” says Thom Achterbosch, Senior Researcher at Wageningen University & Research. “There is a lot of creativity in entrepreneurial arenas when it comes to food. And building those places and locations where entrepreneurs can contribute to food systems transformation is an important way of showing impact.”

Indeed, Andrea Patrucco, Food Trails Project Manager, explains that Milan has developed strong collaborations with entrepreneurs by opening its doors to the startup ecosystem.

Sarah Pullen, Food System Lead for the Birmingham City Council, adds that Birmingham faced a lot of financial challenges over the past few years, but they created a community of food actors. Also, by working transversally across departments, they managed to extend the funding of their activities. For her, the key to financing food policy is developing strong and trusting relationships.

#8 How to ensure access to healthy and quality food for all?

None of these efforts would be sufficient if access to food is limited to those who can afford good quality. How can cities help in ensuring access to good food for all?

Shaleen Meelu, Food Trails Cross-cutting Manager on Nutrition in Cities, describes that cities can have a great impact on their residents and enable them to make healthy and sustainable food choices, to do so they must address every aspect of the food chain.

For example, Groningen’s ‘food hub’ approach ensures everyone can, in one way or another, interact with initiatives on local, organic, and sustainable food. Activities include cooking classes, community-supported agriculture, or farmer markets, explains Hiltje van der Wal, Groningen Policy Officer.

But for Meelu, “In Europe, Northern Europe especially, we need to learn more from our Southern European partners on what eating and community means.”

Elisa Porreca, Project Officer for Milan, shares that the city promotes meals with fresh and seasonal products in all public schools. This allows all children to have a guaranteed healthy meal. They have more than 30 different menus that they adapt based on the pupils’ diets, the season, and the producers.

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Food Trails is an EU Horizon 2020 project involving 11 cities, 3 universities, and 5 food organizations. Its goal is to promote more resilient, safe, fair, and diverse urban food systems through co-designed actions in Food 2030-led Living Labs, enabling the development of systemic urban food policies.

The Food Trails project has received fundings from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, under grant agreement n. 101000812.