Ultuna Hub updates - June 2023

MatRåd - Uppsala Food Policy Council

SLU Urban Futures has been working together with Uppsala MatRåd in their efforts to establish a food policy council in the Uppsala region. The Uppsala Food Council Initiative is a democratic movement that aims to bring together like-minded individuals to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in Uppsala and is interested in collaborating with researchers from SLU and other societal actors. The organization is concerned with designing a sustainable and tasty food culture in Uppsala in collaboration with local actors, researchers and Uppsala Municipality.

Livsmedelsforskningsdagen 2023

The food research day was hosted at Ultuna campus at SLU this year, focusing on issues of food system vulnerability in the Swedish context. The conference heard from a range of speakers from different countries in the Nordic region about their perspectives on creating robust, resilient and sustainable food chains. Political representative, Anders Drottja, and Johan Kuylenstierna, director general of FORMAS stressed the importance of collaboration between research, societal actors and government in creating innovative solutions to the diversity of challenges facing the food system.

The conference highlighted that recent disruptions in the food system, such as drought, covid 19 and the Ukraine war, demonstrated the need to strengthen self-sufficiency in the food system, which requires working with food preparedness and sustainability in tandem. Food poverty and food security were key themes of the conference; the causes and manifestations of poor access to food have a significant urban dimension, as do potential solutions. The huge demands of cities in feeding their populations requires a vast amount of resources, as well as producing huge amounts of food waste. Changes in diets, reducing waste in value chains, and improving local production and global supply chains all form part of the solution to address these issues. Johan Rindevall, Head of Matmissionen, emphasized that we must talk about the social, as well of economic benefits of improving food access, as well as find structural solutions in food supply chains to make food affordable and accessible to the most vulnerable, and prevent food going to waste.

Food&Cities seed funding 2023

Two projects conducting cross-disciplinary research activities have been granted funding as part of the Food&Cities seed funding call in 2023. The projects each explore different aspects of the systemic relations between food systems and sustainable urban development. The projects demonstrate the complex interactions between SDG 11 and other SDGs and illustrate SLU’s capacity to produce research across disciplines in order to address current and future sustainability challenges.

The following projects were granted funding:

• Incorporation of Greenhouse Farming Technology into Urban Planning: Implications on urban households’ food and nutritional security, welfare and resilience in Ghana
• Consumer study on food-Non Food Forest Products (NTFPs) in Mombasa, Kenya