Shropshire Good Food Partnership AGM – Building a Resilient, Local Food Future

Slide deck available below.

AGM 2025.pdf

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Overview of the AGM

What the Partnership Is

• Member of the national Sustainable Food Places network

• Works across education, community, farming, policy and resilience

• Mission to relocalise, regenerate, reconnect and build county-wide resilience

Key Achievements This Year

• £100,000+ secured in project grants

• 130 Good Food Trail venues

• 2,000 children engaged via smoothie bike

• 23 schools in the Schools Food Web

• National influence via parliamentary days & SoilEd curriculum group

• Strong Marches Forward partnership work

Projects

• Schools Food Web (food audits, CPD, composting, microgrants)

• Grove School pilot with carousel workshops and student-led outcomes

• Feeding Resilience pilot in Dawley, Stirchley, Brookside

• Shropshire Good Food Trail with events, films, fireside chats

Funding Position

• Core funding ends March → key risk

• Major bid submitted to National Lottery Climate Action Fund

Civil Food Resilience Work

• Mapping local assets & gaps

• Supporting councils on food strategy

• Developing a local resilience forum

• Connecting farm clusters and land access opportunities

• Right to Grow promotion

Calls to Action

• Need for:

  • local champions

  • funding intelligence

  • bid-writing support

  • volunteers

  • mapping support

  • community food stories

  • wider farmer involvement

  • council & parish engagement

• Open invitation to join Food Resilience Forum

Key Themes

• Hope, community power & shared action

• The importance of food education

• Small-scale producers’ essential role

• Food as a lever for climate action and wellbeing

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Our 2025 AGM

The Shropshire Good Food Partnership’s Annual General Meeting brought together growers, educators, community organisers, local authorities, and food system advocates from across the county and beyond. The session showcased just how far the movement has come—and how much energy there is for shaping a resilient, regenerative, fair food system for all.

Coordinators Daphne and Emma opened the AGM by setting the scene: Shropshire’s Good Food Partnership is part of the national Sustainable Food Places network, one of 123 place-based partnerships working to transform food at a local level. From farms and schools to community groups and policymakers, the Partnership works across the whole system—convening, educating, empowering, resourcing, and giving voice to the county’s good food movement.

A Year of Impact: What We’ve Achieved

Over the last year, the Partnership has delivered an impressive range of initiatives, even while navigating challenging, project-by-project funding:

Major Projects & Highlights

• 23 schools engaged across Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin through the Schools Food Web programme—embedding climate, nutrition, waste and soil learning, and involving teachers, pupils, sustainability leads, community growers and chefs.

• 2,000 pupils cycled the smoothie bike, learning about food waste, surplus, and energy in a hands-on way.

• 130 venues participated in the Good Food Trail, showcasing local producers, events, markets, film screenings and fireside chats.

• Webinars, film screenings, and community events boosted engagement and awareness across the county.

• Policy and national influence through Sustainable Food Places, the SoilEd curriculum campaign, and two dedicated days in Parliament.

These achievements demonstrate what place-based, community-led food work can do even without core funding. But they also underline the need for long-term investment in the Partnership’s essential infrastructure.

Schools as Catalysts for Change

Emma shared the powerful impact of the Schools Food Web project—a programme that not only decarbonises school food systems but also builds meaningful, lasting change in school culture.

Work included:

• School food audits

• Bespoke food system roadmaps

• Workshops on soil, nutrition, waste, composting and citizen science

• CPD for teachers

• Microgrants for student-led projects

• Stronger links between schools, farmers, chefs and community hubs

Children described themselves as “climate heroes through food”—a reminder of how transformative early food education can be.

Building on that success, new pilots are now running:

• Grove School’s “Food Systems Live” (for all Year 7s)

• The Feeding Resilience pilot in Dawley, Stirchley and Brookside—rolling out growing days, cooking sessions, community meals and co-designed resilience planning

Civil Food Resilience: A Growing Priority

The Partnership is increasingly working to address wider structural vulnerabilities in the UK food system—from climate shocks and geopolitical instability to cost-of-living pressures and supply chain fragility.

Current work includes:

• Mapping Shropshire’s food system infrastructure

• Supporting councils to embed food resilience in local strategy

• Developing a county-level resilience forum involving farmers, community groups, and local leaders

• Collaborating across the Marches (Shropshire, Herefordshire, Powys, Monmouthshire) on shared food system goals

• Planning a “shadow” resilience forum to model responses to crises when existing structures overlook food’s critical role.

The message is clear: food resilience isn’t a theoretical issue—it's a practical necessity.

The Challenge: No Core Funding After March

Despite securing over £100,000 this year in targeted project grants, the Partnership faces a funding cliff-edge in March. Without stable core funding, the ability to coordinate, respond, convene and lead strategic work is at risk…

However, optimism remains strong. A major Climate Action Fund bid has been submitted with Marches Real Food and Farming partners, Monmouthshire, Powys & Herefordshire, aiming to secure four years of collaborative funding.

The Power of People: Community, Members & Good News Stories

The AGM highlighted the extraordinary network behind the Partnership—from growers and markets to councillors, educators, composters, allotment champions, chefs, hubs, and activists.

We asked for community stories of hope—examples of what is working, what is growing, and what is possible. These stories can help show that change is real and happening now.

Please share by sending an email to - emma@shropshiregoodfood.org

Looking Ahead

In the year to come, the Partnership will continue to:

• Build Shropshire’s civil food resilience

• Grow the Shropshire Good Food Trail

• Develop land-matching and more school links

• Continue school food system programmes

• Strengthen Marches-wide collaboration

• Support Right to Grow initiatives

• Deepen community knowledge mapping

• Push for a county-wide food strategy with Shropshire Council

  
  

As Daphne shared, food is “the low-hanging fruit of systems transition”—the thing everyone touches every day, and a powerful lever for positive change.