Liverpool will be launching its Good Food Plan this October – a strategy to create a city where everyone can eat good food and address key issues related to the food we eat.
Launching on Thursday 7th October, Phase One of the Good Food Plan is about tackling the immediate and urgent challenges that the city is facing while building a framework and foundation to create real systemic change in the medium and long term.
A total of 32% of adults in Liverpool are food insecure, Liverpool is home to 3 of the 10 most economically deprived areas in England, only 12% of children aged 11 to 18 eat their five-a-day (NDNS 2021) and a survey of the menus of 26% of private, voluntary and independent nurseries in Liverpool found them all to be deficient in energy, carbohydrates, iron, and zinc.
Meanwhile, an estimated 140,000 tonnes of food is wasted in Liverpool each year, producing approximately 368,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually, the equivalent of the CO2 produced by 80,033 cars in the same period.
The Plan issues including acute hunger, chronic food insecurity, access to and take-up of healthy, nutritious food and the sustainability of food supply in Liverpool and is focused around five goals:
Goal 1: ‘Good Food’ at points of Crisis – to ensure people in crisis get access to ‘Good Food’ quickly and easily.
Goal 2: Uncovering the True Scale of Food Insecurity – to better understand and document the scale and experiences of food insecurity.
Goal 3: Enabling Food Citizenship – to enable people to have the power, voice, resources and motivation to shape their local food environments and the food system as a whole.
Goal 4: Shifting Policy and Practice – to shift policy and practice to enable ‘Good Food’ to flourish.
Goal 5: Connecting the Community – to bring together a community of people and organisations that have a part to play in achieving good food for all.
The Good Food Plan delivers part of one of Liverpool City Council’s ‘Pandemic Pledges’, ‘Good Food, Warm Home’, announced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It also supports Liverpool’s City Plan vision to create a ‘thriving sustainable, fair city for everyone’ and builds on the existing and ongoing work of the Poverty Action Group and Liverpool’s Healthy Weight Declaration.
Liverpool’s Food Insecurity Task Force is proposing a fundamentally different approach that shifts power to people and communities to create real change.
The Plan states that “for real change to happen we must come together as a community of people and organisations interested in achieving Good Food for all” and has been developed in partnership with people and organisations such as: Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services, Feeding Liverpool, North Liverpool Foodbank, St Aidan’s Pantry, Micah Liverpool, Liverpool Arabic Centre, Together Liverpool, Merseyside Youth Association, Food Active, The University of Liverpool, The Food Domain, Feedback Global, The Food Domain, St Andrews Community Network, Fans Supporting Food Banks, Liverpool Hope University, Torus Foundation, Liverpool Health Partners, Arena Partners, NESTA’s People Powered Results Team, Nugent Care, The Joseph Lappin Centre, Kensington Fields Community Association and The Greenhouse Project.
Deputy Mayor, Councillor Jane Corbett, said:
“With the impact of austerity and now the pandemic, poverty is rising very fast. As a council we will continue to support our citizens struggling to make ends meet, with emergency grants and household items for as long as we can. In this day and age it is morally wrong that so many families are having to decide between putting food on the table, clothing their children, paying the fuel bills or keeping a roof over their head. This Good Food Plan builds on the many years a good number of us have been responding to food insecurity, working alongside those most affected, and taking our partnership work to the next level. Government must now finally agree to the Marmot policy action to ensure a healthy standard of living for all.”
Kevin Peacock, Chief Executive of St. Andrews Community network and co-chair of Liverpool’s Food Insecurity Task Force, said:
“We want to end the need for food banks. Emergency food provision (like food parcels from a food bank) is essential and has been a lifeline for many during the pandemic but using a food bank should be rare and short term and we must better understand and tackle the root causes of food insecurity.”
The Good Food Plan will be an evolving plan and a living document, owned by the people and organisations of the city and informed by real time action and reflection.
The plan can be viewed online at www.feedingliverpool.org/goodfoodplan/.
