Sustainable Food

Several of the city’s stakeholders linked to the world of agroecology, sustainable food and responsible consumption met on 15 March at the Espai Josep Bota in Fabra i Coats in Barcelona to continue developing a roadmap to transform the city’s food system and make it more sustainable by the year 2030. The process of drawing up the Barcelona 2030 Sustainable Food Strategy began on 19 January. Roughly sixty people participated in the meeting.

The meeting was opened by Álvaro Porro González, Commissioner for Social Economy, Local Development and Consumption, and Amaranta Herrero Cabrejas, Strategic Coordinator of the Urban Food Policies and Responsible Consumption Department of the Barcelona City Council, who explained the main axes of the strategies, as set forth in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, such as carrying out specific and measurable actions linked to existing strategies, promoting healthy diets, ensuring social and economic equality, improving food supply and distribution and reducing waste, amongst others.

The participants worked in four groups focusing on the eight preliminary objectives and lines of work set out in the strategy, with the aim of answering questions about the actions needed to achieve the objectives, the warnings and risks to be taken into account, how coordination should be carried out and which actors should be mobilised. These objectives are:

1. To increase the production, sale and consumption of seasonal, local and agro-ecological food and distribution in shorter, fairer and more balanced chains.

2. To protect and recuperate urban and peri-urban agricultural spaces.

3. To promote and defend universal access to healthy, sustainable diets.

4. To prevent food losses and food waste.

5. To combat the climate emergency and the extinction crisis.

6. To foster a change in food culture.

7. To promote and foster fair relations in the food chain.

8. To coordinate and mobilise stakeholders in the ecosystem to carry out specific and measurable actions and activities linked to existing strategies.

Barcelona moves towards an agro-ecological, transparent and participatory food system

The climate emergency is a global challenge that must also be jointly tackled through local actions by governments, organisations and citizens. With this participatory process of drawing up the Barcelona 2030 Sustainable Food Strategy, the Catalan capital is taking another step forward in tackling the climate emergency and equipping itself with new mechanisms that allow us to urgently transform the way we produce, eat and dispose of food and move towards other more sustainable models.