chapter 3 inventory of local food systems

Project CP/59 - “Instruments and institutions to develop local food systems”
This procedure is repeated several times before coming to a moment of synthesis. For
this, the participants take note of the conversations at the various tables and a final
dialogue is held in plenary. After the café, the organisers process all results in a written
document to be sent to all participants.
After two presentations with the main results and recommendations of the research
projects, three rounds of dialogue were held with as central question: “How can
sustainable food chains be strenghtened?”. In the second round, a new question was
introduced to focus on what is new (‘What new things did you learn?’), while in the final
round participants were asked to specifically search for elements needed for change
(‘What is needed to bring about change?’). In plenary conversation, every table was
asked to think about what they think is the most important lever to strengthen
sustainable food chains.
5.2.3. Levers to strengthen sustainable food chains
After the workshop, we clustered the reactions, ideas and what was written on the table
cloths into the following four levers:
1. Consciousness of the consumer through responsibilisation. In this special
attention is devoted to the clarity of the principles of sustainability and their
dissemination in an innovative and creative way (particularly to access young
people). Through consciousness, participants felt the need to work on the
responsibility of the consumer, with his increased participation in sustainable
food chains as a possible result. However, some draw attention to the choice
and the voice of the consumer, who is not always willing or able to spend
more money on buying food.
2. More sales by more creative marketing. Innovation should respond to social
reality. One aspect that disserves more attention is the possible symbiosis
between sustainability and scale economies, that is, to couple efficient
distribution in mainstream supply chains with communication, fair prices and
long-term relationships that characterise LFS. Both local and mainstream food
systems may benefit from existing product image assets, such as price and
quality as well as assets that yet need to be further developed, such as
products’ connectedness to the region and organic character.
3. Building competences by professionalisation and guidance. Guidance and
support should be more oriented towards the development of skills and the
further professionalisation of sustainable food chains. In that sense, the central
question was reformulated as follows: ‘How can sustainable food chains
strengthem themselves?’ Government should work out policies that are
supportive and motivating and that creates (financial and legal) space for
innovation. Support and guidance of supply chains should be more coherent
by bundling the efforts of different institutions into a network.
4. Stimulating and facilitating government framwork. Government has an
important stimulating and facilitating role in each of the aforementioned
SPSD II - Part I - Sustainable production and consumption patterns - Agro-Food 72