A new city-based campaign has been launched to get more urban-grown veg into local restaurants and shops.
The Veg Cities campaign, spearheaded by Sustain in partnership with the Peas Pleas initiative is providing funding to 14 cities to increase their production and availability of vegetables, especially for children.
The 14 food partnerships that received funding to run local Veg Cities campaigns are in Aberdeen, Bournemouth & Poole, Brighton & Hove, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Hull, London Borough of Lewisham, Luton, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Oxford and Sheffield.
Over the next year and a half, some Veg Cities campaigns will concentrate their efforts in areas of higher deprivation and will set up veg stands, cooking classes for the community, growing spaces and improve the uptake of Healthy Start Vouchers (which subsidise vegetables).
Others will grow more and will work towards getting more locally grown veg into local supply chains. Collectively, the campaign aims to get hundreds of gardens across the UK involved in a Big Dig Day next Spring to kick off food growing for the season and help them measure how much veg they grow in 2019.
Veg Cities will also promote vegetable consumption through schools, events and festivals and will be joining forces withVeg Powerto display veg adverts later this year.
Sofia Parente, Campaign Coordinator at Sustain, one of the three partners coordinating the Sustainable Food Cities network, said: “We are beyond excited so many local areas want to run a Veg Cities campaign. More veg production and consumption brings so many benefits locally: for the environment, for our health, for the local economy and social cohesion.
“The time is ripe for local action on veg and we hope other local areas across the UK will be inspired to join in, register and run their own Veg Cities campaigns.”
