Food in the City

There's an interesting event coming up in Cardiff - well worth getting to for anyone interested in food security, community engagement on food and getting insights on how we plan our way to a safer future.

It's on Monday 24th at Chapter Arts, and here are the details:

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.

The basic necessities of life are air, water, shelter and food and urban planners have addressed them all, with the conspicuous exception of food. Increasingly, however, food production, distribution and consumption are being seen as central to a wide array of policy areas, including the economy, social justice, public health and the environment. Food production is widely regarded as a rural activity, yet this ignores the significance of urban agriculture, an activity that is growing in developed and developing countries alike. Food consumption is central to the Healthy Cities programme of the World Health Organization – of which Cardiff has just become a signed-up member - which addresses such challenges as child poverty and obesity. The global food price surge of 2007-08, when wheat prices doubled and rice prices nearly tripled, has made food security a preoccupation for national policy-makers everywhere. Meanwhile, the production of and access to healthy food is increasingly understood to be an essential part of urban regeneration and planning for sustainable cities. Urban food planning has become one of the quintessential global challenges of the 21st Century.

This conference addresses all these themes by charting the development of a sustainable food policy within Wales, a policy that needs to find space for locally-produced food from Wales as well as fairly traded food from afar. This conference is a timely event because it coincides with the publication of a radically new Food Strategy from the Welsh Assembly Government.

Keynote Speakers: Professor Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University; Andre Viljoen, University of Brighton; Steve Garrett, Director, Riverside Community Market; Elin Jones AM, Minister for Rural Affairs; Steve Knowles, Cardiff County Council; Mike McNally, FareShare; Barny Haughton, Chef and Owner, Bordeaux Quay, Bristol; Professor Cliff Guy, Cardiff University