How BoomCircle are stepping up to the plate locally

Back in 2017, natural curiosity found me travelling from my home town of Cheltenham to a couple of ‘Sustainable Food Cities’ meetings in Wales, inspired by what Cardiff and other towns were doing with the Soil Association's concept of 'Sustainable Food Cities’ (SFC). SFC approach sees towns and cities  using food as the vehicle for driving positive social, economic and environmental change.

They focus on 6 key issues:

  1. Promoting healthy and sustainable food to the public

  2. Tackling food poverty, diet-related ill health & poor food access

  3. Building community food knowledge eg. cooking and growing skills

  4. Promoting a vibrant and diverse sustainable food economy

  5. Transforming catering and food procurement

  6. Reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system

I started to dig around to see what was happening in Gloucestershire around these issues.  My search didn’t uncover much.

Eventually I decided to step up to the plate and start something myself. I met with Jo Price, Chancellor of the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and Chair of Gloucestershire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Rural Business Group who was really supportive. She commissioned a report and  released some seed funding for me to run a couple of workshops off the back of it and Gloucestershire Food Strategy Group was born. 

Our vision is to create a healthy circular economy in food & farming that cools the climate, builds natural capital & reduces food-related illness for the benefit of our people, businesses and nature.

 We are working with 15-20 partners across Gloucestershire from Public Health, NHS, Gloucestershire County Council, the National Farmers Union, universities and businesses in Gloucestershire to get help our food system be the best is can be: generating prosperity for farmers, producing healthy, good food and being part of the county’s nature recovery plans.

 The Food Strategy for Gloucestershire is emerging and received seed funding from RAU and GCC through 2018. In January 2020, GCC and GFirst LEP came together to fund the completion of the Gloucestershire Food Strategy. The draft of which should be ready by June 2020

Any person or organisation who is passionate about creating a new food system in Gloucestershire is welcome to join the Glos Food Strategy Group and help our vision become a reality.

If you would like a two page summary of the strategy so far and the projects we are looking to develop in county, or how you can get involved,  please get in touch with Tamsyn Harrod

We are especially interested in ideas and organisations who would like to partner with the Glouscestershire Food Strategy Group after June 2020 to support the delivery phase of the projects.