NEW BeanMeals Toolkit for food partnerships

The NEW BeanMeals Toolkit has been created by the BeanMeals team for the Sustainable Food Places (SFP) network. Featuring tried-and-tested systems thinking models and approaches, the Toolkit is designed to help food partnerships mitigate risk and ease the pathway to change. It contains insights and tips from the BeanMeals project, a multi-disciplinary research project that finished in November 2024. The project partnered with Leicestershire County and Leicester City Councils to investigate how to achieve diets that are healthier, have lower environmental impacts and support enterprise. The toolkit is accompanied by a deck of discussion cards that will facilitate food conversations between stakeholders; these cards can be used with the toolkit or as a standalone resource.

“The Toolkit is an accessible resource to help mitigate risk when taking steps to transform local food system outcomes,” said Dr John Ingram, Senior Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and the BeanMeals project lead. “The food system is complex, and transformation requires stakeholders to pull in the same direction. The tools described in the Toolkit can help local food partners challenge the status quo and ease the pathway to more beneficial, and better balanced, food system outcomes.

“One of the useful tools is a food systems ‘sustainability compass’. This prompts local food partners to measure and plot improvements in four key areas: nutrition and health, environment, social and equality, and economy. It highlights which actions are most pressing to ensure the food system delivers the outcomes that Sustainable Food Places members want to see.”

Leon Ballin, Sustainable Food Places Programme Manager said: “The BeanMeals Toolkit will be welcomed by the SFP movement; it provides practical support for SFP coordinators by creating a clear roadmap to taking a whole systems approach to sustainable food along with a scalable, replicable case-study.

“The food system is just that  – a system – and if you want to make lasting, significant and positive changes, a systems approach is essential. It is all interconnected. Activity in any part of that system can have positive or negative impacts on the other parts so by only focusing on one area – say health or food poverty – the problems are moved elsewhere or just recur. For example, working to get more UK food into public sector procurement can lead to sustainable livelihoods for food producers which reduces food poverty.”

Running from June 2022 to November 2024, BeanMeals was a dynamic, collaborative research project that worked backwards through the supply chain from promoting bean-based meals to bean processing and growing. Crossing research disciplines with innovation topics, the project investigated how to determine how best to bring about systemic innovation, and analyse the health, environment and enterprise benefits of the transformed system. The research featured two quick-cooking navy bean varieties which have been developed for UK growing conditions by the University of Warwick, Capulet and Godiva.

The Toolkit is available to download here.