Eco Comment – Wakefield and District Good Food Partnership Launch

Often, when I’ve decided to write an Eco Comment on a particular subject, several newspaper or media reports appear on the same subject. This week is no exception.  

My Facebook feed has been full of ‘FareShare Zero Waste’ and the ‘Zero Waste Challenge’ planned for November. Those interested can sign up for the 2024 Challenge and get a pack of information relevant to the challenge and ‘Prevent food waste in your own kitchen, whilst fundraising to help FareShare redistribute good to eat surplus food to people going hungry.’ Even if you don’t want to take part in the challenge, the Facebook posts encourage and give ideas as to how you can use, reuse and preserve food in ways that might be new to you.  

Some of you might have been watching the latest BBC TV show ‘Nadiya’s Cook Once Eat Twice’. This also seeks to ‘introduce inventive ways to utilise leftovers and make the most of what’s in your fridge.’  

This week I also investigated the ‘Too Good to Go’ app which is ‘a social impact company on a mission to inspire and empower everyone to fight food waste together.’ It aims to ‘rescue food near you’ where you can ‘enjoy food at ½ price or less’, thereby ‘help[ing] the environment by reducing food waste’ and ‘try[ing] something new from local cafes, bakeries or restaurants’. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks very interesting. 

Those of you who read the Guardian might have seen the ‘Long Read’ published on Tuesday 08.10.24 ‘The scandal of food waste and how we can stop it’ by Julian Baggini. The article is an edited extract from How We Eat published by Granta. As with so many things it is a shocking read in so many ways and as the subheading tells us ‘Every informed observer agrees that food waste and loss must be reduced if we are to feed all humans. What’s stopping us?’ The answers as you can imagine are many and varied and this Eco Comment tells of a local group that is going to attempt to ‘transform the Wakefield District into a place where our food system does as much good as possible, and as little harm as possible to: 

• Our People – everyone has access to healthier, good quality, safe and affordable food. 
• Our prosperity – the district has a vibrant, thriving and diverse food economy that works for people as much as they work for it. 
• Our planet – we have a food system that doesn’t harm biodiversity and the wider environment. We support the needs of today without limiting future generations.’ 

Who are these people? 

Last week saw the launch of the Wakefield and District Good Food Partnership launch and I went along as an interested observer/participant. I encountered a room of about 50 people from many and varied backgrounds, all focusing on food. The lunch being provided by Create Café might have been an incentive but I don’t think that was the reason so many had chosen to give of their time and obvious energy. 

The morning was opened by Stuart Boothman a member of the Good Food Partnership Development Programme (GFPDP) and chair of Just Transition Wakefield and John Wilcox, a member of the Wakefield Council Public Health team and chair of GFPDP. Whilst not running the enterprise, Wakefield Council were certainly supporting the venture and Councillor Maureen Cummings as portfolio holder for Communities and Poverty spoke by video link concerning the council’s role and support which was evident considering the presence of so many different council-employed people present. Other speakers included John Whiteman, chair of Grow Wakefield whose message was ‘Food impacts everything we do and unites us. Food security and Food Justice is imperative to society.’ And the catchline ‘If you eat, you’re in’ which succinctly expressed the group’s reason for being. Conor Williams – told us of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund ‘Healthy Eating on a Budget project’ which is to be found in several communities within the district and offers help and support to those in need alongside offering sustainable food. He is based at the Eastmoor Community food pantry. Alex Vaughan spoke on behalf of the Yorkshire Grain Alliance although several of you might know her for her home-produced artisan bread making skills. The final speaker of this part of the morning was Paula Appleton, a director of Evergreen Active which spearheads the ‘Let’s Get Cooking’ scheme which I had come across in school. They encourage and provide opportunities for people of all ages to shop, cook and eat together whilst talking about shared experiences and the values of nutrition and food preparation and consumption.  

We were then given group table tasks to discuss and find possible solutions for. This made for a fascinating activity especially given the diverse membership of the tables which included farmers, producers, university researchers, those working with asylum seekers and refugee communities, council departments and others. 

The main speaker of the event was Anna Clayton of ‘Food Futures, North Lancashire’s Sustainable Food Network’. She gave an inspiring talk on how a similar group to those present had started on a journey to ‘realise the shared vision of “a thriving local food system that is healthy, resilient and fair.” Her inspiring talk explained how their ‘ten year’ journey had survived, grown and changed over time and was still having to respond to the needs of the communities it serves.  

One of the most shocking comments to be shared from the event was that ‘45% of green bin waste in the Wakefield district is ‘FOOD WASTE’. This number alone justifies the length of this Eco Comment. If anyone is interested in being a part of this project, please email goodfood@wakefield.gov.uk  I have another three pages of notes which I could share with you but will spare you for now. Needless to say I feel this is something that we should at least be aware of and be pleased that there are people trying to mend the unfair society we live in. Let’s pray they succeed. 

Susan Morgan
Eco Group