During the final meeting in a series of 6 which has brought together organisations and individuals from across Dorset to work through the subject of Food Resilience in Dorset, participants came together to discuss whether Dorset could develop into a Sustainable Food Place.
If you missed the meeting or need a recap you can view it here:
Post meeting, John Sloper of Help and Kindness & Sandra Reeve of Dorset Climate Action Network wrote:
“At Wednesday’s food workshop, hosted by Dorset Climate Action Network and #HelpAndKindness, participants considered whether or not Dorset could develop into a Sustainable Food Place.”
“Participants from all parts of the county, and with all kinds of involvement in food in Dorset, supported the ambition to work to towards Dorset becoming a Sustainable Food Place.”
“Growers, processors, networks, campaigners, educators, politicians, and the public discussed how a wider food partnership across the county could be useful to tackle large scale challenges in our food ecosystem and make our food systems in Dorset more resilient and sustainable.”
“The framework developed by the Sustainable Food Place movement gave a really useful structure to explore how common work could be enabled by teaming up on various common areas of action and interest.”
“Ideas that were shared included looking at how and where food is grown in Dorset, how we can improve nutrition, how we inspire children around healthy food production and diet, how producers can engage with different markets, how we support people who aren’t able to afford to buy or cook food, and how larger organisations in the public and private sector can support a positive food agenda for Dorset.”
“The six themes within the Sustainable Food Place framework that were discussed are:
- Food Governance and Strategy: Taking a strategic and collaborative approach to good food governance and action
- Good Food Movement: Building public awareness, active food citizenship and a local good food movement
- Healthy Food for All: Tackling food poverty, diet related ill-health and access to affordable healthy food
- Sustainable Food Economy: Creating a vibrant, prosperous, and diverse sustainable food economy
- Catering and Procurement: Transforming catering and procurement and revitalizing local supply chains
- Food for the Planet: Tackling the climate and nature emergency through sustainable food and farming and an end to food waste.
“In the meeting we asked attendees to indicate which areas they were working in, or were interested in contributing to. The chart below shows the amazing spread of commitment across all the themes.
Many of the attendees at the meeting are part of larger networks across Dorset, and will be taking these ideas back to their groups and organisations.
To take these ideas forward, we will be providing systems to continue the discussion and support actions around these themes among those who are interested. These actions had some immediate consequences in the meeting, notably around emergency and affordable food projects, but also in taking these ideas back to other parts of the community and organisations and groups who weren’t able to attend the meeting to see how they can increase their impact by working collectively on these issues.
Please help us by completing this quick survey: If you are interested in contributing to and joining in with these themed discussions and activities, please click on the link below and and complete the super-quick survey. We will be in touch with you to link you in with the great work and great discussions that are happening.
Express your interest in the themes here
If you’d like to have a conversation about this work and the opportunities for action and involvement, please drop us a line.
feedingdorset@helpandkindness.co.uk
or phone
01305 59 59 58
Jon Sloper (#HelpAndKindness) and Sandra Reeve (Dorset Climate Action Network)
If you missed any of the meetings you can watch the recordings of all of the meetings here: