Tag - All Party Parliamentary Group
Agroecology/urban farming: Opportunities for Birmingham
There are great advantages to being behind the curve, as Birmingham is, when it comes to a complex matter like how to feed a city. It means we can learn a lot from others.
There’s bags of evidence that food planting, growing and harvesting has massively beneficial impact on citizens’ health and wellbeing, plus surprisingly, on dramatically lowering crime rates, increasing kids’ literacy, lowering truancy, all sorts. So putting How to Feed the City at the core of everything is a brilliant thing to do.
And here’s what I learned about lots of opportunities Birmingham has from the APPG Agrocecology Group meeting earlier this week:
- Put food and food issues at right bang slap as core of Birmingham’s strategic planning.
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Interesting points in the Q&A: All Party Parliamentary Group for Agroecology
As well as summaries of what Rosie Boycott of London’s Capital Growth, Todmorden’s Incredible Edible Mary Clear and Food Matters Clare Devereux, said at yesterday’s APPG on Agroecology, here are some interesting points raised at the Q&A afterwards, chaired by Bournville-lad-now-Stoke-South-MP, Rob Flello:
- Question: The barrier to the market for local food stuff is distribution and all the infrastructure that means. So what to do about this?
- Clare Devereux: A possible start to building that infrastructure for community food growers, is to supply local restaurants. However, scale-up is a really big issue. Wholesale markets are disappearing and it’s likely anything else set up will be destroyed.
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Clare Devereux on Food Matters
Clare Devereux of Food Matters from Brighton & Hove was the third and final speaker at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology yesterday (6th Dec). Here’s a summary of what she said:
Although the south east city of Brighton & Hove might appear affluent, in fact it isn’t. It falls within the bottom 25% of deprived areas in the UK, 25% of their kids come from low income families, wages are below the national average, and there’s lower than national average in various health stats, including mental health.
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Mary Clear on Todmorden’s Incredible Edible
Gloriously plain-speaking grandmother of ten, Mary Clear of Todmorden’s Incredible Edible was the second to speak at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology yesterday (6th Dec). Here’s a summary of what she said:
Three and a half years ago, a few Todmorden people were discussing concerns about it all — climate change, people in some developing countries going hungry, everything . . . and how everyone blamed everyone else for what was going on. Let’s see, they decided, if we could do something for Todmorden that’d make a difference.
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Rosie Boycott on London’s Capital Growth
Rosie Boycott from Capital Growth was the first to kick off at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology yesterday (6th Dec). Here’s a summary of what she said:
Cities have never been designed to grow food, but to be supplied with food, hence food security is their concern. Growing food in cities is about transforming communities. It leads to lots of transformational activities, all positive.
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