English In June 2022, Tony Little, the LWA’s Resilient Local Food Systems Coordinator wrote a blog post for World Localisation Day in which he argued that the short supply chains have the potential to supply a much larger part of the population than they do at the moment, but that a number of things would need to happen for that to become a reality. These include the need for a national strategy, investment in appropriate infrastructure, more collaboration between farmers, food businesses and other, more locally focussed public procurement and planning reforms that more explicitly favour local food systems. Much of the thinking behind our enthusiasm for more localised food systems is set out in the LWA’s 2021 publication Vocal for Local
In order to take the next practical steps along that road of scaling up and scaling out the role of local food systems in the UK, we are bringing together the key stakeholders from across the country..
Building Better Food Systems is a two-day conference that is taking place in Manchester on 28th and 29th September 2022, which will bring together food and farming businesses, policy makers, researchers, and social justice movements to ask the question of how we can realise the full potential of local and resilient food systems. The conference is being organised as part of the Collaborative Agri Food Chains (COACH) project, funded by EU Horizon 2020 programme, with additional support from the Friends Provident Foundation.
During the course of the conference, we will work together to identify opportunities and challenges, aiming to create a vision for local food systems that we can all share, and collaborate to develop action plans that will address the challenges and bring our vision to fruition.
So whether you’re a producer, retailer, activist, academic, policy-maker or intermediary, if you’re interested in increasing the proportion of agro-ecological foods reaching citizens through short supply chains, this conference is for you!
The Building Better Food Systems Conference is organised by the Landworkers’ Alliance in collaboration with Coventry University. This conference is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101000918
