How to Feed a City - A project which provides communities and local institutions with the tools to understand and influence the long-term viability of their food supply.

In 2008 we passed a threshold; for the first time in history more than half of the world's population was living in cities. In the UK the proportion is four-fifths, almost 50 million people. We know that over the next thirty years the fuel, land, climate, and trade that underpin those cities' food supplies will become increasingly uncertain. The problem is that we don't make plans to feed our cities as if this were the case.

How to Feed a City will address that problem; galvanising city communities and institutions into planning ‘future-proofed' food strategies by providing them with the tools to understand and influence the long-term viability of their food supply. 

We have three specific objectives:

1)      We will create a set of resources to support and inform food purchasing policies.  These will include a web-based calculator, which will show how choices about what we eat, and how and where it is produced, combine to influence the resource footprint and risk profile of our food supply.

2)      We will persuade decision-makers in organisations such as local authorities, schools, universities, hospitals, and businesses to take action.  We will promote the use of our web-based resources, and link people to sources of information and practical advice. 

3)      By demonstrating how food security and sustainability can be planned for and acted on at a community level, we will exert influence on central government policymakers, opinion formers and academics. We aim to encourage the development of food policies that enable communities to take more control of their food systems.