Bristol's Local Food Update Scaling-Up Bristol's Urban Agriculture
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BRISTOL FOOD NETWORK Bristol’s local food update community project news · courses · publications · events november–december 2012 The harvest (such as it is) is in, winter is coming, it’s time to order the seed catalogues and to start thinking about how it could all be so much more fruitful next year – not just our own little patches of land, but Bristol as a whole. If this Update has a theme at all, then it’s about the benefits of joining-up – whether that’s literal, physical cooperation across growing sites in Bristol, or in shared learning with great projects from further afield.If you’d like to help us join up more dots in 2013, then we’d love to hear from you. Please email any suggestions for content of the January–February newsletter to [email protected] by 10 December. Scaling-up Bristol’s urban agriculture Mike Lloyd-Jones of the Bristol Pound If you’re interested in any of the themes Farm Link Scheme on developing local that emerged from the ‘scaling-up’ markets using our local currency meeting, or if you’d like to get involved by helping to organise future meetings, or by In the second part of the meeting, the helping develop a ‘Bristol Brand’ please group split into groups, to consider: email us: [email protected] n A ‘Bristol grown’ brand and markets For the full notes of the meeting, go to: n Digital tools for supporting community www.bristolfoodnetwork. level cooperation org/2012/10/15/photo-report-from- n Learning and skills scaling-up-urban-agriculture-event-on- n A plan & central coordinating strategy On 3 October, 50–60 local activists, 3rd-october/ n Bristol grower cooperation growers, and growing enthusiasts got together to address the burning This was a lot to think about in one question: “How do we scale-up urban evening, but we covered a lot of ground agriculture in Bristol?” in a short space of time. We know what the challenges are and we know what The first part of the meeting had short resources are in place. There are some presentations, to get everyone thinking: ideas beginning to emerge, which Misty Tunks of Knowle West Media hopefully will take us in a new direction Centre and the ELM project on using as a network. Bristol’s local food update is produced by technology to link growers and their volunteers at the Bristol Food Network, There are two specific ideas to build upon with support from Bristol City Council. markets – a growers cooperation meeting to be Keith Cowling of Ashley Vale Allotment The Bristol Food Network is an umbrella hosted by Severn Project and a group to group, made up of individuals, Association on the barriers to setting-up think more about a possible Bristol Grown community projects, organisations urban agriculture projects brand and food markets idea. and businesses who share a vision to Rebecca Marshall of the Federation of transform Bristol into a sustainable City Farms and Community Gardens on We also hope that the ‘scaling-up’ meeting food city. The Network connects people their Community Land Advisory Service and subsequent growers’ get-together will working on diverse food-related issues – from getting more people growing, to toolkit for urban agriculture start-ups kick-start a series of Bristol Food Network developing healthy-eating projects; from Tim Lawrence of Sims Hill Shared Harvest themed meetings – but we need more tackling food waste, to making Bristol on urban agriculture and climate change help to make this happen. more self-sufficient. Round the world… Seattle Food Action plan digest: Recommended by Kevin Morgan, Chair of the Bristol Food Policy, who says “This food action plan from Seattle is one of the very best that I’ve ever seen.” www.seattle.gov/environment/ documents/Seattle_Food_Action_ Plan_10-24-12.pdf The convening power Sol Food Mobile Farm digest: A 57-passenger red school bus, equipped with solar panels, of Food (Projects) green roof, mobile greenhouse, on board composting and water recycling, is travelling across the US, In mid-October visitors from 8 European to bring in extra resources to help progress delivering gardening workshops and cities visited Bristol to see and food work in the city. This will include both demonstrations. understand the scale of sustainable financial support and access to expertise. food activity in the city, to share some http://blogs.worldwatch.org/ The focus of the proposed next phase ideas of the nature of food projects nourishingtheplanet/sol-food- will be around three themes: growing, in their cities and to help plan the mobile-farm-leading-the-food-justice- delivering and enjoying (food). Bristol will next phase of a joint European project movement-to-your-backyard/ lead on the enjoying theme working with titled ‘Sustainable Food in Urban Oslo and Vaslui. Core to this theme is the Communities’. Forest gardens in Honduras make the issue of disengagement from food, the best of two worlds The cities represented were: Oslo extent of which is different from country digest: Conventional agriculture says (Norway), Gotenburg (Sweden), Vaslui to country. The spectrum ranges from the that forests are about wilderness and (Romania), Brussels (Belgium), Amersfoot extreme in this country (but with positive have to be cleared before fields can (Holland), Athens (Greece), Messina trends to recover some of the ground) produce agriculture and civilization. (Italy), and Lyon (France). The project will to southern European countries where But a new generation see forests as a also include Ourense in Spain. this is seemingly a new phenomenon but way to grow food. one that is making inroads. The project The highlight of the visit was an evening encompasses all aspects of food: growing www.energybulletin.net/ session at MShed that illustrated food and production, access, choices and stories/2012-09-06/forest-gardens- projects in each city, with presentations health. This is great news for us and will honduras-make-best-two-worlds limited to 3 minutes each. It was also a provide a mechanism to promote the great opportunity for people to meet and Bristol Good Food Charter and measure Detroit’s good food cure share ideas informally. Watching people its impact on changing the food culture digest: What happens when the Motor struggle to keep their presentations to of the city. City transforms itself into the capital of 3 minutes greatly added to the convivial grow-your-own food? atmosphere. We learnt about some really For people wanting to find out more about inspiring projects. We will share more the project there is a website: www.yesmagazine.org/issues/its- information about these through the your-body/the-good-food-cure http://urbact.eu/en/projects/ newsletter in coming issues. low-carbon-urban-environments/ Regenerative Adelaide Alongside the sharing the other main sustainable-food-in-urban- digest: New government policies on outcome of the visit was for the cities to communities/homepage/ energy efficiency, renewable energy, work together to finalise the proposals Also by contacting Steve Marriott or sustainable transport, zero waste, for the second phase of the project. The Dorothy Greaves at the City Council you organic waste composting, water project, if approved, will run from April can access a briefing paper on the project efficiency, wastewater irrigation of crops, next year for two and half years and will taken to the Food Policy Council meeting peri-urban agriculture, and reforestation support each city to set up a local support in October and ‘State of the Art’ paper have taken Adelaide to the forefront of group (Bristol is ahead of the game with produced by the URBACT team. We hope eco-friendly urban development. the Food Policy Council) and to develop to make this available through the Food and start implementing their action plans. www.energybulletin.net/ Policy Council website. Again, we have done much work towards stories/2012-09-11/regenerative- this already in Bristol. The benefit for [email protected] or adelaide Bristol in being involved in the project is [email protected] Green infrastructure and food digest: The Toronto declaration holds that “good food, green buildings, great cities grow together.” http://wayneroberts.ca/archives/908 http://urbanagsummit.org/index.php/ homepage/urbanagblog 2 bristol’S locAL FOOD UPDATE · NOVEMBER–decemBER 2012 The Golden Hill harvest Lucy Mitchell As the nights draw in and the rain comes shelter from the elements!) As the hectic fresh vegetables in our darkest months, down it’s easy to wonder whether we growing season winds down, we’ll have few things more beautiful than the low even had a summer but at the Golden time to tackle our list of infrastructure winter sun shining golden behind frosty Hill Community Garden, we can’t jobs including: building more raised beds, leeks and few things that lift the spirits complain. We’ve had a great year and an setting up our outdoor kitchen, building a more than the first green shoots coming excellent first growing season, which we herb garden, planting soft fruits, making through in the new year. celebrated last month with a fantastic lots of beautiful signage, building pond We are open and accessible to everyone, Harvest Festival. Almost 400 people were dipping platforms, and putting in more and especially welcome volunteers with entertained by live art from the P.U.P. rainwater harvesting and composting mental or physical health issues, or those group (our wonderfully creative Monday systems. If you’d like to learn about any who would find it difficult to garden on a evening drawing group), morris dancing of these things or have skills or ideas to conventional site.