2006 archive

Autumn 2006

Multicultural communities

Our Greener Curry report, exploring how to be local, ethnic and ethical, is due to be launched this autumn. It highlights existing policy support for sustainable food and uncovers how multicultural communities and business owners may be motivated to buy sustainable food. The report looks at examples of sustainable development already practiced by ethnic businesses and communities and makes recommendations for encouraging more.

Restaurants

The restaurants report is also now nearing completion and we aim to publish in the winter. One of the likely recommendations will be to create a forum for restaurants interested in sustainability issues.

We have been working with over 30 different restaurants and catering facilities in London, with varying levels of contact and progress so far. As well as recommending suppliers of ingredients, we have compiled a list of sustainable packaging suppliers. We have also been examining ways of helping restaurants find ways of composting food waste.

Networking and promotion#

We are helping the London Libraries Development Agency with a promotion on food and drink books: An Appetite for Reading. As part of this promotion they are putting copies of The Jellied Eel in most London libraries. Many other organisations are also interested in stocking The Jellied Eel, so we are exploring options to cover the costs of printing and distributing more copies. The Greater London farmers e-newsletter is now being compiled by Emma from the Good Food on the Public Plate project, in association with the National Farmers Union.

Our work with the London Centre of Excellence on sustainable procurement is underway. This is being led by Camden Council who, over the next two years, will be concentrating on a handful of procurement issues, including food. The good practice that this project hopes to promote will then be shared with other London boroughs.

Ben has been invited to South Korea in October to present information about the London Food Strategy and the work of London Food Link to promote a sustainable food system in the capital.

London Food Strategy

London Food is planning to release an implementation plan which may include new projects to:

Increase public sector procurement of sustainable food
Create a business plan for a sustainable food 'hub'
Provide training for caterers, particularly school dinner staff
Promote London's food culture through tourism.

As well as commissioning their own projects London Food is keen to collect data on major projects being run by other organisations that help to implement the strategy.

Summer 2006

The Mayor’s London Food Strategy

London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone, launched his London Food Strategy, on 22nd May, followed by a formal event on 23rd May attended by London Food Link (LFL) staff, many LFL members and a host of others. This represents the culmination of months of research and preparation, and consultation (undertaken for the London Development Agency (LDA) by LFL) and should mark an acceleration in efforts to make London’s food system contribute positively to sustainable development. A budget of around £3million has been allocated to implement elements of the strategy, and we look forward to being able to play our part in turning all the policy commitments in the report into real change. For more information on the strategy go to www.lda.gov.uk/londonfood.

Sustainable food in multicultural communities

Our Greener Curry report, on how to make local, ethnic, and ethical food a reality, was rescheduled for publication in early summer, but has unfortunately been hit by further delays. However, project officer Zeenat Anjari has plans well-advanced for in-depth focus groups with some of the intended audiences for the report, and we are now aiming for publication before the autumn.

In the meantime, Zeenat attended the conference Good Food Up North in Bradford, organised by the Ethnic Food Action Group, in association with the Food Ethics Council. This event explored the food issues facing ethnic consumers at home, and small producers abroad. Zeenat gave a short presentation to publicise the project and met with restaurant owners who buy fenugreek and coriander leaves from growers in Yorkshire.

Restaurants

The success of working with the King’s Cross restaurant Konstam, helping the owner to buy ingredients from within the area covered by the London tube network, was celebrated in a TV series - The Urban Chef - on BBC2 at the start of June. Building on this work with the “eating out” sector in London, we have also been working with the considerate hoteliers awards to promote seasonal British food on their menus. For more information on this national award see http://www.consideratehoteliers.com/.

Towards a greener food and drink sector in London

The contract with the LDA for the London Sustainability Exchange project to “green” London’s food and drink sector has unfortunately not yet been finalised, but we remain hopeful that we will shortly be able to advertise for a new project officer to join the LFL team to undertake this work.

Networking and promotion

Sixty LFL members attended our first ever network meeting at City Hall on 7th June. In her welcome speech our chair, Anne Dolamore, spoke about the recent launch of the Mayor’s food strategy (see above) at which LFL members were recognised for their contribution to a sustainable food system. Anne celebrated the breadth of members’ activities and introduced twelve of them to speak briefly about their work. Members from local authorities, business development agencies, Government Office, Primary Care Trusts and local food initiatives shared their triumphs, challenges, insights and, in the case of Hackney’s Growing Communities, their freshly harvested lettuce! The feedback from members was very positive, with requests that the event happens twice a year to give them more chances to network, and hear about the range of work going on in London.

LFL has been working with the Food Poverty Project [link to their page] on a major London-wide bid to the Big Lottery’s Well-being fund. The bid is being led by the London Health Commission, and LFL is partnering London Sustainability Exchange on an aspect of the application to improve access to food by disadvantaged groups, particularly elderly people. The portfolio of work aims not only to help already active boroughs to improve their existing food access policies and practices, but also help already currently inactive boroughs take advantage of their colleagues’ experiences to accelerate improvements to food access in their areas.

We are also working with the London Centre of Excellence on sustainable procurement. This is being led by Camden who, over the next two years, will be focusing on a handful of procurement issues at a borough contract level, including food. This will build on our previous work with them on school meals, and may extend to other issues such as care catering, so that other London boroughs can adapt their experience to develop their own good practice.

During the London Sustainability Weeks fortnight – incorporating a range of public events raising awareness of London’s impact on the environment and what can be done to reduce it – LFL’s Jellied Eel newsletters were distributed by our members at a majority of these events. Our stall at the BBC’s Springwatch event on the Thames attracted much interest from Londoners keen to know about food growing, cooking and eating projects in their area. We also contributed expertise on food issues to London 21’s Multicultural Environment Fair held in Hackney. Our workshop sought ideas on how to get members of diverse communities with horticultural and agricultural skills participating in growing food, and proposals included more food growing space in London’s parks, and encouraging urban ethnic communities to work with small farmers wishing to diversify their income, either through offering training in growing exotic vegetables or renting out land.

Evaluation

Following a tendering process, Dr Kemal Ahson of Lifeworld Ltd has been awarded a contract to evaluate how well we are doing with our project, and how we can improve. Kemal is an economic development consultant with commercial, project and research management experience gained from local, regional, national and international assignments. He has extensive experience and knowledge of evaluating business support projects, working with black, asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities and sustainability.

Spring 2006

Draft London Food Strategy

The report from this extensive consultation has been given to the London Development Agency (LDA), and the draft strategy is now being rewritten. The final strategy is due to be launched at the end of May. London Food Link will be among those working closely with the LDA to make the strategy a reality. For more information on the strategy and its launch please go to www.lda.gov.uk/londonfood.

In the meantime, LFL continues to work with individual London Boroughs and on 28 February, Kate and Zeenat spoke at a seminar for Camden officers on sustainable food. On 9 March, Kate facilitated a half day seminar for Haringey officers exploring opportunities for introducing more sustainable food into the Council\'s food services.

Multicultural Communities

How can business owners be persuaded that sustainable business practice saves on costs and equips them with a “unique selling point”? That was the question at Envirowise\'s Food Environmental Efficiency Day in Birmingham on February 14. We had a stall to promote London Food Link\'s services to food-sector businesses, raising awareness of how to benefit from the increasing numbers of shoppers buying local, organic and fair-trade food.

The major point raised at our presentation at Camden Council\'s sustainable food seminar on February 28 was the confusion amongst Camden\'s ethnic minorities. Many try to “do the right thing” by not buying produce from abroad to reduce food miles, but they also want to maintain cultural dietary traditions that include produce not grown in the UK. Attendees asked whether countries producing exotic goods with low sales volumes could be encouraged to offer more information on the ethical and environmental implications of how produce is grown and distributed.

At the London Development Agency\'s Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) workshop on March 21 LFL examined ways to integrate environmental advice into mainstream business support.

Restaurants

We are working with the first restaurant to get all of its ingredients from within the M25. There are exceptions – the sugar comes from Suffolk, and the salt and flour from Essex – but this is no mean feat considering our normal reliance on long distance food transport. The challenge now for the King\'s Cross restaurant, Konstam, is in the logistics of getting the food to the restaurant. We are now trying to find more restaurants interested in using the same suppliers, so that it will be both economically and environmentally viable for suppliers to make the deliveries.

LFL is also researching the many other factors affecting the capital\'s restaurants. This snapshot of trends in this sector will be released later this summer.

A Greener Food and Drink Sector in London

We became partners in a successful bid to the London Development Agency\'s Opportunities Fund on the project “Towards a greener food and drink sector in London”. Managed by London Sustainability Exchange, the project will provide advice and support for businesses. The project aims to support 300 businesses through group events, with 200 receiving tailored one-to-one environmental audits and follow-up support.

Winter 2005/6

The Mayor's Draft London Food Strategy

The London Food Link (LFL) team has been spreading the word on the Mayor's 10 year draft food strategy. One highlight was the conference School Food in London in November. This event also saw the launch of our report for the London Development Agency (LDA) on school food.

Other consultation events we organised included Planning London's Food, Tackling Food Waste in London and London's Food Infrastructure, where there was heated debate on the idea of a sustainable food centre or “hub” for London. A preliminary report has been produced by Sustain for the LDA, but there is still much to do.

Another meeting focused on identifying areas with poor access to healthy food, and how London boroughs might work together to make this more effective.

Since the consultation ended in December, LFL has been collating and analysing the responses and will be producing a report for the Mayor at the end of January. The final version of London's food strategy should be launched in May 2006. We'd like to thank Alice Elliott and Jake Elster-Jones for their hard work on this consultation – they will both be sorely missed. For more information on the consultation contact Ben Reynolds at 020 7837 1228 or ben@sustainweb.org.

School food report

This report was commissioned by the LDA and was launched on 25th November at the School Food in London event.

One recommendation is to use Camden's experience to help other London boroughs in a similar position. Another is to set up a sustainable food procurement team to help all public sector catering in London – hospitals, care homes, prisons and so on – as well as schools, to use more sustainable food in their meals.

A Sustainable Food Hub for London

The LDA had also commissioned London Food Link to produce a report exploring the opportunities for a sustainable food logistics centre in London. One of the options proposed was a new 5,000 square metre building, offering sustainable storage, packing, processing, closed organic facilities, marketing and training support, partly publicly financed and self-supporting within three years.

At a meeting in November participants agreed that there is growing consumer demand for organic and local foods, and that current food supply chains are too large and inflexible, and are organised nationally, not locally. However, producers, suppliers, existing wholesale markets and others did not agree on whether there was a need for a new food centre, whether existing centres were already adequate, or whether existing distributions systems and infrastructure could be changed to become more sustainable.

LFL is looking forward to working with all those involved to make sure that, whatever is agreed, it will help local producers of sustainable food to meet increasing demand.

Multicultural Communities

Over the last few months we have been researching the attitudes to sustainable development of different communities in London, and of the food businesses linked to these communities. This research will contribute to a report, in early 2006, that will ask how culturally distinctive food can celebrate sustainable British ingredients and how the structural barriers to ethnic food businesses being more sustainable can be overcome.

In addition, we have made links with the Hoxton School of Asian & Oriental Catering to promote training for its students in sustainable food business practice alongside other skills training.

Sustainable Restaurants

The LFL report Capital Eats highlighted that much less attention had been focused on the sustainability of London’s restaurant sector than on the public sector. Thanks to grants from DEFRA's Environmental Action Fund, and the European Union Objective 2 fund, LFL can now start to fill this gap.

We are making contacts with some who are already interested in using more sustainable ingredients. One of these, Konstam, in Kings Cross is trying to buy everything from within the area covered by the tube network. This is much more stringent than is normally proposed for food "local" to London. LFL has been helping them find producers, and is now helping with the logistics of getting this food from the producers to the restaurant in a sustainable way. The restaurant, and our work with them, will be featured in a BBC programme in Spring. For more information contact Ben Reynolds at 020 7837 1228 or ben@sustainweb.org.