{"id":1292,"date":"2020-05-25T15:37:51","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T15:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2020-05-25T15:38:30","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T15:38:30","slug":"eating-local-and-plant-based-diets-how-to-feed-cities-sustainably","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1292\/eating-local-and-plant-based-diets-how-to-feed-cities-sustainably\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating local and plant-based diets: how to feed cities sustainably"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by\u00a0Caleb Davies<\/h5>\n

How do you feed a city? It is one of the great questions of our time. After all, for a species that ultimately depends on plants to feed ourselves, we do tend to cram ourselves into places that are rather unfriendly towards them. Our cities are built around cars, offices and perhaps the odd park \u2013 not fields of crops.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Professor\u00a0Christian Bugge Henriksen<\/a>, a climate and food security expert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, says that feeding city dwellers sustainably is a \u2018triple challenge\u2019.<\/p>\n

The first part of it is increasing urbanisation: by 2050, it\u2019s expected that 6.5 billion of us will live in megacities \u2013 that\u2019s\u00a0nearly two out of every three people<\/a>. The second issue is the negative effects on our climate; forests are cleared to produce farmland, ruminants produce methane, and transportation of food from farms to cities emits huge amounts of carbon dioxide. The third part is malnutrition: many of us, especially in cities, eat too much of the wrong things, particularly processed meat. \u2018Currently, 70% of all deaths in Europe can be somehow linked to non-communicable diseases that are affected by malnutrition,\u2019 said Prof. Henriksen.<\/p>\n

One solution might lie in having the inhabitants of cities eat food that is produced as close to them as possible. It is commonly believed that eating locally produced food is better for the environment because it has travelled a shorter distance from farm to fork. But what does the evidence say?<\/p>\n

Truth be told, there isn\u2019t an awful lot of it, which is why Professor\u00a0Matthew Gorton<\/a>\u00a0at Newcastle University, UK, began coordinating the\u00a0Strength2Food<\/a>\u00a0project. This is a sprawling endeavour, looking at short food supply chains in terms of their environmental and social sustainability.<\/p>\n

Prof. Gorton says that, in general, the project has found that short food supply chains live up to their good reputation. \u2018By and large, they provide better margins to producers, the carbon footprints tend to be lower, with also better indicators for social sustainability,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

But there are instructive anomalies. Take a part of the project where Prof. Gorton and his colleagues looked at the fishing industry around the Newcastle area. The main catch landed here is langoustine, but it is nearly all exported to Italy, France and Spain, while UK consumers eat mainly imported fish such as salmon, he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018One of the things we\u2019re interested in is: how can we improve that?\u2019 said Prof. Gorton. \u2018How can we get local fish on the menu in the north east of England?\u2019<\/p>\n

Fish box<\/strong><\/p>\n

One idea the team explored was to create a \u2018fish box\u2019 containing fresh local catch that people couldn\u2019t otherwise buy. But it wasn\u2019t a quick win. It turned out consumers wanted recipes and cooking instructions as well as the fish, and some wanted it more or less often. Also, subscribers \u2013 of which there are currently only 45 \u2013 pick up the boxes from local restaurants, which means the service isn\u2019t easy to scale up quickly and involves a dedicated car journey separate from the customer\u2019s supermarket shop.<\/p>\n

But while the scheme wasn\u2019t an overnight hit, it provided some useful lessons, such as how crucial it is to not ask consumers to make several separate journeys to pick up food.<\/p>\n

One way to solve that is to get local food into supermarkets. The trouble is that people often think with their purse when out for their weekly food shop and tend to buy cheaper options even if they like the idea of local food. Prof. Gorton suspected that this could be remedied if there were point of sale displays to remind people of the benefits of local food.<\/p>\n

This idea was tested out with one of the project\u2019s partners, Konzum, a supermarket chain. The team set up an experiment in 18 stores across Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia where local apples were sold alongside cheaper imported apples in three different ways.<\/p>\n

In one group of stores the local apples had point of sale displays with the slogan: \u2018I buy local; I buy it fresher; I support the local farmer.\u2019 A second group of stores had a picture of a young and healthy-looking farmer with the national flag. In both of these groups, the idea was to send the message that these local apples were healthy and buying them supported local people. The third group was a control, with no extra marketing material.<\/p>\n

The team found this promotional material had a significant effect on people\u2019s buying habits. For example, in stores in and around Zagreb, Croatia, local apples accounted for only 34% of the sales in the control stores during the test, but that rose to 56% in the stores with the pictorial point of sale displays.<\/p>\n

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\u2018The time is really ripe to go in and transform the food system.\u2019<\/p>\n

Prof. Christian Bugge Henriksen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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All this suggests short food supply chains are a positive move and can be made to work, even if it\u2019s not easy. But how do we scale up the schemes that work? An answer should be forthcoming from the\u00a0FoodSHIFT2030 project<\/a>, which is led by Prof. Henriksen.<\/p>\n

His team is looking at how we can scale-up innovations that will help make food in urban areas both more sustainable and more healthy. There is a particular focus on getting people to switch to a plant-based diet, which can\u00a0halve the carbon emissions<\/a> associated with an omnivorous diet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early days for the project, which formally began in January 2020. But it has already established spaces known as\u00a0accelerator labs<\/a>, in nine cities around Europe that are each exploring different innovations that could be scalable. These range from\u00a0educating school pupils about local food<\/a>\u00a0in Athens, Greece, to\u00a0vertical farming and other food production technologies<\/a>\u00a0in Barcelona, Spain.<\/p>\n

Urban agriculture<\/strong><\/p>\n

Besides short food supply chains there is also potential for scaling up urban farming. \u2018A\u00a0global study<\/a>\u00a0has demonstrated that up to 10% of the global output of legumes, roots and tubers, and vegetable crops could be produced by urban agriculture,\u2019 said Prof. Henriksen. In other words, cities could grow a significant amount of the vegetables their populations need on roofs, allotments and other bits and pieces of space.<\/p>\n

Scaling up any innovation to an entire city requires political buy-in, but there are some good signs on this front. For example, in 2015 the\u00a0Milan Urban Food Policy Pact<\/a>\u00a0was launched and this collective commitment to develop sustainable food systems is now signed by 209 cities around the world.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the Good Food Policies Declaration,\u00a0organised through the C40 cities network<\/a>\u00a0for the world\u2019s megacities. Signatory cities to this pact have agreed to work towards achieving the\u00a0Planetary Health Diet<\/a>\u00a0by 2030. This diet, developed by EAT, a non-profit organisation, in partnership with\u00a0The Lancet\u00a0<\/em>medical journal, is mostly composed of plants and whole grains and is designed to be healthy and environmentally sustainable for the whole world population.<\/p>\n

As well as this, Prof. Henriksen thinks the Covid-19 pandemic might provide added impetus for authorities to rethink food supply chains. So far, long international food supply chains have been remarkably resilient but it\u2019s not clear how long that will last \u2013 or that any future pandemic would be so forgiving. At the very least, change is in the air when it comes to food in cities.<\/p>\n

\u2018You could say,\u2019 said Prof. Henriksen, \u2018that the time is really ripe to go in and transform the food system.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Issue<\/h3>\n

The global food system is responsible for up to 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a\u00a02019 report from the UN\u2019s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In March 2020, the EU\u2019s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors published\u00a0advice on how to make Europe\u2019s food system environmentally, socially and economically sustainable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the recommendations are treating food as a common good rather than a commodity and addressing power asymmetries in the food system by requiring food manufacturers and retailers to be sustainable and helping consumers make informed food choices.<\/p>\n

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How to make local food systems sustainable<\/h3>\n

Professor Matthew Gorton gives his top tips for making local food systems work most sustainably.<\/p>\n

Think about the benefits to consumers.<\/strong>\u00a0Many local food initiatives can have a vaguely charitable feel to them, says Gorton, with a \u2018support local famers\u2019 vibe. That may be laudable but it\u2019s unlikely to work in the long term if it\u2019s the only appeal to consumers. It\u2019s better to sell local produce on the tangible benefits to consumers, such as improved freshness or taste.<\/p>\n

And convenience.<\/strong>\u00a0Local produce boxes can be popular. But the logistics of getting to consumers can be tricky. If people have to make a special trip that not convenient for them, it also adds carbon emissions. Better to think smart and try to organise larger scale activities, like local produce markets or deliveries to large workplaces.<\/p>\n

It takes time.<\/strong>\u00a0Getting people to change their behaviour is tricky and can take time. Too often this isn\u2019t recognised in retail \u2013 for example supermarkets will often trial products for a week or two and pull them if sales don\u2019t take off. Behaviour change takes time to bed in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media. <\/em><\/p>\n

Published by Horizon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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