Sustain campaigners Fiona McAllister (Capital Growth) and Rob Logan (Fringe Farming) recently joined a panel of food practitioners from across the UK to discuss how urban agriculture can be part of land policy reform. Hosted by the People's Land Policy group the event called ‘Food in the City: Urban growing and peri-urban farming’ explored what needs to be done to facilitate more food growing and production in or near urban areas considering a major barrier is access to land.

Fiona and Rob introduced the session with an overview of urban and peri-urban agriculture highlighting the multiple benefits in terms of food access, jobs and training, and sustainability, before beginning to outline some of the barriers that limit the potential of the sector to grow and actions that can be taken to change this. Nearly 200 people attended the event, posed questions and heard perspectives from the panel which also included:

• Max Johnson, Glasgow Community Food Growing Network
• Jo Payne, Manchester Urban Diggers
• David Mwanaka, Mwanaka Fresh Farm Foods
• Arlene McKenzie, Rootz into Growing
• Marlene Barrett, Organiclea

If you wish to learn more and watch the panel discussion a video is available to view.

The event is part of a series to develop a people’s land policy for the UK, with the next discussion on the 23^rd of March 2021 on the theme of the  international food justice movement.

16/03/2021