SFP Campaigns Breakfast on Peri-urban Farming

Campaigns breakfast meetings are here for food partnerships to connect and share with other local campaigners, hear national updates on issues related to the campaigns, and feedback your campaign progress and experiences. This time, we're talking about peri-urban farming.

Most of us live in urban areas that are not self-sufficient and need to import food from various parts of the UK and further afield. But have you heard about Food Zones? It looks at how much of which foods we could be sourcing from different zones, starting with the urban and peri-urban areas in which most of us live. We look at the concept of Food Zones as well as the Fringe Farming initiative, a collaboration between UK food, farming and land organisations to increase agroecological farming at the edges of cities: Glasgow, Bristol, Sheffield, London and Cardiff. 

Agroecological farming at the edge of cities creates numerous social, ecological and environmental benefits, including improved diets, creation of more jobs (per tonne) than conventional production, access to green space and outdoor skills, increased biodiversity, sequestration of carbon, protection of valuable fertile soils and urban natural capital. Nevertheless, there are multiple challenges to expand peri-urban farming from lack of dedicated financial assistance to competing uses for land and barriers to new entrants. 

Contributions from Rebecca Laughton, Landworkers' Alliance; Aryo Feldman, Sustain; and Steph Wetherell, Bristol Food Producers.

Food Zones slides

Fringe Farming slides

Bristol Food Producers slides