By Graham Brown: CVS Operations and Insight lead and Food Coordination lead

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend The 2024 City Food Policy Symposium organised by the Centre for Food Policy at City University.

The event explored the potential of food systems transformation through local and regional food policy and governance. As it's coming up to 12 months since I started my role, it got me thinking about our approach of this theme in Cheshire East. Before we get into this its sensible to start with a couple of definitions… 

So, what do we mean by a food system.  

There are many definitions. The one from Wikipedia is arguably the clearest. They describe a food system as ‘the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture’.

The Centre for Food Policy at City University also focus on the interconnections around a range of different themes: Society, Economy, Politics, Health and Environment. The diagram below shows the interrelationships.  

Food systems are fragile. Supply chain disruptions, the cost-of-living crisis, geopolitical tensions, and the ongoing climate emergency highlight the urgency of the task to make our food systems fairer, more sustainable, and more resilient.  

Just exploring one of the elements mentioned above, the ‘cost of living crisis’ highlights the interrelationships and complexities. Funding constraints mean that emergency support is no longer being offered directly by Cheshire East Council. However, the Government has committed to extending funding for the Household Support Fund, which will be spent locally. Food inflation has fallen; yet the latest Food Foundation reports highlights that 35% of single adult households with children experienced food insecurity in January, compared with 17.6% of multi-adult households with children.   

So, what can we do to transition to a more resilient local food system? 

The framing of the question implies a place based approach. We all know about this right. No? Well, it’s about understanding the issues, interconnections and relationships in place. Additionally, coordinating action and investment to improve the quality of life for that community. 

I would argue the creation of the Cheshire East Food Alliance is a good example of a Cheshire East wide place-based approach. Through our work to understand the community food landscape and the development of the ‘Right to Food’ strategy, we’ve identified the issues, interconnections and relationships. The priorities and the Alliance itself are the coordinating actions. This helped with the recent distribution of over 20 pallets, or around 3,000 individual boxes, of breakfast cereal, across our community food network. 

  Other local examples include: 

• At a Hyperlocal level, working with a Poynton based community food project to explore how they can increase their opening days. 
• At a Care Community level, the Macclesfield food partnership was set up in response to the Covid 19 pandemic. Partners work to share food and logistical support.     
• At a Cheshire wide level, working alongside Chesire West and Warrington food partnerships to ensure that the voice of Cheshire food groups are heard by FareShare. In addition to other partners as they roll out the King Charles sponsored Coronation Food Project to mobilise the distribution of larger quantities of surplus food.  
• At a National level, joining the Feeding Britain network allows us to highlight the good practice locally as well as giving us a voice on national priorities; such as the extension of the Household Support Fund.  

Our work to increase the uptake of the Healthy Start scheme alongside Cheshire East Council, Cheshire and Merseyside NHS, DWP and a range of other partners. This is an example of how we are working across a range of levels: Hyperlocal, Care Community, Cheshire East and Nationally.  

So, looking ahead… 

Using the Wikipedia definition of Food Policy, our priorities in the first 12 months have been around food and community development. That’s based on priorities of the project funders, Cheshire East Council and Cheshire Community Foundation.  

Whilst these priorities won’t go away, in year 2 we need to look towards nutrition, health, agriculture and the environment. As we procced with this wider approach, alignment with the Sustainable Food Places initiative would seem to be a strategy we should consider. I have no doubt that the place-based approach is the right one; also, a mix of approaches depending on the definition of place e.g. Hyperlocal, is also necessary. A one size fits all simply won’t work.  

The Good Food Local – The London Report is a great example of a place-based approach to benchmarking/assessing progress around areas including:  

• Food governance & strategy 

• Community food growing 

• Community food action 

• Tackling food poverty 

• Promoting Healthy Eating 

• Sustainable Food Economy 

• Catering & procurement, 

• Food for the planet 

• Ethnic and cultural diversity in the food system 

If this article has been of interest, why not sign-up for our next Cheshire East Food Alliance meeting on Wednesday 22 May.