Why are we focussing on Food Resilience?
Food resilience isn’t something that most people think about, but here at the Shropshire Good Food Partnership it’s what we work towards everyday. We want to make sure that everyone can eat nutritious food every day and reduce the risk of food shortages in the future due to climate change and logistics problems. The great thing is that everything we do to strengthen our food resilience brings so many other benefits. Food resilience brings people together over food, improves our physical and mental health and builds our local economy.
Vulnerability in Crisis
Despite the full supermarket shelves, recent research highlights how fragile our food system is in the UK. We import 40% of our food. Our highly centralised system relies on just 121 food redistribution hubs to supply 90% of our food. Our supply chains are vulnerable to climate change, IT and energy failures, pandemics and conflict. There is a high risk that we will not be able to feed our population in the event of a crisis.
Solutions
The solutions to this are more community food projects, more local production of fruit and veg, better infrastructure to support our local food economy in processing and selling and a shift to regenerative farming methods that protect our rivers from pollution and embed more carbon in the soil.
There’s lots of great stuff already happening. You can meet farmers and projects that are already making a difference at the Shropshire Good Food Trail this summer. You can explore the issues of Seed Sovereignty, Food as Medicine, diversity and climate resilience in permaculture growing, and the role of Community Gardens and Markets in a resilient food system at our Food Trail events.
SGFP also provides support and consulting services to Councils seeking to develop local food resilience strategies.
Get in touch to find out more: hello@shropshiregoodfood.org
Spending time weighing odds at https://casinolives.net, I was struck by the statistic that just 121 hubs distribute 90% of our food—that’s a single point of failure on a national scale. It makes me think that building local food networks isn’t just about sustainability, but about having a backup plan when the usual system breaks down.