In the first semester of 2019, the city of Ghent hosted the Working Group Food meeting, setting up a gathering on the topic of climate impacts on food systems and organizing related study visits to local actions active in the city.

Officers that joined the meeting were able to give updates from their most recent initiatives in their cities and Tatiana Tallarico from DG RTD joined them to present the most recent funding occasion for cities, the call Horizon2020 CE-FNR-07-2020 “FOOD 2030 – Empowering cities as agents of food system transformation”.

The city of Ghent organized a specific workshop on “Protein transition and meat reduction. What can cities do and how to measure impact?” and set up two stimulating study visits:

• Foodsavers Ghent – a logistic platform that collects food surpluses from local retailers and the wholesale market and redistributes them to social organizations in Ghent. Among these organizations are food banks, social restaurants and social supermarkets. In the first year about 600 tonnes of food surplusses were saved.
• De Goedinge: social and sustainable agricultural project on land owned by the city. Local sourcing. De Goedinge is a sustainable agricultural project on land owned by the city. The city loans the grounds to a consortium of farmers who can use the grounds free of charge in order to set up a sustainable agricultural project that involves “new” farmers as well as traditional ones and offers social employment. De Goedinge uses a sun powered raft to bring produce to the city.

Have a look at this short video of the meeting.