24/01/2008 – Transition initiatives and Sustainable food seminar

By invitation I attended this seminar more out of curiosity than necessity as the Market Harborough Transition process has not got as far as creating a food group yet but this would, I hoped, bring some of the issues to the fore.

27 delegates gathered at the BVSC (Birmingham Voluntary Services Council) conference centre just outside the Bullring centre to debate the points on the agenda set by ‘Food links UK’ Sarah Davies. The delegates fell into two main categories, transitioners from around the country, Glastonbury, Bristol, Nottingham, Leicester and one all the way from Bonny Scotland and those working for NGO’s to promote local and sustainable food such as F3, the soil association and various regional groups.

The premise of the seminar was simple, for the last decade various NGO’s and charities have been pushing the sustainable, local food message to the public… this was not bearing fruit and so the onus was changed to working with the supermarkets to nurture and environment where local food was encouraged. Again after stepping back and reviewing the progress that had been made there was little to feel encouraged about.

It is here that the transition town initiatives raise their heads above the parapet as it is through the ground roots participation of the local populations that the message can best be heard. This seminar was in fact to find out what various transition initiatives felt that they needed to strengthen their local food message and to help the groups.

It became clear after a few brain storming sessions that there were some simple steps that were wanted by the TT’ers which included.

  • Detailed Case studies of successful projects
  • Expert help for project initiation
  • Access to seed funding

It was also clear that projects should be self financing and so sustainable in their own right without having to rely on continuous funding. The major debate was to whether a bid should be made to the ‘local food fund’ for a co-ordinating body or whether the functions proposed were already covered by various NGO’s such as the ‘soil association’.

It was agreed that the feed back should be analysed, unfortunately not by Sarah Davies who moves on to a new job after the close of play on the 25th, and a recommendation for resource coordination be made and another meeting convened potentially at the ‘Transition Network’ Conference in May.

It was good to see so many transitioner’s taking the time off from work, myself included, and great to make some new acquaintances and to meet Caroline from TT Glastonbury and Danny from TT Leicester again. It was also great to be able to make a journey on public transport without the costs being too prohibitive or inconvenient.

Best regards

Darren