ORFC
Aim of session: How do we change the system and bring about real farming?
Political lobbying, campaign building or changing consumer behaviour? This panel
will bring together people working in food and farming to achieve real change.
What is Nourish?
Nourish is an organization that was founded to promote a sustainable food
system in Scotland based on ecological farming and short supply chains and a
new food culture:
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We want to see a food system where priority is given to producing local
food for local people (rather than prioritizing food production for export as is
SG policy)
o Where relationships between producers and consumers/citizens are
built that are based on trust
o Where everyone has access to healthy food (as opposed to local and
organic food being a niche market)
o Where we have a lot of right sized enterprises with increased
opportunities of meaningful employment
o Where we rebuild local economies and the related social fabric that
nurture community.
Who is Nourish?
Nourish came out of a series of meetings of people involved in the food sector
and sustainable community development organisations in Scotland. For a few
years Nourish was run by a few committed individuals without budget and staff:
getting involved in policy debates, responding to consultations, setting up a
networking website and organising an annual conference.
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8 month ago, in May 2013 Nourish got funding for 2 years from the Scottish
Government and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Although Nourish could have
got funding from other sources N. insisted that funding comes from SG. This
required the SG to acknowledge that the work N. is doing is important.
Nourish incorporated as a CIC, which allows us to generate income, which
will be important for when the funding stops.
Nourish’s Board of Directors is composed of 11 members.
We are a small team of 5 part time staff doing policy and project work.
We have 1400 subscribers to our networking website where people can post
information, ask questions, start discussions or post a blog. In order to
engage people more actively with Nourish we are now planning to introduce
a membership.
How do we go about reaching our aims?
Central to our work is policy work. To grow the alternative food economy (from
1% to 10%) we need the right public-policy support.
At the moment there is a lot of small projects and initiatives around local food,
especially around food growing. But in order to build a local food system that
truly makes us more sustainable and offers a real economic alternative it is
crucial that the policy frame changes and supports this transition.
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The current policies, programmes and financial support do not foster a
sustainable food system often it’s even the contrary.
Or put in an other way, it is not understood that building a sustainable food
system is to tackle the most important issues, whether that’s economic
development and jobs, or health, or mitigating and adapting to climate change,
etc.
For example:
 Money in farming goes to big farms that carry on with business as usual
and without any investment into making farming more resilient.
 No R&D money goes towards ecological farming.
 Only businesses are supported that are ‘growth businesses’, ignoring that
even if an individual business with 3 people does not grow, it potentially
leads to other businesses emerging.
 Or policies on adaptation to climate change and planning do not give any
attention to the food system although the food system creates 30% of
GHG emissions and we know that cc will have an effect on farming.
o SG is committed to cc targets, but hasn’t managed to make
connections between reaching cc targets and resilience.
o Compared to England SG wants to keep the CC agenda.
o For us the way into agroecology is through cc.
o Agroforestry now part of SRDP, but SG doesn’t think to do it at
scale. On east coast massive wind erosion, so will get cereal
farmers to do agroforestry too.
o We have a meeting in Jan with Minister of land use and cc.
What do we actually do in policy work?
One thing is that we respond to public consultations. We consider policies from
the local to the European level. For example we responded to a EU consultation
on ‘Sustainability of the food system’, or one from the House of Commons on
Food Security, and of course a series of SG consultations (SRDP, Land reform,
planning, Adaptation to CC, Community Empowerment Bill).
But we also go and talk directly
 to officials in the administration that are involved in drafting the policies,
 we talk to politicians, (in Scot. Easier access to politicians, we can have
conversations, and we have regular contact with some politicians, e.g. CC
minister, we met several times and after sending consultation response
on mitigation to cc he invited us and we hope to explore how some of our
ideas can translate into policy)
 other organisations.
With other organisations we explore the overlap of our positions
regarding a certain policy and raise the awareness of why building a
sustainable food system is important for them to reach their goals.
 Like the importance of organic local food for the health
sector
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The importance of ecological farming for nature
conservation (RSPB)
The importance of local food for job creation and economic
development (unions, Development Trusts)
We always engage with our subscribers and other stakeholders when we
respond to a consultation.
For example when we responded to the consultation on SRDP we organized a
meeting where we invited our subscribers to join, and also invited individual
organisations like Soil Association, Farmers Union, Crofting Federation,
Development Trust Association, RSPB etc.,
We also had an official from the Government present who lined out the proposal
and who was also prepared to take questions from the group.
Sitting in a circle we explored the issues. In the end the SA, the Crofting
Federation and the Fife Diet agreed to submit a joint response.
In December the final draft of the SRDP was published and it includes things,
such as funding facilitation and co-ordination of projects for cooperation,
agroforestry. These measures have been included also thanks to the work of
Nourish.
Another means that supports us in our work is the conference report. Delegates
set out a vision and suggestions on how to reach the goals of this vision.
And we are no carrying out an investigation into the state of local food in
Scotland. What is the value of local food, what’s the potential for growth and
what are the opportunities and barriers to grow the sustainable food economy.
This will also help us in our advocacy work.
I would like to end by saying that at the moment there are three groups of people
we engage with to shape policies.
Mobilizing our subscribers to build a movement and make them get involved
more actively and take ownership of Nourish.
Politicians and officials
Organisations. We want to raise the awareness amongst organisations that the
various issues we all work on stem from the same root problems which is that
our overarching policy is economic growth rather than aiming for society and
each individual to be able to fulfill their potential. We would like to unite all
organisations under the principle of food sovereignty because FS will address all
the singe issues we are working on now whether that’s poverty, health,
regeneration, employment or nature conservation.
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Activities
(Tell us here what the company
is being set up to do)
How will the activity benefit the community?
(The community will benefit by…)
Nourish will work to create
and support a national chain
of community based local
food networks, developing
local capacity and connecting
local networks to a national
‘local food’ movement.
The community will benefit by an increased capacity in every
region of Scotland to meet a greater proportion of local food
needs from local resources, increasing local resilience and the
ability of communities to respond creatively to the challenges
of moving to a low carbon future and adapting to climate
change. This will benefit local economies, secure local
employment and enhance national food security.
Nourish will work to develop
and widen Scotland’s food
skills base, developing and
supporting practical skills
training for all stages of the
food economy.
The community will benefit from the enhanced skills and
increased opportunities for meaningful employment that will
arise as vibrant local food economies are developed.
Nourish will work with others
to collate research into
sustainable future food
systems, produce policy
papers on key food issues
and represent local food
networks in national policy
fora.
The community will benefit by an increased understanding of
sustainable future food systems and by increased
representation of the needs of local food networks in national
policy fora.
Nourish will develop
strategies and support local
networks in making local food
visible and accessible eg.
through labelling schemes,
directories, promotional
activities, distribution
networks, support for local
food markets etc.
The community will benefit from increased opportunities for
accessing locally grown food and for employment in the
growing, processing, distribution and retailing of local food.
Improved access to seasonal, unprocessed food is likely to
bring positive benefits to community health.
If the company makes any surplus it will be used for…
Re-investment in new project activities to strengthen local food networks in accordance with
the priorities set by the members of the company.
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