Create A Food Partnership

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Izzy: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast, with me, Isabelle Sparrow. Today I’m joined by special guest co-host Vera Zakharov, Local Action Coordinator at Sustain. 

Vera: Hi, pleasure to be here Izzy. 

Izzy: This series is called Do Something Bigger, and it’s all about ways that you can get involved, take action and really make a difference to the place where you live or work. It accompanies our campaign 25 Big Local Actions in 2025 and as the name suggests, we’re highlighting 25 topics throughout this year. Today’s episode is called Create a Food Partnership, but if this is not to your taste – why not go back and see if another episode whets your appetite? And, if you’re hungry for more – then please, subscribe to the pod so you never miss an episode. 

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Vera, it’s really lovely to have you here. Regular listeners will have heard from your colleague Kiloran a few weeks ago when we were talking about Producing Local Food, but before we hear from our guests, I’d love to know more about Sustain and about your role there? 

Vera: Sustain, The Alliance for Better Food and Farming is an organisation that delivers a breadth of campaigns and programmes across a range of food issues. We work on everything from healthy eating and healthy food access for children and for anybody experiencing food insecurity; to work on supply chains, as well as, sustainable farming policy and things like Real Bread, like transparency in our supply chains. And, and then the kind of more local action element of our daily lives.  

Our campaigns and projects are informed by two things. The way I’d like to see it. Is that kind of the wider knowledge of the policy landscape and its enabling and inhibiting influence on our food system, as well as that place based, that local action that everything we do must be driven by and informed by. And so at Sustain, we bring these two parts together. 

Izzy: And can you tell us a bit about what Sustainable Food Places are and what you do specifically around those? 

Vera: A huge part of my work is working on the Sustainable Food Places programme, which is a partnership run programme itself. So Sustain is one of five partners that also includes Soil Association, Food Matters and our nations partners, Nourish Scotland and Food Sense Wales. But really the core of this amazing programme is the 123 (at this point) food partnerships across the four nations. 

And my work is about supporting the food partnerships and the community actors within their networks to take action. And so this is in the form of developing and coordinating campaigns as well as supporting that kind of movement building. So ensuring that community action really is at the core of what these local networks do and how they are informed and how they shape policy locally, but also the work of bringing that local community voice into policy influencing. 

We also have a Good Food Local programme that specifically works with councils to support them, to kind of like benchmark a practice at a local level to make sure that their policies and their processes are in place across a breadth of food issues. 

Izzy: Yeah, absolutely. This topic is really one that is very aligned with what Carbon Copy is about as a charity. Our whole thing is about this local collective impact and about bringing together lots of different kinds of organisations to collaborate around issues. And that is very much what sustainable food partnerships and Sustainable Food Places are about. So we’re going to speak a lot more about this throughout the episode. 

And we’re also speaking to a couple of guests who work within Sustainable Food Places in different parts of the UK. So our first guest today is Martin Carle who works for CFINE, which is one of the lead partner organisations behind Granite City Good Food, which is the Sustainable Food Places Partnership for Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland. I asked him how the partnership was set up and how he got involved. 

Martin: The partnership has sort of formally existed as a member of the Sustainable Food Places Network since 2017, and the background work to all of that establishment and the work that went on to make sure that we became a member of the Sustainable Food Places Network, sort of existed around the years leading up to that point, essentially. I started as the coordinator in 2020, so I began my job and my role during the pandemic, which was a really interesting time to join. 

And I think that time had its own challenges in terms of the way that food was used as a vehicle for positive change and to bring people together in a completely different sense. I suppose. There was an event in 2016 called Eat Aberdeen, which established sort of the approach that we wanted to take as a city around partnership on sustainable food, and that that led us directly pretty much into becoming a member of the network, alongside all of the other conversations that were happening anyway between partners in that point and time as well. 

There’s lots of organisations involved in Granite City Good Food, and I suppose there’s a few different levels of that involvement, for example, our Aberdeen Community Food Network is one of the networks of Granite City Good Food to where there are organisations involved in delivering cooking lessons. But our partnership is also driven by a steering group at a slightly more strategic level. 

And so there are partners involved at the sort of practical level as well as the more strategic level as well. Our steering group at the moment has in the region of sort of 10-12 key partners, including partners from our public sector. So the council, the NHS and our health and social care partnerships are very engaged and involved. 

And in fact, the council on the local NHS board provide funding to support the work that we do. We also have, for example, The Rowett Institute involved, so we have some academic partners that are engaged around the food system locally as well. And of course The Rowett Institute has a national and international reputation as well for the amazing work that it does around food research. 

Izzy: Yeah, it’s really exciting to hear about all these different kinds of organisations working together. And I think it sort of reminds me of something that we talked about in the episode with Kiloran, the Produce Local Food episode, which is really about the amazing power of food to connect basically everything together. Everything is linked by food. And, you know, to be bringing NHS organisations together with private organisations, together with charities; they’re very different groups, but they are all connected by their relationship with food.  

Let’s just go right back to the beginning a little bit, because I would like to understand a bit more about why a place might need a food partnership and what the benefits of it are. What’s the purpose of creating one? 

Vera: The thing is, there is phenomenal activity in every single community and every single place. It might be thought the council is really taking food policy seriously is investing in, you know, procurement, it’s improving school meals. Or it could be that there is a wealth of community and grassroots organisations doing brilliant things and connecting people over food. The reason why partnership working is so effective is, I mean, it’s a very simple concept that we are always greater than the sum of our parts. 

When you bring these different actors together, that’s where the innovation happens. That’s where you start looking at how one intervention, say, around healthy eating, can actually integrate principles around access, inclusivity, around sustainability and ethics. It’s where that collaboration happens. You start seeing every single touchpoint that people have when it comes to food is the opportunity not just to expand their sort of right of access, the right to food, but actually start ensuring that food, as it’s done locally, as it’s produced, as it’s traded and as it consumed locally, actually starts to do good for society and the environment. 

And I think there are many actors in our spaces that don’t see food as their responsibility. And in fact, it’s one of the biggest problems, I think, with food policy, it’s like, you know, whose job is it? Well, what we see is when those different organisations, those different people come together locally, they start realising that it’s a collective responsibility. 

And I think that kind of working as a collective, as a cohort, gives people the courage and the energy to do something different and start to develop that strategic vision at the core. So it’s not something that happens this year: it’s something that happens for always. And so we think every single local area, every single town, city collection of villages deserves that. 

You know, and it’s and I think part of it is about also setting that legacy that they have that for now and that they have that in the future that, you know, our children’s children enjoy that too. 

Izzy: There’s something there as well about [laughing] – to use a pun – demonstrating the ‘appetite’ for change as well. So you’re saying that, you know, good things start happening when you bring people together. But I think also just knowing that there are a number of people, of organisations, that care enough to want that change to happen is really powerful as well. 

We can feel quite isolated in caring about these issues, or quite isolated and wanting change to happen. And actually, when we come together and we start to recognise that actually we are very much, you know, in a majority of people who want positive change. And I think, you know, again, that’s something that’s created that awareness of the appetite for change is created by coming together and communicating with one another. 

Vera: Just to add to that, I think, you know, politicians and government, they need to see the public mandate. And I think that’s why, you know, when you start bringing people together, they have the opportunity to contribute to that narrative of what that local area needs to see. And politicians will, they wait for that. They look for that public mandate. 

You can have all the numbers, all the research and all the figures, but it’s not just important on its own to have that sort of community representation and community shaping of a local priorities. But actually we need that for governments to make the bold choices that they need to make, to make sure that people have a food system that serves and nourishes them. 

Izzy: So back to Martin. The people who are listening to this might not be that familiar with Aberdeen as a place, maybe some of them are, but I certainly have never been to Aberdeen, don’t know much about it, so I asked Martin to tell me a bit more about the city and the context for setting up Granite City Good Food. 

Martin: So first and foremost, I think Aberdeen has a historic reputation as the oil and gas capital of Europe. That reputation sort of continues to be quite prominent and prevalent nowadays. And with that, I suppose, comes a perception anyway, of wealth and, you know, the prosperity that the oil and gas industry has been known to bring. However, that is sort of, it’s almost a veil over, over the city in terms of, you know, there are lots and lots of areas that we in the city called priority neighbourhoods that are identified through the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation as being quite high up in that index. 

And so there is an inequality, and there is, unfortunately, neighbourhoods where food poverty or, you know, poverty in general is potentially, unfortunately higher. But alongside that, there’s lots and lots of great community organisations that are involved in supporting and working within the community, being sort of led and pushed by them within the community as well. And many of those organisations will have some elements of food you know, about them as well. 

So within the city, for example, we work with organisations across the city who are delivering, for example, cooking lessons or delivering community growing projects. The cooking lessons through our Aberdeen Community Food Network, Food Champions programme, which is delivered by our Health and Social Care Partnership and partners on the Community Food Network. Our community growing activity is supported by organisations such as ourselves at CFINE and within the partnership circumstance as well. 

And so there’s lots of really great activity that boosts food security in some way that is taking place across the city. And the level of food support and wraparound support to mitigate those circumstances of food poverty and food insecurity are really active and really prominent, with that emphasis around wraparound support as well. So from an equality perspective and from a wealth perspective, there are communities who experience food poverty and poverty more generally. 

But there is a real lively community that connects into food activity around those communities as well, to make sure that people have that experience, but also have that access to affordable, healthy, nutritious and delicious, at the end of the day, food as well. 

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Izzy: Do you know someone who could really get their teeth into this episode? Perhaps a friend or family member who’s involved with a community group, food business, council or health service organisation, who would love to learn more about Sustainable Food Places? Why not share the episode with them, and help them to Do Something Bigger where they live! 

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Izzy: Now, from Granite City, to the Garden of Wales. Augusta Lewis is the Sustainable Food Places Coordinator for Bwyd Sir Gâr (and I’m really sorry if that’s the incorrect pronunciation, I’m not a Welsh speaker) the Sustainable Food Partnership for Carmarthenshire. We asked Augusta why the partnership was set up in this part of Wales. 

Augusta: So we came about during the Covid lockdowns and so I was initially hosted by the Association of Voluntary Services on a small piece of funding from the Welsh Government’s Tackling Poverty Team, which was really looking at inequality of access to emergency food, which was, you know, quite a big issue during the pandemic and particularly about how people weren’t accessing a sort of balanced diet in terms of the fresh. 

And then we also, during that piece of work, applied to become a member of the Sustainable Food Places scheme, because there was some really good insight from the council and other organisations that, from really early on, that actually in terms of strategic objectives around community cohesion, health and wellbeing, net zero commitments, nature recovery commitments. Actually, the Sustainable Food Places framework is a really good vehicle for creating a partnership and a progressing against those objectives. 

Izzy: Yeah, I think it’s interesting to hear how much the pandemic highlighted and exacerbated issues around food insecurity. And obviously it’s something that Martin mentions as well. So we’ve heard from Martin about the context in Aberdeen, and I was interested to hear about how the location of the food partnership affects the way in which it’s set up and the work it carries out. Augusta told us more about this and about the specific issues affecting Carmarthenshire. 

Augusta: It’s a large rural county historically, and our Chair of our food partnership’s a food historian talks a lot and has written books on the diverse land use in the past and Carmarthenshire being able to sustain the population and meet nutritional needs and what have you. But like a lot of places, due to the pressures of common agricultural policy specialisation and the way the markets work and long supply chains, it’s specialised very highly in dairy and lamb production and a little bit of beef, essentially with horticulture sort of disappearing, as well as small scale cereal economies as well, local cereal production.  

So, you know, with a new incoming sustainable farming scheme, we have quite a favourable environment for pitching local food partnerships to be able to enable that diversification.  

But in terms of deprivation, we do have sort of dispersed rural poverty, and we have a little bit of concentrated urban poverty in our southern towns as well like Llanelli and what have you. 

So we’re doing work with enabling inclusive access there, looking at how we can foster more community collaboration, bringing third sector organisations together with schools and helping communities to design projects themselves that can break down those barriers. The other great thing is the rollout of free school meals across Wales, and that the opportunity there is for more public procurement and we have in our policy environment as well, something called the Social Partnership of Procurement Act, which places a little bit… it’s still only a little bit, but it’s something… of social value on contracts that public sector organisations will go for. So you need to demonstrate that you’re putting something back in terms of local economy and other objectives that councils and health boards have committed to.  

Food partnerships take a place-based approach, which means they’re really flexible and they sort of evolve in relationship to issues of a place. So what’s happening in Carmarthenshire is completely different from what’s happening in Rhondda Cynon Taff or in Cardiff, you know, and it’s shaped by the people and that’s how they should work to be effective. So I think that the coordination that a lot of the time is really a listening exercise and bringing together different viewpoints and finding where there’s consensus to be able to work collaboratively to push things forward. 

So it’s not a kind of, it doesn’t take an adversarial approach. It takes a kind of collaborative approach. So it’s not railing against anything as such. It’s looking for where there’s common interest. And I think when you’re talking about health and wellbeing and it’s linked to nature and climate and future generations, we’re talking about things everybody cares about. So people come together around that. 

Vera: I think that’s the understated and transformative power of this partnership working, is exactly what Augusta said. There are a lot of divisive opinions on a number of issues touching on food. What is absolutely crucial is for us to find consensus and actually build progress on that. That we are not dragging young people with top down policies to something they didn’t sign up for, and neither we are leaving it to people to do it on their own steam, in their own time. That we actually have to find that sort of the values and the big things that are important to us, which are, you know, manifold. 

It’s, you know, your community just doing well and thriving, you know, having good jobs, having good food to eat, having an environment that, you know, is thriving. Those are all things that we can agree on. And partnership working and food partnerships, they are those consensus builders. We actually need that consensus building now more than ever. 

Izzy: As we said, food is the great unifier. You know, it’s the thing that everybody can relate to. And I think it has that really important cultural role as well. And, you know, certainly we’ve spoken to people for this series about other Big Local Actions of the 25 that we’re covering this year. And sometimes you can use food as an entry point to talk about things that are completely unrelated to food or seemingly unrelated to food, but just as a way to get people in the door, you know, just to get people sat down around a table with each other physically. 

And food is the way that you do that. So it’s a really important connector. We spoke to Martin about some of the ways that food is connecting people in Aberdeen. 

Martin: From my time and this it’s coming up for five years I’ve been in my post now, there has been a real development in just the actual joy and the social side of food and how that can bring people together and create experiences that are so positive, regardless of the circumstances of that individual or that that community is in at the time. It has just been wonderful to see. 

And the growth of that movement through things such as our community garden festivals, but also the activity that those who’ve gone on to inspire. For example, we had a festival in 2021 and a festival in 2022, and there’s so much other activity which has blossomed since then around skills development, around bringing people together at a practical level in those community spaces to work together between spaces to support each other, for example. 

In terms of cooking classes and the ability for people to come together and learn how to cook, but also have fun around food to find that inspiration around food, and to learn new things, to have fun with so many other people is amazing. And we’ve got the community kitchen Cook at the Nook, which is very active in terms of delivering food classes. 

But we’ve also got an amazing network of people who have been trained with the skills to teach others how to cook, who are directly in their community, supporting others on the ground, creating this really amazing atmosphere, amazing movement of people that are not only building the confidence of others, but in the same time building community confidence around these issues as well. 

So that being sort of something that we’ve noticed since the pandemic, paired with the fact that we moved from the pandemic into a cost of living crisis. In many ways, we’re still in that cost of living crisis. And so the resilience of some of that activity and the sort of ways that that supported the community beyond, as I see the nutritional value of food or calories or the access to food itself, it’s just been amazing to see as well, because there have been additional challenges in how people access food. The ability for people to access food financially has become a lot more difficult. So I suppose the prevalence of food support has really been something that has, you know, been a bit of a challenge in terms of the demand behind that. 

In Aberdeen City as well, we’ve got such a holistic and coordinated and collaborative approach to providing food support at that level through networks such as Food Poverty Action Aberdeen, but also through the ways that we have been using, for example, Dr Megan Blake’s Food Ladders Framework as a way of delivering positive change and realising the use and value of food in community level change, for example, has been absolutely brilliant too. 

So there’s those very big macro issues and challenges that we face, that I think many food partnerships and many food organisations are facing as well. But that resilience and that solution and the working together in the collaborative nature has just been amazing to see as well. 

Izzy: So can you tell us a little bit more about how the award system works, and what partnerships have to do to achieve the different levels of award, and how many places have achieved bronze, silver and gold so far. 

Vera: So the Sustainable Food Places programme utilises a framework of six key areas of activity, and those are around Governance and Strategy, Good Food Movement Building, and Community Action. Access to healthy and sustainable food. Promoting a diversified good food economy. Transforming procurement and using procurement that kind of the public money for public food as a real driver for change. And the sixth is around food and climate and nature and that kind of like the sustainability piece. So those are the six key areas.  

We use the awards framework to support places to go on a kind of a journey of progress. At the bronze level, we expect a diverse and collaborative network in place of different food system actors. 

We expect a kind of action plan that they come together around and a process by, by which those actions are kind of delivered. So we need to see a sort of direction of change and a level of engagement and bringing in of those kind of diverse perspectives, but also a diversity of areas of working so that there are, addressing and working on food poverty and food insecurity, but also starting to look at that kind of community food action, as well as sustainability. So we want we want to see a kind of a breadth of activity.  

At the silver level we expect a formally adopted food strategy, typically like kind of a three year or longer, food strategy that has been endorsed by the council and seeing a sort of, again, a breadth of organisations, institutions and community groups are doing the sort of, the delivering the kind of the action driving that food strategy. 

And we want to see a level of influence of the kind of ways of working and strategies across those different six key themes.  

And you might be thinking at this point, what is gold about? What we’re looking for is national leadership on different areas of food. It’s quite an endeavor to go for a gold award. With gold. We want to see a kind of a really shining leadership in an area of work. You know, it could be something around food access and food justice, Aberdeen has focused on this, so some of the others, it could be around that kind of good food movement building like a strategic approach and investment in community and grassroots action. 

So it could be whatever areas where that, you know, that that place recognises they really shine nationally. So across our network at the moment, we have over 50 food partnerships that have achieved bronze, 20 that have achieved silver. The six places that have achieved gold are Brighton and Hove and Bristol, Middlesbrough, Cambridge, Cardiff and now Aberdeen. 

Izzy: So let’s hear from Martin now about that gold award and what it means for the city of Aberdeen. 

Martin: It’s something that is very live for us in Aberdeen at the moment. So at the start of June we announced that we were successful and I’m really enjoying engaging with people and talking with people about it. The Gold Award has been one of those opportunities to bring so many people together across that whole yearlong process, basically, that it took for us to refine that bid and the level of excitement around Aberdeen on this, and the organisations and people that have been involved is just amazing. 

So really, to recognise and plug all of the amazing work that partners of Granite City Good Food are doing, that people who have been involved in projects, whether one small project or whether there are lots and lots of different projects with Granite City Good Food and the input that they’ve had. A food partnership is as much as sum of the different parts and stakeholders and people that are involved in that, so I’m always enormously proud of them. 

And that recognition through our Gold Sustainable Food Places Award is just the cherry on top of that cake. I’m sure there’s a healthier analogy, but, you know, it’s the peak of that, and it is the recognition of the people that have made that difference. 

Izzy: I think it’s perfectly fine to have a cake analogy in there. You can have cake occasionally. 

Vera: It’s part of a diversified food diet, is what I always think. 

Izzy: That’s right. That’s right. There well over 100 Sustainable Food Place partnerships in the UK. So the chances are wherever you’re listening to this, there’s one not too far away from you. If there isn’t, however, what could you do? How could you get started bringing together different organisations to create a new partnership? We spoke to Augusta about this. 

Augusta: I would say that it’s really important to identify those who, kind of get the concept and are really enthusiastic, and then you’re sort of pushing on an open door. For Carmarthenshire. It worked very well, starting from the voluntary sector umbrella body and looking for grant funding to put a co-ordinator in post. And I think a co-ordinator is really key who can go out and sort of try and build the relationships with different organisations. 

And I think, you know, we have been lucky in Carmarthenshire that there just does seem to be a lot of willing participants across the organisations I’ve mentioned. But I think they’re everywhere. So I think it really is just getting the funding for a co-ordinator. And then, you know, building those relationships, bringing together a kind of seed of a partnership and going from there. 

Izzy: Martin also had some thoughts about how to get involved with sustainable food. 

Martin: I think there are lots of opportunities and it really depends on how you want to be involved in the food movement and the opportunities and actually the capacity in the time that you have to get involved as well. Everything adds value in some way, whether it is being an advocate for sustainable food, whether that’s, you know, supporting organisations through food donations at that, that level, but also whether it’s through growing food and sharing that with your community, bringing your neighbours and friends together into a really good meal and having the social aspect of that as well. 

There’s lots of opportunities to get involved, at a voluntary level. And that exists right across, for example, getting involved in some of the organisations that are working on food in the city right through to, you know, setting up organisations or becoming part of community organisations that provide cooking lessons and getting involved in the Food Champions programme using the the framework of training that that offers to support people around food in your community. 

But there’s also lots of opportunities, for example, to get involved in food partnership activity and be one of those sort of advocates for that as well. So there’s always opportunities to get involved at the local level, and I would encourage anyone that’s interested to get in touch with my myself, get in touch with Granite City Good Food through our social media channels to begin that conversation. 

I suppose at a national level or a more community based level, if not in Aberdeen, there’s lots of amazing opportunities through the Sustainable Food Places Network. I’m constantly inspired by other food partnerships and by the work that is happening in the food partnership, that I co-ordinate and seeing all the amazing work that’s going on around me, but also the work that’s going on elsewhere. 

And so, you know, the Sustainable Food Places Network is a really fantastic place to start to see what all the other food partnerships are doing to get some inspiration around how to maybe start that yourself. And if you’re local area doesn’t have a food partnership, it starts with one person that wants to connect up some of those conversations and so be that person. 

Have that conversation, get in touch with the Sustainable Food Places team and get involved in the amazing work that that’s taking place. As I say, I’m constantly, as I say, proud and really excited by the work that’s going on around this network. It’s just brilliant. 

Izzy: He’s so enthusiastic, isn’t he? It’s lovely and I really hope that that enthusiasm is inspiring some of the people who are listening to get involved locally, whether there’s something in place already or whether it’s something that they could help to start. Do you have any final thoughts or advice for people whose appetite has been whetted by our chats today? 

Vera: So hopefully, if you’re listening to this, it’s really hitting home that food is everyone’s responsibility, including yours, even if you’re time poor. So I guess the first thing to say is just look it up, go online and see if your local authority has a food strategy. Just put, you know, your local authority food strategy, or maybe look up your local area community food and see what’s out there. 

If there isn’t anything, if you know for a fact and you’ve checked, the Sustainable Food Places website; maybe one place to start is just ask your councillor or even your MP, because they are often at the interface of hearing from communities around food related issues. So never underestimate the value of your local political representative to be the eyes and ears on the food issues that matter to your community. 

And if there’s one thing you do is just raise that question and say, can somebody bring together a meeting? Maybe that meeting is a shared meal with people who want to have a better food system in your local area, in your town. And just have that conversation going. Some of the food partnerships in our network were devised by people who just wanted to get that conversation going, and it’s as simple as that. 

And there are probably organisations, councillors themselves that can actually do that. It doesn’t have to fall on individual shoulders. 

Izzy: Fantastic. Well, we normally end episodes by recapping what we’ve learned. For me, I think it’s been interesting to hear about the localisation of these different food partnerships, how on the one hand, we’ve got a food partnership based in a very urban place in Aberdeen, which is working with a lot of different organisations there, and how in Carmarthenshire, we’re working in a very rural environment, and they’re both sustainable food partnerships, but they’re both sort of addressing and working on very different kinds of issues and with very different kinds of landscapes. 

And I think it’s about responding to local needs rather than being something formulaic. And at the same time learning from food partnerships all around the country. So, you know, there are there are learnings that are relevant for everyone, but there are also things that are specifically local to those places.  

Remember, if you would like to know anything more about anything you’ve heard in today’s episode, please do check out the show notes where there are lots of links and information about everything that we’ve discussed, and you can also get in touch with us at [email protected] that’s E C O. 

Vera, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing some insights and your absolute palpable passion about food partnerships. 

Vera: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. 

Izzy: You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast. It was written and presented by me, Isabelle Sparrow, and co-hosted by Vera Zakharov, Local Action Coordinator at Sustain. Our producer and editor is Bradley Ingham. Big thanks to Martin Carle of Granite City Good Food and Augusta Lewis of Bwyd Sir Gâr Food for their time, and thanks to you for listening. We’ll be back in two weeks when we’ll be getting cosy with an episode called Install Low-Carbon Heating. Until then, goodbye!