New: Sustainable Food Guidelines
Practical advice for anyone interested in buying and promoting more sustainable food.
Current projects and campaigns
Join us in transforming London into a green and productive city, with thriving communities and delicious fresh food - all in all, a better place to live. The Capital Growth campaign, run by Sustain's London Food Link (see below) offers practical and financial support to communities around London to help more people grow more food, and to have greater access to land and growing spaces for community benefit. We aim to help create 2,012 new community food growing spaces for London by the end of 2012, and are already well on our way to achieve this! The Capital Bee project, part of Capital Growth, seeks pledges to promote bee-friendly behaviour, and supports establishment of community beehives.
Better food and food teaching for children in schools, and protection of children from junk food marketing are the aims of Sustain's high-profile Children's Food Campaign. We also want clear food labelling that can be understood by everyone, including children.
Sustain has taken a keen interest in the rapidly accumulating evidence about the effect of food and farming on climate change, as scientific evidence emerges that our food system is a very significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Our food and climate change pages record our activities on this critical issue.
Food and Farming Policy
Sustain encourages integration of sustainable food and farming into local, regional and national government policies. The following pages report on our national (sometimes international) food policy activities, where such material is not already covered within our individual project reports:
- Food Standards Agency (FSA)
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Organic sector development (including a link to the Organic Targets Campaign archive)
- Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
- Cabinet Office review of food policy
- Department of Health
- EU School Fruit (and vegetable) Scheme
The Food Legacy campaign, launched October 2011, is inspired by the London 2012 Food Vision adopted by the organisers of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Food Legacy asks caterers, restaurants, event organisers and hospitality organisations to commit publicly to taking steps to improve the healthiness, ethics and sustainability of the food they serve.
Olympic Food: Sustain sees the London 2012 Games as a tremendous opportunity to help transform the food system. We are already working on Olympic food issues, and sit on LOCOG's Food Advisory Group. Find out more details of the people, processes and standards involved in establishing the London 2012 Food Vision standards.
Food and Mental Health: The project promotes understanding of the links between good diet and mental wellbeing, addressing the many implications of the growing evidence linking what we eat to the way we feel and behave.
More and more people are setting up food co-ops so they can get good food at an affordable price. The Food Co-ops Finder can help you find out if there's already a food co-op in your area, and the Food Co-ops Toolkit will give you all the information you need to set up your own food co-op.
Food Facts is a series of short reports on over a dozen different products, shows how people’s shopping choices – as well as government policy – can protect the environment, enhance social justice and improve health.
Sustain has worked on nutrition and sustainability labelling issues since the alliance was established in 1999, and has recently been involved in the heated debate over carbon labelling. For information about Sustain's activities on this issue, see the sustainability labelling pages.
Good Food for Our Money: The government spends over £2 billion of tax payers' money each year on public sector food. At the moment, our money pays for food that can be harmful to our health and the environment, and fails to invest in local and sustainable suppliers, and in fair trade with poor countries. And there are no rules to stop this happening. The Good Food for Our Money campaign demands that government introduce new rules so that we know our money is being spent on good food. Join us in calling for change!
Good Food on the Public Plate: The Good Food on the Public Plate project builds on the earlier work of Sustain by providing assistance to public sector caterers across London to increase their uptake of sustainable food thereby improving the well-being of the people they serve and creating reliable markets for sustainable local producers.
Sustain also worked with Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency, on a project sponsored by the London Development Agency as part of implementation of the Mayor's London Food Strategy, to develop Good Food Training for London, working with the public sector. This training is now provided by Greenwich CDA.
London Food Link runs a network of organisations and individuals with members as diverse as farmers, food writers, caterers and community food projects. London Food Link and its members run projects that help to increase the availability of sustainable food in London, tackle the barriers preventing access to sustainable food for all Londoners, and celebrate and protect London's diverse food culture.
London Food Link's projects are:
- Capital Growth – the campaign for 2,012 new community food growing spaces for London by the end of 2012.
- Urban agriculture – policy, campaign and research work to increase the amount of tasty, wholesome and nutritious food grown in urban areas.
- Ethical Eats – a network of London restaurants and catering businesses with an interest in sustainability.
- Good Food on the Public Plate - working with London's public sector caterers to
- Jellied Eel - the quarterly magazine for Sustainable Food in London distributed to over 100 food outlets in the capital.
- Local Food Finder – public and business access to food producers and suppliers in London and the counties surrounding London, including on public land, housing estates and roof gardens.
- Sustainable Fish City – the campaign for London's businesses and citizens to buy, serve and eat only sustainable fish.
London Food Link archive projects
London Food Link has also recently completed several projects, and links to these are in the archive section below - Greener Curry; Greener Food; London Food Access Forum; Serving up Sustainability; Small grants for sustainable food (now closed); and Well London - Buy Well. London Food Link also worked with Greenwich CDA in a pilot project supported by the Mayor of London to develop Good Food Training for London, aiming to increase the proportion of healthy and sustainable food provided by public sector caterers. This programme is now run by Greenwich CDA.
Sustain is a consortium partner in a major Big Lottery-funded project to help community enterprises promote local and sustainable food. Sustain is coordinating two strands of work under the Making Local Food Work programme, namely:
- Food Co-ops and Buying Groups, developing a range of resources, such as a toolkit, educational leaflets and marketing materials, to help food co-ops start up or build on their successes.
- Food Supply and Distribution, working with projects around England to increase and improve the supply and distribution of local, sustainable food
For details of these strands, visit the project pages, or visit the Making Local Food Work consortium website.
Local community groups, enterprises and food projects can also join Local Action on Food, an active network of people and projects from across the UK that are working towards the goal of creating a strong and healthy sustainable food system. Members range from community food groups, to farm shops and local authorities. Join in to receive news, support and discounts on events.
Note that these pages also contain links to archive material from previous local food networks, Food Links UK (national network) and AlimenTerra (European network).
Organic Sector Development: Promotion of more environmentally sustainable forms of agriculture are integrated into all of our work. These pages record Sustain's activities to promote organic sector development.
Sustain also worked with organic sector organisations and organic food companies to coordinate a funding bid to the European Union for a major marketing campaign called Why I Love Organic.
The Real Bread Campaign aims to increase the enjoyment, production and consumption of bread made with natural ingredients, appropriate fermentation and no adulterants, so that good bread may play a larger part in the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the nation. It also promotes policies and practices that put grain and bread production at the heart of a sustainable ecological food system.
Sustainable Fish City is the campaign for London to become the first ever city where businesses and citizens buy, serve and eat only sustainable fish. We want to show what can be done if people and organisations make a concerted effort to change their buying habits. Since the launch in January 2011, we have already had some major successes with government, major catering businesses and their clients committing to serve only sustainable fish, including the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Gamesm, national government and many London boroughs.
Supermarkets, health and sustainability: Sustain takes a keen interest in supermarket policies and activities on health and sustainability. These pages record recent activity on this issue.
International Links: Other networks that Sustain supports
The UK Food Group is the network for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on global food and agriculture issues. Sustain works in partnership with the UK Food Group, and also provides management and other services. The Sustain website page for the UK Food Group gives a brief summary of recent activities, as reported to Sustain's Council.
Archive projects and campaigns
Archive: The Agri-Food Network project ran seminars linking academics working on food and farm policy with each other and with those NGOs and think tanks which are using and commissioning research to underpin policy advocacy work. Seminar papers and notes are available on the archive project pages.
Archive: Well London - Buy Well: Buywell is working in 10 deprived areas of London to make it easier to buy healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food locally.
Archive: The Eat Somerset project worked to increase trading between producer groups in and around Somerset and independent food retailers in the county, and creating new markets in Bristol and Bath. Details of the project's activities and successes are on the Eat Somerset archive pages.
Archive: From 1996, the Food Access Network project (previously known as the Food Poverty project) worked with a range of local, national and international organisations to reduce inequalities in health through food. It provided information and support through a database, events and a range of publications. The project also explored new ways of working with low income communities to develop appropriate policies to tackle food poverty. The Food Access Network has now merged with Food Links UK, and a new network for local and regional projects working on healthy and sustainable food issues will be launched in 2008.
Archive: Grab 5! was a Lottery-funded project for primary schools wanting to encourage their pupils to eat more fruit and vegetables. It contributed to an average 30% increase in consumption (from 1.7 to 2.2 items per day) of fruit and veg among the 7-11 year olds in the schools where we worked in Lambeth, Leeds and Plymouth, in schools serving low-income communities. We also developed a programme that ran in at least 1,000 schools in every region of the country reaching children, siblings, parents, teachers and others through schools and local networks, encouraging them to eat more fruit and veg. The project has now ended, but we continue to encourage people to use the materials and approaches it developed. Free-to-download educational materials are available on the archive project pages.
Archive: Sustain worked on a national Orchards project with Leader+ (a European Union funded programme of rural development) to conserve and bring into sustainable management traditional orchards in six Leader+ funded areas; Hereford Rivers, Somerset Level and Moors, Teinbridge, North West Devon, Mid Kent and Cumbria Fells and Dales. It published a good practice guide for organisations and communities striving to maintain traditional orchards, which is available free to download on the archive project pages.
Archive: In 1999 Sustain became the secretariat for the Organic Targets Campaign, which succeeded in persuading government to establish an Organic Action Plan to increase the market share of British organic produce from 30% to 70% of the market, by 2010. The campaign brought together a supporting coalition of over 100 national organisations, plus hundreds more local groups and individuals.
Registered charity (no.