RUAF Update - March 2017

RUAF Update | March 2017

March 2017

RUAF Update

no.29

In this update: Update on RUAF projects • • •

Dutch City Deal: Food on the Urban Agenda Governance of territorial food systems (GOUTER) Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Awards for good practices

News from RUAF partners • • • • •

City Region Food System Assessment Colombo Composts now considered in the “Fertilizer Subsidy Programme” in Ghana A European Network of AgroEcoCities City-to-city learning: Ede (The Netherlands) visits Ghent (Belgium) Urban agriculture training and policy development in Nairobi

New RUAF publications • • • • •

The role of private sector in city region food systems Foodsheds and City Region Food Systems in Two West African Cities Enhancing climate resilience of Gorakhpur by buffering floods through climate-resilient peri-urban agriculture Urban Agriculture Magazine 32: Urban FoodWaste-Energy Nexus and the Private Sector Urban Agriculture Magazine 33: Urban Agriculture and Agroecology

RUAF participation in events • • • • •

Urban Agriculture Australia Seminar Smart solutions for urban food supply Feeding Cities: Urban Agriculture, a Framework for Resilient African Cities Education for Urban Agriculture and Urban Green Entrepreneurship Resilient Cities 2017-Urban Food Forum

Signing of the City Deal

Dutch City Deal: Food on the Urban Agenda On 26 January 2017, 12 Dutch cities, the Province of Gelderland and three national Ministries jointly signed the Urban Agenda on Food, with the objective to strengthen the Dutch food system together with the private sector, knowledge institutes and societal organisations. The partners will specifically work on four themes: 1) Governance innovation; 2) Ecological and economic sustainability innovation; 3) Regional food systems and strengthening of fair and short supply chains around cities; 4) Food education, health and social inclusion.

Cities will engage in the sharing of experiences, joint learning and piloting of new innovations. Also proposals for policy improvement at national and EU level to strengthen urban food policies will be developed. RUAF will take on the role as network manager for the coming year. More information with Henk Renting at h.renting@ruaf.org.

RUAF Update | March 2017

Update on RUAF projects Governance of territorial food systems (GOUTER) IUFN and RUAF collaborate in a project on Governance of Territorial Food Systems supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. The project works with 4 French local and regional government administrations with the objective to strengthen food systems at territorial level (for a project description in French click here). To support the French processes, RUAF has been asked to contribute European experiences with territorial food governance. In order to do so, RUAF reached out to local partners in 13 European cities to elaborate case studies covering different areas as stipulated in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Framework of Action Food Governance. The case study descriptions will become publicly available in April 2017. Contact Marielle Dubbeling at m.dubbeling@ruaf.org.

Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Awards for good practices: 2 RUAF partners and 3 pilot cities of the FAO-RUAF City Region Food Systems Programme selected During the October 2016 Milan Pact Mayors’ Summit, 8 cities received awards for their significant efforts in implementing actions towards sustainable and resilient food systems. Three out of the eight pilot cities of the FAO-RUAF City Region Food Systems Programme, two of them also being a RUAF Partner, received awards for their work in building more sustainable and resilient food systems within their city regions.

Six awards in the following categories of the Framework for Action were presented: • Food production: Quito, for the AGRUPAR programme on urban agriculture; • Food supply and distribution: Toronto, for “Grab Some Good”, a collaborative initiative aiming at bringing healthy food in underserved communities; and • Social and economic equity: Lusaka, for using food for social equity, through the work done by women's groups with the municipality to integrate immigrants and food system services to fight food insecurity, unemployment and poverty; • Sustainable diets and nutrition: Birmingham, for its projects to fight childhood obesity; • Food waste: Riga, for an innovative method to treat and reuse food waste to fertilize soils and produce energy for greenhouses and household heating; • Governance: Vancouver, for the Vancouver Food Strategy.

Two monetary awards were presented on the following categories: • For the highest score within a challenging environment: Mexico City, especially for the “Community Dining Rooms Programme” that has set up more than 200 canteens throughout the city in areas with high rates of marginalization in order to offer affordable meals, thus empowering vulnerable people by providing them with employment opportunities.

• For the overall highest score: Baltimore, for creating the “Baltimore Food Policy Initiative” which aims to address health, economic and environmental disparities by increasing access to healthy affordable food in Baltimore City’s food deserts.

Read here a short description of the winning practices.

RUAF Global Partnership: Where we work

This a map of cities where the RUAF partners are currently engaged or have been engaged in the past. If you click on a city, you can find more information on our work there.

RUAF Update | March 2017

News from RUAF partners City Region Food System Assessment - Colombo Following an in-depth assessment performed for the City Region Food System Colombo by the International Water Management Institute, relevant national authorities, local and regional authorities, NGOs and research institutes agreed on four thematic areas for further study, including; (1) Food security, nutrition, and safety; (2) Food waste and losses; (3) Value chain management; and (4) Natural resources management and climate change adaptation.

Findings of these in-depth studies are now providing the basis for further design of policy and action plans.

Stakeholders envisaged that sustainable food systems are a primary component of the Colombo city’s development, enabling reinforced food systems of the city region, improving food security and safety, and addressing complex consumption needs. Besides, they stress the need to focus on the protection of vulnerable communities and the creation of new opportunities for urban and peri-urban farming and related activities, and improving the sustainability of local food systems in many dimensions. Colombo city will continue to seek possibilities to build a platform to display experiences and innovations while also building on the recent Milan Urban Food Policy Pact to which Colombo city is committed. This is a collaborative project of IWMI, FAO and RUAF. For further details please contact Sudarshana Fernando at s.c.fernando@cgiar.org.

City-to-city learning: Ede (Netherlands) visits Ghent (Belgium) From December 2016 to February 2017, RUAF supported the Municipality of Ede with an external assessment of their municipal food policy which has been implemented for the past 2 years. Part of this policy development review included learning from other cities. Therefore, on the 15th of December 2016 the Dutch food team of Ede visited the city of Ghent. Ghent aspires to be a climate neutral city and developed a food policy called “Gent en Garde”. The Dutch food team learned more about the five strategic goals of the Ghent policy and their operationalisation, especially short food supply chains, sustainable food production and more social value for food initiatives. Ede showed strong interest in the strategy development, facilitating and awareness raising role a city can play. Field visits included a vegetarian restaurant, serving dishes with local products, exemplifying a profitable, social employment project.

Other visits included an aquaponics pilot project where fish are farmed and vegetables and herbs are cultivated in a closed loop system. ‘Roof Food’ supplies biological, vegetarian meals through CO2 neutral transport and at the ‘Spilvarken’ project three pigs are fed with local food waste on a temporarily unused area. The ‘Lousbergmarkt’ is a recently opened covered marketplace for four local

Rooffood.be

food companies. RUAF will promote further DutchFlemish city exchanges in future.

Urban agriculture training and policy development in Nairobi RUAF’s partner, Mazingira Institute, a Kenyan NGO, has hosted the Nairobi and Environs Food Security, Agriculture and Livestock Forum (NEFSALF) since the early 2000s. It provides bi-annual training courses to urban farmers in collaboration with government extension services and has reached well over a thousand farmers. There is also a NEFSALF farmers’ network, and the network and forum have influenced policy. Collaboration between Mazingira Institute and Nairobi City County government continues. Kenya has been developing its Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture and Livestock Policy for some time and is currently finalising its Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Strategy (UPALF) through country-wide consultations with County Governments now responsible for the agriculture sector. Nairobi City County is in the lead on this development, having passed the Urban Agriculture Promotion and Regulation Act of 2015.

Nairobi is also one of the 100 resilient Cities where Rockefeller Foundation-supported activities are beginning. At a meeting on 5 December 2016 Sarah Chemutai of Nairobi’s Agriculture Sector and Diana Lee-Smith of Mazingira ensured food security, urban malnutrition and urban agriculture got on the agenda, also working with Veronica Kirogo of the Kenya national government, State Department of Agriculture.

As a follow-up to a 2016 inter-sectoral training on food systems and agriculture in Nairobi, organised by Mazingira in collaboration with Ryerson University, RUAF and other partners, several sectors in Nairobi are now cooperating on planning open spaces including urban agriculture. City officials are working with youth in one low-income area, where there are plans to upgrade a riparian area with plants to extract heavy metal contaminants and also harvest rainwater for food plants.

RUAF Update | March 2017

IWMI

Composts now considered in the “Fertilizer Subsidy Programme” in Ghana In Ghana, the “Fertilizer Subsidy programme” (FSP) was launched to increase the affordability of fertilizers.

However, until 2016, only inorganic fertilizers were considered, which made it difficult for organic fertilizer initiatives to compete in view of production costs. For this year 2016, for the first time, composts have been introduced into the FSP. As a result, locally produced composts (up to 45,000 metric tons) can benefit from a subsidy of up to 66%, reducing the price of a 50 kg bag from GHS 30 to GHS 10 (1 USD = 3.9 GHS). In a letter, the Director of the Crop Services Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (who administrates this FSP) wrote: “The current introduction of commercial compost production by some organisations and the initial positive results of the WaFo (Waste to Food) project being undertaken by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)-Ghana, has giving assurance to Government of the availability of high quality compost material which could be promoted through the fertilizer subsidy programme. To be able to incorporate organic fertilizers onto the subsidy programme the Ministry undertook stakeholder consultations of which IWMI- Ghana made substantial inputs.”

This positive revolution will benefit a whole sector trying to turn waste into an asset, including several IWMI projects which aim at commercialising waste-based composts. For instance, the Fortifer to be marketed under IWMI’s waste to fertilizer projects Wafo and CapVal (of which RUAF is partner), will automatically become eligible for the FSP once marketing starts.

A European Network of AgroEcoCities In December, Zaragoza brought together several Spanish and other European cities in order to draft the shapes of a first European city network on agroecology. RUAF’s partner the city of Ghent supports the network because of the close link with its own priorities within its food policy.

See also: http://www.agroecocities.eu/gent-en-garde/.

Topics covered in the network are the implementation of food councils, promotion of agro ecological food systems and consumption, better access to land, establishment of networks of agro ecological producers and promotion of short supply chains. The network is currently setting up a communication tool for all cities involved in the network; setting up specific workgroups among network participants and preparing the next annual meeting of the network. For further information contact: Pedro Hererra www.ciudadeagroecologicas.eu.

New RUAF publications RUAF appears in the latest issue of the Pan European Networks Government Magazine in a special feature on urban agriculture. The article explains the work of RUAF and the need for an urban response to growing food demands.

The role of private sector in city region food systems RUAF Foundation and the Food Business Knowledge Platform, with support from the CGIAR Water, Land and Ecosystems Research Program (WLE / IWMI), agreed to jointly distil analysis and perspectives on the role of private sector in city region food systems (2016). The aim of the study is to provide suggestions for private sector actors, policy support mechanisms, and to identify key lessons learned. The two overarching questions addressed in this study are: 1. How can the private sector help shape more sustainable city region food systems?

2. What business and policy environment is needed to better engage the private sector in building sustainable city region food systems?

Based on three city region case studies, 19 smaller case studies featuring private sector and government interventions, and a complementary literature and online review, an analysis report provides findings and recommendations to enhance private sector engagement and putting in place (support) mechanisms to build more sustainable and resilient city region food systems in different city regions.

Foodsheds and City Region Food Systems in Two West African Cities In response to changing urban food systems, short supply chains have been advocated to meet urban food needs while building more sustainable urban food systems.

Despite an increasing interest in urban food supply and the flows of food from production to consumption, there is a lack of empirical studies and methodologies which systematically analyse the actual proportion and nutritional significance of local and regional food supplied to urban markets. The aim of an empirical IWMI-led study therefore was to compare the geographical sources supplying food to the urban population (“foodsheds”)

RUAF Update | March 2017 in Tamale, Ghana and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to record the supplied quantities and to assess the level of interaction between the sources and the respective city. While food provided from within the city region offers certain place-based benefits, like the provision of fresh perishable crops, a larger geographical diversity of foodsheds appeared to enhance the resilience of urban food systems, such as against climate related production failures. Read the full article at: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/12/1175.

Enhancing climate resilience of Gorakhpur by buffering floods through climate-resilient peri-urban agriculture The project “Enhancing climate resilience of Gorakhpur by buffering floods through climate-resilient peri-urban agriculture” is part of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN). Funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, it was implemented by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group (GEAG) from June 2012 to May 2016 to demonstrate the importance of ecosystem services –such as the flood buffering provided by periurban agriculture – in addressing climate change impacts in Gorakhpur. The RUAF Foundation, in collaboration with ICLEI South Asia, undertook a formative evaluation of this project in April–May 2016, at the request of The Rockefeller Foundation. This report importantly documents the tangible impact the project is having on farmers, and contributes to the broader evidence base for urban resilience. Read the full report here.

Upcoming: Urban Agriculture Magazine 32: Urban Food-Waste-Energy Nexus & the Private Sector This issue of the UA Magazine focuses on the urbanfood-energy nexus with a particular focus on the role of the private sector and its enabling environment. It will address and include technical innovations, as well as approaches that connect urban food security and access to sustainable energy. It will share experiences and cases from the West-African Bio-wastes for Energy and Fertilizer (WABEF) project, and a recent study done by RUAF and Food Business Knowledge Network (FBKN) on the role of the private sector and social enterprises in shaping or enabling city region food systems (CRFS). Also experiences from the Resource Recovery and Reuse program IWMI (the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE)) and other RUAF partners on the safe recovery and use of energy (next to water and nutrients) from waste streams are included. The Magazine will be published by July 1 2017, but parts will appear earlier on the WABEF website and will be used in various activities of the WABEF Project.

33: Urban Agriculture & Agroecology Together with Coventry University and Garden Organic, this upcoming UA-Magazine will be published in November 2017 and made available for the Annual AESOP Sustainable Food Planning conference.

Past events Urban Agriculture Australia Henk de Zeeuw (RUAF) visited Australia on invitation by Sustain Australia (the Australian Food Network). The visit included the following events: a. Australian Urban Agriculture Forum, Melbourne: the first national event on urban agriculture in Australia organised

by Sustain Australia. b. Central Victorian Urban Agriculture Forum, Bendigo: organised by Bendigo Food Alliance Network (and Sustain) c. Edible Adelaide: the future of food growing, Adelaide: workshop organised by Natural Resources Dept. Adelaide/ Botanic Gardens and Sustain and an evening session organised by Adelaide Sustainability Connect. d. Urban Agriculture and Food security Forum, Sydney Information on recent research that investigates what grows in Melbourne’s city fringe foodbowl, the vulnerabilities in the city’s food supply and the importance of Melbourne’s foodbowl for a more resilient and sustainable food future for the city, is available here.

RUAF and Ghent at the EU Food Village / Food 2030 in Brussels.

Seminar Smart solutions for urban food supply On January 19th the seminar on ‘Smart solutions for urban food supply’ took place on the Wageningen University and Research campus. Marielle Dubbeling, director of RUAF Foundation, presented research on how the private sector contributes to achieving sustainable urban food policy outcomes within City Region Food Systems. Marc Wegerif, working for Oxfam International and as a WUR PhD candidate, analysed the ‘Symbiotic Food System’ of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

Key messages were that: • Smart solutions for urban food supply require increased attention to different forms and shapes of urban food systems: the smartest solutions are those that are already there!

• There are different forms of food systems which are not solely competitive but rather complementary, and these need to be embedded economically but also socially, environmentally and spatially; • Policy development for urban food supply needs to involve peri-urban and rural food system actors and interests; • Securing urban food supply needs different forms of innovation: not only technical, but also policy innovation. As such policymakers can see food as a way to connect diverse policy arenas in order to make city regions more sustainable and inclusive.

Please visit the seminar website for more information and the presentations.

Upcoming events Feeding Cities: Urban Agriculture, a Framework for Resilient African Cities 23-25 March, 2017 at the Institut Français de Madagascar (IFM), Antananarivo, Madagascar This conference, organised by the Institut des Métiers de la Ville (IMV), has the aim to discuss and agree on an agenda for urban and periurban agriculture for African Cities. For two days, a series of presentations and round tables, as well as the Carrot City exhibition will be offered to the participants, focusing on: feeding cities locally, climate change adaptation, urban resilience, and productive use of urban wastes.

In addition to local authorities and NGOs from Madagascar, a number of international organisations will participate (FAO, AFD). RUAF will present its experiences in supporting cities on urban agriculture in developing food policies, and in relation to climate change. You can follow the conference transmitted on-line through Facebook Live. More information: Carmen Zuleta at carmenzuleta@imvtana.org.

Resilient Cities 2017 Urban Food Forum

Upcoming: Education for Urban Agriculture and Urban Green Entrepreneurship 30 March 2017, Aeres Almere, The Netherlands RUAF, in collaboration with Aeres University of Applied Sciences, will organise a multiplier event in Almere (The Netherlands) to present the main results of the European Erasmus+ project URBAN GREEN TRAIN, including: • Open access educational modules and resources supporting urban agriculture and urban green entrepreneurship • Innovative business initiatives from Italy, France, Germany and The Netherlands.

• Launch of an EU cluster on Entrepreneurial Urban Agriculture to stimulate the cooperation between Small and Medium Enterprises, higher education institutes, NGOs and policy makers.

More information: f.hoekstra@ruaf.org.

RUAF Foundation is a global partnership on sustainable urban agriculture and food systems. Since 1999, RUAF has supported local and sub-national governments, urban producer organisations, NGOs, CBOs, research centres and other stakeholders with training, technical assistance, action-research and policy advice in various related areas.

RUAF is a not-for-profit organisation registered in the Netherlands. For more information: www.ruaf.org.

The RUAF Update is the newsletter from RUAF Foundation. To subscribe: ruaf-news-on@ruaf.org, to unsubscribe: ruaf-news-off@ruaf.org.

You can contact us for more information at info@ruaf.org.

4-6 May 2017, Bonn, Germany ICLEI, with support from FAO, organises an urban food forum during the Resilient Cities Congress. RUAF is supporting programme development. The Forum will host the following sessions: 1. Political session: Resilient urban food systems and the international sustainable development agenda. This Panel will gather city representatives and other key participants and speakers to (i) advocate for the importance of building resilient and sustainable city region food systems, (iii) discuss the transition towards sustainable city region food systems as a key factor of resilience for cities within the framework of the global development agenda and (iii) present the action plan of the ICLEI-RUAF CITYFOOD network.

2. Technical session 1: Tools and methods for city region food system assessment and planning.

This session will explore different tools, methodologies and approaches on city region food system assessment and planning to build local food strategies towards sustainability and resilience.

3. Technical session 2: City network exchange and cooperation mechanisms on urban food systems. This session will showcase how different cooperation mechanisms and processes can be used to foster exchanges of good practices, experiences and knowledge on urban food systems between cities.